“He's a Boiler,” Scott said with reluctant admiration.
Victor gave an indignant huff. “Let us go... we can squabble about monikers once we've eliminated the threat.” He looked back at Julia and Scott, her arm still tender from being broken by Jason... her husband. The whole thing was like brain freeze without the milkshake.
They headed downstairs, where it looked as if a rainstorm of glass had just struck.
“Holy shit,” Scott said, grasping Julia's hand. Peace crept into her from the contact, the calm a product of their meld, the result a relief.
The reality was quite different.
A maelstrom of glass flew everywhere the eye could see. Glass on the floor, deadly and glittering rain spinning in front of her eyes.
Julia could make out Brendan, his chin kicked their way as he used his Tracker abilities and made their scent amongst a myriad of... creatures.
Julia saw them all.
William.
Jason.
The Combatant, wading through the glass, had cuts appearing like small mouths on their flesh as the whirlpool of small shards spun.
Scott stopped moving, pulling her behind himself and his stillness gave away what he was about to do. Then the sweeping storm of glass stopped, falling like a crystalized deluge to drop suddenly on the floor. The clinking of it tore at Julia. She threw her hands to her ears to soften the grinding assault of sound.
Scott was a powerful Deflector and he'd just negated someone else's ability.
Jen jumped from the kitchen. “Scott,” she yelled. “Why'd ya do it?”
Scott swung his head out of the way as a vampire laid claim to his arm, talons sinking in. “Kinda busy!” he yelled back and Jen smiled, landing a butcher knife in the gut of the next.
“God, they're like roaches or something,” Michael said, waving a palm in front of the next onslaught, a large hole appeared between he and two vampires heading straight for him, fangs too large to close their mouths. “Whatever, come at me...” Michael invited. When they leaped over the hole in the floor, they lost their balance as it was no more than a handy illusion.
“Nice,” Jen cackled, jerking the blade out of the vamp and wiping it clean on her jeans. “Can't use this for sandwiches anymore,” she muttered as William came through the door. He was a statue for a breath of time.
Then the vampire retreated, their movements like a movie playing backward, arms coming back in against their bodies as their bowed heads followed their bodies out the shattered windows and bent doorframe.
The Combatant circled William.
Julia remembered what he'd done for her. Tried to do. Persevering through his torture so they couldn't locate her quickly, his sacrifice stalling their appearance. His blood-letting gave her a chance to live after the poison episode with Jacqueline. Her murder of Julia barely thwarted.
William turned too slowly as the knife Jen had flung with her mind into one of the vampires, now plunged between his shoulder blades.
“No!” Julia screamed, sinking to her knees, a deep ache in her back.
Their eyes met. Then Scott was hauling her up, none too gently.
“Jen...” Julia said in a whisper... “not him, don't kill William.”
“Why the hell not?” she said in a sneer. “Isn't this the one who caused all the trouble to begin with?”
Julia nodded. That was true... but she couldn't just execute him after he'd rescued her from a future without choice, sparing her again.
These wars had to stop.
Jen cursed with disgust, jerking the blade out for a second time in a matter of moments, and shoving her heel into William as she put him on his back. His wounds from the battle, though not grievous, were many.
Julia tore her arm away from Scott. It felt like a small death. She did it anyway. Each step dragged more than the last as she made her way to William and away from her soulmate.
“Julia,” William croaked, blood welling everywhere she looked.
She knelt beside him.
“I'm sorry,” she said. The ache in her back worsened in sympathetic response.
William frowned through his pain, trying to sit up.
“No, just... stay still,” she begged, her eyes searching his stormy charcoal gaze.
“Are they yours now?” she asked.
He nodded. “When I was tortured by Merlin's Kiss...”
Julia gulped, sucking in a breath, blinking her eyes closed seconds longer than necessary.
William continued, “And I escaped on the tail of his demise, there was no choice but to appoint me their new leader.”
Julia covered her mouth. “Then why are they attacking?”
