Dark Moon Falls: Volume 2

by Bella Roccaforte

  I glanced around the small cottage all aglow in a soft romantic ambiance. Milo leaned back on the sofa. “This is sort of nice.”

  I took a sip of the spiked tea. “This isn’t too bad.”

  “I’m not normally a tea drinker, but I have to admit, it’s kinda tasty and warm.” He sipped it and licked his lips, and I got lost in a vision of his tongue sliding over parts of me. “What about your father?”

  I blinked to see him staring at me, and my cheeks heated. “Huh?”

  “Your father. You said your mother leased this place before she passed away, but you never mentioned anything about your father.”

  I sucked in my lips. “He died.” It was still unbelievable to imagine him gone. Vampires weren’t supposed to die.

  “I’m sorry. That’s tough to lose both your parents.”

  He had no idea.

  I suddenly realized I didn’t know anything about Milo Hart other than he’d been away at school for several years. “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. You were away at school. What did you study?”

  “Ah. Law.”

  “Right. You did mention something about being a lawyer.” That was impressive, especially from a wolf shifter who had grown up in a small town in the middle of practically nowhere.

  “Yes. But I haven’t started working yet.”

  “Right. You just got back. And you took the bar exam?”

  “Yep. Passed that too. So, you see, I’m just a regular guy.”

  “A regular guy who shifts into a wolf.”

  “Well, yeah, but that’s fairly normal around here.”

  “Are there many?”

  “Wolves?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve been gone for a while, so I have no idea. My guess would be somewhere around 150 to 200 or so.”

  I shivered. So many wolves. It was difficult to feel comfortable in a town with creatures like the ones who’d taken my parents’ lives. But I guess if the wolves around Dark Moon Falls were anything like Milo, I shouldn’t worry too much. Like humans, they weren’t all bad, but they weren’t all good either.

  He studied me over the rim of his cup. “Do wolves make you nervous?”

  “You could say that.”

  “So, I make you nervous?”

  “You did at first.”

  “But now that you’ve gotten to know my wonderfully charming personality, you’ve become more at ease with me.” He chuckled. He was sort of cute when he was being cocky. “If wolves make you so nervous, why move here, knowing a pack of shifter wolves resides here?”

  Maybe it was time I started to trust Milo Hart. Besides, I couldn’t find Elias on my own and needed someone’s assistance in contacting him. Who better than Milo? “My mother rented this place and told me to come here if anything happened to her. She told me to get in touch with someone named Elias.”

  Milo’s eyes widened as his gaze flicked to mine. “Elias Grant?”

  “Yes. That’s the one. You know him?”

  “I do. Everyone knows Elias.”

  “Then you can take me to him?”

  “I can see about setting up a meeting with him. But why do you need to get in touch with Elias?”

  “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure. It was my father’s last request to my mother before he was attacked. He’d told her if anything happened to him that she and I needed to find Elias in Dark Moon Falls.”

  “Attacked? Skye, how did your parents die?”

  I glanced at him. “If you must know, I lied to you earlier.”

  “About what?”

  “I’m not from Seattle.”

  He nodded and smiled. “Okay.”

  “Close, though,” I continued. “We lived in a small suburb outside of Seattle. I didn’t want to tell you exactly where I was from because I was afraid. My parents were both murdered by a couple of wolf shifters.”

  His eyebrows rose, and I got up and stomped to the kitchen, half mad at myself for being so emotional, half mad because I told him, but another part of me was mad because I was beginning to like him.

  I put more water into the tea kettle and placed it on the burner on the stove. I gripped the counter with both hands, wishing Milo wasn’t walking toward me. But he was, and I winced when his hand gently rested on my shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, Skye. We’re not all bad, though.”

  “I know. Sort of.”

  “Do you know who Elias is?”

  I shook my head. “No. My father never mentioned him before. Only that we needed to find him and trust him.”

  “You can trust me. I would never hurt you.” He gently wiped away the wetness from under my eye with his thumb. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  I looked down at my hands. “I can’t. Not yet.”

  He sighed. “I’m here for you if you change your mind. But I should tell you, Elias Grant is the Dark Moon Falls Alpha.”

  “The Alpha?”

  “Of the pack. He’s Alpha of the Dark Moon pack.”

  “I … I didn’t know. Why would my father want me to find him?”

  “Maybe for protection.”

  He placed his finger under my chin, lifted my face so that our gazes met. His lips were only an inch from mine, and my lips were suddenly dry, so I ran my tongue over them. I hadn’t thought about kissing anyone in such a long time, but at that moment, I wanted to kiss Milo. But he was a wolf, and as much as I might trust him or want him, I couldn’t with good conscience let myself get involved with him.

  When his lips brushed gently over mine, I shoved him away. “Don’t. I can’t.”

  11

  MILO

  Skye shoved me away and ran to the bathroom, leaving me standing in the kitchen.

  “Shit.”

  I shouldn’t have tried to kiss her. I should have known she wasn’t open to that. Not after what she’d just told me. Fuck. Wolves killed her parents? Now I had so many questions, but she wasn’t ready to talk about it. I’d tried the gentle approach; then, I ruined it with trying to kiss her.

