His eyes tightened at her expression as he tore into the flesh of his own wrist. Black blood began oozing out of his damaged forearm and flowed down, dripping onto her neck. The droplets splattered like hot candle wax on her skin.
“Drink,” William said, lowering his wrist down to her mouth.
She shook her head, with her ebbing strength she clamped her lips together.
William's eyes flicked behind her and he grunted, frustrated.
“Hold her,” he said with a voice filled with regret.
Large hands clamped onto either side of her head and she was helpless to move in the jaws of their hold.
Just helpless, Julia seethed with frustration.
The poison of his body poured into her mouth in a steady stream and she fought, trying to move her head, but steel bands of flesh held her in position.
He pressed his forearm onto her mouth and with his other hand he pinched her nostrils together and she sucked the blood down into her throat as she began to clench her teeth around his arm.
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, the 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.
CHAPTER 4
“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.
“It's the blood share... it will pass,” he said, intuiting her body's response.
“Put me down,” she repeated.
William gently put her on her feet, his hand gripping her bony elbow, which had become like a twig since they had taken her.
Julia longed to tear it away from him but knew that she could hardly stand. She fumed where she stood; trying not to think about the blood she'd drunk from her husband's murderers.
The memory encroached on her mind ruthlessly and she shut it down like all the others she didn't want to see. Biting the inside of her cheek. Blood welled inside her mouth like sour copper and she made a slight noise. William looked at her sharply, sucking in his breath and began to breathe through his mouth.
Julia smiled genuinely for the first time since her ordeal began as a terrible idea took shape in her mind.
She knew how to escape.
Just as she would press her advantage a large woman burst through the door and Julia's heart skipped a beat, racing inside her rib cage. She swayed and William pulled her gently against him.
She didn't resist, there was no use. But she would soon permanently resist.
Oh, so permanently.
*
Susan looked at the Blood Singer that the runners had acquired some months past and it was the first time that the girl hadn't been half-unconscious. Countless bowls of soup, water poured down her throat, sponge baths and dressings she'd shared with the girl.
But she looked at Susan as a stranger. For she was. The trauma surrounding the acquisition had been so overwhelming the girl had yet to recover. When she was finally dying, William had been beside himself to save her and been given the green light.
Blood share.
He had done it, even with the potential for scrambling the wires of his quarry, he had done it.
Now she stood, now she looked as if she might survive.
Even Susan
could see beneath the dishevelment and scrawny physique to the healthy girl she had been. She would be well again, Susan vowed.
She had to be.
Julia was the Rare One. Susan's eyes flicked to the pale, moon-shaped scar on the girl's head.
Susan approached her and took her gently from William's arms, his hands trailing reluctantly from her body. Susan glanced at William, the feral vestiges about him still.
“You'd do well to leave us for a time,” she said significantly and William nodded. Heaven knew he was having to stretch his limits with her fresh blood a darkly blooming fragrance in the room, suffocating his reasoning.
His directives.
William walked away, the pull of his blood in Julia's body beating in time with his heart. It felt like warm taffy as he moved through the door, swimming upstream. His hand landed on the doorknob.
Julia watched the vampire turn the knob, stiffen and quickly slip through.
Susan breathed a sigh of relief when the vampire left. Julia tried to pull away but Susan gripped her upper arm, her fingers encircling the whole of it.
Julia glared at her. “Take your hands off me.”
Susan smiled. “Listen to me,” she began, her eyes boring into Julia's. “I am not like them. But you know that, don't you?”
Julia didn't answer. She was not going to cooperate with any of this.
“I am human...”
“Yeah, whatever. You work for them. That's all the info I need.”
“Who do you think got soup down your throat? Bathed you? Put clothes on you?”
Julia looked at her in horror. She touched her when she was unconscious. Julia studied her closely. There was something... almost familiar about her.
Memories assaulted her in a torrent. Being in a tub and floating. This woman washing her... ugh. Julia thought of the intimacy all that entailed and wanted to throw up. She remembered the food that she'd been spoon fed woodenly. She'd wanted to die.
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