Rising Son (The Juliana Lucio Series) (22 page)

Monica
didn’t respond, but started to look at Ana a little suspiciously. I slowly reached forward and pulled Christian back from the two women,
a
little
like backing away from a snake.
Ana leaned in and took a great breath next to Monica’s neck taking in her scent.

“I would love to hear
about it,” she told her simultaneously intertwining
h
er arm with Monica’s and steering
her into the other room. Monica was so focused on Ana that she didn’t look as if she even noticed us or Christian any longer. Leave it to Ana to always find the best way out.

Wi
lliam, Christian and I began
wander
ing
further into the house; it was a moderately sized townhome with m
ismatched furniture of the La-Z-B
oy variety, beer logos decorated the
otherwise sparse décor. The only thing that wasn’t skimped on was the
center piece of the living room. It was
where most of the young vampires seemed to be congregating, around a 72” plasma television with every type of gaming system I had ever heard of; granted, I wasn’t up on the latest and greatest of the gaming world, but I knew jaw-dropping when I saw it. Christian was honed onto that screen like a bear to honey
,
and started walking off without another word to me.

“Chris--!” I called out to him in a hushed whisper.

He abruptly stopped but kept his back to me, “I’ll be fine. Let me know if you need to feed.”

I couldn’t do anything right then
about Christian being upset and my heart ached at the wedge that was being shoved between us.
As I looked over at William I was slightly taken aback at the distance he was portraying. He was scanning the rooms of the house with such focus that I couldn’t catch his eye. Everyone in the place knew him and with Michael distracted by Victoria
they were all anxious to come ask
Will
what he thought about the lates
t operations, where he had been;
the women especially fawned over him. The younger vampires looked up  to him and the older ones respected him; considering we were in the midst of our enemy I couldn’t help but wonder what he had done to earn it, and why he was apparently so indifferent to my very presence.

The more William ignored me the harder Michael tried to get my attention
from the back room
.
Turning away from William and his growing crowd of groupies I went to look after Christian
to
see what info I could scope out.
I found him sitting on the only small couch in the entire place with a vampire on each side of him. They all looked like they were concentrating on something important as they squeezed in together on the couch, at least it looked important until half the room started cheering while the other half was cursing. Regardless of the reason, however, it was the
T.V
. they were yelling at
.
Christian was playing
Call of Duty
with them and apparently he was pretty good at it. I was at the edge of the room when Christian turned just enough to catch my attention
. H
e shook his head so slightly no one would have caught it. Trusting he knew what he was doing I backed out of the room and was struck with the realization that I had nowhere to go. Everyone was occupied distracting, awing
and hopefully le
arning some useful information, but me
.
I had nothing to do and no one to talk to.

“You need to bre
ak things off with me,
” I heard William say quietly behind me.

“Excuse me?” I turned to face him a little dumbfounded.

William took me by the elbow drawing me into the corner.

“You need to make it look like you are breaking things off with me
and
it needs to be public so Michael will see it. After the way I just ignored you everyone suspects that we are having problems.”

“Why in the world would I want to do that? But to be honest you
’
r
e
pissing me off enough that I just might do it for real,” I shot back
at
him angrily. I knew his ignoring me wasn’t in my imagination.

“If you are no longer with me then Michael will swoop in and you need to get as close to him as you can. We need to find out who the other leaders are and when the outing is supposed to take place,” he stopped talking for a second trying to weigh his next words, “Jules . . . you need to do whatever necessary to f
ind out who the spy within the C
oven is.” His eyes didn’t stray from mine as he said it.

“I don’t like how you just said ‘whatever necessary’ William.”

“Whatever necessary
,
Jules
lives depend on it.”

I was dumbstruck. I couldn’t speak let alone believe he wanted me to do what he was implying.

“You bastard. Last week you destroyed everything you could get your hands on because he tasted a drop of my blood and now you want to pass me around like I’m some kind of whore?”

When he didn’t respond it was an admission all on its own. His face betrayed no emotion, no remorse in what he asking he just stared back at me waiting for his answer. I thought back to what we had just done together in my room a few hours before and knew he couldn’t possibly want me to do what he was asking. I did need to make Michael
believe it however
.
I reached back and slapped William across the face leaving a bright red handprint in its wake.

“I’m not a whore
,
Will,” I said just loud enough that the eavesdropping ears would be able to hear. I reached up on my toes and placed a light kiss in the middle of my red handprint letting my words barely brush across his skin, “not even you can force me to betray you. I will get the info.” I turned my back on him letting a few tears that weren’t entirely fake fall.

William was certainly right about Michael. I had barely made it across the small room when Michael was by my side
.

“Are you alright? I couldn’t help but see what happened,” Michael turned his brown eyes to me. They were so intoxicatingly s
weet
that I had to keep reminding myself that he was the bad guy. He had
light
stubble across his sharp jaw line he rubbed across my inner wrist
when
he took my
hand
kissing my palm.
I cursed myself for the flutter that it sent through my stomach.

