Crossblood - Completed

Chapter 42

~Moon's POV~


Three in the morning. Witching hour. When the night is quiet and moonlight floods the confides of your bedroom, the light breeze swaying the curtains, drifting in with them the scent of nightshade and ripening dew. Sleep still clouds my eyes, multicolored swirls floating over my vision as I turn to the seemingly tatted arm resting next to my cheek.

"Liam." He barely nudges, eyes blinking for a moment before falling still, mind endorsed in whatever he's dreaming of. "Liam." The second attempt is as fruitful as the first, his bare body rolling over so his breaths tussle my hair, arms crossed over my breast in an 'X'. Cautiously I back away from him, unwrapping his thigh from my own to allow myself to sit up, mentally thanking him for keeping the lights on.

This is nice. I pull the blankets up to my chin, sinking myself back into the sparkling clean mattress, a miracle that must've happened as I slept, and watching Liam for the second time in one night.

"Morning sunshine." His hair is a mess, my hand seemingly indented into his scalp with tuffs sprawled up here and there that managed to escape my grasp last night. There's a spark in his eyes as he snakes his hand over mine, intertwining our fingers and pulling me into his chest, my breaths soon synchronizing to his heartbeat as we sit in momentary silence, neither one of us sure on how to strike up the topic.

Pulling away from him I awkwardly grab for a shirt, slipping it over my head with difficulty and sucking on the neck, covering my mouth with my sleeve covered hands. "I always heard you don't remember what happened," I start, crossing my legs Indian style. "that you lose yourself in the moment and your other side takes over." I let out an awkward laugh as I look away from his eyes, though it resembles more of an irritated cough than a laugh. "I remember everything though."

He answers with a shrug, the blanket slipping down his body as he sits up against the headboard, oblivious to how exposed he is, how my temperature is rising with every look I steal his way. "Everyone is different."

"What was yours like?"

"I went through a lot of mates...the humans never lasted long with me. I'd wake up to a blood stained room, some person dismembered, sprawled across the room with a scream still etched on their face." Drawing a hand down his face he pauses, looking at me through the sides of his eyes before continuing, head down in shame.

"That was when I decided to get rid of my Shifting, to have that destruction taken from my body. Eventually though I got the perfect mate, a former shifter. They were my mentor, my savior. Sounds pretty cliche, huh?" He doesn't wait for an answer, only continues his tale with a new air of confidence to him. "He taught me everything I needed to know about shifters, helped me with my decision to change myself. I've never regretted the surgery, without it I wouldn't have been able to help you ya'know?"

"Do you think I rushed into things?" It's barely a whisper, a hidden thought not meant to be released quite yet.

"To be honest? Yes." He must've been able to sense the way I tensed up at his words, his hand flying to my back in an attempt at comforting me with his touch. "I would've liked to get to know you better. Your likes and dislikes, your third grade crush, the name of your fifth cat."

"Does it ever get better?" The light has left my body, only an empty carcass left as I speak my words, each syllable drowning me until I'm gasping for air, chest heaving as I grip whatever is closest.

"Mating? Yeah, eventually-"

"No." There's a crack in my voice, the true meaning behind my words seemingly revealing themselves as his lips form an 'O', sympathy flooding his gaze as he draws me into his arms, petting down my hair while my body shakes beneath his iron grip.

"Baby," I can hear the pain thick in his throat, coating his words in tears that will no longer fall. "it doesn't. That longing will never leave your soul."

"Why." My mouth hangs, no strength left in me to be able to pull it back, to clench my jaw and force the threatening tears back to their home. "It isn't fair."

His sigh ruffles my hair, the chill of his breath sneaking down the collar of my sweater, absorbing through my skin and shocking my spine with its unexpected frost. "It's just our cross to bear." Once more he wipes his hand down the length of my back, drawing circles with the tips of his nails until my breaths are finally calm, the red of my cheeks dying down as I come to terms with myself.

Watching me undress, Liam turns away, his knees drawn into his chest as his own words sink in, bottom lip trembling as he clinches his fist to calm himself. The windowsill seems all too inviting at the moment, its perch calling for me to sit in the open breeze, to distance myself from the man in my bed, from the problems he carries with him. Before I know it I'm resting in the open window, body quickly paling as the night air hits me, skin already the color of my namesake, the blood visible through my translucent fingernails.

Each breath stings with a vengeance, the pain of a thousand needles dipped in antifreeze, sweet but deadly. My mind only focuses on the sweet, on the snow dusted roofs of the buildings beside ours, animal prints lightly leaving their silent mark on each and every one of them. With another deep breath I'm met with yet another burn, the confectioner's caramel smoke drifting all the way down to the next block over, the scent finding its way into my room, nuzzling into each thread of my sweater and burying itself in the sheets.

