Lunar City

by Samantha Cross

  “No, we don’t have to leave.”

  That made her smile. “Good. We never go out anymore. Or maybe it’s just me that never goes out anymore…”

  “We’ll have to change that,” I said and tugged at the waist of her shirt. Brinly beamed at me, but it seemed to irritate Paul. God forbid his girlfriend be in a good mood because of an outsider. He certainly seemed incapable of inspiring that himself.

  The door to the pub opened and I heard Lincoln’s voice emanating from it. We turned back and saw his head poking out through the cracks of the door. “There you are Brin. I need you to look at something. Can you come here for a second?”

  “Sure, just a second.” Brinly put her hand on my shoulder and said, “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.” She then ran back into the pub.

  I was left alone with the boys. Oh, God…

  Travis was content, puffing away at his joint, while Paul’s body was turned away from me, with his right eye constantly peeking over at me like he hated my guts. Why did Brinly make me stay here? Why did I have to be left out here with a pothead and a man who looked like he wanted me dead?

  I never felt more like an outsider than I did in that moment, hearing them make small talk that didn’t include me while I stood there like an idiot.

  Eventually Travis took pity on me and said, “Want a hit?” and offered me his joint.

  “No, thanks. I have this absurd attachment to my lungs,” I responded.

  Travis chuckled, not giving a damn, and then went back to smoking. Paul, on the other hand was stoic and watchful. I had no idea what he was thinking, but I could guarantee it was nothing good.

  Travis threw the joint on the ground, stomped on it and said, “All right, I got a good buzz. I’m going back in.”

  Thank God. At least I’d be alone now.

  Travis started heading back, but Paul didn’t follow. “You coming?”

  “In a minute,” Paul answered.

  Oh, no. Why wasn’t he going back inside? Why was he choosing to stay?

  I hadn’t been comfortable with the idea of being alone with Paul since the first moment I met him in my motel room. I had been explained to over and over again why they took me and why it made sense, but no matter what, I did I couldn’t feel at ease with him around. Paul just gave me bad vibes and I did my best to ignore moments like these where we were forced to make conversation.

  Once we were alone, we lingered in silence. I kicked my shoe at a couple of rocks on the cement, I looked up to the stars and tried to find the big dipper, and I even nervously coughed a few times just so there wasn’t this deafening silence. Why wasn’t Paul as uncomfortable as I was? Was he doing this on purpose?

  “Nice night, huh?” was all I could come up with to say.

  He ignored my question completely. “Having fun tonight? Feeling cozy?” he asked. They were harmless questions, but it felt like an interrogation.

  “Everyone’s nice.”

  “So, we don’t scare you anymore?”

  “Anymore?”

  He blew a cloud of smoke out of his mouth that smelled like cigarettes. Maybe he wasn’t smoking pot after all. He let it circle around my face, not saying a word, and didn’t speak again until I coughed. “I’ve been told you were attacked a few times by other wolves. That many attacks usually makes a person fearful of something.”

  “I know they couldn’t help themselves.”

  He softly chuckled. “You make us sound like handicapped children.”

  “I don’t even know how to respond to that.” Why was he trying to twist my sympathy into something ugly?

  “How were you not bitten?”

  “I got lucky, I guess.”

  “Lucky? There are several men here, twice your size, that didn’t stand a chance against a werewolf from just one encounter. It’s why they’re here. Yet you claim to have gotten lucky.”

  “What’s your point?” I was starting to feel like he was accusing me of something.

  “How did you escape being bitten?”

  “I ran.”

  “Heh,” he breathed. “All three times?”

  “What?”

  “Well, Max said you were attacked three times. You an Olympic runner? You’d have to be to outrun three separate werewolf attacks.”

  “I outran the first, the second was at a police station and he was gunned down.”

  “And the third?”

  I hesitated, swallowing hard. It wasn’t something I enjoyed talking about. “I, uh, had to put him down. He was my friend.”

  He tucked his lips into his mouth and nodded. “Interesting.”

  “Interesting?” I was slightly appalled. “How is that interesting?”

  “Well, it’s interesting to me that you’re capable of murdering someone you refer to as your own friend. Kind of makes you wonder why any of us should trust you here.”

  I shook my head, both in disagreement and to rattle the words he just spoke right out of my brain. “You think I enjoyed doing that?”

  Paul shrugged. “Maybe you did. I don’t know you.”

  There were a lot of things people could say to me, like I was socially awkward, immature, scatterbrained, a crazy cat lady, and I will always find a way to brush it off and move on, but this was not that. To actually imply that I enjoyed killing anyone, let alone a man I had grown genuine feelings for, was so sickening, was so infuriating, that all I saw was red. I went silent, unable to form words at first, feeling the heat rise to my cheeks and the involuntary way my hands clenched into a fist.

  I got right up in his face and said, “Listen here, don’t you ever, ever tell me that I got pleasure out of having to do that. You don’t know me, you don’t know what I went through, and you don’t know what his last moments were like. You can either accept that or go to hell.”

  Paul’s pink lips stretched into a wide smirk. “Trigger happy and easily set off. I’ll make sure to include these in my notes to Aga.”

