All eyes turned to me, it was my son they were talking about, I had to give the okay. What was going on?
“Jules,” William said holding my cheek in his hand, “this is a way for you to have part of your family back. I can’t give them all to you, but I can give you this.”
“William, he will have to protect me, I can’t endanger him.”
“I have seen him try to fend off two vampires with nothing but a baseball bat and no training, and no fear in him whatsoever, trying to protect you. I wouldn’t suggest it if I didn’t think he could do it. I will train him like he was my own son; I swear to you he is good enough.”
He held my eyes firmly in his gaze, willing me to trust him. I finally tore my eyes from his and turned to face Sebastian.
“If I agree to Christian acting as my Guardian does that mean I can see him and interact with him without any repercussions?”
“Of course, a Guardian and their vampire often lived together, even having a sexual relationship – though I don’t think that would be the case with you.”
“And as long as Christian always keeps vampirekind a secret, never revealing anything about them he remains free, and at no risk of the Council, Sub-Rosa or any other legal ramifications for knowing about vampirekind?”
“That is correct.”
This was William’s way of protecting Christian for what he already knew. Sebastian didn’t know Christian was there when Nathaniel was killed or that he already knew about vampires. By making him my Guardian, he would potentially be at risk, but safe from the Council. William had done it, he found a way of protecting Christian.
“Okay, let’s get this over with. I agree to the terms. We have to tell Christian first and make sure he agrees to abide by the law, but I want to have part of my family back again.”
We were parked next to Sebastian’s car and the driver had opened up the door allowing Martin and Sebastian to get out of the car. That left William, Ana and I sitting in the back alone. I threw my arms around William’s neck pulling him to me.
“Thank you, Will, you did it. You found a way to keep him safe,” I whispered into his neck.
“I started remembering something about it after we met the feeder at the house, then after last night I knew exactly what to look for. Don’t worry he will be fine,” William said pulling me to him even tighter.
“Will,” I whispered then pulled back so he could see my lips move. I mouthed to him fearing even whispering the words, “I think Sebastian is the man I saw when using the feeder.”
“Be careful, and do not use your compulsion with them, no matter what,” he said so quietly it was a brush against my ear. I had to strain to make sure I heard him, “let them think it’s just a rumor.”
I looked up at him nodding that I understood. I looked over at Ana, who looked as calm and collected as ever, but I could feel her unease at the situation starting to leak through the bond we shared.
“Hey, everything will be fine. I’ll see you guys later, then?”
“Yeah, we’re going with Martin and will meet up with you and Sebastian in a few hours,” Ana said.
“Okay, bye.” I gave her a small wave of my hand that seemed somehow insufficient.
I bent over to climb out of the limo revealing more than I intended and got a firm slap on the butt in return, “Hey!” I shouted to receive sounds of laughter coming back at me from the two of them. Martin climbed back in the limo and it drove back out the drive the way we came.
When I looked over at Sebastian he was leaning up against an older white jaguar.
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
“Yes, impressive isn’t she. It’s a --”
“Jaguar XKSS, I know,” I said cutting him off and slowly walking around the car in awe. “I have wanted to see one all of my life; there are only 16 of them in the world. How did you get one?” I asked truly amazed.
“I have been around for 250 years, that gives me enough time to get whatever I want,” he said with a genuine smile. “How do you know so much about cars?” he asked me.
“My brother raised me for the most part and he was a grease monkey. I listened and got my hands dirty when he would let me, I liked the muscle cars, the fast ones with big engines the most.”
“Do you want to drive it?”
“Wh-what?”
He laughed out loud at my sudden inability to speak and tossed the keys in the air.
“Yeah, but this car is worth millions.”
“I’m worth more. The wheel is yours.”
I just stood there frozen, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t believe I was actually seeing my dream car for one, and secondly that I was going to be allowed to drive it. I think I had truly died this time.
“You might want to buckle up,” I told him yanking off my heels and throwing them in his lap to hold as I jumped into the driver’s seat.
“Shit! These are silver!” he said dangling the stilettos by the toe.
“Sorry, forgot about that.”
“They’ve been teaching you.”
“Not really, Ana just gave them to me to wear.”
I turned away from him ran my hands over the steering wheel and console, I was still a little bit in awe that I was actually sitting in this car.
“Amazing, this looks like it could be the original.” I reached down and turned the key. The engine rolled over just like it was supposed to. I felt like I should be idling up to a start line, not sitting in an empty drive.
“It is the original, one of the surviving sixteen from the fire. Come on, let’s see what you can do.”
I needed no other prompting or encouragement, and threw the car into gear. We went flying down the road, and I shifted smoothly loving the feel of the powerful engine underneath me.
“William would never let me get away with this,” I said laughing as the wind ripped my hair around.
Sebastian gave me directions, and I’m sure we took the long route there, but I enjoyed every minute of that car. Finally, he had me slow the car as we came into what looked like a vacant business district with just two or three cars scattered throughout the lot.
“Juliana, before we go in there are a few unpleasantries we must discuss.”
