Blood Ecstasy (Blood Curse Series Book 8) (30 page)

Only his eyes.

Just his eyes.

“Tracker,” she whispered softly. “It’s me. Your little mouse.” Unwitting tears blurred her vision, broke free from her tear ducts, and ran down her cheeks, and although the drops were innocuous, she felt the weight of their sting like trickles of acid. He had been right, after all; she would say it one day—she just had.
 

She sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to rustle his bandaged body, and warily cleared her throat. “Kagen, the doctor-guy, he said you still have a chance.” She paused to draw a deep, cleansing breath for courage. “He said he was alternating infusions of venom with skin grafts, and that the tissues beneath the burns will come back as each layer is treated. He said your heartbeat is faint because you’re still growing new chambers, and that things are healing slower than usual. But that’s because…well, because…your soul seems somehow splintered, like maybe they snatched you back from the brink of death just in the nick of time. Just…barely.” She sighed, not really understanding a thing the vampire-doctor had told her. “I don’t really understand it,” she whispered, refusing to say any more—she wasn’t about to tell him the truth. After all, what could she possibly say? That they had told her he was burned, all the way down to his bones, and while Napolean had been able to stop the complete disintegration of his heart…and his brain…by packing his body in ice, they weren’t entirely sure if his cells would regenerate, if he wasn’t already gone?

His spirit, that is.

Nachari, the wizard-guy, the one who had given him the crystal that first day in his house, he had said something utterly
incomprehensible, something about Julien’s soul, like it was battling between dimensions. The fire had forced it out of his body, causing it to flee as if in death; but the ice and the prayers had called it back, and it was trying to realign, once again.
 

All of it was beyond her comprehension.

Her realm of understanding.

What she did get, loud and clear, was the fact that Ian was gone.

Dead. Dead. Dead.

And she was ecstatic about that fact on a level that barely made sense.

The monster had tortured Julien…all of his life.

And by extension, he had also tortured Rebecca.

She knew, without question, that Julien had not made a rash decision at all, when he had chosen to dive into that fire. He had made an absolute calculation, sought a brother’s vindication, and exercised his final judgment as both a warrior and a son.
 

And he had done so with the courage and the heart of a lion.
 

But what did that mean for them?

What did that mean for her?

What did it mean in terms of the Curse?

Rebecca was Vampyr now, part and parcel of the house of Jadon; there would be no going back for her. And honestly, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to—go back, that is—Rebecca wanted Julien to live.

By all the gods, why hadn’t she understood this earlier?

Rebecca wanted Julien to live!

To stay…with her.

She sighed and inadvertently reached out to take his hand, instantly drawing hers back: there was nothing concrete to take hold of. And then she jolted as a burst of light shot forth from her fingers, gravitated toward his palm, and then just as quickly withdrew, following the trajectory of her hand.

She turned her palm over and stared at it.

There was nothing obvious there.

Yet and still, she could feel a pulsing energy gathering in her fingertips, originating in her soul, and the darkness, the charred, mangled fragments that substituted
for his fingers, began to twitch…or stir. Like fish in a bowl, swimming toward the promise of food, they gravitated toward Rebecca’s energy like they were eager to gobble it up.

To devour her light.

She leaned forward and tried again, this time, splaying all five fingers wide, and allowing her palm to simply hover over his damaged limb. The charred layers began to peel back, revealing raw, reddened flesh beneath burns that were capable of…healing.
 

She pressed her hand even closer.

The bones in his fingers, the phalanges and metacarpals, began to straighten out.
 

She gasped and drew back her hand.

And then the oddest impulse struck her.

She stared into his vacant, moonstone eyes and slowly bent her head forward. Drawing in a slow, deep breath, she lowered her mouth to his and hovered over his frozen blue lips, and then she released the breath, slowly exhaling…exchanging…imparting her life-force into his. And all the while, she invoked a prayer.
 

His lips turned pink!

