Ashes to Ashes-Blood Ties 3 (32 page)

He relaxed a little, settling back in his seat. Things would work out. Bella wouldn't die, they'd be finished with this Oracle business and everything would work out. He saw the headlights of the car just before it hit them crumpling the passenger side and spinning them into a ditch.

Chapter Seventeen: Mother

"That's not possible," Nathan insisted, shaking his head. "If Bella were pregnant, wouldn't the baby end up—"

"A lupin." Cyrus shook his own head. "But that wasn't her intention. Dahlia assumed she'd be the one impregnated, obviously, or she wouldn't have used it on me."

"A lupin is just a werewolf who aligns with technology instead of magic." Nathan's definition didn't sound as confident as it might have in the past.

"That's what your precious Movement tells you. The wolves know better. Among them, lupin is a blanket term for any vampire who's been bitten by a werewolf, or a werewolf who's exchanged blood with a vampire. They might retain all
of
the distinct powers from both species, or just take on a few key characteristics." Cyrus didn't cover up his smirk.

"Our side has known for years."

Still reeling, I reached for the book. "How long was Dahlia working on this?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. I remember drinking a potion but she was always giving me potions," He wouldn't look me in the eye. "For various… sexual reasons."

"And you never wondered what they were for?" Nathan asked, arms folded, expression incredulous.

Sheepishly, Cyrus looked at us. "No. The first few times I did, of course. But they were always herbal concoctions. To enhance the act. She took them as well, so I assumed they were safe."

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Nathan snorted. "You know what assuming does. It makes an—"

"That's not constructive," I snapped. A wave of sickness rose in my throat. Memories of the first time I'd been with Cyrus overwhelmed me. It had been tense, violent, deviant…

and I had no doubt he'd treated Dahlia the same. She'd done those sick things to conceive a child?

"Why would she want a baby? Did she think it would make you turn her? Stay with her?" Nathan didn't so much ask us these questions as throw them out for brainstorming. "Well, it's obvious she thought a natural-born vampire would have something to do with the Oracle's prophecy about the weapon." I tried not to imagine what the baby would be used for.

"Or it
is
the weapon." Nathan's words gave form to my dread. He lifted the book and scanned the page. "Though it seems unlikely to me that she could have achieved all this in the time between the Vampire New Year and the time we killed you. I wish she would have dated this."

"No, she didn't start after the Vampire New Year. That's why I can't imagine her purpose. But she gave me the potion the first night I was with you." Cyrus realized too late the effect his words had on me.

I stumbled into the living room, breathing hard. I heard Nathan mutter something, and the scrape of a chair. But it was Cyrus who came to stand awkwardly behind me. "Carrie?"

"Don't!" I marched down the hall, raging with the things I wanted to scream at him. The fact his little "pet" had tried to take away my reproductive freedom—albeit freedom I didn't really know I'd had—should have been at the top of the list. How could he have not suspected? She'd never hidden her ambitions, from him or anyone else. So how could he have not known? And what would have happened to the child we might have created?

Another, more haunting possibility—that we could have had a child together, that I could have been a mother—tore my heart. But what kind of child would it have been? An unholy monster, like its father? Would I have lost all my humanity in protecting and caring for it?

To his credit, Cyrus didn't try to give me space. He followed me to my room and sat on the end of the bed after I flung myself across it. Two tear tracks, tainted pink with blood, wet his face as he looked at me. "I didn't know. Carrie, I swear to you, I didn't know." He pulled his legs into the small space at the end of the bed and closed the door, shutting us in the dark. He didn't turn on the light.

"How could you not know?" But that wasn't what I wanted to ask him, and he knew it.

"You mean, 'how could you take potions from her?'" His voice was thick with emotion.

"'How could Dahlia have done something you weren't aware of, when you were the person closest to her? Didn't you care about her? Didn't you take an interest in her beyond what she could do for you?' I wish I could tell you that I was forced. I wasn't. I took what she gave me, like a common drug addict I can't lie and tell you that I knew all about it, or that I cared about her, or that I ever asked her a single question that wasn't a proposition. I don't even know her last name."

"How could you be that way?" I hated how my voice trembled when I cried. I sounded like a seventeen-year-old breaking up with her boyfriend. "How could you treat her like that?"

"I don't know. I'm ashamed of myself. Not because you want to hear it, but because I am. And you know I've changed. But I can't change the past, no matter how much I wish it."

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We sat in silence for a long time. I measured the seconds by the beating of his heart, which sounded as loud as my own in the silence of the room.

"It would have been a lovely child," he said finally. "We're not unattractive people." I smiled, in spite of the pain that twisted in my chest. "Nursing a vampire baby might have proved problematic."

He chuckled, then there was more silence.

"Why did she do it?" I asked, though I knew what the answer would be.

"Because my father asked it of her." Cyrus sounded miserable, and lost. "I've no doubt of that."

