Her husband.
The thing with fur, standing over seven feet tall on its hind legs, had a hand that was half paw, and all talons, surrounding the delicate flesh of Jason's neck. His other hand raised in a high arc, readying to deliver the killing blow, claws like spears poised.
“No!” Julia screamed.
Its eyes shifted to hers as she ran to Jason. It seemed to pause.
Then the hand swept down, the nails like knives glinting in the dying light of the fire.
In a blur of light gray, something barreled into the werewolf.
But not before a second mouth of gore opened in Jason's throat. Blood welling and falling as his neck was opened in a deep slash of crimson.
The main artery compromised, Julia ran, sliding in the sand on her knees as she crumpled beside him. Tearing off her jacket she ignored the rawness and finality the wound represented, crushing the soft material against it in a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding.
She could hear the creature fighting something she dared not look at directly behind her. The sounds of meaty flesh being battered was all around her. The lapping of the waves did nothing to silence the music of their violence.
Her eyes met Jason's. She saw his death laying in them.
“Run,” he said out of his ruined esophagus.
Tears ran down her face in a stream, never stopping. “Shh... don't... talk, Jason,” she said in a voice that trembled so badly she could hardly speak.
His eyes urged her to escape even as she stayed. Cyn wailed something in the background. But Julia didn't make out the words. She realized belatedly that shock was settling in like an old friend and she recognized it. Oh yes she did.
It was hauntingly familiar.
The crash that had stolen her family.
Julia heard a sound and looked up.
A man met her gaze, his hands buried wrist deep in the bowels of the creature that had attacked Jason. The gore splatter reached his shoulders, his hands were entwined in the thing's entrails like bloody worms that pulsated and glowed pearlescent in the firelight. Julia swallowed, his deep cranberry gaze the last thing she saw as she turned her face away, heaving the contents of the airplane food as far away as she could from Jason's body. Her quaking hands pressed the cloth against his wounded throat.
Pressing.
Julia felt heat coalesce, rising from her feet and eclipsing at the roots of her hair as she collapsed in a dead faint next to her fallen husband.
Her hands fell away from the wound and the blood came alive again, soaking the cloth of her hoodie, turning it from gray to black.
The full moon rode the sky over them, a cruel governess.
The vampire runners closed in and scooped up the limp body of the Rare One.
The acquisition was a success.
They left in stealth, as they had arrived.
*
Julia's eyes snapped open, her mouth clamped to stifle the scream that had almost erupted. Tears that had dried in sticky lines on her cheeks were the evidence of a dream she had hoped to never face.
A nightmare.
She was so tired she ached. Looking at the glowing red numbers of the clock she saw that she'd only been asleep for a few hours. It read 2:16 am. Early.
She held her body still and listened. The sense of unease she had felt earlier, deepened. Julia knew that something was wrong even as she heard the barest noise in the hall. But it was the primal alert sounding off inside her breastbone that told her what had found her.
Vampire.
They had come. She had to get out of the building.
Now.
She rose, shoving her feet into her shoes. She didn't even put on pants. Running to the window she lifted it silently, the breeze ruffled the hem of her nightshirt, raising goose flesh on her skin in a rush. Looking down at the ground she was at least fifteen feet from the lawn below. She didn't think it was jumpable.
But as her skin began to itch in warning, she knew that it was a matter of time before they had her. She looked around her room quickly. If she survived tonight, she could return in the daylight when the vamps would have to rest and retrieve her things.
She fingered the ring on her neck like a talisman.
Julia looked down again and closing her eyes, crouching on the windowsill, she shoved off. She sailed through the air, preparing herself for the landing, her hair unraveling behind her.
As the ground rushed toward her Julia tried to brace her fall but landed hard, rolling her ankle as she fell. She screamed deep in her throat as ribs were bruised and her ankle sprained. Her head had landed on the soft ground, with an impact that would have crushed it had it been a hard surface.
Driven by fear, Julia leaped to her feet, swaying while her vision remained in triplicate. Her ankle shrieked in protest as she began a hobbling run. Her goal: the woods that bordered the back of the property. She made the treeline, shivering without clothes just shy of making her teeth chatter. She didn't want that.
They would hear.
Julia entered the forest, dragging her leg behind her, clutching her ribcage as she jogged in an ungainly lurch.
William palmed the lock on the door, thankful that it was of vintage origin. Those almost always yielded to his influence. The tumblers shifted against one another smoothly and unlocked at his behest. He opened the door and was greeted by the sight of gauzy curtains, like taunting fingers, waving their mocking salute to he and the other runners.
“She is gone,” Pierce said.
“She could not have gone far,” Andrews said for only the vampires to hear.
Robert said, shrugging, “We track her, it is not difficult, she is but a girl.”
William turned glittering eyes to Robert, a newer runner. “I am sure that is what the Were are considering, even as we speak it.” He made his way to the window that Julia had escaped from. As he gazed down, he estimated the distance as perhaps five meters. Too great a fall for one of her stature and disposition.
Blood Singer or no, she was but an evolved human. Swathed in fragility.
