He kissed me again and again, arching my head back and trailing his tongue across the base of my throat. I was in a fog of desire. “Then don’t,” I pleaded.
Max wrapped me in his arms and pushed me to the bed.
Chapter Nineteen
DANA
I wasn’t at ease being left alone with Rickey and Priscilla. They went back and forth trading insults and discussing the girl in the other room like she were a science experiment. It felt rude and cold-hearted, and I had a feeling they didn’t really care about what she was going through or what would happen to her. That poor girl was likely suffering from so much mental anguish and torture, and all Rickey could do was theorize on if vampires used a new form of mind control or hypnosis. I was the one at the end of that and even I knew to show some humanity. She was still a person, after all.
Rickey had the tendency to geek out over new things that he became unaware of how bad it could come off. And it’s not like Priscilla was gonna call him out on it, because she could be just as crude.
They were very strange together. I noticed a small change between them after my incident at the gas station. She still poked fun at him, but it felt toned down and restrained, like she had softened up to him a bit. But I don’t think he was aware of it yet. Guys could be like that, totally all over a girl who hates them one second but then oblivious when they begin to return the affection.
Of course, I didn’t know any of this. I just assumed.
I decided I was done listening to their banter for a while and headed down the hallway for the bathroom. Max and Cora were in my bedroom, and through the walls I could hear their voices in soft conversation. I tried to mute them out because I didn’t want to intrude, but I still heard Cora’s giggles and Max’s sarcastic jokes in between kisses. They had the kind of relationship I hoped to have one day. Theirs was an enduring love without judgment, and they felt so at ease with one another. I don’t know if I had ever felt truly comfortable with a partner. Tiffany always set me up with mindless, muscular men because they were good-looking and not because we were compatible. They were definitely not my type, that’s for sure. Not that she cared.
I sighed. We all followed Molly blindly, but for Tiffany to take part in what Molly did to me in the forest, it hurt. It hurt terribly. I had to face facts that Tiffany was truly gone. Forever.
A part of me wondered why I even mourned our friendship the way that I was. It was never a perfect relationship. A good friend wouldn’t let Molly publically belittle and talk down to me for years the way that she did. Tiffany never even seemed bothered by it. She even laughed a couple of times.
I hated that memories from years ago still conjured up so much pain in my chest. I hated how powerful they were in my mind at all times.
After I left the bathroom, I stopped right in front of the door to my spare room. Cora’s cousin was inside. I kept imagining her in there by herself, knees pulled to her chest, face soiled by tears, lost in her own isolation and pain. It was easy to envision, because that had been me just a few months ago. We may not be the same species, but our plights were similar.
I wanted her to know that if she felt like a monster, she wasn’t alone.
I didn’t even think about it, I just twisted the doorknob and walked in.
The room was filled with a flowery, powder aroma, and I took a deep inhale, tried to focus, and forced the smell to fade. Melanie was still in her chair looking out the window, and when she heard the door click shut behind me, she jumped. “Don’t be afraid,” I told her softly. She didn’t seem afraid at all, but more uneasy and confused as to why I was there. “I’m Dana. Cora and I go back a little,” I said. It was weird saying I was Cora’s friend. We had only briefly talked a few times throughout the year. Did that really make me a friend?
“You’re one of them,” Melanie said with a quick upturn of her nose. Could she smell that I was a werewolf?
“I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“I didn’t say that you would.” She wasn’t in the least bit scared of me. She was on edge, of course, but unafraid. “You’re that girl Cora was looking for over the summer. This is your place, too.”
“Cora talked about me?”
She nodded. “Annoyingly so.”
I drew in closer but still kept a good distance.
“You come to stare at the new shiny object too?” she asked.
“No. I came to see if you’re alright.”
“Did Cora send you in here to check on me?”
“I sent myself.”
Melanie’s face tightened. “Why?”
“Why?” I repeated, confused.
The space between her brow harshly wrinkled. “Yeah. It’s not like you know me. You’ve got no reason to care.”
“True,” I replied with a lifeless shrug. “We’re complete strangers, so I understand if you want me to leave you alone, it’s just that I feel like I know what you’re going through. A little.”
Melanie pulled her legs to her chest and rested her chin on her knees. “Nobody knows what I’m going through.”
“I’m not a…vampire, no, but I do know what it feels like to have the rug pulled out from underneath you, to be turned into something unnatural and terrifying against your will, and I know what it’s like to be completely confused by it.” My voice trembled as I added, “I also know what it’s like to hurt people you don’t want to.”
That grabbed Melanie’s attention, as her eyes suddenly darted toward mine. Her gaze was like ice. I couldn’t tell if it was a side effect of vampirism or if they were always that piercingly blue, but they almost blended in with the whites of her eyes.
“You’ve killed someone?” Melanie asked.
I didn’t want to, but I nodded. I wanted to be transparent for her sake. “I’m still trying to cope with it.”