  My eyes narrowed as I stared at him, feeling my face doing its best to cool off. I shook my head and asked, “Why do you hate me?”

  “Hate implies you even register in my mind. You’re as important to me as a noisy fly.” His eyes were emotionless, like staring into two perfect sapphires; beautiful to gaze at, but completely and utterly vacant. I didn’t feel like there was a person on the other side of them.

  “If I’m such a nothing, then why are you so bothered by me?”

  “Even bugs need to be exterminated after a while.”

  Was that a threat? Was this guy sitting here actually threatening me?

  Before I could call him out on it, a big grin spread over his face, as if to tease me that he had been joking all along and I was obviously crazy for taking offense to it. It was such a smug expression that managed to make me angrier than I was thirty seconds ago.

  “See you around, Cora,” he said and then walked right past me and back into the pub.

  I knew right then and there this stay wasn’t going to go as smoothly as I hoped.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Several days had passed in the Clementine compound and I found myself, believe it or not, actually getting comfortable there. Sure, I still had some sour glares from the werewolves who had yet to trust me and saw me as nothing more than human trash, but I at least had gotten used to it. It was pretty much like being in high school.

  Still, my biggest issue was Paul. I felt like I had to be on my best behavior at all times when he was around. We had run into each other a few times over the course of the week, each of us always accompanied by another person, so we were never forced to make small talk. It was also my mission to ensure I was never alone with him ever again.

  The conversation we had outside of the pub played in my mind in a loop, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get the image of his smug smile out of my head. If I had an ounce of courage inside of me, I would have knocked him on his ass for comparing me to an insect that needed to be squashed. How dare he?

/>   I had to remind myself that I held back because I was trying to be on my best behavior, and not because I was a horrible coward. As frustrated as I was to know he got the better of me, I was at least comforted by Max’s constant presence. Whenever I felt on edge, he was there by my side making me feel protected. He had no idea about my fight with Paul because I didn’t want to rock the boat in any way, and I knew Max would confront him had I mentioned it. In Max’s eyes, my reservations about Paul stemmed from him bringing me to Aga and nothing more.

  When morning broke, I slipped on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, ran a comb through my hair, and then made my way downstairs, immediately taken back at the small crowd growing in the entrance hall. It was a group of maybe ten men standing near the entrance doors, each with a backpack on and a thermos in hand. It looked like they were going camping. I was surprised to see that Max was one of them.

  It was like he could sense me, because as I stood at the top of the staircase his eyes met mine and he disbanded from the group and walked toward me.

  “Going somewhere?” I asked. I thought for sure if Max were leaving he’d have told me ahead of time, and judging by the backpack he threw to the ground when he approached me, it looked like it was more than a trip to the store.

  He looked at the group he left and then back to me, guilt prominent on his face. “It’s not overnight, but it is all day and that’s why we’re taking so much shit.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out to an abandoned campground. There’s lots of unkempt forest there and you won’t run into another soul for twenty miles or so.”

  “You left out the part on why you and a bunch of guys are hanging out in an abandoned campground. If you’re ghost hunting, I want in.”

  “We’re going out for a shifting exercise.”

  “Why do I get the sinking feeling you’re not talking about Pilates?”

  “Afraid not. I can’t learn to control my transformations without practice. I would have told you I was doing this today, but you get no warning in advance. They spring this on us last second so we don’t have time to prepare.”

  “Why wouldn’t they want you prepared?”

  “That way, we can learn how to transform within a second, in case there’s an emergency. Aga wants to take us from zero to a hundred in a minute and see if we’re able to shift back quickly. If we know ahead of time we get our head in the game and it’s no longer a natural reaction. It’s the only way to condition the body to stop a turn.”

  “That sounds painful.”

  “You gotta break a few eggs… or in my case, ribs.”

  “It doesn’t seem right to do this so close to a full moon. Your body must feel like hell afterward.”

  “I manage.” A sly grin came over his face. “When I come back, maybe you can lick my wounds, or anywhere else you’d like.”

  I did my best not to blush like a virgin. It was much too early in the morning for me to have a defense prepared against such innuendos. “Why don’t you focus on your little camping trip?”

  “Right. Because that’s way more fun,” he sarcastically remarked with an eye roll.

  “Oh, shut up,” I said playfully and then grabbed his shirt by the collar and pulled his lips onto mine. He kissed me hard and passionately, and as I wrapped my arms around his neck I felt my feet lift off of the ground effortlessly as he squeezed his hands around my waist. His hands were big and hot and I felt easily crushable in his grasp.

  Once our lips parted, I had to take a moment to catch my breath.

  “Maybe that’ll tie me over for the next few hours,” he said.

  I playfully swatted at his arm and watched as he walked away from me.

  The notion that Max was going off somewhere in werewolf form put my stomach in knots. Would he be in horrible pain? Could something go wrong, making him break away from the group and hurt someone? Did Aga have a way of ensuring this didn’t happen? Lord knows, Owen had no control over himself, so what did Aga do that was different?

  I kind of felt like locking myself in my bedroom and waiting till this day was over. I didn’t like knowing what was going to be out there.

