Moon Tortured (Sky Brooks Series Book 1)

by McKenzie Hunter

  He began to read, “‘‘The woman whispered part in English and part in Portuguese, “This life you shall have. This life I shall take.” The fanged creature exhaled, hardening before he crumbled into dust.’”

  “Your mother was Maya’s host and allowed her invitation into you on your behalf before she died.”

  We stared at each other for a long time. He was searching, attempting to interpret the blank look on my face. I couldn’t talk because I was too busy telling myself to breath. “What am I?” I finally asked in a dry voice.

  “Your mother was either a gifted human or a witch; I’m not sure which. You are just a werewolf with gifts,” he stated in calm voice. He looked troubled as though he didn’t know how to deal with me any longer. I jumped to my feet and began to aimlessly walk around the room.

  “No!” The word ground out in such a harsh distressed sound that I didn’t recognize it as my own. Josh looked at me; confusion and apprehension marking his appearance as his eyes followed me as I continued to pace back and forth.

  “What?”

  “No!” Again, the voice sounded unfamiliar to me. “In one sweeping moment, you don’t change my life like that. You don’t get to sit there and calmly tell me that I am an abomination— an abnormality that has no place in the human world or this one. You can’t just brush it off as me being ‘just a werewolf with gifts’. I am a werewolf with a terait that needs to have blood for it to disappear. I am werewolf that serves as a host for a demonic spirit. I am a werewolf that can hold magic. I am not just a werewolf!” It started off softly, but in the end, I was standing in the middle of the room yelling at him.

  He took a long time to respond as though he were looking for the right words to make things better. But what were the right words to tell someone that they were an abnormality that this world had never seen?

  “She’s not a demonic spirit,” he eventually responded in a low, calm voice, the same voice I suspect you would use for someone who was perilously close to jumping from a twenty-story building. “She is neither evil nor good, taking on the characteristics of whoever hosts her life. She is at the mercy of your behavior,” he admitted

  I sat down. My hands covered my face. They felt cold and clammy. Of course, they were cold and clammy because technically I was dead. “I don’t care what she is! I want her gone.”

  “I suspect the only reason you exist is because you are her host. If she is forced out, your existence might not continue,” he stated in a soft, sympathetic voice.

  Josh began rambling about something, but I couldn’t listen anymore. Forced to find a comfort zone, I tried to allow my mind to escape to a place less shocking. But I couldn’t find that place. “Stop talking! Please.” Taking in a large breath, I held it—a little too long because I became light-headed.

  “Skylar? Are you okay?” he asked, concerned. I finally stopped pacing and stared out the window.

  He asked me again. “No. I haven’t been okay for a long time,” I admitted, feeling my control slipping. Should I be okay with this? I shook my head slowly. “I don’t want this, any of it.”

  “Okay,” he stated softly. “But I can’t change what happened at your birth. At the risk of sounding harsh, you are going to have to deal with things because they aren’t going to go away,” he stated firmly.

  I didn’t have it in me to do so at the moment. He gave me a look of such sympathy and concern that it made me recoil.

  A few minutes passed, I continued to stare, zoning out. The part of me that regulated my feelings stopped working. Every emotion one could feel washed over me and became too hard to sort out. “Ethan, I need you in here,” Josh’s extremely calm voice requested into his phone. I doubt he wanted to be stuck in a room with a freaked-out wolf.

  “What the hell happened?” Ethan asked in a low, tense voice as he entered the room, responding to my dazed state.

  “Nothing,” he snapped defensively, stepping closer to the Ethan. “She’s just having a little trouble dealing with some new information,” he whispered.

  I wanted to be anywhere but there. I needed respite. Dropping to my knees, I prepared for the change to wolf, which I inevitably failed to stop. It came so quickly that I doubt I could have stopped it, even if I wanted to. I stayed in wolf form for only minutes before I changed back to human form. The transition between human and wolf continued five more excruciating times. In the end, I sat on the ground, trying to catch my breath, exhausted from the series of rapid changes. Giving into the exhaustion, I collapsed and fell asleep on the floor.

