Wolf Moon (5 page)

“
Brookie
,”
he greeted, making me shake my head. “How’s the trip, kiddo?”

“Fine, so far,” I
replied. “I miss you guys.”

Dad exhaled softly. “We
miss you, too. You and Nick haven’t killed each other yet?”

The door to the room
opened and Nick appeared, smiling apologetically when he realized I was still
on the phone. “No,” I said with a laugh as Nick turned to his bags and finished
packing. “Not yet. It’s still early, though.”

“Everyone at work misses
you,” Dad said, possibly as a way of guilt-tripping me back.

Hearing this made me
think of O’Malley and Keaton, and I realized I missed them too, along with
several others. However, I had a feeling that not
everyone
missed me.
Clarke, for example.
I
was almost positive he was thrilled I was gone.

“Tell them I think of
them often,” I replied. “How is everything there?” By law, he couldn’t go into
specifics since I was no longer appointed to the investigations, but I knew he
would. While I already knew who was responsible for the multiple murders as
well as David’s, I wanted to make sure that there hadn’t been any more since we
left. I’d hate for my hometown to be under siege after leaving it undefended.

“Still nothing,” he answered,
sounding frustrated. “There hasn’t been another murder. We still can’t track
down any leads other than that abandoned club in Phoenix. It’s like everything
just up and vanished… Like last time. And as for David’s case…”

“Nothing there, either?”
I fake-guessed, knowing that his murder had already been avenged.
By me.

“Exactly.” A pause.
“Don’t worry, though. We won’t exhaust our efforts.”

Part of me wanted to tell
him to give up. That digging any deeper would only lead to more questions and
eventually a very complicated situation and possibly death. But there were
rules to be followed now. If I told him that, he’d ask why, and I’d tell him,
because he was my dad and I told him just about everything.

“
Brookie
?”
my dad said, pulling me out of my musings. “Your mother and I are just stepping
out to go visit Bobby before dinner. Will you call us when you get to where
you’re going?”

I stopped breathing upon
hearing where they were going, realizing exactly what they’d find. “Y-yeah. Of
course,” I stammered, my heart racing. “I’ll talk to you later. Love you.”

“Love you, too, kiddo.” He
hung up, leaving me sitting on the edge of the oversized bed, wondering what
they would think when they arrived at the gravesite to find the grass torn up
and the earth disturbed. They wouldn’t know I was responsible, but they’d know
something had happened. What if they had someone exhume the grave and found his
coffin…

My vision darkened, and
when it came back, I glimpsed a bit of graveyard dirt on the toe of my shoe.
Pausing, I looked at it, remembered what I found, and sat up straight. Noticing
this, Nick turned around and called my name.

“Bobby,” was all I could
bring myself to say, my eyes slowly rising to meet his. “Why wasn’t he there?”

Nick’s face fell. Lines
of worry formed on his forehead as he swept his hair off it. “I’ll explain in
the car if you’ll let me.”

When we arrived in the
lobby, the guys were all waiting. Jackson regarded me with a curious glance.
Almost like he was concerned. It was weird, because the only emotion I’d ever
picked up on him had been disdain. Was this due to guilt?

“Good morning, Brooke,”
Zach greeted. “You feeling okay this morning?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Better,
thanks.”

“You look great,” Corbin
interjected, his cheeks turning pink. He was adorably flustered. “I mean,
well-rested.”

Nick finished checking
out just then and joined us, placing his hand on the small of my back. He was
setting the foundation of the façade we were supposed to build “You guys ready?
Everybody knows the route?”

They discussed the
directions a little further before we loaded our things and hit the road. Once
in the car, I turned to Nick. He sighed. “I’ve gone over how to explain this so
many times,” he admitted. “Even more since you dug up his grave. I tried to
tell you last night as we drove, but you weren’t very receptive to hearing
anything I had to say. And understandably so.”

I remained silent,
waiting for him to explain what I saw.

“I won’t deny how much I
wanted to keep this from you. You were better off thinking you’d buried your
brother.”

“But we
did
,” I cut in. “We did bury him. We had
an open casket, for crying out loud.”

“Yes. You buried his
body,” Nick confirmed. “But less than two days later, he woke up.”

“He…woke…
up
?”

A nod. “But he wasn’t the
same man you knew, Brooke. Trust me.”

I tried to wrap my head
around this. It shouldn’t have taken me this long to figure it out. I blamed
denial. When I figured it out, I gasped sharply. “You mean…” Nick chanced a
glance in my direction, nodding solemnly. “Vampire?”

The silence in the car
was deafening, so Nick finally spoke up. “When a person is changed, nothing of
their human life remains. They walk and talk the same, even share the same
memories, but the person you knew is gone, and a demonic parasite takes up
residence in their body.”

What was he saying?

“I didn’t want to believe
it when I first saw him,” Nick went on to say. “But it’s true. He was different.
Vicious. Cruel.”

I shook my head. “No. Not
Bobby.”

“Believe me,” Nick said
firmly, eyes on the road. “It was him…but it wasn’t at the same time. The
things he did…”

Unable to wrap my head
around this, I clenched my eyes shut and pinched the bridge of my nose. “What
do you mean?”

“The Pack and I have been
tracking him and
Gianna
for years. The two of them
were a force unlike anything we’d ever faced before.”

“So, you’re just going to
keep trying to kill him?” I demanded. “Nick, you can’t.”

Nick released a dark
laugh. “No, I
couldn’t
. But after
everything I’d seen and learned about what he was capable of… If it meant you’d
be safe. Well, it made my decision pretty easy.”

I faltered, suddenly
unable to take a full breath. “
Wh
-what are you
saying?”