“They attack no longer,” he clarified quietly, giving a deep hacking cough. Julia's eyes pegged the drops of blood that sprayed from that forceful exit from his lungs.
“You're dying,” she said.
His lack of response was answer enough.
Julia turned to Jen with accusing eyes. “Help him.”
“No!” she said. “He put me in thrall to get you in a position to... God knows what.”
Julia whipped back around just as Scott's hand landed on her shoulder.
“It is true. I meant to have you... even still,” William conceded.
“But you didn't. I mean, when push came to shove, you decided to release me from the blood bond....” Julia's golden eyebrows shot up.
William just nodded, his sooty eyelashes closing around the gray eyes that she'd held on more than one occasion.
Eyes she'd trusted.
Still trusted.
Julia turned to Scott. “We can't just let him die.”
“Yeah we can,” Jason said from the door, arms folded across his chest, a Combatant on each side.
Julia's heart lurched inside her chest. Scott put both hands on her shoulders.
“Go near her and die, wolf...” Scott said.
Jason smirked, his eyes moving to Julia's. He took a long lingering look, head to toe. “I'm not gonna kill, Julia... Singer,” he said with derision.
“You've been giving it the old college try,” Michael noted.
Jason scowled, balling his fists.
“Do not,” Victor said. “You are here by our sufferance alone.” His gaze swung to the barely conscious vampire at Julia's feet. “And the same can be said for this Machiavellian drinker at our Queen's feet.” Victor shook his head. “No, I believe we like you where you stand.”
“You're a Singer,” Jen noted.
Jason scoffed. “Was, dollface,” Jason said, dismissing her as his eyes shifted back to Julia and she flinched at what she saw there.
Accusation. Betrayal. Rage.
She understood those feelings. Julia had them herself, she just didn’t have the option of luxuriating in them.
“This isn't accomplishing dick,” Michael said and the Combatant turned to him. “Whoa, guys... dial it back.”
“You,” Michael said, pointing at Jason, “need to figure out how to protect our Queenie here instead of jonesing for doing her in every time you're hanging around.”
Jason pursed his lips into a thin line of anger.
“Eh-uh. No.” Michael put his finger up, swishing it back and forth. “Don't get your boxer's in a twist or I'll put ya in a pile of shit.”
Jason's chin jerked back like he'd been slapped, his face knotted up in a pretzel.
“He'll do it too. He's just that much of a putz,” Jen said with a straight face.
“Singers,” Marcus said in a commanding voice.
All eyes turned to him. “Stop this, we have more pressing things than baiting the local Were contingent.”
“Like... where the hell are the rest of them?” Scott said.
Julia searched Jason's neutral expression as it turned belligerent. Where was the man she fell in love with? She couldn't find him in the middle of all that rage.
“Or... how about William bleeding out?” Julia asked, absently stroking that tender part of her arm.
Brendan offered quietly, “Let me get Cyrus.”
Thank you, baby Jesus, Julia thought, someone who was reasonable.
A minute passed that felt like a year, then Cyrus came, trailing behind a contrite Brendan.
“What?” he asked when he saw William's blood pooling underneath him, as still as a statue, whiter than even a vampire should be.
“Is this a joke?” Cyrus looked at each Singer in turn and Julia sighed.
“No,” she looked Cyrus straight in the eye and he raked a hand through his salt and pepper hair. The soul patch underneath his bottom lip was a solid pure white.
“So,” his eyes shot to Marcus', “I need to waste my ability on this drinker.” His brows shot up his forehead in consternation.
“Just this one, there's a bunch of dead ones out in the yard,” Michael said casually and Cyrus smirked.
“I saw that,” he drawled in happiness, moving to William's other side. Cyrus put his hand on William's chest, a look of distaste settling in. “I forgot how cold these suckers are.”
“What does he need?” Julia asked, guilt overwhelming her.
“You didn't really just ask that, Jules,” Jen said in disbelief.
