“Alone.”
“Yeah... it’s pathetic, I know.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yeah, it kind of is. What kind of adult man feels weird when his sister is out for the night having fun? She’s not my kid.” He exhaled with his arms crossed. “It’s completely pathetic.”
“It’s not pathetic, but it’s not healthy,” I told him in the kindest way possible. It got his attention. “I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am about what happened to your parents, nor could I ever even understand what that must have felt like, but at some point, you have to let go. Trust that something terrible won’t always happen.”
“It’s not easy for me.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s my fault my parents are dead.”
I shook my head. “It was a fire, Owen. There’s nothing you could have done.”
“No, I could have prevented it all. Smelled the fire right away, fell asleep just an hour later, anything. Instead, when I realized what was happening, I grabbed Molly and got out of there without looking back. My parents—”
“Don’t even say it,” I quickly interjected. I knew he was going to blame himself for their death again and I wasn’t going to allow it.
“But it is my fault,” he said, anyway.
“Owen, you saved your sister. Imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t acted at all. You’d all be dead. How terrible would that be?”
“Maybe it would have been better.”
I was shocked. “How could you say that?”
“We’d all be together. Instead of...”
“Instead of what?”
He sat down on the couch and breathed deeply and slowly. “I have nightmares all the time. The kind that feel as real as you and I standing here right now. I relive that night virtually every time I close my eyes.”
I joined him on the couch. “Why haven’t you told me any of this?”
“I didn’t want to burden you with it.”
“It’s not a burden. This is what friends do—confide in one another.”
“I guess I didn’t know where we stood after my stupid night.”
I’ll admit after his drunken stupor at the bar that I felt a little different about him. But now, seeing him in this dark, sad state on our couch, I felt nothing but protective feelings toward him. He was my friend who was in pain, and that didn’t sit well with me. “Owen, you can always come to me,” I said and took his hands into mine. “I’d like to think it’s reciprocated.”
“Of course.”
I softened my voice and said, “What were your parents like?”
“What?”
“You don’t seem to talk about them a lot. Maybe it would do you some good to focus on something besides how they died. What are some things you remember about them?”
His blue crystal gaze glossed over with tears. “My mom was a second grade teacher with kind eyes and a really popular family secret bean recipe. She was always baking and taking Molly out shopping. It’s why I think Molly still enjoys it so much. She says she’ll even buy something she finds ugly because it makes her feel like Mom is still around.”
I chuckled. “That’s oddly sweet.”
“My dad was funny, loud, and a handyman. He taught me everything I know about repairs, and told me I’d need it to pass down to my children. Of course, I have no kids, so it feels like it’s sort of died along with him.”
“No. You taught me. So, in a way, you could say your dad lives a little in both of us now.”
Owen smiled. “I like that.”
“You ever visit their grave?”
“There’s no grave to visit,” he said sadly.
What a horrible thing that was, losing both parents and having their bodies burnt so badly there wasn’t even a casket or proper funeral. I couldn’t even imagine. I hoped he at least had their ashes, but I didn’t want to get morbid with the questions, especially when I wanted to focus on who they were when they were alive instead of what they are now.
“So, who did you look like the most?” I asked with a smile. “I see the differences between you and Molly, so who takes after whom?”
“Molly is the spitting image of my mom,” he answered. “They even have the same voice. Sometimes Molly will call me on the phone and I’ll have that split second where my heart kind of skips a beat. If I convince myself hard enough, I would just think it was Mom.”
“That must be hard.”
“It’s not, actually. Makes her feel like she’s still around.”
“So, you take after your dad, then?”
“I guess,” he replied with a shrug. “I don’t really look like either.”
“Now, see, if you were my brother I would have made adoption jokes the entire time we grew up,” I teased.
“They were definitely my parents, believe me. I have my mom’s eyes...”
Ugh, Owen was killing me with that wounded puppy tremble in his voice.
I placed my hand to his knee in the gentlest fashion I knew and asked, “What would you say to them if they were here right now?”
His eyes rose to me and he softly said, “That I’m sorry. I’m sorry they’re missing everything.”
My heart practically shattered to the size of popcorn pieces.
Owen stayed at my house for probably an hour longer, where we talked about his parents, his childhood, my childhood, our favorite bands and TV shows, even down to my favorite flavor of jelly bean. It felt good to have my mind purely on silly things instead of how fearful I was to sleep at night. More importantly, it felt good to spend so much time with Owen. I had been so distracted that I forgot what a good guy he was; what a good friend he was.
When it got late, he told me it was time for him to go home, so I walked him to the door. “Hope I helped you kill some time,” I said.
He turned around to me at the door. “I didn’t even realize what time it was, so you were doing something right. Molly is probably back by now, and if I get as worried about her as I do, I’m sure she’s ten times worse than me. She’s a little paranoid.”
“Get out of town,” I teased.
