Unleash The Moon (The Preternaturals Book 6) (4 page)

He looked at the numbered tattoo on his upper arm.
It was the same place his dad’s alpha tattoo was. Just more insult
added to injury. When he busted out of this shit hole, he’d get it
tattooed over with something closer to what Cole had. Each day when
he heard 5856, he whispered “Noah” so he wouldn’t forget. After
twenty years in captivity, they’d already made him forget his last
name. He couldn’t allow the same to happen with his first.

The glass door slid open with a whoosh, and a gust
of cool canned air hit him in the face, filling him with a sense of
wellness and happiness. But Noah wasn’t fooled. It was the stuff
they put in the air conditioning to keep everybody calm. He was
sure the humans in the main city were getting dosed with it as well
to keep everyone docile and obedient.

For all he knew it actually worked on them. He
wasn’t sure if it worked on the other preternatural prisoners, but
no matter what Noah’s emotional side said, the cool, logical part
of him wasn’t buying into it.

He barely remembered the machinations of the vampire
king when he’d been building up his police state before the magic
users had started taking over. But if Anthony could see this? He’d
get a hard on. The humans had proven to be more diabolical than
vampires. And that was saying something. Congrats, humans!

He filed out with the other numbered therian
prisoners into the hallway. The cell next to his, 5857, was empty
tonight. It wasn’t the first time a prisoner had disappeared and
never returned. Noah tried not to think about it.

“Please follow the glowing arrows to the exercise
yard, and remember to play nice with your friends.”

Noah hid the eye-roll. It would do him no favors for
the cameras to catch a whiff of rebellion. He moved quietly with
the inmates from nearby cells down the seemingly never-ending
hallway. Another door slid open that took them into the exercise
yard, which was a giant balcony instead of a real yard.

Even so, out here he could feel the moon on his
face. He hadn’t seen the sun in more years than he could count
because his group was mixed in with vampires now. But it only made
him think of Sydney and how she’d never seen the sun.

Noah’s complexion was naturally dark, so at least he
didn’t look too sickly. But he still missed the sunlight.

Someday.

Somehow in everything he’d lost, he’d managed to
retain the memory of the date of his birth. Occasionally, he asked
one of the guards what day it was. He’d been keeping up with the
year as well. It wouldn’t be long now.

His twenty-eigth birthday had just passed. The next
full moon he would reach his full power. If there was any chance at
all, it would be on that night.

He’d forgotten about the twenty-eighth birth moon.
But one day in a dream after he’d eaten the drugged meat, Aunt
Greta of all people had shown up, telling him the harrowing story
of what her twenty-eighth birth moon had been like.

It could have just been a dream, but when he woke,
he remembered. Aunt Greta wasn’t mated in the same way his kind or
the demons or vampires were mated, but she lived with a man who was
much the same as a mate, a sorcerer named Dayne. Had he somehow
made it possible for the werecat to deliver the message? Or was it
a coincidence—his own subconscious reminding him that there might
be a way to escape this place after all?

Was somebody out there still hoping and believing
Noah was alive? He wanted to believe they hadn’t given up on
him.

In the early years, he’d only been a child. The idea
of escape had seemed like a lofty dream. It was a comforting story
he told himself to fall asleep, and then, once asleep, it became
more real and played out in vivid color.

But each day when he woke, it became the impossible
feat once again. These people were powerful. They’d created a
fortress of their city that no preternatural could get inside, and
a fortress of their prisons that no preternatural could get out
of.

As he’d grown older and wiser, he’d begun to see the
cracks in their security, the way they believed too much in the
stuff they sent in with the canned air, the drugs they gave them,
the cheery robotic voice that worked daily to brainwash a bit more
of their soul away.

Noah wouldn’t let them succeed. He thought about his
parents, about Aunt Greta, about Sydney. He trained his mind daily
to stay stronger than his captors even if he seemed obedient, even
if it seemed he would never attempt escape because he never had
before.

