The Blood Bundle, Books 1-2: Blood Singers and Blood Song (New Adult Paranormal Vampire/Shifter Romance) (13 page)

“Goddammit! Adriana! It's not what it looks
like!” Joseph said, removing the threatening claw from Tony's
throat and leaping to his feet, one hand on his rib.

“Oh! You aren't over-disciplining one of our
wolves?” his sister yelled at him from a foot shorter. Her eyes
flashed and her small hands were planted on her hips. “Get rid of
that ridiculous half-wolf face you're sporting and get your ass to
Lawrence's chamber this instant!”

Tony smirked and Joseph whipped his head in
Tony's direction and gave a low growl. Tony's smile faded.

“Ugh... you dummy! Why don't you just pee on him
and get it over with? That's not how you do it. Watch me. Ya know,
your smarter sibling.”

Adriana turned to Tony, who she was not nuts
over, but fair was fair. “Tony, would you please go to Lawrence and
give him a full report of what happened on the mission in the next
half hour?”

Tony struggled to his feet, giving as neutral a
look at his Alpha that he could manage. “Happy to,” he said, giving
a stare that spoke volumes to Joseph.

Joseph sighed, his ribs squawking with the
movement. “Adriana, you weren't there, you didn't participate in
the mission...”

Her ponytail bobbed as she nodded her head.
“Right, because I am a lowly female!” Her face reddened.

There was no way that Joseph wished to engage in
this tired argument again. If she had been male, she would be
Packmaster. As it was, she practically ran the den. Their father
had made him promise to watch over her.

It was essentially a full time job. And she was
vaguely nose-blind. His nose was the keener of the two and he
wished that she'd trust him. She let her emotions run her actions
sometimes.

Like now.

“Adi...” he began.

“No,” she stomped her foot. “Tony is injured,”
she swung her palm to Tony, all but healed. After she turned back
to Joseph, Tony grinned.

Sometimes wolves needed to sort things out.
Physically. Too bad the females were not seeing that necessity. He
was the Alpha, he saw it.

He regretted what he must do. He opened his jaws
wide and latched them onto her vulnerable neck, growling low in his
throat.

“Argh...” Adriana yelped. Joseph was careful not
to break the skin, as she thrashed around he subtly followed her
movements so her skin would not tear. She grew still.

He unclamped his muzzle, regarding her with eyes
like spun gold, his gaze gentle but stern. “Let me be Alpha,
sister.”

She rubbed her throat, where many small red
indents marred the creaminess of it.

Tony was silent, letting the two siblings hash
it out. He silently thanked whatever was Holy that
he
didn't
have a sister. He shuddered.

“This is how an Alpha operates. You are Alpha as
well, it should not come as a surprise.”

“Ugh! You're so unreasonable! Such a He-Man!
Hate it!” She flung her arms up in the air and stomped off.

That went so well.

Joseph sighed, making his ribs twinge.

“Move, soldier,” he pointed ahead of him and
Tony walked toward it.

Joseph followed the blazoned path his sister had
scorched on her way out, moving to the Packmaster's chamber for
debriefing.

What a joyous occasion would be had by
all
, he thought, as his face and hands melded back into their
human mask.

*

Homer, Alaska

Detective Truman was crouched down on his
haunches, letting pewter sand run through his fingers slowly. A
year later and he still couldn't get the scene out of his mind. The
blood, the body... the aftermath.

They were still no further to solving the crime
than when they first began. Truman stood, looking out over the vast
ocean, the snow capped mountains of the Kenai Fjords in ominous
grace, a backdrop to a tousled sea that had whitecaps everywhere he
looked. He sighed, standing. He kicked a large pebble, it bounced
off a large piece of driftwood, the stains of blood that covered it
looking like so much spilled coffee with the passage of time.

He'd go by the girl's apartment. He liked to
visit Cynthia Adams.

She never got angry at his questions.

