“Thanks for the pep talk, Rickey.”
“He’s right, though,” Brinly said, and Daggett grinned like a dumbass. “Daggett, you’ll go with him.”
Daggett almost pissed his pants. “Wait, me? But I have laundry duty tomorrow.”
“Consider it forgotten.”
“Oh, man…I hate laundry, but I hate dying more.”
I put my hand on his shoulder harshly, and he winced. “Nobody’s dying.”
“That sounds an awful lot like famous last words before we’re all torn apart.”
“It’s settled then,” Brinly announced. “You and Daggett will go to Lunar City, and you’ll keep in contact with us if something were to happen.” She looked to Lincoln and added, “Go and ask some of the boys if they’d be willing to help. We’ve got some decent trackers and—”
“Wait!” a female voice shouted. The red drapes tore back, and behind it was a woman with brownish blond hair. She stood there for a moment, not saying anything, and then charged across the room toward Brinly at her throne. Brinly, instinctively, cupped the woman’s face with her hands as if to calm her. “Let me go. I’ll go,” she said.
I watched her for a second, and then it clicked. Was that Dana? The girl from Rookridge?
Brinly was shushing her, telling her it wasn’t a good idea, and Dana, in the tiniest voice imaginable, began to plead her case. “I’m the best tracker here. I’m the best. You know it.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Brinly took a deep breath inward and said, “Dana wants to come with you, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“She can’t control her shifts yet,” Daggett informed. “We’ve been practicing, but it hasn’t taken.”
Brinly dragged her fingers through Dana’s hair, sweetly petting her head like she were her daughter. “Which is why I’m against this idea. We don’t want something bad happening out there again.”
“It’s too bad, though, because she is the best tracker we’ve got in the entire compound.”
I ignored the two of them for a moment and looked directly at Dana. “You really the best here?”
She confidently nodded but didn’t say a word.
“Then you’re in.”
Brinly sighed. She might not like it, but it’s also not her girlfriend in trouble. I needed the best nose in that city to find Cora. If shit goes south and Dana turns, I’ll chain her up in my car if I have to.
We’re finding Cora.
Chapter Five
DANA
My entire life, I’ve felt purposeless. I was never the prettiest, the smartest, or the funniest, and I was never very social or well-liked. I made it a habit to blend into the background, to never inconvenience anyone with my sorrows or struggles.
It was easier that way.
In a lot of ways, I felt like my life didn’t truly begin until that fateful night of the date auction in Rookridge. I hadn’t even wanted to go, but Tiffany convinced me to. She said Molly would be outraged if we said no, and the one thing we all knew was to never anger Molly. She’d ruin your day, your week, and your life. Because she went to church, people just assumed she was this shining example of what a Christian woman should be, but she was a phony. Always was.
No part of me wanted her to die, but being free from her clutches was…a relief. I was relieved to be free of the Molly, Tiffany, Veronica clique in general. I never felt secure or like myself around them. I was a parrot, dressing like them, talking like them, behaving like them. I never knew who I was.
Till that night. And I have Cora to thank for that.
She found me on the side of the road, bleeding and crying. She stopped me from transitioning, locked me up so I’d be safe, and then even checked in on me a year later. If it weren’t for her, I’d be dead, and I never would have been led to Brinly and her compound. My life was forever changed by two acts of kindness from her. I’m sure she had no idea how much it meant to me, but it meant the world. It gave me my life.
It’s why when Max showed up at the compound and said she was missing, I had to help. I quite literally owed her my life. It was only right that I step up, no matter how terrified I was.
When Rickey and I followed Max out to his car, he stopped and turned around, took a deep breath, and said, “You sure you wanna come?”
I nodded and replied, “Yes.”
If it weren’t for Brinly, he wouldn’t be having any doubts about me. She worried about me a lot, and I guess she had every reason to. I wasn’t like everyone else. I had long given up on the idea that I’d be able to control my shifts, and I had more blood on my hands than anyone from her pack. I was sort of a problem.
“We’re picking up one more person, and then we’re out of here,” Max announced as he shifted into drive.
Rickey and I chose to sit in the backseat together, and every couple minutes he would ask, “You gonna be all right?”
“Yes,” I assured him softly. Rickey and I had been trying to gain control of our shifting together. We’d do the exercises together, take the lessons from Lincoln together, and luckily for Rickey, he was recently successful. I wasn’t. Brinly promised me it’s different for everyone, but I just shrugged it off. I had gotten used to the monthly changes. They were nightmarish, but they were routine.
Max pulled up alongside a nice house by the water. The breeze from the lake made the air crisp and chilly, and I secretly hoped Max would turn up the heat, but I felt weird about asking him.
Cora’s grandmother was on the porch, seeing Priscilla off as she fled to our car through the cold. Wendy waved and laughed like someone was telling a joke in her ear, and then she nearly slipped on the bottom step of the porch. That seemed to only make her laugh more. She was always a bizarre older lady.
Priscilla slammed the passenger door behind her, and mid-laugh said, “You should see how much weed is growing in her bathroom.” She then abruptly stopped speaking when she noticed Rickey and me in the backseat. She turned and looked at Max and asked, “What’s with the lesbians in the back?”
