Chapter 10
Ten
Marcus poured the last of the bagged blood into a glass.
He tossed the bag into a nearby trash can, mentally noting that he’d have to empty the garbage before Ethan returned to the house.
Bagged blood was a good filler, but for some reason it wouldn’t hold a vampire over for an extended period of time.
The longer the blood was in the bag rather than running through the human, the less power it contained.
Blood straight from the source held the most power when it came to healing and satisfying hunger cravings.
There was no surviving strictly off bagged blood.
Luckily Rafe had been with them. They’d managed to get Bel to two donors before they made it to Marcus’s house.
Rafe was the only one among them who could blur the memories of a human.
It seemed to be part of his special gift to charm humans.
Bel had fed deeply, but both humans were left alive and unconscious in a safe location before the brothers arrived at Marcus’s town house.
The infusion of blood had helped to slow the bleeding, but the wounds on his chest were so extensive, Marcus knew Bel would need a few days to fully heal. At least on a physical level. Emotionally, Marcus wasn’t sure if Bel would ever recover.
Earlier in the evening, Bel had sent out a text that Julianna was having a bad night.
Rafe had immediately replied, asking if he needed some help, but Bel didn’t answer.
Marcus waited roughly a half hour. Sometimes Bel got distracted and didn’t check his phone right away.
Julianna hadn’t had a truly bad night in nearly a year.
They’d each been able to manage her alone.
Winter sent another text to Bel, and their brother hadn’t answered. Something was wrong.
Marcus had raced to Bel’s house, knowing Rafe and Winter were doing the same thing.
He arrived first, but Rafe was right on his heels.
Charging into the old house, they found their mother straddling Bel’s chest, both of them covered in his blood.
His shirt had been shredded, and there were more cuts on his face as if she’d raked her nails across his cheeks. He was lucky to have not lost an eye.
But the worst, it was like she was trying to dig into his chest and pull out his heart. She was screaming nonsense, claiming that he was evil, that he needed to be destroyed. They all needed to be destroyed.
Marcus had pulled their mother off Bel and subdued her as best he could without hurting her while Rafe worked to stop the bleeding.
Bel had only tried to protect himself. They all knew he never raised a hand toward her.
None of them would willingly harm their mother.
This wasn’t her fault. There was something horribly broken in her mind, and no matter what they tried, they could never fix her.
The best they could do was play for her.
For some reason, the music reached the calmer parts of her mind. It soothed her when nothing else could.
Thank God Winter arrived a couple of minutes after Rafe with his guitar in hand.
He said nothing, barely even looking over at Bel.
He just sat right in front of where Marcus had their mother held and started playing.
It was a soft, lilting melody that reminded Marcus of water trickling down from leaf to leaf in a forest before finally slipping into a playfully babbling brook.
Within minutes, Julianna relaxed in Marcus’s arms. She hummed along to Winter’s playing, swaying from side to side.
Her voice was sweet and haunting, calling Marcus back to bittersweet memories of his childhood when life was so wonderfully simple.
They’d lived in their mother’s fancy town house.
There were tutors and instructors filling their days with knowledge.
Their mother was almost always around to oversee their education, especially in music.
As they learned to play, she would sing along.
Even if the song had no words, she’d make up silly songs to match the tune they played.
Now music was the only thing that saved them all.
It took close to an hour to finally get Julianna moved to her own bedchamber with Winter.
She had to be away from the blood when they stopped playing.
Most of the time, her brain didn’t register the carnage and destruction she caused.
It was like she couldn’t even see it, and she definitely didn’t know she’d been the one to create it.
But there had been a few rare instances where she did see the blood and the wounds still healing on her children.
She’d remember that she was the one to attack her children.
The horror would only throw her right back into a brutal episode.
It was just easier for all of them if she was never allowed to see what she did.
Marcus rationalized that it wasn’t really her. The sweet, caring woman who had raised them would never be capable of such violence. It wasn’t her. Just some darkness in her brain that was only made worse when she was transformed into a vampire.
As children, they all remembered times where they would catch her talking to herself.
Or rather, talking to someone none of them could see.