He turned in profile, the moonlight chiseling his features like marble. “She will be injured. Slow. Let us make haste, moonlight is wasting.”
The runners converged at the window. William leaped from inside the small room, exiting the portal with lithe grace, crouched in mid-air, he landed with the barest hop, his nose skyward.
His head snapped down, his face turned in the direction behind the building.
The woods stood in unrelieved black, jagged points meeting the skyscape. He felt the vampires land at his back, fully fed, energized to pursue. He thought of Julia.
Precious and vulnerable. Alone. He hovered over the possibility of the Werewolves presence. Without turning, he took the lead, running headlong, following the Rare One's scent like a moth to flame. Her fragrance a bell ringing like a clear chime for him to hear.
Only him.
CHAPTER 12
Were
Joseph used his eyesight in the gloom as the tool it was. Piercing the darkness as a laser, he searched for their salvation. Lost over a year ago to a blunders of numbers, she would not be unrecovered again. Five Were strong, they had the upper hand, as the vamps generally traveled by quad.
And they were closing in fast.
The girl was crashing through the brush. They but waited for her to stumble into the meadow where they stood.
She would fall into their arms like a ripe plum. Joseph restrained a howl, turning his luminescent gaze to his first, Anthony, who nodded back, his muzzle lifting slightly, revealing teeth honed for killing.
By tearing and biting.
The other three Were flanked them, partially obscured by trees. They blended so well that it would take one of the supernaturals to see them without night vision or some such.
Joseph growled softly, “The Blood drinkers draw close as well.”
Tony snorted out his response, “Let them come.” His paws tightening into cruel fists, his talons s
till short, the battle's lust imminent.
Joseph's primary enforcer was fearless and not nearly as controlled as himself. He'd need to dig deep within himself for control once he was faced with a Rare One. They brought out the very basest primal urges within their kind. Tony had scoffed when told. But he had never been on the acquisition of a Rare One. Only Blood Singers. It was not the same. The comparison could be made that it was like an appetizer of Ritz crackers as opposed to caviar. Never the twain shall meet.
They waited.
As the breath stilled in their bodies, Julia burst out of the haven of the woods, the fingers of the branches reluctantly releasing her from their care.
Her injuries assaulted the acute olfactory senses of the Were, alerting and arousing them simultaneously
The Were advanced toward her position.
*
Julia rushed forward, her foot tangling on a root as she ran and she fell, her palms biting into the dirt. The needles and branches scraped her palms without mercy. She threw herself into running again, the fir boughs whipping her as she tore through, the smell of cedar filling her nose.
Her lungs burning, Julia could see through the gaps in the trees, an open meadow was just ahead. She ran toward the clearing, feeling if she could just get out of these woods, she'd be free.
She threw herself out of the treeline, her breathing ragged, her ankle a throbbing stump she dragged along. Julia was greeted by five werewolves. She knew exactly what they were.
Now.
Their eyes bored into hers and she felt something integral shift inside her and open, a flicker of emotions assailing her.
It took Julia but one confused moment before she understood that it was one of the Were soldiers within the tight group whose emotions were leaking on her like a wayward radio signal.
She felt lust, power and greed. Not in that order. She turned to run back into the safety of the woods and was met by William and his team.
Trapped.
They walked out of the forest's border using a smooth and unhurried gait.
Julia felt her bowels hiccup, her palms instantly glazed with sweat, her throat threatening to close. A fear so profound she could not breathe.
They did not look at her, rather, they looked beyond her.
At the Were.
Julia began to shake, she had nowhere to go and could feel anger from the vamps and a primal surge of adrenaline from the Were. Their emotions collided with her in the middle.
Their emotional sandwich.
Overwhelmed, she collapsed to her knees, a pain in her chest. She met Williams’s eyes. They flicked to hers then locked back on the Were. She began to crawl away, tears dropping to the grass that was already drenched with dew. The wetness soaked her knees and the hem of the nightshirt she wore. Julia was suddenly struck that she was out in the middle of nowhere, in a strange place with nine creatures of legend.
Half-naked.
She flipped over and in one motion, pulled the shirt over her knees to the tops of her feet. Her teeth did chatter then. Her ankle throbbed with the beat of her heart.
Julia watched the obvious leader of the Were step forward and William circle him. Their talons, almost identical, slid out from the tips of their fingers. In the moonlight the vampire's looked black, the werewolf's a light sable.
“Save yourself, Blood Drinker. No one need know that you released the Rare One this night,” the Were ground out, the timbre of his voice sounding full of gravel.
William smiled. “We would never let this one go. We but lost sight of her for one moment,” he spread his hands, feigning reason and continued, “she is our salvation.”
“Ours as well. We can breed her. What do you offer?” The Were asked as a statement, his teeth revealed in a snout that was almost human, until you saw the teeth like ivory razors held in an alligator's grasp. Ready to close at the least provocation.
“It is an impasse, then?” William said, already crouching.
The Were backed away, swishing a tail as a command.
