"Hey," he breathed, putting his hands on both my shoulders. I was freezing, and he felt so warm. "The holidays always suck, but they're never worse than the first one after something like this. As much as it sounds like bullshit, it is going to get better."
What he was saying was sweet and from the heart, but it wasn't making me feel better. "She'll always be dead, though," I told him. "That's something I have to live with every day."
His brow furrowed. "You say that like it's your fault."
"Isn't it?"
"She was a big girl, Cora. She didn't have to come to Lunar City, but she made that choice."
"But would she have if she knew the truth? I knew the kind of people that were in that city and everything they were capable of, but I let her tag along. I let it happen."
"You're not a psychic, Cora. Not even I could have predicted what happened. You can't sit here and beat yourself up over something you had nothing to do with."
"It's been working pretty well so far," I said bitterly, and turned away from him, folding my arms and tucking my hands into the sleeves of my shirt that was one size too big. "Telling me it's not my fault undoes nothing. I can rationalize it and my brain might even get it, but my heart just isn't there. If I don't vent and cry, I'll explode."
"I get that."
"We're not all experts at bottling up our emotions."
Max threw his head back. "You know, considering the mood of the night, I'm just gonna ignore that little dig."
I felt terrible. "I'm sorry," I said, putting my hands to my face. I wasn't thinking at all. "You didn't deserve that. My head is just in a really weird place right now. The holidays, am I right?" I tried to joke. I tried to act like myself to not worry him. I don't think he bought it, because his expression remained troubled. My face fell, and I pressed it against his chest, taking in the aroma of clean clothes, cologne, and that distinct cozy Max smell. "I'm not trying to irritate you. You're pretty much all I have these days, and I don't want to lose you."
His hand touched my chin and pulled it up so our eyes met. "You are quite literally everything to me. It's gonna take decades of you irritating me before I even entertain the idea of walking out. If that."
I faintly smiled. That was about as romantic as Max got, but I knew he meant every word.
"I'm sorry I ruined the night," I said. "I know how much you hate holiday gatherings. You came all the way out here just for me, and I'm being a total butt."
"It's not the gatherings I hate, it's usually the people in them. You, I can eat dinner with for hours. Priscilla, on the other hand—"
"You just dislike her because you two are similar."
He squished his face tight, clearly insulted. "We are not."
"Yes, you are." I stopped myself and then laughed. "You know she used to have a thing for you, right?"
"Oh, really?"
"Back when we first met. Just think, if I hadn't come into town, you two could be a couple right now."
"That's a horrifying thought."
I laughed pretty hard. It was relieving to know I still could.
"While the mood is still light, I wanted to give you something," Max said and then reached into his pocket.
"Wait, you got me something?" There was a long, gray rectangular box in his hand, and I knew it was jewelry. "Wait, no, Max. We're not supposed to exchange gifts before Christmas."
"I felt like getting you one now. You got a problem with that?"
I scoffed. "Like I'd ever have a problem with presents."
He slyly grinned and watched me anxiously pop open the container. I didn't know what I was expecting, and I had to stop myself from excitedly clapping like a kid in front of a birthday cake. Once I saw what was inside, I gasped at the beauty. It was a gorgeous, silver crescent moon necklace, with a little heart hanging from the edge. The words "I love you" were inscribed on the heart, and the words "To the moon and back" on the actual moon. It was so sweet I thought I was gonna cry.
"It's even silver," he commented. "That way if I ever get out of hand, you can melt it down into a bullet and end me."
"You're so sentimental," I joked, and Max laughed. I clutched the necklace close to my chest and said, "This is everything."
"You're everything."
I smiled, and suddenly putting the necklace on was the last thing on my mind. I wrapped my arms around Max and pulled him to my body, kissing him deeply. His mouth returned the kiss with passion, with more fire than I was initially giving him, and I could feel his hands rubbing all over my back and down to my butt. His hands were so warm and so strong, so goddamn strong in the way he touched me that he unintentionally lifted me right off the ground. I took that opportunity to wrap my legs around his waist and let him carry me to the bed, where we both fell.
Chapter Two
I'm awoken by Max's lips on my cheek, giving me a soft kiss. "I have to go," he whispered, like he wanted me to hear it but also wanted me to be able to fall back to sleep quickly when he left.
"What time is it?" I asked, stretching my arms out as I opened my eyes. I was groggy, but the room was still pitch black, so it had to be at night.
"Around four. I'll come back in a few hours, but I gotta head to the store."
I rolled onto my back so I could see him. He was kneeling beside the bed, staring down at me. He looked so cozy and cute in his warm flannel jacket with his long, brown hair.
"So you do this with all your girls? Have a great night and then tell them you have some shopping to do?"
He smirked, but there was coyness to it. I think he liked that I referred to our night as great. It made me swoon. "It's not for shopping, trust me. The alarm went off and I gotta go check and make sure nothing has been broken into or stolen."
"You want me to come with you?"
"No. It's maybe twenty degrees outside, and I'm sure it's a false alarm anyway. Stay where it's warm, and I'll be back in the morning."
He was about to leave when I grabbed him by the sleeve, holding him in place. "Hey," I said. "I love you."
