The Lunar Effect

by C. J. Pinard

  “Thanks,” I muttered as I slunk out of the office.

  As soon as I rounded the building to where nobody could see me through the glass walls, I walked briskly to the coffee shop.

  Upon entering, I saw Evan sitting alone at a corner table, and I quickly took the seat opposite of him. The strong smell of coffee hit my nose, and the murmured chattering of people hit my ears.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Why are you wet?” he asked, pointing to my face.

  “Oh, oops,” I said, chagrinned. I used a couple napkins from a dispenser on the table to wipe off my face and neck. “I had to fake sick to get out of work.”

  With an amused grin, he said, “How very Ferris Bueller of you.”

  “Who?” I asked, confused.

  He waved a hand. “Never mind. Anyway, thanks for joining me. Would you like a coffee?” He pointed at his own.

  I shook my head. “No, but thanks.”

  “I’m gonna cut right to the chase,” he said, a stoic and mature look on his young face.

  “Thank fuck,” I muttered under my breath.

  He chuckled. “I know all about you, Ayla.” Evan lowered his voice and cut his eyes across the coffee shop, and then back to mine. “From your adoption by the witches, to your wolf boyfriend Ryder, to your brother’s murder. It turns out that you and I are looking for the same man. Linden.”

  I shook my head. “Wait, okay… back up. How do you know all of this?”

  “To make a very long story short, I belong to your biological family’s clan. My small family and I moved up here from Texas about two years ago. I joined their clan.”

  “There’s that word again, clan. Am I supposed to be in one or something, just because I’m a wolf? I mean, Aden told me his… our… uncle had tried to get him to join one. I thought the idea was stupid at the time. Is it a requirement?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not a hard and fast rule, but it’s recommended. Also, I understand you are already in one, with your brother Aden as Alpha.”

  I chewed my lip. “I guess so. I just never thought of us as a clan, per se.”

  “Y’all shift together during every full moon, and are a close-knit group, right?”

  I thought back to my last hideous shift-gone-wild, and said, “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Ayla, you and I have something very important in common.”

  Intrigued, I said, “What’s that?”

  “We’re both hybrids.” He took in my surprised face, and added, “I know about your attack. The only slight difference is that I was born human, bitten by a wolf when I was twenty. Then, as I lay dying, a vampire took me in, and then bit me and fed me her venom-laced blood to try to heal me, but it turned me into a vampire. So I am both. Thankfully, I do not have a sun allergy like my family does. They are the ones who sent me to find you.”

  “Sun allergy… wolves don’t have them. You said you and your ‘family’ moved up here and joined my bio family’s clan. Color me confused.”

  He grinned. “I said I joined the wolf clan. My family are vampires. They saved my life, but being that I was a wolf first, once I moved to this area, I had to, sort of, check in with the wolves, if that makes sense.”

  “I guess it does.”

  “My parents are also wolves down in Texas, and they belong to a clan down there. I’m not an active member of the clan here, however. I’m like a card-carrying member, but I don’t hang out with them or anything.”

  “So how do you know how much about me then?”

  A grin lifted his lips. “My family… they have money… enough to pay for information.”

  My head was starting to spin. “Okay, let’s just cut to the chase. What. Do. You. Want?”

  “I think you’re powerful, Ayla. I want to help you find Linden and destroy him.”

  “You’re going to help me kill another vampire,” I deadpanned.

  He nodded. “Yes. He murdered my brother’s maker. Only his name was Malcom Rich back then. Regardless, he wants a little revenge.”

  I shook my head as if to clear it and then smiled darkly at him. “Revenge, I can get onboard with. So we’re going to team up, or what? You know where this asshole is hiding out?”

  “I do,” he replied. “In a mountainous, magical city here in Colorado, and I’m going to get us in there.”

  His words shocked me. “You are, are you? And how are you going to do that?”

  Evan sipped his coffee, and then set it down, piercing me with a knowing look. “I have a witch on my payroll.”

  A grin lifted my lips. “Witches come in handy.”

