Chapter Seventeen
Trials of Love
L
uca parked his Jeep down the street from Jules’s house. He slammed the door and climbed out just as Jules’s little silver car pulled into her driveway. Jules stepped out, shutting her own car door behind her. At first, he thought she might have missed the six-foot-four werewolf jogging toward her in the pouring rain until she was in his arms. He lifted her off her feet and held her tightly as the rain soaked them both.
“I’m sorry Gabriel took it badly,” he said, loosening his grip but not setting her back on her feet just yet.
Jules studied him a moment. He might have felt awkward if he hadn’t been doing the same thing to her. Without warning, she closed the space between them and kissed him. He pulled her close again, chuckling and reciprocating in kind. She was so small, and beautiful, and sexy, and his. Everything about her felt right, here in his arms was where he wanted her to stay. She backed out of the kiss but didn’t wriggle free of his hold. “Gabriel is an important part of my life,” Jules admitted. “But something tells me that you are more significant to my future.”
“Giving everything up for a guy. Sounds reckless,” Luca teased.
“Yeah,” Jules said as Luca set her back on her feet. “And risking your life and position within a pack is a wise decision?”
“I guess we’ll be impulsive together then,” he said, brushing her cheek with his fingers.
“I guess so,” she replied, throwing her head back at letting the rain drip down her face for a moment. The smile on her lips was one of peace and pure happiness. He knew this, he was unsure how, but he did.
“Shall we get out of the rain?” Luca asked.
“Yes,” Jules replied. “But let’s walk.”
Luca slipped one arm around her and, in comfortable silence, they strolled, her side pressed against his. He slowed his long stride to match hers.
When they reached her driveway, she pulled him to a stop beside her car, where she retrieved her keys and phone from the passenger seat and together they went into her house.
“Shoes.” She pointed to a spot beside the front door. Luca slipped off his soaked Converse and left them there. Before she had time to get much farther into the house he spun her around. He lifted her onto her island counter. She laughed, but wrapped her legs around him, pulling him closer. He kissed her again and again, content to kiss her for the rest of his immortal life.
Just as she began trying to free him from his wet shirt, her phone began to ring. He groaned, dropping his head onto her shoulder. It was her turn to chuckle. “It might be Gabriel,” she said as she retrieved her phone from the counter beside her. “Forgive me?”
“Never,” he said quietly as she put the phone to her ear.
“Hey Monica,” she greeted. “I thought you were at Seth’s today.”
Luca kissed her on the clavicle, and then the neck.
“Wait, slow down. What’s wrong?” she asked.
Luca stopped kissing her and stepped back. He could hear Monica’s rushed and shaky voice, but he had no hope of making out what she was saying. He leaned on the counter beside Jules.
“Alright. I’ll be right over,” Jules said and then ended the call.
“You will?” Luca asked. “What’s up?”
“Seth broke up with her,” Jules said.
“I’m sorry,” he replied. “Did she say why?” he asked, stepping in front of her again. His hands came to rest on the sides of her thighs.
“Actually, she did,” Jules said. “And I think it’s our fault.”
JULIANA
Having left Luca, Jules approached the large, white house. Monica’s mother appeared at the door seconds after Jules rang the bell. Sherry’s human scent hit Jules with extreme force. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was. The craving was overwhelming. She hesitated before entering but Monica needed her. I can handle this.
“Hello, Mrs. Martin. How is she doing?” Jules asked politely and smiled. It was strained but she held it in place just the same.
“As well as can be expected, I guess. He was such a nice boy.” Monica’s mother stepped aside to let Jules in. Jules held her breath. Her vampire impulses were slipping out of her control. The vein in Sherry’s neck pulsed, calling to Jules’s predatory desires.
To Jules’s relief, Mrs. Martin didn’t follow her up the stairs to Monica’s room. Jules cautiously pushed the door open. Monica and a human girl Jules knew worked at the café with her were seated on the bed. Monica was sobbing. When she saw the redheaded vampire, Monica rushed toward her friend and threw her arms around her. Jules stiffened and fought the instinct to sink her fangs into her friend’s neck. Instead of returning the hug, she clenched her fists and teeth.
“Jules?”
Jules tried to smile but instead cringed. All she wanted to do was comfort Monica, but she couldn’t. The bloodlust was too strong. Jules cursed herself quietly. “Will you be alright for an hour?” Her voice was coarse and rushed.
Monica released Jules and backed away. She knew the signs. “Yes,” she said between sniffles. “But you will come back, right?”
“You know I will.” Jules hurriedly left the way she had come. She heard Ethan’s call as she ran back down to the front door, but she didn’t stop or slow down.
Once outside the house, Jules released a frantic breath. She shut her eyes tight, hoping the fresh air would reduce the urge to go back and kill all the humans inside. Without opening her eyes, Jules started toward the backyard. Abandoning her car, she took the shortcut through the woods behind Monica’s house. Running at full speed, Jules veered around trees and over fallen logs all the way to Gabriel’s place, which was closer than her own.
