To Crave a Blood Moon (3 page)

Ruby sat up, ignoring the jibe. “You believed they
both
had a stomach ache? And you let them return on their own?”

“I didn't want to miss the tour of the Blue Mosque.” Rosemary's eyes glinted defensively. “And they did share a plate at lunch today.” She shrugged. “Maybe it was food poisoning.”

“Right.” Ruby swung her legs over the edge of the bed and pushed to her feet. Amy was a good girl, but easily misguided. Ever since she paired up with Emily, Amy had turned into someone else. A perfect parrot of the wilder Emily.

She hastily put on her shoes. “We should have split those two up from day one.”

“Should,” Rosemary said again. “That word comes up a lot with these kids.”

Ruby resisted reminding her that the word
should
needed to be applied to the parents who brought children into the world and then failed them. Rosemary always had a way of blaming the kids. “I suggested you split them up.”

Ruby had been one of them. Rejected. Abandoned. Left to the system. Ruby knew. She knew well.

“Any idea where they went?”

“Kevin said they were talking to some older guys earlier when we were browsing tapestries at the Bazaar. They invited them to a party. He heard the girls agree to meet them at six at that
pastirma
shop where we ate.”

A party in a strange, exciting city. A pair of fifteen-year-old girls. Older exotic men. Great. It was a formula for disaster. Rising, she faced Rosemary. “Ready?”

She blinked. “Where are we going?”

“To get them.”

The social worker's face screwed tight and she waved a hand. “They'll be fine… probably drag in after they've had their fun.”

“And you're okay with that? What if they don't? What if they get into trouble? Or hurt?”

“Look. I'm not about to scour the city for them. And I don't know why you think I would.”

“Oh, I don't know. Because it's your job.”

“I don't get paid enough for that.”

“Fine,” Ruby bit out. “Where's John? I'll get him to go with me.”

“Don't bother. He can't leave the rest of the kids to go off after two troublemakers.”

She inhaled deeply. “All right. I'll go alone. I'll find them and bring them back.”

“How?” Rosemary glanced at her watch. “You'll never make it there by six. The traffic—”

“Maybe.” If she could get close enough it would be enough. She just had to get close enough. Her
gift
would do the rest.

Rosemary shot her a skeptical glare, and Ruby read the doubt there. More than that. She felt it. As
always. Buried beneath Rosemary's general ennui and dissatisfaction with her life was her skepticism that Ruby could do nothing more than hide away in her farmhouse—the oddball loner everyone thought her. “You don't do crowds.”

“I'll be back soon.” She clicked her money belt into place around her waist, beneath her tank. Adele had bought it for her, insisting she wear it instead of using a handbag, so that her money, passport and visa never left her body.

“The girls will be long gone by the time you get there,” Rosemary predicted. The bed creaked as she lowered her square, solid frame onto it.

Maybe. But not what they left behind. Not the lingering trace of their emotions. Not their blind, youthful enthusiasm. She should be able to feel them, track them. As long as she lowered her guard and let them in…

Rosemary continued. “You're wasting your time. They'll be back sometime tonight.”

Ruby placed one hand to the door's latch. “I can't do that.” Without another thought, she stepped out into the hall, into the waiting world with all its people, all its pain, ready to sink their teeth into her.

“Wait here, I'll be right back,” Ruby instructed the cab driver before hurrying out into the labyrinth of streets, into a fog of spices and herbs.

In the fading dusk, she scanned the narrow streets for Amy's blond hair, bypassing the
pastirma
café where they ate earlier. Seeing nothing, she closed her eyes and released a deep breath… and let it all flow in. Every vile, poisoned sensation. Good existed, too.
Amusement
.
Joy
. But those faded amid the onslaught of negative feelings. The mean, the ugly, the sinister—they always hit harder.

She staggered from the force of emotions swirling around in the sultry air, bombarding her in wave after wave, eddying along her senses. Her stomach
twisted and knotted. There was little time to process. Closing her eyes, she breathed thinly through her nose, swimming through the thick fog, searching until she located the girls.

