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  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events are the work of the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 Samantha Cross

  Lunar City

  SAMANTHA CROSS

  For Precious

  CHAPTER ONE

  I had forgotten how strong the aroma of pine needles and moist, dirt covered ground was at my grandmother’s house. Even sitting in my car with the windows rolled up, I could smell the forest around me like I was being buried beneath tree logs and sand. I had told myself over and over and over again that I would have to be threatened with a gun in order to return to this town, yet here I was, one year later, in the very place that had caused me more nightmares than I could count.

  But it was daytime and I knew that, at least for the moment, I was safe.

  Grandma had hit it big—one million dollars to be exact, using her lucky numbers inspired by my cousin Melanie’s birthday, her wedding anniversary, and a mix of her favorite TV channels. The new sum of money she had been blessed with was enough motivation for her to pack up her things, sell the house, and move someplace near a beach. I was elated, to be honest, and not just because she was a millionaire, but because she was leaving this godforsaken town.

  The entire drive down there I kept muttering to myself why am I here, why am I here? But Grandma, even with all her new money, was too much of a cheapskate to pay people to haul her things to her new house, so she asked me if I could lend a hand. My immediate thought was, hell no, but I knew I couldn’t leave her hanging and I figured the quicker she was out of that house the quicker she was someplace safe.

  Away from the damn werewolves.

  When I arrived in town, I couldn’t help but notice how much quieter it was than the year before. It had always been a very sleepy, cozy place, but it was still very much alive with activity. You’d see the lumberjacks chopping down trees in the forest, families playing baseball in the park and a car or two slowly driving down the dirt roads to get to the grocery store Priscilla used to work at. There was life here, but now−it was empty.

  The forest on each side of the dirt roads had grown thicker and wider, and branches sprawled out and hung like claws as I passed, dragging their tentacles along my car door and scratching up the paint. Everything was unkempt, and from the sheer lack of people I could tell why: everyone had left.

  The town felt like a map of misery. Every street corner I turned on and every house that I passed reminded me of the horrific events of the year before. Turner Road was where Max and I crashed our car and found that poor bleeding girl who had been bitten by a werewolf, the town hall is where dozens of people were attacked, and the boarded up windows of a small, quaint home with dead flowers in the driveway was where my good friend took his last breath. Owen. Seeing his house abandoned with the door hanging off the hinges and the front yard’s grass, dead from the blazing sun, reminded me that he was really gone, and I would never see those friendly, crystal blue eyes again.

  I choked back a tear and pulled myself together. I knew returning would be hard, but I wasn’t prepared for just how hard.

  I reached over to the glove compartment for a tissue, passed my sleeping orange cat, Biggie Smalls, who was curled up in a ball in the passenger seat beside me. He was a rascally cat who liked to destroy the house whenever I left him alone for too long, so I had picked up a habit of taking him on all my vacations and this all day trip was no different. We were like an old married couple in that way, side by side during our adventures, one of us usually passed out on the couch, the other irritated.

  I just hoped Grandma wouldn’t mind him chilling at her house for the day while I helped out.

  Because the town was virtually abandoned and the tree and shrub life not maintained in the slightest, I nearly passed Grandma’s house on the drive. A wall of leaves and weeds had grown and taken over the fence near her front yard, creating this wall of plant life that put her yard in a discreet cubby hole just out of plain view. My car’s passenger window was rolled halfway down, and as I steered my obnoxiously bright yellow Bug toward her driveway, twigs and leaves from the trees poked their way in, tap, tap, tapping away and breaking off into pieces, and dropping onto the seat. This alerted Biggie Smalls, who sat upright and stretched out all of his arms, perked his ears up, and looked ready to kick some ass.

  “Settle your horses, Rambo,” I warned him and rolled up the window, and in exchange for lack of fresh air, cranked up the air conditioner.

  When I turned into her driveway, I was surprised to see there was an unfamiliar white car parked there, taking up so much space I could barely pull in and had to settle for a spot midway in the yard.

  I turned off the engine, shut my eyes, and breathed in deeply. I knew the second I stepped out of my vehicle and placed my feet on the soil that this place was real, and that everything that had transpired one year ago wasn’t some horrific nightmare. There were so many negative memories flooding back to me all at once—the death, the carnage, and the loss of so many people I had come to care about. I felt a ping of pain in my chest, so sharp and unrelenting that I thought I was going to have a heart attack right there in the front seat of my car with my little B.I.G. purring beside me.

  I rested my face against the steering wheel and took long, deep breaths. Get it together, I told myself. You’ll be here for a few hours, tops. You can survive this.

  I scooped Biggie up into my hands, threw my purse over my shoulder and then headed up the graveled pavement. It was decorated with yellow flowers on each side, making a charming path that led to her front porch. The door to her house was hanging open, most likely kept that way so she could come in and out carrying, boxes of her items.

  Even though the door was wide open, I was still cautious not to intrude, stepping onto the porch quietly and calling out, “Grandma?” Biggie meowed after me, as if to shout out a greeting of his own.