When she reached it, everything was dark. She tried the front door, but it was locked. Jules swiftly reached under one of the wicker chairs on the porch to find the spare house key.
When she walked inside, there were no signs of Gabriel and Eileen. She went to the kitchen, took a glass out of the cupboard above her head, and pulled open the refrigerator door. Five hospital blood bags sat inside. The sight and smell of it both disgusted and revitalized her. Without hesitation, Jules punctured the plastic with her teeth and poured it in the glass.
She felt her sanity returning as the luscious liquid entered her body. Only after Jules stopped feeling the blood pulsing down her throat and through her body did she open her eyes. She saw a note tucked under the bags in the refrigerator. It was scrawled hurriedly in Eileen’s handwriting.
Jules,
I am going to do everything I can to get Gabriel to see reason. But he says he needs space and I’m afraid if he doesn’t get it he will do something we are all going to regret. So, we’ve gone to Fort Miles for a few weeks. I know this is an impossibly bad time. I’m sorry. We both love you, Jules. Remember that.
Eileen
LUCA
Reluctantly, but at Jules’s request, Luca walked into the employee entrance of Panda Plate on his day off. He found Seth and his father in the kitchen preparing for the lunch rush. Or what they considered a lunch rush.
“Hey there, Luca!” Mr. Yang greeted him while tossing vegetables into a searing pan. Seth muttered a hello but kept his head down.
Luca moved past both father and son to get himself a large paper cup and fill it with Mountain Dew from the soda fountain. Seth’s father chuckled. It was customary for employees to help themselves to soda. Luca slipped a straw into his cup and took several swallows.
“So, Luca, what brings you here?” asked Mr. Yang.
“Nothing much. Just thought I’d drop in,” Luca replied, staring at the back of Seth’s head. Mr. Yang glanced up from the pot he was now stirring. He looked skeptically at Luca, as if he wanted to say something then changed his mind. The phone rang and without thinking, Luca answered it.
“Seth, why don’t you take a break?” Mr. Yang said once Luca had hung up the phone.
“But it’s almost lunchtime,” Seth protested.
“It’s almost ready and I’m guessing Luca didn’t come to see my pretty face.”
Seth poured the contents of his large skillet into a pan and glared at his father.
“Well, come on then,” Seth said as he carried the pan into the dining room and placed it on the almost full buffet. He then grabbed a plate and started fixing one for himself. Finally, apparently reluctantly, he joined Luca at a table in the corner of the dining room. For quite a while Seth said nothing and refused to look up from his plate.
Halfway through Seth’s lunch, Luca spoke up. “Are you really going to make me ask?”
“There isn’t anything to say.”
They sat silently. Luca knew Seth had to have his reasons to break up with Monica. He also knew that if he waited, Seth would eventually say what he needed to.
“Fine.”
That didn’t take long, Luca thought.
“I just couldn’t stand it anymore.”
“And it is? You love Monica, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do. A lot, but she’s always so secretive. It feels like she’s always hiding something from me. I just couldn’t take it anymore.” Seth started speed-talking, a trait he had picked up from Monica. Luca struggled to keep up but managed to catch Seth’s gist.
“Did you tell her all this?” Luca asked him.
“Yes! That’s when she blew up and started raving about how she couldn’t tell me and if I couldn’t trust her then maybe we should just break up. The next thing I know, my relationship of two years is just over. I suppose it’s my fault, but I…”
Luca felt a pain in his chest as he listened. Was Jules right? Was this his fault? Was the secret Monica was keeping the one about the secret supernatural underbelly of the world? The one Luca had insisted she keep. Can Seth handle the truth?
He wanted to tell Seth everything, to insist that Monica had a good reason to lie, but instead, he said, “that sucks, man. I’m sorry.”
He sat there with his friend as he finished up his meal, not saying much more. He needed to talk to Jules. Together, they would decide what to do.
RICKY
Ricky reached out to touch Tasha’s thigh. They sat together on her family’s old basement couch. After Carson’s metaphorical explosion, he’d showered and sought refuge in Tasha’s home. Little did he know asylum would lead to kisses. She giggled as he leaned forward to kiss her again. She slid her hands through his silk-like, black hair and bit down lightly on the tender part of his lip.
“Tasha!” someone called.
“Who was that?” Ricky asked as they both stopped abruptly.
“My brother,” Tasha said. “Ignore him.” Her brother was a senior football player at Aboit high school.
He called out for her again as Tasha pulled Ricky down on top of her by the t-shirt. Ricky tried to ignore his increasingly aggravated calls as they kissed again.
The basement door burst open and Ricky heard footsteps clomping down the wooden stairs. He pulled himself off her.
