Lunar Rebirth (Lunar Rampage Trilogy Book 3)

by Samantha Cross

  “You know I would,” I responded bitterly.

  “Like before?” He was condescending, but he had reason to be.

  “This time is different,” I told him.

  “Why would I trust a promise from a woman who has already betrayed me by escaping and killing one of my own?”

  “They thought they were doing the right thing by trying to save my life, but now—”

  “But now they’re having regrets because someone worthy was taken in your place. Someone better. Someone more important.”

  He was trying to hurt me. I wouldn’t let him.

  “Poor dear Melanie,” he continued. “Always surrounding yourself with individuals who don’t appreciate your worth, and who treat you like scraps.”

  “Like you treated me any better.”

  “I guided you when you didn’t know what you were. I gave you strength when you had none.”

  “Guided me by trying to turn me into a killer.”

  His fangs pressed into his bottom lip, and he smirked. “Is a cat a murderer when she brings her kittens a fresh bird to feast upon? I kept you alive. It’s in our nature to survive.”

  “And now you want to kill me. Some protector you turned out to be.”

  “Your death is part of the greater good. Your story will be told for ages and ages. You’ll be immortalized for all eternity.”

  “Do me a favor and don’t ever speak my name after this. I don’t want my existence attached to yours.”

  “But it will be. We’ll be connected in a way no two people ever have before. It’s a beautiful thing, Melanie. You shouldn’t be ashamed of it.”

  I stepped closer to him, my fists balled up. Because this was a fictional world where he couldn’t hurt me, my fears took a backseat to my anger. I wanted to fight him. “You’re getting what you want. I’m coming on my own terms. You win. You don’t need my cousin.”

  “No, I don’t, but it doesn’t mean I can’t have my fun with her.”

  My stomach dropped. It took everything in me not to visualize all the ways he had been torturing or would continue to torture her. “Don’t you dare hurt her,” I trembled.

  “How I bide my time until your appearance is no concern of yours. Perhaps she’ll think a bit more carefully about her choices next time. Granted, there being a next time is completely in your hands.”

  I wanted to hit him, scratch him, tear out his heart, but I remained calm. “We’ll do the trade for real this time. Tomorrow.”

  “No. I will not give you and your werewolf associates time to plot ways to destroy me. You show up tonight or the girl dies, and I will not let her fade quietly.”

  He didn’t give me a chance to reply, as he vanished right in front of my eyes.

  I was ripped back to reality and into the dark, vacant room of the hotel. The wind outside the window howled and the snow tapped against the glass. It was a stark contrast to where The Master had taken me in his mind. I stood up and approached the windowpane, and pressed my fingers against the frosty glass. I never thought I’d die in the winter. It somehow seemed sadder this way.

  “Did you make contact?”

  I turned to my right, and a tall shadow of a man appeared in the doorway. Max walked into the bedroom and his shoes thudded across the wooden floor like he weighed a ton. I looked up at him and nodded. “I did. He wants me tonight, or he’ll kill her.” He didn’t need to know Master had already hurt her. It would put him into a frenzy.

  Max let out one long, exhausted sigh and sat down on the edge of the bed. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  I sat down next to him. “Don’t worry, we’ll get her back.”

  “I know we will, because there’s no other way this is ending.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a pair of black snow gloves and then handed them to me. “Here,” he said.

  I didn’t take them. “I don’t have a body temperature. I won’t need gloves.”

  “It’s not for the cold, it’s so you can hold this.” Out of his other pocket, he retrieved a small, silver pocket knife. “I found it on the dead guy. If only he knew what he had.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “When we make the trade and this asshole thinks he has you, you whip this out and you shove it in his throat. I’ll take it from there.”

  “Max, no... We don’t even know if silver works on him.”

  “It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

  “No, because he’ll kill you.”

  “It might not do jackshit to him, but it’s still a knife in his throat. It’ll give you a few seconds to wrestle yourself away. By then, I’ll take care of him.”

  He was trying so hard to come up with a plan that kept both Cora and me alive, but it was pointless. Master would kill each and every one of us, and that’s without Molly and Veronica’s help. If I handed myself over, everything would be fine for him.

  I lowered my head and shook it. “I’m not worth it, Max. Let me save Cora my way.”

  “No,” he replied sternly. His tone surprised me. “They don’t get to win. They don’t get to walk away and be free to hunt the rest of us for the remainder of our days. That’s not how this is gonna end, all right? Cora was taken trying to save your life, and I will not be the person who tells her it was for nothing. Got it?”

  I had no reply.

  He rose from the bed and said, “Now put your gloves on and meet me downstairs.”

  Before he left, I replied, “If we do plan on fighting him, I hope you know there’s a good chance one of us doesn’t walk away alive.”

  “I know,” he said. There was regret in his voice, but acceptance as well. “Anyone who’s not cool with that can leave. But I’m going tonight.”

  “So am I.”

  “Then we can end this. For good.”

  Max was about to walk out the door when I stopped him. “Hey, Max,” I called out. “No matter what happens tonight, win or lose, we both know I can’t be in Cora’s life. I’m not normal. It’d never work. I know you already do, but please take care of her. Make sure she’s happy. Make sure she’s always safe.”