  A few seconds passed and then I heard, “Dear, is that you?” I would recognize that high pitched, shaky voice anywhere. Grandma walked toward the open entrance in her usual bingo sweater that was too thick for any normal human being to wear during the summer, but this time she sported a pair of shorts that came down just below her knees and purple sunglasses that somehow highlighted the peculiar, unnatural blue hue of her hair. “That is you,” she said joyously when our eyes met.

  I snickered. “Whoa, you recognized me this time, Grandma. That’s got to be some kind of record.”

  “Your father had my doctor prescribe these new dandy pills that whipped my memory right into shape. I can recite the Declaration of Independence day by memory now,” she stated with a dizzying smile.

  “Oh, boy. Grandma and pills. That sounds like a fun cocktail,” I sarcastically remarked.

  She didn’t detect my sarcasm and maniacally laughed like an insane person.

  I faked a smile. “Are we sure they didn’t slip you something else?” I asked.

  “Don’t be loopy, dear. I feel fine. Come inside before the mosquitoes tear you apart.” She reached her liver spot covered hands to mine, but pulled back when she noticed Biggie in my arms. She grimaced and asked, “What is that?”

  “A feline,” I answered in a questioning manner. He was orange, furry, and he purred—no detective work required.

  “He looks like one of them damn purses you see girls carrying now.”

 
“Who have you been hanging out with lately, Grandma?”

  Suddenly, I heard footsteps coming up from behind her. It must have been the person driving the white car. “Hey Grandma, I found—” the voice cut off, and even though I didn’t see her my memory kicked in and every inch of my skin crawled.

  Melanie.

  Precious, perfect why-can’t-you-be-as-wonderful-as- your-cousin Melanie, with her flowing shoulder-length blonde hair, legs that went on for days and droopy Alicia Silverstone blue eyes. Her one flaw on an otherwise perfect face was an upturned nose, which I found poetically fitting, considering the way she treated me.

  She was the one person that I had done my very best to avoid as an adult. I have always been the kind of girl that was easy to make fun of, and most of my friendships included that, but there was something different about the way Melanie had treated me growing up. My childhood was a living nightmare because of her. She was the kind of girl who could get away with murder if she pleased, by stirring up trouble behind our parents’ back, but then always smoothly covered it up with an artificial smile and a princess act. I can’t begin to count how many times my parents forced me to hug and make up with her after I had told on her for pinching me. It didn’t help that her parents had a good deal of money and spoiled her rotten, making any chance of her developing into a mature adult almost impossible.

  It didn’t surprise me that she’d show up here after Grandma won the lottery.

  I gave her my best western movie stare down and asked, “What are you doing here?”

  “Grandma said I could pick through her stuff,” she said proudly and then flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder with just a jerk of her head. Her hands were too busy holding what looked to be Grandma’s jewelry box.

  My eyes honed in on it like a missile. “What is that?”

  “Now that Grandma is loaded, she’s offering me some of her antique rings.”

  “What?” I looked to Grandma in an accusatory fashion. “You said you’d have to be dead with the rats gnawing at your eyes before you let me even crack open the lid to your jewelry box.”

  “Oh…did I?”

  “Yeah. I took a look once and you threatened to break your hairbrush off in my ass.”

  “Now dear, there’s no need to get upset,” she said and tapped her fingers on my hand like she was petting me. “When Melanie is done you can take a look as well.”

  Leftovers as usual. Why was I not surprised?

  “Yeah, when I’m done you can take a look,” Melanie echoed and then proceeded to walk passed me. She stopped before she got to the front door and eyed Biggie in my arms. “Nice to see you finally have a man in your life,” she said and then cackled like some cartoonish witch. “Hey, what’s that there on your chest?” she continued, and when I glanced down for just a split second she flipped the tip of my nose with her finger and yelled, “Psych!” She then laughed the entire way out the door.

  I seethed quietly.

  “So good to see you girls getting along,” Grandma blissfully spoke.

  “Oh, yeah, I think we’re going to get matching tattoos after this.”

  “Oh, really? That’s nice, dear.”

  My Grandma’s inability to detect my sarcasm and rage wasn’t helping matters.

  Melanie had my entire family wrapped around her little finger since we were children, and the past year was probably the worst. She and her rich husband divorced and everyone in my family treated it like it was a tragedy big enough to rival death itself, sending her flowers and gifts along with messages offering their condolences. The actual grief stage lasted almost as long as their marriage.

  I took a deep breath, counted to ten, and said, “Is there any work I can do?” I had to remind myself that was, in fact, the reason I had come here, and not to retreat back into little kid Cora who was bullied on the playground.

  “There are some boxes in the den, dear. You can put them into the truck.”

  I recognized the den as the room I had slept in all last summer from the dozen of stuffed dead animals and deer heads mounted on the walls—the ones that felt like they stared into my soul as I slept, giving me nightmares.

