The Blood Bundle, Books 1-2: Blood Singers and Blood Song (New Adult Paranormal Vampire/Shifter Romance)

by Tamara Rose Blodgett

  *

  Truman

  Truman hadn't needed to lean on the local fuzz too much. They'd gotten the word from Alaska.

  Full cooperation.

  He was getting a lot of yeses and that's how he liked it.

  His nose was literally twitching with excitement. He'd buzzed through all the drivers and was down to the last one.

  The driver was a pudgy guy with thick hair that had once been black and had now edged its way into the pewter category. Truman picked up on his nervousness right away, it was in the set of his hands as he twisted his cap in his thick hands.

  “I'm Karl Truman, Homer PD,” he stuck out his hand and swallowed the bus driver's in his own.

  Firm grip, nervous but not a pussy. Truman liked him immediately. Seemed like a good sort.

  “Good to meet ya,” the guy said. “I'm Alfred,” he elaborated, giving Truman a solid pump then letting his hand fall.

  Truman pegged him with his gaze and when Alfred didn't waver, drop his stare and met his eyes full on- the twitching became a buzz.

  He took the picture of Julia Caldwell and Cynthia Adams out of his billfold. It was a graduation shot, their heads covered with caps, the tassels captured in mid-swing, the cold Alaskan sunlight lending a halo effect.

  Truman put it in front of Alfred's snout. Alfred squinted at it. Finally giving up, he extracted some eyeglasses and put them on. He leaned in and peered at the photo for a long moment.

  Too long, in Truman's opinion. He opened his mouth to tell him to get the lead out when those eyes flicked to Truman's; he noticed they seemed kind.

  “Yeah, I seen that girl,” he pointed at the photo.

  Truman turned around and indicated Cynthia Adams with a finger flick. “Her,” Truman said, satisfied like a clam at high tide.

  Alfred gave a slight frown and shook his head to the negative. “Nah, her.” With his pointer finger, he carefully pressed it to the shorter girl in the photo. Her golden hair shone almost red in the weak sunlight typical at the beginning of the Alaskan summer, a stray ray exactly falling across her eyes, lighting them in her delicate face.

  Lion's eyes, Truman thought, the startling amber an unforgettable shade.

  Truman's eyes snapped up to Alfred the bus driver.

  “Her?” Truman almost screamed in his face, stabbing the photo.

  Alfred cowered back at his tone but Truman didn't care. He'd been looking for one girl and found the other. He ignored the bus driver's vehement nodding, his thoughts already on the revelation at hand.

  Julia Caldwell, presumed dead.

  But that was wrong.

  She was here, and apparently, very much alive.

  CHAPTER 5

  Blood Singers Region One

  Julia swung low, sweeping her leg toward Scott's for the strike he taught her, geared at numbing the largest muscle of the leg. He caught her foot, twisting it and she flipped, falling to the floor and slapping the flat of her palms on the mat, the sound echoing in the cavernous training barn. She'd almost face-planted and flipped over on her back, chest heaving from exertion, her strength was definitely not fully back.

  Julia hated Scott.

  He was a Punisher.

  She grinned at his expression of contained guilt. He wore gloves so he could train her for hand-to-hand combat. Not an easy task with a soul-melded partner. Scott was having to go against his primal nature to protect her while he taught her defense, he didn't need the additional challenge of skin-to-skin contact.

  “Nice, Scott!” Michael sung, striding by the mat and never breaking pace, “Beating up our Queen. Terrific form, pal, keep it up.”

  Scott's face took on that tomato color that looked so funny with a man with dusky coloring like his. He was just shy of olive-skinned with an almost Mediterranean skin tone. He looked nothing like the other Singers, who were primarily fair-complected. His huge hands curled into fists and giving a guilty glance at her on the floor he stuck a hand out to her.

  Gloved, of course.

  Julia stood with his help and those inky eyes, like smooth stones of the finest honed ebony gazed down into hers. Whiskey met black and he gave another glance at his brother, who flipped him the bird.