  “There’s genuinely nothing more on this earth that I want.”

  I smiled to myself. “You know, you’re not exactly the type I imagined my dweeb of a cousin ending up with.”

  “Is that an insult or a compliment?”

  “Well, an insult to her. I thought she’d get with some band geek, not a…”

  “A what? An asshole?”

  “No. A good man.” I closed my eyes and reflected. “You’re the kind of man I wished my ex-husband was. Protective, honest, willing to lay their life down for me. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone like that in my life.”

  Max nonchalantly shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know, I can think of one person.”

  At first, I thought he meant Cora, but the raised brow and the playful smile told me otherwise. My cheeks warmed up and I chuckled. “Dana… You noticed.”

  “I can be pretty dense about a lot of things, but I’m not dead. No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “I’m not gonna shove my nose where it doesn’t belong, but she’s a good kid. And you mean a lot to her, so…you can’t exactly say you’ve never had someone like that in your life.”

  “Even if that were something I…” I stopped myself. “She deserves better than a dead girl.”

  “Something tells me she’d disagree.” He cocked his head to the side and took one step backward into the hallway. It’s when I saw that Dana had been standing right around the corner the entire time.

  Dana remained in the doorway, leaning her cheek against the wood and essentially hugging the wall. “I wasn’t trying to listen in,” she said. “I came to talk and saw you had company.”

  We were alone for the first time after our kiss. I didn’t know how to bring it up.

  “So, why’d you storm off like that?” I asked.

  “You’ll have to forgive me, but I wasn’t in the mood to listen to you talk a
bout killing yourself. Again.”

  “You shouldn’t have tried to stop me.”

  “Someone needed to. I’m glad Cora and Max were able to.”

  “Are you? Because now she’s gone.”

  Dana’s head lowered. “I’m sorry. Cora doesn’t deserve this.”

  “She doesn’t.”

  “And neither do you.”

  I didn’t know how else to address it, so I just blurted it out. “Why did you kiss me?” I asked.

  Her skin flushed. “Is it really that surprising?”

  Suddenly, it was hard to make eye contact. My heart raced as I remembered the kiss, and us talking about it so openly made me feel lightheaded. I licked my dry mouth and answered, “Yes.”

  “I thought…you...I mean…”

  She was stammering. She was going to take it back. I suddenly didn’t want her to.

  What was happening to me?

  I thought I was ready to talk about the kiss, to tell her I had no interest in her and for her to find someone else, but I felt even more confused by my own emotions hearing her speak. I wasn’t as firm on my feelings as I thought I was.

  I needed to take the attention away from it.

  I said, “Max thinks he can save me, like you do.”

  The sadness in her eyes lifted a little. “Let him,” she said, taking a few steps closer into the hotel room.

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Why does it have to be hard? There are five of us, and three of them. We outnumber them!”

  “A mass crowd outnumbers a police force, too. But they have guns and the people don’t. Master, Veronica, Molly, they’re the ones with the guns. We have nothing.”

  “We have two werewolves who can change anytime they want to. Max and Daggett can fight them.”

  I shook my head. “You only want to save me because you think there’s something between us.”

  Dana paused. “Think?”

  “I’m a wreck, and I think you want to take care of me because no one else ever did.”

  “What I’m feeling isn’t pity.”

  I climbed off the bed and began to pace. “I’m not even a good person. Once the freshness of what I am wears off, you’ll grow tired of me. They always do. I’m pretty, but I’m dumb. I’m fun, but there’s no depth. Did I ever tell you why my husband and I got a divorce?” She said nothing, and waited a few steps from the door for me to tell the story. It would be a short one. “He left me for another woman because he didn’t enjoy me anymore. He didn’t think I could keep up with the conversation or that I was smart enough for him.”

  Dana softly scoffed. “He let someone like you go. He’s not the smart one.”

  She insulted my husband while complimenting me. I almost smiled.

  Nothing I said seemed to scare her off. I spent my entire marriage walking on eggshells, trying to be as perfect as can be, and it was never enough. Yet, I’m a quivering, blood-drinking mess and she still wants me.

  The only person who had ever shown me this much devotion was Cora, but even then I always felt deep down that pity was a part of it. With Dana, I didn’t feel that way. It was genuine.

  Also, Cora’s loyalty to me didn’t give me butterflies in my stomach.

  A part of me wanted to tell Dana that she was making me feel this way, but I knew it wasn’t fair. Regardless of whether Max’s plan worked or not, I probably wouldn’t survive the night. Master could somehow be beaten and bloodied on the ground and he would still find a way to take me out with him. It wasn’t fair to give Dana hope that something could ever happen between us, just for her to lose me in the end. That was downright cruel.

  Dana waited for me to say something, but when I didn’t respond, she frowned. “I’ll see you downstairs,” she said and then walked away.

  I put my hand to my chest and sighed. For a girl who's supposed to be dead, my heart did a lot of racing.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  CORA

  They left me on the floor in the chapel, with the wounds and the bite marks scattered all along my arms and body. They left me on the carpet soaked with my blood.

  It felt like they left me there to die.

