The Lunar Effect (The Ayla St. John Chronicles Book 1)

by C. J. Pinard

  This time, I just laughed.

  “Then what are we doing sitting here waiting to devour him? Let the sun kill him,” I said, proud of myself.

  “He’s gonna climb down if we don’t stay here,” Benson replied.

  “Point taken,” I said.

  The sun was rising fast, and I briefly wondered how much longer until we all reverted back to regular humans. What time of the morning did that happen, anyway?

  “When the sun overpowers the moon and it disappears from the sky,” came a voice, and at this point I didn’t really care whose it was. I clearly needed to stop thinking.

  “Then he’s going to get lucky, we will all be a bunch of naked humans, and he’ll climb down and find some shade for the day,” I said.

  A scream came from the top of the trees, and having to crane my neck all the way back, I could see the vampire’s arm begin to smolder and smoke as if on fire. A few sunbeams were now filtering in through the trees, and it seemed the vampire had sustained a direct hit.

  A gaggle of laughs erupted inside my head, and I couldn’t help but join the laughter.

  Even though we were laughing inside, on the outside we were howling and barking at the vampire. He began to climb lower on the tree, but refused to come all the way down. For now, he was safe from the sun, but I began to fret that we were going to turn back into humans at any time, and that he would have bested us.

  “Can we climb trees?” I asked the crowd.

  I heard a few chuckles. “Go ahead and try.” Benson’s voice.

  “Shut the fuck up, B,” Ryder said. “Baby, don’t try to climb the tree.”

  I laughed. “Noted.”

  The sun was rising fast now. The vampire began to climb down the trunk some more, when suddenly, he jumped off several feet away from the circle we had made at the base of the tree, and landed on his feet, but then rolled and got up and began to run. It seems like he had almost flown off that tree. Could vampires fly?

  “Get him!” Austyn yelled.

  We all took off running, and I gained the lead. The vampire looked behind him as we gave chase and I was quickly gaining on him. I could hear his breaths come out in pants, and while he looked worried as he chanced glances back at us, he was also laughing maniacally, as if he were going to get away.

  I sped up, and at once, I was about two feet from his backside, and Benson had reached me.

  “Let’s fuck this bloodsucker up!” he said.

  At once, we both pounced on the vampire, causing him to fall to the bed of leaves at our feet. He immediately flipped over onto his back and tried to get up, but we had him pinned. The rest of my brothers and sisters stopped short just behind us.

  Getting a close look at the vampire, I could see that his eyes were completely red. This frightened me briefly until I remembered that we had the upper hand here. With long and sharp fangs that extended from his eyeteeth, he hissed at us like some deranged snake.

  With lightning-fast moves, he reached up and gripped Benson by the throat. Benson’s wolf made a gagging noise and this angered me. I felt my blood go hot.

  “You got this, baby,” I heard Ryder say, reminding me that the pack was behind me. I felt like I was at some kind of training exercise, while the rest of them waited behind me and didn’t help.

  Without thought, I reached down and bit into the vampire’s arm, causing him to scream in some unholy octave, but it had the desired effect. He let go of Benson, and that was when I went in for the kill. My jaw fully open and extended, I let out an internal banshee cry that came out as a howl from my wolf, and I tore into this vampire’s neck with teeth.

  The rush of blood into my mouth was near orgasmic. I had not remembered tasting blood before, and this tasted good.

  “Do not swallow his blood, Ayla. I’m serious, spit it out!” Aden commanded, panic in his voice.

  “But I want to swallow it. It’s delicious.”

  “Spit it out!” they all began to scream.

  The vampire under me was fighting. He was strong, but I was stronger. With all my self-control and resolve, I gagged out the vampire blood, letting it dribble from my mouth. I showered his face, neck, and chest with his own blood. Then, I bit the other side of his neck.

  “Take off his head!” I heard Austyn begin to chant, and it sounded like he was thoroughly enjoying watching his little sister devour a person—a vampire.

