The Blood Bundle, Books 1-2: Blood Singers and Blood Song (New Adult Paranormal Vampire/Shifter Romance) (10 page)

Cyn had been naughty and brought champagne.
Julia would have loved to have argued but couldn't.

After all, they were celebrating her
nuptials.

Hard as they tried it was inevitable that Lily
would come up in conversation.

“I'm just sayin', you're not obligated to give a
big defense, Jules,” Cyn said, her legs crossed at the ankles, her
chair rest was Kevin. The wash of the firelight warred with the sun
burning low in the horizon, making a fiery halo around them.

Julia shrugged. Cyn wouldn't understand. She
felt like she owed Lily. Moving in her eight-year old niece had
never been her goal. Actually, Julia wasn't sure what
had
been her goal. She'd made it abundantly clear it wasn't having her
brother's daughter to raise.

As a surprise family.

Jason kissed the top of her head and she buried
her toes that were encased in woolly socks into the sand now warmed
by the fire. Her XtraTufs were thrown to the side.

“She's got a point, Jules,” Jason breathed
against her temple.

“I know she does. But, she did take me in when
my grandma couldn't. She's the only one that could. Beside a foster
family.”

Cyn shuddered. “That's like goddamned Russian
Roulette.”

Kev nodded, everyone knew you could get some
shit family. “Yeah, Jules. I heard about some girl that was like
Cinderella in her family. They made her label every scrap of food
like she was gonna steal it or something. Big time lame. They just
wanted the government money every month.”

“See?” Julia said, looking at Cynthia. “It
could've been worse.”

Cyn shook her head, her huge hoops catching the
light that swirled around them, a mix of burnt orange from the sky
and fire, mingling together in an eerie wash. “If you say so. I
still think she was a big time troll in her skirt to ya!”

She kinda was. But Julia still wanted to
remember Lily in the best light she could and... “She's got all my
stuff too.”

Cyn's face broke into a grin. “Now that's worth
some suck-up, Jules.”

They laughed and then Cyn said, “I'm sorry your
grandma isn't here anymore.”

Julia was too. Summers at her place had been the
only break from the grind of Living with Lily. Grandma had taught
her things she'd never forget.

“Didn't she have your name?” Kev asked.

Julia smiled. “Yes, actually, I had
her
name.”

Kev shrugged. “That's what I said.” The little
details of things like elders passing on namesakes sailing right
over his head.

They smiled and made plans for tomorrow. Julia
and Jason would go by her house and see if they could charm their
way in after a hasty elopement and zero communication.

So
not going to happen.

Cyn broke a mood that had slid far away from
celebratory by jerking the champagne glasses out of her backpack.
Kevin got the champagne out of his beat up cooler, the ice rattling
and clinking.

Cyn put a cube in each plastic cylinder. The
glasses had been made to looked like cut glass and winked like they
were on fire from the light of the blaze. Julia smiled, Cyn had
thought everything through to the last detail.

“Nice glasses,” Julia said.

Cyn smirked. “I know, right? I couldn't let us
be d
é
class
é
even
at the beach!” Kevin filled hers to the brim and she plopped a full
strawberry on the top, where it floated like a jewel inside the
glass, the bubbles mesmerizing Julia as they floated in the golden
liquid.

Everyone's glass fizzing with champagne, they
lifted them as one, four glasses meeting in a clash of celebration.
They took sips, eyeing each other above the rims.

Cyn did an obscene job of tonguing her
strawberry in full view of Kevin, moving it back and forth in her
mouth, twirling the stem like an provocative handle in her capable
fingers.

“Come 'er,” he said in a growl, grabbing her
around her slender waist and pressing her against him. He put his
lips to the half of the berry that lay between her teeth, jerking
the stem with his teeth and spitting it on the pebbled beach. He
met his lips with hers, eating the berry as he sucked the kiss
right out of her.

