My Blood Is Risen (Cullravens)

Prologue

while you taste of wine and freedom

A gentle breeze stirred through the curtains, scented by the pines from the surrounding wood.

Chilled by its proximity to the tarn, the current stirred against Cal Cullraven’s bare torso, raising goosebumps.

Beyond the window, a wordless urgency swelled beneath the tranquility of the densely wooded cordillera like a boiler straining at its iron seams, ready to explode.

His eyes snapped open and when the sunlight flooding his bedroom was caught in the iris, the red bubbles trapped in his unusual amber eyes gleamed like polished garnets—or fresh blood.

Still groggy, Cal reached for his phone and found to his discomfiture that the table was in the wrong place.

Not his college apartment after all, but his childhood bedroom with all of its dense hardwood and heavy, imposing fixtures.

He could hear the birdsong of distant sparrows calling to one another from the depths of Passer Woods.

And, perversely, strings. Damn you, Odessa, he thought nonsensically.

It’s far too early for whatever this is.

And then he blinked, fully taking in the melody for the first time.

Is that . . . Pachelbel’s Canon?

Oh, fuck. The orchestra. The wedding. Ben’s new bride. What a fucking nightmare.

Cal rolled back against the dark sheets, closing his eyes against the imagined specter of Ben’s peacocking smugness as he dragged his pretty young wife over the threshold like a hound with its kill. Nor was he looking forward to what would come afterwards.

At the festival.

“What is your family like?” Noelle had asked him, the very first time they met. There was a shy ebullience in her voice paired with a convivial willingness to please that repelled him as effectively as if they were two magnets of like poles. “Ben says your house is quite old.”

Oh yes, it was. Brick by crumbling brick, his namesake had built this house, and now the specter of it hung over all their heads like an eidolic sword of Damocles.

It was merely a question of which of them would be the first to spill the blood that would mortar the foundation and sate its sleeping hungers.

But he could say none of this to Noelle without sending her screaming off into the night, and under the glaring lights of the fine Thai restaurant Ben had chosen deliberately to impress, it was unlikely she would have believed him anyway, even if saying so was the kinder choice.

“We’re very traditional,” he said eventually, with a coolness she clearly found off-putting. And then, seeing Ben returning to the table, he added dryly, “You’ll get used to it.”

Despite her unease, she had still made every effort to include him in the conversation and seemed surprised and a little unnerved every time Ben pivoted the subject to exclude him at every turn, making the evening feel more like a cross-examination than an introduction.

Part of him had hoped that Noelle would see through the illusion of grandeur and leave.

None of Ben’s other girlfriends had stuck around for very long and it seemed likely that this woman—with her easy candor and simple jewelry—would fall in line with all of the others, put off by the rot beneath the gilt.

But she hadn’t, and now here he was. A spectator to the travesty of his brother’s nuptial bliss.

As he did up the buttons of his shirt, Cal cast a contemptuous look at the cobbled courtyard down below. The decorators his mother had hired scrambled around like ants, assembling arches and various displays with torpid industry beneath the brutal hammer of the sun.

When he leaned out for a closer look, he imagined he could smell the roses from here.

I daresay they’ve never done a wedding like this, though.

He shrugged into his suit jacket, doing up the row of buttons before knotting the blood-red tie into a Windsor knot at his throat.

At his breast, he affixed an onyx raven pin that had once belonged to his great-great grandfather.

Mourning jewelry, his one indulgence to mockery.

It was enough to know that Ben would see it and recognize the gesture for the slight it was.

The faces of his ancestors looked down sullenly from the walls as he stalked down the stairs. Only a few of the men had the Cullraven eyes, but the red the artists had used gleamed from the crushed glass that had been blended into the paint. He’d always wondered if it could still draw blood.

“—no! Don’t put those out there, we have enough roses outside. Those can go into the kitchen with the others.” His mother’s voice chimed like a fragile silver bell. The authority in it was unfamiliar and gave him pause as he rounded the corner.

She was wearing an elegant beaded dress and had a glass of champagne in hand—to fortify herself, he supposed. She watched the departing team of florists with a look of resignation that faded into something altogether more vigilant when she saw him.

Between his height and his daunting physique, he was used to being sized up at a glance, but seeing it come from his mother elicited a frisson of something very like regret.

“You look respectable,” she said at last, in a tone that suggested the opposite.

He felt his smile harden. “Thank you, Mother.”

