“Hey Ma, that for me?”
“Yeah, it’s for you,” I told him smiling.
He padded over with bare feet kissing me on the cheek at the same time he took the plate from me. He hungrily ate the sandwich and drank down the tea, it didn’t escape my notice that Victoria was looking at him with eyes just as hungry. Christian used his discarded shirt to dry off with and looked up at me.
“You nearly cost me that round you know. You came down the stairs and it made me lose track of where Victoria was.”
“You can actually sense where in the room she is not just her presence?”
“Sorta, that’s what we’re trying to work on.”
“It looks like you’re doing a great job.”
“He is but we still have more work to do,” William replied.
“Okay, I take it that not so subtle hint means I need to leave?”
“Yes.”
I took Christian’s empty plate and left him a bottle of water. As I climbed the stairs I whispered, “thank you, Will. Love you.” Low enough that Christian couldn’t hear me. Just before the door closed behind me I heard, “You too babe.”
“Hey Ana!” I yelled into the open space of the house not sure where she had gone off to. She stepped out of the kitchen looking more than annoyed.
“It really isn’t necessary for you to yell. You can whisper much like you just did with William and I will still hear you just fine.”
“Sorry,” I told her a little sheepishly.
“Whatever Juliana. What is all this stuff you bought?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve never made a cake before?”
“What reason would I have to prepare human food?”
“Even if that was a bit condescending I’ll let it slide, let’s go.”
“Go where we just got back.”
“We’re making a cake, c’mon.”
Ana and I had real fun for the first time since being together. She was utterly grossed out by the slimy feel of egg whites under her fingers. I thought it was hilarious. She tried to deny that she was having fun, but I knew deep inside this was the first real thing she has done in a very long time. Something I hadn’t considered was a cake pan, we didn’t own any. As soon as we realized this Ana disappeared and showed up a minute later.
“Where did you get that?”
“I borrowed it from the neighbor.”
William, Victoria and Christian emerged from below as soon as we finished frosting the cake.
“What’s that smell?” William asked.
“You can’t be serious, that’s a cake,” Christian was looking at him like he was crazy.
Just as they rounded the corner Ana and I yelled out, “Happy Birthday!”
“Thanks, but you do realize my birthday isn’t until next week right?”
“Of course I do, but we’re together now. So want a piece of cake?”
“Heck yeah I’m starving.”
I cut him a huge slice of the chocolate cake with extra frosting and poured a big glass of milk for him, we all sat watching him eat it.”
“Aren’t you going to have any? It’s really good, Mom you love chocolate.”
“Christian, we—” William started, but I cut him off.
“Absolutely, I just wanted to see if Ana screwed it up that’s all. It’s her first cake.”
“Jules, you—”
“C’mon Will, one small piece can’t hurt.”
I cut a small piece of cake and sat by Christian. He smiled brightly making everything feel somewhat normal again. I scooped off a corner with my fork.
“Juliana, you really shouldn’t . . .” Ana started to warn me.
“Oh, it’s her son’s birthday cake,” Victoria stopped her, “one small piece can’t hurt.”
I put the bite of cake into my mouth and instead of tasting devilishly good chocolate with extra gooey frosting—I tasted dirt with a side of vomit. I opened my eyes wide and forced myself to chew the once decadent, and now repulsive, birthday tradition. Ana and William were both cringing along with me as they had obviously been here before.
Christian not really paying attention mumbled around a mouthful of cake, which made it seem that much worse, “Good isn’t it?”
“Um. Yeah, good,” I somehow managed to swallow.
“Go on now make sure you eat all of it. We wouldn’t want it to go to waste,” Victoria said in her sing-song voice.
I looked down at my plate and my stomach started to rumble, I felt nauseous, my hands started to shake. I jumped up and ran just making it to the kitchen sink as the cake came back up. I have never wretched so horribly in all my existence and I did it to the soundtrack of Victoria’s gleeful laughing.
Chapter Eighteen
William and I decided it was time for us to get out of the house for a little while before the sun finally rose for the day. Christian, not used to being up at all hours of the night and working his tail off at that was exhausted. We had one room left in the house that wasn’t being occupied—I was not going to put him in the basement—so, I made the bed for him where he promptly passed out. I felt safe leaving him home with Ana and Victoria; there was no way anyone was going to get past those two to make their way to him. Especially with the way Victoria had been eyeing Christian; I didn’t like it, but it did have its uses.
We left Ana and Victoria sitting in the library as we made our way out the back door, I gave the garage a side-long glance before turning to William.
“You know it’s really nice out, let’s go for a walk.”
“What are you up to?”
“Why would you assume I’m up to something? We’ve never gone for a walk before.”
“Exactly.”
“Oh, come on it’ll be nice. I’ll even race you,” I said egging him on.
“Alright deal, let’s see if you can beat me to Washington Park.”