  With all my strength, I began to wrench the vampire’s head from his neck, and that stopped his screams.

  It was the single most disgusting thing I had ever seen, smelled, or done. But for some reason, I didn’t feel like gagging or throwing up like I had when I had watched a particularly disgusting horror movie last week as a human.

  Huh, that’s interesting…

  With his neck vertebrae between my teeth, the vampire’s head swung from my jaws, which elicited the cheers from my brothers and sisters.

  “Go put the head in the sun, in the clearing,” Aden commanded.

  I turned to see Benson and Ryder drag the body with their teeth behind me. Once I had placed the head in the sun, it burst into flames.

  Then I passed out.

  Chapter 6

  “What is the matter with you?” Aden asked from the doorway of my room, as I was curled up in a ball under my covers.

  “Go away,” I sniffled, tossing another tissue out from under my comforter and onto the floor.

  “You’ve been in bed for like a week,” he came back, as I peered over the edge of my comforter. He was still leaned up against the doorframe, his bulky arms crossed over his massive chest.

  “It’s been three days. Now leave me alone,” I murmured.

  “You on your period, or what?” he asked.

  “No! Now get out!” I said, grabbing the first thing I could snatch from my nightstand—which happened to be my very dead cell phone—and tossing it at him.

  He easily dodged it by leaning his upper body to the left, and then shook his head. Leaning down and picking up the phone, he said, “And call Ryder, he’s been blowing up my fucking phone because you aren’t answering yours.” He threw the cell phone back at me, which landed on the bed.

  He then left my room, shaking his head and closing the door behind him.

  After waking up from the shift, half dressed in Aden’s car, everything had come back to me. I was frightened, shaking, and most of all horrified that I had killed someone while I was the wolf. I had cried hysterically, and Aden had tried to console me while trying to navigate the steep and winding turns of the mountain that led down from Wolfe Point. I had not calmed down by the time we’d reached home, and so here I lay in my bed, having not eaten a thing except what Mom had brought me, and the small sips from the water bottle I kept by my bed.

  Mom had grounded me the minute I’d gotten out of the shower that morning. Asking me where I’d been and why I broke curfew. Aden had heard the commotion and had tried to come to my defense, but she just yelled at him, too. I had no idea how we were going to do this every month. Guess I would spend half the month grounded, because that was what she’d threatened before slamming my door shut.

  It didn’t even matter that I was grounded because I still couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed. Every time I allowed my brain to go there—to think of that moment I had committed murder—I broke down into dry tears, crying quietly under my covers until I’d fallen asleep. Realizing I sounded melodramatic and maybe a bit hysterical, I had allowed Aden to come into my room to talk to me earlier. Turned out it didn’t help. Nothing would ever change the fact that I was murderer.

  “He wasn’t even a living creature, Ay,” Aden had tried to console.

  “Vampires aren’t people,” Ryder said in frustration over the phone before I’d hung up on him and then had let my phone die.

  “Get over it, sis. We’re wolves, it’s what we fuckin’ do,” Austyn had said, coming into my room yesterday as if coaxed by Aden.

  None of those ‘words of wisdom’ had helped me at
all. Nothing could squash the feelings of guilt and fear I felt when I thought back to the moment I’d killed that vampire—had torn his head from his shoulders and let it burn to ash in the early morning sunrays.

  Sometimes I wished I could separate myself from the wolf. Pretend she was a different person and wasn’t me at all, but some other creature whose thoughts and actions I got to experience once a month.

  Of course, Gemma had been blowing up my phone, and I had ignored her, too. What was I going to say? “Sorry, Gemma, I’m wallowing in post-homicidal depression, I’ll call you back later, and we can go get milkshakes after cheer practice.”

  Yeah… no. I don’t freaking think so.

  Yanking the yellow and gray flower-patterned comforter over my head—which offered me no comfort at all—I rolled over on my side and prayed tomorrow would be better.