  “You would know,” he replied cheekily.

  A knock on the door bolted me out of my Internet searching. Sitting on my bed with the laptop on my legs, I hadn’t been expecting company. I set the machine aside and made my way to the door. A look through the door’s peephole showed me it was Ryder.

  As I opened the door, I said, “I wasn’t expecting you!”

  He immediately wrapped his arms around me. “I was missing you something fierce tonight.”

  I smiled. “I was missing you, too.”

  He leaned down to kiss me, and I kissed him back. I pushed him out of the doorway and slammed the door shut with my foot before I let him lead me into my bedroom, where we devoured each other in the best way possible. His mouth captured mine and our tongues intermingled in a lusty and familiar way. He ripped his shirt off over his head, as I shoved my shorts down, stepping out of them as they pooled at my feet. I then broke the kiss to tear my tank off over my head. We resumed our frantic kisses until he pushed me onto bed. I smiled into his mouth as his body covered mine. It was warm and familiar, and when he pushed his shorts down and threw them onto the floor, I opened up for him, wanting to feel his passionate comfort. I didn’t have to wait long, as he pushed himself inside my willing body and I threw my head back, basking in his rhythmic pushes, as my hips met his, thrust for thrust. As he chased his release, I chased mine too, clawing the taut flesh and muscles of his back until I could hold back no more. I released my bottom lip from my teeth and groaned out as pleasure rocked my body and made every one of my nerve endings tingle. As I was riding my own climax, I felt Ryder grip me tighter and grunt, stilling his body on top of mine, then finally releasing all his energy onto me.

  With a final kiss, he rolled off of me, and we both lay there panting.

  “That was amazing,” Ryder said, his arms behind his head.

  I lay there, tracing a finger along his chest between his pec muscles. “Mm-hm.”

  His finger rubbed circles on my shoulder as his arm rested under my upper back. “I missed making love to you during our shift this past time,” he murmured.

  “You remembered doing that?” I asked.

  I felt his body shake as he chuckled. “Yes, I always remember. Sex as the wolf is different than sex as a human.”

  Having no argument for that, I simply nodded.

  A long, comfortable silence stretched out between us, then I finally said, “I got a visit from a stranger today.”

  I immediately felt his body stiffen. “Yeah?”

  Continuing to trace my finger along his chest, I said, “Yeah.” I then launched into a long, rambling tirade about how Evan Grant had come into my place of employment today, and our plans to find Linden and end him.

  Ryder once again stiffened, and then he removed his arm from under me, sitting up on one elbow and peering down at me. “You’re just fucking with me, right? You’re not actually going to go after this guy.”

  I sighed, also propping myself up on my elbow, taking the sheet with me to cover my chest. “Yes, I actually am. What’s the problem?”

  Ryder raked a hand through his hair. “What’s the problem? Fucking seriously, Ayla? Do you know how dangerous this is? This Linden guy—he’s a goddamn maniac, from what I’ve heard. I am not gonna let you do this!”

  I huffed, now getting out of bed and taking the bedsheets with me. “Screw you, Ryder! You don’t
get to tell me what I can and cannot do. I have an agenda, and nobody is gonna stop me from fulfilling it.” I stood with my arms crossed over my chest in a defiant posture.

  He got out of bed and pulled on his shirt and shorts. Storming out of the room, I followed him into the living room, where he snatched his keys, wallet, and phone from the dining room table and made his way to the door. As his hand was on the knob, he paused before leaving and said, “It’s not an ‘agenda’, Ayla, it’s a vendetta—a stupid act of misguided revenge. I’m not gonna sit here and watch as you kill yourself. Grieve Austyn and move on with your life. Don’t put yourself on a suicide mission just to try to prove to the world that you’re a badass. Because you’re not.”

  With that, he slammed the door behind him, and I stood there, wrapped in a bedsheet and dumbfounded by his coldness. I felt hot tears begin to sting my eyes and cursed myself for it.

