Julia spun and began to run, her ankle screamed and she ignored it. Something grabbed her hair from behind and lifted her off the ground by it, her scalp shrieking and burning. Torquing her neck, the Were wrapped hands that could have crushed the windpipe they held around her neck and drew her against his body, almost tenderly.
His other hand tore the nightshirt she was wearing collar to hem, using only the tip of one claw.
It fell at their feet in a pile and he moved his hold from her neck to wrap her upper arms.
“I will breed you... Blood Singer,” it growled out between impossibly long teeth.
Julia was fully panicked now. Looking down she saw what made him male in full view and used her hand like a weapon, clawing at his face and kicking out. He shook her so hard her teeth rattled and she saw stars, her head lolling about on the stem of her neck like a fragile flower.
Out of her trembling side vision Julia felt air rush past her and another of his kind bore down on him, his hold releasing, the claws sliding away without purchase. She fell to the grass beneath, her knees folding under her like a chair put away.
As she gazed up at the night sky, the sounds of flesh being torn and ripped, growling and yipping reverberating in her ears, a great black shape descended above her.
Julia lay there, the wetness of the grass soaking through her panties and cami.
She saw that it was a great bird, the eyes piercing her as it hovered above her in ebony glory, revealed only in outline by the full moon.
She didn't even scream when the talons from its feet pierced her shoulders, lifting her body in the air. The pain was a numbing horror but her mind protected her as unconsciousness washed over her body.
The last thing Julia remembered was an unearthly howl of anguish reaching her ears.
Then there was only blackness, the pain a spiral that trailed after her.
*
Joseph
Joseph closed his muzzle with a snap, the howl echoing in the openness of the clearing. The small body of the Rare One was clutched to the drinker like a dark token in the sky.
One Were and one vampire lay in bloody heaps, his first on the ground, heaving from exertion and in the throes of shaking off the breeding lust with effort.
The fool.
He watched as the remaining vampires bled back into the forest seamlessly, their bodies melding so closely with the shadows their forms were indecipherable.
Another failed mission.
He looked at Tony with unveiled disgust. Maybe it would have gone similarly without this transgression, he did not know. What he did know is that drinker had shifted. His intel had not divulged that skill amongst the runners. He must have Singer's blood running in his veins.
The rat bastard.
They needed that Singer, badly. Before a fully blooded vampire could breed her. A thing the Were had heard as rumored legend only.
Joseph was beginning to wonder if there was some truth to it.
He jerked his head at the three Were who lived, indicating their dead comrade.
They hefted the body, the vampire's remains lifting in the light breeze as so much ash at the mercy of the wind.
Joseph and the others turned to go, Tony bringing up the rear, his hand buried in the hair of the head of the fallen Were, carrying it like a macabre purse.
Tony's unfriendly eyes latched onto the back of his leader, malice taking shape like slow-moving poison, insidious and progressive.
*
the kiss of Seattle
Burning.
On fire.
Julia was on fire.
Her eyes popped open and she wanted to scream. Instead, out of a mouth so parched her lips were cracked, she moaned. Her shoulders were one burning mass of flesh.
She cracked open an eyelid and saw fuzzy shapes moving silently around the room. Above her was filtered ambient light.
A presence came close to her and she flinched. “Shh, you're safe,” a female voice said.
Right, Julia thought in exhaustion. She hadn't felt safe since the day Jason died.
Another blurry person, a male, came to stand next to the female, who made Julia feel a sense of comfort.
“We will have to put that shoulder back. Right it.”
Julia watched as they looked at one another, her vision doubling.
She felt a gentle hand at her wrist and a bulging piece of cloth placed underneath her armpit, a fist wedged up underneath it and as her arm was pulled the fist punched upward and she shrieked. The pain at once piercing and awful.
Julia sunk back in to unconsciousness on a hitching sob.
William looked down at her, his hand sliding from its placement underneath her shoulder. The joint was back in its rightful place, that pinched look she had worn since her arrival was gone.
He breathed out and looked at Claire.
“She is so fragile...” she said. As she looked at Julia, she took in the bizarre hair color, the paleness of her skin, a touch of blue to her nostrils and lips. She had lost much blood. She looked at William.
“You will need to give her more blood,” she said, her eyes searching his.
“Every drop I give her binds us tighter.”
“Maybe, but if you don't, she will heal humanly slow. In agony.” She looked at him, knowing things that she should not and he scowled.
Claire knew what his life's goal had been, her eyes moving over the tell-tale mark on the girl's forehead.
What it had always been. It was in the Book of Blood. The vampire equivalent of the Bible. A Rare One would save the race from the brink of extinction. A union between a vampire of Singer descent and a Rare One brought the tenuous hope of offspring. One which William wanted.
Quite badly.
Children who were as strong as vampires. Possessing all the abilities but without the need to drink blood, living as the feral in the cover of darkness. Yes, who would not wish for that.
Long for it.
Julia bore the mark. A half-moon shaped scar like a small kiss of flesh hovered at her temple. It was the symbol of the Rare One. It looked very much like the moon, pure white.
William’s hands balled into fists, guilt sweeping over him as he took in the gauze dressings, already discolored by Julia's blood.
He had almost torn her shoulders off in flight. When she fainted, well... it had been a near thing. The dead weight hanging her like meat off a hook. He clenched his eyes, willing the image of her broken body away as he had brought it into the bowels of the underground. The forgotten city that lay beneath Seattle.
The lair of his kiss.
He looked above him, watching the feet of the passing pedestrians as they walked over glass that was a foot thick. Scuffed and cloudy, it had a vague purple hue, garnered by a century of sunlight he would never behold.