Her eyes dipped, snagging on his pin. Her mouth formed a brief moue of displeasure. “Ben won’t like that.”

“Ben can go fuck himself,” Cal said, very calmly.

“Don’t.” The word flew like a bullet and they both tensed. His mother took a sip from her glass, looking at the stairs and then away. “Don’t,” she said again, in a more restrained tone. “Noelle’s sister will be here soon and so will the other guests. We don’t want a . . . scene before the tour.”

“No, we wouldn’t want a scene, would we?” He played at straightening one of the gauntlet buttons in his starched white cuff. “Seeing us, claws out, they might think we were monsters in a house of death.”

“Cal.”

“I know. Mustn’t drag the entrails before the guests. At least, not yet.” His ironic smile made her flinch and that vestigial sense of chagrin pecked at him once more. “I’ll behave.”

“I won’t.” Odessa strolled in with her gown trailing in her wake, a glass in her hand that his mother glanced at but didn’t remark upon given her own indulgence. “There’s going to be a tour?”

“Of the house,” his mother said. “For the sisters, and whoever else wants to come.” The last part came out as a sigh. She knew better than anyone that forbidding Odessa anything outright was tantamount to an invitation.

Then the meaning of her words sank in. “Sisters? What sisters?”

“My sister. Nadine.” Apparently everyone was convening in the hallway now, which made him wonder just how much of their conversation Ben had let his wife-to-be overhear. Noelle, standing beside Ben like a pale blonde shadow, gave him a cautious smile. “I keep forgetting, you haven’t met her yet.”

She was wearing a gauzy slip dress that looked like it belonged to his sister. It was tradition for the bride to spend the night in the Unicorn Room, but judging by the marks on her throat, Ben had spent the night flouting tradition the same way Odessa did convention.

Glaring at his sister in reproof, he said, mildly, “If she’s even half as charming as you, I shall look forward to it.”

“Goodness,” Noelle laughed. “You’re so formal, Cal.”

“That’s our Baby Cal,” said Odessa. “Esquire at large, born into the wrong fucking century.”

“I’m not a lawyer, yet.”

“For the love of god, don’t let him talk to her about law school or he’ll bore her to an early grave. I’m so fucking tired of hearing about torts.”

“That’s because you are one.”

Noelle laughed again, before looking to Ben, who hadn’t. At his stony face, she fell silent, clasping her hands in front of her like a chastened girl. But she needn’t have bothered. Ben had just noticed the raven pin, his eyes narrowed like a serpent poised to strike.

“That’s what you’re wearing to my wedding? You look like a pallbearer at a funeral.”

“That’s what he always looks like,” Odessa said helpfully. “Consumptive. Stodgy. Victorian.”

His mother made a vague, editorial cough.

“I think he looks fine,” Noelle said. “His tie matches the roses.” When he turned his glare on her, she smiled and reached up to adjust his tie. “And you look very handsome.”

So it begins, Cal thought wearily as a heavy knock sounded at the front door.

His mother slipped away to answer it and a clamor of voices filled the foyer as people began to spill into the main hall.

There was a group of men and women from the historical society and, behind them, a tall and buxom brunette who was hovering at the bottom of the stairs with her arms folded, seemingly oblivious to how the gesture plumped up her decolletage.

Noelle released Ben immediately, racing over to greet her with an embrace that the other woman melted into. Her pale eyes locked with his as she looked over Noelle’s shoulder, widening in a shy and startled way that immediately piqued his interest.

When he smiled at her, she turned as crimson as her dress.

“This is my little sister, Nadine,” Noelle said proudly. “Though she’s not quite so little anymore. She’s taller than me, now.”

“Stop,” Nadine grumbled, batting the other woman’s hand away good-naturedly.

“I’m your new brother-in-law.” Ben stepped forward and grasped her hand so roughly that she winced. “Benjamin Cullraven. I’ve always wanted a little sister—and if you’re half as charming as my wife-to-be, I’m sure we’ll get along very well.”

Noelle looked up, giving Ben a sharp double-take.

“Excuse me,” Odessa said. “Did I die?”

“Ignore her. We do.”

“Let me give you a tour of the house,” his mother said quickly as Odessa opened her mouth again. “You came here at the perfect time. We’ve just had the wallpaper restored—it’s all authentic Victorian, imported from China. That lovely metallic sheen comes from bronze powder.”

Cal, who had heard all of this hundreds of times before, inwardly scoffed.