Technically she was, the marriage license validated and duly noted.
She was Julia Caldwell now, wherever she was.
If she lived.
Detective Karl Truman hiked up the small ravine, swiping branches aside. Some of the larger ones were broken off at the trunk, sap covering their amputated stumps. He didn't pause on his climb to wonder what might have snapped a branch the size of a man's wrist off at the base.
The police had looked for rational explanations to the murder and disappearance.
When what they should have been looking for was anything but rational.
CHAPTER 15
Julia was working into a routine of sorts, steering clear of the vampire that had “saved” her. Her arms were working again and she had full rotation, the scars from the talons that had sunk deep, almost gone.
She looked in the mirror, running a finger over the shiny pink wounds. They faded each day. Julia would brush her teeth and her eyes would move back to the reflection of them in the glass like a magnet to steel.
She knew more than she had before and wished she didn't.
There was no escaping this place. She felt the inevitability of her circumstances closing in around her and it gave her an almost suffocating feeling of claustrophobia.
Julia tapped the toothbrush on the edge of an old-fashioned pedestal sink, shedding the remaining water from the bristles. She turned the spigot sharply to the left and the water dried up, a tremulous drop falling and hitting the basin with a dull plop. She skewered the base of the brush through one of the four holes in the holder that was attached to the wall and without looking at her reflection again, she walked away.
Julia knew the routine. Claire would knock as she entered. They'd have breakfast together. Julia would fight panic attacks and Claire would lend some of that calm she had in abundance and Julia would live another day.
But she was just existing. She was good at inhaling and exhaling. She'd become almost expert since Jason died.
They were biding their time. Grooming her. You see, Julia knew what she was now. She was some prophesied genetic key.
The key that would unlock the prison of their existence. She was the answer to them not being vampires anymore. Julia didn't really think it was that damn simple, but they fed her what they wanted her to know.
Their version.
To listen to Claire explain it, it was some kind of honor. But she'd heard one of the vampire guards discussing humans.
Humans were cattle to them.
Food load. Without humans, they would die. Starve.
The Blood Singers were an essential element to the genetic diversity of the humans' blood. Without this superior faction, intermixed with the regular population, the blood quantum, its quality would be compromised.
In essence, Blood Singers brought the quality of the blood to a level that made all human blood palatable to the vampires.
All.
Vampires were ruled by blood and darkness; the Were by the moon. She was a jealous mistress, governing their changes at her whim. And that whim was when she was full. No more, no less.
Julia's lessons had begun. Through Claire, Julia began to understand her role. Why she never would have been allowed to live with Jason as a spouse.
Blood Singers did not intermarry. The purity of their blood was needed to balance the precious blood quantum. Mating with each other would upset this balance.
Singers were so rare that it was typically not a problem. Claire had mentioned a figure that was one, one hundredth of the global population. That meant Blood Singers numbered around nearly seven hundred thousand souls. A lot, right? No. Spread over the seven continents, it was barely sustaining the vampires. They numbered more.
That is why the two factions had converged on their group at the beach. They would never have allowed the union. But she and Jason did it in secret, so they hadn't known. But they'd been watching, accelerating their plan because of Jason and Julia's elopement.
Julia guessed the plan hadn't included Jason's death.
Claire had explained her parents to Julia. In detail. Both Blood Singers, they had been taken before they could have more children.
It hadn't been an accident, but providential.
As it happens, the one thing they did produce through the coupling of their gene pool was a daughter.
The manifestation of their combined recessive genes was Julia.
She was the Rare One. The unique female, promised to change the face of the races. Able to produce Lightwalkers. If bred to the Were their offspring would be moonless changers. The moon's control would be gone after several generations. The compulsion to be her slave no longer there.
Bred out.
Julia felt like the prized mule.
Then there were the supposed abilities. Supernatural abilities. She remembered the conversation she and Claire had just yesterday.
*
“How can you stand it? Living here... with them?” Julia asked. Her arms folded across her chest, rubbing her skin as if she were cold. She wasn't, she was creeped out and unhinged. Everything Claire had told her reverberated around in her skull like a pin ball.
Rare One? Blood Singers? One of hundreds of thousands of people?
“I have little choice. This is the place that I have come to belong. I've been here many years.”
“What about my parents? Were they expendable? Jason?” Julia asked in a low voice, her arms by her sides, trembling slightly in her anger.
Claire lifted a shoulder. “It is not typical. One in ten thousand is a Singer. That your parents found one another... that you found and married a Singer...” she looked at Julia. “It's unprecedented.”
Wonderful. Julia's parents, dead. Jason, dead. All because vampires wanted their food all pretty and tasty.
Seemed legit to her.
Fancy cattle. That's all the Singers were to all of them, vampires and Were alike. Julia told Claire that.
She shook her head. “We are more. The quality of our blood and the fabric of our genetics are not the only things we have to offer, Julia.” Her eyes searched Julia meaningfully. “Have you ever had flashes of intuition? Feelings of a precognitive nature?”