Unlike the Caldwell family. He couldn't force
their cooperation, but a person would think that they'd want to
find out who took their daughter-in-law. They didn't want to know.
They no longer had a son, they'd said. And they'd certainly never
considered Julia Wade part of their family.

Technically she was, the marriage license
validated and duly noted.

She was Julia Caldwell now, wherever she
was.

If she lived.

Detective Karl Truman hiked up the small ravine,
swiping branches aside. Some of the larger ones were broken off at
the trunk, sap covering their amputated stumps. He didn't pause on
his climb to wonder what might have snapped a branch the size of a
man's wrist off at the base.

The police had looked for rational explanations
to the murder and disappearance.

When what they should have been looking for was
anything but rational.

Julia was working into a routine of sorts,
steering clear of the vampire that had “saved” her. Her arms were
working again and she had full rotation, the scars from the talons
that had sunk deep, almost gone.

She looked in the mirror, running a finger over
the shiny pink wounds. They faded each day. Julia would brush her
teeth and her eyes would move back to the reflection of them in the
glass like a magnet to steel.

She knew more than she had before and wished she
didn't.

There was no escaping this place. She felt the
inevitability of her circumstances closing in around her and it
gave her an almost suffocating feeling of claustrophobia.

Julia tapped the toothbrush on the edge of an
old-fashioned pedestal sink, shedding the remaining water from the
bristles. She turned the spigot sharply to the left and the water
dried up, a tremulous drop falling and hitting the basin with a
dull plop. She skewered the base of the brush through one of the
four holes in the holder that was attached to the wall and without
looking at her reflection again, she walked away.

Julia knew the routine. Claire would knock as
she entered. They'd have breakfast together. Julia would fight
panic attacks and Claire would lend some of that calm she had in
abundance and Julia would live another day.

But she was just existing. She was good at
inhaling and exhaling. She'd become almost expert since Jason
died.

They were biding their time. Grooming her. You
see, Julia knew what she was now. She was some prophesied genetic
key.

The key that would unlock the prison of their
existence. She was the answer to them not being vampires anymore.
Julia didn't really think it was that damn simple, but they fed her
what they wanted her to know.

Their version.

To listen to Claire explain it, it was some kind
of honor. But she'd heard one of the vampire guards discussing
humans.

Humans were cattle to them.

Food load. Without humans, they would die.
Starve.

The Blood Singers were an essential element to
the genetic diversity of the humans' blood. Without this superior
faction, intermixed with the regular population, the blood quantum,
its quality would be compromised.

In essence, Blood Singers brought the quality of
the blood to a level that made all human blood palatable to the
vampires.

All.

Vampires were ruled by blood and darkness; the
Were by the moon. She was a jealous mistress, governing their
changes at her whim. And that whim was when she was full. No more,
no less.

Julia's lessons had begun. Through Claire, Julia
began to understand her role. Why she never would have been allowed
to live with Jason as a spouse.

Blood Singers did not intermarry. The purity of
their blood was needed to balance the precious blood quantum.
Mating with each other would upset this balance.

Singers were so rare that it was typically not a
problem. Claire had mentioned a figure that was one, one hundredth
of the global population. That meant Blood Singers numbered around
nearly seven hundred thousand souls. A lot, right? No. Spread over
the seven continents, it was barely sustaining the vampires. They
numbered more.

That is why the two factions had converged on
their group at the beach. They would never have allowed the union.
But she and Jason did it in secret, so they hadn't known. But
they'd been watching, accelerating their plan because of Jason and
Julia's elopement.

Julia guessed the plan hadn't included Jason's
death.

Claire had explained her parents to Julia. In
detail. Both Blood Singers, they had been taken before they could
have more children.

It hadn't been an accident, but
providential.

As it happens, the one thing they did produce
through the coupling of their gene pool was a daughter.

The manifestation of their combined recessive
genes was Julia.

