The Blood Bundle, Books 1-2: Blood Singers and Blood Song (New Adult Paranormal Vampire/Shifter Romance) (12 page)

Her elbow connected with his jaw and it stunned
him for a moment.

Julia spun and began to run, her ankle screamed
and she ignored it. Something grabbed her hair from behind and
lifted her off the ground by it, her scalp shrieking and burning.
Torquing her neck, the Were wrapped hands that could have crushed
the windpipe they held around her neck and drew her against his
body, almost tenderly.

His other hand tore the nightshirt she was
wearing collar to hem, using only the tip of one claw.

It fell at their feet in a pile and he moved his
hold from her neck to wrap her upper arms.

“I will breed you... Blood Singer,” it growled
out between impossibly long teeth.

Julia was fully panicked now. Looking down she
saw what made him male in full view and used her hand like a
weapon, clawing at his face and kicking out. He shook her so hard
her teeth rattled and she saw stars, her head lolling about on the
stem of her neck like a fragile flower.

Out of her trembling side vision Julia felt air
rush past her and another of his kind bore down on him, his hold
releasing, the claws sliding away without purchase. She fell to the
grass beneath, her knees folding under her like a chair put
away.

As she gazed up at the night sky, the sounds of
flesh being torn and ripped, growling and yipping reverberating in
her ears, a great black shape descended above her.

Julia lay there, the wetness of the grass
soaking through her panties and cami.

She saw that it was a great bird, the eyes
piercing her as it hovered above her in ebony glory, revealed only
in outline by the full moon.

She didn't even scream when the talons from its
feet pierced her shoulders, lifting her body in the air. The pain
was a numbing horror but her mind protected her as unconsciousness
washed over her body.

The last thing Julia remembered was an unearthly
howl of anguish reaching her ears.

Then there was only blackness, the pain a spiral
that trailed after her.

*

Joseph

Joseph closed his muzzle with a snap, the howl
echoing in the openness of the clearing. The small body of the Rare
One was clutched to the drinker like a dark token in the sky.

One Were and one vampire lay in bloody heaps,
his first on the ground, heaving from exertion and in the throes of
shaking off the breeding lust with effort.

The fool.

He watched as the remaining vampires bled back
into the forest seamlessly, their bodies melding so closely with
the shadows their forms were indecipherable.

Another failed mission.

He looked at Tony with unveiled disgust. Maybe
it would have gone similarly without this transgression, he did not
know. What he did know is that the drinker had shifted. His intel
had not divulged that skill amongst the runners. He must have
Singer's blood running in his veins.

The rat bastard.

They needed that Singer, badly. Before a fully
blooded vampire could breed her. A thing the Were had heard as
rumored legend only.

Joseph was beginning to wonder if there was some
truth to it.

He jerked his head at the three Were who lived,
indicating their dead comrade.

They hefted the body, the vampire's remains
lifting in the light breeze as so much ash at the mercy of the
wind.

Joseph and the others turned to go, Tony
bringing up the rear, his hand buried in the hair of the head of
the fallen Were, carrying it like a macabre purse.

Tony's unfriendly eyes latched onto the back of
his leader, malice taking shape like slow-moving poison, insidious
and progressive.

*

the kiss of Seattle

Burning.

On fire.

Julia was on fire.

Her eyes popped open and she wanted to scream.
Instead, out of a mouth so parched her lips were cracked, she
moaned. Her shoulders were one burning mass of flesh.

She cracked open an eyelid and saw fuzzy shapes
moving silently around the room. Above her was filtered ambient
light.

A presence came close to her and she flinched.
“Shh, you're safe,” a female voice said.

Right
, Julia thought in exhaustion. She
hadn't felt safe since the day Jason died.

Another blurry person, a male, came to stand
next to the female, who made Julia feel a sense of comfort.

“We will have to put that shoulder back. Right
it.”

Julia watched as they looked at one another, her
vision doubling.