I appreciated how obvious Max was when he rolled his eyes at her. “They’re helping us track Cora.”
Suddenly Rickey laid his arm out on the back of the front seat, extending his hand out to Priscilla and saying, “Rickey Daggett. My friends just call me Daggett.” He was waiting for her to shake his hand, but she stared instead. It was rude. She reminded me a lot of Molly in that way. Mean for the sake of being mean. Her being friends with Cora made no sense to me. Then again, she was here with us trying to find her, instead of staying home, so there must have been more to their relationship than just what met the surface.
“You must be Priscilla,” Rickey said. “Cora’s friend.”
“That’s not usually how I introduce myself, but sure.”
“Cora’s a cool girl. We hung out this past summer, played a couple of games together.”
She tightly pressed her lips together and stretched them into a fake smile. “Riveting.”
“You know, it’s pretty badass that you’re coming with us like this. You’re human, so you’re a lot more vulnerable than the rest of us. You could legitimately die, but you showed up anyway.”
“If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll throw you in front of me if a monster attacks.”
Rickey laughed. “I feel like you mean that.”
“I really do.”
“You’re a straight up savage, I love it.”
She was obviously poking fun at him, yet Rickey was into it. I didn’t get it. I hated it when people were mean to me.
Her large, blue eyes suddenly shifted toward me, and I looked toward the window hoping she would leave me alone if we didn’t make eye contact. But she didn’t. “You look familiar,” she said.
“Huh?” The words barely croaked out of me, and I had to clear my throat. My voice always got raspy when I went too long without talking, which happened a lot.
“I feel like I’ve seen you
before. Have we met?”
“Probably.”
“I never forget people.”
I could have said that we were from the same neighborhood back in the day, but there was something awkward about knowing who someone was while they barely remember you.
Priscilla snapped her fingers almost excitedly and exclaimed, “You were friends with the bitch trio! I didn’t recognize you with the brown hair.”
Her noticing my hair had changed made my cheeks go red. I stroked the tips of the strands with my fingers and nervously said, “Oh. Yeah.”
“Good God, how could you stand hanging out with those girls?”
“Priscilla, cool it,” Max snapped. “Her friends died for crying out loud.”
“I mean, yeah, shit, rest in peace and no offense and all that, but Jesus, they were an obnoxious group. You would know better than anyone, Max. You did dump Molly’s crazy ass.”
“Would you can it?”
“Who’s Molly?” Rickey asked.
Priscilla leaned against the car door and crossed her legs so she could comfortably face all three of us. “Her brother was a werewolf who slaughtered a bunch of people at this dating auction we had in our old neighborhood.”
“Gruesome.”
“Tell me about it. There were literal heads rolling.” She paused for a moment. “One landed in my lap even.”
“Great way to make light of a bunch of people getting murdered. Really,” Max groaned. I was glad he said something.
“I’m not making light of it, I’m recalling the events. Anyway, Molly was his sister, and she and Max used to have this thing—”
“Here we go…”
“Until he dumped her ass. Oh, boy, you should have seen the drama that came out of this. Molly’s brother, the werewolf, he tried to beat the shit out of Max at a bar. I thought he was gonna, like, knife him in his sleep one day, but that never happened. Well, shit, I guess he got close. He is the one that bit Max.”
“No way,” Rickey commented. “Is that true, Max? You were turned by the brother of your ex-girlfriend? Man, that blows.”
“She wasn’t my girlfriend, she was…” Max groaned very loudly. “What year is this? This drama was dead and buried before they were, so can we keep it that way?”
Priscilla lowered her voice and said, “If I dated one of those girls, I wouldn’t want to fess up to it either.”
“Whispering doesn’t work, you know.”
“What, because you have super werewolf hearing or some shit?”
“No, because you’re sitting three inches from me. Now get your feet out of the side of my thigh,” he growled, punching the bottom of her black boots that were piercing into his jeans.
She tucked her feet under her legs and continued talking. “Anyway, Molly had a circle of real intellects. A bimbo, a southern dumbass, and then this one—Dana.”
My cheeks felt hot again.
“How were you not on the verge of slitting your throat every time they opened their mouths?”
I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “We weren’t all that close,” I replied.
“Molly would make me ring up all her items and then stop and go grab a can of cheese from the other end of the store, just to hold up the line.”
“You sound real torn up about her passing,” Rickey commented, his nose scrunched.
“I didn’t want the chick to die. I’m not that much of a garbage human being. I just don’t think death should make people forget what you were actually like. I’m paying tribute to her by celebrating who she really was.”
Max scoffed. “You’re a true treasure. We need more like you in the world.”
Priscilla side-eyed him, but changed the subject anyway. “So, what exactly is the plan here?”
“We find that church the call came from, and when Cora’s not there, Dana will follow her scent to where she really is.”
“What makes you so sure Cora won’t be there?”
“It’s a meeting point. If it’s a prank, a kidnapper, an old friend, or whatever else, odds are they’ll have migrated out of the area within minutes of coming face-to-face.”
