Chapter 22 – Luna
Chapter Twenty-Two
Luna
I landed barefoot in the dirt behind the truck, scrambled forward, and kept running, until a Faithful caught me—and I slugged him right in the balls.
“Don’t you—we—” I panted, then dared to look back because somehow I wasn’t already dead yet.
What remained of the truck was in a construction site—the bumps I’d felt earlier must’ve happened when the semi jumped a curb—but there was a huge piece of it, and everything else surrounding, that was missing.
Like something had chosen a spot just past the truck’s cab and then circumscribed it for about twenty feet in every direction to disappear—half the truck was gone, although the part that remained was in a sloping curve, there was a divot of ground missing, and some of the lights the Faithful were shining showed floors of nearby construction that looked like a giant had taken a bite out of them.
“What the fuck,” I whispered, not really comprehending.
“Contain this area,” someone commanded from behind me—as a strong hand grabbed my upper arm, wheeled me around, and didn’t let go.
Paco. And if I ever thought Jack had been frightening before, I was wrong. He looked like a motherfucking storm cloud. “Where is he,” he demanded flatly, and when I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know, he whammied me. “Where is he!”
“I have no idea!” I said, throwing up my hands, half in protest, half to protect myself, before wrapping an arm around my chest to hold onto my creaking ribs.
That was clearly not an acceptable answer as he stared past me and I watched the pain of Jack’s mysterious absence—and let’s be honest, likely fucking death, after the explosion-thing I’d seen—finally hit him.
I shook myself free of his stunned grasp. “Oh? I’m sorry—did you fuck around and then find out?”
He refocused in on me and I prepared to withstand personal violence, but then he shoved me aside and ran into the center of the earthen divot and screamed.
It was heartrending, and it went on for so long I covered my ears to block out the sound, knowing that I’d hear it anyhow, that it was echoing in my soul already.
I couldn’t help it; I started crying.
A little bit for everything: I hurt, I was exhausted, for Paco’s current pain, and Jack . . . but mostly for myself.
Because I’d missed my only chance.
If Jack was dead . . . no one else would ever turn me.
It wasn’t fair.
But I don’t know what I fucking expected, right? Because Huntington’s “wasn’t fair” and working for Rosalie for almost a decade without being turned “wasn’t fair” and not getting to take Jack up on his genuine offer “wasn’t fair.”
If there was a Land of Unfairness somewhere out there, I was its fucking queen.
I slid my hands down to cover my face and sobbed as great big pellets of rain began to fall from the sky, like the world was crying with me, and that made everything even worse somehow as I choked on both snot and my own upcoming mortality.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” I whispered into my palms, shuddering with each soft exclamation, unsure how things could get worse in this lifetime, while having an unerring certainty that—given my luck—somehow they would.
And then someone put something over me to block the rain out.
I took a moment to gather myself, still looking at the dirt between my toes as it turned to mud.
There was no reason for me to rush to acknowledge their misplaced kindness: my new dress was torn, I was spattered with blood, some of the grime on my feet was almost certainly vampire dust, and I’d just cried so hard my eyeliner was probably decorating my cleavage.
So I waited until I was fucking good and ready before I finally glanced up—and found a rather concerned looking Nilesh, in the same suited getup as the rest of the Faithful, holding a black umbrella and looking down at me.
Watching me like I was something he’d caught on a table under a glass, and he wasn’t sure if he was going to kill or free it quite yet.
“Ni-lesh?” I said, stammering his name.
“Luna,” he said, nodding.
I finally managed to take in things beyond him. There were more Faithful in suits milling about, taping off perimeters and setting up tents and tables—I wasn’t sure if this’d just become a crime scene or an archaeological dig.
“What are you doing here?” I slowly asked him, still not fitting him in. “You’re—one of them?” I reared back a little, back into rain-range, then shuffled forward, remedying my mistake. “We—we fucked,” I said, quite loudly, within earshot of several of the others.
“We did,” he agreed. “But then you bailed and I never got the chance to talk to you.”
I frowned, and stepped away from him fully, raindrops-be-damned. “Talk to me about what?”
“About myself, and that thing you took from Rosalie’s,” he said, utterly calm and matter-of-fact. “The bone weapon—that was actually neither bone nor weapon, but a piece of an ancient creature’s feeding apparatus.”
