Veronica cupped her hands around Master’s hollowed cheeks, checking on him like he was a five-year-old who was hurt on the playground. She asked, “Are you all right?”
Master ripped the blade out of his eye, shoved Veronica away, and growled, “I’m fine! Do something about those parasites while I deal with Melanie.”
Deal with me? I wasn’t going to give him the chance.
I tried to get to my feet but was startled when I saw him reach out to Cora. He wrapped his hands around her neck and pulled her face close to his, and then his voice purred, “If Melanie escapes from my clutches, attempts to end my life, or even fights back, I want you to find the nearest sharp object and slit your throat with it.”
A disconnected, dizzy expression took over Cora, and I knew his hypnosis had been successful. I could taste the vomit on my tongue already.
I now had no choice but to obey him, to surrender, to let myself die. I’d been prepared for it before, accepted it even, but that was when I thought I’d be the only one losing their life. If I fought him, Cora would die. If I didn’t fight him, Cora would die. What the fuck was I supposed to do?
A loud crash of metal clanging and cinder blocks smashing onto the ground rang off, and we all turned and saw that the gate had been broken down. Daggett and Priscilla were on the other side reluctantly staring in, but Max was nowhere in sight.
Master wiped away the long trail of blood from his face and ordered Veronica. “Take care of them.” His eye was a mess of busted meat and dripping blood. Master was keeping it together, but he had to be in a world of pain. With the one good eye he had, he looked at Molly and said, “You too.”
Molly looked offended that he was ordering her around, and she tightly grasped Cora’s arm. “What about her?” she asked.
“She’s not an issue,” he answered. His hypnosis made sure of that.
“The hell she’s not! You said if I brought her to you, I would get to decide what we do with her.”
“Silence!” he roared, and Molly shrunk into herself, prepared to feel the wrath of the back of his hand. Her submission was enough for him, so he didn’t strike her. “Leave. Her. Be,” he warned one final time.
Molly’s bottom lip quivered, and like a spoiled brat, she dropped Cora’s arm in one violent jerk. Any harder and Cora’s shoulder would have dislocated.
“Veronica, patrol the perimeter of the property,” he ordered.
Veronica nodded. “Yes, Master.”
“And you,” he began as he shifted to a pouting Molly. “Guard this front door so no one intervenes.” We were only a few feet from the castle’s main entrance, and my stomach turned upside down thinking about what would happen once we were beyond that entryway. “I cannot be interrupted, under any circumstances. You understand me?”
Even though she was still seething, Molly managed to reply with a, “Yes.” She knew better than to speak against him again. There’d be consequences. There always was.
Veronica headed toward the broken down gate, to patrol as Master had wanted, while Molly backed away a few steps from us and waited for Master to take me into the castle. A couple of feet over, Cora was frozen in place, partially from fear and partially because the hypnosis was doing something to her brain. I had never been under the spell before, but you always knew when someone else was. They looked and felt off. Cora just stood there, her body trembling from the cold, her upper body slightly hunched, and she never looked at any of us. Her eyes kept to the snow on the ground.
I didn’t want to leave her with Molly. It didn’t matter what Master told her or what she told him. If Molly had an itch to kill her, she was going to kill her. My only hope was that Max would get to her before Molly did.
My feet slid across the ice and snow as Master dragged me back to his castle. To hell. To my death.
I was already dead, so why did I dread definitive death so much? I guess I answered my question there. I dreaded it because it was, in fact, definitive. You only get one second chance, and I used mine up already.
The closer I was pulled to the castle, the more I thought about this second chance I was given. Did I do anything with it? Did I make it matter?
Seeing Cora again and treating her the way I always should have made the return worth it. I liked to believe I became the cousin she wished she had, instead of the fumbling, drunken bitch that I always was to her. Hell, I owed that to myself as well.
And then there’s Dana. Sweet, sweet Dana. She caught me by surprise, both with how gentle and transparent she was, but also that someone like that could find it in them to care about me. How bad could I be if someone like her could want me?
The porch light to the castle was getting brighter. I was almost there, almost dead again. We failed. We—
I’m thrown to the ground, and my entire body skates across the ice and spins. I wasn’t thrown because of any impact put onto me, but because it had happened to Master, which as a result had detached us. I looked up from the pile of snow my face had fallen into and saw that Master had been trampled on by a werewolf and they were in a scuffle. It was Max! Thank fucking God.
Master was strong and holding Max back, but werewolf Max was all over him, opening his large mouth and snapping his teeth at Master’s face to kill him. Veronica and Molly came rushing to Master’s aid, grabbing Max by the fur and trying to pull him away. Molly bit down on him, and Max howled. He then threw his head back to shove them off, but only Veronica was shaken loose and tossed to the ground. Molly wouldn’t let go, so I charged after her like a missile, tucking my head down low and shoving into her stomach. She slid across the ice and away from Max, but didn’t fall over, and when she realized it was me who had gone for her, she threw a punch that landed on my cheek. It hurt. A lot. Holy shit.
Footsteps came in fast from my right, and I glanced over only for a moment and saw that it was Daggett and Priscilla. Daggett could shift into a werewolf and help us, but I didn’t know what Priscilla was going to do. My only thought was for her to help Cora get out of there.
