To Crave a Blood Moon (11 page)

Clawing hunger ripped through him.
Torment.
She gasped, struggling against it. She couldn't take it, couldn't stand it another moment…

With every effort left to her, she brushed a hand against his cold cheek and managed to speak. “Make it stop.”

At least the suffering would end. Ending it for him would end it for her.

“Go ahead!” The growl of her voice startled her, reminded her that she wasn't herself anymore—just some monster that the world needed to be rid of.

At least Sebastian would not die. The thought comforted her more than she would have thought possible. Better that she had known him. Tasted desire with him.
Through
him. She could have died with Amy and Emily and not known. Instead, she had had this time with him. For maybe the first time, she had well and truly lived.

A stark, unwelcome realization struck him, sinking through the deluge of dark, twisting hunger. She
wanted
him to kill her, to feed on her. His anger rose so swiftly, so furiously, it actually beat out the sweet scent of her blood, the temptation that threatened to consume him.

“Damn you, Ruby,” he bit out, shaking her fiercely.
“Talk to me. I need to know you. Tell me who you are.” It was the only way.

Her eyes stared up at him, confused, glazed, lost.

Damn her. He couldn't believe she was giving him permission to
feed
on her.
The hell he would!

“What are you, Ruby?” He shook her. “There's more to you. Tell me. I need to know.” He wet his cracked lips, avoiding looking down at all that blood again. Delicious moisture for his tight, parched arteries. He avoided breathing, avoided taking in the aroma that tormented his starved body.

“No,” her voice rasped.

“Yes. I knew it the moment I saw you. You're… different. Special.” A part of him suspected it was why he'd been able to resist her. She was no ordinary girl.

She laughed then. The dry, brittle sound like crackling leaves on the air. Without humor. Dark. Tormented. “Sure. Why not? It doesn't matter anymore.” Her head lolled on her shoulders and she smiled a silly, drunken grin.

“C'mon. Give me something. A reason.” A reason not to kill you.
A reason to believe you're as important as I think you are
.
Give me the strength to fight the darkness
…

She groaned. The sound tore through him. “I thought I couldn't be any weirder than I was. A freak my family didn't even want. And now this.” She paused before saying. “I'm an empath.”

He thought for a moment, struggling to think as he held down the beast, keeping it pinned. “You mean you know what others are feeling?”

She laughed that awful laugh again, her eyes fixing on him, glittering cold silver. She looked a bit more lucid. Regenerated. He didn't dare look at the wound to verify this. The blood would still be there, pushing at the fine edge of his will.

“I
know
what others are feeling because I feel it. I live it.” Her voice dropped to a mutter. “I can't stop it.”

“Christ.” What hell must she have been through?

He nearly dropped his hands from her, afraid at all she must feel through him… his torment, the hunger. She must think him a monster. She must
know.
Her uncanny awareness made sense now.

This woman possessed power. People weren't always truthful… even with themselves. Mostly with themselves. They may not think certain thoughts… but the sentiment, the emotion was always there. That couldn't be denied. She could look inside the heart of anyone and see what hid there. He'd felt she was special. Now he knew.

Burning determination filled him. He would destroy himself before he destroyed her. His mouth curled in a savage smile. Releasing her, he moved back to the far wall. Away from her. Away from temptation.

She watched him, her pewter eyes eerie in an entirely different way—different from the lycans he hunted. Different because he cared about her.

“Sebastian?” she whispered.

He said nothing, not trusting himself to speak. Closing his eyes, he fought to feel nothing. To empty himself of everything. To spare her and let her heal.

He turned from her. Like everyone else before.
Like her father.

She closed her eyes against the burning sting of tears. Great. She felt like a little girl again, crying when her dad turned his back on her, left her because he just couldn't handle what she was.

Merely another reminder of why she should have stayed home. The world waited with pain for anyone who dared live in it. She had known that. So why had she left her safe haven?