The room was dark, but I could tell he was smiling. Not the overexcited, tooth-filled kind of smile, but the kind where it all came through his eyes. He radiated happiness from within. Max moved his hand up to my cheek and said, "I know."
I scoffed and tossed a pillow at him. "Okay, Han. You better come back, or I'll freeze you in carbonite myself."
"With how cold it is, I don't think you're gonna need to," he said, practically jogging to the door, running from the numerous pillows I was flinging at his head.
I pressed my head back down on the pillow, smiling as I fell back to sleep.
I wasn't sure how long my house phone had been ringing while I slept, but when I awoke, it was still in the middle of the night—or should I say the early hours of the morning—and I could hear the click of the answering machine picking up the call. My mind was half-awake, but my eyes were shut and my body was slumped across the bed, too tired to plug my ears and too tired to crawl my way to the phone to answer it. And then I heard something.
Cora?
The voice playing through the machine was a woman, and she sounded like she was speaking through a tunnel, her voice distant yet loud enough for me to hear.
Cora...are you...are…
My heart jumped into my throat. That voice. It sounded so familiar.
Help me...I'm so tired...I'm so hungry. Why did you leave me here?
Any exhaustion I once had was now long gone, replaced by an overwhelming state of fear. Who the hell was this person on my phone? Why did I swear I knew their voice? Were they in danger? Why were they calling?
I worked up the courage to jump out of my bed and to the phone in the living room. The answering machine was still recording when I lifted the receiver and placed it to my ear. "Who is this?" I asked, my voice trembling. My eyes darted toward the front door, expecting that at any minute someone would break it down and come after me.
"Cora?" the voice spoke. They sounded weak, quiet,
a little on edge. But that voice...why did my heart know it, but my head didn't? It was like there was a block in my brain, not allowing me to recognize who was on the other end of the line.
"Who is this? How did you get this number?" I was almost yelling.
"It's me. Melanie."
I stopped breathing, and the chunks rose in my throat. "I don't know who you think you are, but this isn't funny. How the hell did you get this number?" This time I was yelling. Who would pull such a cruel joke, and in the middle of the night to top it off? It was even sicker because this woman sounded almost identical to Melanie.
"Why did you leave Lunar City? You left me behind." She wept, but it wasn't aggressive or loud, but soft and with a quiet ongoing moaning. Whoever this was seemed to be in an awful physical state. "I'm all alone. I don’t know what to do," she trembled.
How did this person know about Lunar City? That wasn't in Melanie's obituary.
A tear rolled down my cheek. I didn't even realize I was crying at first. It was like my body was registering what was happening but my brain was still a step behind, unable to process. "Why do you sound like that?" I whispered. This couldn't be real. I had to be dreaming. Any second now I was going to be woken up by Max, and this was all some ridiculous dream. It had to be the case.
"Please help me," this woman said. "I'm at an abandoned building. I think it's an old church. I'm so cold. I'm so cold." The more she spoke, the more she sounded like Melanie.
Was this actually possible? I knew life had revealed itself to be far more complex and unreal in the past year for me, but this? Speaking to someone who was dead? Even this crazy life had to have its limits.
"Prove to me this is really you," I demanded. A part of me was hoping they would prove the opposite.
There was a long pause, and for a moment, I thought whoever this was had hung up. But then quietly and weakly, they said, "Thank you for holding me as I went—"
And then the line went dead.
I had no words.
My hands shook as I set my house phone back down on the end table, my heart racing a mile a minute. No one outside of Max and his father knew that Melanie died in my arms. No one. My brain was telling me it had to be a joke, but my heart...oh God, my heart was telling me something else entirely.
I immediately opened my laptop and googled the number that had called my phone. After a minimal amount of digging, it displayed the zip code of the area, and it belonged to none other than Lunar City. The caller wasn't lying about that, and if they weren't lying, what else were they telling the truth about?
I jumped out of my seat and began pacing back and forth. This was insane. I had to be losing my mind.
But I had to know.
It didn't matter if this was a cruel prank by someone who had found the details of our relationship and her death. If there was even a sliver of a chance that Melanie had somehow survived her attack, and was alone and suffering, I had to go and find out the truth for myself. There was never going to be another option.
I wasn't even thinking straight when I ran out of my apartment and down the stairs toward the parking lot. It was around twenty degrees out and I didn't even have my arms in both sleeves of my coat, that's how little I was thinking. I started the engine to my Volkswagen and tore out of there as fast as I could. Because it was the middle of the night, there was minimal traffic, so I pushed way above the speed limit. I didn't have time to stand around and think this over a million times in my head. Lunar City wasn't close by any means, and the longer I waited, the higher the chance whoever this was wouldn't be there when I arrived.
For all I knew this could be some kind of demented trap set up by a mysterious assailant, and my death awaited me when I got there, but if I didn't get in that car and drive, I would live the rest of my life with regret. I had to know what this was. I had to know.
