Blue Moon: Blood Moon Trilogy #3 (11 page)

“
T
his isn’t real,” I whispered, staring into his blue eyes. He looked different from the last time I saw him. His hair was longer, slightly more mussed, and the usual scruff on his jawline had grown out substantially, almost like he couldn’t find the time to care about his appearance—not that he looked bad. The sight of him was glorious. Too good to be true, even.

The moon shone through the trees, illuminating him in an otherworldly glow, only adding to the hallucination. My exhaustion along with my extreme hunger, the pain in my shoulder, and my longing to see him again had to be responsible for what I couldn’t actually be seeing. It couldn’t have been that easy to find him.

Breathing heavily, my heart pounding rapidly, I dropped my eyes to the ground and willed it all to be real. I needed it to be real. If it wasn’t, I didn’t think I would be able to go on, and then I’d surely be caught and taken back to the compound.

“Brooke!” Nick cried, sprinting toward me. He dropped to his knees, sliding through the snow and dirt and colliding against me so hard it left me breathless.

My body shook as he wrapped his arms around me, his hands splayed out and travelling up my back and into my hair as though he wasn’t sure if
I
was real. I exhaled a breath of relief when I registered his scent, and I threw my arms around him, pulling myself closer to him until I was practically in his lap.

“It’s you,” I mumbled, inhaling him greedily. “You’re really here.”

Bringing his hands to my cheeks, he pulled my face back and looked deep into my eyes for a moment. “We haven’t stopped looking since the day you disappeared.” His gaze moved down over my body, assessing me. “Are you okay? Have you been hurt?”

“I… N-not recently, really,” I confessed. “He, uh…” My brain had trouble focusing. It was like I was stuck in a heavy cloud of fog and couldn’t see anything clearly. “He shot me with a tranquilizer dart as we escaped. It had silver in it. I can’t…I can’t shift yet.”

“But you’re okay?”

I nodded as best I could in his firm grip. “Yeah. I am now.”

Nick’s lips were against mine in an instant. With every firm press of his mouth against mine, I picked up on his fear, his worry, his relief. My lips tingled and pulsed as we pulled apart, our foreheads resting against one another’s, and I lay my hands against his chest, feeling his heartbeat—memorizing it.

“Well, isn’t this
adorable
,” a voice said, catching both of us off guard. I jumped when I recognized it, and Nick’s eyes snapped open with disbelief as he raised them and looked over my shoulder. “It’s like a family reunion. Do you realize the three of us haven’t been together in over seven years?”

“Bobby?” Nick’s voice was low, and a growl reverberated in his chest.

Nick and I stood quickly. He pushed me behind him, the temperature of his hand hot against my waist as he held me in place, shielding me from my brother.

“Surprised to see me?” Bobby inquired glibly.

The woods rustled all around us, and as I assessed our surroundings I saw at least five other vampires surrounding us. “Nick,” I murmured.

“I know,” he ground out through clenched teeth, his fingers curling into my hip as he held me in place. “I can smell them.” He continued to stare Bobby down before he finally addressed him. “How’d you survive?”

Bobby chuckled, shrugging his shoulders. “Guess you’re just not as good at your job as you think you are.” He began to walk, moving around us like a shark, his beady black eyes never leaving us. “You really should check to make sure all the bad guys are dead before you skip town,” he chastised. “Now, if you’ll just hand my sister over, I won’t kill you… Not today, anyway.”

It was Nick’s turn to laugh as I shifted behind him a little more, placing my hand on his arm as I peeked around him. His bicep muscle tensed beneath my touch. “Seems to me she isn’t interested in a family reunion,” Nick shot back.

“Oh, I don’t care if she’s interested, but the two of us have some unfinished business to attend to.”

“No,” I shot back angrily, “we really don’t.”

“Brookie,” Bobby drawled, making my skin crawl. “We were just starting to understand each other.”

“The only thing I was starting to understand is what a sadistic little bitch Gianna turned you into.”

Anger flashed in his eyes, and Nick took a defensive stance, eyes flitting to each of the vampires surrounding us. My arm still hurt, but even with six of them against two of us, I liked our odds. We could handle this; we’d managed before.

“Seriously, though,” I taunted. “Come and get me. Let’s see if your head comes off as easily as your whore girlfriend’s did.”

“Take her alive!” Bobby shouted, and then all hell broke loose.

The vampires surrounding us ran forward. Bracing ourselves, Nick and I stood back to back and worked together to fight them off. In all the chaos, two of them had drawn me away from Nick by a few feet. I tried to work my way back to him, but the two vampires I was up against were unrelenting, so I punched and kicked and broke as many limbs as I could in an attempt to disable them long enough to decapitate them.

The blond one backhanded me, sending me to the ground, momentarily dazed. As the other one came toward me, I kicked my leg out sideways, driving my heel into the side of his knee, and I smiled when I heard the crack as it bent in toward the other one. He went down, and I saw my opportunity, springing up and wrapping my arms around his neck and wrestled it free from his shoulders. With a scream, his body turned to ash against the snow and I looked up at Bobby, who remained in place, watching with sick delight.

I wiped the sweat from my brow, likely smearing vamp dust across my skin, and smiled smugly at him. “One down.”

Nick glanced back at me and grinned. One of his opponents ran for him while he wasn’t looking, but his instincts were so honed that he reached back, grabbed it by the jaw and flipped it over his shoulder, snapping the vampire’s neck like a whip until it dislodged. The vampire turned to embers and ash mid-air and fluttered to the ground as the other three vampires stared on in shock and horror before Bobby shouted another order to attack.

