Cynthia screamed when she looked up at the muzzle of the strange beast. Yellow eyes blazed out of its face as it flew through the air, body seemingly suspended. She tried to scramble off of Kevin, but he was already reacting, pushing her away.
And then Kevin was buried underneath a monster—a thing of legend come to life, the heat of the fire at his back. He tried to roll the creature off of him, using the thing's momentum against it, but it was steel and fur with Kevin pinned underneath it.
Kevin looked desperately at Cyn, and he yelled at her to run. And then his head was severed from the column of his neck, blood spouting out in a spray that splattered Cynthia, who lay on the sand behind him. She closed her eyes as the droplets of copper splashed her face. Then she opened them and looked at Julia, stunned, vomit dribbling from her mouth. Julia screamed for her friend.
Then Jason was there. He rammed the twisted metal rod they used for marshmallow roasting into the creature's side, and it reared back from Kevin's body with a howl, backhanding Jason as if he were as insubstantial as a feather.
Jason grunted as he landed on the sand six feet or so behind the creature. Then the werewolf was on him, and he shouted, “Julia, run!” before the beast sank its talons his neck with its talons, squeezing.
Julia felt her bladder spasm even as she ran to Jason's side, ignoring his directive. He was her husband.
The thing with fur, standing over seven feet tall on its hind legs, had a hand that was half paw and all talons, encircling the delicate flesh of Jason's neck. His other hand rose in a high arc, readying to deliver the killing blow, claws like spears poised.
“No!” Julia screamed.
Its eyes shifted to hers as she ran to Jason. It seemed to pause.
Then the hand swept down, the nails like knives glinting in the dying light of the fire.
In a blur of light gray, something barreled into the werewolf.
But not before a second mouth of gore opened in Jason's throat, blood welling and falling as his neck was opened in a deep slash of crimson.
Julia ran to her husband, sliding in the sand on her knees as she crumpled beside him. Tearing off her jacket, she ignored the rawness and finality the wound represented, crushing the soft material against it in a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding.
She could hear the creature fighting. She didn't know who or what it was fighting against, but she dared not look behind her. The sound of meaty flesh being battered was all around her. The lapping of the waves did nothing to silence the music of their violence.
Her eyes met Jason's. She saw his death in them.
“Run,” he said out of his ruined esophagus.
Tears ran down her face in a stream, never stopping. “Shh… don't… talk, Jason.” Her voice trembled so badly she could hardly speak.
His eyes urged her to escape even as she stayed. Cyn wailed something in the background, but Julia couldn't make out the words. She realized belatedly that shock was settling in like an old friend, and she recognized it. Oh yes, she did.
It was hauntingly familiar.
She thought of the crash that had stolen her family.
Julia heard a sound and looked up.
A man met her gaze, his hands buried wrist deep in the bowels of the creature that had attacked Jason. The gore splatter reached his shoulders, and his hands were entwined in the thing's entrails, which were like bloody worms that pulsated and glowed pearlescent in the firelight. Julia swallowed, his deep-cranberry gaze the last thing she saw as she turned her face away, heaving the contents of the airplane food as far away as she could from Jason's body. Her quaking hands pressed the cloth against his wounded throat.
Julia felt heat coalesce, rising from her feet and eclipsing at the roots of her hair, and she collapsed in a dead faint next to her fallen husband.
*
The Rare One's hands fell away from the wound, and the blood came alive again, soaking the cloth of her hoodie, turning it from gray to black.
The full moon rode the sky over them, a cruel governess.
The vampire runners closed in and scooped up the limp body of the Rare One.
The acquisition had been a success.
They left in stealth, as they had arrived.
*
Julia's eyes snapped open, her mouth clamped to stifle the scream that had almost erupted. Tears that had dried in sticky lines on her cheeks were the evidence of a dream she had hoped to never face.
A nightmare.
She was so tired she ached. Looking at the glowing red numbers of the clock, she saw that she'd only been asleep for a few hours. It read 2:16 a.m.
She held her body still and listened. The sense of unease she had felt earlier deepened. Julia knew that something was wrong when she heard the barest noise in the hall. But it was the primal alert sounding off inside her breastbone that told her what had found her.
Vampires.
They had come. She had to get out of the building.
She rose, shoving her feet into her shoes. She didn't even put on pants. She ran to the window and lifted it silently, the breeze ruffling the hem of her nightshirt, raising goose flesh on her skin in a rush. She looked down. The lawn was at least fifteen feet below her. She didn't think it was jumpable.
But as her skin began to itch in warning, she knew that it was a matter of time before they had her. She surveyed her room quickly. If she survived tonight, she could return in the daylight, when the vamps would have to rest, and retrieve her things.
She fingered the ring on her neck like a talisman.
Julia looked down again and, closing her eyes, crouching on the windowsill, she shoved off. She sailed through the air, preparing herself for the landing, her hair unraveling behind her.
As the ground rushed toward her, Julia tried to brace her fall but landed hard, rolling on her ankle as she fell. She screamed deep in her throat as ribs were bruised and her ankle sprained. Her head had landed on the soft ground with an impact that would have crushed it had it been a hard surface.
