His injured body fought the change. William forced it upon himself, his body losing shape and molding into that of a raven. It was twice the size of the majestic bald eagle.
His eyes remained deep cranberry, a color not found in nature. His ebony wings unfolded to a span of nearly ten feet. He rose, partially healing as he lifted from the ground, his clothes in a shredded pile at his feet. Lack of blood, coupled with injury, made William sway in the air. His focus sharpened when he was greeted with the image of Julia struggling in the brutal embrace of the Were.
The creature was clearly in the grip of breeding lust.
William pointed his sharp beak at the pair. Folding his huge wings against his body, he sailed down like an onyx torpedo.
*
Julia
Julia sprung to her feet just as Tony grabbed at her. She did a move that surprised both of them: using her elbow—the hardest part of her body—as a weapon, she jerked it up into the half-human face that was so close to her. Tony unknowingly helped by leaning into her just as she jabbed it forward.
Her elbow connected with his jaw, and it stunned him for a moment.
Julia spun and began to run. Her ankle screamed, and she ignored it. Something grabbed her hair from behind and lifted her off the ground, making her scalp shriek and burn. Torquing her neck, the Were wrapped hands around the strands and drew her against his body, almost tenderly. She could feel the strength in those hands, and she knew they could crush her windpipe.
The Were's other hand tore her nightshirt collar to hem, using only the tip of one claw.
It fell at their feet in a pile, and he moved his hold from her neck to wrap her upper arms.
“I will breed you, Blood Singer,” it growled out between impossibly long teeth.
Julia was fully panicked now. Looking down, she saw the part that made him male in full view. She used her hand like a weapon, clawing at his face and kicking out. He shook her so hard her teeth rattled, and she saw stars, her head lolling about on the stem of her neck like a fragile flower.
Out of her trembling side vision, Julia felt air rush past her, and another of his kind bore down on the first, making him release his hold. The claws slid away without purchase. Julia fell to the grass, her knees bending under her like a folding chair.
As she gazed up at the night sky, the sounds of tearing flesh, along with growling and yipping, reverberated in her ears, and a great black shape appeared above her.
Julia lay there, the wetness of the grass soaking through her panties and camisole.
She saw that the shape was a great bird, whose eyes watched her as it hovered overhead in ebony glory, revealed in outline by the full moon.
She didn't even scream when its talons pierced her shoulders, lifting her into the air. The pain was a numbing horror as unconsciousness washed over her body.
The last thing Julia remembered was an unearthly howl of anguish.
Then there was only blackness, the pain in her shoulders a trail tht beat after her.
*
Joseph
Joseph closed his muzzle with a snap, the howl echoing in the openness of the clearing. The small body of the Rare One was clutched to the drinker like a dark token in the sky.
One Were and one vampire lay in bloody heaps, his first on the ground, heaving from exertion and in the throes of shaking off the breeding lust—with difficulty.
The fool.
The remaining vampires bled back into the forest seamlessly, their bodies melding so closely with the shadows that their forms were indecipherable.
Another failed mission.
He looked at Tony with unveiled disgust. Maybe it would have gone similarly without this transgression. He did not know. What he did know was the drinker had shifted. Joseph's intel had not discovered that skill amongst the runners. He must have Singer blood running in his veins.
The rat bastard.
They needed that Singer badly—before a fully blooded vampire could breed her, a practice the Were had heard about as rumored legend only.
Joseph was beginning to wonder if there was some truth to it.
He jerked his head at the three remaining Were, indicating their dead comrade.
They hefted the body. The vampire's remains lifted in the light breeze like a pile of ash at the mercy of the wind.
Joseph and the others turned to go, Tony bringing up the rear, his hand buried in the hair of the fallen Were, carrying the head like a macabre purse. He felt Tony's unfriendly stare on his back, malice taking shape behind him like slow-moving poison, insidious and progressive.
*
The Kiss of Seattle
Burning.
On fire.