  When I opened my eyes, there were four pairs staring back at me: Josh, Ethan, the albino dingo Hannah and Steven. I sat up, securing the comforter around me that someone had covered me with. I looked at the clock; I had only slept for thirty minutes, which explained why I still felt tired.

  “Are you okay?” Josh asked in a tight voice, keeping an unusual distance from me.

  I nodded.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Why?” I asked in a tired voice. Of course I wasn’t okay. Why wouldn’t he just accept my lie?

  “Your eyes are an ugly white color,” he stated. It must have looked really odd because he was unable to hide his repulsion. “And there’s a field of protection around you. I’ve brought it down three times, but you keep putting it up each time we approach you. Can you release it?”

  “Of course I can. I’m on it,” I responded sardonically.

  He smiled “Okay. I got it,” he stated. “A-na rische mendu.”

  I assumed it had fallen because Josh inched closer to me.

  “And my eyes?”

  “Back to emerald and gorgeous,” he responded with a trademark charismatic smile. There was something more behind his smile—apprehension. I blinked several times to see if they felt different. Uneasiness remained on Hannah’s face as she backed out of the room. She shook her head and left. I guess she was late for the “Skylar should be killed” meeting with Winter. I’m sure they were having one hourly by now.

  Ethan stared at me from the door.

  “Josh, what was that?” He was trying to sound calm, but he was upset and doing a poor job of hiding it.

  “She was still holding onto magic,” Josh admitted. “She just lost control, but she should be fine.” Josh looked like a child who had done something that could have gotten him into trouble.

  “She can do the same type of magic you can?” Steven asked Josh, but he kept his eyes on me, displaying the same look of uneasiness as the others. I was freaking everyone out today. I should have gotten a gold star or something.

  “Yes, as long she holds onto my magic. But she doesn’t know how to control it.”

  “How long is she going to be like this? The last thing we need is her using powerful magic she can’t control.” Ethan inquired hostilely.

  Josh closed his eyes and began to move his lips slowly before he placed his hand in front of me just inches from my body. He flicked his finger and I yelped out in pain. “Stop it!”

  “I can’t find any other magic sources here. I think she used it all,” he stated but he didn’t seem confident with his answer.

  Ethan’s face still held the traces of agitation as he looked at his brother. He nodded.

  “I’m going to borrow these,” Josh informed me as he grabbed the journal and left. Steven stayed a little longer to make sure I was okay. After assuring him several times, he reluctantly left, leaving me behind with Ethan, who was leaning against the doorframe, frowning.

  “I need to get dressed,” I informed him.

  “Then get dressed,” he stated, oblivious to my need for privacy. When I stayed crouched on the cold floor, hugging the comforter around me, he made an annoyed grunt before turning around to give me some privacy. I hastily grabbed a pair of jeans, t-shirt and underwear and got dressed.

  “How did you live as you did?” he asked with his back still to me.

  “I’m not sure what you are asking.” I stood up pulling up my jeans and buttonin
g them.

  “Living in the unknown and being content with it. I operate best when I know all there is to know about things. If I was in your position, there would not be a source I wouldn’t go to find out about myself.” He turned to face me with a look of genuine confusion.

  That’s because you are a narcissistic control freak, I thought and was really close to expressing it, but he wasn’t being malicious so there was no need for me be snippy with him. As odd as I found the were-animals, it dawned on me that I was probably just as odd and terribly complex to them. “You won’t understand because you don’t seem to understand fear.”

  “I understand fear just fine, just not as a recipient,” he stated plainly. I doubt he really ever felt fear. I don’t think the pack allowed it or at least allowed you to actually own up to it. They seemed to possess two distinct emotions— stoicism and rage— and slight variations of the two.

