Insolita Luna

by M. J. O'Shea

  Oh God. I thought about it.

  I convulsed and curled up, burying my face in my hands.

  He was gone from me, gone from my body. I’d lost him. I’d lost PC. My mind reeled sickeningly.

  “It’s not so bad, you know, being a vampire.” Zack’s voice was soft, reassuring. At least it should have been. “I mean, you won’t get to drink mochas anymore, but there are some positives. I know it’s not what you planned, but it can’t be all that awful.” He looked concerned, kind. The kindness made me ache even more.

  “It’s over, Zack.” The words felt sticky in my throat. “The venom changed me too much. I can’t feel him—the bond’s gone. It’s over.” I broke down again, hardly able to think coherently. “What am I going to do? I’m so in love with him.”

  I was shivering on the bed, unable to sit up like a normal person, but I didn’t care. I didn’t have the energy to worry about looking like a fool in front of my new friend.

  “Miles, I know you’re worried, but PC’s not going to care if the bond’s gone. It won’t matter.”

  I wanted that with everything I had, but I couldn’t believe him. “Yes it will. He was drawn to me, he wanted me, but it wasn’t him. It was the bond. Without it, we’re over.”

  Zack made a small snorting sound. “PC’s stubborn and immature, and he can be kind of a moron about this kind of thing, but, God, can’t you see how he looks at you?”

  “It’s true.” Noah’s soft voice came from the doorway. I looked up and saw him leaning against the doorjamb. “He’s on his way. He was terrified. You should have heard him. I promise you, the only thing he cares about is that you’re okay.”

  “Yeah, but as soon as he figures out that I’m fine―”

  The front door slammed open and I heard frantic footsteps running toward us.

  “Baby! Oh my God, are you okay? I’m so sorry!” I was crushed in his arms, so hard I could barely breathe, but nothing had ever felt more wonderful. I inhaled, breathing in the right smell, the one that was home.

  My chest thrummed, tightening painfully. I wasn’t okay. Not at all. I took a deep breath and drew back from him. I had to get used to being apart from him; might as well start. Moving away from him hurt just as much as it always did. But it didn’t hurt my weird newly sensitive skin. The only thing I felt breaking was my heart.

  “PC, it’s gone. You’re free. The vampire venom broke the bond. I guess I’m too different now.”

  “What are you talking about? You’ll just have to, you know, eat different things now. I mean, I know you’re a vampire, but it was an accident, a horrible accident. We’ll make it work somehow. We’re still us.”

  His murmured words should have comforted me, but he was missing the point. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed.

  “You’re not listening. I can’t feel you anymore. It’s over.”

  He yanked me up against him, hugging even harder than the last time. Little kisses peppered my forehead, my cheeks, my nose. I closed my eyes and reveled in the touches that I didn’t understand. Finally, he pulled back and used the tip of his finger to lift my chin. I kept my eyes closed. I couldn’t stand to see his face. It would break my heart.

  “Miles, look at me.” His voice was quiet but firm. “I don’t care about the damn bond.”

  “What do you mean? I don’t understand.” My poor overwhelmed brain couldn’t deal. I was on sensory overload with my weird surroundings and new realities and suddenly he was telling me… what was he telling me?

  He rested his forehead against mine. “Nothing’s changed, okay? I still want this.”

  “Why?”

  “I….” He paused and looked at me awkwardly. “I just want to be with you. I still….”

  He looked like he was in pain. Was it really that hard for him to tell me what he was feeling? Apparently.

  “Are you doing this because you feel sorry for me? I mean, I don’t want someone who―”

  “Miles.” He was smiling. “Shut up.” He put his fingers over my lips, then moved them so he could kiss me, soft and slow. It was a real kiss, with claiming, sliding tongues and teeth nipping at my lips―the kind of kiss we rarely dared. It felt so amazingly good. He pulled back to whisper against my lips. “I’m yours, okay? If you still want me, I’m yours.”

  I stared at him in shock for a few silent seconds. He actually looked worried, like I was going to say no or something. Ridiculous.