Cyn groaned and flung her arms around Kev's
neck, the two of them staggering over to their log of driftwood,
oblivious to Jason and Julia as their audience. Kevin threw his arm
behind him so they wouldn't topple, but as they sat down in a heap,
he fell backward on the sand and we laughed at their lust ridden
dance.

It would have been great if Kevin had not been
on his back with his girlfriend when the werewolf appeared.

He was horribly vulnerable for what transpired
next.

*

Vampire

Stealth was the order of the night, as it were.
He eyed the building carefully, taking in the ironic title of the
structure itself:
Freedom Affirmed.

William's lips curled. They wouldn't understand
real freedom if it introduced itself with a handshake.

He spoke in a voice that could not be heard by
humanity. The decibel level was too high for humans.

In the distance a stray dog lifted its ears and
whined softly, taking off in the opposite direction of the
disturbing tones of the Unnatural. Canines were instinctual. This
one recognized the threat for what it was and ran in a direction of
safety.

The other runners whipped their heads in the
dog's direction, responding in like kind. They made their way to
the structure, converging at roughly all four corners. Their
progress was deliberate and insidious. They would not make a
spectacle of their presence.

William had the barest sense of unease. He hoped
that Julia's abilities continued to lay dormant. If they awoke
during her acquisition, that would change things dramatically.

It would be very bad for all. Blood Singers were
unpredictable at best. At worst, they were dangerous.

He hoped that Pierce and the others would heed
his warning:

Be vigilant. Be aware. They may already be
in the area, having scented her hours before themselves.

Werewolves.

*

Julia's eyes rolled wildly beneath lids that
were clenched in horror.

Watching what had happened that fated evening as
a movie before her.

Julia watched.

Her subconscious replay unrolling, unbidden and
uninvited.

The werewolf came into full view, not in a
crouch, but as a half-man, half-wolf creature, only partially
changed. His advantage as a soldier of the Were was his form. He
and the other soldiers of his race were aptly suited for the
acquisition of Rare Ones. To do so, he would need to subdue the
others. His keen sight, albeit in shades of gray to the deepest
ebony, assisted him in his forward motion.

Immediately he allowed his senses to take in the
threats. His night vision acclimated automatically, dismissing the
glow of the fire, compensating in the orbital network that was
unique to his kind. His nostrils flared, bringing the myriad of
scents necessary for successful acquisition.

If he had been in human form he would have
laughed. One of the males, who if he had been coupled with his
comrade that stood beside the target, might have posed a problem.
But he lay prone beneath a human female. A female clearly in heat,
he scented.

He would dispatch him first, then move on to the
primary target. The mate of the Rare One.

This assessment took mere seconds.

To Julia, from his appearance to his attack, it
seemed to take hours.

As if in slow motion, the creature leaped
forward in one long stride. The muscles underneath the dove gray
fur were a ripple of sinew and tendon, perfectly synchronized.

Uniquely suited for harm and brutality.

Cynthia screamed when she saw the muzzle of a
creature her mind could not name. Yellow eyes blazed out of its
face as it flew through the air, body seemingly suspended. She
tried to scramble off of Kevin but he was already reacting, pushing
her away. It was his movement that kept the head she possessed on
her shoulders.

Kevin was buried underneath a monster. A thing
of legend come to life, the heat of the fire at his back. He tried
to roll the creature off of him, using the thing's momentum against
it but it was steel and fur, Kevin pinned underneath it.

In a moment of sickening clarity, Kevin realized
that Cyn could be killed.

It was the last thought he ever had as his head
was severed from the column of his neck, blood spouting out in a
spray that splattered Cynthia, who lay on the sand behind him. She
closed her eyes as the warm droplets of copper struck her in a wet
splash. When she opened her eyes, her lashes felt gummy from the
blood and she knew she would be sick even as she heard Jules
screaming for her in the background.

Then Jason was there. He rammed the twisted
metal rod they used for marshmallow roasting into the creature's
side and it reared back from Kevin's body with a howl, backhanding
Jason like he was as substantial as a feather.

Jason grunted as he landed on the sand six feet
or so behind the creature. Then the werewolf was on him and he had
just enough time to shout, “Julia, run!” before he felt talons like
razor blades encircle his neck, squeezing.