She found them.

Emily and Amy.
Excitement. Eagerness. Pride
.

It thrilled them to have attracted the notice of
men
. They knew they were being bad, breaking the rules. But they reveled in it too much to stop themselves.

Ruby walked, following the heady sense of euphoria the girls emitted. Ferry horns blew low and deep from the nearby port. Eyes thinly parted, she pushed ahead, following only her awareness of them. She strode from the center of the bazaar quarter, down a street of busy shoppers vying with vendors for their evening fare.

Mingled with Emily and Amy's emotions lurked those of their companions. Two of them. Ruby's stomach knotted and clenched. She had never felt anything like them before. The sensation they emitted was more of a condition than a feeling.
Black hunger. A mawing ache
. And in that hunger, nothing else existed.
Bleak emptiness
. And that was even more frightening. Because there should be something. Some feeling. Some sentiment. There always was. She could always feel something. No one felt nothing. It simply wasn't human to feel nothing, to possess
only that unnatural hunger. Even a starved man must have other thoughts in his head, feelings in his heart. But these men with Amy… they felt empty. Dead.

Weaving through the warren of streets, Ruby's stomach twisted tighter. She had to reach the girls. Fast.

She shook her head as one determined vendor waggled a dead chicken in her face. Pushing ahead. Ruby tuned everything else out as she clung to the thread of emotions from the girls. Dodging a cyclist, she hurried. The thread suddenly grew thinner. Gasping, she jerked to a stop. Looking left and right, she concentrated. Listening to her instinct, she ducked into a small side street.

Sheer curtains billowed off windows high overhead as she hurried down the narrow cobbled street. The market's volume faded to a dull purr behind her, and the thread grew stronger again.

She passed an old lady. Sitting on the stoop of her building, she stared out at Ruby with night-black eyes and spat something in Arabic from lips that moved as quickly as the fingers shelling chickpeas into a bowl.

A sense of urgency stole over her and Ruby quickened her pace. Tenements reached for the sky on either side of her. A baby cried from inside the one to her left, the wail stretching and twisting into the twilight until it died suddenly.

She stopped abruptly amid the growing shadows as the street came to an end at a courtyard. A fountain sat at its center, its gurgling water the only sound in the silence of impending night. A warehouse-type building sat within the courtyard, a squat, solid structure that crouched wide in the shadow of tenements. With its massive double doors of ancient wood, it looked nearly as old as the city itself.

The skin of her face tingled, stomach queasy with knowing. Amy and Emily were behind those doors.

The same black wave of hunger she had felt earlier swamped her as she faced the building.
Aching
.
Craving.
Only stronger. Only more. Fighting back the nausea welling up inside her, she approached the door and rapped until her knuckles burned. Her knocking ricocheted off the courtyard around her.

Moments passed before the door opened. A man stood there, his dusky-skinned face curiously ageless. “Yes?” he asked, blue-green eyes glittering against his camel-toned skin.

She moistened dry lips. “Hi. Two of my friends are guests here. We were invited to a party—”

Suspicion
.
Anxiety
. He pasted a smile of welcome on his face, despite his tension. “Ah, yes. Of course.” He stepped aside, waving her in.

She stepped inside a mosaic-tiled foyer, not at all what she expected given the building's dismal exterior.
Congratulating herself on the ease in which she had infiltrated, she looked expectantly at the man, wondering at his unease over her arrival.

“The young ladies are this way.”

She followed him, trying not to stare at the opulence around her. Surely nothing the girls—or herself—had seen in their corner of Louisiana. The paintings on the wall, the gilded chandelier, the ageless sculpture set upon a strategically placed marble pedestal.

The soles of her sneakers fell flat on the tiled floor. She clung to the jumpy thread of emotions that ran a direct line to Amy and Emily. Harmless compared to the dark ache swirling on the air.
Desperate need
. Thick as smoke, suffocating, threatening to drag her down and make her sick. As sick and helpless as she used to get when she was a kid, before she learned control, before she learned to set up her barriers. She sucked in a deep breath.

