BOOK ONE
BLOOD WILL TELL
Prologue
Her brother, Stellan, was always telling her curiosity killed the cat. She was too young to take this as the warning it was. She was curious. Curious about the noises she heard from below the house. Curious enough to venture downward.
Like a cat who knew she wasn’t allowed on the kitchen counter tops, Eden made her way down the wide stone staircase that spiraled into the basement. Her heart thudded in her chest. Daddy said she wasn’t allowed down here, but that noise ... She flinched as another scream rent the air. As her patent shoe finally descended into the corridor and she peeked around the corner, her heart was going to explode out of her chest. She froze, her eyes drawn to the iron door near the end of the long hallway. The sounds of struggle beyond the door grew more frantic.
The iron door burst open. A woman—a beautiful woman with long red curls—fell out of the doorway and onto the cold, hard floor. Her arms stretched out in front of her as she tried to claw her way along the ground, fingernails breaking off in her wild struggle. Eden took a step forward, terror choking her. The woman’s mouth and left side of her pretty face were swollen. Even so young, Eden knew the signs of violence. Eden scanned the naked woman: raised bite marks, bleeding and raw, covered her breasts and stomach and the inside of her thigh. Eden shuddered in confusion. Lacerations across her back and legs wept openly, excruciating and bloody. The woman sobbed, too weak to pull herself very far, crawling toward Eden. Eden took another step forward and the woman looked up.
“Help!” she yelled, her wide eyes begging and pleading with Eden, the sight of the little girl sparking a dismal hope. “Please, help me!” She reached out for her, screaming all the while. Involuntarily, Eden felt her little arm move out toward the woman. But she didn’t know what to do. What should she do?
The iron door scratched against the stone floor and her father appeared out of the room, his hair was mussed and his face glowing. The top of his trousers were undone, his leather belt dangling from his clenched fist. He scowled ferociously at Eden as he grabbed the screaming, scratching woman up into his arms as if she were nothing more than a wriggling puppy.
“Ryan, no!” she screamed, clawing at Eden’s father. Ryan ignored her.
“Eden,” he said. “Get out of here. Don’t ever come here again without my permission!” And with that he slammed back inside the room, the iron clashing against brick like the roar of a monster.
Everything grew quiet ... except for the harsh, racing thump of Eden’s heart.
“Eden!”
She turned. A blurry Stellan leapt down the staircase toward her, panic and concern in his voice. He clutched her arms tightly in his hands.
Eden promptly threw up at his feet.
Stellan cursed and raced back upstairs. He seemed to take forever as she sat there, breathing through her mouth, her chest heaving. He returned with cleaning products, and went about taking care of the mess she had made, muttering something about Mom and Dad not finding out. When he was done, Stellan returned and carefully lifted her into his strong, young arms. She snuggled into the warm safety of him as he carried her back upstairs to her room. He sat down on the bed, keeping her secure in his hold.
“You can’t tell anyone, Paradise,” he whispered, using his teasing nickname for her. “You can’t tell anyone what you saw down there. Not any of the other Blessed that visit Mom and Dad. What Dad did—does—it’s a breach of our laws.”
She shivered. “The law?”
Her brother nodded, his face taut with disapproval. “There’s a group, called The Tribunal, they make sure the Blessed don’t call attention to our race; they enforce the law that we should only feed on, not devour a human’s soul, so that we don’t start killing off humans. We need them for our survival, after all.”
“Does it hurt them?” She sniffled. “The humans?”
Stellan’s chest moved up and down in a heavy sigh beneath her head. “Yes. But it can’t be helped, Eden. You’ll understand when you awaken. The hunger is just too sweet.”
Stellan had awoken a few months before. Her big brother was always developing faster than everyone else was; he was smarter, taller, quicker. And he’d awoken a couple of years before the average soul-eater. Ryan was so proud. As for Stellan, Eden could hear the awe and wonder in his voice at this new cycle in his life.
“But what Daddy does ...?” The woman’s face flashed before her eyes, begging Eden to help her. She began to cry.
She felt her brother tense beneath her. “Dad gives into his instincts when he shouldn’t. I think Teagan is going the same way.”
Teagan was their cousin. He had come to live with them after his father, Ryan’s brother, had been killed along with his wife. Eden still didn’t know how they had died—she hadn’t thought the Blessed were easily killed—and her father refused to tell her. Teagan was a year older than Stellan; Ryan seemed to prefer him to his own children.