Driven by fear, Julia leaped to her feet, swaying while her vision remained in triplicate. Her ankle shrieked in protest as she began a hobbling run. Her goal: the woods that bordered the back of the property. She made the tree line, her lack of adequate clothing making her shiver just shy of having her teeth chatter. She didn't want that.
They would hear.
Julia entered the forest, dragging her leg behind her, clutching her ribcage as she jogged in an ungainly lurch.
*
William palmed the lock on the door, thankful that it was of vintage origin. Those almost always yielded to his influence. The tumblers shifted against one another smoothly and unlocked at his behest. He opened the door and was greeted by the sight of gauzy curtains, like taunting fingers, waving their mocking salute to him and the other runners.
“She is gone,” Pierce said.
“She could not have gone far,” Andrew said for only the vampires to hear.
Robert shrugged. “We track her. It is not difficult—she is but a girl.”
William turned glittering eyes to Robert, a newer runner. “I am sure that is what the Were are considering, even as we speak it.” He made his way to the window that Julia had escaped from. As he gazed down, he estimated the distance as perhaps five meters—too great a fall for one of her stature and disposition.
Blood Singer or no, she was but an evolved human swathed in fragility.
He turned in profile, the moonlight chiseling his features like marble. “She will be injured. Slow. Let us make haste. Moonlight is wasting.”
The runners converged at the window. William leaped from inside the small room, exiting the portal with lithe grace, crouched in midair. He landed with the barest hop, his nose skyward.
His head snapped down, and his face turned to look behind and away from the building.
The woods stood in unrelieved black, jagged points meeting the sky scape. William felt the vampires land at his back, fully fed, energized
to pursue. He thought of Julia, precious and vulnerable. Alone.
He hovered over the possibility of the Werewolvesʼ presence. Without turning, William took the lead, running headlong, following the Rare One's scent like a moth to a flame, her fragrance a bell ringing like a clear chime for him to hear.
Only him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Were
Joseph used his eyesight in the gloom as the tool it was, piercing the darkness like a laser. He searched for their salvation. Lost over a year ago to a number of blunders, she would not be unrecovered again. With five Were, they had the upper hand since the vamps generally traveled by quad.
And they were closing in fast.
The girl was crashing through the brush. They waited for her to stumble into the meadow where they stood.
She would fall into their arms like a ripe plum. Joseph restrained a howl, turning his luminescent gaze to his first, Anthony, who nodded back, his muzzle lifting slightly, revealing teeth honed for tearing, biting, and killing.
The other three Were flanked them, partially obscured by trees. They blended so well that it would take one of the supernaturals to see them without night-vision goggles or some such.
Joseph growled softly. “The blood drinkers draw close, as well.”
Tony snorted. “Let them come.” His paws tightened into cruel fists, his talons still short but battle lust imminent.
Joseph's primary enforcer was fearless and not nearly as controlled as himself. He'd need to dig deep within himself for control once he was faced with a Rare One. Such beings brought out the very basest primal urges with the Were. Tony had scoffed when they'd told him that. But he had never been on the acquisition of a Rare One—only Blood Singers. It was not the same. The comparison could be made that it was like an appetizer of crackers as opposed to caviar.
They waited.
As the breath stilled in their bodies, Julia burst out of the haven of the woods, the fingers of the branches reluctantly releasing her from their care.
Her injuries assaulted the acute olfactory senses of the Were, alerting and arousing them simultaneously. They advanced toward her position.
*
Julia
Julia rushed forward, her foot tangling on a root as she ran and she fell, her palms biting into the dirt. The needles and branches scraped her palms without mercy. She threw herself into running again, the fir boughs whipping her as she tore through, the smell of cedar filling her nose.
Her lungs burning, Julia could see through the gaps in the trees. An open meadow was just ahead. She ran toward the clearing. If she could just get out of these woods, she'd be free.
She threw herself past the tree line, her breathing ragged, her ankle a throbbing stump she dragged along. Julia was met by five werewolves. This time, she knew exactly what they were.
Their eyes bored into hers, and she felt something integral shift inside her and the open, a flicker of emotions assailing her.
It took Julia but one confused moment before she understood that she was tuning into one of the Were soldiers within the tight group, whose emotions were leaking on her like a wayward radio signal.
She felt lust, power, and greed—not in that order. She turned to run back into the safety of the woods and was met by William and his team.
Trapped.
They walked out of the forest's border at a smooth and unhurried gait.
Julia felt her bowels hiccup. Her palms instantly glazed with sweat, her throat threatening to close. She felt a fear so profound she couldn't breathe.
The runners didn't look at her. Rather, they looked beyond her to the Were.
Julia began to shake. She had nowhere to go and could feel anger from the vamps and a primal surge of adrenaline from the Were. The emotions collided, with her in the middle of them.
She was their emotional sandwich.