She peered at him through the darkness, the muscled hulk of him, a brooding shadow in his corner, half-man, half-animal. She should feel threatened, in danger. Instead, she only felt hurt. Unaccountably
hurt that when she finally bared herself, revealed herself for what she was, he turned away.

She thought that maybe on some level he would understand. Because he was different, too.

Because she let him in her head… in her body.

But he didn't understand. Didn't forgive. Like everyone else.

Ruby shivered, even though she was starting to feel warm again. Healed. Only her heart ached. Stupidly. Why should she care what he thought of her? Why should she care about him at all?

She shouldn't.

But she did. She did, or she wouldn't hurt this much.

The ground shook above them. Ruby opened her eyes from a fitful sleep, alert to Sebastian's every sound and movement several feet away. He didn't stir, hardly breathed.
Hunger
. Craving smoldered inside him, held tightly in check, and she shivered.

He had not spoken to her since she made her confession. Not looked at her, did not touch her.

She had lost track of time, sleeping throughout her body's regeneration. She knew days had passed since she had been stabbed, but she hadn't a clue how many. At one point, they fed her, lycans standing guard between
her and Sebastian. She had gulped down food without tasting, inhaling it, letting it fuel her.

The sounds from above grew, shaking on the air.

“What is it?” she whispered, watching as Sebastian rose to his feet. Primal as any wild animal even when he appeared human. Raw and menacing. Desperate for food. Life.

She eyed the gaunt press of his ribs against his sinewy body and felt the familiar pull. Desire that was all hers. The flexing of muscles in his satiny chest. He gazed up at the ceiling. Every muscle stretched taut as he balanced on the pads of his feet, looking upward as though he could see what went on above.

“It's begun.”

“What?”

He cocked his head, listening. She could hear the sounds, too. Cries, sudden vibrating movements throughout the building. The faint, creeping odor of blood sifted through the air like growing smoke.

The image of that room from that first night with its buffet and free-flowing wine flashed through her head. Followed, of course, with the gorging beasts, the blood, the screams.
Pain. Ripping agony
.

“Are they feeding again?” she whispered, swallowing.

“It doesn't work like that. They can't do that right now. Not until the next moonrise.”

“Then… what is it?”

“They're being attacked. By outsiders.” His head cocked deeper to the side and he sniffed the air, so much resembling an animal just then that a chill chased down her spine. “A rival pack, I'm guessing. The one they've been worrying over.”

“What does that mean for us? Is that bad?”

He frowned and she wondered if it was her question or the
us
that made him frown.

“Packs are territorial, but I've not heard of them making outright war on each other. Not in generations.” In the shadowed cell, his lips twisted. “They've grown too civilized for that and don't encroach on each other. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

His gaze found hers, glittering across the distance like an animal peering out from the brush on a dark night. Light glowed and twisted at the centers like flame.

One of her many foster families had hunted, relying on game for most of their meat. Not uncommon in their corner of Louisiana. So Ruby knew how to hunt, lay a trap, skin and gut a kill. She also recognized the eyes of an animal watching her. Only before it had always been prey. Frightened. Hiding.

He was no one's prey.

“Unless,” he answered, “the rumors of packs allying
themselves and forming a confederation are true. They've grown sick of organized hunters, of NODEAL and EFLA.”

She shook her head. She'd just learned of the existence of preternatural creatures—
had become one
—and now he was discussing things like lycan confederations and organizations of hunters. “Why are they doing that?”

“In order to unite, to let mankind know of their existence, defeat the hunters… and then take on the rest of the world.”

Hot and cold intermittently washed over her at this. She opened her mouth with another question when he waved a hand. “Silence. Someone's coming.”

Her heart picked up speed. “What do we—”

“Stay there.” He sprang into the air like a jungle creature.

The door swung open and she held her breath, commanding her eyes to stay trained on the door, to
not
glance up where Sebastian hugged the ceiling like some sort of spider.

“You're still alive.”

Yusuf. Even if his face and figure were cast in shadow, she knew his voice in an instant. Her nostrils flared. She even knew his smell. Sweat and bad cologne.

