Braden sank back into his chair; his fangs receded in his gums; and his eyes turned back to their normal hue. He relaxed his hands and nodded. “I’m tired of it, Nachari.”
“I know you are, son.”
“I might make mistakes, but I’m nobody’s punk.”
“No,” Nachari said frankly, “you’re not. And you never have been.”
Braden hesitated then, but only for a moment. “End game?”
Nachari nodded. “End game.”
“Okay,” Braden said. He reached across the arm of the chair, took the letter from the end table, and crumpled it up in his hand. “Then let’s do this.”
Nachari Silivasi smiled.
Indeed, it was time to investigate Mr. Antonopoulos.
eighteen
Julien sat back on Rebecca’s custom-upholstered couch, crossed one leg over the other, bending his upper leg across his lower thigh, and stretched a large arm along the back of the sofa. “Becca, talk to me.”
She had been pacing, worrying, and wringing her hands together for the last two hours, ever since Julien had sent the VOSU women home, their memories effectively erased, his “mental files” successfully uploaded, and he had tried to give Rebecca some space, some time to process and decompress—but enough was enough.
This didn’t seem to be helping.
She pressed the pads of her thumbs against the delicate skin beneath her eyes in order to stave off pressing tears and drew a deep, cleansing breath. “So he’s gone then?”
They had been over this.
Several times.
“Yes, angel. He’s gone.”
She nodded her head, courageously. “And how did you say he died again?”
Julien frowned and brushed a piece of lint off his jeans. “I did not.”
“Oh, right, but you’re sure the authorities won’t find him?”
Julien repressed the desire to scowl.
Authorities.
What authorities?
He acknowledged no such thing.
“He will not be found, Becca.” He patted the sofa beside him. “Come to me, little mouse. You need to sit down for a while.”
Rebecca eyed the empty space on the overstuffed couch beside him, almost as if she were eyeing a guillotine, and then she reluctantly crossed the room and sat down, cautiously, immediately tucking her knees to her chest as if to create a physical barrier between them.
Julien placed a large tender hand over the cap of her knee and massaged it gently. “What are you feeling?” he asked in a hushed, compassionate voice, surprised by his own uncommon sensitivity.
She placed her hands on her thighs. “Um, mostly numb.” She tilted her head from side to side as if weighing the question more thoughtfully. “Glad it’s over—glad that the Trevor part is at least over—but anxious about the future.”
“About me?” he asked, getting straight to the point.
She frowned. “You’re a vampire.”
“And you will be one, as well. Very soon.”
She gulped. “Don’t remind me. I think, before, I had a momentary lapse.”
He shifted his weight, leaned in her direction, and uncrossed his leg so he could run the backs of his fingers softly along her jaw. “I want…” His words trailed off as he held her gaze with his and stared deep into her eyes. “I want a deeper understanding between us.”
Her eyelids fluttered several times as she blinked, almost instinctively, much like a delicate bird or a hesitant butterfly testing out a leaf before deciding whether or not to land. “I think we understand each other,” she murmured, unable to sustain the intimate eye contact.
He leaned in even closer and pressed a soft, chaste kiss along the exposed arch of her shoulder, just where the curve met her arm, grateful that she was wearing an open-shouldered blouse. “Do we?” His words were a husky murmur.
Rebecca gasped, and the same delicate skin flushed with rising goose bumps.
Julien reached across her midriff, caressed her upper arm, and lightly kneaded her flesh, imparting warmth and concern in his touch. “You are brave,” he said frankly. “Brave and strong, yet terrified, all at the same time.” He leaned back against the large bulky cushions positioned at the rear of the couch, giving her a moment’s respite from his obvious advances, and looked off into the distance. “You were very good with your friends earlier, with the women you care so much for; and you were level-headed under pressure, when the situation grew tense.” His lip curved in a partial smile. “At least as level-headed as could be expected. And you are now free from your nightmare, but you are still running—you are still hiding—from me.”