  Who the flying fuck was he to say that I wasn’t a badass? I was a badass. I would show everyone, including Ryder, that I could do what I put my mind to, because vengeance was a strong word… but it was also a strong verb. This vengeance wasn’t just for Austyn, it was for me, too. That vampire who bit me had changed me inside and out, and there was no way he was going to get away with it. I would show the world that nobody got away with biting or assaulting a St. John. The punishment would be swift and it would be sweet.

  Chapter 26

  Pushing away the thoughts of Ryder’s disapproving looks and comments, I angrily locked the door behind him and went into my room, discarding the sheet to the floor. I went into my bathroom and started up the shower, and as it was heating up, I looked at my reflection. I had sex hair and my eyes were bloodshot from crying. As I peered at myself in the quickly-fogging mirror, I looked at the irises of my eyes and noticed they were yellow. They weren’t changing back to their natural blue. I blinked slowly and opened them back up again, and this time they were yellow with a ring of red around the outer edges. I had seen that once before, when I had looked at myself in the mirror the first time I’d shifted into wolf-girl. I blinked once more and they were now blue.

  All this shit going on with my body was beginning to freak me out. Maybe my parents or Sanja would know what it meant, I thought as I stepped into the shower.

  I first lathered up my hair with my vanilla-scented shampoo, and then rinsed that out. After applying conditioner, I went to grab the body wash, but was suddenly struck with a piercing pain behind my eyes, and I immediately recognized the familiar psychic headache. I dropped to my knees under the hot spray of water and pressed my palms to my temples.

  I came to the corner to an alleyway of a very dimly-lit street, and before I reached it, I heard the faint sound of moaning by two voices, male and female. Were there people having sex in the alley?

  Slowly, I crept toward the corner and carefully peered around the edge. There, I saw a woman, her sparkly red dress barely covering her ass, with her back up against the brick wall of the building. A man had his head at her neck, and his hand was climbing up her thigh to reach under the bottom hem of her dress.

  Her moans eventually turned to panicked screams, and I began to realize what I was seeing. As if in slow motion, and unable to stop myself, I ran at full speed to the vampire and ripped him off the woman…

  Gasping for breath, I opened my eyes to see I was still in the shower, warm water pounding down on my back. I was on all fours and trying to get my heartrate down to a normal rhythm. Gripping the side of the tub, I stood and put my palm to the wall to steady myself. With shaky hands I rinsed the conditioner out of my hair and pondered the strange vision I’d just had.

  “Ryder’s pissed at me,” I said sadly, stirring my seltzer water. I plucked the olive off the stick and popped in my mouth.

  “Why’s that?” Sanja asked, piercing me with her intense brown eyes.

  It was now spring break and my bestie was staying with me so we could hang out and catch up.

  “I foolishly told him of my plans to kill Linden. He told me it’s a suicide mission and I should just let it go.”

  She chewed her lip and looked at me sympathetically. With her hand on mine, I felt that weird electric current, but ignored it. “He’s just concerned about you. It’s not very smart to go after someone like that. But I understand why you’re doing it.”

  “Do you?” I asked.

  She looked hurt. “Of course I do. You’re hurting and need closure.”

  “Linden isn’t the only one I’m going after,” I said, looking around the club. We were once again in Moon Chasers.

  “I understand you wanting to confront the vampire who bit you. And I think you should… just with caution,” she said.

  “Excuse me, would you like to dance?” said a voice from behind us.

  We turned to see a young, pale-skinned human wearing dark clothes. He was looking at Sanja.

  She smiled sweetly at him, brushing some of her dark hair behind her ear. “Thank you, but no. We were just catching up.” She pointed at me.

  He looked at me and smiled, and then back to her. “Okay, if you change your mind, my buddies and I are hanging out at that table back there.”

  We both looked to see where he was pointing, but I never got to the table with my gaze, as it landed on something else. Kellan and two of his guys stood near the DJ booth, and he was, of course, staring at me.

  I gave him a small smile, but he did not return it. My grin quickly dropped and I looked away. “Asshole,” I muttered.