  I set my purse and Biggie down on the couch and headed for the den, and when I went inside I was startled. All the stuffed corpses and hunter’s trophies were now packed into boxes, and the room was stripped completely bare. The curtains were gone, the bed was nothing but a mattress-free frame, and no decorations hung from the wall. It looked so empty I almost felt sad. It was like the last remaining bits of my time here were gone.

  It sounded crazy for me to be almost sad to see this place go, but despite the horrible conclusion, the days I spent here painting the house with Owen and shooting the breeze with Priscilla and Henry at the store were actual good times. I missed those guys. All three of them.

  Suddenly, I heard wind chimes clinking together from outside. I approached the frame of the window and peered out, and saw several silver tubes dangling from a tree, brushing into each other to make a gentle musical tune that was carried in the wind. With my head practically poked out the window, watching the branches of the trees sway in the direction the wind blew it, I was suddenly taken back. It was like no time had passed at all. If I closed my eyes, I could almost pretend it was last summer—when Molly, Jason, Henry, and Owen were all here, giving the town life. Just listing their names off like that brought me so much hurt.

  And then there was Max.

  The pain I felt thinking about him wasn’t from a place of loss, but of unbearable regret. We hadn’t exactly left things on the best of notes. The weeks following his werewolf bite were sheer torture because he pushed me away harder than anyone had ever pushed me away before. He knew what he was going to turn into and he knew what kind of danger it put me in. No matter how hard I tried to persuade him, he just didn’t want my help. He said there was nothing that I could do, and really, he was right. There was no cure for this, and no all-knowing power to go to for advice. I know I certainly didn’t have the answers.

  I promised myself I wouldn’t abandon him, but as the days passed and the next full moon grew closer, I was forced to return to the life I had in Detroit; the job, the apartment, and the friends I had. The week that I returned home, I attempted to get into contact with Max, but he wouldn’t answer any of my calls. He simply cut off all connection with me.

  My heart ached when I thought of him going through his first transformation, then his second, third, fourth, fifth and so on. Was he alone? Did it hurt worse than imaginable? Was he holding up all right? These were thoughts that plagued me daily. How could I just leave town like that, at his lowest point possible? Even Owen, who had been tormented by what he was, had someone with him every month that passed. Max was all alone. Just thinking about it put me in a miserable mood.

  It was then that I knew what I had to do. I had to see Max.

  He was literally five minutes away from Grandma’s house, and most of Grandma’s belongings were packed away and ready to be loaded into the truck, so I’d be done here in no time. There was no excuse not to see him.

  But the thought put me on edge. My teeth chattered and my palms began to sweat, knowing that he was nearby and I was going to have to make the brave step of initiating a meeting. I had never been any good at reconnecting with people, and that was one of the reasons I never lost contact with anyone, especially ones I had these feelings for.

  I reminisced of the time he had tapped his fingers against the screen of the window before me, calling to me in the night so I would meet him out on the porch, and he would stare at me with those enticing pale blue eyes, head tilted, mouth smirking. I remembered the way my heart raced as he inched in closer to kiss me, and how my body trembled when we were robbed of that moment.

  I sighed. We never got that kiss.

  Out of nowhere, I heard my Grandma screaming at the top of her lungs in the living room. She sounded absolutely terrified, and as I ran toward her to investigate, all of these old feeli
ngs of the terror I had last year came flooding back to me. It was daytime, I assured myself. Nothing that detrimental was going to happen in the light of day.

  “Grandma, what is it?”

  “A rat! I just saw a rat!”

  I exhaled, relieved. I’m not sure what I was expecting to find, but knowing it was a measly rat put me at ease. Sure, I found them repulsive, but they were nothing compared to the beasts slinking around in the woods. “Where did it go?” I asked.

  “Behind the couch.”

  I took a quick glance and saw what appeared to be an orange tail curling around the corner of the sofa and then disappearing behind it. “It’s my cat, Grandma,” I told her.

  “Why do you have a rat, dear?”

  “Cat,” I emphasized.

  “What happened?” Melanie shouted, bursting through the door like Clark Kent escaping a phone booth with his Superman apparel on. “I heard screaming.”

  “Everything’s fine,” I told her.

  “Everything is not fine,” Grandma countered. “I saw a creature behind the couch.”

  “Oh, no,” Melanie said and then jogged to Grandma and pulled her in close to her chest for a tight hug. She patted her on the back and swayed her back and forth like Grandma was an overgrown infant. I shook my head. Boy, was she laying it on thick. I had to wonder just how much ass kissing Melanie was willing to do in hopes that Grandma would leave her fortune to her.

  “Guys, it’s a freaking cat,” I assured them. “And a small one at that. I have larger rats living in my cupboards.”

  “Oh, that’s right, you lived in Detroit,” Melanie commented, her nose scrunched and her eyes sizing me up and down like living in Detroit was some kind of disease she would catch if she got too close. “Isn’t it, like, one of the most dangerous cities in the US?”

  “I think we slipped out of the top five, but I don’t live there anymore. I moved to be closer to Grandma.”

  “I’m going to do that, too,” she said proudly while swooping an arm around Grandma. “As soon as I find a place to live, that is. There’s just so many great homes to choose from.”