Moon Tortured (Sky Brooks Series Book 1)

by McKenzie Hunter

  We walked back to the house, my wounds throbbing as we weaved our way across the unleveled terrain. Ethan’s emotions were worn sufficiently on his face as the muscles of his neck and face strained as he fought to keep it together. Josh met us halfway in his Jeep and I sat next to him. Ethan sat in the back. I could feel his wrathful glare on me during the drive back.

  Ethan jumped out of the car before it could come to a full stop refusing to look in my direction or even speak to me. “Chase and Gabriella left a body on the property. All evidence of it needs to be removed. You need to do your thing,” he stated, his voice becoming harsher with each word. When he finally turned to look at me, I wished he hadn’t. A torrential wave of rage filled the space between us. I knew then that if Sebastian, at that moment, lifted his order of protection, it wouldn’t be Winter I would have to worry about.

  Josh must have sensed the anger and violence brewing in Ethan as well because he stepped between us and stayed there until Ethan disappeared into the house. Then he quickly took me to Dr. Baker’s office.

  Dr. Baker took one look at my shoulder and shook his head. “Silly, silly girl,” he scolded as he palpated the area, abandoning any pretense of gentleness with each touch. Each time I winced, he grumbled an insincere apology under his breath and pulled my arm back.

  As he poked and prodded around the wounds, I flinched, periodically drawing my hand back but he kept a firm grasp on it. “I’m sorry, but these types of wounds have a tendency to cause pain with touch. That’s why we try not to get staked or stabbed,” he said, irritated. He was angry with me. I had managed to anger a person who had patience and compassion like nobody I had seen, well, in this house, anyway. Okay, I definitely see why some of them wanted to kill me.

  He tore the remainder of my shirt off and let out a chain of irritated sounds. As he examined the shoulder, I didn’t need to look at his face to know it was a mess. My fingers were still numb and the shoulder throbbed like hell.

  “You won’t be picking fights with vampires anytime soon, will you?” He took a syringe and medicine out of the cabinet.

  “I don’t think what happened between Gabriella and me today could remotely be considered a fight. If so, I think someone should explain to me what a fight is. I thought it involved two people trying to best one another in a physical confrontation. What occurred between Gabriella and me was a smack down and I was the only one being smacked,” I stated flatly.

  He chuckled then laughed. It stopped abruptly when Sebastian walked in the room, taking soft deliberate steps as he looked at Dr. Baker, then me.

  When he stepped closer to me, his anger flooded the room, drowning me in his unspoken rage. I was too tired and hurt to display false bravado, so I kept my eyes glued to the floor, hoping he would leave soon.

  “How does it feel?” he asked in a cold, flat voice.

  “Hurts like hell.”

  “Good,” he snarled.

  I looked up and glared but cut it short to a mere glance when I saw the look on his face. His appearance promised an unfavorable response if I dared to even whisper the smart-ass comment that was forming in my head. “She’s not going to have efficient use of her left hand and right shoulder for a day or two. There’s serious soft tissue damage,” Dr. Baker stated, showing the sympathy that Sebastian was unable to give.

  He let out a disgusted grunt. I could sense the storm brewing in the midst of the quiet rain as he inched uncomfortably close to me. Waves of anger flooded the room.

  “You allowed yourself to be injured by your own weapons,” his lips were pulled tight together as he focused, trying to keep the wolf dormant. “I will tell you again. You are our responsibility.” His increasing frustration sent me into a slow panic. I didn’t know how to make this situation better. An apology or admission of stupidity would not calm the fury that was stirring within him.

