“Molly forced you to turn?”
She nodded. “She told me to and I just…I just did it. I had no control. It was like she was brainwashing me or something.”
It was a completely unbelievable story, but I knew Dana wasn’t a liar, nor was she a drama queen. She was loyal and honest to a fault, and if she said a resurrected Molly came after her then I sort of had to believe it. Even if it did sound batshit insane.
“Have you heard anything like this before, Daggett?” He had been with Brinly’s compound longer than I had, and he knew more about their world than I ever could.
But he shrugged and said, “Dead people who can manipulate you into doing things? No, man…never.”
“Sounds like vampires,” Priscilla said.
We all sort of stopped everything we were doing and went silent. Priscilla was being sarcastic, but one look at Dana’s petrified expression and we realized Priscilla probably wasn’t off.
Vampires? No. I would have heard about this at some point. Right?
But shit, I didn’t listen to Cora about werewolves right away and look where that got me; bitten and cursed. Maybe these Rookridge girls were onto something.
Very softly, Dana said, “They had fangs—bloody, protruding fangs—like they had been eating something. Or someone. It was all over their dresses too.”
“Why were they in dresses?” Daggett asked.
Priscilla scoffed. “A bunch of crazy bitches with fangs are back from the dead and you want details on what they were wearing?”
Daggett rolled his eyes. “It may have been significant. If they weren’t wearing coats they could be immune to the freezing temperature. It’d help us figure out what they are.”
“There were no coats,” Dana told him. “Their skin wasn’t even flushed. They were just pure white, and they were wearing the exact same dresses from the night of the date auction. What they died in.”
“Okay, this is nuts,” Priscilla said with her hands flailing about. “You guys woofing under a moon is one thing, but this is pure lunacy. Besides, if we’re gonna pretend vampires are real, then this makes even less sense, because vampires are made from bites from other vampires. Molly and the blonde brigade were killed by Owen.”
“Are you sure they were?” Daggett asked. “Did you actually see them die?”
“I saw Tiffany and Veronica. Tiffany was dragged around the dance hall and Veronica was attacked in the parking lot.”
“What about the other one?”
“Molly? Max and Cora were the ones that found her.”
“What was her condition?”
It wasn’t something I wanted to reminisce about for too long, so I just said, “She was in one piece, but she was bitten and clawed up.” It was a visual that stayed with me for a long time. My ex-fling in a frilly purple dress that was soaked in her own blood, stuffed and bent like a pretzel into the trunk of a car. It’s not how I envisioned our relationship coming to an end. If that were even the end anymore.
“Is it possible that there were vampires in your town and they fed on the bodies afterward?”
“You think I wouldn’t notice vampire neighbors?” Priscilla said, rhetorically.
“Well, in fairness, how long until you noticed the werewolves?”
“You know what, Daggett? You talk too much.”
The two chewed each other out for a couple of minutes, and with each second that passed, I felt myself slipping out of the conversation and into a state of numbness. If vampires were real, and they were here, that meant Cora was somewhere lost with them on her tail. I had no idea what level of strength they possessed, how fast they were, how brutal they could be. Deep down, I don’t think I wanted to know, because no matter how deadly they were, a human like Cora would never be a match for them.
The body in the gas station bathroom was most likely their doing, and so was Dana’s forced shift. If they could make Dana do something of that magnitude, what kind of fight could Cora put up? What defense would she even have?
My legs were bouncing up and down without me realizing it, and I knew I had to take a walk before I lost my mind. “I’ll be back,” I mumbled to them and then took off out of there. I couldn’t handle it anymore, the jabs, the jokes, the dozens of theories they were running through. It all felt like a waste of time. I needed to get straight answers.
I stood by the outside of my car and searched for a signal on my cell. It took me a couple of minutes, but I managed to get a weak one. So I called Brinly.
“You don’t sound good,” was the first thing out of her mouth. I had barely even greeted her outside of saying her name. She just knew.
“Tell me the truth,” I began. “What other supernatural beings are out there other than us?”
She didn’t answer, and simply said, “What happened?”
“It’s Dana.”
“Oh, God, is she all right?”
“She’s fine now. She claims she ran into a group of girls that had the ability to force her to turn into a werewolf. The girls she’s talking about are ones I watched die in Rookridge a couple of years back.”
There was a long pause on her end. “That’s a lot of info to take in, Max.”
“Just tell me. Are vampires real?”
“Vampires? You mean, actual blood-sucking vampires in the traditional sense?”
“Yes.”
Brinly stammered for a minute and then grew very quiet. “Papa used to tell me stories, but I thought he was trying to scare us.”
“What kind of stories?”
“Horror stories of the victims of werewolves rising from the grave and killing them as an act of revenge. He told tales like this all the time, but we thought they were just that. Tales.”
“He never said anything to make you believe he was telling the truth?”
“You remember Papa. He was big on stories. It was hard to know what was and wasn’t the truth.”
I groaned. Somehow I felt even more confused.
“What’s going on down there?” she asked. “Have you found Cora?”