  “Of course I do.” I sank my fingers into his silky, fragrant hair. I heard his pulse pumping just below the surface, warm and comforting and oddly familiar. “I never thought you’d actually want this, you know, if you had a choice.”

  “I have for a while, not just because of the bond but because of you. Because I can’t imagine anyone else making me laugh like you do or fitting so perfectly with…. God, I’m really bad at this.” He drew back and gave me a hopeful look. “Are we okay?”

  His insecurity was the sweetest thing ever. I nodded and leaned forward to kiss him.

  The touch of his lips made me shiver. It had always been good before, but not like this. I leaned closer and opened my mouth to taste his kiss. I all of a sudden couldn’t wait to taste him. Violent pleasure chills raced in circles over my skin. I heard faint laughter from the doorway. I didn’t think they’d been there the whole time, but I was so focused on PC that I couldn’t be sure.

  “He noticed already, huh?” Zack whispered to Noah. It was enough to get my attention. I lifted my head from PC’s tempting mouth. The kiss was going somewhere I couldn’t take it anyway. Not at Zack and Noah’s place―not at all, actually.

  “What do you mean ‘he noticed’?”

  Noah chuckled. “C’mon. Let’s go sit at the table. We have a lot to talk about.”

  It took a bit of shuffling and eye wiping (mostly on my part), but eventually we were seated at Zack and Noah’s dining room table. PC dragged my chair as close to him as he could get it. He pulled my hand into his lap, sandwiching it between his and was running a thumb along my wrist over and over. His touch was so incredibly distracting, causing swirls of delicious pleasure to cloud my brain. But I knew I had to listen to Zack and Noah. I needed to pay attention to what they were telling me. So I sat up and tried to ignore the desire PC’s casual touch was igniting in me.

  I could tell Noah was having a hard time not laughing. It was Zack who finally spoke.

  “First of all, PC, you’ve got to knock that off. You have no idea what you’re doing to Miles right now. He won’t hear a word we’re saying.”

  He stopped moving his thumb but didn’t release my hand.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, looking a little annoyed.

  “Vampires have elevated senses, just like you do. I know you knew about our sense of smell, and our hearing, but our sense of touch is also really strong, amplified from a regular human’s. Physical contact of any kind registers about ten times stronger than it would’ve if he was still human. Miles is very new, but his senses are shifting already. It’ll be a weird few days for him.”

  “Is that why the air feels so… real?”

  “Yeah,” Noah answered. “You’ll get used to it eventually, but right now it’s pretty disorienting. Everything that touches your skin will feel more. It’s hard to explain it, but I think you get it already.”

  I concentrated on the warmth of PC’s skin surrounding my palm. “So if this is what holding hands feels like, then―” I then realized what I’d just said out loud and turned bright red. Noah and Zack burst out laughing.

  “Yep,” Zack answered succinctly. “Just wait.”

  I was still embarrassed, but a flash of heat zapped through me.

  “So what’s going to happen to me? Am I already a vampire?”

  “Yes. Well, mostly. You didn’t get a huge dose of venom, so it will probably take a week or so for the change to happen completely. Your senses will get stronger, the sunlight will start to hurt more and more.”

  Oh shit. Daylight.
/>   I’d been so worried about losing PC that I didn’t even consider the rest of my situation.

  “I still have a month of first quarter left. What am I going to do about class?”

  “Mono?” Zack suggested. “We’ll think of something. You’ll have to get your classes switched around for next quarter.”

  “Yeah. I guess college isn’t the number one priority for a new vampire.” I chuckled to myself. “After the past few weeks, class is starting to feel like more trouble than it’s worth, anyway.” If I’d only come to New York to find PC, what was I doing wasting time and money getting that degree? Especially with the newly added complications.

  PC pinched me.

  “No way. You’re finishing school. I don’t want your mother to hate me before we even meet.”

