Ashes to Ashes-Blood Ties 3 (11 page)

She was more human than she gave herself credit for. He felt like an asshole, and he hated that she could make him feel that way. "First of all, I don't have any wounds because of you."

She glared at him, hurt shining in her eyes even as she prepared for another round of fighting.

He let her stew for a minute, then sat beside her on the bed. "And second, all you had to do was ask."

The way his voice went rough, the way he had to clip his words short to get them out made him crazy. He was going to say something stupid. He knew it, and wouldn't be able to stop it.

"All you have to do is ask for anything, and I'm not going to be able to tell you no." He swallowed.
There it was
. "And that's probably why I hate you so much." She smiled and kissed him, a friendly peck, thank God, and pulled him with her onto the bed.

As she arranged the covers around them, he glanced at the clock in the corner. "You know, it's not exactly my bedtime."

"Stay," she implored, twining her fingers with his. His lips quirked in a reluctant smile. "And I'm not exactly dressed for bed, either."

"Stay," she repeated, yawning.

He did.

During the day, while we slept, the atmosphere in the house seemed to change. If the Oracle had intended to snake our confidence by nearly killing Bella, her plan had backfired. By the time we gathered for another—hopefully uneventful—war council, we'd all found some sort of peace with each other.

Max, however, hadn't found peace with his dining room, so we met in the library. Bella lay curled before the fireplace in a pose that betrayed her canine blood. Max sat at her side, occasionally giving her head an affectionate scratch. Each time he did this, Nathan, seated in the stiff-backed wing chair next to mine, rolled his eyes. I gave him a warning glance and cleared my throat. "So, she can see into the Oracle's head? Like with a blood tie?"

Bella shook her head. "No. I am not familiar with your vampire tie, but I know I cannot control what I see."

"So, the Oracle is controlling it," Nathan murmured pensively. He stared straight ahead, the way he always did when working out a difficult problem.

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
)

"Not necessarily." Max tried, and failed, to make eye contact with Nathan, so he turned to me. "It sounds more like the Oracle gave Bella accidental access. Mind residue or something."

"There are still things that are hidden to me. I know where she is going. I know someone is with her. But I cannot see who." Bella's smooth forehead creased in concentration.

"Another vampire."

"That narrows it down," Max quipped. At Bella's hurt look, he added a hasty, "Sorry." There was a pause. Nathan still stared into the flames of the fireplace, his steepled fingers pressed to his lips as he leaned forward, elbows on his knees. Max looked uncomfortably from him to me.

I shrugged. "So, where's the Oracle going, then? I mean, we don't have much, but that's something."

"Boston," Bella answered quickly. "She is on a ship."

"Do you know when she'll arrive?" If she'd already come ashore, she could be anywhere. Bella nodded. "Soon. She is still at sea, but she becomes restless. They will land in a few days."

"That doesn't give us much time." Max seemed in danger of slipping into the same concentration coma Nathan was already in. Luckily, he snapped out of it quickly. "We'd better get moving."

"All of us?" I'd just taken a long, perilous road trip, and I didn't feel inclined to go on another one. Where I really wanted to be was back in Grand Rapids, living in skewed domesticity and half-assed reconciliation with Nathan. "I mean, shouldn't someone stay behind and try to find the Soul Eater?"

"Yeah, you're right. Maybe you and Nathan should?" Max smiled. "Seriously, though, it's a good idea. Bella has to go to Boston, because she's the one who'll be able to get clues and necessary info from the Oracle's brain. I've got experience with the Oracle, albeit a drugged up, restrained Oracle, but it is experience. And the Soul Eater is really your and Nathan's area of expertise."

"So, I guess it's settled then," I said slowly, looking for any reaction from Nathan. "You'll go to Boston and we'll… "

"Nobody is going anywhere," Nathan said finally. His meaningful gaze locked on each of us before moving back to the flames.

"So we're just going to sit around until the Oracle hooks up with your daddy and they turn the world into a nightmare of chaos on earth?" Max shook his head and lifted one arm over his head. "Raise your hand if you think that's a bad idea."

"It is a bad idea," Nathan agreed. "But it's also a bad idea to rely on information from the Oracle, especially considering how we got it."

"Information from the Oracle is rarely wrong?" Max turned to me. "Remember Anne, the receptionist? She told you the Oracle had given her a vision of her back breaking, and it happened."

It had happened, in gruesome detail, before our very eyes. "But she didn't know when. She told me the Oracle doesn't give specifics, and that's why she didn't believe it would happen."