Julia sucked in her breath. She'd always known who was phoning as soon as her hand touched the receiver. What the next song would be on the radio. When there'd be a pop quiz in school. Now that everyone sent texts, she'd get a vibration before it rang.
Not from the cell, from within her body. She'd always just chalked it up to one of those things.
It sure the hell was one of those things. It just wasn't the thing she'd been thinking.
Can you hear me? Claire asked. Her lips weren't moving. Icy fingers brushed inside her head and Julia shivered. The feeling of an itch not quite being scratched hovered in her brain.
“What did you say?” Julia asked out loud. Sure as she was standing there that she was imagining things. People didn't have telepathy.
Can you do this? Claire asked, her voice breathing through Julia's mind.
I don't know, Julia replied, aiming her thoughts at Claire like a well trained archer.
She must have hit the bull's-eye because Claire smiled and responded, I thought it might be possible. It is spoken that the Rare One will come to possess all the talents for our people.
Julia backed away, stunned. It was too much to take in. A wave of calmness stole over her, making her feel slightly numb, drugged.
“Stop doing that!” Julia yelled.
“I only wish to help. I am part of you, we all are,” Claire said, moving forward, her rich chestnut hair falling around her shoulders as she came at Julia.
Julia stumbled, falling backward. She felt something well inside of her, rushing to the surface like an errant bubble of oxygen sliding to the surface of a pool of water. She allowed it to leave her, bursting on Claire.
Julia hadn't meant to hurt her.
Claire looked like she'd had an invisible ripple plow into her and she
slammed into the wall. Just inches from the hearth that boasted an old fireplace.
Full of jagged rock.
Claire slid down the wall, stunned. Julia got up off the floor, rubbing her arms again, her body flushed, her head light. She began to move toward Claire when the door slammed open and William was there, glancing at his relative leaning against the wall where she'd been thrown. Julia hopped over the back of the couch where she'd been sitting and he was flying over it and underneath her before she could jump to the ground.
She screamed and he crushed her to him.
Her chest tightened painfully, the proximity to him unbearable.
She could feel it like silken tentacles pulling taut.
The call of her blood to his.
The consumption of his blood a pulsating thread that bound them.
Like a song.
A blood song.
The guard at the door took in the vampire Julia hated holding her against himself like she was the most precious treasure in the world.
To him, she was.
*
Julia
Julia was goddamned done with the coven. She was considered a flight risk.
Gee, ya think?
So, they had her guarded all the time. There were humans called “intimates,” who were the day slaves of the vampire underworld. They guarded her when the vampire slept. While awake, they had the vampire guard. Day in and day out.
Julia was frustrated. She wanted to leave her room. It didn't matter that it was beautiful and all her needs were met. So what? She was little more than a bird in a gilded cage.
She and Claire had come to an uneasy truce. She would teach Julia to harness her abilities, Julia would not use them against Claire. Simple, right? Not really. Julia was already planning on honing said skills and getting the hell out of the coven. She wasn't stupid though. Julia knew that learning what these abilities were, practicing them with someone that also had them... well, it made sense. She decided to bide her time. Not that there was a plethora of options, she thought dejectedly.
Claire came to her the next day with the news that she had been there a month and it was time to meet the leader of the Seattle Coven, Gabriel.
He was Claire's brother, a Rare One.
If Julia had thought the odds of running into one of her kind slim, a Rare One was even slimmer. Claire had explained, out of the almost seven hundred thousand people who were potential Singers, only one percent of those were the coveted Rare Ones.
Wonderful. Julia didn't think that it had helped her in the slightest. It had just gotten the people she cared about dead. A tightening of her chest came on the heels of that marvelous revelation.
The vampires were old school. Claire told her there would be a ball of sorts. Like an old-fashioned “coming out.” Julia would be the guest of honor. Their stolen prize.
The blue ribbon winner.
The prize Heifer.
They didn't need to milk her, just breed her. But to whom?
She'd never let one of the blood suckers touch her. It was only afterward that Claire told her William had “blood shared.” Saving her indescribable agony from the wounds he inflicted on her, allowing her to heal quickly.
Not her problem. If they'd not chased her, he wouldn't have had to use everything he had to get her here. Julia thought of the feeling of the talons piercing her flesh, her bone the next layer beneath the biting claws and shuddered at the memory.
It was his fault she was here.
His.
*
debutant
William studied his reflection, securing the matching cufflinks at the cuffs of his custom made button-down. It was burgundy silk, woven against the grain to produce a slight sheen with movement. Claire said it brought out his eyes. The eyes that met his reflection were the deepest shade of red, just shy of black, his pupils inky dots in their center. But they were not always so, depending on circumstance they could appear reflective, silver. He lowered his sleeves after adjusting the links just right. Sterling squares with a beveled and scalloped edge were pierced with a star burst that held a brilliant blue sapphire chip in its core. An heirloom from his father before him.
