Rising Son (The Juliana Lucio Series)

by L. C. DeCarlo

  “Well, whatever you did—or didn’t do—go back and do it again so you can get me one,” Ana said with envy.

  “Why do you think it’s for me anyway?” I had yet to look up at William. I wasn’t avoiding him; I just couldn’t take my eyes off the car. “Who has the key?”

  “It came with an envelope addressed to you, Gloria. The driver dropped off the key after parking the car in my garage.”

  “We should take it for a spin before the sun rises. Fastest in the world huh?”

  “I think you are getting off track Juliana, why did he give you the car?”

  “I told you I don’t know! He kept commenting about how ridiculous we all looked piling into one car and said I could borrow one of his. I declined. That’s it, alright. Just open the damn letter if you’re so concerned.” Those two were seriously ruining my excitement over the car.

  “It’s not like he’s giving it to me.”

  Martin pulled the envelope from William’s hand and tore it open. The longer he looked at the more anger there seemed to be that radiated off of him. I finally broke my gaze away from the work of art in front of me and focused on Martin. His eyes slowly rose from the note in his hand and like a key turning in a lock an icy chill settled in my stomach.

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  He didn’t even bother looking back down at the paper, he had it memorized.

  “Dear Juliana, I am gifting this Italian jewel to you in gratitude for your feeder saving my life. I wanted to deliver it in person, but I had to leave on short notice and was unable to make it myself. You may have noticed my use of your true name. I feel that I am at liberty to do so now that I have been made aware of your secret. I was unsure on where your true loyalties lied however, until your aid in saving my life. I look forward to seeing you upon my return where I hope to have you standing by my side ready to lead the world into a new era. Yours, Michael.”

  “Oh my God. He’s doing it. He’s really going to reveal our existence,” I numbly heard Ana say beside me.

  “Tell me what you know about this,” Martin’s fangs were in my face. The only thing holding him back from attacking me was his belief that I had information on Michael.

  “I swear I have no idea! I don’t know how he found out about me. I would let you compel me to find out what you want if it would work. I give you my word I know nothing about this!” I was pleading with him like my life depended on it. I don’t know why he finally believed me, but after a long look into my eyes he yelled a curse into the night turning his back on me.

  William let out a breath he seemed to be holding and pulled me out of the car, “We need to figure out where he went, and fast.”

  “It sounds like he’s planning on attempting the reveal. It’s gotta be someplace public. What’s going on that he would try to take hijack for the readymade viewing public?” Martin asked while flipping the T.V. on and turning to the national news.

  “It doesn’t have to be someplace public though, he just has to go down to the public news station and walk on camera that would do it,” Ana was pacing the room as she thought.

  I went to the kitchen trash and started pulling all the old newspapers out and brought them back into the living room.

  “Where’s Victoria? We need her help?”

  “She went to go see Christian after Sebastian left earlier,” William was already calling her as he pulled out his laptop.

  “Victoria, we need you now. It’s Michael, he’s on the move and tell Christian we need him here before the sun sets. He better be armed and ready to go. He needs to tell his dad whatever he has to, but we need him, clear?” He hung up a second later not breaking eye contact with me the entire time he spoke with Victoria.

  “I’m sorry Jules, but we need a human and he is the best we got. If daylight hits he might be the only way we get out alive.”

  I could only nod and blink quickly to try to stop the tears from over-flowing.

  I let my attention be averted as we all started scouring the news for the location to garner the most attention for Michael.

  “Is there an awards show coming up?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Concert?”

  “Not big enough.”

  Victoria came running through the door, “When does our flight leave?”

  “Flight? To where? We are still trying to figure out where he is going,” I told her.

  “You have got to be kidding me. I didn’t realize I was put on a team with a bunch of self-important idiots. Well, that’s not true, I did, but I thought you could read a newspaper.” She pulled the unread newspapers I had just carried in from my hands. After flipping through them she found the one she wanted and slammed in on the table in front of us.

  “JOHNSON WINS ELECTION!” She threw down another,

  “JOHNSON WINS BY A LANDSLIDE!” “NEW AMERICA WITH PRESIDENT JOHNSON!”

  “Do you nimrods get it now he’s going to the presidential inauguration.”

  “We can’t wait until tomorrow night, we need to leave now,” Ana was saying.

  “We have no choice the sun is going to be up in less than an hour even Juliana’s new car can’t get there by then, even if it could fit us all,” Martin said sounding more frustrated than ever.