  Oh shit. Mom. I realized I was probably going to have a lot of “oh shit” moments. I also knew I was going to have to deal with them one at a time instead of freaking out over too many details that were mainly out of my control anyway. Still, if I didn’t tell my mom, then it was going to be really awkward when I went to visit her in San Diego, of all places, where the sun was out most of the time. I didn’t want her out of my life, but I also didn’t know how I was going to break the news to her and―

  “Earth to Miles…. Hello?”

  I chuckled sheepishly. “Sorry, just thinking.”

  “It’s okay. You’ll get distracted a lot for a few days. Your brain will tend to want to think about a million things at once. It’s another part of being a vampire you’ll need to get used to. Noah calls it newborn attention disorder. You’ll have to work on concentrating.”

  “So heightened senses, spacing out, no sunlight, what else?”

  “You’re right. We really do have to go over the rules. Don’t want you to get hurt accidentally.”

  “Yeah, me neither. What are the big ones?”

  “Very limited sun is the biggest one. It won’t kill you right away, but it will hurt pretty badly. You can go out in the rain during the day. Overcast is a bit more iffy, since sunlight still seeps through that and it’s hard to gauge. You shouldn’t eat food, but you won’t want to anyway. It smells disgusting. You’ll see. Um, no lycan blood, or any other supernatural blood, just to be safe. You probably won’t want that either. We tend not to like what’s bad for us. Convenient.”

  “Silver?”

  Noah held up his left hand. He had a pretty braided silver ring on his finger.

  “That’s BS, obviously. Silver is fine.”

  “Silver doesn’t hurt me either,” PC added. “As far as I know, it doesn’t hurt anyone.”

  “So lycan blood is bad for me―” I didn’t want to ask the rest of my question. God. Embarrassing

  Noah smiled. He figured it out. “PC?” Noah gestured at him like he wanted PC to answer.

  “It’s fine, babe. One of the lycan elders was mated to a vampire in the scandal of the century.” He rolled his eyes. “Our blood is the only thing that’s bad for you, and the same with your venom. Everything else seems to be harmless.”

  I let out a long breath, too relieved to worry about being embarrassed.

  “What about stakes in the heart?” I felt stupid asking, but I had to know.

  “I think a stake through the heart would kill pretty much anything, us included. We’re immortal as far as aging goes, but we’re in no way impervious. Well, that’s not true. Our skin heals really fast, so knives aren’t that dangerous. But watch the internal organs. They don’t heal as fast. And keep the sharp stuff and the bullets away from your heart.”

  I nodded. I’d hoped to be a little more invincible, but I’d take not aging and getting to be with PC forever and be happy with it.

  “And we don’t turn into bats or anything?”

  Noah burst into laughter. “Not the last time I checked.”

  “Don’t feel bad, Miles,” Zack told me with a smile. “I wanted to ask that too. He shouldn’t laugh.” Zack poked Noah in the stomach.

  “Sorry, it was funny.” He gave me a quick smile. “We will need to get you some blood fairly soon. It helps the transformation along, plus your body’s been through a lot the past hour or so, and we always need blood when we’re weak. We’re going to have to go out since you can’t exactly drink from any of us.”

  You’ll need to get some blood. I nodded as if it made perfect sense. It did make sense in a way, like it would have if I were writing it in one of my stories. The part that still left me reeling was that it wasn’t one of my stories. It was happening to me. I’d finally gotten myself used to the fact that I was going to be turned into a lycan, running the streets at night with PC by my side. At least, I’d been mostly used to it, prepared to a certain degree. This… well, this still seemed so very, very impossible. I adored Zack and Noah and the girls, and it was fine that they were vampires, but it didn’t seem real yet that it was me too.

  “Miles?” PC looked concerned. “Hey, it’s a lot to take in. but you’re going to be fine, okay? We’ll make sure of it. All of us.”

  “I know, and I think I’m fine with it. I mean. I don’t have much of a choice but to be fine with it. It just doesn’t seem real yet. I keep saying it in my head but it almost feels silly.”

  Zack smiled. “It will. I mean, I still think of myself as Zack before I’d ever think of myself as a vampire. You really aren’t any different―just some of your physical realities have changed a bit. Don’t get too caught up in the labels.”

