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 he would have thought they'd want to find out who took their daughter-in-law. But 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 his wife. The marriage license had been validated and duly noted.
She was Julia Caldwell now, wherever she was.
If she was even alive.
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 in his climb to wonder what might have snapped a branch the size of a man's wrist off at the base.
The police looked for rational explanations to murder and disappearance.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Julia was working into a routine of sorts, steering clear of the vampire that had “saved” her. Her arms were functioning again, and she had full rotation. The scars from the talons were almost gone.
She looked in the mirror, running a finger over the shiny pink wounds. They faded each day. Julia would brush her teeth, and her eyes would move back to the reflection of them in the glass like a magnet to steel.
She knew more than she had before, and she wished she didn't.
There was no escaping this place. She felt the inevitability of her circumstances closing in around her, and it gave her an almost suffocating feeling of claustrophobia.
Julia tapped the toothbrush on the edge of an old-fashioned pedestal sink, shedding the remaining water from the bristles. She turned the spigot sharply to the left, and the water dried up, a shaky drop falling and hitting the basin with a dull plop. She skewered one of the four holes in the toothbrush holder— attached to the wall—with the base of the brush, and without looking at her reflection again, she walked away.
Julia knew the routine. Claire would knock as she entered the room. They'd have breakfast together. Julia would fight panic attacks, and Claire would lend some of that calm she had in abundance, and Julia would live another day.
But she was just existing. She was good at inhaling and exhaling. She'd become an expert at that since Jason had died.
The vampires were biding their time. Julia knew they were grooming her, and she knew what she was now—she was some prophesied genetic key that would unlock the prison of their existence. She was the answer to them not being vampires anymore. Julia didn't really think it was that damn simple, but they fed her what they wanted her to know, their version of what was happening.
To listen to Claire explain it, it was some kind of honor. But she'd heard one of the vampire guards discussing humans.
Humans were cattle to them.
Food load. Without humans, the vampires would starve to death.
The Blood Singers were an essential element to the genetic diversity of the humansʼ blood. Without this superior faction, intermixed with the regular population, the blood quantum, the quality of the blood quantum would be compromised.
In essence, Blood Singers brought the quality of the blood to a level that made all human blood palatable to the vampires.
While vampires were ruled by blood and darkness, the Were were ruled by the moon. She was a jealous mistress, governing their changes at her whim. And that whim was when she was full. No more, no less.
Julia's lessons had begun. Through Claire, Julia began to understand her role and why she never would have been allowed to live with Jason as a spouse.
Blood Singers did not intermarry. The purity of their blood was needed to balance the precious blood quantum. Mating with each other would upset that balance.
Singers were so rare that it was typically not a problem. Claire had mentioned a figure: one one-hundredth of a percent of the global population. That meant Blood Singers numbered around nearly seven hundred thousand souls. That seemed like a lot to Julia, but spread over the seven continents, it was barely sustaining the vampires. They existed in greater numbers.
That was why the two factions had converged on their group at the beach. They would never have allowed the union. She and Jason had married in secret. But the vampires had been watching, and they accelerated their plan because of Jason and Julia's elopement.
Julia guessed the plan hadn't included Jason's death.
Claire had explained Julia's parents—in detail. Both Blood Singers, they had been taken before they could have more children.
It hadn't been an accident, but providential.
As it happened, the one child they did produce was a daughter.
The manifestation of their combined recessive genes was Julia.
She was the Rare One, the unique female, promised to change the face of the races, able to produce Lightwalkers. If bred to the Were, their offspring would be moonless changers. The moon's control would be gone after several generations, the compulsion to be her slave no longer there—bred out.
Julia felt like the prized mule.
Then there were the supposed abilities. Supernatural abilities. She thought about the conversation she'd had with Claire the previous day.
*
“How can you stand it? Living here… with them?” Julia had asked, her arms folded across her chest, rubbing her skin as if she were cold. She wasn't cold, just freaked out and unhinged. Everything Claire had told her reverberated around in her skull like a pin ball.
Rare One? Blood Singers? One of hundreds of thousands of people?
“I have little choice. This is the place that I have come to belong. I've been here many years.”
“What about my parents? Were they expendable? And Jason?” Julia spoke in a low voice, her arms by her sides, trembling slightly in her anger.
Claire lifted a shoulder. “It is not typical. One in ten thousand is a Singer. That your parents found one another… that you found and married a Singer…” She looked at Julia. “It's unprecedented.”
Wonderful. Julia's parents were dead. Jason was dead. And all because vampires wanted their food all pretty and tasty.
Fancy cattle. That was all the Singers were to all of them, vampires and Were alike. Julia told Claire that.
She shook her head. “We are more. The quality of our blood and the fabric of our genetics are not the only things we have to offer, Julia.” Her eyes searched Julia meaningfully. “Have you ever had flashes of intuition? Feelings of a precognitive nature?”
