Ashes to Ashes-Blood Ties 3 (10 page)

Max woke at the sound of Bella's scream.

He'd been curled up at the end of her bed like a dog—he'd hoped in her post-possession panic she wouldn't notice—where he'd fallen asleep watching over her. There was no time to berate himself for napping on the job. Bella clawed at the blankets, then her clothing, shrieking in utter panic.

Grasping her shoulders, he called her name, shaking her lightly. "You're okay, baby. I'm here. I'm here."

Her pupils changed size as she tried to focus. Frowning, she pushed back the hair that had escaped from her long braid. "I know. That is why I was screaming." The fact she could make a wisecrack bolstered his faith that she would be all right. At least, for now. "You scared the bejesus out of me."

"That is what I was going for." Her voice broke a little, as though she might cry. Of course, she didn't. Max was reasonably sure werewolves were born without tear ducts. Or hearts.

"Can I have a glass of water?" Her voice was hoarse, probably from screaming. She'd always sounded like that, after they'd—

He didn't just force the thought aside. He clubbed it unconscious, threw it into a crawl space and watted it up alive.

He grabbed a bottle of water from the bedside table—he'd come prepared—and twisted the top off before handing it to her. Partly to see the look of annoyance on her face when she realized he thought her weak and incapable of caring for herself, partly because he took bizarre satisfaction in caring for her. He waited until she'd gulped down half the water before asking, "Are you okay?"

She nodded. "I am fine. I am sore all over for some reason, but I am fine."

"Well, after you blacked out, we all took turns kicking the shit out of you." He smiled weakly. "Do you remember what happened?"

She shook her head vehemently, then winced and rubbed her neck. "The last thing I remember, I was looking into my scrying bowl, and I was starting to get a picture. Then I woke up here. I had the most terrible dream."

"Do you remember what it was about?" He briefly considered grabbing a pen and paper; but decided that might seem insensitive. Not that he would normally treat her with perfect sensitivity, but she'd had a rough ordeal. She deserved at least a day to rest before the interrogating began.

When her gaze met his, her eyes held a hint of hopelessness. "I saw a man. He had white hair… And the Oracle. She was there, feeding off of his blood. And she was becoming strong from it. I do not know why it was so disturbing, it just was."

"The Soul Eater." He shook his head. "When you blacked out, the Oracle…she took over your body."

"What?" Bella shrieked, her face pale.

He laid a hand on her knee to calm her. Even through the blankets and her clothing, he imagined her skin searing his. "Don't be freaked. She didn't make you go crazy or kill anyone, like the Soul Eater did to Nathan. She used you to speak to us. Basically, she just popped in to announce her presence."

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Bella's brow furrowed. "I knew that."

"Well, then you weren't as bad off as we thought," he stated, for lack of anything better to say. He could have murmured, "Tomorrow is another day," or "Every cloud has a silver lining." That would have been just as brilliant.

"Somehow, I knew that." She started to shake, her eyes wide. "How did I know that?"

"It probably leaked into your subconscious. I mean, she could have left, like, psychic residue… "

Bella quirked her eyebrow. "Residue?"

"I'm sorry, I'm not hip to the whole mental communication scene." He tossed his hands up.

"You are a vampire. What about the blood tie? That does still happen, does it not?"
You have no idea
. Everywhere Max looked—at Marcus's bed, Marcus's chairs, Marcus's obscenely expensive rugs—all he saw was a hole where his sire should have been. Of course, he couldn't expect a werewolf to be sympathetic with that. "I'm just trying to help."

"I know." Her voice was uncharacteristically soft. "She is on her way to meet the Soul Eater."

Max frowned. "We assumed that—"

"She is on a boat. It is a cargo ship of some kind, headed for… Boston." Bella shook her head. "Why would she give you that kind of information?" He decided to ignore the chills racing up his spine for a moment. "She didn't." They stared at each other for a long minute. Vaguely, he noted the ticking of the clock in the corner, and the click that registered it was about to chime. When it sounded, they both jumped.

"How did I—"

He cut her off. "I don't know. Do you know anything else?"

"Many things." She trembled openly now, and a tear slid down her cheek. "She killed a sailor sent to check on something in the hold.
Hold
. That is not a word I would use."

"It doesn't come up in a lot of my conversations, either." He brought his clasped hands to his mouth. "Maybe it's a fluke."

"Fluke? I have her memories in my head. You think that is a fluke?" Bella moved as if to get out of bed, and Max put his arm out to stop her.

"You've had a bad night. Just take it easy." He tucked the blankets in around her legs.

"Take it easy?" she screamed, kicking the covers back. "Do not tell me this! I have been used as a puppet!"

"Look, there's no reason to panic. At least, not yet. She didn't have enough power to continue inhabiting you."

Bella covered her face with her hands. "Why me? I am not one of you. Why did she not seek one of her kind?"

"I don't know." He'd wondered the same thing. More specifically, he'd wondered why it had to be Bella instead of himself. He would have gladly changed places. She tried again to get out of bed, but her arms shook, not up to the task. She fell buck on the bed with a startled cry, as if pain and muscle fatigue were things she'd never experienced.

He moved to help her, repeating, "Take it easy. You really took a beating tonight."

"A beating?" She snorted. "I am strong. Nothing the Oracle could do to me would

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matter."

"You were suspended five feet off the ground and she dropped you. And I'm sure your ribs hurt after the CPR."

Smooth, Max.

"CPR?" She frowned.

Max rolled his eyes. "Cardiopulmonary resuscitation. You kind of… died."