  “Then you won’t understand me or any explanation I try to give you.”

  “Try me.” He took a seat in the corner and waited. Ethan was curious but not for the typical reasons most people were. I was a job and his job consisted of knowing the ins and outs of the situations at hand. As an anomaly, he felt obligated to know as much about me as possible. Despite the reason, I was ready to use him as an outlet. My chest felt like lead from holding it all in and I needed a release.

  Taking a seat on the edge of the bed, I directed my gaze to a spot on the floor. “Early on, I knew Elena wasn’t my mother, even before she told me. I didn’t need her to tell me. There was something different—wrong with me. I thought I was protecting her by not discussing it but deep down I knew I was protecting me.” I looked up briefly; Ethan was watching me carefully. He reminded me of Josh at that moment, hungry for information and seeking answers to the many questions surfacing in his mind. “But why not confront the fear?”

  “Because of the night terrors,” I admitted. “At six, I had nightmares of creatures much like the were-animals, but angrier and more frightening than you all could ever be, which is saying a lot because you all are very scary,” I stated, glancing up at him. His lips twisted into a half-smile. “They attacked me in my dreams and I could make them disappear, but I didn’t know how I did it. I just would imagine them gone, and poof, they went away. They never injured me but just terrorized me for months. It wasn’t until one clawed me and I awoke with this mark, that I realized it wasn’t just night terrors,” I tugged my shirt to the side to show him a mark on the top of my shoulder. It was a small rise that barely resembled a claw mark. To most, it looked like nothing more than an oddly shaped birthmark. “I killed him—well, in the dreams I did; but after that, I never had them again. When I told Elena, she cried. That was something I had never seen her do before. I made her cry. Can you imagine what that did to me? I was a freak that had odd dreams, weird abilities, and she didn’t know how to help me. I did that to her and I never wanted to do it again. After that, I made it my goal to be as normal as possible, at least until my change to wolf. Now, knowing what I do of my birth, I guess she was frightened for me and not of me.”

  I never told this story to anyone, and there were a combination of feelings stirring inside of me. I felt unburdened and uneasy. It was relieving to finally tell someone who wouldn’t consider me a nut case. Unfortunately, the person I was telling it to was the very person who admitted that if I were ever a risk to the pack, he would murder me without giving it a second thought.

  Ethan hadn’t moved or said anything since I started talking. Absorbing the information, he leaned back further in the chair, looking at a spot on the wall.

  “So when you changed, you thought you had become one of the monsters that terrorized you as a child?” he asked with a frown.

  I responded with a forced smile. “I didn’t want to be that creature,” I admitted. “I just wanted something about me to be normal. Changing into an animal once a month was far from normal.”

  He pushed himself up from the chair, walked over and sat next to me. My body tensed. He pulled back the shirt to look at the scar. “Do you feel like a monster now?” he asked, running his finger along the mark.

  I didn’t respond. We saw our wolf-half differently. There was no need to insult his belief by telling him that if you weren’t wholly human, there weren’t many things you could be considered. Even with the new information, changing into a wolf once a month didn’t make me feel less different or anything short of something that was too wrong to exist.

  “At one time, we were all monsters, creatures of the night that were nothing more than living nightmares. The vampires, were-animals, witches and demons commanded the night in bloodshed and terror. We all have evolved throughout the centuries—some more than others. Evolution had to occur, some by force, others through adaptation, and many through their connection with their humanity. Those weren’t your night terrors; they were Maya’s memories. The memories of those times in which she lived in people whose lives were nothing more than a nightmare in living form,” Ethan stated in a level voice. “She seemed to exorcise the horrors of the lives she lived when you sleep. That explains why your nights are so restless. I often hear you in your sleep, but I always assumed it had to do with what was going on now.”

  “I never had problems sleeping until now.”

  His lips twisted amused. “I’m sure that’s true from your viewpoint, but what do the people say who sleep on the other side of your bed or in the house with you?”