  “You got a new car?”

  “Sorta,” I told Victoria not nearly as excited about it anymore. “Hey, does this mean I have to give the car back?”

  William stomped out of the room, “I’m going to try Sebastian again. Ana book our flight.”

  * * *

  Christian was right on time; well, I assumed he was because he was there when I woke up at least. Everyone was downstairs dressed and ready to go. We all had on our sun resistant leathers, riding boots with the blades embedded in them and knives holstered under our jackets, even Christian. We looked pretty bad-ass. I ruined the entire image when I gave Christian a big motherly hug.

  “C’mon, Ma, are you gonna do this every time?”

  “Make sure you use your inhaler,” I said handing the inhaler to him at the same time managing to ignore his question. Martin at least had the courtesy to look embarrassed for him.

  “Mom, I told Ana--”

  “You remember how to use it right? Push it down and inhale holding in the mist,” I gave him a meaningful look pushing the inhaler in his hands.

  “Show me now, so I know you can use it later.”

  “Whatever, Mom.” He puffed the inhaler twice looking at me like I had lost my mind.

  “Good, use it again when we get there.” I gave him a pat on the cheek and jumped into the shuttle we had to take to the airport. Talk about embarrassing.

  The flight wasn’t long and it got us to D.C. with plenty of time to avoid sunrise. We didn’t have any way of knowing what Michael’s plans were so we were going to stake out the inauguration site thinking that was our best bet.

  We knew he wanted the reveal to be as public as possible, so we each took various points of the amphitheater to try and scout out where Michael and the rest of his Coven may have been hiding. I was crouched in the rafters above the stage looking out among the crowd that had been waiting for a full day to hear the new President of the United States make his inaugural address. The crowd was packed tightly together increasing the difficulty I was having scanning for vampire signatures among the audience. It was easier to just ignore all the humans in the area rather than trying to distinguish between them all.

  We knew our approach to the search left us vulnerable to attack as we were each alone and thus weaker by being separated, but we needed to cover more ground, so we took the risk. This proved to be more dangerous than I had realized when I abruptly felt the heat of a hot branding iron being shoved into the fragile recess of the back of my neck. I just barely caught hold of the rafter beam preventing my crashing into the crowd below when I lost my footing from the pain.

  I tried to scramble away from the burning heat that held me trapped in its grip, and as I yelled
out in both pain and anger at my unknown torturer a piece of thick, stiff leather was shoved into my mouth preventing my screams of agony from making their escape. I spied scaffolding off to my right and knew it was going to be my last opportunity to fend off my attacker.

  I jumped away from the scalding heat at my neck not sure if I could make the landing or not, but knowing it was my last chance to free myself. Before I even tumbled onto the shaky landing I found myself further entrapped by silver netting that was thrown on me from somewhere above.

  The pain was excruciating.

  The netting was heavy, yet made of fine silver and as it burned my skin I thought it might melt right through me. I writhed in pure anguish on the wobbly scaffolding, high above the oblivious crowd below. My eyes finally met those of my attacker.

  A human male.

  A human had attacked and taken me down without me so much as noticing him. As my skin began to send tendrils of smoke into the air, my human attacker laughed.

  “I tried to warn you. If you only would have kept away then none of this would have happened to you. I know how painful burns can be, after all.” He waved his fingers at me, which showed newly healing skin from gasoline burns. I was hit with understanding.

  “Yep, it was me that sent you that little hint. On Monica’s orders, of course- She’s going to turn me as soon as this is all over.”

  I raged against my restraints trying to pull the netting off, but only further injuring myself in the process.

  “Well enough chit chat, let’s get you back with the others,” he said as he roughly threw me over his shoulder as I began to blur in and out from the pain.

  I came to as he abruptly dropped me on the floor of a room and yanked the netting off me ‘until the show later’. They didn’t want us too crispy after all. There were two other vampires in the room I didn’t know, but from the looks of William, Ana, Martin and Victoria we were all captured the same way--with silver netting thrown over the top of us. We all had burns in the shape of a net seared into our skin; the smell of burning flesh wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. We each had our hands bound together with a silver braided rope that we couldn’t break, yet continued to burn us. I was the only one in the room that was gagged though.

  “How did they manage to capture us all?” Martin bellowed through his pain.

  “Humans,” Victoria winced, “I was so focused trying to find vampire signatures that I ignored all human signatures. They got me from behind,” she finished weakly.