When asked, she’d say that she was just talking to the fairies and laugh like it was nothing.
But there were a couple of times she woke them all in the middle of the night, and they all hid in the attic until the servants finally found them and coaxed their mother out.
But it wasn’t until she became a vampire that her strange madness turned to violence.
“I don’t want to drink more,” Bel said wearily when Marcus offered him the glass.
“You’ve lost a lot of blood. You need to drink,” Marcus said stubbornly.
Bel closed his eyes and shook his head. He was propped up on the couch, his long body still hanging off.
Marcus hated the sickly paleness of his cheeks.
They were all pale after a century of hiding from the sun, but this was more extreme.
Marcus needed him to drink just to return the color to his cheeks.
“Rafe? Did Rafe go?” Bel’s eyes suddenly blinked open, and he moved like he was trying to rise off the couch.
“He went to check on Winter.” Marcus carefully placed his hands on Bel’s shoulders, pushing him down onto the cushions. He didn’t want to mention their mother. This was the worst attack Bel had ever suffered, and he didn’t need to be reminded that she was his assailant.
“Should we go help them? I don’t want—”
“They’ll be fine. They’ve got it under control.”
“But she’s strong. What if Winter and Rafe can’t handle her? We can’t let anything happen to them.”
“They’ve got it under control. Winter had her calm and in her room before we even left. Rafe is just going to see if Winter needs a break.”
Bel relaxed against the cushions, releasing a deep, heavy sigh. His eyes were closed, but it didn’t stop the tear that slipped from the corner of his left eye to slide down his temple. Marcus swallowed hard against the lump in his throat as he wiped the tear away with his thumb.
“Why does she hate me, Marcus?” Bel asked. His voice was barely a whisper and shook with a pain that Marcus was sure had nothing to do with the wounds on his chest.
“She doesn’t, Bel. You know that. Mother loves you.”
“But I can’t fix her. I’ve tried for so long. A century. I can’t fix her. Does she know and hate me for it?”
Marcus threaded his fingers through Bel’s thick hair, pushing it back from his forehead. “Don’t. She loves you. This attack…this isn’t her. You know that. These bad episodes aren’t her. It’s the sickness. She can’t control it.”
Bel’s eyes flicked open, holding Marcus. “Tonight was different.”
“What do you mean?”
Bel shook his head and tried to sit up again, but Marcus wouldn’t let him.
He needed to rest and conserve his energy in order to heal.
Bel finally gave up and frowned at Marcus.
They were long used to his dominating, dictatorial ways, but that didn’t mean they didn’t try to push against him every once in a while.
“You sent a text that you thought she was having an episode.”
“She seemed off. We went out hunting early. She didn’t seem much in the mood for feeding, but it had been two weeks. I knew that if we didn’t, she would definitely have an episode by the end of the week.”
When Julianna stayed with Bel, he kept a strict log of all her activities in hopes of identifying potential triggers. The one thing they’d discovered was that she couldn’t go longer than three weeks without feeding. Hunger would definitely set her off.
Largely, Julianna was indifferent to feeding. Sometimes she was in the mood, but it wasn’t often. They’d usually have to coax her into going out.
“Any problems?”
“We both found donors quickly. She fed a little lightly, but she did feed. I figured it would be enough to hold her at least a week, and then we headed home.”
“Did she see anyone, or did anything happen?”
Bel shook his head. “No. Nothing. We walked home with her arm in mine, and she was talking about digging out her old sheet music for Carmen. That opera has always made her happy. I have no record of it being linked to her bad moods.”
“When did you realize she was going to have an episode?”
Bel rubbed the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger. Marcus frowned to see his hand was brown with dried blood. They both desperately needed showers, but cleaning up would have to wait.
“As soon as we walked into the house,” Bel murmured, “I told her that I’d get my cello.
I thought I’d play while she sang. I hadn’t played in a while, and I thought it would be nice to play when she was already in a good mood.
But she jerked away from me like she was repulsed by me.
She said she wanted nothing to do with me and stalked off to the library.
The mood change was so sudden, I stood there shocked. ”
“You sent the text then?”