Visci (Soul Cavern Series Book 2) Read online

  Visci

  Venessa Giunta

  https://www.VenessaGiunta.com

  Visci

  Copyright © 2020 by Venessa Giunta

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form, printed or electronic, without prior written permission from the author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:

  [email protected]

  Image/art disclaimer: Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-7326860-3-8

  Print ISBN: 978-1-7326860-4-5

  Cover Artist: The Book Brander

  Proofreader: Melissa McArthur

  Published in the United States of America by Fictionvale Publishing, LLC.

  This book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  https://www.venessagiunta.com/

  Table of Contents

  Visci

  The Soul Cavern Series

  Dedication

  Chapter One: Jenny

  Chapter Two: Claude

  Chapter Three: Jenny

  Chapter Four: Mecca

  Chapter Five: Jenny

  Chapter Six: Mecca

  Chapter Seven: Claude

  Chapter Eight: Jenny

  Chapter Nine: Mecca

  Chapter Ten: Jenny

  Chapter Eleven: Mecca

  Chapter Twelve: Claude

  Chapter Thirteen: Jenny

  Chapter Fourteen: Claude

  Chapter Fifteen: Jenny

  Chapter Sixteen: Mecca

  Chapter Seventeen: Jenny

  Chapter Eighteen: Claude

  Chapter Nineteen: Mecca

  Chapter Twenty: Jenny

  Chapter Twenty-One: Mecca

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Jenny

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Mecca

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Jenny

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Mecca

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Jenny

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Claude

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Mecca

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Jenny

  Chapter Thirty: Jenny

  Chapter Thirty-One: Mecca

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Jenny

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Mecca

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Jenny

  Epilogue: Four Days Later

  Acknowledgements

  The Soul Cavern Series

  Venessa Giunta

  The Soul Cavern Series

  Jivaja

  Blue-Edged Soul

  Visci

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  Dedication

  For Shirley Mae, who always supported me, even when I made really stupid decisions.

  I hope I’ve made you proud, Gram.

  Chapter One: Jenny

  A bitter breeze whipped Jenny’s scarf in front of her. The frigid air sneaked into the sleeves and collar of her coat and chilled her skin. But it was fine. It matched the chill in her heart. It matched the chill of the procession to her father’s grave.

  Surrounded by people—some she recognized, but most she didn’t—Jenny felt more alone than she ever had. Even more than when she’d gone to London for her first study abroad semester. That had been nothing compared to this.

  Sounds came through muted, like the adults in a Charlie Brown movie, and everything around her had a weird, fishbowl quality to it. The coffin balanced over the grave. Green fabric meant to give the illusion of grass lay over the surrounding dirt. As if that made putting someone into the ground easier. Fake green grass.

  The cherry wood of her dad’s coffin gleamed in the sunlight. It was closed.

  The mortician hadn’t been able to…make his neck presentable, presumably.

  Did these sorts of random thoughts go through everyone’s brain when they buried their dad?

  The man speaking—a pastor that Jenny had never seen before—talked about her dad’s great accomplishments in life and how much he’d be missed.

  This stranger. She’d bet her last dollar he hadn’t even known her dad. Hadn’t even had a single conversation with her dad.

  A scream built in the back of her throat.

  Icy fingers wrapped around her fist and squeezed. Jenny glanced at her mom. Green eyes, surrounded by puffy red skin, gazed back at her. Jenny realized that the smile her mom gave was meant to be reassuring, to give her strength.

  But Jenny didn’t want reassuring.

  I want my dad.

  Most of the people surrounding them had shown up to pay their respects to the city councilman everyone loved. They weren’t true friends. Jenny only recognized a few faces.

  Mrs. Taylor, her dad’s assistant from work who’d been with him since he’d practiced law, was a kind, matronly woman who always gave soft peppermints to Jenny when she’d visited his office as a kid. After the service, Mrs. Taylor had come over, her eyes only a little red and puffy, and given Jenny a gentle hug and her grandmotherly smile. She hadn’t spoken a word. Jenny had been glad of that.

  A few neighbors were scattered among the folks gathered. She wondered if any of the anonymous faces were part of the council that her mom told her about, the Visci Council that ruled the southeastern part of the US.

  She hoped not. That would be gruesome. Jenny was positive someone on that council had killed her dad. She studied the unfamiliar faces as the preacher droned on.

  And there. Mecca’s dad. David Trenow.

  He stood far away, as far as he could possibly stand from them and still be considered at the grave site. He stared at them from his spot on the small rise.

  If Mecca had been there, would she have stood with her dad? Or would she have insisted on staying here, by Jenny?

  Jenny wanted to believe her best friend would have stood with her.

  But Mecca was in the hospital, recovering from a compound leg break. And Jenny hadn’t visited her yet. For reasons.

  Things were more complicated now than they’d been before Jenny had gone to London. Complicated, because she knew Mecca was something called Jivaja. But Mecca didn’t know she knew. How awkward was that?

