blood 03 - blood chosen (15 page)

“Hmmm,” Reagan sounded off and glared at them all.

Julia broke the long silence, “I think what we really need to think about is Tony's presence.”

The very lack of expression on her face spoke volumes to Julia and she was suddenly afraid.

“Anthony Daniel Laurent is not my father. He is the rapist of my mother. And but for the law of the moon, should be executed.”

“Why can't he be?” Julia asked, though she knew she was inciting rather than helping. She wasn't loving a violent solution but if the deed matched the consequence....

“Because of what I am.”

“What is that?” Julia asked, voice breathy.

“Moon Warrior,” Tony said from his shackles, his nostrils flaring at her scent. Then, “Female of my loins.”

It happened that fast. One minute, Reagan was beside Julia, the next: five crimson lines bloomed on Tony's chest where she struck him with her talons. No one had seen her move, Reagan's unnatural speed the apparent privilege of her station.

“Do not!” Slash roared.

Tony smiled at his daughter while he bled, the rain of her violence splattering the ground at his feet, he wallowed in his own pain, using it like food—as he did in battle.

“Like father, like daughter,” he whispered and she tipped her head back to the moon and howled her frustration.

“I but mark you,” Reagan said in the old language.

“Because you beg for my death does not mean you will see it,” Tony answered, returning the ancient words of his kind back to her, his typical modern vernacular bowing to the language of their kind.

Jacqueline stood slightly behind him and to his left. “This is your daughter?” she asked, taking in the imposing Were... female, yet hardened like a male fighter. Her eyes tagged his bleeding chest and she raised a casual brow in response.
This appearance was most interesting,
Jacqueline thought. Her love of chaos notwithstanding, having Tony's spawn here might complicate matters.

Tony nodded, his eyes never leaving Reagan's as he studied her. “I didn't know I'd left any mistakes behind.”

“I'm not a mistake...” Reagan said and hated the defensive tone in her voice.

“Sperm donor,” Adi said. “We'll add that to the list of shit head names we can call you.”

“It's crass, but it'll do,” Scott said, coming to stand beside Julia, looking between the two reunited Weres. It wasn't his fight. Julia's protection was all that mattered. These two could fight it out.

Tony gave a smile of fierce triumph. “None of you can kill me, now that my daughter has been revealed as the Moon Warrior.” He looked at all of them with cheerful disdain. While they'd been all politically correct, thinking about how to get rid of the bad doggy, his daughter had shown up and screwed their plans six ways to Sunday.

They fell silent under the doctrine that all must obey by ancient law. Laws that superseded the Book of Singers, Luna, and even the ancient law of Vampire. They could not deny his lineage.

The shackles were released from his ankles, his hands still bound and Tony, as pleased as a peacock unfurling its multi-colored tail like a graceful fan, posed and preened in front of eyes that landed on him like stones of hate. The wounds on his chests began to scab on their way to healing.

“Hate me all you want,” he said to those at large, but his gaze was all for Reagan. “But you can't kill me.”

“He speaks true,” Marcus added slowly from his position alongside his children, it was if the words were torn from him.

Reagan got up close to him, her nose reached his chin and she stared into his eyes, giving him all kinds of unhealthy eye contact. “Who said your death was what I wanted?” she whispered.

Tony's eyes widened but she took only a half-step backward and came at him not as he would have expected; but in a way he would not.

DNA was a strange enterprise. They were more alike than either realized.

She behaved like the wolf she was and as Tony tried to cover his groin with a twist of his legs she smiled and it was a wolf in front of an exposed throat, seeing the vulnerability.

And taking it.

She ignored his crotch and jabbed her fingers into the tender underside of his Adam's apple and he gave a choking wretch, his bound hands trying in vain to save his throat. With a snapping hand, Reagan hit his face, the sliver of cheekbone exposed splitting like a ripe fruit under the blow. And like an expert dancer, she moved into his injured body when he thought she'd move away and stomped on the instep of his foot with her heel.

Tony howled and bent over, the chains clanking from his bound hands. Even Jacqueline, normally impervious to the suffering of others, gasped at the brutality of the beating.