“You little creep!” her brother screamed, rushing at Ricky.
Ricky was too fast for the large football player and easily avoided the charge. With one last smile over his shoulder, Ricky rushed out of the house.
As he headed into the woods, he peeled the layers of clothing off and leaped into the air. Tasha’s brother shouted angrily from somewhere behind him, but he would never catch Ricky now.
Even if he did, he wouldn’t be looking for a black wolf. Ricky turned and trotted away from the voice with a toothy, wolf-like snicker. Once he was well out of range, he stopped to stretch, utterly pleased with himself.
“That was reckless.”
Ricky spun. Before him, in a random patch of woods behind Tasha’s subdivision, was Jules.
He stared at her with his yellow, wolf eyes, and then turned his head from side to side, unsure what to do now.
“Hang on,” Jules said and then bolted in the direction he’d come from, returning moments later with the pants he’d discarded. She tossed them at him and then turned her back.
In a burst of light and laughing easily, Ricky the wolf became Ricky the boy and pulled on his returned piece of clothing. “Okay,” he told Jules, who turned around to face him.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked before she took the opportunity to question him. “You know these woods butt up against the preserve this pack runs in.”
“I did not,” she admitted. “This is the fastest way from Monica’s to my… Mr. Prentiss’s house.”
“You and Mr. Prentiss huh?” he teased.
Jules made a face at him that he interpreted to mean you know what I mean.
“By the way,” Jules began, sounding like his teacher for a moment. “What if Neal had seen you?”
“Who?” Ricky hadn’t the foggiest idea who she was talking about.
“Tasha’s brother.” Jules pointed back in the direction of the houses.
Ricky shrugged. “He didn’t.”
“Teenagers.” Jules smiled and scoffed at the same time.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” Ricky asked, thinking about the fact that Jules had been on her way to her friend’s house.
“Yes,” Jules said, like she may have forgotten that fact. “And where are you headed?”
Ricky shrugged again. He wouldn’t go back to the Den, that he knew. But he didn’t exactly have plans beyond this particular moment.
Jules bit her lip for a moment, presumably thinking. “Listen, if you don’t want to go home.”
“Its not my home,” Ricky interrupted.
“Well, then, if you need somewhere to be, I think Luca is still at my house.”
Ricky’s eyebrows raised as he waited for Jules to continued.
“Even if he’s not, there is a spare key under the planter by the back door. You can’t miss it. The plant is dead.”
“Really?” Ricky asked. “Why would you offer that?”
“Honestly,” Jules began, “because I see something in you that reminds me of someone I once loved. Someone I loved above all others.”
“What happened to him?” Ricky asked, catching the context of the past.
“He died long ago,” Jules said. “But what you did back there, that recklessness, he would have loved it.”
JULIANA
When she finally made it back to Monica’s house, Monica’s co-worker was just leaving. “How’s she doing?” Jules asked.
“She hasn’t stopped crying,” the girl said. She looked emotionally spent.
“It’s my turn for a shift.”
This time, after Jules rang the doorbell, Ethan answered.
“Hi,” she greeted.
“Hey,” he said, “what was up with you earlier?” “None of your business,” Jules said, smiling at Ethan, who glared at her. “How’s your sister?”
Mrs. Martin walked out of the kitchen, smiled when she saw Jules, and then disappeared again.
“The same,” Ethan replied. “She’s been crying like an annoying baby for hours,” he complained as they walked up the stairs side-by-side.
“You want to come and cheer her up with me?” Jules asked.
“No way,” Ethan stepped back and Jules moved toward Monica’s bedroom door. “I’m not going near that with a ten-foot pole.”
“Such a great little brother you are,” Jules teased.
“Oh, I know I am.” He laughed and then walked into his own room.
When Jules pushed open Monica’s bedroom door, she was not surprised to find her curled up in her fluffy chair in the corner; tear streaks down her faced and a box of Kleenex on her lap. Her eyes were red and her cheeks were blotchy. She looked so human in this moment, Jules loved her even more.
“Oh, Jules.”
This time, when Monica hugged her Jules hugged back. Both girls sunk onto the bed.
“I can’t believe this is happening. I mean, I know he feels like I’m hiding something from him. I mean I am hiding something from him, a really, really big something. But...” Monica continued to speak, and Jules let her, rubbing her back and waiting.
“Monica, I’m so sorry. It’s all my…” Jules began, once Monica had stopped to take a breath.
“Don’t you dare say this is your fault,” Monica snapped, fixing Jules with a glare. “He should have trusted me!”
“Still, if you want to tell him you should be able too,” Jules said. “I’ll talk to Luca. I promise.”
“No. Don’t bother. It doesn’t matter now. If he can’t trust me, it’s over anyway.” With this, tears began to run down Monica’s face once again.
“Are you sure about that?” Jules moved her head down, so she could look into Monica’s lowered eyes.