“Blood, bright one,” Michael said.
Julia's face heated with her embarrassment. She'd been too stressed to think of the obvious.
“Shut the fuck up or I'll knock your teeth down your throat,” Scott told Michael.
“Boys,” Marcus warned.
Julia was suddenly glad she was an only child. “Stop,” she said, looking at Michael. “I've had a nasty little shock, you turd, so just... give me some damn time, will ya?”
“Yeah, give her time so she can save his carcass,” Jason reiterated.
Julia threw a look his way, which he ignored with a small smile. He was stupidly mean and unhelpful.
She exhaled, inhaled... calming herself. Scott's quiet presence stood like a warm reassuring line of heat behind her.
She could do this.
Cyrus gave her a serious look, his watery blue eyes seeming to float in his pale face. “If you want this vamp to live, you're going to give him blood. Your blood.”
Julia felt Scott tense behind her.
“Is there any other way?” Julia asked, knowing if there were then he wouldn't have suggested it. But she knew it was like lighting a powder keg around here.
He shook his head. “He's too far gone,” Cyrus said, dropping the wrist he'd been feeling for a pulse. The hand landed with a dull echo on the bloody wood floor, that glass clinking around it.
“Won't this put me in the same place... I was before?” Julia asked Marcus. She didn't want a deepening of any blood ties. Things were complicated enough without volunteering for more problems.
Before he could respond Jason piped in from between the two Combatants, whose names escaped her at the moment, “You like us being in that place. Holding your special magic over us so we're your little slaves.”
Julia stood, looking at Jason from ten feet away.
It might as well have been ten miles, so much distance separated them. She was so sick of his attitude.
“How could I have ever loved you?” she asked, William momentarily forgotten.
“I don't know... wife,” he said, his gaze level on her face. Jason's anger vibrated through the room like a bullet that ricochets. The flecks of green in his irises burned like emerald sparks with his thinly kept rage.
It was crazy, Julia knew it, but he made her feel guilty for everything, which just made her irritation more. I guess ya can't feel guilt unless you own it, she thought.
Julia turned her back on her husband; her soulmate steps away. She ignored everyone but Cyrus and William, who lay on the floor, more dead than alive.
“What do I do?”
Cyrus laughed. “That's easy, just put your wrist above his nose.”
Julia's brows came together, her golden hair slipping forward as she began to reach out with her arm but she hesitated. “What'll happen?”
Cyrus' smile faded, his expression turning serious. “Biology,” he said simply, just as Julia's arm grazed the tip of William's nose.
With a choking roar, William's back bowed, his mouth opening to reveal fangs that sprang from the flesh that held them like ivory hooks now set free.
William scooped Julia tight against his body and sunk those deadly fangs into her arm before her next breath, her fear a tangible thing. It was razors in her skin, the ice of them burned as he fed.
Julia gasped as he gulped her blood.
For the second time inside a twenty-four hours.
Jason and Scott came forward. For all his words, Jason's face held the same expression that Scott's did.
Fear.
Not for themselves.
For Julia.
CHAPTER THREE
Julia felt in perfect balance, the pulls from William's mouth felt... right, good. Then she opened her eyes and two sets of angry ones met hers; one impersonating true black, the other hazel-green.
Both possessed indignation and anger in equal amounts. A sure recipe for violence if Julia's experience had anything to do with it.
Everything would have been fine had Jason not grabbed the back of William's head as he fed from Julia.
William released her with a hiss, his arm wrapping around her waist as he stood and flung his hand out almost casually as it flicked a path across Jason's cheek.
Julia watched it split, the blood from the strike flying in a shimmering scarlet arc even as his skin slipped from his body for the change.
“Fuck,” Scott said in a miserable hiss as a chain reaction of cross-cultural testosterone spun out of control.