They did as they were told, but hesitantly. It was this hesitance that cost them their lives in the span of ten minutes.

As soon as the dust settled Bobby advanced on us, looking confident that he could succeed where his brethren failed. Nick and I prepared to take him on, but he stopped short, eyes flitting up to the sky…the lightening sky.

“Looks like your time’s up,” Nick jabbed. “Better get back to your hole in the ground before you fry.”

I stepped forward as Bobby stepped back into the shadows, the forest floor lightening as the sun slowly stretched across it. “Let’s not be hasty. I’m sure we could take care of him before the sun can do it for us.”

Bobby snarled, pointing a finger at me. “This isn’t over, Brooke,” he threatened. “You will come back to me. You’ll see.”

Those were his final words before he ran off in a blur. My confidence evaporated when my adrenaline exited my body, and I started to collapse again before Nick caught me.

“It’s over,” he whispered, pulling me into his arms and kissing the top of my head. “It’s all over.”

I closed my eyes and clung to him, never wanting to let him go again, when suddenly I remembered something. “Cordelia!” I cried out, pushing away and looking into his eyes. “We have to find her. She could be anywhere.”

“Relax,” Nick said. “We found her hiding in a cave a few miles from here. She’d shifted and was hiding with a pack of timber wolves. Smart and resourceful.”

“And now?” I croaked. “Where is she now?”

“With Vince and Roxy. They’re laying low until we meet up with them,” he explained, smiling as he ran a hand over my hair and sighed. “What do you say we get you home?”

Nodding, I let Nick wrap his arm around my shoulder and lead me away. We made it about five steps before I had my next realization. “Jax,” I said. “He found me and told me to run while he fought off a couple of vampires. We have to go back for him.”

Nick smiled. “Jax can handle himself against two vampires,” he assured me. “He’s probably already with Vince and Roxy.”

Even though I knew Nick was right about Jackson’s ability to fight, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Nick picked up on this, and with a sigh, agreed to double back to check on Jackson.

We ran through the woods as the sun continued to rise, lighting our way and guaranteeing our safety. I followed my scent until I picked up Jackson’s and eventually we made it to the clearing I’d last seen him in. I looked around, seeing a few drops of blood and a whole lot of ash. But no Jackson.

“He’s not here,” I stated, looking around for footprints. He was so much larger, and I could tell his tracks from the vampires’ we’d fought before I ran away and left him alone.

Nick crouched down and sniffed near some of the blood droplets. “It’s his, but it’s not enough to prove fatal. He’s alive. Look.” I looked down to find Nick pointing west. “His tracks go this way.”

I followed Nick as he tracked Jackson’s footprints, and I exhaled a sigh of relief when they turned to wolf tracks. He’d shifted. Maybe Nick was right; maybe Jackson had defeated the last of our attackers and then shifted to meet up with us. Yeah, that had to be what happened. All the evidence led to that conclusion.

Feeling a little better about Jackson’s well-being, I allowed Nick to lead me back through the woods and toward the meeting place. It took a while, and even though it was daylight, I jumped at every little sound. Nick did his best to try and calm me, but I was a wreck after everything I’d just experienced. I suspected I’d be a little jumpy until I felt safe again.

As we walked through the woods, I tried to think of all the things I had to say to Nick, starting with an apology for taking off so abruptly. Before I could say a thing, Nick brought my hand to his lips and kissed it.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered against my knuckles, enclosing his other hand around them. “I should have been honest from the beginning.”

Stopping, I turned him to me. “No, Nick. I’m sorry. I acted like an immature brat—I always do when I don’t like something I’ve heard. I have this tendency to run away from problems instead of talking them out. I did it with David the night he died, the night I found Roxanne in your bed, and then the night I found out it was you who…who…” I swallowed the lump that formed in my throat.

“Who bit you,” he finished for me. “Baby, you have to believe me. I never meant to hurt you that night, and I sure as hell never meant to keep it from you as long as I did.” He paused, coaxing me forward again so we’d make it to the rest of the Pack. “I guess it just got easier to keep the truth from you as you accepted what you’d become. I figured it wouldn’t matter, and Jackson wasn’t quick to offer up the information.”

“Because he’s loyal to his Pack,” I guessed. “The two of you may not get along, but he would never throw you under the bus.”

Nick dropped his head, ashamed. “I know. I’m a selfish shit.”

I wanted to disagree, but given the circumstances, it was kind of true. “I can understand the need to protect me from the truth. You didn’t want to hurt me anymore than I already had been. I’d been through so much, and that would just be one more thing to come between us. I get that.”

Nick stopped again, bringing his hands to my hips and turning me toward him. “Believe me when I say I’m done with the dishonesty. There will be absolutely no more secrets between us.”

I smiled up at him and brought my hands up to cradle his jaw. “You promise?” He nodded, and I stood up on the tips of my toes and kissed him once. “Then take me home so we can move past it and figure out what to do about my sadistic brother.”

“Deal,” he said before kissing me again, this time a little harder as he lifted me off the ground.

It felt good to be in his arms again, free from my prison of the last couple weeks. I almost hated that moment when he set me back on my feet and led me along our path again.

About an hour passed before we entered a clearing. I was growing exhausted from hunger, but I knew we had to keep moving. I could eat at the manor. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too much longer.

As Nick and I made our way through the snow, I heard a high-pitched howl. I looked up to see a sleek black wolf barreling toward us. She was smaller than the other two flanking her, and I recognized her as Cordelia the second I registered her scent. She leapt up, colliding with me as her giant paws rested on my shoulders.