Julia sucked in her breath. She'd always known who was phoning as soon as her hand touched the receiver. What the next song would be on the radio. When there'd be a pop quiz in school. Now that everyone sent texts, she'd get a vibration before it rang—not from the cell but from within her body. She'd always just chalked it up to one of those things.
It sure as hell was one of those things. It just wasn't the thing she'd been thinking.
*
Can you hear me? Claire asked. Her lips weren't moving. Icy fingers brushed inside her head and Julia shivered. The feeling of an itch not quite being scratched hovered in her brain.
“What did you say?” Julia asked out loud, sure that she was imagining things. People didn't have telepathy.
Can you do this? Claire asked, her voice breathing through Julia's mind.
I don't know, Julia replied, aiming her thoughts at Claire like a well trained archer.
She must have hit the bull's-eye because Claire smiled. I thought it might be possible. It is spoken that the Rare One will come to possess all the talents for our people.
Julia backed away, stunned. It was too much to take in. A wave of calmness stole over her, making her feel slightly numb, drugged.
“Stop doing that!” Julia yelled.
“I only wish to help. I'm part of you. We all are,” Claire said, her rich chestnut hair falling around her shoulders as she came at Julia.
Julia stumbled, falling backward. She
felt something well inside of her, rushing to the surface like a bubble of oxygen sliding to the surface of a pool of water. She allowed it to leave her, bursting on Claire.
Julia hadn't meant to hurt her.
Claire looked as if an invisible ripple had plowed into her, and she slammed into the wall just inches from the hearth that boasted an old fireplace. It was full of jagged rock.
Claire slid down the wall, stunned. Julia got up off the floor, rubbing her arms again, her body flushed, her head light. She began to move toward Claire when the door slammed open, and William was there, glancing at his relative leaning against the wall where she'd been thrown. Julia hopped over the back of the couch where she'd been sitting, and he was flying over it and underneath her before she could jump to the ground.
She screamed, and he crushed her to him.
Her chest tightened painfully. The proximity to him unbearable.
She could feel it like silken tentacles pulling taut: the call of her blood to his.
The consumption of his blood was a pulsating thread that bound them—like a song, a blood song.
While the guard at the door watched, the vampire Julia hated held her against himself as if she were the most precious treasure in the world. And she knew that to him, she was.
*
Julia
Julia was goddamn done with the coven. She was considered a flight risk.
Gee, ya think?
So, they had her guarded all the time, day in and day out. There were humans, called “intimates,” who were the day slaves of the vampire underworld. They guarded her when the vampires slept. While awake, the vampires guarded her.
Julia was frustrated. She wanted to leave her room. It didn't matter that it was beautiful and all her needs were met. So what? She was little more than a bird in a gilded cage.
She and Claire had come to an uneasy truce. She would teach Julia to harness her abilities, and Julia would not use them against her. It should have been simple, but it wasn't. Julia was already planning on honing said skills and getting the hell out of the coven. She wasn't stupid, though. Julia knew that learning what those abilities were and practicing them with someone that also had them… well, it made sense. She decided to bide her time. Not that there is a plethora of options, she thought dejectedly.
Claire came to her one day with the news that she had been there a month, and it was time to meet the leader of the Seattle Coven, Gabriel.
He was Claire's brother, a Rare One.
If Julia had thought the odds of running into one of her kind slim, meeting another Rare One was even slimmer. Claire had explained that out of the almost seven hundred thousand people who were potential Singers, only one percent of those were the coveted Rare Ones.
Wonderful. Julia didn't think that her blood status had helped her in the slightest. It had just gotten the people she cared about dead. A tightening of her chest came on the heels of that marvelous revelation.
The vampires were old-school. Claire told her there would be a ball, of sorts, like an old-fashioned “coming out.” Julia would be the guest of honor—their stolen prize, the blue-ribbon winner, the prize Heifer.
They didn't need to milk her, just breed her. But to whom?
She'd never let one of the bloodsuckers touch her. It was only afterward that Claire told her William had “blood shared,” saving her indescribable agony from the wounds he'd inflicted and allowing her to heal quickly.
Not my problem. If they hadn't chased her, he wouldn't have had to use everything he had to get her here. Julia thought of the feeling of the talons piercing her flesh, her bone the next layer beneath the biting claws, and shuddered at the memory.
It was William's fault she was here.
*
Debutant
William studied his reflection, securing the matching cufflinks on his custom-made button-down. It was burgundy silk, woven against the grain to produce a slight sheen with movement. Claire said it brought out his eyes. The eyes that met his reflection were the deepest shade of red, just shy of black, his pupils inky dots in their center. But they were not always so. Depending on the circumstance, they could appear reflective and silver. He lowered his sleeves after adjusting the links just right. Sterling squares with a beveled and scalloped edge were pierced with a starburst that held a brilliant blue sapphire chip in its core—an heirloom from his father.