With a gnashing of teeth, the Were sprung on the vampire and a war of fang and claw began.
Julia watched in horror as the vampires began to fight for their lives, outnumbered five to four.
The prize they fought over lay to the west. An injured and sodden mess, huddled in a ball with fear riding her like a shroud of mist as an uncertain dawn approached.
*
William sprang, fangs unsheathed, launching himself at the leader of the Were. Wrapping himself around the torso of the Were like a steel vise, his fangs sunk deep, the foul taste of its flesh like acid in his mouth. He hung on tenaciously.
Even as Joseph sunk all ten talons along his vulnerable flank, William worried the Were's shoulder like a dog with a bone, grinding his teeth closer to the vulnerable bone that lay beneath.
Joseph felt the horrible, burning bite of the blood drinker pierce his upper shoulder and stifled a howl of rage. Instead, he launched his claws into the vampire's side, digging deep. Like a handle he lifted the drinker in the air, a piece of his shoulder coming with it and flung him away, releasing and retracting his claws as he did. The vamp landed with a practiced roll, springing upright, blood trails leaking everywhere Joseph looked. All ten.
Like mini geysers they flowed, the blood looking like black oil in the moonlight.
Joseph howled in triumph. The drinker was wounded, quite badly. But he was distracted as one of his soldiers head's flew by his peripheral vision like an errant bowling ball. His nostrils flared and he was stung by the awful smell of a drinker quite close. He gave an instinctual evasive lean as claws missed his exposed throat by millimeters. He reacted even as he leaned, bringing the claws of his right paw and swiping in an upward arc, releasing their full length as he did. The talons sprang from the stubs of his fingers and gutted the vamp as he leaped to finish the swipe that had not been true.
Andrew's face had a surprised look as Joseph held him suspended, mid-leap. He retracted his claws and the vamp fell at his feet on the long grass of the meadow. With his left hand, he made the final cut to sever the head.
That bastard drinker could have healed a disembowelment. He could heal nothing without a head, Joseph thought with brief satisfaction.
The head rolled to join his fallen Were and Joseph turned in the melee, blood spray and gore littering the pathway as he began to move toward the girl. Belatedly he realized that Tony already made his way to her.
Against express orders.
Joseph was the only Were allowed to touch the girl.
Already Joseph could smell the unshakable lust of his first, riding an unstoppable urge. He would crush the girl if he reached her first.
The sharp claws of Joseph's feet sprung from the pads of his feet, spearing the soft earth beneath him. He spun, using the finely honed balance they gave him. On the balls of his feet, he surged forward, each landing paw, gripping and shoveling a spray of dirt behind him.
Even with his incredible speed, he could see he would not reach the girl in time. For the first time as a Soldier of the Were, he experienced an emotion he had only heard about.
Fear.
And underneath that. Panic.
*
And Julia thought she'd known fear. Tasted it. She had not. Sheer terror took hold of her now. Something even scarier than William approached. Not at a dead run, no. He advanced with purpose, a light in eyes that were reflected in the pale moonlight like a cat's. Glowing.
They were fixed on her with a look she couldn't recognize. Finally, as he was almost upon her she thought she knew what it was. What he wanted.
He looked like he wanted to consume her.
Julia gave in to her intense fear, screaming so loudly her voice left her and hoarse shouts were all she could give out. Her terror was not diminished from the lack of their volume.
She scooted backward on her haunches with an energy Julia didn't realize she possessed. Her modesty forgotten, she scuttled like a spider backward, using just
her hands and feet.
Still he came.
CHAPTER 13
William
William’s sides burned as if on fire, the wounds inflicted by the Were deep, the poison released from his talons delivered and flowing through his system, weakening him.
He needed blood.
And his group was outnumbered. Andrew gone.
He heard a hoarse voice, hysteria riding it like fine wine. Normally, a scream like the one he heard would incite a tornado of blood lust.
Not tonight.
The source of the screaming was his to protect with his life. By any means necessary.
William shifted into the form that would allow him to travel faster, his only gift. The singular thing that separated him, identified him as having the blood of a Singer running through his veins.
His already injured body fought the change. William forced it upon himself, his body losing shape and molding into the raven. It was twice the size of the majestic Bald Eagle.
The eyes remained a deep cranberry, a color not found in nature. His ebony wings unfolded to a span of nearly ten feet. He rose, partially healing as he lifted from the ground, his clothes in a shredded pile at his feet. Lack of blood, coupled with injury made William sway in the air. He sharpened when he was greeted with the image of Julia struggling in the brutal embrace of the Were.
Clearly in the grips of lust.
Breeding lust.
William pointed his sharp beak at the pair, folding his huge wings against his body, he sailed down as an onyx torpedo.
*
Julia
Julia sprung to her feet just as Tony grabbed at her. She used her elbow in an insightful move that surprised both of them, using the hardest part of her body as a weapon she threw it up into the half-human face that was so close to her. Tony helped her by leaning into her just as she jabbed it forward.
Her elbow connected with his jaw and it stunned him for a moment.
Blood Singers (Blood Series, #1) Page 8