  Julia was getting a little more accustomed to the sibling interaction but much of it seemed like rivalry to her. Scott began to go after Michael and she forgot their promise to not touch each other and put a staying hand on his muscular forearm, the striated muscles rippling under her fingertips.

  In a tingling rush of almost electric proportions, Scott gasped, groaning.

  “Julia!” he said in a low voice, charged with emotion and restraint.

  “I'm sorry,” she apologized and withdrew her hand but Scott was helpless with the sensation of skin-to-skin contact and wrapped her against him.

  Hard, with almost brutal contact he wrapped his hand in her hair and kissed her forehead, then her nose, then found her mouth and pressed his lips to its softness.

  Julia squirmed against the intimacy even as she began to press forward. It was almost like a witch's spell, cast by genetics, directed by fate.

  Using a restraint Scott didn’t know he possessed, he put Julia away from him at arm's length. She was flushed, her vivid coloring reasserting itself as the hiatus of recovery that had spanned this last week had given her vitality back. Scott knew that the flush wasn't from health, but from desire. It burned in her eyes, deepening them to a fine amber.

  He didn't need to look to know that his eyes mirrored hers.

  “Sorry,” he whispered.

  Julia gave a shaky laugh. “It's okay. I just...” she paused then continued, “I didn't want you to pummel Michael.”

  “I'm trying to give us time. You know what Marcus said...”

  Julia did and she was embarrassed. She lifted her eyes, their bodies straining for contact, two feet of separation feeling like ten miles.

  She stayed where she was, looking at the gloves he wore so he could train her. It had been Marcus' idea. When Scott had tried to train her for self-defense, he'd executed his first throw against her and gone and barfed up the breakfast they'd shared.

  Scott found that he could not touch her in a move that might cause her harm without a physical reaction.

  In essence, it hurt him to instigate any move or intent that had potential to harm her. Marcus thought it was all part of the fabric of their soul-meld.

  Of course, he didn't want to hurt her, Julia knew this. She had insisted. Julia didn't want to ever feel weak again. Unprotected.

  Scott was the highest ranked Singer in the tri-state region for his ability: Deflection. So far, he had no sub-ability like Brendan did (Tracker and to a lesser extent Pyro, as it was affectionately referred to). As Marcus had explained, those secondary abilities could manifest at any time. There was always a primary ability and in the instance of a secondary, it was considered an “overlap” or “crossover,” talent. In Singer terminology whatever a Singer possessed was their “talent.” So Julia had spent the first true week at Region One's compound getting quizzed on her “talents.” So far, her primary was the telekinesis and it appeared she had a low-level telepathy. However, it seemed to work only with other Singers, sporadically at best and was not very powerful. As Julia had discovered, it wasn't uncommon, if a Singer concentrated hard enough, they could communicate mind to mind with other Singers.

  In fact, Julia wasn't sure why she'd be the pick for Queen. She just wasn't seeing why she “had it.”

  Scott looked at Julia for another frozen moment then straightened from the semi-slouch he'd adopted to hold her. Julia was really overwhelmed by Scott's size. When he was training her, it took every ounce of her internal fortitude to remind herself: he would not hurt her.

  The soul-meld thing made it doubly awful. It was like she hovered around synchronicity; it was just out of reach. And, of course, she was desperate to touch it.

  “Let's go ahead and take a break, I can feel how thirsty you are,” Scott said with a sma
ll smirk.

  He had a devilish sense of humor. Julia wasn't sure if she'd warmed to it or not. But she dished back what she took. It was squaring up awesomely for her. In fact, Julia found it lightened her to banter with him.

  Scott knew that Julia wasn't as sensitive to his basic needs and it peeved her that she didn't know if he was hungry or thirsty. He couldn't hide his desire though. That smoldered in his gaze, his body, his mannerisms. She couldn't escape that dark knowledge. Sometimes she wished she didn't have it.

