The Blood Bundle, Books 1-2: Blood Singers and Blood Song (New Adult Paranormal Vampire/Shifter Romance) (47 page)

“What?” Jen asked and gave a laugh, thinking
she'd heard her just fine.

“I said,
bullshit
,” Julia repeated.

Scott knelt beside her and met her eyes. Julia
noticed how black his were and shut her own against what she saw
there. “Okay,” she said without opening them. The pull against her
chest felt unbearable. The urge to cry was a weight she hated but
bore, just barely.

When she felt the softest touch of his hand on
her arm, gloveless, a shuddering exhale left her body and she gave
a soft sob of relief. Her whole body unknotted. The pain had been
so great, building to a screaming crescendo, that until some of the
weight of it was lifted, she didn't know how bad it had become.

Julia opened her eyes and saw the tightness in
Scott's. His hand trailed fire on her skin as he stroked her arm.
When his hand stopped he wrapped his palm around her forearm, his
fingers touching. She fell into his eyes, so grateful for the
reprieve from the river of pain that was now dammed another
hitching sob escaped her.

“Julia, shhh... I'm here,” Scott crooned to her,
using his other hand to cup her cheek, his fingertips grazing her
temple and she nuzzled into his palm, the contact sucking more pain
away.

When his lips came for her mouth like sleeping
beauty waking from a bewitched slumber her lips parted in
readiness, her eyes shutting.

Heat and silk touched her mouth, moving with the
barest touch, the horrible pain sliding away like melting candle
wax, an unbearable memory put away.

Scott pulled away, feeling the bite of what she
felt, the thud of an instrument of torture like an excruciating
echo of pain across a psychic distance where space didn't matter
before blood.

He flinched with the rhythm of it and Julia's
eyes widened. “No, Scott. Put it back,” she said, grabbing his hand
and clenching it to her chest.

“No problem,” he said as the abuse kicked up a
notch.

Scott turned to Cyrus, never taking his touch
away from Julia. “How long?”

Cyrus shrugged. “It depends on the healing
prowess of the vamp. If he's a good healer. Even now he might be
healing it all.”

“Wait a sec,” Michael said, tearing a Blow Pop
out of his mouth. Scott would have rolled his eyes if he hadn't
been dying about then. “Why are they torturing this dude? They're
all vamps, right?” He stabbed the sucker back in his mouth.

“I can answer that.” A young woman came through
the door and Brendan said, “Angela?” She looked at Marcus and he
nodded.

“I've sensed... the presence of the blood
drinkers.”

“Vampires 'R Us, huh?” Michael asked, sticking
the lollipop back in his mouth, but not before everyone got a load
of his blue tongue.

Gross,
Julia had time to think before
Scott gave her hand an involuntary squeeze, his eyes tightening
from whatever was being done.

To William.

Scott gave her a quick glance and getting the
basic emotion he whispered, “Don't you dare feel sorry for
him.”

Julia wanted to take her hand out of his but he
held on. “No,” he shook his head. “If I let go, it will all come
back to you.”

“Do something, Cyrus. It's a circle until the
torture of this vamp stops,” Brendan said.

“He can't, Bren,” Angela said.

All eyes fell on hers but Marcus'. He knew what
she would say. “He can't repair what doesn't happen. It's all
here,” she touched her head, then let her palm sweep her own body,
head to toe. “It is in the blood, a blood-binding is impossible to
break from a distance.”

“So, he gets the treatment and so does bro and
Queenie?” Michael asked the general crowd.

Marcus intervened when Scott stood, his hand
tenaciously clinging to Julia's. He put a palm up to stay Scott and
gave a look to Michael. “If you choose not to be helpful,
leave.”

Michael shrugged, leaning against the wall.

“She'll have to go to the vamps, won't she?” Jen
asked in a whisper.

Marcus nodded.

“No effing way,” Scott said through gritted
teeth. He couldn't believe Julia had been bearing this. He rolled
his shoulders, trying to shrug off the agony.

It clung like a scent.

Angela came to stand before Scott. “There is no
choice. They'll never stop, Scott.”