  Not only had the guilt eaten me alive, I began to look at myself as ugly. Even after six months of these shifts, I still hadn’t grasped that I had transformed into a disgusting, drooling, tail-wagging animal once a month. I had asked Aden whether or not we could transform into this… animal… at a time other than a full moon, and he had said no, we couldn’t. Then I had asked him if we could just avoid the full-moon shift altogether, and with a sympathetic glare, he had told me again, no, we could not. We were truly slaves to the damn full moon. A moon I used to think was pretty. I was once grateful for its light on a dark Colorado night, when there wasn’t even the bright reflection from the snow around to illuminate my way. But no, I now hated the full moon. It meant that I was going to have to endure a shitload of pain, for the rest of my life, for no other reason than I had been cursed with this affliction.

  “Really? No other choice for me? Turn into a wolf during a full moon?”

  Aden’s jaw had ticked at my answer, before he said, “Not you, but us. So to answer your question, no, there is no other choice. I’d apologize, but why bother? I don’t like it any more than you do.”

  This fueled my depression. I didn’t want to be a wolf. I wanted to be a regular girl with aspirations to go to the University of Colorado at Boulder after I graduated, and then get a great job, marry Ryder, and have lots of regular, human babies with him.

  Why was this so much to ask?

  Because I was born with a curse.

  Eventually slogging out of bed, I had charged up my phone and decided I should probably shower before I caused noxious fumes from my body to invade the house.

  In the shower, I thought about Aden’s answers to the questions I’d asked. And I really didn’t like those answers—but it seemed I was out of options. I really was. So, pulling myself up by my bootstraps, I went to school so I could eventually graduate. I also realized that I was turning eighteen soon, and that was going to be amazing, because I was going to get a tattoo.

  I had no idea what it was going to be, but I was going to do it.

  After a refreshing shower that surprisingly made me feel better, I looked at my phone plugged into its charger on my nightstand.

  Four bazillion texts and missed calls from Gemma, a few from Kiera, asking me why I hadn’t been at cheer practice, a seven texts and two calls from Ryder. A bunch of random e-mails. One text from Aden, which I thought odd, but for some reason, I read it first.

  Sitting on my bed, draped in nothing but a towel, and my blonde hair dripping down my back, I clicked on his text, which was dated yesterday afternoon:

  Sis, I know it sucks. I know it’s hard. But you’re going to get through the guilt and shit. I love you. Austyn loves you. Mom and Dad love you. Once you accept what you are, you will discover who you are. Love you.

  Without my permission, my eyes began to water, and a tear dripped down my cheek. I swiped it away with the back of my hand, and without any rational thought, I hit reply to my brother’s text and simply said:

  Thank you, bro. I love you.

  I didn’t think I needed to say more. This curse—this wolf I could feel living inside of me—it wasn’t going away, and it was clear I had to put on my big-girl panties and deal with it.

  As silly as it was, I quite literally had to check the school’s sports schedule online to see if we had a game tonight. After responding to both Gemma and Kiera and assuring them I’d be at cheer practice the next day, I wasn’t sure whether we had a game, and I wanted to make sure I had my uniform on. I couldn’t give away that I was so completely out of sorts and had lost track of time that I didn’t even know what day it was.

  Monday. Mondays sucked, but I could deal with that. Games happened on Fridays, and rarely we’d have a scrimmage on a Wednesday, but today was a normal Monday and we didn’t have to cheer. So throwing on a blue Broncos hoodie, some skinny jeans that made my butt look awesome, and some long, brown boots to go over them, I tossed my hair into a ponytail and scurried out the door, where Aden was waiting to take me to school before he went to his job at a construction company.

  “Where you been, girl?” Gemma asked, applying some lip gloss while using the mirror attached to her inside locker door.

  “Wallowing in PMS,” I replied, the answer I’d practiced before coming back to school.

  I was already stressed because I was behind and missing assignments in four of my classes, and I really needed to pass those and graduate so I could get the hell on with my life.

  What that meant, I wasn’t sure, but I did know that I had applied to CU Boulder and could then get my degree in something. I didn’t know what, but it was sort of a plan, and I was sticking to it for now.