“It seems kind of pointless to even go there then.”
“We’re taking the path we think Cora would. It’s the only way Dana can lock onto her scent.”
“God, that must be weird knowing someone is sniffing you out. I hope she showered at least.”
Irritated, Max loudly cleared his throat and then turned up the radio. I think it was his not-so-subtle way of telling her to shut up. I was happy with the decision because the more noise in the car, the less I was expected to make conversation.
I leaned my cheek against the frosty glass of the window and tried to imagine what Lunar City even looked like anymore. After Brinly’s former fiancé unleashed an attack on the city, nothing was ever the same. People moved away because they didn’t feel safe. I think the windowless black vans that appeared out of nowhere and collected the bodies threw everyone into paranoia. We kept expecting them to return. It’s why Brinly abandoned her grandfather’s compound, even though it tore her up inside. I went with them, no questions asked, but I continued to pay the rent for my old apartment twenty miles outside of the city. Just in case I needed it.
For the remainder of the ride, Max was really quiet, mostly keeping his eyes to the road and then sometimes on his phone. His hands were continuously tapping across the steering wheel like he was playing the piano, and he only ever broke it up to vigorously scratch the stubble growing on the side of his face. It was clearly a nervous tick. Poor guy. He looked like a bundle of nerves, and he was trying so hard to hide it, but I noticed.
I always liked Max. I don’t even know if he knew who I was or had much of an opinion of me before this, but whenever he visited the compound, he was always so nice to me. It made sense that Cora fell in love with him. They were both really good people, and it’s rare those types end up together. I would have figured he’d hook up with someone like Priscilla, who, by the way, was doing her best to ignore Rickey. He was asking her a dozen questions about her life, which I think was his way of flirting. I know she didn’t owe him anything, but she could at least give him a shot. He’s a great guy.
Before I knew it, we were in Lunar City, and it was a shell of its former self. There was so much property damage and wood from destroyed buildings lying all over the street, only now it was coated with a layer of snow so it made everything look even more desolate. You knew people were still living in the apartment buildings, though. You could feel it. It just felt like the city’s population had been cut in half.
“You guys remember where any of the churches were?” Max called out.
“There’s only one, as far as I know,” Rickey replied. “Turn left off Gray street. It should be right there.”
I was expecting more of a struggle or more obstacles to be thrown in our way, but getting to Lunar City and finding the church was almost simple. It made me uneasy.
“You see that?” Max said, pointing to the snowy road in front of the church. “Tire tracks. Someone was recently here.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s her,” Priscilla said softly.
“Doesn’t mean it’s not.”
We parked the car, and almost in unison, all of our doors popped open and we stepped out. The wind was howling, swirling and lifting the snow from the ground and into the air, and I had to pull the collar of my coat over my cheeks to stay warm. A faint aroma suddenly entered my nostrils, and although it was very weak, I recognized it as Cora’s scent. She had in fact been here.
The snow crunched beneath our feet as we walked up the narrow pathway to the church, with Max taking the lead. He pulled open the front door and we all walked in at the same time. The door crashed shut behind us and the loud bang echoed through the confines of the church. We saw the pews, the altar, the stained glass windows, but there was no one inside.
“You getting anything?” Max asked.
I breathed in deeply. “She was h
ere,” I said. I took a few steps forward, still breathing inward. “She walked up this aisle.” I came to the front of the row of seats and trailed my hand along the pews. “She sat here. I can sense her really strong, she must have lingered here for a while.”
Max’s eyes lit up with relief. “Okay, but where did she go?”
I circled the area for a minute, inhaling as deeply as I could, but something strange happened when I took a few steps in the direction of where I knew she was going.
There was nothing.
I smelled nothing.
“I don’t…I don’t understand…” I whimpered.
Max’s eyes no longer looked relieved. “What? What is it?”
“I lost her. She was heading in this direction, and then it’s like she vanished.”
“I thought you were supposed to be the best at this,” Priscilla griped.
“She is!” Rickey barked.
I was so confused. This had never happened before. “I keep trying, but—” My eyes began to sting from tears. I was so embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” I said to Max. I felt like pleading for his forgiveness for wasting so much of his time and abusing his trust. Maybe I wasn’t as good of a tracker as I thought I was.
Max didn’t look angry, but he looked sick to his stomach. “It’s all right,” he said very calmly. I didn’t know if his quiet and soft demeanor was for my sake or his own, but I knew he was worried. “We’ll figure something out.”
“What the hell are we gonna do?” Priscilla asked. “This was how we were gonna find her. Now what? We’re shit out of luck.”
“Get in the car. I have another plan,” he announced.
Chapter Six
MAX
The church was a bust. I knew it would be before we even stepped foot into that building. What I couldn’t figure out is why, once again, Cora’s trail went cold. But, at the very least, we knew she made it to the city and that she was more than likely alive. I breathed a big damn sigh of relief over that one.
I drove us to a nearby gas station to fill up the tank, and so we could regroup.
Lunar Rebirth (Lunar Rampage Trilogy Book 3) Page 4
