Unleash The Moon (The Preternaturals Book 6)

by Zoe Winters

  “Hey Jane,” she said, “Anthony’s being all crazy again. Let’s go kidnap Charlee for some girl time while he’s asleep. She needs to get out of that compound before she loses her mind.”

  His mom stood and stretched then bent to kiss his dad. “I’m game.”

  “Be careful,” Cole said. Like he needed to say that to Noah’s bad ass demon mom. Nobody could hurt Jane. She could make herself where she was like a ghost, and you couldn’t even touch her. And she had this scary demon form that sometimes Noah saw when he didn’t clean his cave. And she could shift into anything. She could become a bird and fly away. She was his hero.

  “Careful is my middle name, babe,” she said. Before she left with Aunt Greta she turned back to Noah. “You be careful. Stay safe.”

  Noah rolled his eyes at his mother. “Mom, I am the most powerful of all the werewolves that ever lived. I mean look at these muscles!” He held his arms up. They looked like regular kid arms and not the superpowered child he seemed to believe he was.

  “Yeah, you are!” his dad said, chuckling.

  Jane just shook her head, a wry grin on her face. “Just be careful.”

  Noah jolted out of the dream, finding himself back in the sterile glass room. He whimpered and put his nose between his paws. He should have listened to his mother, and he still blamed himself for it. He’d only been a pup, but he still should have listened. He’d been old enough to listen. Even if he couldn’t manage it as listening to his parents, he should have listened to them as the pack alphas. No one else his age had gotten free passes like that. The alpha’s word was law to the pack.

  It wasn’t long after that he’d been taken. He’d been playing chicken with the protected areas versus the unprotected areas with his friends. He’d jumped outside the protections at just the wrong moment and been taken by some magic users.

  And he’d been here ever since.

  Noah stretched and stood. Even more than being kept a prisoner, he hated that his blood might be used for magic to hurt more preternaturals. From what he could see, the humans had protected themselves well in tightly-controlled fortress cities. Now they were being aggressive because they could.

  New clothes had been neatly folded and placed in the center of his cell. He shifted back to his human form and stretched again, then he ambled to the center of the room. He winked at the camera high in the wall over his cell. It was a holographic square patch that blended well into the glass, but he could still see it. Noah wasn’t sure if humans could detect it, but his vision was more enhanced than that. He could see the iridescent ripple that proved it wasn’t the same as the surrounding glass. He wasn’t sure if it was technology or magic. Over the past decade the two had blurred together until one was indistinguishable from the other.

  He dressed, then sat and waited. It felt like hours passed, but it was probably less than half of one when a cheery robotic feminine voice in the ceiling said: “Number 5856, Please prepare to exit your cell for daily exercise.”

  “Noah,” he whispered under his breath.

  He looked at the numbered tattoo on his upper arm. It was the same place his dad’s alpha tattoo was. Just more insult added to injury. When he busted out of this shit hole, he’d get it tattooed over with something closer to what Cole had. Each day when he heard 5856, he whispered “Noah” so he wouldn’t forget. After twenty years in captivity, they’d already made him forget his last name. He couldn’t allow the same to happen with his first.

  The glass door slid open with a whoosh, and a gust of cool canned air hit him in the face, filling him with a sense of wellness and happiness. But Noah wasn’t fooled. It was the stuff they put in the air conditioning to keep everybody calm. He was sure the humans in the main city were getting dosed with it as well to keep everyone docile and obedient.

  For all he knew it actually worked on them. He wasn’t sure if it worked on the other preternatural prisoners, but no matter what Noah’s emotional side said, the cool, logical part of him wasn’t buying into it.

  He barely remembered the machinations of the vampire king when he’d been building up his police state before the magic users had started taking over. But if Anthony could see this? He’d get a hard on. The humans had proven to be more diabolical than vampires. And that was saying something. Congrats, humans!