  But now I was even more worried that she was in danger. I needed to take this to Elias. But I couldn’t yet, not with all the flooding and my truck stuck in a ditch. Plus, I didn’t want to leave her alone.

  I walked to the closed door of the bathroom and softly knocked my knuckles against it. “Skye, I’m sorry. Please come out. I promise I won’t try to kiss you again.” Not today, anyway.

  The bathroom door slowly opened, and she stepped out. Her eyes were red. “I think I could use another cup of spiked tea.” She walked past me and back to the kitchen. I went to the coffee table and grabbed the two empty cups and brought them to her, placing them on the counter in front of her.

  “Thanks.” She poured brandy into each one and then topped them off with the hot tea that had been brewing in the teapot.

  She took her cup and headed toward the fireplace and sat on the floor, leaning up against the chair that was close to it. I took my cup and sat across from her by the other chair.

  Our gazes caught as we both took a sip of our tea. Her sip was a long one.

  “It’s warmer down here.”

  “That it is.” I crossed my legs at the ankles and tried to relax.

  She sighed and placed her empty cup on the floor beside her. “My father led a dangerous life. He didn’t mean to, but there really was no escaping danger for him, especially if someone ever found out about him.”

  I frowned, not sure what she meant, but I kept quiet. If she was willing to talk, I didn’t want to interrupt her.

  She became silent, though, and stared at me for quite a while. I was about to speak when she said, “You live here in Dark Moon Falls. You’re a wolf shifter, so you know about supernatural beings.”

  “Yes.”

  “Things like other types of shifters, witches…” She paused and stared into the flames of the fire as they crackled against the wood.

  “Right. There is also another supernatural s
pecies known as the gifted. They have some special supernatural gifts. I believe they were transformed from demons, and they are similar to vampires in that they drink blood.”

  Her forehead knitted into a frown as she stared into the fire, obviously in deep thought. Maybe I shouldn’t have said they were similar to vampires. That term could easily be misconstrued, so I added, “They were born that way.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a species like that.”

  “They won’t hurt you. Dark Moon Falls is a land of diversity, that’s for sure.”

  Then her gaze caught mine, and she blurted out, “My father was a vampire.”

  “What?”

  “My father was a vampire.”

  “I thought you just said you’d never heard of those creatures before?”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Then what are you talking about?” I lifted my cup and sipped the warm, golden liquid.

  “My father was the other type of vampire. He was turned when he was in his early twenties.”

  I almost choked on my tea. I coughed and tried not to look startled as I stared at her. I hadn’t expected her to say that. Because from everything I’d ever heard about those types of vampires, they were not only dangerous, they were also rare, and something else now puzzled me. “I didn’t know vampires could procreate.”

  “They can’t.”

  “Okay, you lost me. Then how can your father be a vampire?”

  “My father was twenty-two years old when he was turned, which was in 1955. But before that, before he’d been turned into a vampire, he’d participated in a medical research trial which involved him donating his sperm for an experiment. At that time, sperm banks and experimentation with fertilization were only on the cutting edge of modern medicine. They paid him $10 to participate. He didn’t care about the research; he just needed the money, so he donated his sperm, never thinking much about it again.

  “A couple of years later, after a night of drinking with his buddies, he’d taken a shortcut by the harbor and was approached by a woman. She was a vampire.” She shrugged and stirred her tea. “Well, you can guess the rest.”

  “So, how do you come into the picture?”

  “He met my mother in 1990, and they fell in love. She never feared him and didn’t care that he was a vampire. One evening, after they were married, my father was reading the newspaper and came across an article about the research firm that had paid him the $10 for his sperm. Apparently, the company had been sold to a large corporation, and during the reconstruction of the facility, they’d discovered vials of sperm that had never been used and had sat frozen all those years. The firm was going to toss them out unless the donors claimed them. My father contacted the company, and sure enough, his name was on one of those tubes. They told him the chances that the sperm was still viable were slim to none after all that time because they had no way of knowing how well it had been preserved.”

  I tucked one of my legs under my thigh, leaving the other stretched out in front of me. “They never asked any questions?”

  “You mean like, why he still looked like he was twenty-two when he should have been well into his fifties?”

  “That, and why he wanted thirty-five-year-old sperm?”

  “Maybe. But …” She took a sip of her tea. “Why would that make much difference? There are plenty of men who want to have a child in their fifties, even sixties. Besides, it was his sperm, and they were going to toss it.”

  “I suppose that’s true.” I leaned back against the side of the sofa.

  “They never questioned his youthful appearance. Plus, over the years, he’d died the hair at his temples gray for my mom’s benefit.” She shrugged. “Maybe he’d done that back then, too. I don’t know.”

  “They found a doctor who was willing to help them. And now, you’re looking at a twenty-five-year-old in vitro product of a human and a vampire.” Skye moved a bit away from the fire and sat cross-legged.

  I tried to stay quiet, but I couldn’t because there were loopholes that I needed to be filled. Like how she got her supernatural gift and why her skin was so pale. “That’s interesting. That explains how you came to be, but it doesn’t explain why or how you can teleport yourself and me across the street. If your father donated the sperm while he was human, you wouldn’t have inherited any of his vampire attributes.”