Rebecca peeked at him through lowered lids, primarily using her peripheral vision to scrutinize him. “I’m not ready,” she whispered. “Not for any of this.”
He moved off the couch and knelt in front of her, his huge warrior’s frame towering over hers. Wanting to remove all physical barriers between them, he slid his palms beneath her calves, tugged both legs gently forward, and anchored her feet on the floor, kneeling between her thighs. And then he cupped her face in his hands and bent his forehead to hers. “You are,” he argued delicately.
She trembled beneath his touch, the paternal, yet intimate, contact.
“Sh,” he coaxed her. “You are.” He bent to her ear and pressed a lingering, seeking kiss just beneath her earlobe, at the apex of her carotid artery. “Be with me, Rebecca,” he breathed in her ear. “Let the world slip away for a while, and just be with me.” He trailed a light series of slow, seductive kisses down the length of her jaw, stopping just short of her quivering mouth, unashamed that he was pouring fire and ice—and erotic pulses—into every graze of his lips in order to tantalize her.
Her spine stiffened, and she splayed both hands against his chest, but she didn’t push him away. “W-w-what about your girlfriend? What about Shelly? Is…is she just going to accept that you’ve moved on, simply because the moon changed color?”
Julien drew back in surprise.
He knew it was an excuse, a deflection at best, but still: What an extremely odd question. He chuckled low in his throat, the sound a throaty, masculine drone. “Shelly Winters is not my girlfriend. She is a brave and kind soul, a female who serves the house of Jadon, faithfully. She has extremely pure, untainted blood, and she attends the Vampyr in that particular…manner…on occasion. I have known her for many years. That is all you walked in on.”
Rebecca shook her head emphatically, and she even dared to meet his gaze. “No, Julien. No, it’s not. I walked in on a beautiful woman lying on the floor at your feet, bleeding and unconscious, while you were zoned out in a chair.” She shifted nervously on the couch. “I don’t want to be that woman. Not now. Not ever.”
Julien stiffened.
He swept his hand through his hair while considering Rebecca’s words carefully, and then he slowly nodded his head. He respected his destiny’s honesty as well as her blunt appraisal, even if it was a means to an end, a way of deflecting his advances. He blew a short wisp of hair away from his eyes and studied her intently. “You are right to question what you saw, and I would be remiss to make up some half-ass excuse. Shelly came to feed me at an inopportune time…for her.” He shrugged his shoulders and frowned. “The H doesn’t work, baby girl, not without human blood. And I…I treated her callously, but not on purpose. Never on purpose.”
Rebecca sighed. “And how do I know you won’t treat me the same, just not on purpose?”
Julien nodded. He understood her question, maybe better than she knew, and he had no intentions of skirting the truth. “In 1556,” he uttered, shocked that he was about to share this tale, “before I had a reliable chemical escape, I hunted an enemy to a rural village near Andalusia, Spain. It was a quaint community filled with laughing children and revered elders, and despite the fact that they recognized me as a predator, as someone—or something—to be feared, they welcomed me with open arms. They were a kind, hospitable people, and I dwelled among t
hem for about three months, while I searched for this enemy, tracked him through the hillsides, and hunted him amongst rubble and ruins.” He sighed, remembering the frustration. “But, as always seemed to be the case, this particular monster eluded me, and it was finally time to move on.” He felt his muscles tighten and intentionally relaxed his shoulders.
“Before I left, though, I wanted to stop by the house of one particular family: the Aiza household. They had twin girls, Analise and Evangeline, who had just turned ten, and both were born with a rare affliction, a deformity that had crippled their legs. These sweet little girls could hardly walk. They wore wooden braces just to aid them with their crutches, and even the smallest task was a monumental feat for them to achieve, yet I never heard either one of them complain. Their hearts were filled with such hope and appreciation. For everything.”
Rebecca seemed to be holding her breath, and something in her expression changed dramatically—it was all at once softer, more welcoming…more compliant.
Surprised.
