Blood Moon

by A. D. Ryan

  “How serious what is?” I demanded, letting denial win this round. “Do you realize how crazy all of this sounds? Do you really expect me to believe all of this?”

  Nick looked surprised—like he actually expected me to just accept everything he tried to tell me. “How can you not believe it?” he asked.

  “How can I?” I shouted. “You’re asking me to believe in werewolves, Nick. It’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes!”

  Nick’s eyes narrowed in challenge as they met and held my gaze. “How have you been feeling?”

  I balked at the question, my mouth opening and closing as I struggled to reply. This seemed to amuse him, and he arched an eyebrow triumphantly. “Craving red meat? Increased sense of smell? Taste? How’s your eyesight and hearing?”

  Staring at him, slack-jawed, my heart pounded furiously as I tried to speak, but no sound came out. How could he possibly know about any of that? Once again ignoring the possibility that he might be telling the truth, and suppressing that inner voice that really worked to make itself known, I tossed my head back and forth defiantly. “That doesn’t mean anything. Low iron can make you crave red meats, and as for my senses—”

  Nick chuckled. “You tell yourself whatever you have to if it helps you sleep at night.”

  Anger coursed through my veins, and I glared at him. “You know what? Screw you, Nick. I never asked for any of this, and I sure as hell don’t need to sit here and listen to you feed me some bullshit story about werewolves.”

  To my surprise, Nick’s amused expression disappeared, replaced by one of sadness. “I know you didn’t ask for this, and I’m sorry,” he replied gently, “but now that—”

  I couldn’t listen to him tell me everything again, because if I did, I was afraid I’d start to believe him. And I was already going back and forth on that front. “N-no,” I said, covering my ears like a crazy person trying to block out the voices in her head to no avail. “I can’t hear this again. I have to get home.” I glanced up at him to see he looked…rejected, and the urge to take him by the hand and console him consumed me, but I refrained.

  “Is this about him?” The question came out of left field, and the tone of Nick’s voice was like a punch to the gut. I found it weird that it had this affect on me; we’d been broken up for seven years. I shouldn’t feel bad about moving on after all this time.

  So why did I?

  “Along with my mother and father,” I replied carefully, hoping to ease that blow. “I’ve been missing all night. I left a potential crime scene…in Phoenix. They’re bound to be worried, Nick.”

  Nick nodded his agreement, his expression turning cold as steel. “You’re right. You should go.”

  I turned to leave the room when I remembered I only wore his bedsheet. “Um…”

  Sighing, he opened his top dresser drawer. “Right.” He reached in and produced a few things. “I know they’re not yours, but they’re better than that sheet.”

  I accepted the clothes and gasped when I recognized the old concert T-shirt as one I used to wear all the time. Fond memories of those early years together washed over me, forcing a smile to my face. “You still have this,” I whispered, placing it to my chest sentimentally.

  “Of course.”

  “But it doesn’t even fit you—it hasn’t for some time,” I reminded him, recalling the time I dared him to try it on and he looked ridiculous with it plastered to his upper body while his lower abdomen showed.

  His eyes appeared sad as he laughed nervously, scratching at the back of his head. “It’s always held a bit of sentimental value,” he confessed before turning away from me. “The, uh, bathroom’s down the hall and to the left. I’ll give you a ride home when you’re done.”

  “Uh…I think it might be best if I didn’t get a ride home from my ex. I’m still not sure what I’m going to tell David, but I do know that if he sees you, he’ll jump to all the wrong conclusions, and I’m not ready to deal with that right now. I can call a cab.”

  “Did you happen to swallow your wallet before you changed last night?” Nick asked, once again reminding me of the one thing I tried to deny.

  “Um…”

  He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll pay for your cab…on one condition.” I met his eyes once more and saw how serious he was. “You’ll meet with me again. Don’t ignore me, Brooke, because you don’t understand just how dangerous this part of you is. I can help you learn how to control it.”

  The entire situation was still pretty unbelievable, but hearing the conviction in his voice every time he talked about it made me waver. There was a very large part of me—the rational part—that continued to refuse to believe that another world existed within our own.

  Or that I was somehow a part of it.

  I wanted to continue to deny that any of this was happening to me, but the memories kept coming, each one more vivid than the last. That definitely made it more difficult for me to do. If I had to be entirely honest, I wanted to tell him I still didn’t believe him, all in an effort to ignore it in hopes that it would all go away and things would return to normal.

  I didn’t, though. I nodded instead, hoping to placate him long enough to get him to let me leave.

  When he seemed content with my response, I headed to the washroom to clean myself up before pulling on the clothes he gave me. I looked in the mirror for a minute after dropping the sheet around my feet, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. The pink marks were slowly disappearing, looking more like light scratches, and my skin was marred with streaks of dirt and grass. I would need to shower when I got home.

  I dressed and found his shirt still fit the same as it did back then—a little loose, but comforting and it smelled like him—and the shorts he’d given me were a few sizes too big in the waist and really long in the leg. I remedied that by rolling the waistband of them a few times until they sat on my hips and fell to about mid-thigh. I looked ridiculous, but it was definitely better than finding my way home in a filthy dirt and grass-stained bedsheet. How horrible would that have looked?