  I literally didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. All I knew was that “werewolf” wasn’t on the frickin’ list.

  Sad little werewolf.

  Werewolf. I was beginning to develop a love-hate relationship with that word. Wait, I meant a hate-hate relationship. What was there to love?

  I sighed as we both closed our locker doors and made our way to math. As I begrudgingly made my way into the classroom, and then sat in my designated seat, I felt eyes on me. Turning slightly, I could see Ryder staring at me. His aquamarine gaze made me feel all happy and warm inside. I smiled back.

  I turned back to Gemma. “I can’t wait to graduate and be done with this high school stuff. Then Ryder and I can move in together and be real adults.”

  She glanced over my shoulder, and then into my eyes, her brown ones dancing in amusement. “Adults, huh? I hear it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

  I kept her gaze as she started digging into her messenger bag for something. “Well, I don’t care. I need to move out of my parents’ house. If I can’t live in student housing at CU Boulder, then Ryder and I will get an apartment together.”

  Gemma found what she’d been looking for and put the hairclip into her mouth while she twisted up her long, light-brown hair up into a messy bun, and then used the clip to secure it. “Well, as fun as Benson is, I don’t want to be tied down in college. I want to get to live those slutty years. Ya know, get it out of my system.”

  “I think you’ve already gotten a head-start on that one, G,” came a male voice from behind us.

  Suppressing my laughter, as was Gemma, we both turned around to see Sam, the stupid perv who had grabbed my ankle at my first shift, and his buddies cackling. “Fuck you, Sam! I’m no slut!” Gemma wadded up a piece of notebook paper and launched it at him, which he, of course, caught like a baseball with his fast reflexes.

  More laughter erupted.

  We turned back around and quieted down when we heard Mr. Trussell come into the room and told us to open our math books.

  “Damn, that Sam has fast reflexes. Did you see his arm muscles? I might need to go talk to him later,” Gemma said to me under her breath.

  I rolled my eyes so hard I think the whole class heard it. “Gemma, he just called you a slut. Besides, he’s a total douchebag. Trust me.”

  She opened her math book, and then pulled a piece of gum from her pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth. “I don’t want to marr
y the guy, Ayla. I just want to take him for a test drive.”

  I snorted and then was forced to pay attention when Mr. Trussell gave us both the evil eye.

  Chapter 7

  “Are you kidding me!” I said under my breath as I stared at the graduation schedule our homeroom teacher had just handed out.

  “What?” Gemma asked. “The weather will be perfect! And it’s on a Friday. It’s gonna be epic, girlfriend!”

  I had learned quickly to know the days of the month when the moon would be full, and graduation night, unfortunately, was going to be the first night of the full moon. That meant, that Ryder, Benson, half the football team, and even that ass, Sam, and I would have to spend our graduation night writhing in pain instead of partying our asses off. I wanted to cry… and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

  “Nothing,” I murmured and shoved the flyer into my bag. I needed to tell my parents that I would be out all night for graduation. I had, after all, turned eighteen last month, and now that I was graduating, I didn’t think they’d have too much heartburn with it.

  I’d learned over the past few months to make up excuses about my all-night shifts. I’d tell them I was staying at Gemma’s or Kiera’s on the full-moon nights, that way I wasn’t coming home at dawn with no explanation. I would also have to make up more lies about why I was coming home so early, like Gemma had to go to a soccer tournament for her little brother two cities over and I had to leave her house, or Kiera and her family were leaving on a trip. It sucked lying to them, but I wasn’t sure what else I could do. Aden told me to stop lying and just say nothing, but I couldn’t do that to them. My brothers and I owed them everything… our lives. I didn’t want to disrespect them like that.

  As I sat and listened to Gemma and Kiera make plans for graduation night, I tried hard to fight the sadness inside of me at the thought of their parties and the kegs and the fun they were going to be having while I was killing deer with my bare teeth and having animal sex with Ryder.