Chapter 3 – Luna
Chapter Three
Luna
I stumbled out of Jack’s apartment, weak—now that I wasn’t operating on adrenaline, my body still felt a quart low.
And Jack . . . Jack, Jack, Jack . . . he really had been ready to turn me, right then, when he asked.
Except that my current Master wouldn’t let me say yes.
I looked around the outdoor corridor, wondering where he was hiding—and how come he’d been able to be inside Jack’s apartment with me, and Jack not know.
I held the keys to my little Fiat with a shaking hand and walked down the hall, hitting the button on my key fob, listening for its beep, craning my head back and forth across the parking lot—when one of my shadows peeled off the wall to come stand beside me.
Only years of serving Rosalie stopped me from screaming in surprise. She’d trained me well; no good ever came of giving your location away.
The shadow moved to stand in front of me, a me-shaped spot of liquid darkness with blurry edges. “Master, I was so close,” I hissed. “I thought you wanted him to owe me?”
“And now he does,” the shadow-puppet shaped like me informed me in my mind.
I rocked back on my heels, remembering the moment.
I’d been about to tell Jack “Yes!” and mean it, from the bottom of my soul, when I’d felt my Master’s touch beneath the table, his cold hands wrapping around my calves then moving up my thighs, threatening to go higher.
The chill had snatched my words away, and I knew there was only one possible reason that he was there, right at that moment.
To stop me.
I’d still wanted to yell it, and then throw myself into Jack’s arms and wait for his bite . . . but if my true Master, the one who had sent me to serve Jack, was there, it would have displeased him.
He wouldn’t have interrupted, otherwise.
And I was scared of him enough as it was. I didn’t want him to be unhappy with me.
“If he makes you,” the shadow went on, its words reverberating in my head with magic, “then you’re nothing to him again.”
“That’s not true,” I whispered. “Jack’s not like that.”
“As a human you’re more frail,” he continued, like he hadn’t heard me.
“It makes him feel the need to care for you.” The shadow stepped closer, and a ghostly hand pushed my hair back.
I shivered in a combination of horror and desire.
I was scared of the power this Master held, but I also wanted to be just like it, so badly.
I’d spent so much of my life afraid of truly dying—I never wanted to hurt or fear again. “I watched him, as you healed.”
“I don’t understand,” I confessed.
Cold lips leaned in to kiss at my neck. “Your understanding is irrelevant. Stay with him, now that he’ll keep you—and stay human, or else.” The shadow took a salacious lick up to my ear and then disappeared.
Or else what? I wanted to ask, but I already knew the answer.
Or else I wouldn’t actually get to live as a vampire for very long.