Julia was on fire.
Her eyes popped open and she wanted to scream. Instead, out of a mouth so parched her lips were cracked, she moaned. Her shoulders were one burning mass of flesh.
She cracked open an eyelid and saw fuzzy shapes moving silently around the room in filtered ambient light.
A presence came close to her, and she flinched. “Shh, you're safe,” a female voice said.
Right, Julia thought in exhaustion. She hadn't felt safe since the day Jason died.
Another blurry person— a male who made Julia feel a sense of comfort— came to stand next to the female.
“We will have to put that shoulder back.”
Julia watched as they looked at one another, her vision doubling.
She felt a gentle hand at her wrist and a bulging piece of cloth placed in her armpit. A fist was wedged up underneath it, and as Julia's arm was pulled, the fist punched upward. She shrieked. The pain was at once piercing and awful.
Julia sank back into unconsciousness with a hitching sob.
*
William looked down at her, his hand sliding from its placement underneath her shoulder. The joint was back in its rightful place, and the pinched look she had worn since her arrival was gone.
He breathed out.
“She is so frail,” Claire said.
William took in Julia's bizarre hair color, the paleness of her skin, the touch of blue in her nostrils and lips.
“You will need to give her more blood.” Claire's eyes searched his, troubled.
“Every drop I give her binds us tighter.”
“Perhaps, but if you don't, she will heal humanly slow. In agony.” Her eyes moved over the telltale mark on the girl's forehead.
William scowled. Claire seemed to know things that she should not. She knew what his life's goal had been.
What it had always been. His hope was written in the Book of Blood—the vampire equivalent of the Bible. A Rare One would save the race from the brink of extinction. A union between a vampire of Singer descent and a Rare One would bring the tenuous hope of offspring.
William wanted that quite badly—children who were as strong as vampires, possessing all the abilities but without the need to drink blood, living feral in the cover of darkness. Yes—who would not wish for that and long for it?
Julia bore the mark. A half-moon-shaped scar like a small kiss of flesh hovered at her temple. It was the symbol of the Rare One. It looked very much like the moon—pure white.
William’s hands balled into fists, guilt sweeping over him as he took in the gauze dressings, already discolored by Julia's blood.
He had almost torn her shoulders off in flight. When she'd fainted, well… it had been a near disaster. Her dead weight had hung like meat off a hook. He held his eyes closed, willing the image of her broken body to disappear. He had brought her into the bowels of the underground—the forgotten city that lay beneath Seattle.
The lair of his kiss.
He looked above him, watching the feet of the passing pedestrians as they walked over glass that was a foot thick. Scuffed and cloudy, it had a vague purple hue, garnered by a century of sunlight he would never behold.
He sighed and looked at Claire, who had stubbornly folded her arms across her chest. The granddaughter of a Rare One, she s
hould have been renamed Stubborn One.
William came by his own tenacious streak honestly: Claire was his cousin.
His fangs elongated, and he placed the twin points against his wrist. Sweeping sideways, he made a clean cut like two, razor-thin lines, and blood welled, almost black.
Squeezing his wrist to prompt the flow, he used his other hand to massage Julia's throat. As the drops fell, her full lips parted, and the first trembling drop held itself suspended for a moment like a glittering gem then fell.
As the blood found its way inside her mouth, she stirred, her throat convulsing and swallowing. Without waking, her hands moved to the offered forearm, small and like carved ivory against even his pale flesh. her grip was weak as a kitten's.
William leaned closer, the pull of her mouth against his flesh an erotic tether that bound him to her.
She drank, and William resisted his impulses.
They were many.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Julia awoke naturally, her body aching. As she became aware incrementally, her internal system didn't hum with fear but with a subtle calmness.
She never felt calm.
Her eyes snapped open and were met by a stare that matched her own. She had never known anyone to have eyes the same shade as hers and was momentarily speechless.