Julien pressed on, not at all certain that he could get through the story if he took too much time to pause. “Long story short,” he said coolly, “I had made a decision: Before I left the village, I was going to inject both of them with just a small amount of venom, just enough to heal their affliction, not enough to endanger their souls. But when I got there—” Despite his determination, he had to stop, measure his breaths, and steady his resolve. “When I got there, the entire family was dead. The girls had been violated…sexually…and their bloodied corpses were staked to the rough-stone walls. And above their hanging cadavers, my enemy had written my name in their blood.”
The memory rocked him hard, and he bit down on his bottom lip, drawing a trickle of blood. “You have to understand, it wasn’t just their murders, the fact that they had died because of me. It was their ages—the fact that it happened on their tenth birthday—it was the entire, gruesome scene.” He gritted his teeth and continued. “It triggered something altogether elemental inside of me, something from my past, and I shook with rage. I could not contain my fury, and then there was this noise, like a rushing river, sweeping through my head, this sound that just grew louder and louder…and louder. And in that moment, in that fleeting instant, the heavens crackled with thunder and lightning, and the skies rained down ice and fire. The crops and the hillside were set ablaze, and the roofs began to burn. I tried to channel my emotion into something else…anything else…determination, the desire for revenge, hell, even self-loathing, if that would redirect the energy, yet the earth opened up beneath my feet. And then it swallowed the village, whole. I could float above it. The humans could not.” He clenched his eyes shut, shoving the memory away, tucking it into the dark, hidden compartment where it belonged, where it always stayed. “You have to understand: As a vampire, as a descendant of celestial beings, we are intimately connected to the earth. Our emotions become natural events. It was only ninety seconds of weakness, two minutes, at most; yet I destroyed the entire village and everyone who lived there. My rage—and the ensuing carnage—was unlike anything the house of Jadon had ever seen.”
He opened his eyes, rocked back on his heels, and grasped his head in his hands. “I killed them all, Rebecca, because I couldn’t channel my pain. And I know that letting that woman—letting Shelly Winters—fall from my lap after feeding, letting her tumble to the floor, was callous and unfeeling, unbefitting of a Master Warrior, but despite how awful it may have appeared, she still got up and walked away. She left my home, alive and unharmed. And no one in Dark Moon Vale died that night. No one has died since that night in Spain, at least no one innocent.” He braced his hands on her legs and took several deep, measured breaths, allowing his enormous chest to rise and fall several times in succession. “Baby, it’s not every day. It’s not all the time. It’s not even my first, second, or third means of coping, but every blue moon, to coin a phrase, when the noise gets too loud, when my ears begin to ring, when I hear that familiar rushing river, I shut it out because I honestly can’t stand it. I have far more control than I did in 1556, and who knows, perhaps I seek the escape for entirely different reasons now—but that is the truth of it, angel. That is the truth of me.” He sat back and stared at her, wondering what she was seeing, wondering what manner of revulsion she was feeling. And to his great surprise, Rebecca reached out a tentative hand and gently stroked his cheek.
“Oh, Julien,” she breathed softly, her eyes glazed with sorrow, compassion, and something else that he couldn’t quite name.
Something inexplicable.
Something deep, and transformative, and…familiar?
As if some sort of lightbulb had just turned on in her soul.
“What are these demons that haunt you?” she asked. “Tell me, Julien.” She caressed his jaw with her thumb, and her delicate hand felt like a feather sweeping over a calloused stone. “Who was this enemy you hunted?”
Julien looked away.
So it had come to this?
It always came back to this.
“My brother,” he whispered softly. “My dark twin.”
Rebecca sat in stunned silence as Julien Lacusta went on to tell her about the dark soul that had shared his mother’s womb; the reckless, perilous choice his parents had made to keep the unnamed one, in flagrant defiance of the Curse; and the hideous, unspeakable outcome that had befallen all of them as a result. And as she listened, she kept hearing those names, Analise and Evangeline, and she just somehow, instinctively, knew something Julien could not articulate: Yes, the vampire believed his father had betrayed the house of Jadon—he said as much, aloud. He believed that Micah Lacusta had been forever barred from the Valley of Spirit and Light because the male had been weak and unfaithful to his house, because Micah, Julien’s father, had not loved Julien enough to do what was right. And he even admitted to failing at the only challenge he had ever truly needed to conquer: hunting his brother, Ian.