I exhaled slowly. “Not yet.”
“You will, Max. You will.”
I didn’t have the strength to lie to her and tell her I was confident in that. No part of me was prepared for this new nightmare that was forming. I wanted to keep Brinly on the phone longer, but lost the signal and couldn’t get it back. There wasn’t much more we could say to each other anyway.
Eventually, I sat down inside my car and simmered in the silence. I needed to think.
Chapter Fifteen
PRISCILLA
Dana looked like something I sneezed out during the flu. Daggett tended to her like she was nine years old, forcing her to sip water through a straw and dabbing a napkin on her forehead to remove the sweat that was forming. I did my best to finish my cheeseburger, figuring that if any of the shit Dana was spewing about Molly was true, then I needed to make this last meal count.
Fucking Molly.
I still didn’t believe Dana had experienced anything other than some stroke-induced hallucination, but if anybody was gonna crawl their ass out of a grave to try to kill me it’d be Molly. Goddamn, I miss the days when people who died just stayed fucking dead.
I checked the clock on the wall and realized that Max had been missing for twenty minutes. Going outside sounded like a dipshit move, and something someone like Cora would do, but Max had the car and him taking off meant I’d be completely abandoned. Abandoned with a guy trying to get in my pants and a girl who could wolf out at any second.
It didn’t take much searching, as I just sort of poked my head out the door and saw Max sitting in his car. It made me wonder if he was toking one up, and if he was it was rude as hell he wasn’t sharing. I popped open the passenger seat and sat down beside him, and immediately shards of glass underneath me poked into my ass. The car was also freezing because of the punched hole in the window.
“If you’re out here because you’re trying to catch pneumonia and die, you
could have given me a heads up and I’d join you,” I joked. “You can’t leave me with these weirdos.”
Max’s head hung low, and he smiled. It was a forced, close-lipped fake ass smile, and I wondered why he even tried it in the first place.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said.
“The waitress cleaned our table ten minutes ago. We’re just sitting around in there doing nothing. What’s next?”
“I take you home.”
I thought I heard him wrong. “Take me home?”
“You shouldn’t be involved in this, Priscilla. It was stupid of me to even let you tag along.”
“Let me? I volunteered. Did you forget that? I’m trying to help you find Cora, you know.”
“What if there’s nothing to find?” He blurted out, looking me straight in the eye, every muscle in his face twitching. I may have even seen a tear. “What if it’s too late?”
I scoffed. “What in the hell are you talking about? Is that what you’ve been doing out here, convincing yourself that she’s lost forever?”
“I haven’t had to convince myself of anything.” He lowered his head again. “I used to think the only thing powerful enough to control a werewolf was the moon, but apparently I don’t know shit, and there’s three of them slinking around the city. The city my girlfriend is lost in.”
I hadn’t let any of Dana’s story sink in, but if she were being honest about it all, that did put Cora in a dangerous position. I guess I hadn’t wanted to think about it.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” I said. I sounded as convincing as I thought I would, which was not at all.
Max leaned far back into his seat, his eyes focused somewhere between the dashboard and the ceiling. “Why are you even here?” he asked.
That took me by surprise. “What?”
“You’ve never treated her the way she deserved to be treated. Cora bends over backwards to be nice to you, and you act put off by it. Like you’re too good for her, when we both know that’s not even remotely true.”
“Jesus, Max, tell me how you really feel.”
“Cut the bullshit.” He said it softly and casually, yet it felt like he was snapping at me. “You know the way you are with her. I keep my mouth shut because you’re her friend, but she’s not here.” Max scoffed. “You should hear the way she talks about you when you’re not around.”
I shake my head and stare at my hands in my lap, prepared to hear it. “What, that I’m a piece of shit?”
“No, that you’re her best friend.”
Why did that kind of hurt when he said it?
He mentioned this before, back at my apartment, but for some reason it felt much heavier this time around.
I took a deep breath. “Cora’s too…nice,” I said. “I don’t know how to deal with people like that. I’m so used to people being assholes and liars that I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I kept expecting to find out she wasn’t as nice as she is, and it was all an act.”
“She couldn’t fake that even if she tried.”
I chuckled. “She is a piss-poor liar.”
“The worst,” he added, with a faint smile on his lips.
“Look, Max, I don’t have a great track record when it comes to friendships. Believe it or not, some people find me difficult.”
Max looked over at me and just stared. “Is that supposed to be some kind of revelation?” he asked.
“You could at least act surprised. Daggett was a lot nicer when I talked to him.”
“Daggett’s known you for two seconds. You forget you and I go all the way back to Rookridge, long before Cora got there.”
“And you didn’t like me then?”
“You put my business out there for every person that walked into your store to hear. What do you think?”
I laughed to myself. “I almost miss those stupid ass days. I mean, I fucking hated my job and my life—no change in that department, by the way—but at least none of this crazy shit was going on.”
“It was always going on, we just weren’t a part of it.”
“Being blissfully ignorant sounds nice right about now.”
