The Blood Bundle, Books 1-2: Blood Singers and Blood Song (New Adult Paranormal Vampire/Shifter Romance) (4 page)

He didn't react like she thought he would.
He dragged her against himself, Pierce releasing her in surprise.
Her mouth on his arm, clamping down. Julia bit down with everything
she had.

His eyes dilated, the silver disappearing to
be replaced by deep crimson. He pressed her against him, his fangs
completely extended.

“William! Control
yourself!” Pierce yelled, coming for him.

Julia hung on for dear life as she watched
those black eyes look at her with such longing and loneliness. As
he reared to strike a fist crashed into the side of his temple.

Her mouth was torn off his forearm, her body
sliding off his lap onto the floor.

Julia lay in a small heap on her side as a
fire burnt inside her. It became a delicious roar within. She was
being consumed by heat. It burned and itched. She melted into the
intense warmth, her consciousness narrowing.

As her mind dimmed, she saw the other
creature check on William, his black eyes shut.

The creature named Pierce looked in her
direction and he was sideways.

Julia knew what else he was.

Vampire.

She fell into a deep abyss of grayness, her
mind shielding her from what she couldn't handle.

She floated swiftly down her memory
pipeline, grateful for the escape it gave her.

*

last day

Jason had his fingers entwined in Julia's,
their last day of school finally here, his plane tickets bought for
Vegas. They were gonna do it. She looked up at him and smiled. He
looked into the light gold depths and almost stumbled. She always
had that affect on him. He'd been drawn to her from the beginning.
A small furrow stood between her brows. Julia's hand came to her
temple, rubbing.

He pulled her over to the side of the hall,
the sea of bodies and backpacks jostling past, an excited buzz
thrumming in the halls. He slid his palm underneath her
honey-colored hair and wrapped the back of it on her neck, gently
kneading the soft skin.

“Is it the headaches
again?” he asked. Jules had been having these bone crusher
headaches. Jason thought it was the stress at home, trying to plan
a secret elopement could take its toll on a girl. He
smirked.

“Huh, you really care!”
she said, giving him a mock-scowl, putting her hands on her
hips.

Her luscious
hips
, he thought.

“No!” Ah... I was just
thinking all your super secret spy moves you're pullin' around Lily
are getting kinda old?” He cocked an eyebrow.

She nodded, true... but. “Actually,” Julia
looked down at her hands that had found their way to Jason's hips
and she couldn't look away, a blush came over her face.

Jason put a gentle finger under her chin and
raised it until their eyes met. Chocolate meeting gold. “What is
it?”

She shoved her erotic impulses away and
concentrated on his question instead, the blush still staining her
cheeks.

Jason saw the high color marking her
cheekbones a delicate pink and wondered what she'd been thinking
about. He opened his mouth to repeat the question and she
interrupted, “It's the dreams, I'm having them again.”

“Oh,” Jason said, pulling
her in against his body. He hadn't liked the dreams. He wasn't
going to tell her, but he'd begun having some of his own. And they
were goddamn doozies.

“Get a room!” Kevin
yelled, walking by, arm slung around Cynthia. Jason gave Kevin the
finger and Julia grabbed it in the air.

“Don't,” she hissed,
giving him another scowl.

Jason threw up the other hand and flipped
him another bird.

“You're impossible!” Julia
said sternly. Then she smiled.

She began laughing and convulsed into a
stream of irrepressible giggles.

“That's so helpful, Jules.
You're so
on it.”

Julia looked at Jason and he was standing
there, in full view of the world, giving Kevin the double-finger
send off.

Oh my god, Julia clutched her sides,
howling.

Julia was bent over until she noticed a pair
of hot pink boots come into her line of sight.

She grabbed Cyn's sweater and hauled herself
up.

“Hey asswipe, you're not
sensing any adults around?” Kevin asked.

Jason dropped his hands as one of their
teachers made his way toward them in a huff of righteous Adult
Indignation.