I flinch at the slight brush of material against my skin, Liam cloaking me in a sheet to shield my skin from any further damage from my rendezvous with the night. Amongst the empty streets a light shines, footsteps following along with the slam of a door, then another, until the group rounds the corner of the bar. A swarm of cluttered black, its movement that of the ocean as it floods the streets, cloaking the brick in its shadows. There's another knock, a man in his thirties answering the pale pink door, apron covered in flour and cream, bright yellow candies stuck to every corner of his attire.

The groups exchange words, the man retreating back into his shop as the swarm eclipses him, coating him in their eternal night as he lets out a scream, the snarl of a hound echoing off each shop until the screams cease to exist. I'm sealed to the window, body shaken from his screams, from the scent of his blood and the river it etches into the indentions of the street.

The scent of a shifter.

As the blinds are forced shut I'm broken from my trance, the fear finally setting in as my mind catches up, hand flying to my wrist at my newfound realization.

They're killing shifters.

The room is a blur, my actions meaningless as Liam dresses silently, throwing clothes my way with his finger pressed to his lip, ushering me out of the bedroom and into the main quarters where the others reside.

They're killing shifters.

My heartbeat pounds into my ears with each scream, nails scratching at my ears to avoid the sound, the overwhelming scent of their mixing blood forcing me to gag. Liam has already woken everyone, each of them alert as they hear the screams, Andrew immediately turning to me, nodding to the room as he gathers us together.

"We split up-" He shuts my protest down with a look, seemingly regretting it as his features soften, hand rising to rub the back of my head in comfort. "Its the only way for us to get out. Moon, Kai, Julius, Jesse, and Liam go together alright? Me, Claire, Mikayla-"

There's a flame in the pit of my stomach, a sensation I can't explain but I somehow know... "I want Mikayla."

He covers his shock with a cough, pushing Mikayla my way as he finishes the teams. "That leaves me, Claire, Clide, James, and Will." The sparse moonlight catches his tears, a goodbye stuck in his throat as he hugs us both, chest hiccuping as he kisses Kai and then myself, hand coming up to cover his lips before he walks away, dread clear in his eyes at having to make a hasty departure, not enough time to say a proper goodbye.

In an instant he's back in our direction, hand wrapping around the collar of Julius's shirt, dragging him to the ground as he whispers something in his ear, letting him fall as he walks away with one last glance our way before pulling up his cloak and walking out the door.

"Until we meet again."

"Moon, lets go." Reluctantly, I follow them into the back room, its bed barren and walls sparse from lack of use, and across to the small window, climbing out and dropping two stories into a narrow alley below. I can no longer tell from which direction the screams are coming from, if we're running away from danger or towards it. There comes a time when my legs tire, my breaths tighten and falter, and the only thing keeping me running is fear, my hands intertwined with Kaiien's feeble ones as we cross alley after alley, turning this way and that with each sound and crack and scream and snarl.

I desperately want to fall, to twist my ankle and be forced back into the night waiting to feed on me, to end it now on my own terms instead of play their game of impending doom, to endanger Kaiien and subject him to the torture that was forced upon me. But as I take a look behind me I see his scrunched up face desperate to keep up, his limbs giving out without any food to fuel them and I'm reminded of that child, the one I protected at all costs, the one who I carried through the jungle as he slept on my back, the one I carried out of danger.

Quickly, I slip him onto my back and continue to run, the forest dense as we cut our own path, cautious not to rustle too many branches, wary of every crisp leaf and snapping twig that clutters the minefield of a floor.

It's too late to turn back. It's over in an instant, the one wrong step to doom us all as we're insnared in a trap, the three hours we spent distancing ourselves from them wasted for us only to be caught by a separate group. We're frozen in place, the gem laced wire enough to kill any man that dares cross it. From the bushes there comes voices, echoing off each tree and branch as it grows louder, the vibrations causing the wires encasing us to shake, only threatening us more as we move to avoid a cut, death looming over us until the voices come, cloaked faces surrounding the small trap in the woods, the world spinning from the obsidian until it finally collapses to black.


•••


The world has never been so gray.

Gray ceilings with dark gray indentions, the deep yellow lights flickering to cast gray shadows against the wall. The sparse amount of light that floods through the makeshift windows flows through in muted grays, covering the gray concrete floors with more...gray.

"He's awake!" Heels click against the concrete, its clash vibrating from one pounding ear to the next. A face eclipses my fluorescent sun, dark hair tickling the tip of my nose as I let out a staggered breath, tongue washing over my cracked lips in a poor attempt to revive them. The moisture has been sucked from my mouth, warmth drained from my body as I sit up from the medical table, the buttons of my cloak clinking against the cool metal surface.