“I don’t know. But he’s the one who broke it off. I won’t go crawling back to him,” she said with what Jules thought was false conviction.
Jules didn’t say anything. Monica was being too negative to receive any real advice right now. So, she held her in her cold arms as she cried. Jules remained quiet as Monica finally moved on to silent sobs. Jules stroked her hair. Monica would have stayed with her had the roles been reversed, there was no way Jules was letting her down. Even the emotions that came with Gabriel abandoning her could wait.
“We should have a girls’ night,” Jules suggested once the tears had stopped and Monica had begun to make an effort to compose herself.
“Maybe… I don’t know if I’m up to it.”
“Think about it. We could hang out. Maybe watch a movie. You could order in. Take your mind off things.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Monica admitted. “We could invite Hayley.”
Jules knew that hanging out with a vampire might be asking too much of the werewolf but if Monica wanted to at least invite her, Jules would.
“Please,” Monica begged.
So, Jules picked up her phone and scrolled through her contacts until she found Hayley’s recently added name. She hit send and waited through the rings.
“Hey, you were supposed to call me,” a male voice greeted. “I’m the one who likes to get phone calls from beautiful women.”
“Hi, Kyle.” Jules laughed.
“Hand it over. She doesn’t want to talk to you,” Jules heard Hayley say in the background.
“How do you know? She might have called the wrong number,” he said but his voice was no longer near the phone.
Jules chuckled. After what sounded like a chase around the living room, Jules heard the sound of a hand smacking bare skin. “Ouch!”
“Jules. Hi, I’m so sorry about that. He’s an idiot.”
“Don’t be.” Jules tried to stifle her chuckling.
“What’s up?” Hayley asked.
“Monica needs a girls’ night; Seth broke up with her.”
“Jerk!” Hayley said. “They were perfect together.”
“Are you up for an evening in? With us?” Jules added to clarify that she, the vampire, would be in attendance as well.
“Absolutely! That sounds really great, actually,” Hayley said. “Honey,” she called away from the phone. “I need you to run an errand for me.”
“What for?” Kyle’s distant voice asked.
“A boatload of wine. We are having a girl’s night in,” Hayley said happily.
“Wait! I’m not a girl,” Kyle exclaimed. “What about me?”
Jules could almost see the face he would be making at his wife.
“Sometimes you are just not that important,” she said away from the phone.
He groaned.
“I’m back,” Hayley said. “See you at your place in two hours.” With that, Hayley ended the call and Jules set down her phone.
“Party at my place,” Jules told Monica.
She raised her eyebrows.
“Don’t worry,” Jules said putting her hand on Monica’s. “It’s girls only.”
THE FORT MILES PHANTOM
The unnaturally thick fog granted the Fort Miles Phantom the ability to walk the city streets in daylight once again. The nickname was growing on him. Why not have a label for his misdeeds?
“Hi there,” he greeted the attractive, dark-skinned, young man he had in his sights.
The man gave him a sideways look but didn’t respond. Instead, he kept walking in the direction he had been headed when he had been stopped by the vampire.
“Alright then,” the vampire said aloud, to no one in particular. He’d grown tired of his current lover and was on the prowl for another human one. He liked human lovers, they required very little commitment. Thus, they were the perfect distraction. But, obviously, not that one.
He wasn’t looking for a drink but out of nowhere, one presented itself to him. The Phantom had a type, in both lovers and meals. Young and beautiful was best, but never blonds. Killing blonds tended to cause an unreasonable, emotional spiral, so it just wasn’t worth it.
“Hi there,” said a drunk, and probably drugged, boney girl. He recognized her from a bar he frequented. She looked like she’d come from there. “I know what you are,” she mumbled.
“Do you?” he asked her, but it wasn’t really a question. Vampire groupies were groupies for a reason.
“You can drink from me if you want,” she said, sticking out her wrist toward his mouth.
“You have no idea what you’re offering,” he told her but walked with her toward a secluded side of the fountain.
“Don’t you want to?” she asked, swaying on her feet and dropping onto the seat beside him with a thud.
He put one hand on the back of her neck to steady it. He chuckled a low, breathless chuckle. He watched the pulse under her skin, the vein exposed. She was offering herself for a moment of relief from this mortal coil. How could he resist? His fangs slipped free of their sheaths. He inserted them into her neck and began to drink.
“Wait,” the woman said after several long moments. She jerked, trying to free herself. The moment had come. He could let her go, he knew vampires that had the ability. He could let her go and when she returned to herself, she’d wouldn’t even remember seeing him this night. That was the power of vampire venom. He’d once been told it felt like a drug. Calming the human and conveniently, causing a real case of brain-fog. However, he’d inherited his addictive personality from his drunken father. His grip tightened around his prey, holding the source of his addiction to his lips as he continued to drink.