Terrell.

Great. Instead of calming down, it had the
opposite effect and Julia continued laughing, tears streaming down
her face.

Terrell lurched up to the group. Taking a
look at the Wade girl, doubled over in fits of hysterical giggling,
he dismissed her. It was the basketball boys that he had his
attention trained on. He didn't care if the Caldwell boy had got an
A in his class, there was something fishy about them. Especially
that never-apply-herself-girlfriend of his.

He got right up in Caldwell's grill,
momentarily nonplussed that the kid had him by four inches. “Listen
here, Caldwell. I don't give a good lick about how great you think
you are, or that it's your last day here, this isn't the court. You
don't own the school, the halls, nothing. Act like an adult and
maybe, just maybe, you'll become one someday.”

Terrell had sobered Julia up and she didn't
like how Terrell was talking to Jason. Big surprise, she didn't
like Terrell that much. She and Cyn had their arms crossed and
Kevin stood looming over Terrell.

He didn't seem intimidated
and Julia suddenly remembered a term that Lily used, “little man's
syndrome.”
Maybe he had a dose of
that
, she thought.

“We clear?” Terrell asked.
But he wasn't really asking. He was commanding. He wanted a certain
kind of response.

Please don't get nailed on the last day,
Julia thought, seeing Jason's fists clench and loosen. She watched
him notch down his anger at Terrell and her shoulders relaxed.
Looked like things were gonna settle down.

Then Terrell looked at her. Really looked at
her, starting at her head and ending at her feet, sweeping over her
private parts with a lingering look.

Gross!

“Hey perv!” Cyn squeaked.
“Why don't you go die somewhere?”

But it was Jason that knotted his fist in
the teacher's collar and dragged him close. “Don't you look at
her,” he said in a low voice, violence swirling beneath the
surface.

Kevin was prying his fingers off of Terrell.
“Don't... he deserves it but don't. He's pushin' ya.”

Their eyes met and Jason released Terrell,
pulling Julia behind him protectively.

He looked smug. “I knew you'd mess up. This
is all I needed to get you where I want you.”

Jason was confused, he'd seen the perv look
at Julia and some of the other girls but what did it have to do
with today? Why had he been so overt with Julia? His eyes narrowed
on the teacher.

Jason planted his legs apart, hands on his
hips, looking around once to make sure Julia was behind him and
safe. This guy had lost it.

Kevin hit him in the arm and Jason's face
whipped back to Terrell as Cyn gasped. Jason became focused on the
gun that was naked in Terrell’s hand.

What-the-hell was this? Jason thought,
backing away, Julia a warm presence at his back.

Julia wasn't laughing now as kids in the
hall, who had just been thinking how much trouble Jason was going
to be in, scattered like beetles out of a jar, screaming as they
ran down the hall.

Julia's headache slammed into her
uncontrollably, spearing into her temple at a fever pitch. But it
was the frenzied gaze of the teacher that she couldn’t look away
from. His beady hazel eyes shifted between the three kids,
seeking.

Finally, he caught a glimpse of Julia behind
Jason and said, “It's you. If you were not here, then I could...
stop having this pain. The pain would stop..” he said, brandishing
his gun in the air, kids slamming themselves on the hallway
floor.

Julia felt something integral slip into
place, the pain slipping away and becoming a burning mass.

“Hey whack-job!” Kevin
said, going for the gun at the same time that Jason did. It wasn't
choreographed and as their bodies moved, a gap opened and Terrell
pointed the barrel.

At Julia.

All that focus, a warm liquid pain that she
buried for the moment came to her in a sliding push. With nothing
but raw emotion, she looked at the black hole of the gun and
mentally shoved as the hammer pulled back.

It clicked.

Time slowed down, Jason batting the gun away
even as the bullet rushed toward Julia, Cyn screaming in the
background and Kevin landing on Terrell, their bodies crashing to
the floor.