Owen gave me this long, silent fondly stare like I were a cute little kitten. I must have done more for him tonight than I thought. It made me feel good inside. He then pulled me into a deep, enormous and tight bear hug. I hadn’t been hugged like that since I was a kid. And you know, I kind of dug it.
When he let me go I almost fell over, and he shot me a smirk like he was trying not to laugh. “Goodnight, Cora.”
“Night, Owen.”
And then he walked out the door.
I plunked myself back down on the couch, accidentally sat on my purse, and felt the hard pointed binder of the book beneath pressing into my skin. Amazingly, the book had almost drifted right out of my mind. Almost.
Now that I knew I had some alone time, I tore open the book to my last bookmark and began reading the chapter on the upcoming blue moon.
A paragraph in and my jaw was on the floor.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When morning came, I rushed over to the house of the one person I knew I could talk to; the one person I could spill the beans on what I had read and discovered about the blue moon, and could do so in a fashion I wouldn’t think would make me look completely and utterly insane. I decided to go see Max.
I had no clue if he was in the midst of a hunt, and I felt queasy when I thought of the notion that he might be out and I’d have to wait on his porch and see him lug in a dead deer body right before my eyes. I knocked once and there was no answer. Great. I knocked again, still no answer. Wherever he was, he obviously wasn’t inside.
His porch was practically three steps and nothing more, so I hopped off it and landed in the grass, and decided I was going to wait it out. At least for a while. He did most of his hunting in the very, very early hours of the day, so he had to be home soon, right?
To keep myself busy, I meandered around his house and yard, not necessari
ly snooping, but still investigating. I hadn’t really been on his lawn because I was deathly afraid of this place after my incident, but once I read up a bit from my trusty book, I realized there wasn’t too much I had to fear during the daylight.
There was a small woodshed several feet from the back of his house and I approached it, thinking perhaps Max was inside cutting up some animal for meat. I could tell the structure was newer than the barn in my grandma’s yard, but somehow, it was more beaten down, looking like it saw a lot of action. He must have used this thing a lot. Unfortunately, the door had a big silver lock on it that needed a key. I grabbed a hold of the lock and rested it in my palm, twisting it to scan the back and front, and a wad of hair came tumbling down from it and onto my forearm. It was brown and wispy and had been rolled up into a tiny fur ball. I flicked it away with my fingernail and cringed when I thought it may have belonged to one of the animals he had hunted and dragged inside his woodshed. Poor thing must have got caught on the door and shed itself.
“What are you doing?” Max’s voice called out from behind me.
I didn’t jump, surprisingly, and instead casually turned around to face him. “Looking for you,” I replied.
“In the shed?”
“You didn’t answer your door.”
“Yeah, well, I was busy,” he nonchalantly spoke and brushed his hands along the seams of his pants.
“Are you busy now?”
“Why?”
“Because I have some things I wanted to talk about.”
“Must be important if you were willing to come down here. Thought this place freaked you out.”
“It does, but you’re the only person I can talk to about these things and there’s some new info I wanted to go over.”
He gestured his hand to my right and then we both walked back to his house together. Max let me in and, immediately, he went for the fridge in the kitchen for a bottle of beer. I sat down on one of his sofas and slid my book out of my purse.
“You’re still reading that?” he called out from the kitchen.
“Rightfully so. You’re not going to believe what I read.”
“Shoot,” he directed and then plunked himself down on a chair in the living room.
“You know how there’s a blue moon coming up this Saturday?”
“Yep.”
“Well, this book just so happens to have an entire article dedicated to it,” I told him and opened the book right to the page. There was a black and white drawing of the full moon that had been shaded in with some kind of lead right above the chapter about it.
Max plopped his feet down on the floor and took a final sip of his beer before peeking at the book. “You’re kidding,” he said.
“I wish I was,” I groaned. “And what I read was...” I had no words for it, and the fact that I was speechless made Max stare directly into my eyes like he was trying to read my mind for information. “According to this, werewolves are at twice the strength that they usually are under a blue moon.”
“Twice?”
I nodded. “Because a blue moon is so rare, it gives them some kind of power surge. There’s so little time between each transformation that the one that occurs on the blue moon is quicker and easier, meaning their bodies aren’t as exhausted from the initial transformation.”
“What do you mean not as exhausted?”
“I was reading up about the transformation and they said the body goes through so much damage and pain when it turns that it hinders them a little. It’s almost nature’s way of making sure they’re not overpowered.”
“Yeah, but they’re still turning, anyway. I don’t get why this would be any different. Why would they suddenly not be as weak?”
“Because the more you turn, the less time it takes. There are rumors that there are some who can turn at will and it’s because they’ve been doing it for so long, and when they do turn, it’s within a minute because they have practice. So, when you turn twice in a month, it’s like your body is prepared and remembering what it needs to do. They’re not completely healed from the last time, so their body jumps right back into it. It guides itself.”