  His windstorm of emotions forced me to retreat. My eyes stayed plastered to the floor. I gasped when he roughly grabbed me by the face lifting it until my eyes met his. Something I wished he hadn’t done. Hearing his rage was worse than watching it erupt before me. “You realize the severity of what will take place if you are caught by the vampires? You’ve seen it and felt it almost first-hand. Mayhem will ensue and I could very well lose a large number of my pack trying to stop the shit!” His words came out angry and rough as they pushed through clenched teeth. “You do realize that your death will give them strength and power that will surpass ours, leaving them virtually unstoppable. Giving them free reign to act in any reckless manner they choose. Unnecessary deaths will occur, and who will be there to stop them? We will try to stop the rampage, and possibly be successful, but will suffer great losses. I will lose people that I watched grow up all because you continue to act recklessly against us.” His anger escalated to no return.

  I closed my eyes for a second and when I opened them, I looked over to Dr. Baker who appeared uneasy. Sebastian stopped fighting the wolf that longed to surface. His eyes shifted to deep amber. In wolf form, they are striking against his dark brown coat with subtle hints of auburn. Now in human form, I was too fear-stricken to notice.

  “Do you want to die or are you really this fucking irresponsible with your life?” He ground out his face, inching even closer to mine. “If death is what you long for then I can make that happen right now.” He grabbed me by the throat with one hand and raised me off the ground.

  His arms remained steady as he effortlessly held me midair. I wiggled my feet, feeling for ground that was far from my reach. He slowly added more pressure as I fought for breath. My eyes darted erratically around the room, looking for Dr. Baker, who had discreetly left the room. All that remained in the room was me, Sebastian and his fury. He pressed even harder, and the bones in my neck started to creak and falter under the pressure. He was about to break my neck. If I gave into it for even a mere moment, I was sure it would be a clean break and a quick death. I forced air into my throat, expanding it enough to allow me to breath.

  Is death what I wanted? I wished I could have given him a quick response, but I didn’t know the answer. I was too scared to give a rational answer. Feeling fear at so many levels, reason had been pulled from my thoughts. The life I knew was gone, and I didn’t know how to start another one. People wanted me dead, and I didn’t know how to stop them. Those things alone were enough to make a person feel a little hopeless, desperate and yes, maybe even suicidal. I wasn’t sure if it were the pain that overwhelmed me or the helplessness that plagued me daily, but part of me welcomed a swift end to it all.

  As I fought for air, desperation overwhelmed me and my only response was to shed tears that trickled down my face. The salty liquid splattered on Sebastian’s fingers. He jerked back as though he had been touched by hot wax, dropping me to the ground. I stayed down. Bowing my head, I allowed the tears to flow unrestricted, hoping it would relieve some of the pressure that pushed hard against my chest. It was so uncomfortable that the passive act of my beating heart felt painful.

  He lowered himself to the floor and knelt in front of me. “Look at me,” he commanded. I took a deep breath and forced myself to look at him. He let out a sigh as he attempted to modulate the tone of his voice, still straining with anger, to sound gentle. “Skylar, you don’t deserve to die because of what you are. It’s not your fault. I am not holding you accountable for it nor should you. I want to protect you, but you are making it painfully hard … eyes up here,” I brought my gaze back up once they had drifted back to the floor. He was a hard person to maintain eye contact with. “I don’t understand you, and I don’t wish to. Maybe you are depressed about your mother, or you’re one of those emo-chicks with a strange obsession with death, or, perhaps, you are just tragically stupid. Either way, I can’t bring myself to give a damn. If death is what you want, then there is no need for my pack to waste any more time protecting you. I can no longer continue to waste resources that could be better spent finding the Gem of Levage. I will ask you once, and I expect an an
swer now. Do you want to die? If so, I will give it to you now, swift and painless,” he assured me, his voice strangely calm and soothing.

  Focusing his attention elsewhere, he gave me a moment to make a decision. The way his hand was positioned led me to believe that he expected me to say yes. Whatever choice I made didn’t matter to him, and he wore the indifference casually on his face.

  He was offering me a quick death, which was far better than what the vampires would give me. I was coward enough to accept. I never really considered my life worth living, even more so now that I was truly alone; but for some reason, I wasn’t ready to die. I shook my head and fought back the tears.