"W-whe..." My voice fails me, throat aching as the eclipse brings me a glass, our fingers brushing one another as he passes it on, water splashing out of its confides from my trembling hands. The man notices, confiscating my glass and tangling his unkept nails into my hair. Another hand comes to his assistance, tilting me back as he pours the water in my mouth at a gentle pace. "Where am I?"

"Welcome to Sector G." My eyes have yet to focus completely, the disembodied voice floating from one side of the room to another, putting up various glasses from the sound of it. "You put up a good fight, that's probably why you're stuck with us."

"I lost?" I am in an infirmary...

"I never said that." The voice lets out a laugh, something rings in it with familiarity but my lack of strength tells me not to pursue it. "You got knocked out by the obsidian, woke up, killed half their men, got shot in the neck, and now reside in Sector G."

My vision has slowly started to come back to me, the blurred gray lumps taking form as medicine cabinets, what I mistook for a window is merely a discarded chair in the corner of the nine-by-nine room. "Is that the camp name?" With closer examination I notice no bars on the windows, no guards, not even a speck of blood on the cracked floors. "I am in a camp right?"

"Sector G is just which part you're in, it's a huge camp after all."

"Are you the doctor?"

"Are you going to keep asking questions?"

"Yes."

He seems proud of my blunt response, cracking a disgruntled smile before pushing me back down onto the metal operating table. "I'm not a doctor but I know how to fix a bullet wound. I saw your squad get kicked in here the other day-"

I shoot up in a hurry, head spinning before being roughly restrained, the first shot of pain coursing out of my collarbone and straight to each and every limb. "Other day?!"

"Being shot in the neck isn't something you recover from in a day and you were exposed to a heavy dose of obsidian. You should be dead." With a deep breath he pulls up a chair, seating himself comfortably next to me as my heart races in an inner panic, my face struggling to stay composed as I look around in a hurry, no one around except for this man.

"Look," He sweeps back his black hair, it's length almost the same as mine but with a delicate curl at the end, it's tied back with a ribbon, accentuating his features so they stand out even more. "right now you are in Sector G, it's reserved for troublemakers, the one who put up a fight when brought in. We're kept underground, hence the shitty lights when it's eight in the morning. Your tattooed friend got sent down here too, as well as the werewolf, but they were a bit nicer to them than they were to you."

"And the rest of-"

"I'm getting to them." His thin lips roll into a smile, scooting his chair closer to me and leaning his elbows against the table. "Sector A is the infirmary, everyone who is sick or appears sick is kept there. Your skinny friend is in there at the moment. Sector B has all the children, Sector C is the biggest sector, it keeps everyone they can't categorize, which is where your curly headed female friend is as is your other male friend. Sector D through F nobody really knows the categories for, its basically just an extension of Sector C."

"Thanks for the tour..."

"Another group came in with yours by the way...a blonde man, three teenagers, and a blonde girl."

Andrew.

"Thank you." The smile on my face is genuine, relief flooding me as I realize that they're safe, all of them are safe. "I can actually relax now."

"Well maybe you should go relax with your boyfriend in the upper section, he seems pretty strung out."

The man helps me up, legs shaking a bit as I'm led up a dripping stone stairwell, a dim light ahead leading to the echoing sound of chaos.

"Moon!" Liam and Jesse rush forwards, dried tears crusting on Jesse's cheeks as he holds me close, Liam waiting patiently behind him for his turn. As Jesse backs off he steps forward, hugging me with less fervor than Jesse's wild greeting. There's a calm in his eyes that casts away my fear, a quick nod telling me everything will be okay, that I can't be hurt here.

The bustling crowd doesn't notice our embrace and if they did they didn't care, they go back to their beds or to their fights, ignoring the newcomers to their twisted group. I'm placed next to an empty bed, Jesse and Liam sharing a sector together and leaving me alone. Each sector holds two plain beds, a short concrete slab divides each set of two though most have been broken and beds have been rearranged. There is no order and there are no guards, we can kill each other down here and no one will blink an eye.

There's a creak in the bed beside mine, my neck pulsing in pain as I whip my head around, those slender lips meeting my eye, drawn out nose and ribbon tied hair, face glowing with a smile as his citrine eyes meet mine. "We never truly introduced ourselves to each other earlier."

"I'm Moon." I stick out my hand, holding the limb limp as he pauses for a moment before holding out his own in embrace.

"I'm Ezra." Before he lays down he lets out another twinkling laugh, its tune haunting me as I roll over, desperately trying to match it to my broken memories.







////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Note

Ezra to the side ->