“So, the quicker it is, the less tiring it is?”
“Exactly.”
“And what you’re basically saying is, come Saturday, we’re going to have a bunch of werewolves running around on steroids?”
I puffed air out of my mouth that knocked my hair back. “It’s terrifying, isn’t it?”
“Why would this just be happening now, though? I’ve lived here for years and there obviously have been some blue moons in the past, so why wouldn’t I have seen anything?”
“Maybe there weren’t a lot here until recently? Or maybe Joe was right about the lumberjacks disturbing them and kind of rustling them up. Maybe they were content living out in the woods not bothering anyone, but everybody pissed them off and now they’re looking for some kind of retaliation for what we’ve done to their home?”
“An animal is going to look for revenge?” he asked with disbelief.
“I don’t think these are animals, Max. At least not normal ones.”
“Well, this is awful news.”
“I tried to get Deputy Wilson to somehow cancel the whole thing, but he doesn’t want to put people into a tizzy. I understand where he’s coming from, but it doesn’t seem safe.”
“People are going to need a more concrete reason not to go other than a werewolf invasion,” he said mockingly, but I knew he was still taking it seriously. “Hell, I would need one and I actually believe you.”
It was a nice reminder.
“Max, I saw one of these and was chased by one under a normal full moon, and I almost died. I could feel the thing breathing down my neck the whole time I went running down your road. If your house hadn’t been here, I would have ended up like those workers in the woods. My God, if you amplify that thing’s speed and power, I’d have been dead in seconds.”
“Then just stay off the back roads. Don’t ever be alone.”
“Yeah, but we’re all going to be out at night, partying it up and making as much noise as humanly possible. How are those creatures not going to notice?”
“The one thing I’ve learned from hunting is animals are more afraid of us than we are them. You were probably attacked because it felt in danger. I don’t think they’re going to join forces and attack a building full of people, especially one that’s going to be as lit up as this.”
“Tell that to the lumberjacks,” I retorted, and I saw the doubt in Max’s eyes grow. “They were a large group of big guys who were all carrying axes and chainsaws. They had blatant deadly weapons, yet they were taken out easily and brutally. No one is going to be carrying a machete at this party. Everyone is just going to be boozed up and acting reckless.”
I could actually see dread all over Max’s face, like my worries for once were actually warranted and not all in my head. “The cops know about all this stuff, though, right? They must have some approach.”
“Deputy Wilson did say that pretty much every officer working will be there that night.”
“Then there you go.”
“But will it be enough? I know they have guns, but...”
“You can’t agonize over this. Maybe they are some weird new breed of creatures, but everything that lives can also die. I’ve never been one for cops, but they’re supposed to be pretty good with a gun.”
“Maybe you ought to go down there with your rifle.”
He coyly grinned. “Something tells me the cops wouldn’t be okay with me waving around my own gun at a party.”
I had a breathy chuckle, and it was a nice cut from the tension. I knew no cop would allow him to do this, but I imagined Max was the vigilante type that would break the rules and sit out in his truck with his rifle loaded and aimed, ready to spill some werewolf blood. God, listen to me advocating killing an animal. You know you’re in a terrifying situation when a vegetarian wants as many guns pointed at animals as possible.
“So, did you read all of this book?” he asked.
“Most of it.”
“Is there any werewolf loophole? It seems like with every myth there’s always some kind of weakness to exploit, you know? It’s hard to believe there’s one night where they’re complete gods and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“I did read one thing, but it kind of goes into the idea that all of the wolves are people stuck in their werewolf form.”
“But what was it that you read?”
“That if a human turns into a werewolf under a blue moon, they’re in some kind of werewolf limbo. It’s almost too much power for their body to handle because they’re not full wolf, so they shift back and forth between human and wolf, to almost kind of balance it all out.”
“I’m not following.”
“Like they have a human heart and the blue moon energizes it too much, kind of like an electrical shock. It’s too much. So, they’ll have brief moments where they turn back human so their heart can wind down, you know, so they don’t die. Then they go back, and because they’ve had to transform again they’re a little weaker and their body can actually deal with all the power they’re being given.”
“That’d be helpful if they were all human.”
“I mean, I guess we don’t really know. This book said that there are the 24/7 werewolves that were never human and never will be human, but that they can also infect people and make them into one of them. If the ones in town are just infected, than we may have a chance, but if not...”
“We still have to worry about the roided out wolves.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not sure which is a weirder ass hope. That we’re facing off with a new breed of wolf that can overpower us and kill us in seconds, or that there are people in town that howl at the moon once a month?”
“Both are terrifying,” I said with a headshake. “Can you imagine if I had been bitten that night? What must it be like to be a full sized human that goes through all this pain to be crunched down into some wolf shape? How the hell would you survive something like that? And then continue to do it every month of your life?”
“I’d take a bullet to the temple.”
Lunar Rampage (Lunar Rampage Series Book 1) Page 20