“But—you—you’re a tattoo artist.” My face scrunched up. “I saw you work—I’ve seen your work on people! You—”
He spun a hand between us. “Can I show you my back already?” he asked, handing the umbrella over.
I took it, gawking, then watched him take off his suit jacket, and let him pass that over too.
“We knew that when Rosalie died there was going to be a power shift in the local paranormal communities—she was too influential for there not to be,” he said, taking off his tie, then beginning in on shirt buttons.
“And we’d known that she’d had several objects of interest, for quite some time.
Frankly, as dangerous as they were, they were better off with her than us,” he said, his hands sinking down his chest as they worked, revealing a thin cotton undershirt beneath.
“As bad as her actions sometimes were, she kept a steady hand at the wheel. Smart enough to know not to get too greedy, while prideful enough to keep other contenders down. A true apex predator, in all senses of the word.”
His shirt was free from his slacks now, and he quickly unfastened his cuffs to remove it.
“So we weren’t really interested in disrupting the status quo—and if we’d taken her toys, we would’ve had to deal with them, which is oftentimes harder to do than it sounds.
Some items are dangerous to destroy, and you can trap whatever you want in a lead casket and toss it out in the middle of the Atlantic ocean—a trawler will still dredge it up, if it wants to be found.
So it was better that she watch over them, with her continual cunning vigilance.
” He handed his linen shirt to me, and reached for his undershirt.
“But once she died, all bets were off,” he said, finally showing me the chest I’d kissed not that long ago, his nipples hardening against the night’s chill—and then he turned around.
His broad back framed two strange markings that mirrored one another, that I realized were not tattoos.
Brands, possibly?
No.
Scars.
Like a person might have if they’d had their wings hacked off.
It took me a moment to absorb what he was showing me, and even then—
“I don’t believe you,” I said, as he turned back around.
He snorted and scanned everything that was being erected behind us. “Somehow, all of this, you’re fine with, but not some small faint proof of former divinity?”
I dropped the umbrella so I could slap him. “My mother died. Where the fuck was your God then?”
“I don’t know, Luna.” He cupped the skin I’d hit with his palm and nodded, considering me. “There’s a reason I’m stuck on Earth. I like to ask a lot of questions.”
I started shaking my head and didn’t stop, unwilling to accept any part of this new reality. “No. Absolutely not.” I threw his shirts at him, and pulled on his suit jacket to stay warm with—then I realized he didn’t start working at Dark Ink until I did.
And that when that first Faithful had gotten inside the truck he’d said he’d found the “target.”
He hadn’t meant Jack—he’d meant me.
“You just go around sleeping with girls to gain their trust?”
His eyes narrowed. “Someone has to. These putzes have too much honor,” he said, jerking his head back to where the Faithful were still scurrying. Rain beaded and then trailed down on his warm brown skin.
“But aren’t you . . . the baddie?”
“I’ve kind of wrapped around to the other side now.
I think my thing is that I like fighting for the underdogs, and I don’t know if you noticed, evil’s kind of having a field day.
” He didn’t look cold in the least as water sluiced off of his chiseled pecs.
“Plus, also—live a few thousand years, and you see what you’re willing to do to pass the time. ”
Me, apparently. I gave him the coldest smile in my arsenal. “So you’re saying you have met a lot of girls like me then, before,” I said, and then turned on my heel.
Behind me, Paco’d fallen to his knees and was sobbing on the mud in the divot’s deepest spot. He was covered in it—like he’d been scrabbling through it with his hands. I swept the umbrella up and walked over to him.
“I tried to tell you, Luna—but you wouldn’t let me!” Nilesh called after me.
I couldn’t even be bothered to shout a “Fuck you” back as I reached where Paco was—I just held the umbrella over his head. He looked up at me, panicked and lost, with all-too-human eyes. “What have I done?”
“Shh,” I soothed him, putting a cold hand on his cheek.
“I don’t know, baby. But we need to leave here, all right?
It’s not safe for us.” He clapped his hand against mine to keep it there and nodded.
“Come on,” I said, urging him up. I wrapped his fingers with my own and pulled him up to standing.
“Do you still have your phone?” I asked, in my most sympathetic tone, and when he nodded, I said, “Yeah? Good. Call us up a ride, will you? We need to get home.”