Unleash The Moon (The Preternaturals Book 6) (5 page)

“
What am I going to eat?” she
asked.

“
Me, like always,” he said with a
smirk that left her disgusted. Before, it had been bearable. Now,
the idea of drinking his blood when he intended to give her to the
humans made her want to vomit.

The feeling of revulsion didn’t last. Something
predatory came over her, and she was filled with calm. Perhaps
there was some remnant buried deep inside her of what she was meant
to be as a vampire. She wasn’t sure what this feeling that had
bubbled up meant, but she was going to drain every last drop of
blood out of him. And then she was going home.

“
I didn’t want you to find out
like this,” he said, not having noticed the change in her
demeanor.

“
No, because this makes it
awkward. You might have to feel guilty. It would have been so much
easier if little Sydney hadn’t asked any questions until the
transaction started. Do I have it about right?”

Jacob turned red, and Sydney thought she could
convince him not to do it. But the things she’d end up doing with
him in order to have the smallest chance, turned her stomach. No,
she was killing the shithead. She’d worry about what she’d eat on
the way home.

He was quiet for a long time, only the sound of the
old truck piercing the silence. What else was left to say? The rest
of the drive, Sydney spent fantasizing about what would have
happened if she’d gotten away on her own—if she hadn’t confided in
the human.

Her father might not have been able to get into
Jacob’s head with the magic that cloaked and protected him, but
when he discovered Elise’s remains he would have known something
was wrong and would have gotten the information out of him the
old-fashioned way. Then he would have carved Jacob up like the game
the others hunted.

It was a nice fantasy, but she needed to focus. She
was already getting sleepy. It didn’t even take the sun coming up
to wear her out. Even normal vampires couldn’t get up when the sun
was in the sky, but that went double for Syndey.

They were in Oregon now. She’d seen signs on the
road they’d driven on. The Hub City was in Nevada. Sydney wasn’t
sure if he was taking her the whole way or if they’d meet someone
else who would take her. If she planned to kill him, this might be
her only opportunity.

They’d passed a place called “Bend” about an hour
ago. It was deserted like most other places. Or else those who
lived there were in hiding, hoping the cities had lost interest in
them.

Jacob pulled off the road when he spotted a
farmhouse. Sydney contemplated running, but he’d catch her, and she
knew he’d picked an area like this intentionally. It was so much
wide open space, hundreds of acres. The only safe place for her
when the sun came up would be inside that farmhouse somewhere. Or
maybe the nearby barn.

“
Let’s go inside and find you a
safe space.”

Such an odd thing for him to say right now, but he
would want her safe for the trade. If she died, she was no good to
him and he couldn’t get back to his precious family. It made Sydney
feel even more guilty for trying to escape hers.

She wondered if someone had
delivered the truck and left it for him for the drive. She wondered
what other things he’d been planning. He probably had
non-perishable food already packed away in the back of the truck,
shipped to him by humans.
Figuring out
what he’d eat likely just meant deciding on a canned meat and
vegetable, not hunting something as she’d previously
imagined.

As she followed him into the house, she envisioned
jumping on his back and sinking her fangs into his throat, draining
him so fast he couldn’t react, but she knew he’d toss her right off
him. And then she’d be screwed.

No, she had to wait until he offered her his vein
and distract him so she could drink more than she should. It had
been so long since she’d drank too much from him—so long since it
had been a real threat. In the decade since Elise had claimed him,
he’d probably forgotten how weak he could get from blood loss and
how fast.

Jacob opened cabinets in the kitchen, and a white
mouse scurried by squeaking in irritation. A few cans of food in
the pantry had exploded after years and years of sitting expired in
a house with no temperature control.

“
No one has been here since the
original owners. And from the looks of it, they haven’t been here
in a long time, either.”

His boots creaked over the rotting hardwood as he
went down the hallway. Sydney silently prayed the floor would
collapse and he’d break his neck falling into a basement, but it
didn’t happen. He reached the end safely.