He sighed and looked at Claire, who had stubbornly folded her arms across her chest. The granddaughter of a Rare One, she should be renamed Stubborn One.
He came by his tenacious streak honestly. Claire was his cousin.
His fangs elongated, he placed the twin points against his wrist. Sweeping sideways, he made a clean cut like a razor thin line and blood welled, almost black.
Squeezing his wrist to prompt the flow, he used his other hand to massage Julia's throat. As the drops fell, her full lips parted and the first trembling drop held itself suspended for a moment like a glittering gem, then fell.
As the blood found its way inside her mouth, she stirred, her throat convulsing and swallowing. Without waking, her hands moved to the offered forearm, small and pale against even his flesh, like carved ivory, her grip weak as a kitten's. William leaned closer, the pull of her mouth against his flesh an erotic tether that bound him to her.
She drank.
William resisted his impulses.
They were many.
CHAPTER 14
Julia awoke naturally, her body aching. As she became aware incrementally, her body didn't hum with fear, but with a subtle calmne
ss.
She never felt calm.
Her eyes snapped open and were met by a stare that matched her own. She had never known anyone to have eyes the same shade as hers and was momentarily speechless.
Julia tried to sit up and the room spun. The woman's arm that was attached to that stare rose and pressed her back against the pillows that were stacked behind her.
She opened her mouth to speak and Claire stood, leaning forward she pressed a cup with a straw against Julia's chapped lips. “Drink. You're dehydrated.”
Julia drank. It was the best water she'd ever had. It was refreshingly chilled and it coated her parched throat like the first spring rains in the desert.
She tried to gulp but the woman took the cup away when Julia would have had more.
“Small sips, we don't want that stomach of yours giving up the blood inside you.”
Julia's expression changed and Claire saw it. “Don't even start, Julia.”
Julia narrowed her eyes on the woman and she said, “The only reason you're not on that bed writhing around in pain is because of the blood William gave you.” She cocked a brow.
“I'll bet,” Julia croaked out, her voice raw from screaming.
“He didn't want to,” Claire stood. “I forced him. It is bad enough for you to transition into our coven, we don't need an injury slowing that assimilation.”
She looked at Julia. “I'm Claire.”
Julia nodded in greeting. Claire obviously knew who she was.
Julia shrugged, she felt a comfort in her presence, true. But Julia had reason to distrust them. She could sense what was around her.
Vampires.
And not a few.
Legion.
*
Joseph
Maggie fussed over Tony when Joseph would have left the smallness of his injuries alone. Let him deal with it. He continued to seethe as she ministered to the long gashes that crisscrossed Tony's torso. She was disinfecting the open wounds.
Vampire venom was poisonous. Joseph smiled, thinking of the one he'd speared with his claws.
He'd have been feeling some serious pain. Delirium would be his friend as he flew with the Rare One. A troubling thought. What if he'd injured the Singer in his pain-induced stupor?
Maggie stood back, critically looking at the dressed wounds. “I think ya may live another day,” she clucked like a mother hen.
Joseph looked at her, his expression softening. It was not her fault that he was pissed at his first. She was doing her job. Attending the Were soldiers. There was one less tonight. His headless body cooled in a shed on the Were compound. Lawrence would want a full report; then a ceremony would need to be arranged for his fallen comrade.
Now it was his horrible task to tell Colton's widow the news that her mate was gone. Joseph hung his head.
After a long moment of reflection, he planted massive hands on his jean-clad thighs. Standing, he stared at Tony, waiting until Maggie bustled out of the room. He watched the departure of her back and turned to Tony, stabbing a finger in his direction. “I have duties to attend to but you will answer to Lawrence. Your Packmaster will know what you elected to do, allowed yourself to do. It is you that jeopardized this mission.”
“You can't blame me for everything,” Tony said with derision, his upper lip curling back slightly.
Joseph came forward and Tony sprang to his feet, they crashed into each other, knocking a lamp off an end table. As it slammed to the floor, shards flying everywhere, Joseph took the six-foot three Tony down in an arm lock that drove his elbow into the other man's sternum, the windpipe compromised. Joseph felt the change hovering in a dim corner of his brain and his vision changed, his facial bones rearranging in a disconcerting clay like movement that had the room filling with the sounds of their shifting, tendons popping into their new arrangement.
But it was just his face and hands that changed. The rest of Joseph remained as it was. He slowly removed his arm from the throat of the soldier who had acted on impulse. Joseph replaced it with a claw nearly a foot long in variegated and mottled browns, creams and tans.
“Do not,” Joseph said on a growl, his throat partially changed, his teeth gleaming with killing intent in a mouth that now had a muzzle covered in gray fur.
“I can and I will blame you.” His gold eyes round and large in his wolf form, peered at Tony. “You were without control so near the Singer. You begged me for this assignment, refused to be desensitized.”
“I would not harm her!” Tony growled back, mindful of his own change, which bore down on him enough to make sweat bead on his upper lip, the restraint he employed ugly.
“Rape is harm!” Joseph barked at Tony.
He understood anyway.
“We are meant to breed her!” Tony said, exasperated.
“Not without the ceremony, not without the proper testing. She cannot be with any wolf. She must be properly matched, properly mated. Do you not see?”
Tony did not, narrowing his eyes on his Alpha. He would give anything to be the Alpha. He could not think for the scent of the Singer. How had Joseph stood it?
One day the position would be his.
By whatever means necessary.
There was a noise by the door and Adriana rushed in, landing a solid kick to Joseph's side with her full werewolf strength and his rib bruised instantly, robbing some of his breath.
“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 him, 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 tha
t 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.
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