  “Why did this happen to me? I’m not complaining, I just really don’t understand. Why would that vampire have chosen to bite me? I’m not homeless. I was with two vampires. That was the stupidest possible time to attack someone. What could have been his reason?”

  PC hung his head, his voice quiet and sad.

  “I already know the answer to that.”

  We all looked at him sharply. He took a long deep breath and lifted his head to look at me.

  “The vampire bit you because he thought you were me.”

  Chapter 14: The Werewolf King

  THE SILENCE at the table was heavy and long, all of us reeling from the implications of what PC had just said. The attack had seemed random, senseless, but it wasn’t. He’d said my getting bitten was a horrible accident, and now I understood what he meant. It was an accident that I’d gotten bitten because the bite was meant for him. Someone out there wanted PC dead.

  “Why? I mean, how do you know that?”

  “Almost the second that Zack called me to tell me what had happened, my mother got a message on her phone saying that I’d been killed. I saw it and took off running, trying to get here as fast as possible. I was so worried about you I’m actually pretty lucky I didn’t shift right on the corner of 73rd and Lexington.”

  “But who sent the message? And why?” That part still didn’t make sense.

  PC shook his head. “I’ve been so focused on getting to you, making sure you were okay, that I haven’t even thought about the implications of this. I mean, it has to be connected somehow—the vampire killings, the attack. But I don’t know how or why.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Noah assured PC. “Chances are whoever it is will come forward soon anyway. The question remains. Why you? You haven’t taken out that many rogues lately, vampire or anything else. I don’t get it.”

  “Neither do I,” PC answered.

  “What happened to the vampire?” I was almost afraid to ask the question.

  Noah looked like he didn’t want to answer.

  “Seriously? I’m one of you guys now, aren’t I? You don’t have to hide information from me.”

  “You were one of us from the first day,” Noah told me. My chest felt all full and bubbly. I couldn’t help my smile. He still looked a bit embarrassed, though. “I, uh, killed him. I caught up to him and he wasn’t giving me answers. I got mad.”

  “So he’s… dead dead?”

  “Yeah. I get pretty irrational when people I care about get hurt. Besides, he’d al
ready figured out you weren’t the lycan and would’ve gone back to whoever hired him. That kind of news is best left undelivered.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” PC said. “I’d have hunted the bastard to the ends of the earth if you hadn’t—” Just then PC’s phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket and was about to silence it when saw who was on the ID. “Hey, listen this is my mom. It might be important.”

  He flipped open the phone.

  “Mom, hi. Is there news? No, Miles is fine. … Yeah, I’ll tell him.” He squeezed my hand and listened silently for what seemed to be forever, eyes growing huge. “You’ve got to be kidding me. What are we going to do?”

  When PC hung up, he looked shell-shocked.

  “What happened?”

  I was freaked out myself. I’d never seen him like that. He looked like he was having a hard time speaking. Then he took a deep breath and said two quiet words:

  “Andrian Silivasi.”

  Zack and Noah both understood immediately. Their eyes went wide as well, and Zack drew his breath in sharply. I waited patiently for someone to tell me what, or rather who, this Andrian Silivasi person was. I assumed he was trouble; their faces didn’t leave much doubt. There were long moments of silence, three heads filled with spinning wheels. Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer.

  “Okay, people, used-to-be human sitting here. Is someone going to fill me in?”

  PC took a long breath and held my hand to his mouth as if it would somehow make him feel better to have it there. Then he lowered it and started to speak.

  “Andrian Silivasi is the leader of the werewolves. He’s hated the lycans since practically the dawn of time. It looks like he’s finally made his move. We’ve been waiting for him to try something like this for centuries.”

  “He did this?” I gestured to myself, but I meant everything—the killings, the attempted attack on PC.

  “Yes, and much more. Turns out I wasn’t the only target. Not even close. Across the city, and we’re assuming other cities as well, high ranking lycan children were taken, killed—the sons and daughters of elders, those in line for office. None of the elders were attacked, only those close to them. It was meant to incite violence…. It was an act of war.”