“Ok, sure.”
“First, no one here knows my real identity. If they thought I worked for the Council they would simply kill me. If they discovered that I was really the head of the Council, they would devise a slow torture of some sort, and use me as an example, before staking me out to burn in the sun in as public a way as possible.”
“Don’t worry, I understand you’re undercover like Ana and William.”
“If you let them know who I am, thinking to use it as some kind of blackmail, I will kill you and then every one of your family members personally.”
“You promised me their safety! You swore to William you would protect me!”
“And I will, as long as you don’t blow it in here.”
“What is it you’re expecting me to do?”
“I don’t want you to do anything; all I want is when we come out of here for you to agree to work for me.”
“I won’t be working for the Council.”
“We’ll see.”
He got out of the car then flashed around to the driver’s side door faster than I could see and held it open for me. He gave me his arm and escorted me to the side door of the vacant building just like he had at Charlie’s. When we reached the door, I expected him to stop and tap out some sort of secret knock, but he just pulled it wide open.
“They leave it open on purpose, they figure if you wander in where you aren’t supposed to then that means you’re dinner,” Sebastian explained.
Chapter Eleven
The entryway to the Coven’s meeting place looked like the vacant building that it was from the outside, there were only a few vampires milling about. Not really paying much notice to us as we went in. When we walked in to the next room, there was loud music blaring from the corner, and the only ligh
t around was coming from candles scattered throughout. As people passed in front of them they created shadows on the walls, almost like tiny little strobe lights.
There were only about twenty or so vampires in the room; many more than there were cars for in the parking lot. They were dancing all over each other, if you could call dancing, grinding on whoever was next to them going from partner to partner. Sebastian started pulling me through the small crowd with what looked like an intended direction. The chaos didn’t seem to faze him in the least. My eyes couldn’t stop moving from place-to-place, vampire-to-vampire, there were couples having sex right on the floor, on the tables, threesomes, foursomes it didn’t seem to matter. And the scent of blood would have been completely overwhelming had Ana not prepared me. I get what Sebastian and Martin were trying to do now as well, though that was like a paper cut compared to this. I guess he figured if I couldn’t handle that there was no sense in even attempting to bring me here.
We made it to the back room of the building where there were several long tables set neatly in a row throughout the room. There were vampires seated at all the tables, dressed up like Sebastian and I were, and having what appeared to be civilized conversation. It was like going through a time warp. He walked us over to one of the last tables left and pulled out a chair for me before sitting himself.
“Hello, Bastian. Good of you to finally join us. I missed you,” purred a gorgeous brunette sitting on the opposite side of the table from him.
“Yes, my sweet, I had to pick up my date, Gloria.”
They started bantering back and forth, mostly the woman pouting for Sebastian’s attention, I mean Bastian, as she called him. I was starting to pick up what sounded like a cacophony of heartbeats. Initially I thought it was just the music coming from outside the room, and then noticed it was coming from closer inside. I looked around the tables then saw that chained to the wall were human women. They were all in various stages of dress, some nearly naked, others dressed up. All of them gagged with their hands tied tightly above them and chained to the wall.
I must have tensed up when I saw them or gave some other indication I was shocked by this because Sebastian put his hand on my thigh and squeezed tightly. I just looked back at him and smiled tensely, trying my best to control my own sense of fear.
“Bastian dear, would you like to come choose with me? It’s my turn this time,” the brunette asked him.
“No, thank you. I wouldn’t want to keep Gloria waiting for me. That would be rude of me, you go ahead and choose.”
The woman shot me a dirty look she didn’t even bother trying to hide, as she got up and stormed toward the wall of humans. I looked at Sebastian, I didn’t want to say anything in case I was supposed to know what in the hell was going on, but I wanted to know what in the hell was going on.
Sebastian pointed lazily toward the direction the other vampire had gone, “She’s going to choose our table’s human. Each week, we take turns selecting. It’s more ‘civilized’ that way,” Sebastian explained.
I nodded in understanding, even though I was still completely lost. No one had said a word to me yet, for which I was eternally grateful. I looked around the room some more, and saw there was a group of human men digging a hole in the ground. There were jack hammers leaning up against the wall and broken concrete lying about. Now, they were shoveling up the dirt leaving a huge mound of it next to them. What in the hell was going on?
The brunette from our table came back and as she sat down she leaned over far enough to show off all of her cleavage.
“I think you’ll like who I picked Bastian, she looks just like me. Well, not as beautiful of course. They’re cleaning her up now,” she said with a smile, like she was talking about a new puppy or something.
The table was all smiles at her comment and continued on with its idle chit chat. I was really trying to focus on calming myself. Sebastian had taken my hand in his and was rubbing a circular pattern on the back of my hand with his thumb. It was sort of meditative and I concentrated on the feel of it. It seemed to be working, so much so that I didn’t initially take notice of the groups of people carrying stretchers between them. Each stretcher had a naked human woman laid out on it, and one was being taken to each table as though she were some sort of naked lady food platter.