The momentary relief that we had something in common faded, and her face tensed back up. “But it’s different for you. You can’t control what you do when you’re turned. I don’t have that excuse. I’m always me.”
“I imagine your cravings for blood are pretty strong.”
She couldn’t make eye contact with me as she nodded. She was ashamed.
“Your hunger for blood is probably no different than us turning under a full moon. We’re victims of these powerful urges that take over us and make it hard for us to fight. It’s not our fault.”
I couldn’t believe I was saying this. I had wanted to believe these words for the past year and a half, but never could. Somehow, telling them to Melanie felt different. It felt honest. I would never blame someone like her for what she had done, so why had I done it to myself for so long?
Everything I said wasn’t exactly hitting Melanie, though. She still looked so somber and alone. One day, I thought. One day she’ll hear me.
“Do you have any family?” she asked.
I was surprised by the question. “I do, yeah.”
“Do they know what you are?”
“No.”
“How do you make that work, being what you are?”
“I don’t. I haven’t seen any of my family in over a year. I’m afraid of what I’ll do to them if I live close. Keeping my distance, telling them I moved away for a job…it’s easier than the truth.”
“So you’re alone?”
A knot formed in my throat. “I have Brinly and the compound now.”
It was true, I was no longer living by myself. But in every other aspect of my life, I was completely and utterly alone. Melanie didn’t need my tears and sob story, though. She had enough on her plate.
But Melanie persisted anyway. “You’re just done with your family forever?”
“I don’t know about forever. Forever seems like such an inconceivable notion for someone like me.”
“But not for someone like me,” Melanie responded sadly. Her living forever was something that hadn’t crossed my mind until that moment. I had never seen someone with so much endless time in their future look so sad and hopeles
s about it. One look into her glossy blue eyes, and I knew she saw it as a curse.
What good is an eternity to someone who is all alone?
I didn’t want to dwell on the subject, so I continued with our previous conversation. “The life I had before, the person I was before, had to be completely snuffed out so I could rebuild. My family couldn’t be a part of that.”
“That’s depressing.”
“It might be, but I’d like to think there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve gone through so much, but in a lot of ways, this is a do-over. A way to start from scratch.”
Melanie frowned and then looked out the window. “I’ve had to start my life over twice now. The first was when my husband left me for another woman.” She chuckled to herself, though she wasn’t smiling. “He probably didn’t even shed a tear when he found out about me. Probably no one did.”
“Cora did,” I said.
“Yeah, she’s about the only one.”
There was so much loneliness coming from her I could taste it. She was trying to hide it, though, even if I saw right through her.
Melanie looked at me and admitted, “Not many people care about me. I mean, really care about me. You know my family didn’t even have a real funeral for me? All they had were ashes, so they had some small dinner for a few hours and moved on. People probably showed up for the food and nothing else.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“You don’t know my family. They’re not all like Cora. She’s the only good one in our entire family, myself included.”
“What have you done that’s so terrible?”
“What have I done that’s good? I’m the family fuck-up. The only thing my family loved about me is that I married rich, and look how that turned out. I couldn’t even keep him happy.”
“Did he ever make you happy?”
Melanie thought about it. “No,” she replied. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been happy.”
“Then why beat yourself up over a relationship ending, if it didn’t even bring you one bit of peace? The girl who let that get to her is gone. You’re someone brand new now. You’re wiser, you’re more powerful, and you have family in the next room that put her life on the line because she loves you. That’s what matters. Not the people who wouldn’t be here even if they could.”
Melanie’s face softened, her eyes got a little brighter, and I saw her exhale like she had been holding her breath our entire conversation. “But I don’t know who this version of Melanie is yet,” she said. “What if she’s even worse than the other one?”
“What if she’s not?” I sat down next to her and placed my hand on top of hers. Her skin was like touching the rim of a cold glass of water. “I may not have known the old Melanie, but I can tell I’m gonna like this one,” I said.
There was still so much fear in her eyes, but there was also a dash of hope. The corner of her pink lips crept into a half-smile. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
Chapter Twenty
CORA
I could have stayed in Max’s arms all night long, forever warm against his fuzzy coat and shaggy, brown hair, but I had a dead cousin and a couple of freaked out friends in the other room that I had to get back to. And we had no time to waste with what was lurking around town trying to kill us. They could find us at any moment.
Melanie and I had been hiding out when I saw Molly, Tiffany, and Veronica for the first time. Even though I had accepted what Melanie was and that she was truly back, seeing them felt different somehow. Maybe it was because so much time had passed since their deaths to that moment, or maybe it was because their presence felt far more sinister. They were destroying my car and ripping up the seats when we first made contact. Tiffany was laughing, Veronica seemed bored, but Molly looked enraged like a wild animal.
The only thing running through my head was if she knew what I had done to Owen and if she knew I was the one who ended his life. They were more bonded than most siblings, so at some point, I knew she must have tried to reach out for him, and in the process learned he was no longer alive. If she didn’t know already, she soon would. It was inevitable.