She felt a gentle hand at her wrist and a
bulging piece of cloth placed underneath her armpit, a fist wedged
up underneath it and as her arm was pulled the fist punched upward
and she shrieked. The pain at once piercing and awful.

Julia sunk back in to unconsciousness on a
hitching sob.

William looked down at her, his hand sliding
from its placement underneath her shoulder. The joint was back in
its rightful place, that pinched look she had worn since her
arrival was gone.

He breathed out and looked at Claire.

“She is so fragile...” she said. As she looked
at Julia, she took in the bizarre hair color, the paleness of her
skin, a touch of blue to her nostrils and lips. She had lost much
blood. She looked at William.

“You will need to give her more blood,” she
said, her eyes searching his.

“Every drop I give her binds us tighter.”

“Perhaps, but if you don't, she will heal
humanly slow. In agony.” She looked at him, knowing things that she
should not and he scowled.

Claire knew what his life's goal had been, her
eyes moving over the tell-tale mark on the girl's forehead.

What it had always been. It was in the Book of
Blood. The vampire equivalent of the Bible. A Rare One would save
the race from the brink of extinction. A union between a vampire of
Singer descent and a Rare One brought the tenuous hope of
offspring. One which William wanted.

Quite badly.

Children who were as strong as vampires.
Possessing all the abilities but without the need to drink blood,
living as the feral in the cover of darkness. Yes, who would not
wish for that.

Long for it.

Julia bore the mark. A half-moon shaped scar
like a small kiss of flesh hovered at her temple. It was the symbol
of the Rare One. It looked very much like the moon, pure white.

William’s hands balled into fists, guilt
sweeping over him as he took in the gauze dressings, already
discolored by Julia's blood.

He had almost torn her shoulders off in flight.
When she fainted, well... it had been a near thing. The dead weight
hanging her like meat off a hook. He clenched his eyes, willing the
image of her broken body away as he had brought it into the bowels
of the underground. The forgotten city that lay beneath
Seattle.

The lair of his kiss.

He looked above him, watching the feet of the
passing pedestrians as they walked over glass that was a foot
thick. Scuffed and cloudy, it had a vague purple hue, garnered by a
century of sunlight he would never behold.

He sighed and looked at Claire, who had
stubbornly folded her arms across her chest. The granddaughter of a
Rare One, she should be renamed Stubborn One.

He came by his tenacious streak honestly. Claire
was his cousin.

His fangs elongated, he placed the twin points
against his wrist. Sweeping sideways, he made a clean cut like a
razor thin line and blood welled, almost black.

Squeezing his wrist to prompt the flow, he used
his other hand to massage Julia's throat. As the drops fell, her
full lips parted and the first trembling drop held itself suspended
for a moment like a glittering gem, then fell.

As the blood found its way inside her mouth, she
stirred, her throat convulsing and swallowing. Without waking, her
hands moved to the offered forearm, small and pale against even his
flesh, like carved ivory, her grip weak as a kitten's. William
leaned closer, the pull of her mouth against his flesh an erotic
tether that bound him to her.

She drank.

William resisted his impulses.

They were many.

Julia awoke naturally, her body aching. As she
became aware incrementally, her body didn't hum with fear, but with
a subtle calmness.

She never felt calm.

Her eyes snapped open and were met by a stare
that matched her own. She had never known anyone to have eyes the
same shade as hers and was momentarily speechless.

Julia tried to sit up and the room spun. The
woman's arm that was attached to that stare rose and pressed her
back against the pillows that were stacked behind her.

She opened her mouth to speak and Claire stood,
leaning forward she pressed a cup with a straw against Julia's
chapped lips. “Drink. You're dehydrated.”

Julia drank. It was the best water she'd ever
had. It was refreshingly chilled and it coated her parched throat
like the first spring rains in the desert.

She tried to gulp but the woman took the cup
away when Julia would have had more.

“Small sips, we don't want that stomach of yours
giving up the blood inside you.”

Julia's expression changed and Claire saw it.
“Don't even start, Julia.”