Julia moved as the bullet entered the
curtain of her hair instead of the fragile bones of her face, its
course veering at the last moment and she fell sideways away from
the trajectory. Hitting Cyn, they both stumbled into the
lockers.

“Julia!” Jason hollered,
sprinting to her side, kicking the gun away as he came. His eyes
frantically took in her body, checking for damage.

She was unscathed.

Miraculously.

As sirens wailed in the background Jason
turned around, leaving Julia in Cyn's arms and grabbed a fistful of
hair on the top of Terrell's head. Using it like the dull side of a
hammer he picked his head up and slammed it into the floor.

Again and again.

Cops came and pulled him off but the damage
was done. Terrell lay in a pool of his own blood, spreading into
the soles of all who had gathered.

“Julia,” a voice whispered
to her as if through a tunnel. She came awake in stages, still
feeling like she was in the school hallway, watching Jason beat
Terrell's head into the floor until it split open like an
egg.

She opened an eye and looked into silvered
ones, reflective.

Julia flinched.

Her captors.

The vampires.

Once a myth, now she believed through hard
evidence and even harder experience.

Even as his eyes clenched from her reaction
his expression showed cautious relief and he stroked a wisp of hair
away from her temple.

Julia found her voice, “Don't touch me.”

His hand paused, then finished the movement.
He stood and Julia looked around, taking in the room for the first
time. She'd never allowed herself to care about her surroundings.
The one named Pierce loomed into view and she shrank back.

“We will not harm you,” he
began.

“Right... you guys are
so
harmless
,”
Julia said in a voice husky with disuse.

William and Pierce looked
at each other. Finally, William said, “We did...
I did
what I had to. To
pull you out of your dreamscapes. If I had not done that,” he
shrugged impossibly broad shoulders, “you would have buried your
psyche there forever, until there was no feeding you, hydrating
you...”

“Until you ceased to
exist,” Pierce finished for him.

Julia tried to sit up and succeeded, barely.
She felt better, actually. Who were they to play God anyway? Maybe
she didn't want to exist? Had they thought about that?

They watched her warily. She swung her legs
off the bed she'd been lying on. She tentatively put her feet on
the rough wooden surface and stood. The blood rushed to her head
and her vision swam in streamers of dull colors before her
eyes.

She commanded her legs to hold her even as
they folded.

A blur of gray reached her and she was
swooped up in the arms of the hateful vampire, William.

“You're too weak to walk,”
he said in a voice that reverberated through her breastbone,
melodic and low. It affected her. She didn't know why but his
nearness frightened her and she saw the reflection of it etched on
his face. It pained him... that she was afraid.

“Let me down,” she
whispered.

“Pierce, get Susan
again.”

In her periphery she saw a blur of color and
heard a far off door open then shut.

They stared at each other, the Blood Singer
and the vampire.

“Why am I here?” Julia
asked, resisting the deep pull that emanated from her body to his.
She didn't know what it was but it was organic.

Needy.

She felt liquid fingers sink into her,
through her skin, deep in her marrow, clinging to her consciousness
like cobwebs.

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
When she opened them, William gave her his steady regard. “You are
safe within this coven.”

“I am not safe with you. I
will never be safe again.”

William flinched. Knowing that she could not
separate their acquisition of her with the violence that had
surrounded it. She was lumping the groups together, the Were and
Vampire. Now was not the time to correct her misapprehension. Not
when the Were's rancid breath was upon their doorstep. When the
whole coven was on the chasm of blood lust from her months here.
The fragrance of her rarity permeated every nook and cranny that
the haven provided. Even the most immune amongst them, of Blood
Singer descent themselves, were itching with need. The time was
ripe to make haste to his home kiss. The coven where he had always
been.

Just thinking of the city and what lay
underneath it made his sluggish heart beat faster, primal
adrenaline surging through his limbs.

Julia responded to his physicality, taking a
sharp inhale, her body tingling in reaction to his thoughts.