Time almost didn't feel real on that drive. I was caught somewhere between excitement and terror, staring at the empty roads covered in a sheet of snow and ice as the windshield wipers swayed back and forth like the ticking of a clock. Then dread hit me when I realized I had left my cell phone on the end table by my bed. If shit went down, I'd have no way of contacting someone. I was all in now. There was no going back.
A half-hour later, I was there.
The place, much like Rookridge, hadn't fully recovered from the madness with the werewolves. Because it had once been a thriving city, you could see from the row of lights in the windows of the apartment buildings that it hadn't lost all of its occupants, but the roads still had immense damage. A lot of the street signs were lying in the bushes, and one corner didn't even have working traffic lights. I had to wonder if the people left here weren't just werewolves.
I drove down every street, over and over, looking for a building that looked like a church. I had no memory of one from my stay here, but I also wasn't allowed a lot of travel time to explore the city. There was also the possibility that she was confused and it wasn't actually a church she had called from. So basically, I was functioning off of scattered, possibly incorrect, information. And I was doing it all by myself. Sometimes I blow myself away with how much of a dummy I can be.
Just as I was ready to give up on Gray street and search elsewhere, I spotted a large, brown crucifix statue in the bushes on the side of the street, its bottom jagged and broken, lying sideways in the leaves unattended to. It clearly belonged on the rooftop of the building behind it, but the disaster that hit the city must have blown it straight off, and no one had fixed it.
I had to admit, I was surprised that the church was a reality. That’s twice the woman on the phone was being truthful.
I parked my car out in the front and debated whether to lock it or not. I didn’t want to be robbed, but I also wanted to be able to get back in swiftly and quickly if something bad happened in that church. Considering my record when it came to this city, nothing good awaited me inside.
My hands shook as I tugged open the main doors. The church was so dusty and unkempt from months of negligence, that every step I took across the wood flooring creaked and screamed like it was going to collapse beneath me. Worse was that the building was freezing cold—the kind of cold that hit you in the bones—and the wind was whistling and howling through the broken windows.
What person, in their right mind, would stay in this place? My teeth were actually chattering.
I stopped dead in my tracks when I heard sniffling. It was sniffle, sniffle, cry, sniffle, sniffle, cry. Someone was in that church with me, and they sounded very close. I listened for a moment, trying to detect where it was coming from. Against my better judgment, I called out, “Hello?”
The cries immediately halted.
That quick inhale of breath to end the crying was a loud enough noise for me to get an idea of where its source was. It was at the main area of the church where the worshipers would kneel to pray, I was certain of it. I took cautious steps toward the noise, drawing closer in toward a large biblical statue, and when I turned to my right, I saw a figure. It was a blond-haired woman, knelt on the floor, her face and arms pressed into the church seats as she quietly wept.
Suddenly, I felt sick to my stomach. Something wasn’t right. Something didn’t feel normal. Whatever I had stumbled upon felt like I had found a mythical creature like the Loch Ness monster or bigfoot. I had the overwhelming feeling that I did not belong here. All that curiosity I had five minutes ago? GONE. EVAPORATED. FINITO. I needed to leave, pronto.
But before I had a chance to book it out of there, the woman slowly lifted her face from her hands and looked at me.
Oh, God…oh, God!
It was Melanie. It was really her.
Her face was as white as a sheet of paper, her under eyes purple and blue, her hair stringy and unwashed, and as she rose to her feet, she began to mouth something. Only I didn’t register what it was, because as her mouth opened, a pair of white fangs protruded from between her lips.
I screamed.
Chapter Three
PRISCILLA
BANG. BANG. BANG.
What the fuck.
My front door sounded like someone was shoving a log against it, hitting it so hard I thought it was gonna be blown off the hinges. If I had lived in a worse neighborhood I'd think it was a crackhead or a rapist, but if they were really a criminal they'd probably be in the house already, and not knocking like some manic dumbass.
I rolled out of bed and headed to the front door, lowkey wishing I was wearing something hot just in case it was a mysterious stranger with a flat tire who needed my assistance and perhaps sexual favors.
I pulled open the door. Shit. It was just Max.
"You didn't hear me knock five hundred fucking times?" he yodeled in my face.
Knowing it was him and not a mysterious stranger made my exhaustion creep back in, and I yawned while leaning against the door frame. "Yes, Max, I most absolutely fucking did. Did your brain at any point figure that if someone doesn't come to the door when you're pounding on it harder than your meat, that maybe that person is ignoring you on purpose?"
"I don't have time for your brand of wit. Where's Cora?"
I made a face and threw my hands up. "How the hell should I know? Isn't she your girlfriend?"
"You haven't heard from her?" His voice suddenly went soft. It was weird.
"Last I saw her, she was at her place with you."
"Shit." The color drained from his face, and it was the first time I saw him look scared. Even with the fuckery of Rookridge, I never saw him look like this.
"You gonna tell me what's going on, or what?" I asked.
"She's not at her apartment, and she's not picking up her phone. It's like she fucking disappeared."
I chuckled. "What'd you do?"
"Huh?" His face squished so tight I could tell he was irritated, not confused, by my question. Not sure why I found him hotter making this face, but whatever.
Lunar Rebirth (Lunar Rampage Trilogy Book 3) Page 2