“Yeah, I—I’m fine.”

I had to pull my hand
back from him and hated the knowing smirk he gave me as I did it.

“Well, no matter what is going on with the two of you I’m glad you could make it tonight. It’s going to be an eventful evening
.”

“Oh, why is that?”

“I’m taking everyone out; I want to show them one
of
the production centers.”

My alarm was instant. “What is a production center?”

“It’s going to be the way of the future, the very near future. Think of it like a dairy farm, but for humans.”

“What? Where is it
? Are there going to be a lot of these places? How does it work
?
”

“They are all over the country
,
we have them set up in almost every major city.”

The excitement was shining through his face. Just as he was undoubtedly going to go into
all
the gory details of how to milk a human like a cow his phone rang.

“Would you excuse me for a moment?”

“Michael! Wait, I want to talk to you about this,” I called after him my compulsion reaching out to him without warning. I hadn’t meant for it to happen it just flung from me like electric
ity
from a storm cloud
;
one moment I was calling after him the next I was trying to force my will upon him.

He turned to face me holding his phone to his chest, giving me a sidelong glance. I couldn’t tell if it was one full of anger or if I had
j
ust confirmed for him what he was seeking to know about me all along.

“When I get back, my sweet, we will definitely be talking some more.”

Before I could
respond
he had disappeared almost before my eyes as I was left standing alone near the kitchen. If they had production centers set up in almost every city already how close must they be to revealing our existence? Why did they want production centers? I thought they just wanted to be recognized by the rest of the world, not commit genocide.

After the scene I just had
with William I couldn’t go to him and I had no idea where Ana or Victoria
were
. I could think of turning to one other person. I ran upstairs clutching my purse while trying to find an empty bedroom. The only place I found was an empty hall bathroom.
Except when I got inside it wasn’t as empty as I thought. There was an obviously drained and very dead man lying haphazardly in the bathtub. He was so pale I don’t think there was an ounce of blood left in him. I couldn’t focus on that now though, I might only have a minute or two before Michael came looking for me.

I pulled out my phone and called Sebastian.

I was sent to his voicemail.
Called again. Voicemail.

“Are you kidding me?” I looked at my phone like it was in on some sort of
conspiracy
.

“I don’t have time for this!”

Resting my head in the palm of my hand I made the decision to call the only other person
who
might be able to do something. I loathed him for the way he treated me. The phone rang once before the voice on the other end picked up.

“What?”

“It’s nice to talk to you too
,
Martin.”

After quickly telling him what Michael said about going to see where the production
centers were I hung up and went
downstairs to wait for Michael.
I didn’t see him anywhere so he was presumably still on his call. I might only have one shot at this and I didn’t see any of the others around so I made a snap decision. I went straight to the room that I last saw Christian playing video games with the other vampires. As soon as I walked in they all slightly stiffened up and tr
ied
to keep their eyes averted from me.

“Hey guys, how
’s
it going?”

No one answered and Christian just gave me an uneasy look. With each second that passed I was becoming
more anxious and less patient. Just
because I couldn’t compel Michael didn’t mean I couldn’t compel these fledglings. 
There were only three of them left in the room two of which were crammed in on either side of Christian.

After one
quick
look out of the room to scan for Michael I
came
back in the room.

“Feeder, come here.”

Christian didn’t waste any time jumping to my order; in fact I think he had been looking for a way out already.
My compulsion flew to the edge of my psyche as if it were another entity just waiting to be let free, to go on the attack. Where before I had to focus and concentrate for it to do my bidding, now I didn’t have to give it a fully conscious thought and it was there. It felt powerful and frightening stitched together as one. 
I made quick eye contact with the lone vampire in the chair telling him to sit by the others. Oh God, I hoped this worked. I’ve never tried to compel three vampires before, but everyone keeps telling me to get the info at all costs, right.

I looked the three male vampires briefly in the eye and made no attempt at introductions.

“When does the Coven plan to reveal vampirekind to the human world?”

Instead of answers flowing back to me I had slack jaws and blank gazes, this told me they were under my influence, but why weren’t they answering?
I pushed my will further onto them until I could feel the boundaries of their mind. 

“Answer
me,” I growled at their seeming incompetence.

“We don’t know.”

“He doesn’t tell us.”

“They don’t want anyone to know the date,” the three droned back to me.

Great, it was going to be harder than ever to get the info we needed. I was beginning to feel the strain of holding three vamps under my control and I knew I was running short on time. I wasn’t sure what they would know. I couldn’t be sure what to ask. My muscles were starting to shake as I felt one of them trying to break the hold.
It was a pressure being forced back onto me.
Christian whispered in my ear, I think he was afraid if he spoke he would brea
k the trance, and he might have.
I no
d
ded back to him
before asking the question.