She drew back and giggled, and then she began to cry, uncertain where the tears were coming from. She only knew that something magical, something powerful, something life-giving was passing between them. Her spirit was calling to his, and for whatever reason, however nonsensical, she knew she had the power to bring him back.

And then, for reasons she could hardly understand, her heart suddenly thudded in her chest, and her breath caught in her throat. She glanced up at a solar clock hanging on the wall and cringed in desperation.

Something imminent was happening.

Something cryptic and something dangerous.

Something was threatening Julien, and time was of the essence.

She didn’t know how she knew. She didn’t know why she believed this would work. She only knew that the vampire’s soul was in peril, and she had to break through the charred, bandaged barriers and find him…wherever he was. She had to reach him, quickly.

Rushing from the bed, she sprinted to a nearby counter and began to open drawers. She flung miscellaneous objects to the side in a frenzy, searching frantically for scissors, a scalpel, anything that could cut through the myriad of dressings that enveloped him like a mummy.

She had to have access to his skin!
 

She knew Kagen Silivasi might think she was crazy if he caught her. And who knew? Maybe the entire house of Jadon would bar her from the tracker’s room, believing she had finally flipped her lid, but Rebecca needed to start at Julien’s toes and work her way up his torso, however improper that seemed. She had to try to heal him, one touch at a time; each breath, in succession; one magical caress on the heels of another.
 

And for reasons she simply could not fathom…

She had to do it fast
.
 

twenty-nine

Julien Lacusta did not know where he was.

In the land of the living, the land of the dead, or somewhere, lost, between the two.

His head hurt like the dickens; his skin felt like it was on fire; yet curiously, everything around him was shrouded in ice.
 

He faintly remembered standing on the banks of the River Rock Creek, facing off with his brother, Ian, and gazing into an undulating wall of blazing flames, a rampart of fire and wrath that had enveloped the forest and called to him like a lover.

Beckoning him forward.

Entreating him to embrace his brother and end the madness once and for all.
 

Now, as he scrubbed a partially transparent, spectral hand over his eyes to clear his vision, he noticed that he was standing on a high, arched bridge, positioned midway along a narrow passage, and it was literally caked in ice. Huge shards of what looked like frozen snow, framed by icicles the size of cars, hung from the bridge’s
girder, long beyond the anchorage block, and disappeared into a crystal fog. The deck beneath his feet was coated in sleet, and the railings were like virtual planks of frost. Even the towers sustaining the bridge were coated in thick blocks of rime.
 

He ceased walking and looked both ways, toward each distant shore, trying to distinguish between opposing directions. For all intents and purposes, he was standing at a crossroads: He could turn to the right and cross the bridge, emerging into a thick bank of clouds; or he could turn to the left and traverse the bridge, emerging into a dense, inky darkness.

What the heck was going on?

Where the hell was he?
 

And then it hit him as he glanced again: The white clouds were dotted with golden specks and almost radiant with brilliance—he somehow knew that they heralded the entrance to the Valley of Spirit and Light. And the dense, inky darkness at the other end of the bridge that practically radiated with despair and malevolence—it augured the entrance to the Valley of Death and Shadows.
 

Was Julien dead or alive?

Was he caught between two eternal worlds?

And did he have a choice as to which realm he entered?

Nothing made any sense.

Squatting down to make himself smaller—he didn’t know if he was alone—he gripped his head in his hands and tried to remember the teachings, all he had learned at the Romanian University in his youth, all he had been taught by the house of Jadon about life after death, the Curse, and the afterworld: Every male from the house of Jadon was destined to reside in the Valley of Spirit and Light unless he failed to fulfill the Curse, to provide the required sacrifice of a dark twin within thirty days of finding his
destiny
; just as every male in the house of Jaegar was destined to enter the Valley of Death and Shadows, even if he made the required offering. For the Dark Ones, it was just a matter of timing, a matter of
when
.
 

Best to live as long as they could.
 

Immortal.
 

Forever.
 

If possible.
 