Julia felt her bladder clench even as she ran to
Jason's side, ignoring his directive.

Her husband.

The thing with fur, standing over seven feet
tall on its hind legs, had a hand that was half paw, and all
talons, surrounding the delicate flesh of Jason's neck. His other
hand raised in a high arc, readying to deliver the killing blow,
claws like spears poised.

“No!” Julia screamed.

Its eyes shifted to hers as she ran to Jason. It
seemed to pause.

Then the hand swept down, the nails like knives
glinting in the dying light of the fire.

In a blur of light gray, something barreled into
the werewolf.

But not before a second mouth of gore opened in
Jason's throat. Blood welling and falling as his neck was opened in
a deep slash of crimson.

The main artery compromised, Julia ran, sliding
in the sand on her knees as she crumpled beside him. Tearing off
her jacket she ignored the rawness and finality the wound
represented, crushing the soft material against it in a desperate
attempt to stop the bleeding.

She could hear the creature fighting something
she dared not look at directly behind her. The sounds of meaty
flesh being battered was all around her. The lapping of the waves
did nothing to silence the music of their violence.

Her eyes met Jason's. She saw his death laying
in them.

“Run,” he said out of his ruined esophagus.

Tears ran down her face in a stream, never
stopping. “Shh... don't... talk, Jason,” she said in a voice that
trembled so badly she could hardly speak.

His eyes urged her to escape even as she stayed.
Cyn wailed something in the background. But Julia didn't make out
the words. She realized belatedly that shock was settling in like
an old friend and she recognized it. Oh yes, she did.

It was hauntingly familiar.

The crash that had stolen her family.

Julia heard a sound and looked up.

A man met her gaze, his hands buried wrist deep
in the bowels of the creature that had attacked Jason. The gore
splatter reached his shoulders, his hands were entwined in the
thing's entrails like bloody worms that pulsated and glowed
pearlescent in the firelight. Julia swallowed, his deep cranberry
gaze the last thing she saw as she turned her face away, heaving
the contents of the airplane food as far away as she could from
Jason's body. Her quaking hands pressed the cloth against his
wounded throat.

Pressing.

Julia felt heat coalesce, rising from her feet
and eclipsing at the roots of her hair as she collapsed in a dead
faint next to her fallen husband.

Her hands fell away from the wound and the blood
came alive again, soaking the cloth of her hoodie, turning it from
gray to black.

The full moon rode the sky over them, a cruel
governess.

The vampire runners closed in and scooped up the
limp body of the Rare One.

The acquisition was a success.

They left in stealth, as they had arrived.

*

Julia's eyes snapped open, her mouth clamped to
stifle the scream that had almost erupted. Tears that had dried in
sticky lines on her cheeks were the evidence of a dream she had
hoped to never face.

A nightmare.

She was so tired she ached. Looking at the
glowing red numbers of the clock she saw that she'd only been
asleep for a few hours. It read 2:16 a.m. Early.

She held her body still and listened. The sense
of unease she had felt earlier, deepened. Julia knew that something
was wrong even as she heard the barest noise in the hall. But it
was the primal alert sounding off inside her breastbone that told
her what had found her.

Vampire.

They had come. She had to get out of the
building.

Now.

She rose, shoving her feet into her shoes. She
didn't even put on pants. Running to the window she lifted it
silently, the breeze ruffled the hem of her nightshirt, raising
goose flesh on her skin in a rush. Looking down at the ground she
was at least fifteen feet from the lawn below. She didn't think it
was jumpable.

But as her skin began to itch in warning, she
knew that it was a matter of time before they had her. She looked
around her room quickly. If she survived tonight, she could return
in the daylight when the vamps would have to rest and retrieve her
things.

She fingered the ring on her neck like a
talisman.

Julia looked down again and closing her eyes,
crouching on the windowsill, she shoved off. She sailed through the
air, preparing herself for the landing, her hair unraveling behind
her.