He sighed. Sometimes the pomp and circumstance of these ceremonies weighed heavily on him.
William thought of what Claire had told him. Julia was resistant, distrustful. In her youth she thought that she could fool Claire into thinking she was compliant.
William had warned her this was not so. Julia had a steely resolve, never forgetting a wrong vested upon her.
That is why those whiskey-colored eyes followed him with indifference and sufferance.
Julia was not immune to the fire that burned in their veins from the blood share. Her blood called to him. She had tasted of his, so now she had a fraction of the feeling of the song that he held within himself for her.
She listened to his blood as a melody.
Her blood to him was a symphony.
There really was no comparison.
William turned from his reflection, forbidding his despair to take over. This was the Greeting Ceremony. Aside from Gabriel there had not been one in his kiss for three centuries.
Rare indeed.
He slipped quietly out of his chamber, hesitating slightly outside her door, apprehension at her proximity making his step falter. He drew himself together. He could not abide a slip of a girl commanding a warrior of the vampire.
William strode off, never glancing back.
His desire behind him, his plan ahead.
*
Julia
Julia turned her head in mid-stroke of the hairbrush when she felt the familiar tightening inside her breastbone.
“What is it?” Claire asked, locking her gaze with Julia's in the mirror's reflection. Julia unconsciously rubbed her chest as she stared at the door, her breath held in her throat.
“I don't know,” she whispered.
But she did. William stood outside the door. She was deathly afraid he'd come in.
She was even more afraid because she wanted him to.
Her body crawled with the need to be near him, the chemical aspects of the blood in her body more than they had been. Twice now he'd given her his blood. Each time, life saving. It was the quantity that mattered. When it reached critical mass, she would be left choiceless.
Claire had explained it was part of the mating process. That he had given her blood twice drove them closer to being mated. Whether he was right for her or not.d
Whether she wanted it or not.
“After the greeting ceremony is over then there will be a courtship within the circle of eligible vampires.”
Julia couldn't believe how ridiculous it all sounded. A little more than a year ago she'd been a high school senior, secretly engaged.
Then married. Pretty unforgettable.
She'd been on a path of life so divergent from this one she could never reconcile the two, however much she thought about it.
Now, she would be handed over to the best mate of the vampire contingent. The one with whom she could produce the most likely offspring.
“The sooner you accept your placement here, the better off you'll be,” Claire said, admiring Julia's gown. Trying to hide her scowl at Claire's words, even Julia had to admit it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever worn.
It was the palest champagne, almost a soft tangerine. Her ginger colored hair shone above it. Claire had seen to it that her hair had been expertly cut around her shoulders, where it curled softly.
“We keep your hair down for the greeting. No need to be provocative this first time. It will be hard enough for them as it is.”
Right, Julia thought, the blood lust.
Murmured voices reached Julia's ears as she swept in with Claire, the vampire guard and Clarence, trailing behind them soundlessly.
The voices stopped instantaneously, an ominous silence filling the cavernous space. Julia looked up, not being able to help noticing a central strip of ambient l
ight that was perfectly spaced. Large grid-like skylights lined the ceiling of where she stood. Rectangular in size, they housed many thick glass circles. Dark spots would appear above them with regularity. It was mesmerizing.
The vampires stared at her as she brought her gaze down from the ceiling peppered by glass.
A man came forward and instantly Julia felt her body respond. It was not sexual. It was synchronicity. This man was kindred to her. She felt more related to him than she'd ever felt to her flesh and blood aunt.
He smiled and it was sun breaking through clouds. For the first time since her arrival she felt something slide into place.
Something that felt like home.
He was tall and she had plenty of time to assess him as he came toward her, his copper hair slicked back and tied in a navy silk band at the nape of his neck. He had a slight accent when he said, “You are Julia.” He formed it as a statement when it was truly a question.
She nodded, the hair sliding around her bare shoulders. Her nervousness felt like a caged animal yearning for release.
“Welcome!” he said in a booming voice that echoed against the stone walls. Julia fought not to jump as he looked around and faced the crowd of vampires.
There were so many they lined the walls, some lingering in the tall, bricked archways, two feet thick at the threshold. Julia's eyes searched the crowd, many faces expressionless, a few held contempt. Julia swallowed.
The faces lost their neutral expression as they tracked the small movement of her throat like vultures circling a dying meal.
In this case, it was she that they watched.
Gabriel continued, “Here is the one our warriors have brought to us. The first Rare One in three centuries. Here now. For the prophesied continuation of our race. It will be she that allows daywalking. And so much more.”
He turned those golden eyes to hers, so much like Claire's, so much like Julia's.
“Please welcome Julia Wade into our kiss,” he stepped back with a flourish and Julia sat there pegged, a butterfly’s wings pinned to a board. Examined. Scrutinized. It was beyond awkward.
She wasn't anyone's savior. Julia was herself. That's all she was.
Destiny's Dark Fantasy Boxed Set (Eight Book Bundle) Page 49