  “I didn’t think so,” Sanja said. “He seemed pretty harmless?”

  I chuckled. “Not that dude. Someone else in here.”

  She sucked down the rest of her rum and Coke through the little black straw, and said, “Who?”

  I tried to discreetly show her Kellan, and then I launched into the entire story about what had happened since I met him, and who he was to Linden. Her asking about him was a good segue way into the whole psychic vision thing, because I was dying to ask her what the hell it had meant and what was going on with me.

  When I was done with my account of what I’d been through in the past few weeks, including my strange encounter with Evan Grant, she furrowed her dark eyebrows and chewed on the little plastic stick that once held the lime from her cocktail.

  “So you’re telling me that you have these… visions… and then hours or days later, they come true?”

  I nodded. “I’ve only had two, but yes, so far they have.” Then my eyes went wide. “Wait! I had another one today. But Kellan wasn’t in this one.”

  “You did?” She gasped.

  I nodded. “Yeah, it was strange.” I then told her about it.

  “Could it be about the vampire who bit you?” she asked, concerned.

  “I don’t know.”

  I was about to say something else, but suddenly, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and a goosebump-inducing shiver ran up my spine. I slowly turned to see Kellan standing behind me.

  I found it odd how my mind and body always knew when he was close.

  “Hello, love,” he said, a smile on his handsome face.

  I swallowed hard, and said, “Hi, Kellan.”

  Grinning in his deliciously wicked way, he said in his strong accent, “Are you going to introduce me to your pretty witch friend?”

  “I’m Sanja,” she said quickly, putting out her hand to shake.

  Kellan looked down at her hand, but did not remove his from his pants pocket. With a grin, he said, “Nice to meet you.”

  I knew why Sanja wanted to touch him, but he was not falling for it.

  Kellan put his intense gaze back to mine, and said, “May I speak privately with you for a moment?”

  Nodding, I said, “Sure.”

  He put out his hand and I took it, standing from the barstool and adjusting my little black dress.

  “Excuse us,” he told Sanja.

  She simply nodded, and turned back toward the bar, signaling the bartender.

  Kellan brought
me to a dark corner of the club, and I noticed his two bodyguards, if that’s what they were, were behind him, but not close enough to hear our conversation.

  Wait, what was I thinking? Vampires had supersonic hearing. Disregarding those thoughts, and after being seated in a booth, I watched as Kellan slipped in, sitting dangerously close to me. I was nervous for some unknown reason, but I held my tongue and waited for him to speak.

  “You are probably wondering what we’re doing here,” he started.

  I grinned. “The thought did cross my mind.”

  “I know you have a boyfriend, Ayla St. John.”

  “Okay, so you did some digging on me. I’m not impressed so far,” I said in a bored voice, breaking his intense stare and looking out into the club.

  He reached over and used his fingers to tilt my jaw, making me look back into his eyes. “I am not trying to impress you. I am simply telling you that even though you have this adolescent crush you are still entertaining, it won’t last long.”

  Twisting my head so my face was released from his fingertips, I rolled my eyes at him. “Whatever, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, sliding over the booth’s bench so I could slip out and leave. “My love life is none of your business.”

  I stood and adjusted my dress, but before I could storm off, Kellan was in front of me, gripping me gently by the shoulders. “Don’t leave. I didn’t mean to offend.”

  I glared up at him, not knowing what to say.

  “It’s just that you intrigue me is all. You’re a wolf but you smell of a vampire, too. You’re strikingly beautiful, and have a strong resolve and fierce determination in your eyes.”

  Once again taken aback by his words, I simply asked, “Thank you, but why do you talk like that? How old are you?”

  He chuckled and removed his hands from my shoulders. Then, before I could blink, his right arm slunk around my waist and he pulled me up against his hard body. “I’m no bloody teenage vampire, I can assure you.”

  Ignoring the delicious way his body felt melded up against mine, I kept my hands at my sides and said, “You didn’t answer my question.”