He sighed. Sometimes the pomp and circumstance of these ceremonies weighed heavily on him.
William thought of what Claire had told him. Julia was resistant, distrustful. In her youthful naivety, she thought that she could fool Claire into thinking she was compliant.
William had warned her this was not so. Julia had a steely resolve, never forgetting a wrong enacted upon her.
That was why those whiskey-colored eyes followed him with indifference.
Julia was not immune to the fire that burned in their veins from the blood share. Her blood called to him. She had tasted of his, so now she had a fraction of the feeling of the song that he held within himself for her.
She listened to his blood as a melody.
Her blood to him was a symphony.
There really was no comparison.
William turned from his reflection, forbidding his despair to take over. This was the Greeting Ceremony. Aside from Gabriel, there had not been one in his kiss for three centuries. That was rare indeed.
He slipped quietly out of his chamber, hesitating outside her door, apprehension at her proximity making his step falter. He drew himself together. He could not abide a slip of a girl commanding a warrior of the vampire.
William strode off, never glancing back, his desire behind him, his plan ahead.
*
Julia
Julia turned her head in midstroke of the hairbrush when she felt the familiar tightening inside her breastbone.
“What is it?” Claire asked, locking her gaze with Julia's in the mirror's reflection.
Julia unconsciously rubbed her chest as she stared at the door, her breath held in her throat. “I don't know,” she whispered.
But she did know. William stood outside the door. She was deathly afraid he'd come in.
She was even more afraid because she wanted him to.
Her body crawled with the need to be near him, the chemical aspects of the blood in her body more than they had been. Twice now, he'd given her his blood. Each time, it had been life saving. It was the quantity that mattered. When the amount of his blood in her system reached critical mass, she would be left with no choice.
Claire had explained it was part of the mating process. The fact that he had given her blood twice drove them closer to being mated, whether he was right for her or not—and whether she wanted it or not.
“After the greeting ceremony is over, then there will be a courtship within the circle of eligible vampires.”
Julia couldn't believe how ridiculous it all sounded. A little more than a year ago, she'd been a high school senior, secretly engaged and then married. It had been pretty unforgettable.
She'd been on a path of life so different from this one she could never reconcile the two, however much she thought about it.
Now, she would be handed over to the best mate in the vampire contingent—the one with whom she could produce the most desirable offspring.
“The sooner you accept your placement here, the better off you'll be,” Claire said, admiring Julia's gown.
Though trying to hide her scowl at Claire's words, even Julia had to admit it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever worn.
It was the palest champagne, almost a soft tangerine. Her ginger-colored hair shone above it. Claire had seen to it that her hair had been expertly cut around her shoulders, where it curled softly.
“We keep your hair down for the greeting. No need to be provocative this first time. It will be hard enough for them as it is.”
Right, Julia thought. The blood lust.
*
Murmured voices reach
ed Julia's ears as she swept in with Claire, the vampire guard and Clarence, trailing behind them soundlessly.
The voices stopped instantaneously, an ominous silence filling the cavernous space. Julia looked up, not being able to help noticing a central strip of ambient light that was perfectly spaced. Large grid-like skylights lined the ceiling of where she stood. Rectangular in size, they housed many thick glass circles. Dark spots would appear above them with regularity. It was mesmerizing.
The vampires stared at her as she brought her gaze down from the ceiling peppered with glass.
A man came forward, and instantly Julia felt her body respond. It was not sexual. It was synchronicity. This man was kindred to her. She felt more related to him than she'd ever felt to her flesh-and-blood aunt.
He smiled, and it was sun breaking through clouds. For the first time since her arrival, she felt something slide into place—something that felt like home.
He was tall, and she had plenty of time to assess him as he came toward her, his copper hair slicked back and tied in a navy silk band at the nape of his neck. He had a slight accent when he said, “You are Julia.” He formed it as a statement although it was truly a question.
She nodded, the hair sliding around her bare shoulders. Her nervousness felt like a caged animal yearning for release.
“Welcome!” he said in a booming voice that echoed against the stone walls. Julia fought not to jump as she looked around and faced the crowd of vampires.
There were so many they lined the walls, some lingering in the tall, bricked archways, two feet thick, at the threshold. Julia's eyes searched the crowd. Many faces were expressionless, and a few held contempt. Julia swallowed.
The neutral faces lost that expression as they tracked the small movement of her throat like vultures circling a dying meal.
Gabriel continued, “Here is the one our warriors have brought to us—the first Rare One in three centuries, here now for the prophesied continuation of our race. It will be she who allows daywalking. And so much more.”
He turned those golden eyes—so much like Claire's, so much like Julia's—to hers.
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