“You still rent from there?” Rickey asked.
“It’s a security blanket. In case I was ever thrown out from the compound.”
“Why would you be thrown out?”
I lowered my voice. “Can we talk about this some other time?”
“Yes, please,” Priscilla echoed. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
We got back to the car, and I winced when I saw the hole in the window. There was so much glass on the car floor and seats, and it was all because of me. The weak link. I felt like putting my head down and crying. But I didn’t. I ignored the ache in my heart and got inside. I even volunteered to sit in the front passenger seat so all the cold air would hit me and not them. I was on fire, anyway, so it wasn’t too bad.
I could tell from the constant glances in the rear view mirror and fidgeting in his seat that Max was uncomfortable with leaving Lunar City, even if my apartment was nearby. I think the closeness to the city made him feel connected to Cora, and leaving made him feel like he was leaving her behind.
We’d find her. I knew this. Cora was too strong-willed and brave to give in. She’d fight and fight and stay alive for us. I envied that about her so much.
Ten minutes later, I saw my apartment building. It was still as broken down and empty as when I lived there, maybe more so now. The rent was low, and when you looked at the air conditioners hanging out the windows, the chipped wood in the balconies, and the faded paint, it made sense why. No one wanted to live there. It’s probably why I chose it. The fewer people, the better.
“This is it,” I said, almost embarrassed. They all probably had such nice homes, and I had this.
When we got out of the car, Priscilla slammed the door behind her and said, “You have power and running water here, right? ‘Cause I gotta piss like a mother.”
“We were at a diner ten minutes ago,” Max complained.
“I didn’t have to go ten minutes ago, Sherlock,” she sniped back.
My apartment was on the second floor, so the four of us trotted up the stairs. I did my best to keep up, but my heart was still pounding too fast in my chest and I was suffering from a lot of lightheadedness. Priscilla mentioning the bathroom made my stomach churn, and I wondered if I was going to need to throw up.
“Number 14,” I said, pointing to the door at the end of the hallway. They all walked in front of me as I trailed behind, but before they entered my home, I stopped them. “Wait,” I said. “Look.” The doorknob, which was usually locked, had been busted apart and was left hanging from a hole in the door. Someone or something broke it.
Max extended his arm out in front of us, and very quietly warned, “Stay back.” He gently pressed his hand against the outside of the door and pushed, but his face scrunched and twisted like there was a resistance on the other side. He pushed once more, and again nothing moved. Finally, he banged his shoulder into the door not once, but twice, and eventually, the thing flew open.
We joined him at his side, prepared to storm in together to fight off whatever intruder was in my home. We took a couple of steps inside and found nothing, only that one of my sofas had been used as a barricade to keep us out. Everything else was mostly the way I left it.
“Looks like you were robbed,” Priscilla said.
“No, that’s just how her place is,” Rickey replied.
I couldn’t even argue. The memories I had here were pretty horrible, and with my depression controlling my life, I rarely had the energy to pick up after myself. It was just wall-to-wall books and dirty coffee mugs. I barely even decorated.
Thud.
The noise came from down the hallway, and I think we all collectively lost our breath at it. Someone was in the apartment, probably hiding in my bedroom or the bathroom. It was a terrifying thought.
“What the fuck was that?” Priscilla asked, and Max shushed her.
I glanced over into my small kitchen and noticed the top drawer was open. It’s where I kept the knives. My first instinct was to go in there and grab one, and that’s when I wondered if it was the same for whoever was hiding.
If we were surprise-attacked, I didn’t know if I would have the physical strength to fight them off. My legs still felt like jelly, my arms were still heavy, my balance was still off-kilter. I didn’t think I could even attempt to turn into a wolf right then and there to protect myself, either. My body was under too much stress.
As Max crept down the hallway, the three of us followed him closely, so much that we were practically up his butt. When Rickey bumped into him and apologized, Max rolled his eyes and kept moving. Poor Max, getting stuck with a trio of idiots like us. If something happened to him, we’d never know what to do with ourselves.
Down my hallway, there were three doors—the bathroom on the right, my bedroom at the end, and then an extra room on the left. All of the doors were wide open except the room on the left, so, of course, that’s the one Max went for. He jiggled the handle, and it was locked. Whoever was hiding was in there.
I suddenly smelled that flowery, funeral scent. I swallowed, feeling sick to my stomach, and then squeezed Max’s shoulder in hopes that he was ready for what was on the other side. I know I wasn’t. Not by a long shot.
Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a dark figure come running down the hallway with an object raised over their head. It smashed down onto the back of Max, knocking him to the ground. We all backed up, confused, horrified, but ready to fight.
But then Rickey stopped us. “Wait!” he yelled. Or was that yell not for us? Was he talking to the attacker?
Oh my god.
The attacker wasn’t Molly, Veronica, or Tiffany.
My chest swelled with relief, and I smiled.
It was Cora.
“Stop, it’s us!” Rickey screamed.
Cora stood there with a wooden rolling pin high above her head, and as soon as she realized what she had done and who we were, her eyes grew to the size of a small dinner plate. She turned her attention down to the floor where Max was, and the two locked gazes for the longest time, I swear. I wasn’t even a part of it, but I could feel the electricity between them. I could actually feel the love.