The girls destroying my car was the first and only time I had seen them, and I was thankful. Somehow, Melanie and I had outrun them at every turn. It’s the only reason we were still alive. Or, well, that I was alive. I wasn’t sure what Melanie was anymore.
When I pulled away from Max, my hair was covered in static, and he patted my frizzies down onto my head. “What, you don’t think it’s a good look on me?” I teased.
“We’re too electric, I guess,” he teased back.
I could tell he was happy to see me. Max would only ever say something that corny if he were overwhelmed with joy.
“We really should get back out there. Before Priscilla kills one of them,” I said.
He scoffed. “Or they kill her.”
I scrunched up my nose. “I’m guessing you guys weren’t having a bonding road trip together.”
Max chuckled. “It had its rough patches, but it could have been worse.”
That was probably the closest Max would ever get to saying he didn’t hate spending time with her. I gladly took it.
We left the bedroom together and headed for the living room, where I was going to have a little chat with everyone on how to treat Melanie going forward, but when we walked down the hallway, I realized the room Melanie was in was wide open. She wasn’t in there.
I found her in the living room, seated in a rocking chair by the frosty winter window, with Daggett and Priscilla hovering over her on each side like she was in a hair salon getting her hair done, or was about to be tied down and used for a sacrifice. I’m not sure which was the most likely.
“What are you doing?” I yelled.
They scattered like a couple of teenagers caught watching late-night Cinemax. “Nothing!” Daggett shouted.
Priscilla swatted at him. “Don’t look so guilty, you weirdo.” She turned to me. “We’re experimenting.”
“Is that something you really want to do out in the open like this?” I asked.
“Not that kind of experimenting. Eww,” Priscilla groaned.
“The feelings mutual,” Melanie grumbled.
“You’re not the one I was talking about.”
It took him a second, but Daggett realized she was referring to him, and he scowled. “Why you gotta attack my manhood like that?”
“At least I’m giving your manhood some attention.”
He was offended at first and then nodded his head. “You have a point there.”
I rolled my eyes. “Is anyone going to tell us what you meant by experimenting? My head is going to goats and hellfire, so somebody clarify please.”
“It’s the hypnosis,” Daggett replied. “We wanted to see how extensive this ability is.”
My eyebrow cocked. “And how were you going to do that?”
With a casual shrug, he said, “By hypnotizing us. Or mind-controlling us. Or whatever you want to call it.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little dangerous?” Max asked. “We don’t know what the hell that’ll do to your brain.”
“Dana seems fine,” Daggett replied.
We all glanced at Dana, who was seated on the opposite side of the room like she had been watching the entire time, but not participating. “You getting any headaches?” Max asked.
“No more than usual,” Dana said.
“See, she’s fine,” Priscilla nonchalantly commented.
I tilted my head at her. “Yeah, until she’s diagnosed with a brain tumor in three months.”
“This isn’t radiation or something,” Daggett began. “We’re talking straight-up magic here. I don’t think we can apply any kind of science to this.”
Max folded his arms and with a sigh said, “He’s kind of right. Maybe we should look into this. If anything, just to give us an idea of what we’re dealing with out there.”
“I know I don’t want
to deal with vampires blindly.”
They had a point. It was just nerve-wracking dealing with something of this magnitude, especially when it felt like we were poking and prodding at Melanie like she were an experiment. She had already gone through enough of that with her months of containment.
I poked my head past the group and to Melanie, and I asked, “You all right with this?”
“It’s fine,” she replied. “I need to know what I’m capable of just as much as they do.”
“Then go ahead, I guess.”
They didn’t need my permission, but it felt like they were waiting for it.
Priscilla raised her hand and said, “I’ll go first.” She knelt down on the floor in front of Melanie, widened her eyes until they were the size of baseballs and said, “Make my tits bigger.”
We all groaned in unison.
“What?” she yelled.
“That’s not how mind control works, genius,” Max said.
“Uh, they made Dana turn into a werewolf,” she argued.
“Yeah, something she already was.”
“Are you implying my boobs aren’t already big?”
“You just asked a vampire to will you into having implants. I think we know the answer to that already.”
Priscilla gasped. “Cora, kick your boyfriend in the dick for me.”
I shook my head and said, “Get Melanie to hypnotize him into kicking his own dick.”
Priscilla’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, that’s a great idea!”
I pulled Priscilla off of the floor and pushed her away from Melanie before she did something we’d all regret. “All right, Broom-Hilda, give someone else a turn.”
“I didn’t even get my shitting turn.”
“Well, see, when you have bad ideas, you get your turn taken away.”
“Oh, I’d love to see what brilliant idea you three come up with.”
“It’s not like the bar is very high at this point.”
Priscilla crossed her arms, offended. “Please, by all means, go ahead. Make Daggett balance a pencil on his nose. I’m sure we’ll all be blown away.”
Lunar Rebirth (Lunar Rampage Trilogy Book 3) Page 13