“Goddammit!” Scott roared into the room, Julia
flinching with the sound of his anger. He looked his apology to her
but turned to the others. “What the hell do they want?”

Marcus sighed. “
Julia
,
son. They want her.”

“Well, they're not going to have her. Over my
dead carcass.”

“They'll probably be happier than hell to
arrange that,” Brendan said.

As it happened, that was the truth of it.

As the Singers despaired over Julia and Scott's
situation. Merlin's troop of runners closed in on the Singer
compound, the kiss of night having fallen softly on the woods, the
grounds.

“They're here,” the Feeler said. Angela's eyes
grew wide as more of their intent became known.

“Ha!” Michael said. “Let 'em try. We're going to
kick some undead ass.”

“Don't hurt William,” Julia said.

Scott looked down at her, seething because of
her sympathy.

“Why, Julia? Why should I give... should
we
give two shits about this guy?”

“Because he saved me.”

“From what?” Scott asked, his eyes searching
hers, frustration and pain a mix that made him hold her hand too
tightly. He loosened his grip.

“The others,” she whispered.

Angela, Region One's Feeler, put her eyes on
Julia's and gasped, her hand covering her mouth. And Scott shifted
his gaze to her. “What?”

“They plan a terrible end for her.”

“What end?”

“An arranged mating. She'll have no choice.
None.”

Scott gave a vehement shake of his head,
gathering Julia against his chest, raising her effortlessly into
the cradle of his arms.

He was struck by how he'd hated Julia in the
beginning, just a short week ago. Or hated what she had
represented, a fine line that he'd had difficulty recognizing. She
seemed like an intrusion on Scott's freedom, his independence. And
in time Scott had come to realize his independence was merely a
hiatus from what destiny deemed his future.

Julia was his future.

Scott wanted her as his soulmate; he knew that
now as he stood there, shouldering the pain from a distant vampire
as he was tortured so they could get to Julia. As he looked at his
father, Scott recognized that at the very least he was her
protector. Along with nine other soul-meld candidates. That part he
hated.

“Where are the others?” Scott asked him.

“They come. They draw nearer to complete the
circle.”

Julia said, “Let me down.”

“No,” he said quietly and she did the only thing
she could think of. Using her God-given Singer ability she jerked
out of his grasp and flew through the open window into a night
embraced by vampire, fueled by the power of her mind.

Pain slammed into Julia as soon as the
connection was broken with Scott and light flashed before her eyes.
There was no getting used to the pain. It was its own relentless
force, barreling into her without mercy, the buffer of Scott
gone.

Her concentration shattered under the brutality
of it. She was falling and landed against something... someone.

Julia opened her eyes and met crimson ones. Ones
she knew.

Vampire.

Then there were Singers everywhere, vampires
battling her kind. As a wash of pain lanced her. The vampire that
held her dropped her as a male Singer swung a fist at him, fire
rolling off his forearm like a wrecking ball, the sunset flames
hitting the vampire in the chest and he shrieked into the night,
beating his own chest to put out the flames.

Another swooped in to grab her and she did as
Scott had taught her, the training he gave her in the infant stages
but it was enough. She lashed out with her foot, giving a solid
kick to his knee and he hissed in pain, his fangs bursting out with
a fleshy pop.

Julia immediately thought of that night with the
vampires in the bathroom and fear bloomed where anger at Scott had
been.

She'd been played a fool. Then Julia realized
that the pain was gone. She scuttled away on all fours as the
vampire blurred to her in a rush of speed and she used his momentum
against him as she shoved her power at him and he slammed into
another vampire.

Bowling pins
, Julia thought wildly,
giving a hysterical giggle as she beat a hasty retreat to the
house.

She got to the first step of the house and a
vicious tug on her head kept her in place as a strong arm like warm
steel curled around her waist and lifted her off the ground.

Julia gave in to her terror, screaming for all
she was worth, her throat feeling like something important tore as
she did.

Julia felt a crunch and the grip loosened and
she began to fall, throwing her arms out in front of her.

She knew it was Scott before she smelled him,
saw him.

Their blood coursed in synchronicity and Julia
resisted what she felt even as she did: safe.

