The Uninvited (The Julianna Rae Chronicles Book 1) (24 page)

1730 HOURS.

IN-COUNTRY.

Julianna tried to empty her mind during the nap she took, but she kept returning to Taris and the words he had spoken. She was dozing, asleep but aware of the noises around her as they blended into her thoughts and the heavy arm around her waist curled into a more possessive grip.

His breath was gentle on the nape of her neck and she felt herself wanting to smile at the tickle, but Taris disapproved, lowering his aviators.
He planned your initiation. He knows you well.

She stood in the living room of the family estate. The sun shone through the large windows overlooking the expansive property and an owl perched outside, peering through the glass. Taris stretched out on the main sofa, staring at her as she moved the curtains to admire the landscape. She’d forgotten how beautiful the estate was in spring.

The window propped open and the curtain billowed in her hand. The owl cocked its head but its dark eyes exchanged a knowing look with its mate who flew in to join him. They nodded and took flight and when she turned into the room again Taris was gone.

The curtain billowed again and touched her ankle, caressing it gently as she left it for the photos on the wall. She touched one frame holding a faded photo of Taris, Doug, and Caden, all smiling during happier times. Another beside it showed Bas and Caden during a family gathering. Her father’s hand was in the background, barely visible but for her mother’s name tattooed on his wrist. She frowned. The images were familiar – she’d seen them before, but the memories were clouded. Everything weighed down, blocking her vision, covering her eyes from a terrible truth she wasn’t ready for. The heaviness clung to her chest, dragging her down with each room she explored, each perfectly decorated in old European furniture.

She ambled along the hallway, running her fingers along the dust-covered tables and furniture in reach. Ornate decorations from across the world marveled her eye, centuries’ worth of antiques rested under her fingertips, the wooden carving of the red and white striped rocking horse warmed her heart. She cupped the delicate carving in her adult hands, tracing its worn leather saddle with her touch.

An icy breath of air licked at her skin and a rough hand clawed at her shoulder. 

She opened her eyes, startled.

The house was gone, the rocking horse a faded memory. The curtains didn’t billow out to lick at her ankles, but the cold breeze against her bare skin as Caden stole the blankets sent her body into a shiver. She pulled them over; he stirred and his nails dug at her skin again as he slept.

He’s dreaming, too.

She uncurled his fingers and laid them flat against her stomach.

‘Family estate’s beautiful this time of year.’ Bas smirked and took a chunk out of the first quarter of apple. He chewed it loudly. ‘Used to sit on the floorboards and play with that rocking horse for hours as a baby.’

Julianna flicked her attention up. Bas watched her from across the fire while cutting an apple into quarters. Everyone else still rested. More apples sat at his feet.

Caden’s arm was heavy and stubborn. She propped as far as his dead weight would allow, seeing Bas through the wave of heat from the freshly-stoked fire. An apple rolled into her arm and she picked it up to take a bite. He didn’t say another word; the look that swept over him as he studied his brother told her he didn’t approve.

She laid back and took a second bite while staring up at the dusky sky. They’d slept the day away undisturbed. The next breeze flowed across her bare arms and damp face, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. The evening was warm for their travels.

Yeah, but the company’s cold.
She glanced back to Bastiaan’s narrowed and fixed eyes.

‘How about you and me take a walk.’ He finished the second quarter whole. ‘Clear the tension. Rid you of the IDM.’

Her heart skipped its beat. There was the clincher: the identification marker. She couldn’t agree more, but Bas wasn’t the one she wanted at the end of a sharp blade digging away at her side. Not with the grudge he bore.

She lifted the heavy arm away and reached for her pants. They were still wet and clingy when she wiggled into their legs, stealing away the warmth Caden had given her.

Bas stood, holding her singlet out to her, looking away, slightly embarrassed. She snatched it and quickly pulled it over her head, the heaviness of dried blood and dirt scratched through the material onto her skin.

‘Shall we?’

The last of the apple disappeared into his mouth. He started through the trees, expecting her obedience. They bowed and parted to his authority without his touch, closing tightly around him before she could follow. The plant life protectively tightened its weave, making her trek impossible through its grasp until he turned around to discover her delay. His lips thinned. The long grass parted beneath her feet. He waited so they could move farther into the woods without interruption.

Lazy.

‘Excuse me?’ she said.

‘You’re lazy,’ he said flatly. ‘You’re impulsive, reckless...’

Insolent, disobedient...

‘Get out of my head!’ she snapped.

Bas ignored her. He continued to poke in and out of her mind without apology, insulting her while he did it.

Music time.
She sung inside her mind, devouring the sweet apple to the core as she walked, and thanking the Guild for their gift.

He stopped the uninvited attention before edging down a steep ledge one step at a time. She followed and stood at the top, watching him jump the rock ledges fashioned like a giant’s staircase.

She aimed the apple core in his direction. Sensing her move, his dark eyes swung around, daring her with a snarl. She lowered it down, threw it to the side, and followed instead.

‘Here will do,’ he said.

She jumped from the last embankment and into the clearing of soft grass beside him. Trees held their pink blossom above the deep green grass, swaying gently in the breeze, and thin strands of yellow weed poked through the cracks between round rocks scattered randomly. She admired the landscape for its natural beauty and color; he scrutinized it with black eyes for intruders who dared to approach. There wasn’t a life form for miles except the wild birds fluttering above in a nest, feeding their young and preparing for the evening ahead.

His eyes slipped into their hazel color and he knelt in the dewy grass, edging his knife blade from its handle. ‘Lay down. Promise I’ll heal you once I’m done.’