  She swiped her hair off her face. “Right. Well, I am also allergic to the sun, but that’s another side effect of what I’m about to tell you.”

  12

  SKYE

  If I was going to tell him about myself, I needed more alcohol, so I stood and went to the kitchen and poured myself some more tea, adding brandy with a heavy hand. I came back and sat beside Milo, propping my back against the sofa, and stretched out one of my legs and kept the other folded under my thigh, mimicking him, and sipped my tea.

  “When I was only a few weeks old, they discovered that I had congenital amegakaryocytic thrombocytopenia.”

  Milo stared at me, his dark and enigmatic eyes wide and filled with questions. Maybe it was the brandy, but I suddenly wanted to tell him everything. It had always been a secret. I was never allowed to share about myself with friends. Not that I had any. I didn’t attend school. My mother homeschooled me at night, and other kids weren’t allowed to play at nighttime.

  “I know it’s a mouthful. It turned out that my father’s frozen sperm hadn’t been as sustainable as they’d hoped. A semen analysis showed a good sperm count and mobility and thought everything was good. There was no reason to suspect anything else. But his sperm carried a genetic blood disorder that they hadn’t considered—congenital amegakaryocytic thrombocytopenia. Let’s just call it CAT. Anyway, CAT is caused by a mutation in the genes and affects the ability of the blood to clot properly. They discovered it when I went in for my first vaccination, and I didn’t stop bleeding after the injection. Unfortunately, the disease also leads to leukemia. And as it turned out, my leukemia was acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which progresses rapidly and is typically fatal within weeks or months.”

  “But they found a cure, obviously. You’re here.” He placed his hand on top of mine. The gesture was kind and comforting, and I didn’t move for fear he would remove it.

  I set the cup of tea I was holding in my other hand on the coffee table so I wouldn’t spill it. “No, they tried everything, but nothing worked. They were losing hope. My parents thought about using my father’s blood as a cure, but they weren’t sure how much to give me or if it would even work. And my father worried that if they gave me too much, it would turn me. He was a relatively young vampire and had never lived among them to learn their ways, mostly because those types of vampires are rare, and there aren’t very many of them.

  “My father had never given anyone his blood before, nor had he ever tried to turn a human. And they feared that the disease had already taken over too much of my blood for it to work. But my mother begged him to try, and finally, as a last resort, they filled my bottle with my father’s blood and fed it to me, hoping that its special healing properties would save me. They had a hell of a time getting me to ingest the blood, though. Mom said I kept spitting it out. But after not receiving any other nutrition for too long of a time, I gave up and sucked down most of the bottle. After a few days, I began to show signs of improvement, and they took me to the doctor for testing. Of course, the doctors were shocked that I was getting well. By the end of two weeks, I was in complete remission. The leukemia never came back.”

  I was sitting close to Milo, our legs only centimeters apart. One small movement, one jerk of a muscle, and we would be touching. I stiffened, not wanting to be the one to make a move.

  “My father’s blood cured the disease, but there were side effects that they never considered. And of course, there was no reason to suspect any at the time. But having my father’s blood flow through my small body and overpowering all my own blood cells caused me to develop a few of his vampiric traits. One is the
ability to teleport or flash if you will, to another nearby location. They discovered that I had that one when I was two years old. It seems I could only do it when I was scared or threatened in some way. I’d fallen out of a shopping cart I’d been trying to climb out of and was about to hit my head on the hard floor when my body vanished and reappeared in my mother’s arms. My mind simply reacts to the danger and transports me somewhere safe.”

  “Like away from the car.” He smiled. “I have to admit, that was rather handy. If you hadn’t teleported us away, we’d have been caught in the blast. Thanks for taking me with you.”

  “You’re welcome, and I’m glad I could help. But to be honest, I hadn’t thought to take you with me. You were holding me when I vanished. I didn’t even realize you were with me. Which means I have no control over it. That was the first time I’d ever taken anyone with me. I hadn’t known that was possible. I guess danger triggers it. I don’t even know it’s going to happen until it does.”

  “You said a few traits. What other abilities did you acquire from his blood?”

  “Unfortunately, not all good ones, but I am stronger than most humans. Though not as strong as a full vampire, I can hold my own when needed.”

  “Good to know.” He smiled. “What else?”

  “I’m allergic to the sun. I mean, I can’t go into direct sunlight. It burns my skin. I’ve had some serious second-degree blisters over the years. I’ve lived my entire life like a vampire. Sleeping during the day and awake during the night.”

  “Hence the blackout shades.”

  “Right.”

  “That must have been difficult.”

  “Not really. I was homeschooled. It wasn’t really a hardship since my mother had lived that way anyway, with my father being a vampire. I’m sure my life would have been that way regardless of my affliction to sunlight.”

  The heavy rain outside faded, becoming more like the ding on a child’s toy xylophone as water dripped from the gutters in a steady rhythm. I was almost sorry that it was stopping. That would mean Milo would be leaving soon.