Nick nodded once, eyes
focused on the road, almost like he couldn’t bring himself to look at me. “We located
one of their nests up in Alaska a few months ago and burned it to the ground.
Bobby was inside with their newest progenies while
Gianna
was out…recruiting.” Nick paused to pass a slower-moving car in front of us. “
Gianna
was furious to lose him.”

“You…you
killed
him?” I suddenly couldn’t breathe
at all, and waves of nausea rolled in my stomach. The walls of the car were
closing in around me. I needed to get outside. “Pull over,” I begged, my voice
hoarse.

Nick did as I asked
without hesitation, throwing the car in park as I bolted. I didn’t make it far
before my legs gave out, and I lowered my hands to the ground to break my fall.
My body was trembling, muscles tensed. I felt my anger taking over, so I closed
my eyes and took several deep breaths to keep myself from shifting. It was
hard.

“Brooke.” Nick knelt next
to me, placing his hand on my back, and I recoiled, slapping his hand and
rolling onto my ass to move away from him.

Through my periphery, I
watched as the guys pulled up behind us. They stayed where they were, though,
likely sensing my escalating emotions.

“He was alive all this
time,” I rasped, the chill of the snow soaking through my jeans.

“Brooke, please let me
explain…”

My chin quivered and
tears fell from my eyes, stinging as the cold worked to freeze them. “You
killed him.”

“No,” Nick said firmly,
looking offended and angry. “
I
didn’t
kill Bobby.
Gianna
did… What he became was not the
same person you knew and cared about. I did his memory a favor.”

“But… It was
Bobby
,” I argued with a sob, still heavy
in denial.

As though he could sense
my inner turmoil, Nick tried to make me understand. “Think about it, Brooke.
When you were investigating Samantha’s murder, how did her family and friends describe
her?”

Everyone loved her. She was a “good girl.” Very work-oriented,
I thought to myself,
wiping the tears from my cheeks. Those were just a few I could remember with
this new revelation swimming around in a storm of emotions.

“And how did she seem to
you?”

Cold. Calculating. Vicious.

“My guess would be the
exact opposite to how she was described, correct?”

I nodded slowly, but when
Nick held his hand out to help me up out of the snow, I looked at it with
contempt before raising my eyes to his. “He was my
brother
,” I seethed.

Nick reached for me
again, and I shoved his hand away. He was lucky that was all I did. With a
sigh, he ran his fingers through his hair, his brow and lips pulled together
with frustration. “That’s exactly how I used to think. I figured I could make
him come around, get him to remember who he was, but it was no use. He was lost
to us forever the second
Gianna
got her hooks into
him.”

“Nothing’s that cut and
dry,” I snapped. “You could have told me. Maybe I could have gotten through to
him!”

Out of the corner of my
eye, I noticed Jackson and Vince making their way for us, but one sharp look
from me and they froze in their tracks. I pushed myself to my feet, brushing
the snow from my jeans.

“You wouldn’t have been
able to, Brooke,” Nick shot back just as aggressively.

“You don’t know that!” I
shouted, tears falling from my eyes as the cold wind picked up and threatened
to freeze them to my cheeks.

“But I do. God knows I
tried to talk to him.” Nick looked frazzled and at a loss.

Pain ripped through me.
This was like losing Bobby all over again. He was alive all this time, and I
could’ve had the reunion with him I’d always dreamed of. But Nick ripped that
all away from me.

Something deep inside
told me that thinking this way was ridiculous and to hear Nick out, but I was
beyond rational thought.

“Hey, is there some kind
of problem here?” a strange voice called out.

When I looked past Nick,
I saw an older man with a white beard and hair just as pigment-challenged
peeking out from beneath a trucker hat. Jackson and Vince were in his way,
keeping him from getting any closer.

Nick turned to me, the
look in his eyes wondering the same thing as the trucker. I exhaled a heavy
breath and rolled my eyes, pushing past Nick roughly. “Everything’s fine, sir.”
I called back, forcing a smile to my face. “Just feeling a little car sick.” I
rubbed my stomach for effect.

The man still seemed
uneasy, looking around at the five scruffy men dressed in leather jackets. I
realized how bad it probably looked to him. “You sure, Miss?”

I nodded. “
Mmm
hmm. Thanks for the concern. We’re going to be on our
way now.”

He looked at me once
more, holding my gaze and giving me one more chance to ask for help. One of the
few good people left in the world who would stand up to a bunch of men
attacking a young woman on the side of the road—were that the case, that
is.

“Thank you for stopping,
though. I truly appreciate it.” I made my way for the car as the Good Samaritan
watched on. Nick placed his hand on the small of my back, and I had to fight
the urge to push him away from me. That wouldn’t make the man believe I wasn’t
being held against my will.

While a part of me wanted
to tell Nick to go to hell and then go back home after everything I’d just
learned, the truth was, I still needed his help to get through this. Nick
opened my door for me,
and before I climbed in,
I waved at the man. He tipped his hat, uncertainty still evident in his
expression, but he headed back to his truck, parked right behind the bikes.

Nick slid behind the
wheel and started the car. I still felt sick, knowing that Nick could have done
something like that—to my brother…his best friend—but deep down, I
knew I had to hear him out. He was right about Samantha being nothing like how
her family described her, and while I wanted to believe my brother could have
been an exception to this, I had to believe Nick wouldn’t do something this
severe unless he truly felt threatened.

“
Gianna
was furious when she returned to the charred remains of her nest,” Nick
explained, breaking the silence as he pulled back onto the interstate “Apparently
there’s a bond between sire and progeny that can’t be undone, and when that
bond is severed, it causes irreparable damage…not that
Gianna
was entirely sane to begin with, from what I’ve heard.