  “Then you are protected and that order extends to you as well. You will do whatever is necessary to keep yourself safe from harm. Don’t run away again. If you do, I will kill you and it will be neither quick nor painless. I will think little of it afterwards,” he stated in a soft smooth tone devoid of all threat. It was nothing more than a promise he made in a low conversational manner.

  I nodded my head.

  When Dr. Baker returned, I was seated at his treatment table and had wiped all evidence of my tears from my face. He applied stitches to my shoulder and wrapped my hand. It took a while to get to the room because the least movement caused excruciating pain. I had been tired before but now I was just beyond exhausted. My emotions had run so hot and cold today that it left me in an empty well of despair. I would probably sleep well. It might be filled with nightmares, but at least I would sleep.

  It took me a long time to shower. You never realize how much movement is involved in removing your clothes until the least effort produces searing pain. Eventually, I undressed and sat at the bottom of the shower, watching all the grime and pink water run down the drain. My hair received the same treatment. I glopped in shampoo, worked it in as best I could and stayed under the water until it no longer looked gray from the dirt.

  I didn’t have the pain threshold to put on clothes. Instead, I wrapped a towel around me and headed for the bed. It didn’t matter that it was early morning; I wanted to sleep until this day was no longer a living nightmare.

  After finding a comfortable position that brought my pain level down to a tolerable ache, Ethan walked into the room. He didn’t knock. I wished he had done something that would have given me a warning to prepare for him. There was still a brute harshness to his features, a sign that he was still holding on to his anger from earlier. “Sit up,” he commanded in a dry voice.

  I didn’t move; instead, I watched carefully as he walked into the room. He wasn’t trying to intimidate me. Well, I didn’t think he was. Ethan stalked rather than walked, and his movements where so precise, lithe and coiled that it always seemed like he was seconds from striking. I didn’t want to be around when he finally did.

  “Now.” His voice wasn’t harsh; instead, he seemed bored. Was he bored with being angry with me or was contemplating the many ways to annihilate me no longer entertaining.

  I rolled into a sitting position bringing the covers with me. “If you’ve come to reprimand me, I can assure you I’ve been appropriately chastised and frightened by Sebastian. If you came to threaten to kill me, Sebastian beat you to it as well. And if you came to yell at me, can you please wait until tomorrow? My ears are still ringing from my encounter with Sebastian,” I stated in a tired voice.

  As he knelt in front of me, I prepared for virulence. Instead, he cupped my face gently, inspecting the bruising on my neck. Lightly, his fingers brushed along the marks. If I didn’t know better, I could easily mistake his look for empathy.

  “You shouldn’t have run again.”

  Did they get mileage points or something for stating the obvious?

  “It was stupid,” I admitted.

  His lips tightened, then he exhaled a deep breath. “It was dangerous.” He sat back on his heels, his gaze fell somewhere behind me. I think if he had looked at me, the anger would have rushed back on him like a wildfire.

  “I don’t know what is more insulting: your belief we have no honor and would go back on our word to protect you, or your fear that we are so craven that we would attempt to kill you while you sat unknowingly in our home. We are animals, it would be against our natural sensibility to hunt a captured prey,” he stated softly.

  Yay, if they decided to kill me, they would at least give me a running start or at the very least wait until I made it home.

  “My running was by no means a reflection of my thoughts of your honor or integrity as a pack or a hunter. There is validity to Winter’s argument, and I can honestly see how you all could agree with her. The pack is your family, and I expect you to take necessary precautions to keep them safe,” I responded in a low rasp. My throat was raw from too many bouts of screaming over the past two days. “If the roles were reversed, I couldn’t say that your lives would be safe at my hand. If any of you had been an imminent threat to my mother, it would be nothing less than dishonest to say I wouldn’t have taken your lives to protect her.”