  It took a while for me to remove most of the twigs, grass, and bits of dead leaves from my tangled hair, but I managed to make myself look at least partway presentable. The entire time I groomed myself, I tried to come up with so many other—and much more realistic—scenarios that could have happened to me last night. I hoped this might help kick-start my memory and prove Nick to be as crazy as he sounded, but all I remembered were the wolves.

  When my cab arrived, Nick walked me out to it. There was a slight chill in the air, but I could smell and feel the arid warmth that would greet us come noon. Something I would have learned from the weather channel on a normal day.

  “You have my number, Brooke. Call me if you need to talk about anything. We should meet up in a few days, though. Once everything settles down with your folks…and David.”

  Still not sure what to say, I nodded once more. I probably looked like a bobble-head.

  A sad smile played at his lips, and before he closed the door, he sighed. “I really am sorry about what happened,” he said. “You didn’t ask for any of this.”

  The question left my lips before I really thought it through. “Did you?”

  Laughing dryly, he tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. The gesture was so gentle and familiar that it invited those same feelings from before that I shouldn’t have been entertaining. “How about we save that story for next time?” he suggested, his thumb moving softly over my cheek. More tremors rippled beneath my skin, and I smiled for the first time this morning when I recognized the playful glint in his eyes. “You know, leave you salivating for answers so you keep your word to come back to me.”

  I inhaled sharply, my breath shuddering, at his choice of words. He likely didn’t mean it the way I’d interpreted it, so I let it go without questioning or correcting him. “Deal.”

  “One last thing,” he added, this time stopping me from pulling the door
closed. The playfulness disappeared from his face, with no sign of it even existing lingering in his expression. His eyes suggested that what he was about to say was to be taken seriously. “You can’t tell them what you are. It’s dangerous, and they won’t be able to handle it…and that’s if they even take you seriously.”

  I looked at him, so many questions still begging to be asked, and before he shut the door, I stopped it with my hand. “Nick, I don’t even know if I believe you.” With that, I pulled the door shut, and Nick slapped the roof a couple times to tell the driver that it was safe to go.

  As the cab pulled away from the curb and onto the street, a nervous roll swelled in my belly, and my palms grew sweaty with increasing anxiety. Nick’s last words repeated over and over in my mind, and while I wasn’t sure what really happened last night, I did know that I was worried about how I would try and explain any of this to my family—to David.

  How did one even begin to explain a twelve-hour disappearance, a body covered with unexplainable wounds, and clothes that weren’t theirs?

  I was willing to bet that nothing about this would be easy…

  Chapter seventeen | interrogation

  Even though we were still five houses away, I asked the driver to pull over. I still wasn’t quite ready to face whatever awaited me. If anything even did. For all I knew, David was still in Phoenix, looking for me. If I had my cell phone, I’d have tried to get a hold of him before now.

  When I did see him, I knew David was going to ask a hundred questions, and I wouldn’t blame him; I’d been missing for well over twelve hours. Honestly, I would be worried if he wasn’t freaking out.

  After what had to be a half hour, the driver turned around and looked at me expectantly. “Hey, lady, I’ve got a living to make, and your boyfriend only gave me thirty bucks. Your time’s up.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I muttered, opening the door and stepping, barefoot, onto the sidewalk. The cold fall air attacked every inch of my exposed flesh as another bout of unease swept over me. I wrapped my arms around my middle as my body quivered. I tried to ignore the feeling as I refocused on how to explain myself, and I headed for home.

  Much slower than one normally would.

  The short walk to the house offered me a few more minutes to figure out what to say. Not that it helped in the least. I hated the idea of lying to David, but I was still so confused about what may or may not have happened that I didn’t have much of a choice. Even if Nick was telling the truth—big if—it wasn’t like I could just open the conversation with “So, when I took off last night it was actually because I was turning into some kind of werewolf, even though I didn’t know it at the time.” Nick made that perfectly clear, and I was pretty sure that would get me locked up and fitted for a straightjacket anyway. Even if he did believe Nick’s bullshit story, I still couldn’t tell David that I was with him. He’d lose his mind.

  Remember when I once thought that a club for vampire wannabes sounded ridiculous? I missed that. Somehow in the course of these last couple weeks, my life turned into some kind of horror movie, and I had no clue how I was supposed to process it all.

  Two houses from my own, and no closer to piecing together an explanation, I heard a door open and my name being shouted. While I’d kind of hoped to make it to my front door undetected, I should have known this wasn’t going to happen. I closed my eyes when the voice registered as David’s, and I braced myself for the impact of his body against mine, my anxiety spiking and the tremble in my hands increasing.

  “Thank God you’re all right,” he breathed into my ear, holding me tightly in his arms. I tried to be strong, to not fall apart on David, but when his hands moved over my body, probably checking for injuries, I cracked. I pulled my arms from between us and wound them around his neck and inhaled deeply, noticing how David’s natural scent was laced with fear and desperation.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he whispered softly, and I nuzzled my face into his chest as best I could, unable to answer. His warmth—while a noticeable few degrees cooler than my own—was comforting, and I sensed his fear beginning to ebb the longer we held each other.