Julia narrowed her eyes on the woman and she
said, “The only reason you're not on that bed writhing around in
pain is because of the blood William gave you.” She cocked a
brow.

“I'll bet,” Julia croaked out, her voice raw
from screaming.

“He didn't want to,” Claire stood. “I forced
him. It is bad enough for you to transition into our coven, we
don't need an injury slowing that assimilation.”

She looked at Julia. “I'm Claire.”

Julia nodded in greeting. Claire obviously knew
who she was.

Julia shrugged, she felt a comfort in her
presence, true. But Julia had reason to distrust them. She could
sense what was around her.

Vampires.

And not a few.

Legion.

*

Joseph

Maggie fussed over Tony when Joseph would have
left the smallness of his injuries alone. Let him deal with it. He
continued to seethe as she ministered to the long gashes that
crisscrossed Tony's torso. She was disinfecting the open
wounds.

Vampire venom was poisonous. Joseph smiled,
thinking of the one he'd speared with his claws.

He'd have been feeling some serious pain.
Delirium would be his friend as he flew with the Rare One. A
troubling thought. What if he'd injured the Singer in his
pain-induced stupor?

Maggie stood back, critically looking at the
dressed wounds. “I think ya may live another day,” she clucked like
a mother hen.

Joseph looked at her, his expression softening.
It was not her fault that he was pissed at his first. She was doing
her job. Attending the Were soldiers. There was one less tonight.
His headless body cooled in a shed on the Were compound. Lawrence
would want a full report; then a ceremony would need to be arranged
for his fallen comrade.

Now it was his horrible task to tell Colton's
widow the news that her mate was gone. Joseph hung his head.

After a long moment of reflection, he planted
massive hands on his jean-clad thighs. Standing, he stared at Tony,
waiting until Maggie bustled out of the room. He watched the
departure of her back and turned to Tony, stabbing a finger in his
direction. “I have duties to attend to but you will answer to
Lawrence. Your Packmaster will know what you elected to do, allowed
yourself to do. It is
you
that jeopardized this
mission.”

“You can't blame me for everything,” Tony said
with derision, his upper lip curling back slightly.

Joseph came forward and Tony sprang to his feet,
they crashed into each other, knocking a lamp off an end table. As
it slammed to the floor, shards flying everywhere, Joseph took the
six-foot three Tony down in an arm lock that drove his elbow into
the other man's sternum, the windpipe compromised. Joseph felt the
change hovering in a dim corner of his brain and his vision
changed, his facial bones rearranging in a disconcerting clay like
movement that had the room filling with the sounds of their
shifting, tendons popping into their new arrangement.

But it was just his face and hands that changed.
The rest of Joseph remained as it was. He slowly removed his arm
from the throat of the soldier who had acted on impulse. Joseph
replaced it with a claw nearly a foot long in variegated and
mottled browns, creams and tans.

“Do not,” Joseph said on a growl, his throat
partially changed, his teeth gleaming with killing intent in a
mouth that now had a muzzle covered in gray fur.

“I can and I will blame you.” His gold eyes
round and large in his wolf form, peered at Tony. “You were without
control so near the Singer. You begged me for this assignment,
refused to be desensitized.”

“I would not harm her!” Tony growled back,
mindful of his own change, which bore down on him enough to make
sweat bead on his upper lip, the restraint he employed ugly.

“Rape is harm!” Joseph barked at Tony.

He understood anyway.

“We are meant to breed her!” Tony said,
exasperated.

“Not without the ceremony, not without the
proper testing. She cannot be with
any
wolf. She must be
properly matched, properly mated. Do you not see?”

Tony did not, narrowing his eyes on his Alpha.
He would give anything to be the Alpha. He could not think for the
scent of the Singer. How had Joseph stood it?

One day the position would be his.

By whatever means necessary.

There was a noise by the door and Adriana rushed
in, landing a solid kick to Joseph's side with her full werewolf
strength and his rib bruised instantly, robbing some of his
breath.