They stopped before a door of carved pewter inset with opals. The beauty of it almost distracted from the fact that it was bolted on the outside. The man sent her a smile, knocking once before lifting the hefty bolt with a grunt. The smile might have disarmed her if she did not sense unease tripping through him… and a skittery sense of urgency. He wanted to run away, to flee…

Why? What would he have to be afraid of?

Then the door opened.

Clawing hunger
.
A pulling ache
.

Struggling past the strange… condition—
not
a feeling; there was no feeling, no sentiment—she spotted Amy laughing on a couch, sipping champagne and talking to a pair of very attentive men.

And Ruby couldn't go anywhere. Couldn't leave.

She cleared the threshold, noting with some relief that the room was crowded with men and women alike. It was a party. That much was true, at least. Softer, milder emotions existed beneath the hunger.
Glee. Delight
.
Levity
. All too light to make much of an impression on her. The black ache eclipsed everything else.

Music filled the room. Blood-pumping hip-hop piped in from an overhead system. A huge spread of food and drink weighed down one table, which everyone appeared to be sampling, making the hunger even more puzzling.

Ruby drove a hard line toward Amy.

“Ruby,” she cried.
Annoyance
.
Guilt
. “What are you doing here?” Amy looked over her shoulder, as if she expected to see Rosemary and John in tow.

“I've come to take you and Emily back to the hotel.”

Emily arrived then, one hand propped on her hip. “We're not going,” she announced.
Hostility
.
Aggression
.

“Oh, yes you are,” Ruby countered. “You are fifteen years—”

“Ruby, is it?” A man stepped in front of her. Tall, dark, his eyes glittered an eerie silver. Hunger swathed him. Controlled. Careful. And beneath that… the familiar nothing.
Emptiness.
An animal that did not feel emotion, only the physical demands of his body.
Hunger
. She resisted the impulse to retreat a step.

“I'm Gunter. Why not stay and chaperone the girls? Eat. Drink. Be our guest.”

It was like coming face-to-face with a serpent. Charm and hospitality dripped from his voice, but behind it all—a void. His expression exuded warmth… but Ruby knew. She
felt
. Something dreadfully, terribly wrong flowed from him. From nearly everyone else in this room. She darted a quick glance around. Several others gazed at her. Her breath caught at their silver eyes. How the hell was it possible for them to
all
have the same freakish eyes?

“Amy,” she whispered, her lips barely moving as her hand inched toward the girl. Her pulse raced at her neck. “Come with me. Now.”

“Why don't
you
beat it?” Emily snapped beside a very big leather-clad tattooed man who looked old enough to be her father. “Amy doesn't need you for a mother. Why don't you go have a kid of your own and stop trying to mother us?”

Ruby's gaze crept back to the man, the serpent. Gunter cocked his head, studying her as though she were some rare specimen, a field mouse to devour. But something in his look struck her as familiar. It was a look she had seen before—regardless that it came from a pair of unnatural eyes.

It was the look she received when someone realized she was not what she seemed, not quite right, not normal. He knew it. He saw that. Her father gave her that look. Her grandparents. Her kindergarten teacher. On occasion, even her mother had looked at her that way.

“It's too late to go now. You will stay,” he purred in his thick accent, staring down at her with glinting eyes. “I shall enjoy you, I think.”

The door closed shut then. The sound of the bolt falling into place on the other side sent a vibration straight to her heart. The servant was gone.

Amy's breath changed beside her, released in a nervous titter. A shaky smile curved her mouth.

“Open those doors,” Ruby demanded.

“I can't.” Gunter lifted one shoulder in a mild shrug. “It's locked from the outside.”

“Chill out, Ruby.” Despite the flip words, Ruby felt the niggle of unease worming through Amy. She needed to build on that, needed to get the girl on board with her so they could get out of this. Whatever
this
was…

“Freak out enough?” Emily rolled her eyes and turned back to her tattooed friend.

“Sit. Relax. Enjoy.” Gunter waved to the table behind them, very much the host. “Have something to eat. The fun is about to begin.”