Tremors 5: Bloodlines Novels & Stories

My legs trembled and I felt some liquid gushing down my thighs. No… Oh please, no… “Ophelia, are you…” Queen Romina stopped midway when she saw the reaction I had. From being worried, her expression changed to horror. I froze and my mind went black when I realized what was happening. “Forgive me if I was a little harsh. You can’t blame me. You were too aggressive I had to make some move,” Ren spoke so lightly as if he didn’t just kill an innocent life. “You lost Demitri’s, but you can bear mine. I don’t think there’s much difference. It’s still a child nevertheless,” he added.

She came to the conclusion that he was a halfbreed. "Freya, please leave." He began to plead again, his voice strained and tight. She then noticed that he had his hands clenched so tight, and his palm was beginning to bleed. She could almost not bear watching him. She tried to force his palm open, but he was strong, far too strong for her. "Please, you are hurting yourself." A distressed groan came out of his throat again, followed by a low growl. He suddenly unclenched his hands, and then she saw that his fingers were slowly turning into claws. That was why his palms were bleeding?

He’d seen his mother with bruises enough times. In his dressing room he pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and stopped short at his bed. Blood? Why was there blood on his sheets? Faro did a sweep of his room and he walked over to his desk and bent to pick up the papers from the floor. Faro frowned as he looked at the marriage contract that now held Sihana’s signature. The blood drained from his face and his hands started to shake as he put the contract down on the table. What the hell happened last night?

The mutant sways and stumbles and then falls like a building crumbling to the ground. I look up, and everything is spinning. My father is kneeling. Liosha! he yells, crawling to me. “I’m okay…” I say weakly. “We did it…” Except I’m wrong. Because out of the shadows, someone appears. At first, I think it's another alpha.. It’s Carlos. Something is wrong. It almost feels like dread. He’s surrounded by darkness, as if he's carrying hundreds of souls. Black blood is dripping from his hands, and his eyes are red, not gold.

Not right now. His hand went through the drywall again. The veins on his arm stood out, red mixing with white dust. I could see the tremor in his body now, the way his shoulders twitched between each strike, like he couldn’t control it anymore. “Damien!” I screamed again, voice hoarse. “Stop!” Nothing. My throat burned, my palms were sweating, my entire body felt like it was vibrating. I had never seen anger like this before not from him, not from anyone. It was pure, silent chaos.

My phone vibrated in my hand and I looked at James’ name on the screen. “Motherfucker.” I swiped to answer it, already knowing what he was going to tell me. “Is she okay?” “She’s fine. Two fuckers broke in, both dead.” “We killed 5, I have one alive in the basement,” I said. “Chinese?” “Yeah, Chinese. This was an orchestrated attack. I need to call my father.” “I’ll send a clean-up crew,” James said.

The only one left with any pavement on it. The cut comes quickly — a clean, burning line across the center of my palm. My blood rises to meet the air, dark and vivid, filling the space immediately around me with the storm-edged scent of Blackwell power. I hold my hand over the moonstone bowl and let it fall. Each drop hits the silence of the hall like a small decision that can’t be walked back. Morwen turns toward Emily. “The mother’s blood now, to tie the life she carries into the working.”

It snaked across the concrete, toward Marco’s hand. “Get back!” Lila barked, her team raising weapons, but the vein ignored them, slithering faster, wrapping around Marco’s wrist like a bracelet of blood. He gasped, arching, the gold in his veins flaring brighter. “It’s calling the fragments back!” The servers exploded in a shower of sparks. Reels spun wildly, tape shredding, lights strobing red-white-red. The walls groaned, dust cascading. A crack split the ceiling, widening with a sound like a glacier calving.

"They kept the remains. They used the marrow to track the next generation. Your mother stole these back, one by one, over nine years. She was building a wall of names." I walked to the center of the room. In the middle of the bone-shelves sat a single, leather-bound ledger. I opened it. The first page was my mother’s handwriting. The Fifth Door is not a choice, it read. It is a bridge. If you walk across it, you must be prepared to leave the world behind. The Moon Goddess creates the fated. The Woman creates the chosen. But the Equilibrium demands that only one soul can occupy the center. Underneath the writing was a list of names. Seventeen names. The same seventeen bloodlines Vanessa’s fat