Scott made her feel safe. It scared Julia. She
didn't want to feel safe. She didn't trust safe. Safety was
something to be stolen.

Then she looked up into his face and gasped in
shock. Eyes of black ink, rimmed by red looked at the vampires who
approached them.

Ten deep.

Brendan, Michael and her Singer guards flanked
them. But it was Scott who held her attention.

Holy shit,
Julia thought, stunned despite
the circumstances she found herself in, he's like the Incredible
Hulk.

And he was.

Scott set Julia down and she watched as his six
foot three frame stretched by inches, his muscles bulging and
tearing the black fabric of the tee that he always wore.

With an inhuman roar he launched himself at the
vampire. His hand touched the first and as he did, he pulled the
limb off in sickening twist of tearing flesh, even as two sunk
their fangs into his arms. Scott howled, using the arm of the
vampire as a club, he heaved the ball joint of the shoulder into
the vampire like a battering ram, cracking his jaw like an unhinged
gate. His face hung askew as Brendan and Michael went to work,
Brendan setting a fire at many feet, but it was the faces that
Julia would never forget.

The faces of the vampires as they wailed and
their skin melted off as she stood there watching.

The smell of burning flesh, flesh that had
long-since been dead, speared the air and as her nostrils filled
with it Julia tipped like a spinning top, her hands biting into the
ground, the fresh air that lay right above the vegetation not
enough to stop her from puking where she crouched.

Julia's eyes burned with the acrid smell. Jen
was there patting her back, coughing into the back of her hand.
Julia was reminded of Adi as her nose and eyes ran, the little bit
of food she'd consumed decorating the weeds.

Out of her peripheral vision she saw Scott, an
impossibly changed and brutal Scott, become a tornado of violence,
tearing the vampires limb from limb as Michael distracted them with
his illusions and Brendan lit them up like tiki torches.

Julia rocked back and sat on her butt watching
the battle unfold. Marcus was amongst the throng, using a sword as
long as her torso, his supernatural strength aiding in its use.
Julia watched him strike the vampires as they came, nearly as fast
as they and she closed her eyes against the violence, repulsed.

“What... are we?” Julia began, still watching
the images behind her eyelids of the killing like a movie she
couldn't turn away from.

It was awful. It was necessary.

Julia couldn't go back to them.

She couldn't stay here. Julia knew that now.

Everyone wanted a piece of her. She had to get
the hell out of here before these other guys... the Combatants
showed up. If she didn't, she'd be royally screwed.
No pun on
that
, she thought bitterly.

Scott stopped, his chest heaving, his mind no
longer powering his body, his arms were covered in vampire gore,
their dead flesh clinging in a mix of blood, sinew and the finer
things that held bodies together, dead or alive.

In this case, no longer.

The undead lay all around Scott like discarded
marbles, their pieces scattered around. The battle was over.

Scott didn't trust it. His eyes flicked to his
father and he tried to speak and found that he couldn't. What the
hell was wrong with him?

He began to move toward Julia (he'd never lost
that sense of where she'd been during the entire battle), then
stopped. He lifted his hand and it was as if it belonged to
somebody else. It was gigantic. Scott was used to being a big guy,
at almost six foot four and nearly two fifty, he used his size and
natural grace to his advantage in sparring. But this!

Scott kicked the vampire parts out of the way
and an errant leg hit the trunk of the tree like it weighed five
pounds instead of forty, denting the bark and causing leaves to
flutter down in blurry shapes scattered by gloom.

Julia screamed at Scott's approach and his step
faltered, her terror at his image halting him in his tracks. What
was she seeing? He was still himself inside, regardless of what his
shell looked like.

What she saw was a six foot eight, nearly three
hundred pound man that moved like a mountain of muscle, eyes so
black they were like ground coal with crimson rims of rage.

Scott ran to her, his gait slowed not at all by
his size. It was as if he was more graceful in this form, not
less.

Julia sprung to her feet, turning and he grabbed
her. “It's me, Julia. Scott!” he said, finding his voice when he
needed it,
thank fuck
he thought in relief and she swung
around hitting him on a chest that felt like heated stone. “Don't
touch me!” she screamed, beating on his pecs like a drum.