I did my best to fight Molly off, ducking every punch she threw and landing a couple of my own. I had never been tough; I had never been a fighter. I was the chick in high school that talked shit about a girl and then ran at the first sight of that girl willing to square up. I was shocked that my fists were even hurting Molly, because my punches were sloppy and not always connecting, but I had the strength of a vampire and that was all I needed.
Suddenly, Veronica slammed her hands down on my shoulders from behind me and then attempted to hold my hands back so Molly could pummel me, but she was immediately yanked off of me by Daggett. I sometimes forgot he was a werewolf and could do shit like that. He just looked so… dweeby.
Max and Master were still going at it beside us. Without the girls aiding him, Max seemed to be overtaking him. As he arched his head back and widened his mouth, ready to go in for the kill, Master’s body suddenly exploded into a mass of tiny, black bats. Max nosedived into the snow where Master once laid, as the air around us was polluted with dozens of flapping, screeching bats. They were in our hair, in our faces, scratching us and screaming so loudly in our ears I thought I was going to go deaf. It was chaos, and we were all running around trying to avoid it like a bunch of loons.
The cloud of bats slowly rose above us and pulled close together, their little bodies meshing into one another like balls of Play-doh to form an enormous mass of black that was darker than the night sky beyond it. It twisted and churned, and in a few seconds, the darkness doubled in size and seemed to be growing arms, legs, and a head. Master was reforming, only this time his skin had wispy gray hair all over. As he stretched his arms out wide, a pair of rough, jagged edge black wings spawned from his back. A pair of red eyes beamed down at me, surrounded by patches of dry, ashy skin. Even though I knew it was Master, there was nothing physically there that resembled him. A human sized bat is what he had become. I was horrified.
He floated in the air, his wings not even needing to
flap to keep himself elevated, and then he let out a high pitched scream. It was sharp like a whistle and it pierced through the chilly night air, forcing us to cover our ears. I didn’t know if it was because I had vamp hearing or what, but he nearly ruptured my eardrum. The next time he screamed came with an impact. Somehow his vocal chords had made a noise so powerful that every single one of us took flight and were thrown about, until our bodies sprinkled onto different areas of the lawn. I tried to find where everyone had fallen and spotted Dana instead. She was slumped against a statue with her eyes shut and her body completely limp. Dana had only been there for a few minutes, but already there was a sheet of snow covering her. It was like she was sleeping and the snow was her blanket.
I tried to focus my hearing on her and her alone, and I smiled when the thud, thud, thud of her heart entered my ear canal. She was alive. Thank God.
I placed my hands down onto the earth to help myself get to my feet, and just as I touched it I felt a rumble beneath me. The snow, the soil, the actual ground was quaking. I focused my hearing again. Fast-paced, heavy running footsteps came from around the edge of the castle, drawing closer and closer to us. Something animalistic was coming, and there appeared to be more than one of them. And they were coming fast.
Three large, black animals suddenly jumped out from a darkened corner on the right side of the property. Their long, raven hair matted with dirt and other debris, and their tall ears were cut up, scab infested and missing their pointed tips. They were werewolves, but werewolves that had been through some shit.
At first I was confused by them being here in this way, because there was no full moon, but then I remembered Cora telling me about the purebred werewolves that stayed werewolves at all times. The ones that turned that guy Owen into one. The ones that started this all. But what the hell was Master doing with them? Did he have them chained up in his basement for whenever he needed backup?
God…I obviously wasn’t the only thing he collected over time. I had to wonder what else he might have stored away.
The werewolves charged at us, at first all together, until they broke apart to get each of us on our own. One was heading right toward me, and as it got within a few feet, I leaped into the air and floated over it, landing behind the beast. Its paws slid across the snow, trying to stop itself so it could turn around and come and get me, but the moment it turned, Max charged into it with his entire body and knocked it onto its back. I didn’t even see or hear Max coming. While the werewolf squirmed against the snow, Max stood on top of it and mauled the thing. Blood and fur polluted the air, but the creature was still fighting. I ran over to the two, balled up my fists, and punched my hand straight into the werewolf’s chest. Squishy, wet, thick substances lathered around my hand and up to my elbow as I dug through to find its heart. The creature howled. My fingers touched something meaty, something pounding, and I wrapped my grasp around it and yanked it back through the hole that I had created. Its heart thudded one last time against my palm, and then the werewolf passed.
Max’s long, brown face was only inches from mine, and his pale, animalistic eyes stared. I knew it was Max and he had full control of himself, but it wasn’t Max’s face I was looking at. He looked just like the asshole who ended my life. No matter how hard I reminded myself that I wasn’t in danger, I was still uncomfortable. These things scared the shit out of me.
I couldn’t read his mind or even communicate with him, but something in his stare told me that he needed me to find Cora and protect her. Maybe it’s because I knew it’s what he wanted, or maybe it’s because it’s what I wanted. Either way, I knew what I had to do.
I wiped my bloodied hand across the back pocket of my jeans and said, “I’ll take care of her. Don’t worry.”