  My mother noted restless nights in her journals but who didn’t have an occasional nightmare? His comment about company in my bed wasn’t worth dignifying with an answer, so I ignored it.

  Ethan didn’t leave immediately as I expected him to; instead, he lingered, staying close to the window, looking out of it. I think he was admiring the view of the woods. The house was surrounded by it, but Steven seemed to do the same thing. So, I assumed I must have had the best view. “Why didn’t you tell your brother we went to see the Tréase?” I asked. Even if he didn’t know what it was or about its reprobate nature, seeing my reaction after I met it, surely would have been good reason to discuss it with Josh.

  “I forgot,” he stated, his attention still focused out the window. His breathing—normal, heart rate—normal, the timbre of his voice—unchanged. They were all the signs that he was telling the truth. But he was lying.

  “Have you been there before?”

  He turned toward me, his face placid and eyes deep and sedulous. “No.” There was something about Ethan she didn’t like. I doubt she was that judicious to determine she disliked him from the few minutes he spent in her home. Either she knew something about him or that wasn’t the first time they met.

  “Are you lying?” I asked.

  “You shouldn’t go back to the Tréase. It wouldn’t be safe.” Well that was a moot point because the only way I was going back there was unwillingly. And I was going to put up a fight with anyone who would dare to take me near there again.

  “You didn’t answer my question. Are you lying?”

  “If I were, answering that would defeat the purpose of doing so,” he stated curtly as he walked out the door

  “The magic you’re able to do, did she tell you about it?” I blurted before he could get out of the room. He broke Josh’s protective field, and it really left him angry and bewildered. It wasn’t arrogance that fueled those feelings, it was the fact Ethan was able to do so, and Josh didn’t know how. There was only one explanation for that.

  He turned keeping the same vacuous look on his face. Not one emotion betrayed him. “Breaking a ward is hardly witch magic. Were-animals break them all the time. It would be beneficial if you learned to do so as well, or you will find yourself denied entry into many places you may want to be.” He left before I could interrogate him anymore.

  CHAPTER 10

  Josh sat in the library, his legs propped up on the desk, thoroughly engrossed in the journals as though he were reading a novel by his favorite author. He didn’t
bother to look up when I walked in. “Your mother was quite the chronicler,” he stated as he continued to flip through the journal.

  I smiled; it was the only mask I could manage at that moment. I committed to no longer wallowing in the panic and grief that the newfound information had forced on me. Being mad at Josh about it was just ridiculous. So I did the next best thing; I accepted it. But it was turning out to be a harder task than expected. I could barely breathe as I asked, “You find out any more interesting things about me?”

  He shook his head and I exhaled a sigh of relief. He placed the book on the table, “You hold magic as though you were a container. Once you use it up—it’s gone. You have to re-establish a connection in order to use magic again. Anytime you form a blood connection with anyone, you are able to store their magic and duplicate their abilities. There aren’t many who can do that.”

  I thought he would have been repulsed by it, but he seemed intrigued, elated.

  “Then I should able to do the same things you do—like the protective field, but this time intentionally?” I asked.

  His eyes brightened as he nodded his head. “Want to try one?” he asked enthusiastically.

  I nodded once in assent, and his grin grew wider. It was at that moment I realized he was a magic addict drawn to it without recourse. It may have been his burden initially, but now he found immense joy in it. I wondered if I were being a fool, falling victim to its allure.

  “You will be using me as a conduit, which means you will be bound to me,” he informed me coming to his feet.

  “Will the same thing happen to me as before at Caleb’s?” I asked cautiously. That was an experience I would rather not duplicate.

  “Yes, but it won’t be as intense.” He grinned. “We will be bound, connected. I can hear your thoughts; so keep it PG and no more name-calling. And any impure thoughts you may have about Ethan’s strong muscular arms around you should be kept under wraps,” he stated, grinning playfully.