But had Julien actually failed to complete the Curse? Had he refused to comply before he…
died
?
 

He shook his head to clear the cobwebs.
 

Nothing was getting any clearer.
 

He had thirty days from the start of his Blood Moon to provide the Blood with an heir, and the wicked aberration could not claim him before then, not as long as he still had time. If he had refused, tried to outrun the Curse or save his soulless son, then—and only then—could the Blood come after him and take him to the gods-forsaken valley. But—and it was a pretty important
but
—if he turned himself in, after failing to comply, if he willingly entered the Death Chamber, then even after the Blood took his life, his spirit would go on. It would reside, for all eternity, in the valley of the celestial gods.
 

So which was it?

What had he done?

Or, more importantly, what had he failed to do?
 

True, if he was actually dead, then technically, he had failed to fulfill the Curse. He had found his
destiny
, claimed her as he must, and died before he could either make the required sacrifice or turn himself in to the Chamber.
 

But that wasn’t his fault.
 

It wasn’t his choice—

Or was it?

Julien had willingly and knowingly dived into the fire with Ian, and that meant he had, in effect, taken his own life. What had Ramsey Olaru said to him, that first day, right after he had found Rebecca? Julien had absently told the Master Warrior:
I have half a mind to tell the Blood to go straight to hell and just let the Curse take me in the end.
And Ramsey had immediately snarled, his voice growing deathly
grave.
That’d better be the H talkin’, warrior. Don’t even play like that. Let’s not forget
:
The Blood can take you on a lifelong trip, an eternal, never-ending vacation.
To hell.
 

And then Nachari Silivasi…he had chimed in with some advice of his own, later that same day, when he had brought the pale blue crystal, embedded with his memories, to give to Julien to view:
Your life isn’t just your own. Your choices don’t exist in a vacuum. And your
fate
affects the entire house of Jadon. If you think for one moment that you can just step off the stage without completely screwing Ramsey, Santos, and Saxson—hell, even Saber Alexiares—then you’ve been sucking down that cocktail for way too long… Try skipping out on the Curse, skirting your way around this Blood Moon, offering yourself up like some suicidal sacrifice to the Blood at the end of these thirty days. Just try it, and see what happens… No one is going to let you die, brother. And we don’t give a
gods-damn
about what you want or whether or not you’ve had enough.

Nachari had been trying to tell him that suicide, in any form, was not an option.

Before Julien could process any further, try to figure out if he was alive or dead or caught in some celestial purgatory, a hideous crimson shadow swept over the bridge, swirled in an arc above him, and then dipped down, low, at eye level, where it snarled and moaned in his ear.

Julien shrank back, immediately recognizing the primordial taint of the Blood: the ghostly apparition of the original Romanian females, those who had risen from the dead in order to wield the perpetual Curse.
 

“Dear Gods,” he muttered, shielding his eyes with his hands to avoid the noxious glare.

“Trackerrrr,” the apparition hissed. “You think to avoid our Curse?”

Julien shuffled back on his haunches, drawing even lower to the icy planks. “I…I didn’t think at all. When I died…if I died…it was not intentional.”

Sparks, fire, and brimstone shot out of the evil apparition, melting the frost beneath him. “Oh, but it wasssss.” The Blood drew out the letter
S
like a snake taunting its prey. And then the bridge began to rock and tremble as a giant of a man—
no, a god
—stormed out of the mystical white clouds and traversed the space in an instant.
 

Once again, Julien shielded his eyes, even as he peeked at the giant from between two fingers: The male was at least ten feet tall; his wild hair whipped about his shoulders as if in a violent wind; and he was the naked personification of an Adonis: all sculpted, bulging muscle and rock-hard flesh, cloaked in a simple lion’s pelt that covered his back like a cape and wrapped around his groin like a loincloth. In his right hand, he brandished an enormous club; in his left, he held a three-headed serpent, also known as Cerberus; and just like he did in the northern sky, he immediately knelt on one knee.