"If the Oracle is telling Bella she'll definitely be in Boston in a few days, doesn't that seem a little suspicious?" Nathan turned to the werewolf. "I don't doubt you're getting visions,

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
)

and that they're genuine. But you said yourself there were things you couldn't see."

"You think she's setting a trap?" While I didn't question Nathan's intelligence, I did question the Oracle's sanity. "She doesn't seem to have it together enough to do something like that."

"While I'm going to Boston regardless of what any of you chuckleheads say, you do have a point." Max stood and leaned against one of the massive marble columns framing the fireplace. "On the other hand, I've seen her tear a man's head clean off his body, so I'm disinclined to think she's not evil enough to set us up."

"Well, at least we agree on something," I grumbled. "She's capable of killing us all."

"That kind of thinking is not constructive," Bella snapped, glaring at me.

"If you go to fight the Oracle, you will lose." Nathan gripped the arms of the chair and rose to his feet "Don't be so stubborn about this that you get yourself killed!"

"Hey, hey!" I shouted, standing quickly to step between Nathan and Max. The testosterone level was growing to an unmanageable level. "We're not going to get anywhere fighting."

"That I can agree with," Bella sulked, still lying calmly on the floor. I shot her an angry glance and turned to Nathan. "At the very least, Max and Bella should try to find out more about this Oracle situation. Now, if that means going to Boston—"

"Which I'm going to do, anyway," Max snarled.

I raised a palm to silence him. "If that means going, then maybe they have to go. But they don't have to engage in full-on combat. They can do some recon, find out what she's up to, and get back to us."

I turned to Max. "You have to admit, it's pretty stupid to rush in to kill her when we don't even know what she's got planned. What's to say that if we kill her, the Soul Eater can't finish whatever it is she's started, if she's started anything at all?"

"You have a point," Max conceded.

Nathan wasn't so easily swayed. "And if the Oracle has an ambush waiting?"

"Max and Bella are Movement trained assassins." I refrained from pointing out Bella had been seriously injured and that Nathan and Max had been rendered powerless by the Oracle. "They're more than capable of taking care of themselves. Remember your training?"

"I remember," he said with gritted teeth. "But let's sup pose they go and follow the Oracle, and learn all her secrets. What are we going to be doing?"

"Weft, we'll check out what's going on with the Soul Eater," I replied lamely.

"Without any Movement contacts and no idea where to start looking?" Nathan laughed derisively. "What are you going to do? Wave a magic wand? Or are we going to go back to the tarot cards?"

His contempt steeled my resolve to be the victor in this argument. "Nope. Not tarot cards. Think about it. You've got a blood tie to the Soul Eater. I realize it's a risk to contact him, but it's even riskier to let him roam around unchecked." I slipped my hand into Nathan's back pocket, jerking him forward so our pelvises bumped. Almost before the thought fully formed, before I had any time to register shock at what I suggested, the words slipped past my lips: "And I've got Cyrus."

Chapter Six: Conversations with Live People

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
)

"Hello?"

I don't know what I was expecting when I dialed the number Information had given me, I guess I was still reeling from the discovery that Cyrus even had a listed number. When his voice came across the line, I was stunned. Whatever it was I thought would happen, Cyrus answering the phone wasn't it.

"Hello?" he repeated. "Look, I can hear you breathing, and it is neither sexy nor interesting. If you'd like to call back when you have something sexy or interesting to say, I will be happy to chat. Until then—"

"Cyrus, it's me." I swallowed thickly. "It's Carrie." There was a long pause. I wondered if he'd hung up, anyway.

"Carrie." His voice seemed faint and far away. "How are you?"

"I'm fine." I glanced across the room, where Nathan sat on the overstuffed sofa, pretending to be absorbed in one of my dog-eared Terry Prachett novels. I stood beside the bed. I'd been sitting on it when I'd first made the call, but the sound of Cyrus's voice had pulled me to my feet. It seemed way too intimate, perverted even, to be lounging on a bed, talking to Cyrus, with Nathan in the room.

"I'm fine," I repeated, turning my back on Nathan. "And you?"

"As well as can be expected." His heavy sigh made a harsh, static sound on the line. "I have a job now."

"A job?" I heard Nathan's grunt of stifled laughter and pointedly ignored it. "That's great. What do you do?"

"Do you promise not to laugh?" Cyrus didn't seem too concerned, considering he was already chuckling himself. "I stock shelves in a grocery store."