  Scott certainly couldn't help it.

  Didn't want to.

  He held out his hand to her and she took it. He cupped her small hand and looked down at the crown of her head, the golden red hair halfway down her back, a cascade of liquid sun. Scott wanted to touch it so bad his chest tightened.

  Instead he said, “After we get a drink, let's go by and see Marcus.”

  Julia turned and looked up at him, way up. Scott was nearly a foot taller. “Why?”

  Scott walked for a few more paces and replied, “He's got some big ass revelation about me. I need to know.” He glanced at her and the weak ambient light that worked its way through the canopy of trees pierced her face just right.

  God, Scott thought, it's like she's captured the sun inside her.

  “Scott?” Julia asked.

  Scott startled, he'd been openly gawking at her and felt heat rise to his face again. This damn soul-meld shit was a force to be reckoned with. He gulped.

  Hard.

  “Yeah,” he chuckled, softly towing her after him. He grinned and said, “He'd been about to tell me a big secret,” he lowered his hands from airquotes and continued, “then you were sliding down the sick slope and I took off to help you. I've been so consumed by that I haven't had a chance to get back to it. But I know it's important,” Scott said with certainty, mentally distracted by all the possibilities of what the information could be.

  Julia stopped walking and Scott felt her fingers leave his gloved ones and a form of grief took residence where they'd been.

  “What?” his eyes searched her face.

  “I don't want to burden people,” Julia said, her eyes clear and level on him.

  “No,” Scott said, moving into her personal space, uncomfortably close. It would have been more natural for them to touch. However, they both knew that it caused... problems.

  Scott put a piece of hair that floated in the breeze of the woods they were traveling through behind her ear, allowing himself that at least.

  It was a short path between “the barn” and the Victorian where his family lived, the deepness of the woods their only audience.

  He cupped her face, the tips of his fingers at her temple and his palm easily capturing her small chin, a fragile egg he held in his palm. “It's not you. You're not a burden. I was just...”

  So damned worried I barely slept, ate, breathed, Scott remembered but said, “I was assuring your safety, Jules.”

  “Please don't call me that.” She stepped backward, a frosty silence inserting itself between them, her face closing down. The openness of the moment vanishing.

  Fuck. Double-fuck, Scott thought. That nickname was off-limits. It's what her friends had called her.

  From before.

  Scott's hands fell at his sides and they stared at each other. How could he repair it? He knew Julia needed to talk about the attack against her by her husband. Even thinking about someone other than himself mated to her made his skin crawl and adrenaline pump through his body. He squelched it without mercy.

  “What do you want me to call you?”

  “Julia,” she said in a huff, crossing her arms across her narrow body, her full breasts cradled by the movement and he looked at them presented before him like delicious fruit then raised his eyes to Julia.

  She saw his assessment of her as a woman and laughed. He grimaced, caught.

  The smile stayed in her eyes and she repeated, “Julia,” more softly and without the force of her earlier answer. Then she looked up at him through her ginger-colored lashes, “Besides, I like the way it sounds when you say it.”

  She pivoted in the opposite direction, walking ahead on the well-worn trail.

  Had she just flirted with him? Nah... impossible, Scott thought. But as he watched her walk away, all his female navigation skills going up in smoke when it came to her, he thought maybe she had.

  Hope sprung to life.

  Scott grinned, following her small feminine form, the flame burning brighter as he did.

  While in the deepest part of the woods, vampires slept under cover of forest debris.

  Waiting.

  *

  battle

  William took the first two easily, gutting one with a well-placed talon, his entrails getting wrapped in the process. He slung the pearly rope of flesh against his mate's neck, and pulled with about half his strength, spearing the vampire in the fleshiest part of his jaw as he fell forward.

  William tore the talons out of his victims, flying over their bodies and colliding midair with the next vampire who engaged him.

  There were many.

  They overwhelmed William. A puzzling trend emerged, they fought talonless, he had single-handedly brought down ten when the remainder held him.