She was the Rare One. The unique female,
promised to change the face of the races. Able to produce
Lightwalkers. If bred to the Were their offspring would be moonless
changers. The moon's control would be gone after several
generations. The compulsion to be her slave no longer there.

Bred out.

Julia felt like the prized mule.

Then there were the supposed abilities.
Supernatural abilities. She remembered the conversation she and
Claire had just yesterday.

*

“How can you stand it? Living here... with
them?” Julia asked. Her arms folded across her chest, rubbing her
skin as if she were cold. She wasn't, she was creeped out and
unhinged. Everything Claire had told her reverberated around in her
skull like a pin ball.

Rare One? Blood Singers? One of hundreds of
thousands of people?

“I have little choice. This is the place that I
have come to belong. I've been here many years.”

“What about my parents? Were
they
expendable? Jason?” Julia asked in a low voice, her arms by her
sides, trembling slightly in her anger.

Claire lifted a shoulder. “It is not typical.
One in ten thousand is a Singer. That your parents found one
another... that you found and married a Singer...” she looked at
Julia. “It's unprecedented.”

Wonderful. Julia's parents, dead. Jason, dead.
All because vampires wanted their food all pretty and tasty.

Seemed legit to her.

Fancy cattle. That's all the Singers were to all
of them, vampires and Were alike. Julia told Claire that.

She shook her head. “We are more. The quality of
our blood and the fabric of our genetics are not the only things we
have to offer, Julia.” Her eyes searched Julia meaningfully. “Have
you ever had flashes of intuition? Feelings of a precognitive
nature?”

Julia sucked in her breath. She'd always known
who was phoning as soon as her hand touched the receiver. What the
next song would be on the radio. When there'd be a pop quiz in
school. Now that everyone sent texts, she'd get a vibration before
it rang.

Not from the cell, from within her body. She'd
always just chalked it up to one of those things.

It sure the hell was one of those things. It
just wasn't the thing she'd been thinking.

Can you hear me?
Claire asked. Her lips
weren't moving. Icy fingers brushed inside her head and Julia
shivered. The feeling of an itch not quite being scratched hovered
in her brain.

“What did you say?” Julia asked out loud. Sure
as she was standing there that she was imagining things. People
didn't have telepathy.

Can you do this?
Claire asked, her voice
breathing through Julia's mind.

I don't know,
Julia replied, aiming her
thoughts at Claire like a well trained archer.

She must have hit the bull's-eye because Claire
smiled and responded,
I thought it might be possible. It is
spoken that the Rare One will come to possess all the talents for
our people.

Julia backed away, stunned. It was too much to
take in. A wave of calmness stole over her, making her feel
slightly numb, drugged.

“Stop doing that!” Julia yelled.

“I only wish to help. I am part of you, we all
are,” Claire said, moving forward, her rich chestnut hair falling
around her shoulders as she came at Julia.

Julia stumbled, falling backward. She felt
something well inside of her, rushing to the surface like an errant
bubble of oxygen sliding to the surface of a pool of water. She
allowed it to leave her, bursting on Claire.

Julia hadn't meant to hurt her.

Claire looked like she'd had an invisible ripple
plow into her and she slammed into the wall. Just inches from the
hearth that boasted an old fireplace.

Full of jagged rock.

Claire slid down the wall, stunned. Julia got up
off the floor, rubbing her arms again, her body flushed, her head
light. She began to move toward Claire when the door slammed open
and William was there, glancing at his relative leaning against the
wall where she'd been thrown. Julia hopped over the back of the
couch where she'd been sitting and he was flying over it and
underneath her before she could jump to the ground.

She screamed and he crushed her to him.

Her chest tightened painfully, the proximity to
him unbearable.

She could feel it like silken tentacles pulling
taut.

The call of her blood to his.

The consumption of his blood a pulsating thread
that bound them.

Like a song.

A blood song.

The guard at the door took in the vampire Julia
hated holding her against himself like she was the most precious
treasure in the world.

To him, she was.