Rebecca could hear and sense his shame.
Still, she saw something altogether different at his core, something she should not have been able to glimpse, but it was like…it was like a lightbulb had just turned on.
Julien Lacusta did not hate his father, and it wasn’t guilt that plagued his soul.
He loved the male he had never known, as any child would, and he mourned grievously over Micah’s loss.
Endlessly.
Destructively.
Julien Lacusta could not forgive himself for being born.
Perhaps, if there had been another child in Harietta’s womb, a different son of Jadon—one who was more worthy, more special, more inherently valuable—Micah would have made a better choice. He would have made the required sacrifice, and everything would have been different.
The heroin didn’t just subdue his rage and pain.
It numbed the unbearable darkness of being, the unyielding guilt of his existence.
Rebecca gasped as the knowledge sank in. She blinked back tears of empathy and tried to offer the faintest of smiles. “Warrior,” she whispered softly, not sure where the word had come from. “You are worthy.”
Julien jerked back like she had burned him. “What?”
“You are worthy,” she repeated. “Of life…of existing…of one day fathering your own precious sons.” She leaned into him and took his large rigid hands in hers, and then she slowly rose from the floor. “There is something I need to show you.” She made her way across the living room to an old, tarnished bookshelf and began to pull a series of hard-bound volumes from the shelves: Visions of Andalusia, a manuscript all about ancient Spain; The Practice of Medicine in the Middle Ages, a volume that detailed everything from testing urine, to letting blood, to splinting deformed legs; and finally, Earthquakes, Floods, and Other Natural Disasters: When Innocence Is Lost.
She handed the volumes to Julien, and he studied them closely, furrowing his brow in obvious surprise at the titles. While he thumbed through the copious pages, she turned her attention
to a shelf, further down, and retrieved a leather-bound photo album, the cover embossed with a raised, red rose. “After I finally left Trevor, once I finally got away, I had this overpowering need to own something special, to cherish something beautiful that I could call my own. I ventured into a rare, exotic pet store, and they had these two amazing birds, monk parakeets—so I bought a beautiful cage, learned how to take care them, and brought them home. They were my pride and joy—hell, my heart and soul—for the next three years. Whenever I was feeling down or overwhelmed, I would just watch them and listen to them sing, and something inside of me would grow peaceful, everything extraneous would go away, at least for a time.”
She opened the album, thumbed through several pages of photographs, and finally stopped, somewhere near the center of the book, reaching into the plastic sleeve to retrieve a picture of two bright-green birds. She extended the picture to Julien, and he took it hesitantly, unsure of what she was trying to convey.
“You…you want me to see your birds?” he asked, his mouth turned down in an awkward expression.
She nodded. “Turn it over.”
Julien turned the photograph over and jolted.
His hand grew lax and the photo fell out, landing upside down on the floor.
Written on the back, in flowery script, were two elegant words, the names of Rebecca’s birds: Analise and Evangeline.
Julien read the names a second time and briefly shut his eyes, even as Rebecca rested her hip against the bookshelf. “You don’t have to describe your pain, Julien. I already know it.” She bit her bottom lip softly in hesitation. “In here.” She placed her hand over her heart and sought his pensive gaze. “And you don’t have to justify your actions or apologize…not to me…not anymore.” She sighed. “Five days ago, all I wanted in this world was to be free of the nightmare I was suddenly thrust into, to be free of you.” She laughed insincerely. “Five hours ago, all I wanted to do was figure out a way to fulfill our bargain and get whatever was required of me done, over with…behind me.” She snickered then, but the sound was distinctly hollow. “Hell, fifteen minutes ago, I just wanted to be someplace else, anyplace else, with anyone else. But now…”