Blood Ecstasy (Blood Curse Series Book 8) (35 page)

Julien absently licked his lips—they were suddenly very dry—as he stared in fascination at his ruling lord. By all the gods, Lord Hercules had dissected Julien’s psyche like a little toy frog in a kindergarten lab, and forced him to inspect the pieces. The Blood was literally trembling now, hovering over the child. With a hiss and a moan, it snatched the infant from the altar, drew him into the thick of the fog, and swiftly began to retreat.

“Not so fast!” Hercules thundered. “You have a sin to atone for, of your own.”

The child disappeared into the dense, cloudy mist, and the Blood crept forward like a wily jackal: head bent low, snout to the ground, its crimson, shadowed haunches bent in an unnatural arc.
 

Hercules withdrew his staff from the center of the apparition and squared his mighty shoulders to the abomination. “You are a wicked concoction, indeed. Born of anguish, vengeance, and pain, as thirsty for blood as the race you created, never satisfied, never fulfilled, damning yourselves because your oppressor was damned.” He snorted in disgust. “That is your right.” He pointed at the now-empty altar. “This is your due. The wages of sin are, indeed, eternal death, but you dared to defy the original gods, to defy the very creators who once made you pure, before your collective incarnation became so tainted. You dared to touch a soul that you did not own! And for that, there will be reparations.”

The Blood shrank back and whimpered, and even Saber looked afraid.
 

Hercules stretched out his mighty hand and placed it on Julien’s forearm. “My son, the sin this deviant
thing
committed was against you, and it is you who shall be made whole. You shall be paid restitution for an unthinkable crime: a soul for a soul; one eternal resting place in exchange for another.”

Julien cleared his throat, not certain if he had heard the omniscient lord correctly. “What exactly are you saying?”
 

Hercules tightened his fist around his staff. “Warrior, there is nothing more sacred or more invaluable than the final resting place of a disembodied soul, of a spirit who has passed into the eternal realm. You will never know the contests and the wars that have been waged on your behalf, or how hallowed we consider this duty. To try to sentence an immortal being to an eternal realm of darkness, where he does not belong, is a crime beyond imagining. The Blood will relinquish one of its own, to a realm beyond its jurisdiction. A lost soul must be returned to the Valley of Spirit and Light.”
 

“Nooooo!”
the Blood hissed with an awful screech, and Hercules held up his hand to demand silence.
 

Julien swayed on his feet, and Saber reached out to steady him.

This couldn’t be true.

This couldn’t be happening.

He hardly dared to hope…

His hands began to tremble, and he felt the moisture of pressing tears suddenly clouding his vision. “Do you mean…” His voice faltered, and he had to try again. “Do you mean a lost soul…one from the Valley of Death and Shadows…returned to the world of light? Forever?”

Hercules nodded his head and squeezed the vampire’s arm. “Yes, son, that is precisely what I mean.”
 

At this, Julien shook from head to toe.
 

Despite all his courage, all his bravery, all his proud centuries of living, he fell to his knees before the powerful lord and began to cry, without restraint. “My father,” he choked, the words barely audible. “
My father
,” he tried again.

“Micah?” Hercules asked, perhaps for effect, perhaps because there was power in a spoken name.

Julien nodded his head and opened his mouth to confirm his choice, but he was at an utter loss for words…
 

Micah Vladimir Lacusta.

The father he had never known.

The male who had never held him, taught him, or loved him, who had never witnessed his induction into the revered house of Jadon. The Ancient Master Warrior who had died in the Death Chamber so many centuries ago, after trading his soul for a monster. The vampire who loomed larger than life, whom Julien could not stand to imagine—after all these centuries, outrunning his lineage, in truth, he had never let go.
 

Julien had hated Micah as long as he could remember, because he couldn’t bear the grief of his loss, and loving him—conjuring visions, ideas, or illusions of his dad—simply hurt like hell. He couldn’t embrace the tragedy, not if he hoped to survive. He could not even begin to conceive of such a loss.
 

Hercules placed his hand on Julien’s shoulder and smiled. “Your father’s sins are washed away. When it is truly your time to ascend, the hour and minute of your final death, he will be waiting, along with your mother, to greet you in the Valley of Spirit and Light. Until then, know this: You were always fated to save him, Julien. Your desire was too strong to deny. Your will and your longing reached beyond the grave and pierced the valley of death.
That
is why the Blood took you on that icy bridge—it had to create the conditions for your father’s salvation, even though it didn’t know why. You were always worthy, son, and in the end, you saved him, after all.”

Julien’s chest felt like it might cave in…

Collapse around his heart.

He could hardly think or breathe.

“And son?” Hercules spoke softly now.

Julien glanced at his lord through tear-drenched lashes, feeling wholly gutted and exposed.
 

“Your father loved you
dearly
. He was simply confused and lost. He made the gravest of errors—
the gravest of errors
—but that was all it was.”

The words descended upon Julien’s shoulders like waves crashing down on the shores of his native land, sweeping all of his resistance aside, and he crumpled to the floor and sobbed. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought he heard Lord Hercules banish the Blood from the Chamber, say something about healing emotions—
don’t worry about the earth
—and bid Julien a final farewell. And there was something else, something about Braden Bratianu and digging deeper…much deeper, but everything was shrouded in fog, too surreal to connect with, too far away to reach.
 

Julien was open, unfettered, and raw.

And bawling like a baby in front of Saber Alexiares.
 

After several awkward minutes had passed, the “dragon” knelt down beside him, placed his palm on Julien’s back, and murmured in his ear. “I’m gonna go now, J. Take your time.” He rubbed a small half-circle over the tracker’s spine, then quietly rose to his feet. “Might sound kind of crazy coming from me, but welcome back to the house of Jadon. Hell, welcome back to the land of the living.”