She stood in the hall, not liking close proximity
with this Jacob. His head popped out again a few minutes later.
“Bedroom in here, Syd. There’s a big, empty closet you can sleep
in. I just have to cover this hole in the wood so the sun doesn’t
get you.”

There was a large picture window
directly across from the closet door that looked like it probably
got some direct sunlight. As resting places went, this was far less
secure than she’d like, but she had to be breathing for this
trade
to happen. Barring a freak raid on
the place, she knew she’d make it at least until night in the
closet.

He went back down the hall, leaving her in the
bedroom. She heard doors opening and closing and banging around in
drawers until he returned with shiny silver tape. He got a look of
longing in his eyes.

“
My dad used to have this. It’s
duct tape. You can fix anything with it.” He covered the hole in
the wood, then sat on the edge of the bed and tossed the tape on
the floor.

Sydney pushed back the revulsion
that went through her as he rolled back his sleeve. And then she
thought,
Great, he won’t let me near his neck.
It would be harder to kill him this
way.

She sat beside him and sank her fangs into the
offered arm. Her hand inched up the inside of his leg, but then
Jacob’s hand was on top of hers, stilling her.

“
As good as you can make me feel,
Syd, I know you’re just trying to sway me. It can’t be done. I’m
going back to my family, and you’ll never see yours again. I’m
sorry this is the way it had to go down. I’m sorry you come from a
family of monsters and must suffer for their crimes.”

She cringed as his hand stroked through her hair.
But then, he started telling the most insipid stories about his
childhood before the vampire king had him brought to the compound
to be on Sydney’s dinner menu. He wasn’t paying close attention to
her feeding or how much time had elapsed.

If he just kept talking… After a few minutes, his
words began to slur and slow as he stumbled and tripped over
sentences. This could work! She could taste freedom. A moment
later, she felt a sharp zap of electricity, and then she blacked
out.

***

Sydney woke, feeling weaker than normal, even though
she’d fed a lot. She struggled out of the closet she’d been
carelessly tossed into to find an angry Jacob sitting on the edge
of the bed, a black rectangular box in his hand.

He looked down at it, then back at her. “Just some
protection that was sent to me with the truck and provisions.”

Provisions. Yes, there was food in the back of the
truck. Far from roughing it, they’d provided her captor with
everything he needed to comfortably transport the vampire cargo.
Her attention went back to the weapon on his lap.

“I didn’t want to have to use it. You knew you were
taking too much. Shame on you, Syd.”

“
Shame on me?” She was only trying
to survive. She wasn’t the one he had a conflict with. It wasn’t
like she’d picked him out of a catalog, or like she’d known how her
father had secured her meals. She’d been too young to think through
the ramifications of any of that.

She felt gross from sleeping in the closet, and she
wondered how many of those field mice had crawled over her in her
sleep. She wondered if Jacob had done anything inappropriate while
she’d been unconscious. And then she started to cry, because what
was the point anymore of pretending to be brave?

A hint of guilt shone from his eyes, but he just
said, “We need to get back on the road.”

He dragged her to the truck and made sure she was
buckled in. This time he didn’t hide the fact that he had plenty of
food for the trip. He took a dried meat product in a plastic
wrapper and a canned beverage from the back and got into the
truck.

Sydney was hungry, but she knew he wouldn’t let her
feed again until they stopped. And she also knew the black box
would be poised and ready in case she tried anything else
stupid.

Chapter Three

Noah sat in a corner of the glass cell. An hour
maybe until exercise time. The moon was getting closer. Tonight
more than any other time before, he felt amped up, like he couldn’t
run enough. He’d already been tempted on his laps around the yard
to shift, but if he did it before the full moon it would look
suspicious.

The twenty-eighth birth moon was the most important
and special day for a therian. He should have been with his family,
celebrating. As the alpha’s son, the whole pack would have gone all
out for a huge party. Even with how the world had changed, they
would make something special. He would have shifted and gone
running with them all, fed, and then come back to party some
more.