  “The same would be true with us. If your presence in our lives put us in imminent danger, I couldn’t say that your life would hold much value to us either. Our pack is in no danger at the vampires’ hands. This is not the first time we’ve had less than favorable dealings with the vamps, and I assure you that it won’t be the last. ”

  “Winter thinks I am a danger to the pack.”

  “She is, along with the rest of us, concerned with your unique characteristics. But at this time, you aren’t a direct risk to us. If things were to change, then we would revisit the situation.”

  “In other words, if I were a direct risk to the pack, then I would have cause to fear for my life,” I stated thoughtfully.

  He nodded without hesitation, then moved closer. His hands rested at my side, against the skin on my lower back, where the sheet had left me exposed. Warm, firm fingers pressed into my skin. His touch, delicate and tender, was belied by his words. “I would dispose of you without any reservation, but rest assured, it would not be while you sat in the house under our protection.” Well, say what you will about them— they were a direct and brutally honest bunch.

  “It is a good thing that you didn’t kill Chase. The vampires lust often but love infrequently. Chase and Gabrielle are lynked, similar to being mated. He created her, and they have been together for, I believe, fifty-three years, never straying and never parted. They vowed their existence to each other. If you kill one, you must kill the other or suffer the wrath of the survivor. Whatever you saw in your vision would be nothing in comparison to the torture you would have endured at Gabriella’s hand if you had killed him. She wouldn’t care about any consequences because he is her existence and she is his. Once a hunter tried to make a name for herself, caught Chase, tortured him and left him for dead. Horror tales evolved around the torment she endured once Gabriella found her.”

  For once, my incompetence worked to my advantage. “I thought vampires had an aversion to light. How were they able to walk in the light like that?”

  “Borrowed source. The older ones can walk in light if they consume enough to sustain them. Usually it takes about three lives to give them twenty minutes of light. There are only a few vampires who can travel, but they aren’t gifted in that manner. This means they must be feeding from an elf, accumulating a large debt to do so. Elves do not help without getting much in return. I am curious to find out the specifics regarding that debt. The vampires have accumulated a great deal of debt on your behalf. You are important to them.”

  “Yeah, I get the point. Chase and Gabriella have made it painfully obvious," I responded derisively.

  “Even more reason for you to start making wise choices. Skylar, please understand if you keep pushing us, we won’t have any other option—” he left without finishing the sentence, but I knew how it ended: We will have no other option but to kill you.

  It was just a mere fourteen hours from the time Gabriella had stabbed me in the shoulder and hand with my
own weapons and Sebastian strangling me. I was staring at the television mindlessly. Flashes of light bounced in front of me from the television, and I stared at it with little interest. I had no idea what I was watching. It may have been an infomercial.

  After Ethan left, I lay in bed for five hours but slept for about two of them. Now I was using the television to get my mind off the throbbing pain in my hand and shoulder but it didn’t help. Dr. Baker wouldn’t give me anything for the pain and I had begged him at least four times so far. He refused, stating that because our bodies metabolized it so quickly it would be ineffective, or so he wanted me to believe. I think he wanted to subject me to a healthy reminder of my stupidity. Dr. Baker wasn’t the type to yell or threaten you, but he had his way of letting me know he wasn’t happy.

  Steven knocked on the door but didn’t wait for a response before entering. “Brought food.” He carried in a tray of food. Steven eyed the bandages on my hand and shoulder, pulled out a knife and cut everything up into easy-to-handle, bite-size pieces.

  “Thanks.” I hadn’t eaten since my run in with Gabriella. My stomach seemed so full of anxiety and distress that eating was the furthest thing from my mind.

  “You are very welcome, troublemaker,” he stated with a grin. “Boy, you really rubbed Sebastian the wrong way, and yet you are still here.”

  “Barely.” I showed him my memento from my talk with Sebastian.

  “It’s not that bad compared to most. The bruising is minor,” he admitted. “He must like you.”

  “If this is a like mark then I don’t want to see how he responds when he hates you.”