Julia tried to sit up, and the room spun. The arm of the woman who that stare belonged to rose and pressed her back against the pillows that were stacked behind her.
She opened her mouth to speak, and the woman stood, leaning forward. She pressed a cup with a straw against Julia's chapped lips. “Drink. You're dehydrated.”
Julia drank. It was the best water she'd ever had. It was refreshingly chilled, and it coated her parched throat like the first spring rains in the desert.
She tried to gulp, but the woman took the cup away when Julia would have had more.
“Small sips. We don't want that stomach of yours giving up the blood inside you.”
Julia's expression changed, and the woman saw it. “Don't even start, Julia.”
Julia narrowed her eyes, and the woman said, “The only reason you're not on that bed writhing around in pain is because of the blood William gave you.” She cocked an eyebrow.
“I'll bet,” Julia croaked out, her voice raw from screaming.
“He didn't want to.” The woman stood. “I forced him. It's bad enough for you to transition into our coven. We don't need an injury slowing that assimilation. ”
She looked at Julia. “I'm Claire.”
Julia nodded in greeting. Claire obviously knew who she was.
Julia felt a comfort in her presence, true. But she had reason to distrust her. She could sense what was around her: vampires.
And not a few. They were legion.
*
Joseph
Maggie fussed over Tony. Joseph would have left his small injuries alone. Let him deal with them. He continued to seethe as she ministered to the long gashes that crisscrossed Tony's torso. She was disinfecting the open wounds.
Vampire venom was poisonous. Joseph smiled, thinking of the one he'd speared with his claws. The vampire would be feeling some serious pain. Delirium would be his friend as he flew with the Rare One. A troubling thought occurred to him: what if that vampire had injured the Singer in his pain-induced stupor?
Maggie stood back, critically looking at the dressed wounds. “I think you may live another day.” She clucked like a mother hen.
Joseph looked at her, his anger softening. It was not her fault that he was pissed at Tony. She was doing her job—attending to the Were soldiers. There was one less tonight. His headless body cooled in a shed on the Were compound. Lawrence would want a full report, and then a ceremony for the fallen comrade would be arranged.
It fell to Joseph to explain to Colton's widow the news that her mate was gone. Joseph hung his head.
After a long moment of reflection, he planted massive hands on his jean-clad thighs. Standing, he stared at Tony, waiting until Maggie bustled out of the room. He watched her walk away and turned to Tony, stabbing a finger in his direction. “I have duties to attend to, but you will answer to Lawrence. Our Packmaster will be made aware of what you elected to do—allowed yourself to do. It is you who jeopardized this mission.”
“You can't blame me for everything,” Tony said with derision, his upper lip curling back slightly.
Joseph came forward, and Tony sprang to his feet. They crashed into each other, knocking a lamp off an end table. As it slammed to the floor, shards flying everywhere, Joseph took the six-foot-three Tony down in an armlock that drove his elbow into the other man's sternum, the windpipe compromised. Joseph felt the change hovering in a dim corner of his brain, and his vision changed, his facial bones rearranging in a disconcerting claylike movement that had the room filling with the sounds of their shifting and tendons popping into their new arrangement.
But it was just his face and hands that changed. The rest of Joseph remained as it was. He slowly removed his arm from the throat of the soldier who had acted on impulse. Joseph replaced it with his transformed hand—a claw nearly a foot long in variegated and mottled browns, creams, and tans.
“I can, and I will blame you,” Joseph said on a growl, his throat partially changed, his teeth gleaming with killing intent in a mouth that now had a muzzle covered in gray fur.
His gold eyes, round and large in his wolf form, peered at Tony. “You were without control so near the Singer. You begged me for this assignment but refused to be desensitized.”
“I would not harm her!” Tony growled back, mindful of his own change, which bore down on him enough to make sweat bead on his upper lip. The restraint he employed made him ugly.
“Rape is harm!” Joseph barked at Tony.
“We are meant to breed her!” Tony said, exasperated.