“Cora?” Max trembled. He sounded in disbelief, almost like he thought she was a dream. Max rolled off of his back, got to his feet, and charged toward her. She just stood there, waiting. In a flash, the two were hugging. He towered over her tiny frame so much that she practically disappeared into his arms as they swayed. It was such an intimate moment that Rickey and Priscilla looked away, but I didn’t. It was beautiful, and I wanted to witness something that pure, even if I had nothing to do with it.
Max put her face into his hands and kissed her lips and then her forehead. There wasn’t anything sensual about it. It was an urgent, needy kiss, like he had to touch her to know she was real. “Jesus, you scared the shit out of me,” he said. “Don’t do that again.”
“Sorry I hit you,” she replied with a playful frown. Cora looked past Max’s shoulder and to us, and asked, “What the heck are you guys doing here?” She sounded shocked, and on the verge of a laugh.
“They came with me. To find you.”
Cora smiled, clearly touched. “Really?” Now she was happily laughing. “Daggett, Dana...hi. It’s been a while.”
She wasn’t the type of person to forget someone, but I was still flattered she remembered me.
Her eyes narrowed and said, “Priscilla, you came too?”
Priscilla was leaned against the hallway wall, her arms folded. “Okay, let’s not get all gushy over this. Your boy toy thought you croaked and I wanted to be here when he was proven wrong.”
“But you still cared that I was found.”
“I mean, whatever.”
“So this means you’re practically in love with me.” She was teasing Priscilla, but Priscilla was having none of it.
“It’s not too late for you to drop dead, you know.”
“But you don’t want that, because you love me.”
“Cora, shut up.”
Priscilla was rudely barking at her, but when she turned her head away, I swore I saw a smile struggling not to form on her lips. Their relationship started to make some sense to me.
“So what happened?” Rickey asked. “Why all the mystery?”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly planned,” Cora admitted. “I’m sorry to freak you guys out like this. I swear, if I knew this would escalate the way it did, I never would have come here alone.”
Max pulled her auburn hair away from her shoulder, his eyes lovingly gazing at her. “Why would you go alone, anyway?”
“I got a message in the middle of the night.”
“We know, we listened to it.”
Cora’s brow was wrinkled. “So then you know why I’m here.”
“What is this, charades?” Priscilla complained. “Why are you here?”
Cora took a deep breath. “I’m not sure if it would be better to tell you, or just show you.”
“Show?” Max echoed.
“It’s behind that door.” It was the only room that was locked, the one that Max was trying to get into, and the one that happened to reek of funeral flowers. Max reached his hand for the handle, but before he could try to open it again, Cora said, “Please don’t make any sudden movements, or loud noises. She’s still on edge.”
She?
Cora knocked lightly against the door and said, “It’s okay, it’s me. You can unlock the door now. We’re safe.”
A few seconds later, I heard the click of the door unlocking. They popped open the door and let it slide open very, very slowly. I was immediately hit in the face with all these senses, some so strange that I didn’t have the words to explain it. It was like being hit in the nose hard and the taste that takes over your mouth afterward.
There was a figure sitting in a chair, their back to us, their face looking toward the frost-tinted window. In the reflection of the glass, I could see piercing blue eyes hidden behind strands of wet, blond hair. She was dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, which I recognized as being from my closet. Cautiously, she turned her entire body toward us in the chair and stared. She was beautiful, but her skin was like snow.
Rickey said quietly. “Is that who I think it is?”
“No fucking way,” Priscilla added.
Cora entered the room and sat on the ledge of the window beside the woman. She placed her hand on top of the woman’s hand and said, “I thought I was going crazy too. Say hello to Melanie.”
I gulped.
She was just like them. She was just like Molly.
A vampire.
Chapter Seventeen
MAX
“I don’t even know where to begin,” Cora said quietly, as she sat beside her cousin who, one minute ago, I thought had died in Lunar City. Melanie was white as a ghost and quivering in her seat. She was breathing and moving, but she didn’t look any more alive than a corpse. Just looking at her gave me the strangest taste on my tongue. It’s like I could taste the abnormality in the air.
I stroked my chin, trying to keep my cool. “At the part where this makes sense would be nice,” I replied.
“I wasn’t trying to give you guys a heart attack or anything, but I don’t know if I’d even have the right words to tell you about her. This way, there are no doubts.”
Daggett lowered his glasses and gawked at Melanie. “So it’s true. Vampires are real,” he said. Melanie was doing her best to not draw attention to herself, often looking out the window nervously or pulling up a fleece blanket to her chin, but all eyes in that room were on her. And it was gonna stay that way.
Cora jerked her head toward Daggett. “Wait, you guys know?”
“Dana had a run-in with one of them. We only just became aware.”
Now, Cora was looking at Dana. “Are you all right? Did they hurt you?”
Dana was pressed against the wall, hiding behind the rest of us. “I’m okay,” she responded.
Suddenly, Cora’s use of they played back in my head. “They?” I asked. “How did you know there was more than one?”