  Was I to become a vampire now? The rules were still unclear to me. I told myself that if I became a vampire that I’d be all right and that I’d make it work. I never much cared for the sun anyway. It wouldn’t be such a loss. Right?

  It’s the drinking of the blood that I wouldn’t be able to handle, or the idea that I’d outlive everyone I knew, or never even have children. Having a baby was never something I focused too greatly on, but knowing I’d never mix my DNA with Max and watch it grow up was gutting. I don’t think I realized how much I wanted that future with him until it seemed impossible.

  I already had all the empathy in the world for Melanie, but this made it even more intense. These things had to have run through her head a million times.

  I crawled off of the floor, got to my knees, and ran my hand against the side of my neck. There was dried blood and a gaping hole where Master’s teeth had been. Molly and Veronica had left that part of me alone and mostly focused on drinking from my arms and legs. Never in a million years would I have guessed that someday they would do that to me. Life can really take a goddamn weird turn.

  The chapel doors opened, and Molly walked in. She saw me attempting to get off the floor and tossed a towel at my face. “Clean yourself up,” she ordered. “Master doesn’t want you looking skuzzy.”

  I removed the towel from the top of my head. “Are those his words or yours?”

  “How are you feeling?” she asked. I didn’t get the impression it was a genuine show of empathy on her part, but a sinister curiosity. She wanted to know I had suffered.

  I wouldn’t let her know how much pain I was actually in, so I sarcastically answered, “Like my arms, neck, and legs have been cut open.”

  She smirked.

  “You come here to gloat?” I asked.

  Molly sat down at the altar and crossed her legs. Her dress was so torn up on the ends I could see her knees through the weak fabric. “Now that we’re alone, there’s something I need from you.”

  “What more could you possibly take?”

  “The truth. A confession, really.” She leaned toward me and draped her arms across her knees. “I know you killed my brother, but I want to hear the words from your lips.”

  It was one of many moments I dreaded. No matter my reaction, it would be wrong. If I told her the truth, she'd be outraged and if I lied to her, she’d be equally outraged. I couldn’t pick one option in the hopes of her sparing my life, because I didn’t know what would set her off.

  I sighed. “Your brother was sick,” I told her.

  She cocked her head to the side. “That’s not a confession.”

  I shut my eyes and took a deep inward breath. “He asked me to end his life.”

  “Liar,” she hissed.

  “Owen practically begged me. He couldn’t live with what he had done, with what he had done to you. You were his world, Molly.”

  Molly jumped to her feet. I fully expected her to leap at me and rip my throat out, but she turned away and paced. “He knows I wouldn’t have wanted that for him. We talked about this a million times.” Her pacing ended and she looked to me, her eyes misty red with rage. “Just admit your sketchy little ass got trigger happy and killed him without thinking twice! That he was just some beast to you.”

  I shook my head and said, “That’s not what happened.”

  “Like you’d ever admit it if it was,” she spat.

  “You might not give a shit about me, Molly, but Owen did. I wanted to help him, but losing you was the last straw. He had nothing left.” I sighed. “God, Molly, you knew him better than anyone. You know I’m telling the truth.”

  She panted, her white skin flushed. “Why did you listen to him?!” she screamed. Her voice was layered with so much emotion that it echoed throughout the chapel. “Why couldn’t you help him?! If you ha
d done for him what you did for Max, I wouldn’t be alone!”

  “Is that why you’re so angry?” I softened my voice. “Because you’re lonely?”

  Molly turned away, her side profile still present. Her chest violently moved up and down from how heavy she was breathing. She had really worked herself up. Molly lifted her head and stared at the stained glass chapel windows. It was colored with a depiction of the betrayal of Jesus Christ by Judas. “I’m angry for many reasons,” she admitted.

  “But why with me? Why do you hate me so much?”

  “You know exactly why.”

  “No, before Owen died. You always acted like you couldn’t stand me, and I never understood why. What did I ever do?”

  Slowly, she turned in my direction. “You existed,” she answered. “You stumbled into town with your torn nylons, your ridiculous sense of humor, and your overall dorky, mess of an existence. Yet, my brother and Max fell all over you. Like you were something special. I had to work overtime to get people to look at me with even an ounce of respect. I said the right things, dressed in the right way, went to church, tried to be a good girlfriend and sister. Where did it get me? Here. Damned for all eternity.”

  “You’re not going to hell.”

  Her shoulders bounced as she let out a scoff. “What could you possibly know about where we go when we die?”

  “Not much,” I admitted. “But if there is a God, I don’t think he would be cruel enough to condemn you when you’ve already been punished.”

  Her eyes trailed back to the stained glass windows. “Maybe it’s what I deserve for helping Owen cover up what he did to our parents with that fire. There’s only so much you can get away with before you have to pay.”

  “You were protecting him. It’s what any good sister would do.”

  Molly looked back at me. “Don’t try to get on my good side. I’m not like Owen, I won’t fall for your fake nice girl act.”

  “Nothing about Owen and me was fake. I may not have known him for very long, but I cared about him and I never wanted anything bad to happen. If I knew then what I know now, I would have helped him. I guess we both have our regrets.”