Hissing, he balled his bound fists and landed them as one on her jaw as he came up for air in a sucking roar of rage.

“You seek to avenge your whore of a mother? Who begged me to take her...” He slapped Reagan's face with his hands still laced together with zip ties and Slash moved forward even as her eyes slid to his in a silent plea. A plea not to interfere, regardless the cost.

Which, moment by moment, became mightier than the last.

*

Reagan's claws sprung from the tips of her fingers and she gutted Tony even as he came for her. The powerful muscles of her forearms drove the force of the bone-like material of her talons into the deepest cavity of his body and he grunted as if he'd been punched.

“She is not a whore, but a survivor!” Reagan bellowed into his face as she twisted her claws inside him like so much scrambled egg and he shoved her with his hands tied in the way of a battering ram, effectively tearing himself up in the process as her talons were jerked out of his churned guts. Reagan staggered backward, gained her footing and with a swinging press of limb, steadied her left leg like an anchor and swung her right leg in a roundhouse kick that took him high in the head.

Tony crumpled in a heap on the ground as he held his entrails inside himself with hands bloody from his wounds.

“Don't kill him,” Jacqueline murmured into the silence of the forest, every person held still by the raw violence of the space of seconds becoming minutes.

“No,” Reagan said in slow grudging agreement, sparing her not a glance. “But I will make him wish for death.” She moved forward and fell on Tony, her claws put away for the moment, meaty sounds of her small but effective fists pummeling flesh that gave way... bones which broke.

A life which hung by a thread.

When Tony lay broken and bleeding at her feet, when bubbles of blood burst from the nose she had broken, she stood. Gore rose like reverse water to her elbows and Reagan spoke in a whisper that trembled with her rage, “No one will hurt those I love. No one,” she repeated.

Julia looked at Reagan, no less regal covered in blood, then her gaze shifted to who had been a part to bring her into the world and hated what she represented. Violence. But Reagan was necessary, a part of some whole that Julia swam in. Her eyes swept over Jacqueline, a quiet and angry presence. Finally, her gaze fell to Tony.

The most evil of males, who even now healed the injuries vested upon him by a daughter beget of violence. They were not Julia's words but those of William, she realized. Julia could almost hear them in her head and she looked at the vampire and saw his eyes were all for her.

Reagan was violence personified. A different brand than her father, but still dangerous.

Julia watched Reagan step over Tony's healing body and turned to her. “Let me clean the stink of him off me and then we talk.”

Julia could only nod. If there were three that would oversee the supernaturals, if she was the light... then Reagan was the dark. The moon when it was new and unseen.

Who would be the third?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Scott

Scott took Julia by the elbow, his eyes daring William and Jason to interfere. He could feel her bone tiredness like it was his own as well as the emptiness of her belly. Instead of going to meet Reagan he steered her straight to the kitchen. She needed to be away from a torn and bleeding Tony. He wasn't too won over by Reagan either. He loved that she'd kicked Tony's ass but he could feel how sick Julia was over the violence.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“You're eating, I can feel you starving when I touch you,” Scott said and wrapped the hand that had been on her elbow around her nape.

“Okay,” Julia said but she added, “I can't say I have a great appetite right now. I mean... Reagan.” Scott nodded in understanding. They moved through the house silently; most of the other Singers were in the yard in various stages of assessing Tony.

“Did you know about Reagan?” Julia asked him as he settled her onto a stool. He'd been prepared to answer when William and Jason entered the kitchen like a pair of shadows that needed no sun, because Julia was there. Scott felt his shoulders tense as he searched the fridge for food. Smelling a container of leftover chicken with mashed potatoes he slid the whole glass dish into the microwave and hit the timer.

“No,” Scott finally replied.

“I know of the writings,” William supplied and Scott glared at him. The vampire pissed him off. Well... Jason pissed him off too. Couldn't make up his mind which one pissed him off more. Scott guessed it was whoever was closest. Or spoke.

Or existed.

Which, right now, was the both of them in the kitchen, staring at Julia. The timer beeped and he set the food down in front of Julia, who began shifting the steaming pile around with a fork.