“Probably because they’ve been trying to kill us for the last day,” she answered. “I would guess they were after you too. Molly, right?”
Jesus fucking Christ. Now we couldn’t pretend this wasn’t real.
Priscilla and I must have been on the same page, because as soon as Cora said this, Priscilla had a small outburst. “Oh, hell no,” she exclaimed.
Cora sighed. “I didn’t believe it at first, but…I kind of had to when Melanie showed up.”
“What even happened?” I asked. “Better yet, why the hell did you come out here by yourself? Are you insane?”
“I know, I know…if I had any idea what I was walking into, I would have got a hold of you, I swear. But you know how I am. When I thought you were in danger, I came here in a flash too. It wasn’t gonna be any different with Melanie.”
“With all that you know? It should have been different.”
“All right, all right,” Daggett interrupted. “Can we save the lover’s spat for later?”
“Seriously,” Priscilla grumbled.
Daggett continued, “Be thankful that we’re all alive and well.” His eyes suddenly darted toward Melanie, and then muttered under his breath, “Well, mostly…”
Jesus, this was weird. Though calling it that felt like a stupid thing to say. You call a person weird, or a science project weird, not a person coming back from the dead. This went above and beyond that.
I repeated myself, though this time, calmly. “What happened?”
Cora took a deep breath, and I knew we were in for a story. “You said you guys heard my voicemail, right? Well, I knew it was Melanie’s voice. I knew it without a shadow of a doubt, and I couldn’t wait until morning to confirm it. I was afraid if I waited, she’d be gone, and I’d spend the rest of my life wondering who that was on the other end of the line. So I went. It was stupid, but I felt like I didn’t have any other choice. I found her in an old church, filthy and starving, and that’s when she told me all of these horrible things.”
She didn’t continue, so I asked, “Like?”
Slowly, she looked to Melanie. “Did you want to tell them?”
Up until this point, Melanie had been completely silent. When she parted her lips to speak, I didn’t know what to expect. “I woke up in a cage,” she said. “Several other people and I were kept there.”
“Where exactly is there?” I asked.
Melanie weakly shrugged. “Some big building. A warehouse, maybe? It was all a blur. I was so tired and hungry all the time, I didn’t have it in me most days to keep my eyes open for more than a few minutes.”
Cora laid her hand against the back of Melanie’s head and stroked her hair. “They fed her a few blood bags, but not enough. We’re guessing they did it to keep her weak.”
“You must have been taken by the men in black,” Daggett said.
“What, like the movie?” Priscilla asked.
“Not literally,” he answered. “Max, you had mentioned how these vans came and cleaned up Rookridge after your werewolf attack, and the same thing happened this past summer in Lunar City. They’re always there after something big happens.”
“You think they brought Melanie back to life somehow?” I asked.
“Maybe,” he said with a shrug.
“No,” Melanie said. “You guys brought me back.”
Daggett and I exchanged looks.
“When she says you, she means...your kind,” Cora clarified, but that didn’t make it any clearer for the rest of us in the room. Cora saw our continued confusion and said, “It’s your bite. Your bite does this.”
Immediately, I knew she had to be confused. “No. We make other werewolves, we don’t create this. We don’t have the power to bring the dead back.”
“Maybe not a singular bite.”
“English, please.”
Cora looked over at Melanie again. “Melanie?”
> Melanie sighed like it was a struggle to even breathe. “Death from a werewolf bite is what made us. They say it’s nature’s punishment to the rabid werewolves.”
“Who is ‘they’?” Daggett asked.
“The ones that were kept with me,” she answered. “The ones like me.”
“Hold up, go back,” I said, sternly. “If that were true, there would be vampires running all over town. I’ve lost track of the people I’ve met who have accidentally killed someone.”
“The ones that turned were all in one piece when they died,” Cora said. “Decapitations, the heart being removed, bodies being torn apart, those are the ones that stay dead. For some reason, it doesn’t work.”
“So, it’s like the venom from our fangs is what’s doing it,” Daggett noted. “As long as the host is technically livable, it can be resurrected through whatever we transfer into it.”
“That’s what we figured. The actual deaths had to be caused by werewolf-induced injuries. Melanie...died,” her voice quivered, and I didn’t know if it was because it was a sensitive subject or that it was strange to say it with Melanie right beside her. “And it was caused by Travis’ bite. Just like with Molly, how we found her in one piece but bleeding out from Owen’s attack. That’s how she turned.”
It all sounded like bullshit. Everyone knew a werewolf bite turned you into a werewolf, or worse, killed you. Nowhere did I ever hear we were capable of creating another monster like this. But how could I argue against it, when the evidence was sitting in a chair in front of me, looking like she crawled out of a grave? I had a lot of damn questions, but there was one that rushed to my lips quicker than the others. I sat down on the edge of the bed in the room, and asked, “What about Owen? Is he…?”
Cora’s eyes fell and her voice sounded tiny. “No. I shot him, remember? Besides, I don’t think a werewolf can become a vampire. I don’t think you can switch from one supernatural being to another.”
“Yeah, but do you actually know this?”
She shook her head.
Lunar Rebirth (Lunar Rampage Trilogy Book 3) Page 11