“Not without the ceremony. Not without the proper testing. She cannot be with any wolf. She must be properly matched, properly mated. Do you not see?”
Tony did not. He narrowed his eyes on his Alpha. He would give anything to be the Alpha. He could not think for the scent of the Singer. How had Joseph stood it?
One day the position would be his—by whatever means necessary.
There was a noise by the door, and Adriana rushed in, landing a solid kick to Joseph's side with her full werewolf strength. His rib bruised instantly, robbing him of some of his breath.
“Goddammit! Adriana! It's not what it looks like!” Joseph said, removing the threatening claw from Tony's throat and leaping to his feet, one hand on his rib.
“Oh! You aren't over-disciplining one of our wolves?” His sister yelled at him from a foot shorter. Her eyes flashed, and her small hands were planted on her hips. “Get rid of that ridiculous half-wolf face you're sporting, and get your ass to Lawrence's chamber this instant!”
Tony smirked, and Joseph whipped his head in Tony's direction and gave a low growl. Tony's smile faded.
“Ugh. You dummy! Why don't you just pee on him and get it over with? That's not how you do it. Watch me—you know, your smarter sibling.”
Adriana turned to Tony, who she was not nuts over, but fair was fair. “Tony, would you please go to Lawrence within the next half hour and give him a full report of what happened on the mission?”
Tony struggled to his feet, giving as neutral a look to his Alpha as he could manage. “Happy to.” His stare spoke volumes.
Joseph sighed, his ribs squawking with the movement. “Adriana, you weren't there. You didn't participate in the mission…”
Her ponytail bobbed as she nodded her head. “Right, because I am a lowly female!” Her face reddened.
There was no way that Joseph wished to engage in this tired argument again. If she had been male, she would have been Packmaster. As it was, she practically ran the den.
Their father had made him promise to watch over her. It was essentially a full-time job. And she was vaguely nose-blind. His nose was the keener of the two, and he
wished that she'd trust him. She let her emotions run her actions sometimes—such as now.
“Adi—” he began.
“No.” She stomped her foot. “Tony is injured.” She swung her palm toward Tony, who was all but healed. After she turned back to Joseph, Tony grinned.
Sometimes wolves needed to sort things out physically. Too bad the females were not seeing that necessity. Joseph was the Alpha, so he saw it.
He regretted what he had to do. He opened his jaws wide and latched them onto her vulnerable neck, growling low in his throat.
“Argh,” Adriana yelped. Joseph was careful not to break the skin. As she thrashed around, he subtly followed her movements so her skin would not tear. She grew still.
He unclamped his muzzle, regarding her with eyes like spun gold, his gaze gentle but stern. “Let me be Alpha, sister.”
She rubbed her throat, where many small red indentations marred the creaminess of it.
Tony was silent, letting the two siblings hash it out.
“This is how an Alpha operates,” Joseph said. “You are Alpha as well—it should not come as a surprise.”
“Ugh! You're so unreasonable! Such a he-man! Hate it!” She flung her arms up in the air and stomped off.
That went so well.
Joseph sighed, making his ribs twinge.
“Move, soldier.” He pointed ahead of him, and Tony walked that way.
Joseph followed the blazoned path his sister had scorched on her way out, moving to the Packmaster's chamber for debriefing.
What a joyous occasion would be had by all, he thought, as his face and hands melded back into their human mask.
*
Homer, Alaska
Detective Truman was crouched down on his haunches, letting pewter sand run through his fingers. It was a year later, and he still couldn't get the scene out of his mind. The blood, the body… the aftermath.
They were still no closer to solving the crime than when they first began. Truman stood, looking out over the vast ocean, the snow-capped mountains of the Kenai Fjords in ominous grace, a backdrop to a tousled sea that had whitecaps everywhere he looked. He sighed, standing and kicked a large pebble. It bounced off a large piece of driftwood. The stains of blood that covered the wood had come to look like so much spilled coffee with the passage of time.
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