To Crave a Blood Moon (24 page)

“Let's go inside.” Grasping her elbow, he led her into the house. But not before casting one more lingering look over his shoulder. They needed to move. As soon as moonrise ended. He would give her no choice.

In days, they would be gone from here. And far from whatever was coming for them.

Ruby paced the floor of her vegetable cellar. The concrete was cracked in several places, leaking moisture from the earth. The air felt cool even without the benefit of air conditioning. In summers past, whenever the AC gave out, she and her mother would fold laundry down here with only each other and the radio for company.

A lone mattress sat on the floor, a blanket tossed over it. For her comfort. She shuddered. It was hard to imagine ever feeling comfortable with what was coming.

Sebastian leaned against the wall, watching her beneath a heavy-lidded gaze as she prowled the cell, waiting for Adele. She couldn't help it… her mind
drifted to another room about the same size halfway around the world. Her mouth dried. But this time it would be only her down here.

“You'll be okay down here?” Adele called, her feet falling soundly as she descended the wood steps. She carried a pillow and a jug of water with her.

“Sure.”

Adele stopped next to her. “Just want to make sure.”

“Yeah, well. I don't have a choice.” She spoke distractedly, rubbing the side of her face. “Have I told you how much I appreciate and love you for doing this?”

The two of them had patched things up, but Ruby still regretted the harsh words she'd spoken.

Adele brandished the syringe, flicking it once with her finger. A drop of fluid glistened from the tip. It would knock Ruby out within half an hour. At least according to Dwayne's instructions.

She held out her arm and didn't flinch as Adele pushed the needle through her flesh. Not when the alternative—being awake and cognizant during her transition… feeling nothing but the blood hunger, the terror of her body becoming something else—was the only other option.

Pressing her arm close to her side, she rubbed the spot of injection. “You should go ahead and leave now.”

Adele's eyes glinted wetly. “I'll leave the basement, but not the house. I'm here for you, Ruby.” Her nose wrinkled and she winked. “I'll wait it out with lover boy upstairs.”

Heat crawled her face and she tossed a nearby pack of toilet paper at her friend. It bounced off Adele's back as she moved up the steps.

“Don't come down here until morning,” Ruby reminded sharply.

Adele's feet beat out a steady rhythm. “You've only said that like fifty times.”

Sebastian arrived at the top of the stairs, his frame filling the doorway. “I'll see that she doesn't.”

Ruby nodded stiffly. He hadn't touched her last night. She had waited, lying in the dark, desperate for him. And he had not lifted a hand toward her. She didn't know what moonrise would bring, but she knew she would survive it. And she would not go with him when he left.

That meant he would be gone in three nights.

An ache throbbed beneath her breastbone. As eager as she was to put moonrise behind her, she was not eager to say goodbye to him. She moved to sit on the mattress. “I expect French toast in the morning,” she called to Adele's retreating form.

“If you're making it,” Adele shouted from just beyond the stairs. “You know I can't cook.”

“I'll cook.”

Sebastian lingered at the foot of the stairs. She felt his hesitation, sensed his unease…

He shuffled closer, away from the stairs.

“You can't stay,” she said, her voice fast. “Go.”

He couldn't hold her hand through this. No one could. They weren't the same. Fully shifted, who knew how she would react to him? Sure, he could handle himself against any single lycan—
her
. But she wouldn't put him to the test. She wouldn't put herself to that test.

“You can't be here.”

“Ruby.” He shook his head. “I can handle whatever comes.”

“I'm alone on this. I have to be.”

His indecision hovered between them. His compassion. It undid her. She had vowed to do this alone, had vowed to handle it. To keep control of something in her life, of this at least. She couldn't rely on him. Couldn't let herself need him.

“I'm always alone,” she added. “That's the way I like it.”

Her words seemed to affect him at last. His features hardened. “Of course. I understand exactly.” And that's because he did, she realized. They both felt the safest in solitude. Trusting only themselves. Neither would have it any other way.