  He filed out with the other numbered therian prisoners into the hallway. The cell next to his, 5857, was empty tonight. It wasn’t the first time a prisoner had disappeared and never returned. Noah tried not to think about it.

  “Please follow the glowing arrows to the exercise yard, and remember to play nice with your friends.”

  Noah hid the eye-roll. It would do him no favors for the cameras to catch a whiff of rebellion. He moved quietly with the inmates from nearby cells down the seemingly never-ending hallway. Another door slid open that took them into the exercise yard, which was a giant balcony instead of a real yard.

  Even so, out here he could feel the moon on his face. He hadn’t seen the sun in more years than he could count because his group was mixed in with vampires now. But it only made him think of Sydney and how she’d never seen the sun.

  Noah’s complexion was naturally dark, so at least he didn’t look too sickly. But he still missed the sunlight.

  Someday.

  Somehow in everything he’d lost, he’d managed to retain the memory of the date of his birth. Occasionally, he asked one of the guards what day it was. He’d been keeping up with the year as well. It wouldn’t be long now.

  His twenty-eigth birthday had just passed. The next full moon he would reach his full power. If there was any chance at all, it would be on that night.

  He’d forgotten about the twenty-eighth birth moon. But one day in a dream after he’d eaten the drugged meat, Aunt Greta of all people had shown up, telling him the harrowing story of what her twenty-eighth birth moon had been like.

  It could have just been a dream, but when he woke, he remembered. Aunt Greta wasn’t mated in the same way his kind or the demons or vampires were mated, but she lived with a man who was much the same as a mate, a sorcerer named Dayne. Had he somehow made it possible for the werecat to deliver the message? Or was it a coincidence—his own subconscious reminding him that there might be a way to escape this place after all?

  Was somebody out there still hoping and believing Noah was alive? He wanted to believe they hadn’t given up on him.

  In the early years, he’d only been a child. The idea of escape had seemed like a lofty dream. It was a comforting story he told himself to fall asleep, and then, once asleep, it became more real and played out in vivid color.

  But each day when he woke, it became the impossible feat once again. These people were powerful. They’d created a fortress of their city that no preternatural could get inside, and a fortress of their prisons that no preternatural could get out of.

  As he’d grown older and wiser, he’d begun to see the cracks in their security, the way they believed too much in the stuff they sent in with the canned air, the drugs they gave them, the cheery robotic voice that worked daily to brainwash a bit more of their soul away.

  Noah wouldn’t let them succeed. He thought about his parents, about Aunt Greta, about Sydney. He trained his mind daily to stay stronger than his captors even if he seemed obedient, even if it seemed he would never attempt escape because he never had before.

  “Please remember, keep fraternizing to a minimum while in the fitness yard,” the cheerful robotic voice said over loud speakers. The speakers sat atop very tall fences crowned with barbed wire.

  Noah didn’t have to shift yet under the moon, but when it was full, he wouldn’t have much of a choice—particularly on his twenty-eighth birth moon. One would think if it was the night he’d reach the height of his power that he’d be able to control the shift when under the moon, but it didn’t quite work that way. The moon overwhelmed most of them, even the strongest, unless they’d just fed.

  He ran laps around the yard. They
didn’t have to tell him not to fraternize. Others would betray you when it would save their own neck or when it most suited them. If you told someone your thoughts or feelings or plans, they were out there. And in a place like this, that was bad. He wouldn’t speak to anyone, and was only grateful that as a werewolf, nobody could force their way inside his mind.

  They watched all therian interactions closely. But they didn’t worry about Noah and had long ago figured out that he wasn’t about to form any tight bonds. In their minds, it probably meant he’d succumbed to his fate—accepted it so he wasn’t a threat to them. In his own it meant he didn’t have to worry about busting anybody else out to take with him.

  He wouldn’t allow himself to get attached. To any of them. He’d have one shot, and friends would only be dead weight.