  Add to it that Jenny never shared with her best friend that she was Visci. How do you bring that up to your best friend?

  Hey, so I drink blood to survive and can’t really be killed. Oh, also, I’m faster and stronger than you. Cool? Great. Let’s get pizza.

  But she’d have to talk to Mecca about it soon. The knowledge was too heavy for Jenny to carry alone.

  Maybe tomorrow, when she planned to finally stop by the hospital.

  Jenny should have seen Mecca right away. She felt pretty shitty about that. But with Dad’s funeral and the insurance guys and the cops… Apparently, a person being murdered left a lot of things on the to-do list.

  She welcomed the numbness that stole over her. It was easier to deal with than the pain. The anger. The grief.

  David met her gaze, and she was pleased to see that he seemed sad. She wasn’t sure whether he would. Ever since Jenny and her mom had learned that David had Jivaja powers—he could kill them easily, if he wanted to—Jenny wondered if his friendship with her dad had ever been real.

  He dipped his head in a tiny nod.

  Did he want her forgiveness?
/>   He’d been the one who’d found her dad. Maybe if he’d tried to help more…

  Jenny ground her teeth together.

  Numbness. Stick with the numbness.

  More than fifty people had come to the cemetery. The funeral had had three times that many, easily.

  Everyone stood clustered about the grave—the pastor guy was still talking—so Jenny couldn’t help but notice the three individuals who’d gathered much farther away, even beyond David.

  They all seemed to be around her age, maybe a few more years, mid-twenties, one guy and two women. The guy, short and stocky with broad shoulders, stared at her with dark eyes. He looked Latino, and his black hair fell around his ears in shiny curls.

  On his left, the woman was more interested in Jenny’s mom. She looked older than a college student, but not much. Her brown skin contrasted with the brightly colored, over-sized knit hat she wore. Dark braids stuck out of the edges, hanging down about her body. She held her wool coat tight around her curvy frame.

  The third woman, if she was old enough to be called a woman, was thin, pale, and waif-like, sort of like Jenny’s mom. She wore black, round sunglasses which hid her eyes, but she seemed not to be looking at the grave site at all, but rather anywhere else, like she didn’t want to be there.

  Jenny brought her gaze again to the dude, and his gaze shifted to her mom. She didn’t know why they were here. Who were they?

  She—the taller woman—met Jenny’s gaze, and the intensity in those eyes almost made her gasp. The pastor had wound down and was saying what sounded like his final blessings. The man said something to the shorter woman, who frowned at him.

  Jenny released her mother’s hand. People began milling about, moving toward them in a wave, but she ignored them. Had to ignore them. The trio across the cemetery spoke amongst themselves, the taller woman pointing at the grave site. The man shook his head.

  Jenny’s mom began greeting the attendees, shaking hands, inviting people to the house.

  I can’t do this.

  With a pang of guilt, Jenny took two steps backward and left her mom to be surrounded by the throng of bodies. She worked her way along the fringe of the group, giving nods to those who expressed their sorrow, but not letting them stop her. She kept her gaze on the three in the distance.

  The man noticed her movements with wide eyes and a look of alarm. He spoke to his companions, and they all began moving away, winding through the headstones.

  When Jenny cleared the mass of funeral-goers, she broke into a sprint, glad that she’d worn flats, against her mom’s advice. Someone called after her, but Jenny ignored them. Her breath puffed out in a white haze before of her.

  The three rounded the corner of a mausoleum near the trees and disappeared from Jenny’s sight. When she got there herself, the cold air icing her lungs, she realized they’d ducked into the woods.

  She stepped inside the shaded canopy of the tree line. The temperature dropped a good ten degrees from what it had been in the sunshine. She shivered as she peered into the surrounding haze, searching for movement, but found none. The scents of evergreen and molding leaves mingled in her nose. Straining her ears, she focused, hoping to hear a twig snap or the crunch of leaves underfoot.

  But again, nothing.

  They’d vanished.

  Jenny climbed into the limousine behind her mom. The warmth of the space off-putting and strange after the briskness of the grave site and her run through the cemetery.

  Why did these stupid thoughts keep coming to her?

  Dark circles had settled beneath Carolyn Barron’s eyes, and her skin looked pallid and drawn. Jenny hadn’t realized how exhausted her mother looked until now.

  “Are you okay?” Jenny asked.

  Her mom nodded but remained silent.

  It would be a long drive to the funeral home for their car, thirty minutes, but at least they weren’t in a procession anymore. That had taken forever.

  The driver asked if they needed anything, but her mom just waved at him, and he got behind the wheel. As they pulled away from the curb, Jenny considered the three people she’d chased.

  Why had they run? Were they Visci?

  And why had they been spying on her dad’s burial?

  So many questions.

  In London, her mom had finally told her that there were others of their kind in Atlanta and that she’d kept Jenny from them on purpose. She still wasn’t past her anger at her mom over that.