With a brisk nod and a curt “good luck,” he took the steps two at a time.

Then, halfway up the steps, he stopped. Turning, he drove a hard line back down the steps toward her, his mouth pressed into a hard, determined line that made her stomach clench.

Before she realized his intent, he seized her by the shoulders and kissed her long and hard. Just when the kiss began to swing into something else, something that sent licks of heat twisting through her belly, he broke free. Nose to nose, he stared starkly at her for several moments. His ragged breath fogged her bruised lips and she leaned forward for more, another taste.

But then he was gone.

She listened as the door clicked shut and multiple locks fell into place, resounding in the silence of her cellar, echoing in the hollows of her heart. For now, and all the generations to come.

As the sun dipped behind the trees standing guard over the house, Sebastian strode a hard line over the floor, walking from the bookcase to the edge of the living room and back again. Impending night hummed outside. His ears picked up the slightest sounds, detected the life beginning to stir, insects
and animals that had lain low all day moving now, ready to prowl free.

Adele sat on the couch, legs curled under her, flipping through a copy of
Food and Wine,
a sweaty bottle of Dixie hanging loosely from her fingers.

Being up
here
—while she was down
there
—didn't feel right. He was here to watch over her, protect her—from herself and others. That's why he'd come after her.

Was that why? Really
?

He shoved back the small voice inside his head and listened for the smallest sound from below, even though he knew she wouldn't have shifted yet. It took a high moon before that could happen.

“Pacing the floor isn't going to make the night pass any quicker.”

He glanced at the female on the couch. With her ample curves and sultry mane of hair, she would have spiked his interest any day of the week. Before. Before Ruby. Only thoughts of Ruby consumed him now.

He and Ruby had shared a lot in the last month—imprisonment, fear and torture… their bodies. He could not claim such closeness to anyone else. He'd gained a certain comfort with her that he shared with no one else. His hand tightened into a fist at his side. She could walk around his head… and he didn't mind.

“You care about her.” Adele watched him with catlike eyes for a moment, then looked down at the magazine in her lap again, flipping pages. “I think you probably even love her.”

He opened his mouth to deny this, but she only cut him off. “Don't lie.” Her glossy lips quirked. “I know these things. I'm surprised Ruby hasn't already figured it out, but then I guess her own feelings probably get in the way. She probably thinks what she's feeling from you is just her own heart talking.” She laughed hollowly and heaved a sigh. Her gaze drifted over him, her eyes hardening. “But this is new to Ruby. I hope you're not going to break her heart and bail out on her like everyone else in her life. Because if you mess with her, you'll have to answer to me.”

He smiled at that. A threat from a mortal woman . . . “Yes, ma'am.”

She nodded as if matters were settled. “So how long are you going to hang around up here?” She motioned to the floor with one hand as she flipped another page. “Ruby needs you down there.”

He stared at her for a moment, her words sinking in. She was right. What the hell was he doing up here? Ruby was scared. Frightened. No matter what she said. The transition alone would feel like she was being torn inside out. As a boy, those first times had
been nothing short of traumatic. Until he learned to embrace it, to stop fighting his body's change. Now he did it with ease, in a blink of the eye. Ruby wouldn't know how to do that.

Even different as they were, he could help her through it. Coach her through the worst. He could handle one lycaness. He was stronger, older, more experienced, not a mortal in danger of moon-driven hunger. And none of that should bother him anyway. Loaded with sedatives, she would sleep through the worst of it. She probably wouldn't even know he was there. But he would. He would know.

He had to go to her.

“What are you waiting for?” Adele asked.

“Absolutely nothing.” Turning, he headed toward the kitchen, stopping at the door leading to the cellar that he had added extra locks to—intent on one goal.
Ruby
.

Ruby needed him. It was enough. It was everything.

One hand on a bolt, he jerked to a sudden stop. The hairs on his flesh sprang to chilling awareness, vibrating. Rotating on his heels, he moved, passing back through the living room, past Adele's watchful gaze, pausing before the front door.