  “Me too,” Ana said.

  I tried to spit the gag out but I couldn’t. I tapped Victoria’s foot and tried to sound out Christian’s name.

  “I don’t know where he is,” she said painfully, but not so much from the pain in her wrists.

  I closed my eyes and leaned back against the wall trying to conserve my strength and also trying to break the chains wrapped around my wrists by varying intervals. We were all getting weaker the longer the silver was wrapped around us. There was an intense bass coming through the walls that startled me to awareness. I looked around for the source of it, but couldn’t find it.

  “They’re starting,” William told me, “that’s the crowd roaring.”

  I wanted to weep that this was it. Where was Christian? Was he going to make it out of here? Would he be able to protect Evan and Antonio?”

  I started to hear a loud, “Mom!” piggybacking on the sound of someone speaking on a microphone. I shot straight up and started to thrash as much as I could, but I couldn’t yell back. I couldn’t make a sound.

  There it was again, “Mom! Juliana!”

  The others heard it too and answered the call for me. Everyone sang out Christian’s name as loud as they could manage. We could hear him opening and slamming shut doors, and then he made it to ours.

  It was locked.

  “Back up, Christian!” William called out to him.

  William gestured Martin to the door. They shimmied over with bound hands and feet and lay on their backs next to the door.

  “Now,” William said then they slammed their feet into the door just knocking it open. It made it apparent how weak they were that it took both of them to get it open.

  Christian came running in with blood dripping down his neck.

  “We need to leave now!”

  “The chains, Christian, we can’t do anything until you get them off us,” William panted looking like he was about to pass out.

  Christian was reaching for the chains wrapped around William as I frantically shook my head back and forth. I think they all thought I was just being impatient.

  “Don’t let your blood touch him,” Ana warned. “Tell us what happened.”

  Christian dried his hands on his tee-shirt then deftly started unwinding the silver from William’s hands and ankles, then moved on to each of us as fast as he could manage.

  “I was caught and thrown into a room down the hall. The vamp that caught me said they were waiting for us and had been watching us since we flew in to the airport. They said their guy on the inside told them they could find us there, what we looked like, everything. Then in walks Sebastian and I think I’m saved right? Until he says that he was there to turn me. Apparently you’re too big a hassle, Ma? He thinks I would be easier to control and just as powerful. He never told Michael I was your son 'cause he wanted to turn me himself. But we gotta go. Now. This place is crawling with vamps, and I just killed one of their top guys.”

  Christian helped me up and started to pull me out of the room.

  “How did you kill him?” Martin asked.

  “I have no clue. He just attacked me and bit my neck. I tried fighting him off then all of a sudden he’s clutchin’ his throat and gurgling on the ground like a dead man. I wasn’t gonna wait to see if it wore off. I sprung the blade from my boot, staked him in the chest and got the hell out of there.”

  “You lie, he would never betray us!” Martin yelled at Christian.

  “Look, believe what you want, but that lying bastard is dead. I don’t know what my blood did to him, but if he hadn’t attacked me and betrayed your kind he would still be alive. Stay here if you want, but I’m getting my mom and everyone else outta here.” Christian was right in Martin’s face. He pulled my arm yanking me out of the room.

  “We need to stop Michael, Christian!” I tried to pull away from him, but I was so weak I couldn’t.

  “It’s too late.” He stopped in the hallway facing everyone. “Don’t you get it? You lost. Our only hope is to get out of here alive. There will be no stopping the Coven tonight.”

  We all looked at each other feeling the pain and anguish of a battle lost. Then we heard Michael’s familiar voice coming over the loud speaker. Speaking not to us and not even just to the country, he was speaking to the world.

  All of mankind would soon hear his words.

  Each of us exchanged one more look and knew that we all wanted to live to fight another day.

  So we ran.

  We all ran down the corridor, hoping to find freedom, at least for now, while we listened to Michael’s melodic voice.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, may I have your attention please? I have an important announcement I would like to make . . .”

  About the Author

  L.C. DeCarlo is a native of Arizona. She has tried several times to leave, but the desert keeps pulling her back in! The rest of her family is from Chicago, IL where the books take place, even though most of them are now scattered about the country. Her family is her heart and soul, and the true inspiration for the love in her books.

  Find out more about the next book in the series at:

  www.lcdecarlo.com

 

 

 
moz-filter: grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share