Page 4 of Bane of Hate and Silver (Primordial Inheritance #1)
Phantoms of Past and Death
J ules slowed to a walk as she approached a quiet street directly next to the sea.
Four houses down sat her own little home.
Parked in the driveway was the small, silver, car that had been neglected in favor of running to the art gallery.
A cobblestone path led toward green siding, white trim, rounded storybook windows, and stone arch over the door.
Over the four centuries of her existence, Jules had lived in a lot of places she’d called home. This one was one of her favorites.
Her first hundred years as a vampire had been spent in extravagance and indulgence.
She’d lived on an English estate, in a grand manor, which housed the oldest coven in existence.
In the century that followed, she roamed and killed aimlessly, until Gabriel.
With him, came an existence of family, one as strong as her human one had been, though they’d remained platonic throughout.
It had only been in the last few decades, since Eileen’s arrival, that Jules had finally understood the beauty and solitude of living alone.
The porch step creaked under her feet, adding to its character. The darkened house greeted her gently. Neglecting to turn on any lights she walked past her living spaces and into her bedroom near the back.
Walking to the far side of the room, she opened the French doors, stripped off her sweatshirt and jeans, pushed back her covers, and dropped gracefully onto her mattress. Memory foam was a brilliant invention.
Flicking on the Tiffany lamp on the bedside table, Jules picked up her current smutty fantasy novel she kept next to the bed, and started to read. Many a night passed this way in recent years. Just a few more hours before she had to resume her current life as a modern-day American.
The sound of the waves crashing and the words of escapism had her shifting, shaking her head a little as she felt herself drifting sleepily. Setting down the book, she pulled her soft feather blanket up and slipped into sleep.
Jules tossed, unprepared for her past to haunt her dreams this night, and yet he returned with a vengeance like he always did.
Waves of familiarity crashed into her as she stood at the entrance to an opulent ballroom.
Inside, candle light and haunting music set the mood as couples moved across the dance floor.
They were all iridescent ghosts floating around the ballroom.
Beings she once loved floated amongst the dancers.
Gwendolyn, a primordial vampire, one of the first of their kind, dressed as a ghostly bride, a long veil covering her delicate features.
Stephen, her werewolf husband, a gaping hole in his chest, blood draining out over his white, linen shirt.
“Help me, Juliana.” His voice was tinny, not fully recognizable.
“Hello, my pet,” a familiar voice crooned as he slipped a hand around her throat from behind.
Jules thrashed in her sleep. Not this.
He turned her as his grip tightened. His other hand threaded in her hair and yanked, forcing her to look up into his malice filled eyes.
His face was the one she dreaded most. The monster of her own nightmares.
The hand around her throat squeezed even tighter.
Her body recoiled on the mattress like she could feel the physical pain he caused.
He was not faded, a memory bathed in time, but a fully corporeal nightmare.
Every cruelty, every feature as vivid as if he were standing before her.
An accustomed, cold, smile shown on his primordial lips. “You are mine, Juliana.”
“No,” the dream version of her said.
“You will always be mine.”
Hector’s hand connected with her face yet again as the dream shifted. The back of her head slammed into the wall as he threw her.
Crumpled on the ground, her eyes opened to the bloodied and lifeless body of her friend lying on the riverbank in front of her. “Juliana, help me,” called the distorted and rotting corpse of Stephen Cain.
Startled awake, Jules sat up in bed. She wiped her matted hair from her face and took a few deep breaths. A human reaction to steady the nerves, but still relatively effective. Jules swallowed, her throat dry.
Attempting to shake free of the nightmare, Jules pushed back the covers and walked to her sparsely stocked kitchen.
In this area of the home, her own need was extremely specific.
Pulling one of her few glasses from the cupboard, she squinted as she opened the refrigerator to retrieve a bag of blood with the hospital’s tag still on it.
Only a few were stored here from her last raid on the local blood bank.
Gabriel kept most of the stock at his home to protect it from Jules’s addiction to the consumption of it.
Ripping the bag open with her teeth, she poured its contents into the glass.