  ***

  Sydney sat in the passenger side while Jacob drove. She still wished she could have left him at the compound, but he was a dead man either way he went: coming out here into the wild with her or staying behind.

  It was only a matter of which way he wanted to die, and he seemed to have chosen with Sydney. If it might be any consolation to the human driving the old-fashioned truck, she’d be killed right along with him. He was stronger than her, and a better fighter. So if he died, she did. Unless she accidentally drained him first.

  When the humans had reinforced the cities against the preternaturals, they’d used magic to find new technologies and then blended the two into an almost seamless whole. Suddenly they had no need or use for fossil fuels. Nobody cared about them anymore. Oil fields had been abandoned all over the world.

  The remaining preternaturals had taken it upon themselves to gain control of them because some might need to travel long distances using vehicles left behind. Automobile companies outside the major cities were taken over as well, creating a slow but steady trickle of new vehicles to replace the old ones that wore out.

  The truck Sydney and Jacob were in was an old green beater that had managed to last over twenty years, which made it dinosaur-old in car age. It had been well cared for, even if the sides of it were rusting. Jacob had found it pretty easily at an abandoned service station in the middle of Cary Town—a service station that some intrepid rebel had made a gasoline delivery to.

  The entire town had crumbled like some post-apocalyptic nightmare without enough people to keep things running. But Sydney still had the vaguest memory of her father’s penthouse at the Cary Town Luxury Apartments, before he’d relocated them permanently to the compound.

  “Whatcha thinking about, Syd?” Jacob asked. His hand drifted to her knee, and she shifted closer to the window.

  She was now keenly aware of the danger Jacob posed. Sure, they’d slept together before, and deep down she knew he hadn’t had much of a choice in the matter. He’d been their blood slave, and neither she nor Elise had been particularly shy about utilizing his other charms.

  But Sydney had never tried to force herself on him. She couldn’t have anyway, but maybe, with her father being who he was, the threat had been implied if the princess was made unhappy. That thought horrified her. She hoped Jacob hadn’t seen it that way, but now wasn’t the best time to bring the conversation up. Not when they were on a deserted road, and he was the most powerful being within screaming distance.

  “Nothing,” she replied.

  “Come on, that isn’t the face of somebody thinking about nothing.”

  “I was just thinking about how everything has changed so much.” They’d been driving for hours, and she’d fought not to think much about her parents or how they would feel about all this. But she’d been suffocating there. They had to understand. Weren’t they suffocating, too?

  But her parents had seemed happy. Instead of hating the confinement, her dad especially had seemed sedate most of the time. The pressures of being king had faded once he lost control of everything. It was as if he’d found some zen place now that he couldn’t micromanage the entire world.

  He’d been content to micromanage Sydney instead. It was an uncharitable thing to think about her father. He worried about her.

  As long as he knew his mate and daughter were safe, he seemed happy. He was very different from the Anthony Burgess she’d heard stories about. It made her wonder if they were even all true.

  “Maybe we should go back,” Sydney said, already regretting her decision. She could negotiate something less restrictive with her father. He loved her. Maybe he could be reasoned with. Though, by the time she got back, her dad would be so livid she might be confined to not just the compound, but her room as well, under guard until he calmed down. And with a vampire, that could be months.

  He wasn’t known to let go of grudges. He’d been obsessed for years with finding out where the Cary Town pack’s den was. When he’d finally discovered the den, it didn’t matter anymore. Things had spiraled well past the point where he could control anything. Sydney used to play with the alpha wolf’s pup.

  Noah hadn’t shifted to human for the first time until he was five, and it was so weird for her that Sydney didn’t see him for a few weeks after that because she couldn’t understand why he had turned into a boy. After he disappeared a few years later, she’d become despondent, and her father had gotten even crazier about the wards and protections and never letting her out of his sight.

  Jacob drove faster. Not exactly the response she was expecting to “Maybe we should go back.” His face was tense.

  “Syd… we’re not going back.”