  Out of nowhere, Melanie appeared at my side, scoping out the group of people who packed up their things and headed outside. “Where they going? Max finally come to his senses and leave you?”

  “They’re doing a shifting exercise, and no,” I answered, the second part more bitterly than the first.

  “Shifting exercise? What, like Pilates?”

  I was beginning to see the family resemblance.

  “You know, why don’t we do something?” I suggested. “They’re all going to be gone all day, so why not find a way to preoccupy ourselves?”

  “There’s a bar right around the corner.”

  “It is possible to have fun without being drunk, Melanie.”

  “Ooh, what are we going to do, play Yahtzee?”

  “And what the hell is wrong with Yahtzee?”

  “Any game that makes you count isn’t a game. That’s homework.”

  “Is watching a movie beneath you?”

  Melanie huffed and puffed. “A movie? For real?”

  “Oh, shut up, you’ll enjoy it,” I barked at her, and she rolled her eyes. “But before we do anything, we’re on laundry duty.”

  Melanie’s entire body sagged and she dropped her chin and groaned as loudly as possible. She was like a teenager forced to do chores.

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” I said, and we headed down the hallway to the laundry room. “If cleaning some clothes keeps us alive and in everybody’s good graces, then that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

  It was a really slick looking laundry room. It had green tile walls, black ceramic flooring, and a pair of bare windows on two sides of the room that lit the place up and gave it an overall fresh feel. There were three giant hampers lined up on the wall and four washers and dryers in the center of the room, placed back to back like it were a real laundromat.

  I started going through one of the hampers and grabbing as much clothes as I thought would fit into the washer. There were so many jeans and tshirts covered in dirt, it made me wonder if these were all clothes worn during one of their shifting exercises.

  “Turn on the washer, will you?” I said to Melanie.

  Melanie had a puzzled expression on her face. “How do I do that?”

  “You’re telling me you’ve never done laundry before?”

  “My ex did all that.”

  I groaned and pushed her aside, twisting the knob until a flow of water began. “I’ll put the detergent in, you sort the clothes.”

  “Sort? Like, pants with pants and shirts with shirts?”

  “No. Sort the colors. Whites go with whites and darks go with darks.”

  “That’s so racist.”

  “Oh, just sort,” I said, exasperated.

  ***

  After our ordeal with the laundry, I decided some fun was in order and told Melanie to clean herself up, put on her most comfortable pair of pants and meet me in ten minutes. In the meantime, I headed up to Brinly’s room, hoping she’d be interested in joining us. I knew Brinly would be free tonight. She was, after all, the only werewolf on the compound who had no intention of ever turning.

  I found her bedroom and gave the door a soft couple knocks, followed by the sound of her voice saying, “Come in!”

  I popped open the door and found Brinly lying on the bed, stomach down, doodling in what appeared to be some kind of book or diary. Did she keep a diary? What a juicy read that must be.

  It dawned on me that this was the first time I had ever taken a step inside Brinly’s bedroom. I hadn’t even laid an eye on it before. Because of the pink in her hair, I expected her room to be dripping with the color, but was surprised to see it was a very basic, yet luxurious setup. She had a gorgeous white canopy bed and silver carpet, and every dresser and end table was sleek and black.

  “You and Max get to say goodbye?” she asked
.

  “Just a few minutes ago. You’re not going to see them off?”

  Brinly closed her book and then shook her head, almost bashfully. “Nah. I have stuff to do.”

  From the looks of it, she was sitting in her bedroom doing absolutely nothing. I didn’t have a canine’s sense of smell, but I still detected bullshit.

  “You going to have stuff to do later in the day?” I asked.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Did you want to watch a movie in the theater?”

  Her dark eyes widened, puzzled. “No one has used that theater in ages.”

  “Let’s give the old place some life then.”

  The biggest, sweetest, most adorable smile smothered Brinly’s face.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “You broke the TV, didn’t you?” Melanie groaned.

  Melanie, Brinly and I sat in the row of blue seats set up in the small indoor movie theater, patiently waiting for the film to start as I smacked the remote control repeatedly and pressed any buttons I could.

  “Why is the screen still blank?” I bitched.

  “Don’t ask me, this place hasn’t been used in centuries,” Brinly replied, her arms draped across the back of her chair, her feet propped up on the seats in front of us. There were only four rows of seats in this mini theater, but I insisted that we all sit next to each other, to really bring the movie going experience alive. It was a cute little place with red walls and lights strung along the edges of the seats and the ramp leading up to them. It looked like if you cut a typical movie theater in half.

  Suddenly, the giant screen in front of us went from a black shade to gray. “What did I do? Is that good?”

  “Looks like you turned it off,” Brinly replied.

  “Crap.” I hit a couple more buttons and suddenly the movie appeared. “I am a genius!” I exclaimed.

  “What’d you do?”

  “I hit the power button.”

  “Brilliant.”

  I sat down and reached my hand into the giant bowl of popcorn in Melanie’s lap and popped a piece into my mouth.

  “What are we watching?” Brinly asked.

  “Titanic.” They both groaned and I was shocked to hear it. “What’s so wrong with that?”