Her hunger beat along the inside of his skull. “Please, Julia, you're killing me, eat.”

Julia smiled at him. “You can feel I'm hungry?” Her eyebrows arched, a fork full halfway to her mouth, frozen.

“Yeah, it's driving me crazy, now shovel.”

“She was always a shitty eater,” Jason commented and Scott felt his face go hard.

Jason studied Scott, sensing and seeing his irritation. “Y'know, you're gonna have to simmer down, Singer. We were married... we were close.”

Julia took a cautious bite of food, studiously avoiding memories of  Tony’s beating so she could keep food down while ignoring the rising testosterone. Easier thought than done. Scott set a glass of milk in front of her and after a long moment of staring at it she took a sip as her eyes went from a glaring Scott to a satisfied Jason.

“You were married but a day or two,” William stated.

“Don't discount me knowing her,” Jason said, turning on the vampire while Scott began to grin.
Wasn't this entertaining as hell.

“I know her as well, you dolt. She was the one who cried and bled for two years without you. Who ran to escape the many who would claim her against her will.”

Julia felt the food she'd eaten slide down in a solid lump to a stomach that had begun churning. She pushed her plate away.

“Can we talk about Reagan?” she asked as the vampire and her... husband argued about who was the most intimate with her.

William stood seething at Jason for a moment, then like melting ice, his former irritation slid off his face and it was the one she knew so well: controlled, hard, and worthy. Fierce intelligence lay in the deep gray of his gaze as he peered out at them.

“The Singers have their ancient text: the Book of Singers.” His eyes touched on Jason, “yours is Luna... and for Vampire, it is Blood.” He said that last as if it was the most elemental of comments. “The deepest magic of all that will come to pass is doing so in this moment. We are but witnesses to history being made, in this time...” he swept his palms together, clasping his hands in a clap that caused Julia to flinch. His eyes went to Julia and they gentled from the flinty steel he gave the other men. “To answer your query: I do not know who the vampire female will be, or when it shall come to pass. Reagan seems to authenticate the prophesies of all three text. However,” his eyes grew solemn, “you may reign with help but your life is still bound by the rules that you choose in the next three days. You must bind yourself to the three of us or be faced with a life of constant guard. And certain mortality is the reality for your future.”

Scott stood behind Julia, his hands on her shoulders.

William's eyes held compassion and Jason's customary anger swam in his gaze. “I'll do it for her. Because it's the only way to release the Combatant and the constant guard, because she'll be safe and live forever, apparently. But don't expect me to live with her, love her. I'll do whatever...” Julia watched his hand rake through his sandy longish hair, his hazel eyes blazing out of his face like chipped ice. “I might have to seal the deal, but I'm not going to be her husband after—afterward.”

William turned to look at him. “So you would punish her because of circumstance beyond her control. Because you could not live the life you envisioned for the two of you?”

“You make me sound like an ass when you say it like that,” Jason said and Scott barked out a laugh. Jason glared at him, carefully avoiding eye contact with Julia. “You stay out of it.”

“No,” Scott said in a clipped word. “I'm so far in I don't have a choice. Does the words soul meld mean anything? Even if I wanted to chuck her nine miles away from me I'd die first. Hell, I manifested the crazed form when she was in danger and the vamps showed up. My ship is sunk, pal. So deal.”

Julia let the tears fall. She felt like she'd been crying for over two years. She was tired of being sad. Of disappointment and disappointing. “Does anyone want to be with me just because?” she asked to the room at large.

Everyone was quiet.

She stood. “Yeah, thanks for the grub, soulmate,” Julia said and Scott came forward.

“I'm sorry, Julia... you know I love you.”

“'Cuz you have to.” Julia nodded at him and moved away, her body growing colder without his beside her. Julia's mind swam with her destiny in a swamp of sadness, the sludge of her thoughts leaving a trail of murk that could never be erased, cleansed- eased.

Her eyes found Jason's and she saw the spark of who she'd known before he covered his expression with indifference. He didn't try to touch her.