“S- Bastian?”
The end of the stretcher was set on the table and pushed, so the woman was laying completely on the table, naked, and set out in plain sight before everyone present. Her heart was beating so fast I thought it was very possible it might fail her. She had a light sheen of sweat covering her naked skin, the gag had been taken out of her mouth, and she was trying very, very hard not to cry out loud. There were silent tears flowing down her face, but she hadn’t uttered one sound. I think that’s what they wanted from her, which was why they removed the gag, and she knew it.
I wanted so badly to comfort her, I wanted to reach out and hold her hand, to cover up her nakedness, anything. What was wrong with these people, these monsters! Sebastian grabbed my hand more firmly than he had before, holding me in place. I was frantically trying to think of anything I could do to save her, there was only one reason she was here, and I didn’t think they were going to be nice about it.
“Gloria,” Sebastian said firmly under his breath. It took me a second to remember that was supposed to be me, and he was warning me to get it together.
I thought there would be some sort of, not a ceremony, but something said at least, but no, all of sudden everyone at the table dropped their fangs and savagely sunk them into whatever vein was closest to them. The girl lost her silent fight with bravery and let loose a piercing scream mixed with pain and fear. It sang all the way through the rafters of the building, and was soon combined with a chorus of other wails as the other tables were doing the same, viciously biting into the humans at their table. I couldn’t take it, no amount of blood could ever prepare me for the uncaring, ruthless way they were treating these people with. The humans fear was egging them on, and they were becoming more and more savage in their feeding. Blood was pouring down the faces of everyone at the table, everyone except Sebastian and I that is.
The woman wouldn’t stop screaming; her cries were like hearing a child cry, lost and alone in the darkness. I had to do something I had to make them stop. I opened my mouth to yell at them to do just that, I could feel my compulsion start to rise within in me, without my calling it when Sebastian grabbed me pulling me into his lap pressing his mouth hard against mine. I started to fight against him, to push him off me, when he put his hand to the back of my head and held my mouth to his. I felt someone’s hand grabbing my ass, not Sebastian’s, and just as I felt it Sebastian back handed the man next to him sending him flying about twenty feet back and into the wall.
“Do not ever touch another woman of mine again,” Sebastian growled at the man.
When Sebastian pulled me into his lap my dress came riding completely up-- again. I was flashing everyone in the room. Not that anyone besides the man he hit, and the brunette, was paying much attention to me. I climbed off Sebastian’s lap, pulling my dress back into place, giving him a look that said I wasn’t pleased.
The human woman’s heart beat had stopped. She was staring at the ceiling with dead lifeless eyes, her mouth still open, frozen from her screams. I was about to reach out and close her eyelids when the stretcher was taken from the table just as quickly as it was brought. Her body, along with all the others, was carried to the pit the men were digging where it was unceremoniously dumped in. One by one, the bodies were dropped on top of each other, and the stretchers carried from the room.
“Why didn’t you feed?” The brunette asked me suspiciously.
“What? Oh, well . . . I--”
“She had just fed before I told her we were coming, it was a surprise,” Sebastian answered for me.
“Yes, if I would have known we were coming, I would have waited for sure.”
“I’ve never seen anyone not feed
here before.”
“Well, I was about to, but you know how Bastian is. He’s insatiable at times, and wants what he wants, when he wants it. I’m surprised he stopped at a kiss really,” I told her conspiratorially trying to change subjects. It worked because she just huffed loudly and looked away, not saying another word.
“So, what’s going to happen with the bodies?”
“When the night is over the pit will be covered over and most likely never found, or it will be an incredibly long time before anyone does. The humans forever staying on a missing persons list,” Sebastian told me. This confirmed much of what William had told me earlier about the Coven trafficking humans.
“So, Gloria where are you from?” A man at the middle of the table asked me. He had short light brown hair with eyes to match. His sharp jaw line was only marred by the blood covering his face. He looked thoughtful as he spoke to me, and I decided this was not the time to start lying.
“Chicago.” I could keep my answers short and sweet however.
“Bastian, would you like to retire to the sitting room?” the man asked.
Sitting room? This place was a freaking abandoned warehouse!
“Of course, Gloria dear, would you care to join us?”
I stood up taking Sebastian’s hand, and we followed the man out of the room. He brought us to what would have most likely been an office, but it was indeed converted to a sitting room. There was a loveseat and an oversized chair sitting atop a large Asian throw rug. There was a large antique chest in the middle of the room acting like a coffee table. It was quiet in here, I couldn’t hear any screams of pain and terror, and there was no residual bass from the ongoing rave in the outer room.
“Nice,” I told him.
“Thank you. My name is Michael by the way, I’m the leader of this so called clan of rogue vampires.” He had just finished wiping his face clean of the blood and he was even more handsome than I thought he’d be. Without the blood he looked like he could never do anything evil, his eyes looked deceptively kind and caring. But even without the blood evidence, I could never erase from my mind what I had seen.
Rising Son (The Juliana Lucio Series) Page 10