“Does Mom do it, too?”
She felt Stellan shake his head. “Mom’s like me. Or I’m like her, I guess. She’s more cautious of us being found out.”
Eden had a horrible thought. “Would you want to? Do what Daddy does, I mean?”
At his continued silence, Eden looked up into her brother’s face and saw the longing there. He clenched his fists and his jaw. “It’s there. The desire to do it ... But I know it’s wrong, so I won’t,” he promised.
“Is it wrong because you’d be killing a human, or wrong because you’d breaking the law?”
Sighing again, Stellan brushed her hair back off her face in easy affection. “You’ll understand, Paradise, when you’re older. We can’t help our nature. But we can try and control it.”
She was silent and pale.
Finally, Stellan grinned down at her. “This is no way to celebrate your birthday. Come on.” He settled her on her feet and grabbed her hand to lead her downstairs. Stellan took her through the back rooms and out onto the huge balcony that descended into twin stairs, leading out onto their land at the back of the house. By the time he had chased her through the gardens he had her laughing and giggling again. He swung her up into his arms as he caught her at the end, near their mother Celine’s prized fountain and turned her to where her gift awaited.
“Happy birthday, Paradise.”
At the sight of the pony, she squealed in childish delight.
The nightmares that began that night lasted longer than the pony.
Chapter One
Salton, Michigan
Her English teacher droned on in the background, but Eden Winslow was gazing out of the classroom window, out through the school parking lot, past the front gates and at the library across the street. Two guys in sunglasses sat on the steps, one reading a newspaper, the other sipping coffee. Their faces were very familiar.
Her dad really thought she was stupid. He was so paranoid.
She nearly snorted aloud as she watched the two men trying to look inconspicuous. It was a dull, cloudy day outside. Maybe they should have reconsidered the sunglasses. Morons. Jeez, her dad actually thought she had no idea he had bodyguards tailing her back and forth from school and wherever else she went.
Noah thought she should talk to him about it. Get him to stop.
Noah didn’t know Ryan.
Mmm. Noah. She felt her chest constrict with the hunger.
“... Career Week in a few weeks and it has inspired me.” Miss Travis grinned at the class. Eden groaned, even though she was kind of glad Travis had distracted her. Still it never bode well when Miss Travis got inspired. And to be inspired by the upcoming, dismal Career Week? Joy. “I want all of you to write a short autobiographical piece about your lives, as though you’re eighty-years-old and have already lived it. What will stand out about your life when you’re old and wrinkly and have time to contemplate it?”
The screams, Eden thought, a cold sweat breaking out across her skin.
“Well, we all know how Andie’s going to end up.” Maria Roth smirked at the shy girl across the aisle from her. Andie turned bright red, her eyes widening with panic as everyone turned to stare. “In some freak show for mutes.”
The class tittered at the dig until Miss Travis hushed them. Eden barely registered her admonishing the girl. She was too busy shooting daggers at Maria. Everyone picked on Andie because she was painfully shy. Sure, Eden reckoned the girl should probably, like, talk to a therapist about her problem, but bullying someone with a crippling fear was just sick. And Eden knew a lot about sick and twisted.
“Well,” Eden shifted in her seat, her eyes slanted narrowly on Maria, “with your family’s history, it’s safe to say we know how your biography is gonna go. Something about drug abuse, becoming a crack-whore, breaking a record for most accumulated sexually transmitted diseases, and either OD’ing under some fat, rutting, married taxi driver, or from tetanus poisoning from the ‘I ain’t a bore, I’m a whore’ tattoo you had slapped on your ass—you know, to improve the view for the clients.”
And that was the reason Noah was her only friend.
Maria lunged at her and Eden braced herself for attack. She and Maria were both about five-feet-eight, but Maria was solid while Eden ... wasn’t. It wouldn’t matter. Eden had her mom and dad’s genes, and thus their preternatural strength.
Miss Travis dived in between them before Maria could get to Eden’s hair. She’d seen Maria in fights before and the bitch always went for the hair. As Miss Travis pushed Maria back into her seat, Eden reached up to her pat her head instinctively. She didn’t think much of herself but her hair she liked. It was thick and black as tar, and fell to her waist in a shiny silk curtain that other girls gazed at enviously. No one was touching her hair.
“Miss Winslow!” Miss Travis spun on her, her eyes sparking furiously. “You will report to this classroom after school!”