Overwhelmed, she collapsed to her knees, a pain in her chest. She met William’s eyes. They flicked to hers then locked back onto the Were. She began to crawl away, tears dropping to the grass that was already drenched with dew. The wetness soaked her knees and the hem of her nightshirt. Julia was suddenly struck with the fact that she was out in the middle of nowhere in a strange place with nine creatures of legend, and she was half-naked.
She flipped over and, in one motion, pulled the shirt over her knees to the tops of her feet. Her teeth did chatter then. Her ankle throbbed with the beat of her heart.
Julia watched one of Were step forward. She knew instinctively that he was their leader. William circled him. Their talons, almost identical, slid out from the tips of their fingers. In the moonlight the vampire's looked black and the werewolf's a light sable.
“Save yourself, Blood Drinker. No one need know that you released the Rare One this night,” the Were ground out, the timbre of his voice sounding full of gravel.
William smiled. “We would never let this one go. We lost sight of her for one moment.” He spread his hands, feigning reason, and continued. “She is our salvation.”
“Ours as well. We can breed her. What do you offer?” The Were asked this as a statement, his teeth revealed in a snout that was almost human except for the teeth like ivory razors—ready to close at the least provocation.
“It is an impasse, then?” William asked, already crouching.
The Were backed away, swishing his tail as a command.
With a gnashing of teeth, the Were sprung on the vampire, and a war of fang and claw began.
Julia watched in horror as the vampires began to fight for their lives, outnumbered five to four.
She was the prize they fought over, an injured and sodden mess, huddled in a ball with fear riding her like a shroud of mist as an uncertain dawn approached.
*
William
William sprang, fangs unsheathed, launching himself at the leader of the Were. Wrapping himself around the torso of the beast like a steel vise, he sank his fangs deep, the foul taste of its flesh like acid in his mouth. He hung on tenaciously.
Even as Joseph sank all ten talons along his vulnerable flank, William worried the Were's shoulder, grinding his teeth closer to the vulnerable bone that lay beneath.
Joseph stifled a howl of rage. He launched his claws into the vampire's side, digging deep. He lifted William into the air, as if he were lifting a flagon by its handle, and flung him away, releasing and retracting his claws as he did. The vampire landed with a practiced roll and sprang upright, blood trails leaking everywhere.
Like ten minigeysers, they flowed, the blood resembling black oil in the moonlight.
*
Joseph howled in triumph—the drinker was wounded quite badly. But the Were was distracted as one of his soldier's head's flew by in his peripheral vision like an errant bowling ball. His nostrils flared, and he was stung by the awful smell of another drinker quite close. Joseph gave an instinctual evasive lean as claws missed his exposed throat by millimeters. He reacted even as he leaned, swiping his right paw in an upward arc, releasing the full length of his claws as he did. The talons sprang from the stubs of his fingers and gutted the vamp as he leaped to finish the swipe that had not been true.
The second vampire's face had a surprised look as Joseph held him suspended, midleap. Joseph retracted his claws, and the vamp fell at his feet on the long grass of the meadow. With his left hand, he made the final cut to sever the head.
That bastard drinker could have healed a disembowelment. He can heal nothing without a head, Joseph thought with brief satisfaction.
The head rolled to join the fallen Were, and Joseph turned in the melee, blood spray and gore littering the pathway as he began to move toward the girl. Belatedly, he realized that Tony had already made his way to her against express orders.
Joseph was the only Were allowed to touch the girl.
Already, Joseph could smell Anthony's unshakable lust, riding an unstoppable urge. He would crush the girl if he reached her first.
The sharp claws of Jose
ph's feet sprung from the pads, spearing the soft earth beneath him. He spun, using his finely honed balance. On the balls of his feet, he surged forward, each paw landing, gripping, and shoveling a spray of dirt behind him.
Even with his incredible speed, he could see he wouldn't reach the girl in time. For the first time as a soldier of the Were, he experienced an emotion he had only heard about: fear.
And underneath that, panic.
*
Julia
Julia thought she'd known terror. She thought she'd tasted it.
She had not.
Sheer horror took hold of her now. Something even scarier than William approached, though not at a dead run. The creature advanced with purpose, a light in eyes that glowed in the pale moonlight like a cat's.
They were fixed on her with a look she couldn't recognize. Finally, as he was almost upon her, she could read his face and knew what his expression meant.
He looked as if he wanted to consume her.
Julia gave in to her intense fear, screaming so loudly her voice left her, and then hoarse shouts were all she could give out.
She scooted backward on her haunches with an energy she didn't realize she possessed. Her modesty forgotten, she scuttled back like a spider, using just her hands and feet.
Still, he came.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
William
William’s sides burned as if on fire. The wounds inflicted by the Were were deep, the poison released from Were talons flowing through his system, weakening him.
He needed blood.
And his group was outnumbered. Andrew was gone.
He heard a hoarse voice, hysteria riding it like fine wine. Normally, a scream like that one would have incited a tornado of blood lust but not tonight.
The girl at the source of the screaming was his to protect with his life—by any means necessary.
William shifted into the form that would allow him to travel faster. That ability was his only gift, the single thing that separated him and identified him as having the blood of a Singer running through his veins.
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