  “David, I—”

  There was no chance to respond before I heard my parents cry out their own relief, and David released me from his hold to allow them to embrace me next. It was hard for me to make sense of everything happening as they assailed me with questions, but I tried to sort through it all as best as possible so I could maybe try to answer some things without looking crazy.

  “We had everyone in Phoenix out searching for you,” my dad said.

  “We checked all the hospitals from here to the city,” my mom sobbed at the same time, running her fingers through my still-matted hair.

  “Everyone was so scared,” David informed me, holding my hand so tight, I was certain he’d never let go of it again.

  They ushered me inside the house and David closed the door behind us. “I found your phone on the side of the road,” he said, reminding me of the exact moment I threw it to the ground. “I kept calling you and calling you, and when you didn’t answer, I went off looking. I heard it ringing, and…” The pain in his voice cut me deep, and I tried to offer him a silent apology with just a look because I still didn’t know what to say…

  …what I could say.

  Tears streamed down Mom’s face, and the guilt of my disappearing on her weighed down on me, making my knees buckle slightly. Her fear thickened the air I breathed, and I suddenly heard Nick’s voice in my head: “Craving red meat? Increased sense of smell? Taste? How’s your eyesight and hearing?” Swallowing thickly, I tried to slough it off. It proved to be more difficult than it should have been, and it all started to fall into place and make sense: why I’d been so sensitive to people’s emotions…my heightened hearing…impressive vision…

  In the living room, I sat down in the middle of my couch, pushing down my revelation for the time being and mentally filing it in a box I decided to call “Questions for Nick.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to alarm you all.”

  “You just took off from an active investigation,” my dad spoke up, anger and fear obvious in his tone. I wasn’t sure if he was more pissed about his daughter going missing, or his detective leaving a crime scene. Logically, I knew it was probably the first one, but I felt fairly confident it was a little from column B as well. He wasn’t finished laying into me, yet, and I let him. What else could I do? “David finds your phone, discarded and shattered, on the side of the road and your clothes…”

  Inhaling sharply, I covered my mouth, remembering how Nick told me that my clothes were shredded and in the woods. It didn’t take a genius to know how this looked; I’d worked with the department long enough to understand what they must have thought given the evidence they’d found.

  Before I could rush to explain in whatever way possible, my mom’s eyes scanned me from head to toe. Panic gnawed at my insides when she held her breath, her eyes widening as they fell on the familiar-looking T-shirt, and I shook my head once, hoping more than anything that she wouldn’t say anything about who it belonged to.

  Thankfully, she remained quiet, and I relaxed minutely. Unfortunately, this was the only reprieve to be granted, because there was still so much tension between the three of them. I took it, though, because, no matter how small the victory, I figured I’d dodged at least one silver bullet.

  This is no time for jokes, I inwardly chastised myself before slowly raising my eyes to David. He was still watching me with a combination of relief and expectance. “So?” he asked. “What happened?”

  “I—” I started, taking a deep breath and trying again. “I walked around, trying to get some fresh air like I said I was going to…and then I guess I blacked out.”

  “Brooke, I found pieces of your clothes near the outskirts of the city…in the desert—miles from the club we were searching!” David’s voice rose, and I looked to my dad, afraid—and maybe hoping?—that he might step in
and tell David to calm down.

  He didn’t; he also watched me and waited for my explanation.

  “Not to mention your badge and your gun,” David tacked on.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I whispered, suddenly feeling trapped; I never liked being on the receiving end of an interrogation, and this was no exception.

  Mom still looked upset and confused, but she seemed a little less concerned than Dad and David as she sat beside me and held my hand. Maybe the fact that she knew I was with Nick assuaged her fear? It was a question I couldn’t find in myself to ever ask her, because I was still pretty ashamed of how I felt when I was with him this morning.

  I still worried she might say something to allude to where I was, but she surprised me by staying quiet and offering me her silent support while David and Dad continued to overwhelm me with questions.

  “I’m just glad you’re okay,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion, and she wrapped her arms around me again. “We all thought…”

  “I know,” I told her softly. “I’m sorry for putting you all through this.”

  “Your clothes are being tested,” David interrupted, drawing my focus back to him.

  “What?” I demanded. “Why?”

  He thrust his hands through his disheveled hair, frustrated, and I grimaced when I noticed the same lines of worry etched into his face and the dark circles under his eyes that had been missing for several days. “They looked like they were ripped from your body, Brooke. You blacked out. Don’t tell me that doesn’t scream ‘sex crime’ to you.”

  “David,” I said, pulling free of Mom and crossing the room to where he paced. “I wasn’t attacked. Don’t you think I’d know if I had been?”

  He was skeptical, and I didn’t blame him. I’d think the same thing given the circumstances. I placed my hands on his cheeks, coaxing his eyes to mine. I hoped he’d see the truth in my eyes, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. “I’m fine,” I whispered. “Just…a little confused.”