Max darted off toward the remaining two werewolves. As I ran across the snowy field to find Cora, the sounds of yipping, growling, and howling grew louder and louder. He was fighting them on his own, and I hoped he would come out on top.
I didn’t slow down my pace even when I glanced back to find Max, to see if he was okay. Instead, my eyes focused on Master, who was floating in front of the castle, the moonlight shining down on his blackened wings. He wasn’t making any attempt to intervene in Max’s fight, or to even come after me. He was just… watching. Waiting.
I spotted brownish-red hair in the distance, and I knew I had found Cora. She’d been tossed near the gate that Max had broken down, and was on her knees in the snow, her back facing me and her hands busy in her lap. Cora held something heavy and dark, but there was so much snow building up around her, I couldn’t tell what it was. I ran toward her and saw that it was part of the fence in her hands, and she was trying to wiggle one of the beams free. For a weapon, maybe?
I placed my hand on her shoulder. “Cora! Are you okay?” I asked. With so many werewolves and vampires around, it was easy to forget she was human and had very human aches and pains.
Cora said nothing, and continued to furiously detach the beam from the gate. “I have to,” she panted. A beam broke free, and immediately she put it to her throat.
“Cora!” I screamed, and knocked it out of her hand.
“I need it!” she yelled back at me, throwing herself into the snow in search of it.
It was the goddamn hypnosis Master put her under. The second I fought back, it took effect, and now she was desperate to slit her own throat. I yanked her off of her hands and knees and pulled her closer to me, locking our eyes. “You don’t want to slit your throat. You want to live,” I told her. But it felt like I was talking to a wall. Her eyes looked the same, her mania stayed the same, and the second I let go of the collar of her coat, she dove back into the snow for the object. It was like watching an addict trying to get a quick fix. Or watching Cora in a fudge shop.
We fought for a minute, and all I could think about was how stupid we looked given the severity of the absolute shitfest going on around us. I picked up a ball of snow and shoved it in her face, and she spat it out and coughed. I was stronger than her, so she was never gonna win this fight. I didn’t even need to be a vampire to do that. Cora had the strength of a wet noodle.
Daggett and Priscilla dashed their way over to us, and I pulled Cora off of the ground and met them halfway. “He fucked with her head,” I told them. “You gotta take her somewhere safe. Someplace she won’t get hurt.”
“Yeah, I get that, but you guys need backup,” Daggett said. “You need another werewolf.”
“I need my cousin alive more. Molly wants her dead, and with her head fucked up like this, she’s extra vulnerable. You gotta protect her, Daggett. Seriously. Will you do that?”
He didn’t sound so sure of my plan, but he nodded his head anyway. “Yeah, yeah, I can do that.”
I handed her off to Daggett, not knowing if this was our final goodbye. She wasn’t even in the right state of mind for me to even try to say something nice and have her hear it.
“When Master showed me how to get here, he put a layout of the property in my mind,” I explained. “There’s a hedge maze on the outside of the castle, and inside is a shed. You can hide Cora there.”
“What about you?”
I swallowed. “Watch out for her, okay?”
He looked worried, but not for himself. For me. “You know I will,” he said. It almost looked like he was going to reach out and take my hand for comfort, but decided against it. Instead, he took Priscilla and Cora and they booked it.
Into the cold night they went. Away from the madness. Away from me.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
PRISCILLA
Going on a scavenger hunt for a shed through the garden maze from hell was at the bottom of my list, until I saw a dead guy levitate in the air and turn into a giant bat. Suddenly, running around hedges with dweebs like Daggett and Cora sounded so much fucking better. At least I wasn’t dead, right?
We entered through an opening in the hedges, and all I saw were tall walls of green. Even with all this nasty ass snow,
the leaves kept some of their color. There were three directions, one in front of us and one on each of our sides. “Where do we go?” I asked.
“Whichever way we pick, we gotta stick with it,” Daggett said. “Put your hand to the wall and don’t remove it.”
Cora was suspiciously quiet. Maybe she was traumatized. Who knows what that weirdo and his duo of brainless Barbies did to her.
“Yeah, but which way do we go?” I asked.
Daggett glanced back and forth. “Left, maybe?”
“Maybe? You’re a werewolf. You should have a sense for this.”
“Becoming a werewolf doesn’t give me the ability to sniff for sheds or see through walls.”
“You can’t, like, smell the wood or something?”
“Look around us, Priscilla. We’re surrounded by trees and plants. I could always lead us in a circle, if you’d like,” he said sarcastically.
“No need to get testy. I can’t keep track of your dog abilities.”
“It’s usually true across the board that dogs can’t see through objects,” he said as we headed into the hedge maze. I kept close to his side because I didn’t want something or someone leaping out and grabbing my ass. Meanwhile, Cora trailed behind us as she looked around like she was stoned. I waited for her to say some lame or corny shit to release the tension, but she never said a word. I lowkey missed her motormouth.
As Daggett kept to the wall of one hedge, I clutched onto the sleeve of his winter coat and kept my chest close to his back. He peeked over at me and said, “Careful. Any closer and I might think you like me.”
Lunar Rebirth (Lunar Rampage Trilogy Book 3) Page 27