  “But…” Maybe he was right. Maybe she should keep going. But wasn’t that supposed to be her decision? She’d let him tag along and now he was acting like he was the one in charge.

  “I’m sorry, Syd. I need to go back to my family.”

  “Okay, so go, but take me home, first.”

  “I wish it were that simple. I don’t know where they are. But I know someone who does. We’ve orchestrated a trade.” It was clear from the expression on his face that she was the trade.

  “What? How? You live with vampires!” Sydney didn’t understand how Jacob could possibly be some kind of double agent. Wouldn’t a vamp have seen inside his head? The others couldn’t read him with Elise’s claim on him. But Elise could. Then again, the vampiress had harbored a strong grudge against Sydney for a while now. It wouldn’t have been hard to get her cooperation.

  “I met some magic users from the Hub City.”

  It used to be known as Las Vegas a long time ago, but when it was taken over by magic users, it had become the central point of organization in this country.

  “And?” She kept hoping for a punchline. She was afraid she might be the punchline.

  “And, they know where my parents are. They shielded my mind so when I killed Elise, none of the other vamps would have a chance to read me and know what was happening. I’m sorry. They said they want to study you. They’re fascinated by what you are.”

  And here she’d been worried about his safety. What completely wasted angst.

  Sydney wiped away a stray tear. It was bad enough to be so physically weak, but she couldn’t let him see her cry on top of everything else. “I thought you loved me.”

  “I find you attractive, and you aren’t unlikeable. It wasn’t hard to pretend what I wanted you to see. But you had to know I wouldn’t be happy after being taken from my family like that. The other humans at the compound are different. They fell for the vampires who claimed them because they were thrown out of the cities to the monsters, and those monsters have treated them well in the end. It’s a little harder for me to romanticize it.”

  She was glad she’d never fallen for him. It was bad enough to be betrayed by someone she’d thought was a friend. If she’d thought of him as more it would have been crushing. At least she didn’t have to be the foolish girl who fell in love with him.

  “I’m going to start looking for a resting place for you for the day. I’ll figure out what I’m going to eat when you’re asleep.”

  Once the sun c
ame up, she’d sleep like the dead, literally. She wouldn’t rise until after sunset. And Sydney rose later than many other vampires, anyway. There were so many stupid ways in which she was different, weaker, and not any kind of respectable vampire at all.

  “What am I going to eat?” she asked.

  “Me, like always,” he said with a smirk that left her disgusted. Before, it had been bearable. Now, the idea of drinking his blood when he intended to give her to the humans made her want to vomit.

  The feeling of revulsion didn’t last. Something predatory came over her, and she was filled with calm. Perhaps there was some remnant buried deep inside her of what she was meant to be as a vampire. She wasn’t sure what this feeling that had bubbled up meant, but she was going to drain every last drop of blood out of him. And then she was going home.

  “I didn’t want you to find out like this,” he said, not having noticed the change in her demeanor.

  “No, because this makes it awkward. You might have to feel guilty. It would have been so much easier if little Sydney hadn’t asked any questions until the transaction started. Do I have it about right?”

  Jacob turned red, and Sydney thought she could convince him not to do it. But the things she’d end up doing with him in order to have the smallest chance, turned her stomach. No, she was killing the shithead. She’d worry about what she’d eat on the way home.

  He was quiet for a long time, only the sound of the old truck piercing the silence. What else was left to say? The rest of the drive, Sydney spent fantasizing about what would have happened if she’d gotten away on her own—if she hadn’t confided in the human.

  Her father might not have been able to get into Jacob’s head with the magic that cloaked and protected him, but when he discovered Elise’s remains he would have known something was wrong and would have gotten the information out of him the old-fashioned way. Then he would have carved Jacob up like the game the others hunted.

  It was a nice fantasy, but she needed to focus. She was already getting sleepy. It didn’t even take the sun coming up to wear her out. Even normal vampires couldn’t get up when the sun was in the sky, but that went double for Syndey.