  No one was more surprised than he when their leader pulled out a weapon that William had never seen used before in any battle in which he'd participated.

  A gun.

  The leader lifted it, leveling it on William's chest while a vampire weighed down each of his limbs, and pulled the trigger. It pierced his chest with a meaty thwack and William felt himself go liquid and boneless as he lay there. A strange floating euphoria descended on him and he was paralyzed.

  “Finally, damn. Gabriel said to take twenty and I almost dismissed his numbers.” William heard their voices casually discuss him as he lay there, frozen by a paralytic drug of epic proportions. Much would be needed to freeze a vampire into paralysis combined with consciousness.

  The leader stepped over William and raised his fist high above William, the shadow of his bunched hand like a small moon above him. “This is a closed discussion, runner.” With that comment, he struck, hard and quick.

  William's consciousness slipped away and blackness replaced his thoughts.

  The vampires took him, his limbs swinging and flopping uselessly as he was carried over the shoulder of one of the survivors.

  *

  perseverance

  William blinked awake, the stone that his body lay on was cold even to his vampiric indifference. He knew where he was even as he willed it not so.

  Torture chamber.

  William looked around the dank stone walls and his eyes came to rest on the male in partial shadow in the corner. He stepped into the crude light that made its way inside the stained and foul-smelling room William found himself in, his mask hiding his identity. No surface remained unstained by the gore of others. Their struggles. In vain.

  No matter.

  He was vampire, with vampire strength and speed.

  And ingenuity.

  William was in grave danger.

  “Why?” he asked the vampire who was his brother in arms, from different covens, with the same precepts as his own.

  The vampire rolled massive shoulders into a shrug, and in a voice like polished rock replied, “It is nothing personal, Singer.”

  “I am not fullblood. I am just a runner. It is them I seek.”

  “Yet, you found her.” The eyes in the mask bored into William's. “You are the one that discovered the Rare One. Made her partially yours with the blood-share.”

  A horrible terror gripped William. It was Julia. They would weaken her through him.

  “I see that you understand our objective.”

  “Do not do this!” William growled in a low voice, jerking the chains of silver that held him fast against the slab.

  His torturer gave a grim smile. “You will heal, my friend. We will gain a prize. One day, you will forgive u
s this transgression.”

  “Never,” William promised, his gray eyes turning into a storm in his face. He felt burning hatred for his home kiss, having made William the sacrificial lamb and it was unlike anything he had ever known.

  “We shall see,” the torturer said, moving forward with blurring speed, the barbed whip striking William in the chest, tearing his flesh to the bone in a blinding and skin-tingling shock of pain so acute and numbing William was silent in the aftermath of the strike, his words stolen.

  His breath.

  The next thirty strikes put him under.

  When the icy water struck his face, William wished for death. Prayed for it.

  If God watched over his kind, he remained silent witness to William's pleas.

  For they remained unanswered.

  His blood ran red, dripping into shallow copper-lined troughs that ran the perimeter of the stone slab that he lay upon.

  It was collected.

  Every drop.

  And taken elsewhere, for use on the Singer.

  Julia's fragile connection to William had been discovered and turned into her Achilles' heel.

  She remained unaware, but not for long.

  *

  Northwestern Pack

  Adi grinned at Manny when he walked by but his expression remained solemn, her presence unnoticed. She chased after him, tugging on his sleeve. He turned, his face lighting up when he saw her.

  “Hey, got any good gossip?” she grinned.

  He shook his head. Adi was quite a handful. But she was a wonderful female alpha. He regarded her. Manny knew that it would take a formidable male to appreciate someone like her. Just as he thought it, Tony strode into the narrow hall that traveled between the great library and the gathering hall, where meals, socializing and yes... gossip transpired.

  Not that male, Manny thought. In fact, he was the most eligible wolf in the pack but the females shied away from Tony.

  Adi didn't. Unfortunately, she enjoyed needling him. Foolhardy and provocative at best, dangerous at worst.