  Their kind. Were those three “their kind”?

  When Jenny hit puberty, she’d gotten a weird talk. Nothing the health classes at school covered. Her mom explained their need to drink blood, which freaked Jenny the hell out.

  It would have—should have—freaked anyone out. Vampires, for fuck’s sake.

  Her mom hadn’t named them then, only told Jenny of their weird needs and began feeding Jenny every week or two from her own wrist. When Jenny asked how her mom got her…food, she said that Jenny’s dad allowed it so that her mom didn’t have to take from others.

  And all Jenny’s life her mom emphasized that they weren’t vampires. That it wasn’t necessary to kill people. That they should always take blood from people willing to give it.

  It suddenly hit Jenny—even more than his funeral and putting him into the ground just now—that her dad was gone.

  No. Not gone. Dead.

  Despair hit her hard. Her whole body ached. And behind it…grief, anger, fear. How would they get blood now? How did that even work?

  She stewed in her emotions until her mom spoke.

  “You’re very quiet.”

  “How do you expect me to be? My dad is dead,” she snapped. A tightness formed in her chest. “There’s an entire group of people out there like me that you kept a secret from me. And there’s a whole other group of people who seem pretty hell bent on killing us. And apparently my best friend is one of them. So what is it you think I should be saying, Mom?”

  Her mother cringed but finally nodded. “That’s fair. But you’re not the only one affected by your dad being gone.”

  “Dead, Mom. Not ‘gone.’ Dead.”

  “Yes.” The pain in her eyes made Jenny seethe more. How could she just agree without screaming? Jenny wanted to scream all the damned time.

  It wasn’t rational, and she knew it. Yet she had to handle the rage that boiled in her, that tightness that wouldn’t loosen. But she didn’t want to discuss her dad being dead anymore. She couldn’t. “Why didn’t you tell me about these people like us?”

  “Because I left them when I met your father.”

  “Why?”

  Her mom remained silent for a long, long moment. A police car went by, its sirens screaming. The sound bored into Jenny’s head like an icepick.

  She looked over to her mom and realized her anger had lessened. Only a little. But she couldn’t have said why.

  She was a hot mess.

  Her mom stared back at her. She had always been the most beautiful woman in the world. Every little kid thought that about their mom, really, but Jenny believed it even through her teen years, when she and her mom fought as if they’d hated each other. That was mostly Jenny’s fault, in truth.

  But now, her mom looked tired, worn. Each wrinkle on her face stood pronounced. Wrinkles Jenny had never seen before. Or maybe never noticed. Her mom’s green eyes dulled by grief, she looked…defeated.

  “I didn’t want the politics, the back-biting, the manipulations to be a part of our lives. I’d endured that for centuries. May even have enjoyed it for part of the time.”

  The furrow to her mom’s brow told Jenny that she had enjoyed it at some point. That was the expression she pulled when she was forced to acknowledge something she didn’t want to be true. The last time Jenny had seen it was when she’d found Jenny’s stash of condoms.

  She waited for her mom to continue. The anger still bubbled below the surface, and she wanted to yell at her mom for getting her dad killed. But she needed information o
n these people, these Visci.

  Her emotions were all over the place. Fractured.

  “When I met your dad, and we eventually talked about a future together, I realized that I wanted something simple. Much more simple than any life I’d ever led. I only wanted to take care of him, have a family, take care of you.”

  “Didn’t do a great job this week, did you?” She couldn’t help it. She hadn’t meant to say it. It just came out.

  Her mom’s wounded gaze lowered.

  “I’m sorry,” Jenny said. She was, and she wasn’t. But it didn’t matter. Everything felt disjointed. Bungled. Erratic.

  Her mom shook her head and looked up again. “So I disengaged from society. I told my father, my family. They were not happy at all, but they ultimately accepted it. There was no other option for them. And I told the new ruling group. They were glad to see me gone.”

  A ruling group. The Visci were big enough, organized enough to require a government, for fuck’s sake. Heat gathered in the base of her skull and the rage rose again. How could she keep me away from these people like me?

  She wondered why the rulers would care whether her mom was there. “I don’t understand why they were glad to see you go?”

  Her mother sighed and peered out the window. The day had gone gloomy. “That’s because you also don’t understand how dangerous they can be.”

  “Don’t you think keeping me ignorant is worse than me knowing what the hell is going on?”

  Her mom nodded, but her reluctance was clear. “You’re likely right,” she said. “It doesn’t mean I’m glad to have to tell you.”

  “Oh my God, just say it already.”

  The limo pulled onto the highway and picked up speed. The ride smoothed out.

  “For millennia,” her mom began, “royal families ruled the Visci. The most ancient of the lines. It was hereditary and had all the same problems that every hereditary ruling system has. People who are ruthless. People who are crazy. People who don’t care. And none could be removed, because…”