The empty bag was discarded in the sink, and then she walked to her tiny living room.
Jules settled into her favorite floral and filigreed chair that was in fact from times past. The room was cluttered, but only with books that no longer fit on one of her six over stuffed bookshelves.
The furniture was outdated in the best way.
A large television hung across from the blue velvet, claw-foot couch.
Picking up the remote she put on some news channel for mindless chatter as she sipped from her glass.
For a moment, Jules thought of nothing but the liquid seeping into her tissues as she drank.
Everything inside her was consumed by the quenching of her thirst. She drained the rest of the blood in a few gulps.
The ecstasy and rejuvenation that blood brought to her erased the pain of her nightmare.
But not the lingering sting of his presence.
Her now crimson-colored eyes blinked as she regained her composure.
Jules set the blood-stained glass down on her wooden coffee table and sunk back into her chair.
Dreams of him had been dormant for so long, it unsettled her that they’d surfaced once more.
Seeing the Beta may have caused it, he did resemble Stephen Cain, although his stature was off.
Her thoughts drifted to her life before the English coven had taken her in. It was a time when humans greatly feared but believed in such superstitions as vampires. They were considered demons on earth, and she had just become one of them.
Once the physical pain of her death had receded, her heart stopped beating.
The change from human to demon complete.
Desperately seeking solace, she’d run faster than she’d ever thought possible to her fiancé, Laurence; ever her rock and protection.
After being invited into his home, she’d told him what had happened.
Hoping he would try to see past her demon face and into her heart.
Instead, he’d cursed her and cast her out.
She’d run from Laurence’s cottage, straight into the arms of her primordial abuser.
He had taken her to his home, to his coven at Pelmoore Manor.
His sister, Gwendolyn, was as sweet as she was mad.
The werewolf Gwendolyn had loved against all odds.
Stephen had saved Jules’s life in more ways than one.
Hector had broken her down to nothing. To worthlessness. It was only with Stephen’s death that she’d escaped him. Jules could feel the bitterness overtaking her. That night still haunted her, the one down by the river. The night of Stephen’s death.
If only he hadn’t been walking alone. Out of jealousy and greed Hector had ended Stephen’s life that night, but he hadn’t stopped there.
He’d torn him apart bit by bit and sent the pieces to the neighboring werewolf packs.
Instead of disheartening the werewolves as Hector had intended, this whipped the packs into a frenzy.
They retaliated. Both sides lost many lives. Hector wanted war, and he’d gotten it.
Jules felt a single, thick, blood-tear escape her right eye and slide down her cheek. Shaking herself free of her thoughts yet again, she wiped under her eye. The back of her hand came away smeared with blood.
The Manor and all those within were no longer a part of her existence. They hadn’t been for centuries. Jules tried to focus on what the late-night newscaster was ranting about; some string of murders in Fort Miles, a large city not far from Aboit.
Nicholas’s lack of self-control was his greatest weakness. The Phantom Killer is what they were calling him now, and this alone proved it was true. He should move on from this city and become a new city’s nightmare. And yet, something told him to stay.
He didn’t set out to murder people, he never did. There were hundreds of humans around him every night who lived to see another day. The unfortunate few that didn’t were the inevitable sacrifice made to satisfy his thirst for blood.
He was a vampire, and lived in a way that being a vampire suggested.
Vampires who didn’t give in to the hunt, who refused themselves the ecstasy that only came from draining warm, fresh, pulsing human blood did exist. He, however, couldn’t comprehend the reasoning behind this choice.
Not to kill humans he supposed. Many could drink from the source without killing the host. Once in a while, he wished that level of self- control wasn’t beyond him.
But the thought was always a fleeting one. He was only vampire, after all.
As Nick walked the city streets, on his way to the home of a lover he’d taken to fill the night hours, a couple of drunken college kids fell from a bar and stumbled down the sidewalk in front of him.
He moved past them without contemplating it further.
A mother and her young child waited on a bus.
He left them there. A gentleman late into his allotted years bumped into him. He righted the man and walked on.