"Died?" She bolted upright.

"Just for a second!" He held out his hands, prepared to stop her if she tried get up again.

"Minutes at most. Carrie brought you right back."

Bella raised her fist as though to strike him. He braced himself, so he wouldn't flinch when she hit him.

But she didn't. She broke into sobs.

Max, having long ago dismissed the idea that werewolves, Bella in particular, had feelings, had no clue how to deal with the situation. In his mind, female tears were like acid, and he had never willingly wetted himself with
that
.

Still, Bella was usually so unshakable, so collected, so stone cold… It killed him to know something could bother her so much.

"Hey, don't cry." He reached to put his arms around her painfully aware of how awkward he felt. When she didn't lash out at him or drive a stake through his heart for trying to help, he gave her a hug and a brotherly pat.

It didn't surprise him at all that his gesture didn't help.

"I hurt so much," she sobbed, her words almost incomprehensible, given her tears and her accent. "It hurts to cry and I cannot stop."

"Just…you know, get it out." He rubbed her back gently. Physical contact had always distracted him from his troubles. She couldn't be much different.

"That feels good," she sniffed. "My back is like a fishing net, it has so many knots." He let the opportunity to ridicule her primitive, old-world folkism pass, and slid behind her on the bed.

"What are you—"

"Nothing sleazy. A back rub will help." Before she could argue, he pulled her between his legs and went to work on her shoulders.

She groaned and her muscles seemed to melt under his hands. "Wait."
Here we go. This is where she goes off on her "You're
getting
it all wrong, I don't feel
that way about you" kick
.

To his surprise, she leaned forward and putted off her shirt. "The fabric was chaffing." Faced with the smooth expanse of her warm back, he suddenly couldn't trust himself. He fixed his gaze on the dark lines of the curse tattooed on her arms, silently vowing not to notice the black straps of her lacy bra or the two tiny moles just above the small of her back, the ones he'd bent to kiss as he'd taken her from behind…

Just a friendly back rub for an injured person.
Keep your dick out of her. It! Keep your
dick out of it!

She moaned a little as his hands worked the base of her neck, and he shifted to keep her as far from his growing erection as possible.

"How long was I unconscious?" she asked, pulling her braid forward over her shoulder. The silky rope of hair brushed his knuckles, sending shivers up his arm. "Well, we weren't

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with you when it started, and you were… gone when we got there. But after Carrie got you back, I brought you up here and that was about… six hours ago?" Bella turned her head slightly. They couldn't make eye contact, but in profile he saw her mouth curve into a smile. "You carried me here?"

He shrugged. "You couldn't exactly walk."

"And you stayed with me?"

"Every second." He cleared his throat. "Except for when I went to get the water and the extra towels and the first aid kit. Those seemed kind of important to have, just in case."

"Ah!" She faced forward again and wiggled her shoulder, signaling he should continue what he hadn't even realized he'd stopped.

Trying hard to infuse every brush of his fingers against her skin with platonic feeling, he kneaded her back, then her shoulders and finally her upper arms, trying the entire time to block out her satisfied groans and whimpers.

When his hands started to ache, he tentatively pulled away. "That better?"

"Yes. Thank you" She didn't withdraw.

In fact, to his great and keen dismay, she leaned against him and reached back to loop an arm around his neck. "I missed you."

"Did you?" He'd missed her. At least, part of him had. She gave a little sigh. "Do you know you are still the only man I have ever slept with?"

"Congratulations. You went a whole month without boning someone else." He felt her laugh, and smiled, though it hadn't been meant as a joke. Somehow, the thought of her with another man horrified him more than the dangers posed by the Oracle and the Soul Eater combined. "Listen, I should go."

"No." Her arm tightened around his neck. "Stay with me."
What would it hurt
? He didn't particularly want to travel down the road his thoughts were leading him on, but he couldn't help it. Every moment of every day, he thought of her. Not because he wanted to, but because there was some broken pipe in his brain that kept sputtering out toxic drops of her until his head was completely polluted. Now the leak had become a flood, and his fear—a very real, paralyzing fear—was that his brain would never dry out. He'd just stagger through the rest of his life drowning in
her
. But it infuriated him that he couldn't just turn off the way he had with all those other women. She was dangerously close to becoming an obsession, and if he didn't control himself now, he might never be able to.

He shoved her off him under the guise of clumsy gentleness and tucked the blanket around her, pointedly ignoring the hint of dark color that peeked over the lacy edge of her bra.

"You had a bad night. We both did. You're not physically up to anything… physical."

"Werewolves heal quickly" She cocked her head.

"Yeah, well." He scratched his neck, a nervous tic that seemed to emerge only around her.

"
I'm
not up to it."

Frowning, she crawled forward, rising to her knees to loop her arms around him again.

"Did you get hurt?"

He didn't return her embrace. "Yes."

She finally got it. It took her long enough.

With a wounded look, she eased away from him. "You are not still angry about what happened between us?"

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"Of course I am!" he cried. "Jesus Christ, it's only been a month! What kind of inhuman bitch are you, to ask me that?"

Her eyes flew open in shock, then narrowed again. "Not a human. I did not think that was news to you."

"Don't change the subject!" He stood and paced angrily at the side of the bed. "You can't do this. You can't just decide we're chums when you're lonely or horny or—"

"I am scared!" she shouted over his tirade, her voice hoarse. "I do not want sex, I wanted you to stay with me. You have an annoying habit of cuddling. I thought if we had sex, you would stay, and I would not be alone here. I am sorry if I opened your wounds regarding me, but what was I supposed to do?"