A High Priest’s word meant less than her Uncle Doug’s, she thought. Though she’d lay still for him on the cool grass, shielding her eyes from the last sunlight breaking through the branches, knowing he meant every word. From where she rested, the moon was a full white disc in the sky, and would be bright once the sun moved down. Bas looked, too; and the concern on his face creased his brow. The night, though warm, was well-lit for their travels, leaving them exposed.

His hand eased her singlet away and she felt his fingers running along her stomach, searching. His touch was purposeful and premeditated. The stars were breaking against the sky and she tried counting them for distraction as the press of his fingers continued across her soft skin. She dared not look, but she heard a mutter under his breath and she felt the point of his knife.

She cried out.

The birds in the blossom tree stopped their fluttering and tweeting and gazed beneath them to see the fuss. They blinked their black beady eyes and bounced between branches with curiosity as Bas deepened his cut into her waist.

‘I can’t do this if you’re moving,’ he muttered, and put a firm hand to her stomach.

Stars filled her vision, but not from the sky. She opened then wide and blinked. The birds were back to their young and the sun peeked from a cloud, dulling the moon in its glare, washing everything in a pretty orange haze. 

The estate sprang into mind – her first horse-riding accident.

The horse had been wild, still yet to be broken in, but she’d opted to ride bareback the moment the handlers had left for the day. She’d been bucked, and she’d stayed in the field for hours in rain and sleet.

She screamed.

The knife pushed deeper, the cut against her side grew wider and tears rolled down her cheeks.

‘You sing as pretty as you do in your head?’ he asked gently. His knife tip edged under the solid chip. She didn’t reply. Everything inside her focused on being still.

Bas spoke softly about the estate where she’d spent her childhood. She listened to his story about the horse accident. He’d been the one to scoop her up and carry her back. She didn’t remember that part, not the scoop-up part. Didn’t remember him, or how wet and cold she had felt, or how blue he said her skin had looked. Only the arms and the chest she had huddled into. She didn’t remember the broken arm either. Surely it hadn’t been him who’d given her comfort on that miserable day.
Surely.

She’d been so little then, and memories often failed to be reliable. She’d been told off; she remembered the humiliation. She remembered the pain in her toes in the hot bath and she remembered the strong arms wrapping around her.

‘You were lucky that day.’ His hand covered the wound and the pain surged through her body again. He was taking the cut away. ‘Could have been killed. Everyone was looking for you – even Cade came out that day and, man, he was so damn pissed.’

She didn’t remember.

He dragged the blade’s edge through the grass to clean the blood, studied it, did it again, and then put it away.

‘One thing I know for sure,’ he said. ‘He would’ve initiated you then and there. The only thing keeping you safe from us that day was your age.’

She felt winded again as he helped her to stand.

‘You haven’t changed.’

Bas turned from her stare and started back toward the camp. She glanced down at her side, lifting the bloodied material to examine what wasn’t there, and when she lifted her head he was hauling himself over the last ledge jutting above her.

If age was all that kept me safe...

The urge to bolt in the opposite direction overwhelmed her.

‘Coming, or what?’ he called down to her.

The urge left her, the
or what
being less favorable to the warm fire and full belly. What he said didn’t matter; she’d escaped the final process that turned a norm into a watcher. Her head spun, she’d escaped the bullshit that followed the rituals. She still belonged to
herself
. That’s how she’d keep it. He wasn’t a High Priest anymore and the Council didn’t exist. It didn’t matter. What he said didn’t matter and she needed to forget about it.

And Caden isn’t my watcher!

Bastiaan looked over the treetops and the horizon from the highest ledge, and then down to her reaching up.  The gaze chilled Julianna as she climbed to the ledge, declining his hand to help her.

‘I don’t remember you,’ she said coolly.

He raised his expression with a half-smile.

‘Or Caden, for that matter,’ she said. ‘But I do remember the Council, and that’s enough to know if you ever try to intimidate me with your old world bullshit again, I’ll put you in a grave myself.’ She pushed past him. 

‘Sure.’ He hauled her arms back to overtake her step. Julianna’s path became difficult to navigate as the plant life closed protectively around him. ‘Oh, and Julianna...’

She looked away from a fern twining itself around her ankle.

‘That old world bullshit – the Council – it still survives – all of it, and you, my dear, are very much a part of it.’

The words drove ice through her veins. She kicked the baby fern away and stomped it. The green frond shied away in fret, from its attacker, curling in retreat to Mother Nature. Bas greeted his brother with a slap on his bare shoulder, and she continued to push through the landscape, turning the words over in her head and warily glancing at them with each step that brought her closer. Her insides churned at the thought of an initiation possibility.

She shook her head.
I thought the Council was over...if it’s not...shit, oh shit, oh shit!
Another frond died.

Caden discarded his half-eaten apple into the fire and glanced up. Julianna exchanged the cursory glance before he returned his attention to the fire. His belt still rested on the ground and his pants hung loosely around his waist as he bent over the fire to adjust a log with his bare hand. The log dropped into the center and the flames whisked around it, creating a swirl of embers that twinkled out into the breeze. He lightly slapped his hand against his pants to rid the dust and ash.

The pendant tightened against her throat, snapping away to travel into the fire, and she observed Bas lowering his hand.

‘Good,’ Caden said.

She shrugged, down to one syllable words now. Not
you okay
or
how’d it go
? Just
good
.

Sonofabitch told Caden what I said!

Caden shook his head while he narrowed his eyes down at her. The others still slept.