He’d been to a twenty-eighth birth moon celebration
when he was just a pup, right after he’d shifted to human for the
first time, and though he’d had to go to bed early since he was so
young, and a lot of the party was more adult-centered, he’d
remembered the buzz in the air, the excitement, and how he couldn’t
wait until his own twenty-eighth birth moon.

It wasn’t turning out quite like he’d thought it
would. Though now, it was even more exciting, because it might mean
freedom and reuniting with his family, assuming he could find his
way back home.

Noah went through the mental checklist of his escape
plan. He’d been forming it casually for years, but only more
specifically for the past three months. He was deep in thought when
he smelled her through the glass of his cell. The sweetest smell in
the universe.

His nostrils flared. It couldn’t be.

But it was.

He would never forget that scent if he lived to be
two thousand. That scent was burned into his brain. That scent was
Sydney.

“5856, congratulations, you have a new neighbor.
Meet 5857B. Isn’t she pretty?” The cheery robotic voice emphasized
the letter B too harshly, as if to say,
Yes, 5857 is dead. We
killed him. This one might be next. Perhaps there will be a 5856B
as well.

Not if Noah had anything to say about it. He growled
and looked down at his tattoo. If they laid a hand on her… If they
marked her in any way… He began to pace in the far-too-small cell
as a rage he’d never before felt began to build.

***

Sydney retreated to the other end of the glass cube,
her back pressed against the farthest wall she could get from the
angry, growling guy with glowing, yellow eyes. Fur began to sprout
on his arms and fangs pushed through his gums. A voice came out
over the speakers.

“
Be polite, 5856. We would like
this one to last a while.”

Polite, yeah right. But the fur disappeared back
into his skin. The fangs receded, and his eyes went back to a
normal brown. She wasn’t sure how strong the glass was. Was it
shatterproof? Was she about to find out? What was he?

He could be any number of therian breeds but
something inside her screamed “werewolf”. But the wolves she
remembered as a kid had all been nice. Not like this.

Had he killed the last person in the cube she now
occupied? How had he gotten in? Had they let him in? So many
questions and way too much intense staring aimed at her.

A few minutes passed, and someone
in a white lab coat came to her door. The glass slid open. The
woman in the coat had a friendly smile, but Sydney didn’t trust it.
Despite her recent road trip, she wasn’t
that
gullible. She knew the score now.

She sniffed the air. Human. Magical human. She’d
never had blood from a magic user before, and she was sure she
wasn’t about to get it now. The only kind of blood she’d ever had
was regular human. It was all they’d been able to get.

“
5857B, if you’ll come with me
please.”

“
S-Sydney. M-my name is
Sydney.”

“
5857B,” the woman repeated,
glancing at the clipboard in her hand as if it contained all
infallible knowledge. “Please, let’s not make this
difficult.”

Sydney looked back to see 5856 growling some more
and followed the woman in the white coat out of the cube. Between
the two, she seemed to be the safer option.

She was grateful for the silence
as they walked down the hall. It allowed her to digest
everything.

Jacob had taken no chances with her and had always
had the weapon ready in case she tried any further pathetic escape
or murder attempts. She couldn’t even kill a regular human who’d
practically shoved her fangs into his vein. What an awful excuse
for a vampire she was.

Tonight had been a shorter drive. The night was only
just now reaching its midpoint. She knew because she felt her
strongest in the middle of the night. But she was so hungry. The
traveling and stress had worn on her.

She’d begged Jacob to reconsider. She’d offered to
help him find his family, even though she had no idea who they were
or where they could be or how to get the information to find them.
She’d even suggested that maybe the magic users he’d met didn’t
know either. Maybe it was a trick. Maybe they just wanted her and
were using the story they knew would most easily gain his
cooperation. Maybe they were even a danger to him.