“That’s five miles away here.”
“So, it’ll take us two minutes, two and a half tops. See ya there.”
He took off before I even realized, he didn’t bother opening the gate that would just slow us down; instead he leapt right over it. I shot after him pushing myself as hard as I could, the wind kicked up behind us rustling the leaves and litter in our wake. Running full speed on the empty streets was invigorating I felt like I could take on the world as my ears tuned in to all the sounds as they dashed by. William glanced over his shoulder at me, not that he needed to see where I was, he could most definitely determine that by the sounds of my footfalls.
“Become silent, Jules, you run like a human. Step as though you are treading on water, light as a feather; speed has little benefit if the enemy knows exactly where to find you.”
I began to focus on each of my steps picking up my foot almost immediately after the other one touched down. My swiftness became a rhythm all its own that turned silent with each passing beat. I was right on his heels as we neared the university next to the park. William deftly dodged the buildings, cars and the few people that happened to be milling about. I tried to contain my laughter, the burst of wind was something the people could rationalize away, but voices laughing out in the night was something different.
We made it to Washington Park, but instead of going into the park like I thought we were going to William zipped up the stairs for the parking garage separating the park from the hospital I used to work at. He stopped running at the edge of the wall and turned to me with a satisfied look on his face.
“Beat you.”
“That wasn’t really fair, you said we were going to the park this isn’t exactly the park.”
“Oh, come on you aren’t that bad of a sore loser are you?” He was laughing at me now.
“No, I am not.” I started to look around and abruptly recognized where we were.
“This is where Ana attacked me.”
I was at once uneasy and had lost my good mood.
“Why do you always do this,” William started griping.
“Do what?�
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“This,” he was gesturing to my entire demeanor, “as soon as something reminds you of that night you get all mopey and pissed off, and your world is ending again. I know it’s been hard, but I think some good things have come out of it too.”
He turned me so I could no longer face the spot where Ana tore my throat out and left my life’s blood on the parking garage floor.
“Only you would think that,” I objected.
“Really? You couldn’t run a 30 second mile before, leap tall walls in a single bound,” he said jokingly trying to lighten the mood.
“There is that.”
I let him pull me into his chest and hold me firmly against him wrapping his strength around me.
“You wouldn’t have found me,” he said faintly.
“No, I wouldn’t have you.”
And this is where the cross roads began. I loved William, he was my strength when I was weak, but I wouldn’t have traded my family for him—my husband for him. Now that I was making peace with Antonio starting to move on, and me becoming happy with William; I didn’t know what I would do if faced with having to choose between them. I think William knew this and thankfully never spoke the question out loud.
His entire body stiffened and his bearing changed to one of complete awareness all at once. His grip around me didn’t let up.
“Blood.”
“I don’t think the consuming-only-blood thing is a positive exactly, I mean I really wanted a piece of that cake. Oh my god, blood, lots of it.”
I started looking around, but there was no one with us. We were still completely alone on top of the garage, but the overwhelming scent of blood was coming from someone, somewhere.
William moved me out of his embrace still keeping hold of my hand as he crept low, pulling me along with him to peer over the barrier wall of the parking garage. At first we couldn’t see who the blood was coming from, but just beyond the tree line of the park there were two vampires in plain sight feeding. I tried to stand up, but William yanked me back down next to him.
“Stay out of sight, you don’t know what’s going on here.”
“It seems pretty obvious to me, we need to stop them before they kill someone. They are going to be seen.”
“Juliana, you need to start thinking like someone that has two lives. The Coven could be using this to draw us out. Michael said himself that he knows there is a spy in his network, but he doesn’t know who. If we go down there stopping that he’ll have his answer,” William looked at me with a hard expression that said he wasn’t going to budge on this no matter how much he let me get away with normally.
“Fine, but I—” movement coming from the park caught my attention.
We both looked over the wall again to see that it was Michael and another one of his lackeys down in the park. We would have been discovered if I ran down there. The vampire with Michael was viciously feeding on a young college-aged girl, the vamp must have been a newborn or it had been a very long time since he had fed because he was in a blood filled frenzy. Michael was making no attempt to stop him; rather he was looking around almost daring someone to interfere. A small gathering of college students who were studying in the library came out and began looking for the source of the muffled cries.
“Oh, this is just fucking great. There are humans involved now.”
“They haven’t seen anything yet. They’ll probably just go on their way, you know people don’t like to get involved.”
William slid down the wall so he was completely covered and pulled out his phone.
“We’ve got a problem. Michael is feeding in the park with a newly turned vamp, with a gathering audience of humans.”