A threat approached. Outside. Just beyond the porch. His every nerve buzzed in warning, his skin tightening, stretching. His bones pulled, at once
painful and darkly satisfying.

“Adele. Get upstairs. Now. Hide yourself.” Even as he instructed this, he knew it wouldn't matter. Whatever coming wasn't human. If the creature defeated him, Adele couldn't hide.

“What—”

“Go!” he barked.

She scrambled from the couch. Her feet thundered up the stairs.

The familiar heat of the beast rose up inside him, preparing to battle whatever advanced as his hand closed around the doorknob, his mouth dry as sandpaper. He couldn't lose. Ruby was just below. Defenseless, sedated.

Growling, he shook his head. How could he have thought he could ever leave her? He would never feel satisfied with the notion of her alone during every moonrise with only Adele, a mortal, to serve as watchdog. How could he have thought that would be okay? Right now, in this moment, with darkness closing in, the moon rising on the night, and a faceless threat drawing closer, she needed him.

And she always would.

He opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. A figure emerged from the trees, his strides slow, deceptively easy, the rolling gait of a predator.

Sebastian marked him instantly: the golden dovenatu from Istanbul. A vengeful light glittered at the centers of his eyes. Apparently he had survived the explosion… and was pissed as hell.

“You're alive,” Sebastian announced, his voice thick and guttural, teeth gnashing. The words rang with deadly calm—a direct contrast to the wild stretching, turning, tightening of his muscles, readying to battle.

“Yeah.” He carried a backpack over one shoulder, but tossed it aside as he squared off in front of Sebastian. Wind whispered through the night, lifting the dovenatu's dark blond hair.

In an instant, he shifted, muscles straining, swelling against his clothes, his face blurring into felinelike lines. “But you're not.”

They sprang for each other, bodies a hiss on the wind. Only one thought churned through Sebastian as he smacked into hard flesh and bone. He had to win. His own fate didn't even register.

If he lost, the bastard would find Ruby and destroy her. She needed him. He wouldn't fail.

Ruby breathed heavily from where she sprawled on the mattress. Her chest rising and falling with rapid breaths, air sawing from her lips and nose as if she could not draw enough inside her. Heat smoldered through her, flaming her insides raw.

Sitting up, she blinked free of the grogginess in her head and glanced at the digital alarm clock.
Seven
P.M.

Rolling onto her back, she beat a fist against the mattress, arching in agony. She should be unconscious. Dead to the world.

“Damn it, Dwayne.” The dosage must have been off. She had to endure this awake and aware.

No light permeated the room, but she didn't need to be outside to know that dusk had fallen. Moonrise was on her.

With a moan, she curled into a tight ball and clutched her twisting belly. Was this how it was supposed to be? Was it supposed to hurt this much? Did she have this to look forward to for the next three nights?

Every month? Every year?

A sob scalded her throat. She flipped to her stomach and buried her mouth in the mattress to muffle her scream as her limbs twisted, tore, grew…

One name welled up inside her, exploded from her lips in a voice she didn't even recognize, too thick and garbled to be her own.

“Sebastian!”

Writhing, she strained, bending her spine as her body turned itself inside out.

Worse than the pain, than the unbearable pulling and stretching, was the building hunger. The burn in her blood. The devouring of herself.

Squatting on all fours, she turned her head side to side, inhaling deeply through her nose. Her fingers flexed on the cold cement floor. All at once, the earth became a live, pulsing thing beneath her. The woods surrounding her house were soaked with life that beckoned. Everything reached through the walls, seeking her, calling her awake, urging the hunger on.

Her nostrils flared. A familiar scent reached her—Adele.

She was close. The only human within miles and Ruby zoned in on her. Springing to her feet, she sniffed harder, drawing air into her lungs. She surged forward, breaking through the door as if it were cardboard.

Wood splintered, but she could not stop to care, to worry, to do anything besides follow her nose, her bloodlust.