On his way home from the Chamber of Sacrifice and Atonement, Julien took the first of two detours that he needed to make that night: a quick roundabout through the northern forest, to stop by Ian’s grave, and then a quick trip to Nachari’s brownstone, to speak with Braden Bratianu.

Shimmering into view just beyond the River Rock Creek, at the site of the horrific fire, his breath caught in his throat, and he stared solemnly at the ground, eyeing the spot where both he and Ian had died.
 

Well, Julien had come very close to dying, but Rebecca had valiantly saved him.

He reached into his front pocket and withdrew an object he had been carrying around for the past four days: the single red ruby, fashioned from his tears, the day when he had found Ian’s cards, the day when he had prayed to Hercules for revenge. Kneeling over the mound of ashes, all that remained of his dark, soulless twin, he dug his fingers into the dirt, buried the ruby about nine inches deep, and covered it up with fresh slag.
 

“I didn’t get to dine on your blood, and that, I will always regret, but our history ends here, this night, along with my tears. You didn’t get my father, Ian. You didn’t get my soul. In the end, you got exactly what you deserved: You were nothing more than the lost, sacrificial twin to a brother of light. Guess it always sucked to be you.” He bent to one knee, placed his palm on the ground, and spat on the calcified grave. “Farewell,
brother
. I won’t be seeing you on the other side.”

thirty-four

Julien crossed his arms over his chest and waited patiently for Braden Bratianu to emerge on Nachari’s rooftop terrace. Although the teenager had sworn he was awake when Julien had reached out telepathically, he had sounded a little bit groggy. And, honestly, Julien felt like a heel, dragging the kid out of bed at two o’clock in the morning, but what else was he going to do?
 

He wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and Lord Hercules had saved Julien’s life…

Twice.
 

Hell, he had given him back his dad.
 

And through it all, he had only made one request: something about speaking to Braden Bratianu and digging deeper…much deeper.
 

Although he couldn’t remember the lord’s precise words, Julien wasn’t about to let the celestial god down. Truth be told, he had no idea what he was digging for, or even where to begin. He could only hope that Hercules would somehow offer guidance when the significant moment came.

The door to the rooftop swung open, and Braden Bratianu sauntered from the top of the stairs onto the upper terrace, his jeans wrinkled, his hair disheveled, his burnt-sienna eyes drooping with heavy lids. “What’s up, J?” he said hoarsely.
 

Julien chuckled inside. So the fledgling was using his casual name, a shortening of
Julien
to
J
, usually revered for the sentinels. That was fine; really, it was. Maybe it would help break the ice. Julien cleared his throat and ushered the sixteen-year-old forward. “First things first: I apologize for waking you up.”

“Nah.” Braden waved his hand through the air in a casual, dismissive gesture. “Seriously, I wasn’t really sleeping that deeply. We’re vampires, right? Nocturnal.”

Julien nodded in assent. “True. True.” He ambled over to an upholstered divan and pointed to a matching chair, offering Braden a seat. The youngster plopped down on the cushion, rubbed his eyes with his palms, and then leaned forward toward the tracker, waiting to hear what the warrior had come to say.
 

Julien decided to dive right in, go straight to the heart of the matter. “So here’s the thing…”
Oh, hell; he had no idea, whatsoever, where to start.
“Okay…so…” He cleared his throat and started again. “So this might come across as kind of nosy…or intrusive…being that we don’t really know each other that well, but I was just thinking…wondering about some things…and I get the impression that it’s important.”
Well, that was as clear as mud. Besides,
impression—smession—he was told to dig deeper
by a god
.
“I guess I wanted to ask you some questions.”
 

Damn, they were really making progress now—

Not.

Julien shifted his weight in his seat, and Braden furrowed his brows, clearly confused by Julien’s introduction, perhaps fearing that he might be in trouble. Yet to his credit, he responded with an open invitation. “Shoot,” he said, his sleepy gaze growing just a tad brighter with burgeoning curiosity. “Did I do something wrong?”

Bingo.

The kid was concerned that he had done something wrong.
 

“No,” Julien insisted, his voice a bit too harsh. “Not at all. In fact, how are you feeling? Have you healed completely since that night by the river?”

Braden relaxed his shoulders. “Me? Oh yeah, I’m fine. Napolean hooked me up. In all honesty, I was a lot more worried about you—you were seriously jacked up in that fire, like some kind of crispy critter—” He halted abruptly and bit down on his tongue. “Ah, damn. I’m sorry, J. That was really messed up and disrespectful, huh?”

This time, Julien laughed out loud. “That’s all right, son. I guess that’s one way to put it: crispy critter, indeed. I’m good.”

Braden smiled sheepishly. “Cool. Cool. How’s your
destiny
?” Once again, the boy sounded as nervous as Julien felt.

“She’s good. Real good. We just had a son.”

Braden’s smile revealed true appreciation this time. “Seriously? That’s awesome! Congratulations.” Although his smile and his voice divulged his good wishes, something was still out of place, maybe in the elusive set of his features, maybe in the subtle slant of his body. It was hard to pinpoint just what it was, but the young male appeared somehow sad, perhaps even wistful, in spite of the gaiety of his words.
 

Julien wasn’t about to go there.
 

He needed to stay focused on the subject at hand, remember what he had come to do.
 

And exactly what subject was that?
 

What the hell
had
he come to do?

He glanced up at the heavens, trying to discern his ruling constellation, and uttered a prayer beneath his breath. And then, as if out of the blue, a leading question popped into his mind: “That day, the first time you met Ian by River Rock Creek, what was it about him that made you trust him, even for a minute?”