He hung up without saying another word. As if on cue we heard an earsplitting scream ring out through the quickly diminishing night. I looked over, to see the group of students peering into the tree line. Our screamer was standing with her hands covering her mouth as if to hold back any more from escaping, it didn’t however prevent the tears and snot from pouring down her face. I followed her line of sight to see both Michael and his newly turned fledgling looking at the group of humans without an ounce of remorse. It seemed as though they were about to advance on the group when Michael reached into his pocket and put his phone to his ear. He hung up without ever having said a word. He spared no more consideration for either his onlookers or his newborn as he abruptly turned and vanished from the park.
“Could you hear who was on the phone?” William asked me.
“No, could you?”
“No.” But I swear there a breath of hesitation before he answered.
“We need to head back to the house; I don’t want to come across any more Coven.”
“Yeah, okay, but what about the humans. They all saw what happened, they saw Michael and that other guy.”
“Sebastian is going to take care it. Let’s go.”
We took off heading home the same way we came, half way to the house several police cars and an ambulance went screaming by us. They didn’t seem to take notice to the two blurry outlines shooting through the breeze, but then I can only imagine what was coming over their radio. We came bursting through the front doors of the house startling Ana and Victoria both, which to me felt like quite the accomplishment.
“Michael brought a newborn out to feed in public while several humans watched,” William told them without preamble.
“Did he see you?” Ana was up and ready to attack in an instant.
“No, I think he suspected someone was there, but I don’t think he saw us.”
“What did you do?”
“Sebastian’s taking care of it.”
All of their eyes sort of flitted to me then away again like they didn’t want me to realize they were looking at me, or trying not to look at me at least.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s good timing to be back anyway. Monica called, they want to meet at the new house they’re ‘borrowing’.”
“What is Sebastian going to do?” I interrupted Ana.
No one wanted to answer me. I don’t know what exactly they were afraid of but Victoria was the one that finally looked me in the eye. She was firm, but hidden behind it was a hint of pity.
“You know exactly what he is going to do. He is going to go to the scene and if any of the witnesses are aware that the attack was done by vampires, make even an innuendo; he will kill them. Hopefully they just think it was some sicko and nothing supernatural at all, most don’t want to believe and it has probably saved their lives.”
The room was silent, painfully so, as I tried to absorb what I really already knew. It was after all why I kept myself hidden from my family, but it was different being face-to-face with it.
“Why doesn’t he just compel them to forget? A lot more lives would be left intact.”
“There is no way to guarantee that it will stick, besides he can’t compel a group of them at a time. With the Coven and Council on the tipping edge of an all-out war Sebastian cannot afford to let even one person go while knowing the truth. Christian is the only exception he has made and that is because he is your Guardian. Your Guardian, whom Sebastian wanted me to remind you, will be going with us to the meeting with Michael in just a few days.”
Victoria continued to look at me with a steady gaze, all pity now gone, and only fierce determination left in its place. “You can help us in this fight, but you have got to stop acting like you are still a bleeding-heart human. You need to think like a vampire, you need to act stronger than what you have been and quit falling apart. You have the potential to live for a very long time and there will be countless humans that die in that time. You can’t care about all of them.”
“Maybe that’s what sets me apart, I want to care. I’m fighting because I actually give a damn about what happens to these people. Victoria, why are you doing it, because you were ordered to? Have you ever, in your life done anything at all without being ordered by someone else to do it first?”
&nbs
p; She didn’t give me an answer and it seemed no one else had anything left to say either.
“I’m going to my room. I’ll see you all tomorrow night unless you need me sooner.”
I was in my room, but I didn’t bother changing. I knew William would be following me soon and I didn’t want him distracted if he came in while I was half-dressed. Just as I predicted it wasn’t two minutes later and he was sliding into my room. I gave him half a smile and sat down heavily on the edge of the bed.
“You okay?” he asked coming to sit beside me on the bed, of course not making a sound.
“Yeah, I just think we could have done something tonight. I could have done something tonight.”
“You probably could have, but you need to decide if it would be worth risking the greater good of the mission. That is always going to be a hard decision to make and it will never be the same answer.”
“You sound like you’ve been here before.”
“I have been here more times than I can count. Victoria is right when she says you can’t care about every human death, if you do you will go mad. Is isn’t cynicism, love, it’s self-preservation.”
“When did you get so wise?” I said looking at him sideways.
“Hey, I’m more than just something good to look at and a superb lay you know.”
We both started laughing and I felt better already.
“You make me feel better just by being near you, have I ever told you that?”
“Same here, Jules,” he gave me a breathtaking smile that showed me the truth of his words.
“So . . . you know how you immediately called Sebastian tonight—at the parking garage.”
As if I really needed to clarify.
“Yes . . . why?” he was clearly confused by the sudden change of topic.
“I want to tell you something, but you cannot tell Sebastian. Or Victoria. Or anyone really. If you don’t want to know so you can deny knowing, that’s okay. But I want you to be aware of what is going on.”
Rising Son (The Juliana Lucio Series) Page 17