“
Please remember, keep
fraternizing to a minimum while in the fitness yard,” the cheerful
robotic voice said over loud speakers. The speakers sat atop very
tall fences crowned with barbed wire.

Noah didn’t have to shift yet under the moon, but
when it was full, he wouldn’t have much of a choice—particularly on
his twenty-eighth birth moon. One would think if it was the night
he’d reach the height of his power that he’d be able to control the
shift when under the moon, but it didn’t quite work that way. The
moon overwhelmed most of them, even the strongest, unless they’d
just fed.

He ran laps around the yard. They didn’t have to
tell him not to fraternize. Others would betray you when it would
save their own neck or when it most suited them. If you told
someone your thoughts or feelings or plans, they were out there.
And in a place like this, that was bad. He wouldn’t speak to
anyone, and was only grateful that as a werewolf, nobody could
force their way inside his mind.

They watched all therian interactions closely. But
they didn’t worry about Noah and had long ago figured out that he
wasn’t about to form any tight bonds. In their minds, it probably
meant he’d succumbed to his fate—accepted it so he wasn’t a threat
to them. In his own it meant he didn’t have to worry about busting
anybody else out to take with him.

He wouldn’t allow himself to get attached. To any of
them. He’d have one shot, and friends would only be dead
weight.

***

Sydney sat in the passenger side while Jacob drove.
She still wished she could have left him at the compound, but he
was a dead man either way he went: coming out here into the wild
with her or staying behind.

It was only a matter of which way he wanted to die,
and he seemed to have chosen with Sydney. If it might be any
consolation to the human driving the old-fashioned truck, she’d be
killed right along with him. He was stronger than her, and a better
fighter. So if he died, she did. Unless she accidentally drained
him first.

When the humans had reinforced the cities against
the preternaturals, they’d used magic to find new technologies and
then blended the two into an almost seamless whole. Suddenly they
had no need or use for fossil fuels. Nobody cared about them
anymore. Oil fields had been abandoned all over the world.

The remaining preternaturals had taken it upon
themselves to gain control of them because some might need to
travel long distances using vehicles left behind. Automobile
companies outside the major cities were taken over as well,
creating a slow but steady trickle of new vehicles to replace the
old ones that wore out.

The truck Sydney and Jacob were in was an old green
beater that had managed to last over twenty years, which made it
dinosaur-old in car age. It had been well cared for, even if the
sides of it were rusting. Jacob had found it pretty easily at an
abandoned service station in the middle of Cary Town—a service
station that some intrepid rebel had made a gasoline delivery
to.

The entire town had crumbled like some
post-apocalyptic nightmare without enough people to keep things
running. But Sydney still had the vaguest memory of her father’s
penthouse at the Cary Town Luxury Apartments, before he’d relocated
them permanently to the compound.

“
Whatcha thinking about, Syd?”
Jacob asked. His hand drifted to her knee, and she shifted closer
to the window.

She was now keenly aware of the danger Jacob posed.
Sure, they’d slept together before, and deep down she knew he
hadn’t had much of a choice in the matter. He’d been their blood
slave, and neither she nor Elise had been particularly shy about
utilizing his other charms.

But Sydney had never tried to force herself on him.
She couldn’t have anyway, but maybe, with her father being who he
was, the threat had been implied if the princess was made unhappy.
That thought horrified her. She hoped Jacob hadn’t seen it that
way, but now wasn’t the best time to bring the conversation up. Not
when they were on a deserted road, and he was the most powerful
being within screaming distance.

“
Nothing,” she replied.

“
Come on, that isn’t the face of
somebody thinking about nothing.”

“
I was just thinking about how
everything has changed so much.” They’d been driving for hours, and
she’d fought not to think much about her parents or how they would
feel about all this. But she’d been suffocating there. They had to
understand. Weren’t they suffocating, too?