Behind him, Annika and another female hovered,
shifting anxiously. “Hurry. Grab him. He may be the only thing to keep them from killing us.” Anxiety hummed from them as they rushed the room. And something else. Bitter and acrid, it filled her mouth, coating her tongue.
Fear
. They were afraid.
Panickyhot
. But not from anything they faced in this room. They feared what they fled, whatever tangled with the rest of their pack above. Whatever waited Ruby and Sebastian if they got out of this room.

Yusuf's gaze flew wildly over the room, skipping over her, searching for Sebastian.

Noise descended on them. A terrible boom. Several violent thumps came closer. Shouts and crashes. A shrill scream.

Yusuf dragged her to her feet, gripping a fistful of her hair. “Where is he?”

She shook, words strangling on her lips, wincing at the grip on her head.

A shadow fell, swooped down.

Yusuf looked up the precise moment Sebastian dropped on him.

Ruby stumbled free as the two locked, a tangle of flying limbs and pummeling fists. The females plunged into the fray with ear-burning screeches, pouncing like cats on Sebastian.

“Go!” Sebastian shouted. “Run, Ruby! Run!”

The door loomed ahead. Open and clear, she dove
for it, intent on reaching the floor level, the front door. Escape. She only had to make it through warring lycans. No sweat. Right.

A niggle of guilt wormed through her. She paused, her heart a hammering thud in her chest. Glancing over her shoulder, she bit her lip.
Sebastian.
Her heart squeezed. She could still hear them—the smacking of fists on bodies—Sebastian's and Yusef's growls and grunts. Turning back, she faced the shadowed stairwell, the light ahead. Perspiration trickled down her nape.

Go. Run. You can't help him even if you tried.

A mantra grew in her head.
Get away. Get away. Get away.

Exhaling, she rushed ahead, took the steps two at a time.

But he kept you alive, Ruby. You know what it cost him to do that, what he endured. You know because you felt it yourself
.

Swallowing a sob, she shook her head. If she stayed around him, he would break—feed on her and become one of them. He was better off without her. They were both better off without each other. No matter how her heart ached. She forced the heartache away.

She didn't owe anything to a half-breed lycan who took her virginity… who made her body catch fire with a single touch. That sped up her strides and tightened
her jaw.
Get a grip, Ruby. This is about survival. Your safety. Not about some guy making you go weak at the knees.

No one met her at the top of the narrow stairs. She crept down an empty corridor, pressing close to one wall, palms skimming the smooth plaster. An eerie quiet prevailed, sending the small hairs along her arms into salute.
What happened to all the noise? The screams?

Acutely aware of her aloneness, she paused, waiting for some sort of sound. Linked to her brethren, she felt Gunter and others nearby. So Gunter wasn't dead then. Unfortunate. If the alpha were dead, then she would be normal again. Free.

Closing her eyes, she reached inside herself and used her newly heightened senses. Over the beating of her heart, over the blood rushing in her veins, she heard a man speaking. The distant voice grew, gaining clarity. She cocked her head, listening, trying to detect his location. She followed the voice. Down the corridor. To the left.

She stopped at the corner, listening intently to the voice. She had never heard this man before. Never
felt
anything like him.
Immense cold
. Even in a language she did not understand, its rumble was different than that of Gunter, yet he spoke with such command that she knew he was an alpha.

She continued, rounding around the corner. The sound of the voice grew, but she saw no one. She stopped at a set of swinging double doors. Where death reeked. The voice came from within.

A covert look through one filth-covered window revealed a large room. Bodies sprawled between long-neglected machinery. Dead bodies. Pools of blood stained the cement floor. Her nostrils quivered against the coppery tang of it, something dark unfurling in her belly.

Her gaze landed on Gunter. He stood before a mob of at least fifty, mostly men, some women, all outfitted with weapons and dressed in brown fatigues. Warriors. Soldiers. Even through the grimy glass, she could see the pewter gleam in their eyes.