He stared out the window. “That’s not an option anymore.”
“You’re right. Which is why I’m gonna stay and help.” Truth was, I didn’t know how the fuck I was supposed to help, but if I didn’t, I’m pretty sure that made me a terrible person. I may not be a good person, but contrary to popular opinion, I hope to get there someday. Max must have understood my position, because he looked at me and nodded. I got no argument from him.
“Oh, and to answer your question,” I began. “I’m here because I want to be, and because Cora’s the only person I know who can tolerate my shit. And she’s about the only friend I’ve got.”
Max faintly grinned. Immediately, I regretted opening up like that.
“And if you tell her I said that, I’ll kick your ass,” I warned.
“I hope you get your chance.” He was still dwelling on the idea that she was dead. With a heavy breath, he said, “You know, just last week I was looking for a gift to give her for Christmas. I went to a jewelry store to buy the necklace I gave her, and I passed all these engagement rings. For a moment, I almost did it.”
Was he really talking about popping the question? Jesus.
“You don’t think it’s a little early for all that?” I asked.
“With someone else, maybe. Not with Cora. I don’t know anyone else who would stand beside someone with all my baggage. Most sane people would run the other way.”
“Well, Cora’s not exactly sane.”
Max laughed. “No, maybe she isn’t. But I like that. Her weirdness was always…”
He said was. He was speaking about her in the past tense. It didn’t sit well in my stomach, and from the gutted expression on his face, I could guess it didn’t sit well with him either.
Max cleared his throat loudly and wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve. “Anyway,” he said, in an attempt to move on. But I didn’t. I just watched him. It was almost sickening to see how distraught with worry he was. I could see it all over him, like he was drowning in it. The way his body was lifeless and hunched forward, the way his eyes seemed to slide to the sides of his face. He looked horrible.
I reached out to put my hand on his arm but stopped myself. It seemed a bit strange for us. I was never all that touchy-feely, especially with Max. I knew he only put up with me because of Cora. “Do yourself a favor,” I said, and he looked right at me. “When this is over, and we find Cora alive, pop the fucking question.”
Chapter Sixteen
DANA
I couldn’t shake the nausea, the cold sweats, the quaking hands. My body was jolted into a state of shock and I wasn’t recovering. Shifting was something I had grown used to, but having it done against my will amounted to an indescribable pain.
Nightmarish new versions of Molly, Veronica, and Tiffany had replaced the old, and every time I closed my eyes, I saw them. There was no life or warmth in their eyes. They may as well have been strangers that found me in the woods. I would have felt just as safe in the presence of serial killers.
The worst part was being alone in it. I was the only one that saw them, that felt their power, that smelled all the blood. I think Max and the group all believed me, but it wasn’t truly clicking with them. They’d find out for themselves soon enough, I was sure of it. Then, and only then, would they understand.
Priscilla and Max had been outside together for ten minutes or so, leaving Rickey and me alone to talk. “You scared the hell out of me,” he said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll be okay.” It was a lie. I was in pain, so much pain, and I was horribly on edge. I could have died, or worse, I could have killed someone. I licked my bottom lip and said, “I’m sorry for trying to hurt you and Priscilla.”
“It’s me that should be apologizing. I actually
did hurt you.”
“You were only doing what was right. You had to defend yourself. I’m glad you did, because…if I was actually successful in going after you guys, then—”
He cut me off. “We got each other’s back. It’s all right.”
Many, many nights Rickey sat with me and listened to my sob stories of self-hate and regret over all the things I’d done, so I knew he was interrupting me before I went down that road again.
Max and Priscilla walked through the main entrance and to our booth, both sliding in on the opposite side of Rickey and me. They weren’t being chatty or energetic, and I got the impression that whatever they were talking about was pretty heavy.
I had the urge to apologize to Priscilla the way I had Rickey, but I couldn’t find it in me to open my mouth and do it. She was too sassy and distant, and I don’t think my heart could handle her shutting me down or making it into a joke.
Before I could say anything, Rickey spoke. “What’s our next plan of attack? We still searching or what?”
“We are,” Max said. “But if you two want to bail, I won’t stop you.”
“Why would we do that?”
“Dana isn’t exactly in the best condition right now.”
I felt like the weak link again. Brinly was right to be worried, and I hated it. “I’m not going home,” I protested. “Not until we find Cora.”
“All right,” Max replied, and dropped it immediately. I was thankful his personality was like that. “We may have to move on foot again. If we’re being followed, us driving up and down the streets in my car with a giant hole in the passenger window is like waving around a big fucking sign.”
“So we leave the car here,” Rickey said.
“It’d be better to ditch it someplace secluded. Throw them off our trail. Maybe on the rim of the city, make them wonder if we left or are still here.”
I suddenly had an idea. “I know where we can drop the car off,” I said. “My apartment building is ten minutes outside of the city. Barely anyone lives around there, so no one will notice.”
Lunar Rebirth (Lunar Rampage Trilogy Book 3) Page 10