Julia looked at her husband as he shed his skin like a snake as blood ran down her forearm where William had taken from her. Large flakes of sloughed skin came away in chunks, blood and other nasty bits plopping to the ground in a wet pile. Large drops of her own blood ran down her palm, pausing on her middle finger to finally land on the war-torn ground.
Scott dragged Julia back from the Were, tossing out a command to William as he did, “Close the wound, drinker.” The sound of Jason's change continued to be heard, the great meaty sounds of ligaments realigning, tearing and forming the new pathways of a shape wholly inhuman.
William turned Julia and she trembled as his skin pulled taut against a face that was all hollow-eyes and cheekbones, pinched tight with need. Anger and some other emotion she couldn't name, swam within the constraints of his aching expression of want.
Jason approached, his head three feet shy of the ten foot ceilings of the large parlor. Julia cowered against William, Scott at her side. Sometimes it was choosing the lesser evil. Jason had proven, even if accidentally, he could hurt her. William had not.
Some emotion slid across Jason's face then was gone, like a shadow chased back by true darkness.
“She fears you wolf,” William said as he dipped his head to lick the wound closed that he'd caused, his eyes never leaving those of Jason's wolf. When he finished, William lifted his head from Julia's arm. “It is I that takes blood from her veins, yet it is you she fears.”
Her wound was already closing, a shaky exhale of relief escaped.
Julia's eyes met Marcus' and he shrugged. “If left to your own devices, you will heal all but the most grievous of injuries.” Compliments of becoming, she assumed. Julia held her breath as Jason approached her and William.
“Don't touch her,” Scott warned, coming to stand shoulder to shoulder with William.
Jason swung a face that was decidedly wolfen in Scott's direction, giving a snort that had the thread of a bark through it. “Oh yeah, so you throw her at the vamp so he can suck her dry. You're such a great protector,” Jason said the last word sarcastically, making a grab for the considerable maleness that hung between his legs and continued, “if you had more of this then she wouldn't be near him.”
Julia studiously kept her gaze averted. She had never been more intimate
with anyone than with Jason, though they had never technically consummated their relationship. Julia clenched her eyes against the memories of those intimacies they'd shared. They were powerful... real. This image of him as part-werewolf obviously didn't agree with what she knew.
When she opened them, his spinning green eyes blazed with the memories Julia was trying so hard to ignore, to forget because they couldn't be like that anymore. Dammit. He wasn't going to make it easy.
Julia rolled her eyes above her shoulder to Scott, meeting his solid gaze. “You can't be serious... he hates me now.”
Scott shook his head, his words for Julia, his eyes flicking to Jason. “Hate is not the opposite of love, indifference is.” Scott stared at Jason. “And this,” he swept his palm at Jason, his seven feet of contained violence, a breath away from a full change, vibrating through the room, “is not indifference. There is only passion in strong emotion. Hate... and love.”
Jason made a low sound in his throat gone half to wolf, lowering a face that had a stub-like muzzle. “She smells like you,” Jason said, his nostrils flaring.
“Yes,” Scott said simply.
“She's my wife,” he answered.
“Haven't they already gone over this?” Michael asked the obvious.
“Let me go,” Julia said and William did, reluctantly. William, Scott and the remaining Combatant waited to see what Jason would do, how he'd react. Hell, so did she.
Julia walked to where Jason stood, keeping the tremble off her body with an effort. After all, Jason had gone from loving husband to strangler and limb-breaker. So sue her, Julia was a little gun-shy.
“I smell your fear, Julia,” he said in a quiet growl.
She nodded. Julia couldn't hide it... so she didn't bother with a lie. “Yes.”
His fists clenched, the short talons digging into palms covered with a gauzy blanket of short crimson hair. “I won't hurt you,” he ground out and she dropped her eyes. Julia wasn't sure she believed him.
He gave a disgusted exhale. “I mean... shit. I didn't mean to hurt you.”
“Yeah,” Julia replied, that she heard as the truth.
“She knows,” Marcus said as a statement.
Julia met his gaze and Marcus sighed when he saw her nod.
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