Sure, Maria makes a jab and gets told to shut up; I make one little crack-whore joke and I get detention.
Another reason she didn’t have any friends. People just didn’t like her.
It was probably the whole ‘Blessed’ thing. She gave off vibes.
Yup, it was true. No matter how much Eden tried to get her head around it, she couldn’t quite believe she was one of the bad guys.
Eden had been aware of the screaming that came up from the basement of her parent’s mansion for as long as she could remember. It only ever happened when someone opened the huge iron door to her father’s private room. The terrified, exhausted cries for help would rip out through the open door to haunt Eden. It had fallen to her brother, Stellan, to explain. She had been six-years-old, he only nine, as he held her close and told her a story of the gods of ancient Egypt. It was a story he’d had to tell a couple of times more later on because she hadn’t fully grasped it then. Now she knew that, because some Pharaoh’s wife, Merneith, had manipulated the goddess Bat into helping her take revenge against the man she loved (the Pharaoh—her brother, ugh!) and the mistress he loved, the Blessed had been born. And Eden was one of them.
“When the hunger awakens in us, Eden, we’ll have to do what Mom and Dad do and feed off human souls. It’ll make us even stronger than we already are, and we’ll never get sick.”
It had never occurred to her then to ask about the screaming—what exactly did it mean? She’d assumed it was a part of the soul-taking. There was so much more to it than that in her house, as she came to realize on her ninth birthday. Her parents had never exactly been the loving kind. Celine, although always careful of her, was just ... indifferent. To say Ryan was overprotective didn’t even cover it, and he had a temper. But he liked to be kept updated on Eden’s life. It wasn’t love, not like Stellan, who always had time for her, but it was something. Her parents were usually too wrapped up in one another—they loved one another with a violent, jealous intensity, and there just wasn’t enough room to love their kids. Having Ryan show a little interest now and again was something Eden clung to. For instance, he never missed a birthday. So when Celine told Eden on the morning of her ninth birthday that Ryan had a business meeting, Eden had been so disappointed she’d turned around and headed back to her room. That’s when she’d heard the screaming from below.
She remembered how the nightmares had come that night, of the woman begging her for help, her father’s vicious face screaming into her own, dripping blood and gore. Nothing but Stellan could keep the nightmares at bay, which he did, rushing to her room to shush her so her parents wouldn’t hear how traumatized she had been by her findings in the basement. She was one of the Blessed. The torture and killing of a human shouldn’t affect her as much as it did. But Stellan protected her, keeping it from their parents. And now,no matter how much she wanted to fight it, she was getting hungry.
As she walked out of class, in a daze as per usual, Maria tried to slam her into the lockers. Eden didn’t budge under what was a supreme effort from the stocky girl. Maria gaped at her in disbelief.
“You better watch your back, Winslow,” she finally spat before pushing her way through the crowds of school kids.
Eden snarled at her. A ten, definitely a ten, she thought. Over the past few months, as the hunger grew stronger and it became more and more apparent that at some point she really was going to have to do something about it, she’d started scoring people out of ten on whether she’d willingly suck their soul out of them or not. One being ‘definitely not, dude is cool’ and ten being ‘hell yeah, dick deserves it.’ Still, the thought of having to get close enough to Maria to do it, ugh. Eden shuddered.
Her cell buzzed in her pocket and she stopped glaring at Maria’s back. It could only be one of five people. Mom, Dad, Stellan, Noah, or Teagan. She shivered at the thought of the latter. She didn’t even want to think about him.
She tugged out her phone and grinned.
Hey Paradise, how’s skool? Class sucked so I bailed. Guess who stole ur Wii :-p
Laughing, Eden began texting back. Stellan was twenty now and attending the local college, which he hated. He could have gone anywhere with his grades. Unlike Eden, he’d actually liked school and, with his looks and charm, had been pretty popular. Eden had no idea how he managed it, but he did. His future had looked bright: any college, anywhere, away from their psycho family. Eden had been scared of being alone without Stellan, but she’d also really wanted him to be happy. That’s why she felt so guilty all the time. Stellan hadn’t left because of her. Technically, Stellan hadn’t left because of Teagan and his haunting Eden’s every move. Like always, her big brother was protecting her.
School sucks. Got detention 2day. U can have the Wii, just don’t delete any of my scores like last time :-/
As she made her way into the library, her phone buzzed again.
Too late :-o
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