But her parents had seemed happy. Instead of hating
the confinement, her dad especially had seemed sedate most of the
time. The pressures of being king had faded once he lost control of
everything. It was as if he’d found some zen place now that he
couldn’t micromanage the entire world.

He’d been content to micromanage Sydney instead. It
was an uncharitable thing to think about her father. He worried
about her.

As long as he knew his mate and daughter were safe,
he seemed happy. He was very different from the Anthony Burgess
she’d heard stories about. It made her wonder if they were even all
true.

“
Maybe we should go back,” Sydney
said, already regretting her decision. She could negotiate
something less restrictive with her father. He loved her. Maybe he
could be reasoned with. Though, by the time she got back, her dad
would be so livid she might be confined to not just the compound,
but her room as well, under guard until he calmed down. And with a
vampire, that could be months.

He wasn’t known to let go of grudges. He’d been
obsessed for years with finding out where the Cary Town pack’s den
was. When he’d finally discovered the den, it didn’t matter
anymore. Things had spiraled well past the point where he could
control anything. Sydney used to play with the alpha wolf’s
pup.

Noah hadn’t shifted to human for the first time
until he was five, and it was so weird for her that Sydney didn’t
see him for a few weeks after that because she couldn’t understand
why he had turned into a boy. After he disappeared a few years
later, she’d become despondent, and her father had gotten even
crazier about the wards and protections and never letting her out
of his sight.

Jacob drove faster. Not exactly the response she was
expecting to “Maybe we should go back.” His face was tense.

“
Syd… we’re not going
back.”

“
But…” Maybe he was right. Maybe
she should keep going. But wasn’t that supposed to be her decision?
She’d let him tag along and now he was acting like he was the one
in charge.

“
I’m sorry, Syd. I need to go back
to my family.”

“
Okay, so go, but take me home,
first.”

“
I wish it were that simple. I
don’t know where they are. But I know someone who does. We’ve
orchestrated a trade.” It was clear from the expression on his face
that she was the trade.

“
What? How? You live with
vampires
!” Sydney didn’t understand how
Jacob could possibly be some kind of double agent. Wouldn’t a vamp
have seen inside his head? The others couldn’t read him with
Elise’s claim on him. But Elise could. Then again, the vampiress
had harbored a strong grudge against Sydney for a while now. It
wouldn’t have been hard to get her cooperation.

“
I met some magic users from the
Hub City.”

It used to be known as Las Vegas a long time ago,
but when it was taken over by magic users, it had become the
central point of organization in this country.

“
And?” She kept hoping for a
punchline. She was afraid she might be the punchline.

“
And, they know where my parents
are. They shielded my mind so when I killed Elise, none of the
other vamps would have a chance to read me and know what was
happening. I’m sorry. They said they want to study you. They’re
fascinated by what you are.”

And here she’d been worried
about
his
safety. What completely
wasted angst.

Sydney wiped away a stray tear. It was bad enough to
be so physically weak, but she couldn’t let him see her cry on top
of everything else. “I thought you loved me.”

“
I find you attractive, and you
aren’t unlikeable. It wasn’t hard to pretend what I wanted you to
see. But you had to know I wouldn’t be happy after being taken from
my family like that. The other humans at the compound are
different. They fell for the vampires who claimed them because they
were thrown out of the cities to the monsters, and those monsters
have treated them well in the end. It’s a little harder for me to
romanticize it.”

She was glad she’d never fallen for him. It was bad
enough to be betrayed by someone she’d thought was a friend. If
she’d thought of him as more it would have been crushing. At least
she didn’t have to be the foolish girl who fell in love with
him.

“
I’m going to start looking for a
resting place for you for the day. I’ll figure out what I’m going
to eat when you’re asleep.”

Once the sun came up, she’d sleep like the dead,
literally. She wouldn’t rise until after sunset. And Sydney rose
later than many other vampires, anyway. There were so many stupid
ways in which she was different, weaker, and not any kind of
respectable vampire at all.