Blood Moon (Moon Books) Read Online Free PDF Page B

follow my parents’ directions very well. I snuck out looking for the vampires one night when they were working on a lead. Unfortunately, I got a little too lucky. My parents traced my path and caught up to me just as I stumbled on the vampires’ nest.” He took a deep breath. “That’s how they really died, Zack. You know how I said it was in a car crash? It wasn’t. My parents died trying to protect me from the vampires.”
    “But you, uh, got away.”
    “Well, not exactly.”
    I knew before he even opened his mouth that I didn’t want to hear it. There was only one place this was going and it wasn’t good.
    “I didn’t die, but I didn’t get away free and clear either. One of the vampires bit me.”
    I sat stock still on the dock. I could almost feel the shockwaves from that last statement. “Noah, are you trying to tell me—”
    “Yeah. I am.” He took a deep breath. “Zack, I’m a vampire.”
    I was speechless for a second but then every little drop of incredulity that I had been feeling came pouring out at once in a huge wave. “Okay, you know what? I can’t do this. There’s just no way.”
    It was just too crazy, too much, too impossible. There was no such thing as vampires, werewolves, or supernatural bounty hunters. My life had turned into Thursday night on the CW and I couldn’t handle it. I needed reality.
    I jumped up, yanking my arm out of his and stomped down the dock towards the leafy trail.
    Why couldn’t he just say he was afraid of being gay or that his parents didn’t want him seeing me anymore and he felt guilty because they died in some awful car crash before he could reconcile with them? Was it just so hard to admit that he’d been a chicken that he had to come up with some nuts-o story? I had to admit there was something weird going on with his family but monster hunting? Give me a fucking break.
    I slapped angrily at the branches that seemed to be strangling me and tried not to picture the pain I saw on his face when I turned away.
    It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t. There was no fucking way. Cause if it was then everything I knew to be reality was just some surface world that most of us existed in while supernatural forces battled beneath our noses constantly. If it was true, he’d been trying to protect me from everything that was beyond that thin film of reality. If it was true, than he really did love me and I had just walked away from him. The worst part, though, the part that was nearly unthinkable? If everything he’d said was true, than Noah Harper, the guy I always figured I’d love forever, was a vampire.

Summer Moon
    If anything, it was even more impossible to fall asleep that night, than it had been the first night we’d gotten there. It had to be close to dawn before I started to feel my eyes get heavy.
    I’d been so ready to forget the past. All it took was one look at his face and I just wanted to forgive him and move on. Why couldn’t it have been that easy? Why couldn’t he have hugged me and kissed me and said he made a huge mistake and he wanted us to be together? It was all I’d wanted since forever.
    I squeezed my eyes shut. I needed to get some sleep. Maybe in the morning, which was coming awfully quickly, the whole thing would look different.
    * * * *
    It was nearly noon when I awoke to an impatient pounding on my door. I looked at my clock blearily. It took me a few seconds to remember why I had slept in so late, why I had been up most of the night thinking.
    Noah.
    Noah my almost-boyfriend who was a vampire and had to break up with me three years ago to protect me.
    I groaned.
    Who has shit like this to deal with? No one. That was the answer. No one did because it wasn’t real.
    “Zack, get up!” Maya’s voice called from the other side of my door.
    “I’ll be out in a minute, Maya,” I grumbled at her and headed for my still halfway packed bag to find my swimsuit. I wasn’t sure if I could handle a day of lake games after the night