"But she did it before the Vampire New Year," I reminded him. He shook his head sadly. "I wouldn't be surprised at all if my father had arranged my meeting her from the start. He has that kind of power. He can make anyone do anything." It was true. Cyrus had been so desperate for the Soul Eater's love and approval he'd killed his own brother to become their father's fledgling. He'd sacrificed his own happiness, his humanity. He'd even admitted he would have given Jacob Seymour his very soul if he'd required it. But why? I'd seen the Soul Eater. It certainly wasn't his good looks and charming demeanor that commanded such suicidal loyalty.

Sensing my thoughts, Cyrus tensed beside me. "He wasn't always like that, Carrie. You saw him at the end of a yearlong fast. He's little more than a glorified corpse at that time. My father… my father is selfish, but he tricks you into thinking he deserves all you do for him. And he acts grateful. That gratitude is like a drug for people like Dahlia and me. For anyone who's lived a life like mine."

Cyrus seemed to straggle with something. His confusion and pain were evident through the blood tie. Images of Mouse, interlaced with images of a time long ago, flashed in his thoughts.

I took his hand in mine. "Tell me."

With a sad, quirked smile, he lifted my hand to his lips.

"I'll show you."

It was an intimate thing between us, the sharing of memories. We'd done it before, when he was the sire and I was the fledgling. Though our roles had reversed, it felt as natural as before, and comfortingly familiar. It was something I'd never dared to do with Nathan. He'd seen flashes of memories through the blood tie, and the few times he'd tasted my blood, but I'd never invited him into my head the way I had Cyrus. Maybe I didn't trust him. Maybe I thought he would judge me for what he saw. Maybe I was trying to protect him from seeing something that might hurt him.

With Cyrus, I didn't care. Nothing I had ever done had been more shameful than the things I knew from his past. And nothing he saw could hurt him. He knew the extent of my betrayal. He knew me better than Nathan did. Probably better than I knew myself, since he'd seen and reveled in the dark side of my personality that I denied. We lay together on my tiny bed, our hands still twisted together. "Are you sure?"

"What do I have to lose?" he asked, drawing in a shaking breath. And then I was rushing forward, through absolute blackness, through emotions too numerous to feel, let alone name.

On the other side of the blackness, I saw a woman. For a moment, I thought she must be very tall. She towered over me, her hip bones at my eye level as we faced each other. Then

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I remembered I was not myself, but was looking through Cyrus's eyes. Cyrus as a child. The very thought of it, that somewhere, before the scheming and murder, he'd been, well, as innocent as a baby would have choked me up, if I'd been in my body. I took advantage of the moment to study the woman. She wasn't an adult so much as a girl. Rail thin, with limp, dirty blond hair and dark circles under her eyes, she looked like she would drop from exhaustion as she stirred the huge iron cauldron that hung over the hearth. A chubby hand tugged on her skirts, and she looked down. A genuine smile lit her tired face, then a look of alarm replaced it. "Simon, no! Very hot. You'll burn yourself, mark me!"

It was something young Cyrus heard often. She was terrified of the children burning themselves. Lifting him up, she kissed his forehead and wiped his nose with her apron. Setting him on his feet, she handed him a wooden bucket. It was heavy, and the rope handle made his palms itch, but he was a good boy. He knew how to get the water and bring it back for his stepmother.

"Out with you," she said, giving his backside a pat. From his halting gait, I imagined he was three or four years old. He stumbled through the oiled canvas flap over the doorway, tripping a bit on the hard-packed earth, and I was rushing forward again, to the spot where Cyrus, with no way to brace himself from the impact, smacked his forehead on the ground.

Young Simon Seymour was a hardy child, despite his surroundings. He stood, brushed off his scraped knees and took a few steps before he heard his stepmother's voice.

"Simon? Are you all right?"

Dropping his bucket, he plopped down in the dirt and summoned the best fake tears a three-year-old could produce. When the girl ran from the broken-down cottage, her face showed only concern. No annoyance that her work had been interrupted, no resentment that she had to tend a child that was not her own. She scooped him up, holding his probably dirty face close to her own, kissed him and murmured reassurances that he'd be all right.

I was touched to the core to see that, no matter how the rest of his life had gone, he'd had at least one person who'd loved him unconditionally.

The scene changed. Cyrus was still a child, perhaps a few years older. His footing was surer, his thoughts more sophisticated. He carried a wooden bucket, probably the same one from the earlier memory, toward the river. It was hot, and the water level was low. He'd have to climb down the bank to get any at all.

He'd set the bucket down carefully and was about to begin his descent when he heard the screams. It wasn't uncommon to hear a woman shouting in the village. Women screamed at their children, screamed when giving birth, screamed when they were being beaten. Women screamed all the time over the smallest things, in his opinion. Except his mother. That's why he didn't recognize her voice right away. He realized it was her when she burst onto the lane, wailing in pain and terror. Flames consumed her clothes, burned away her hair. She beat at her blazing skirts with bloody hands. The skin fell away in huge chunks. She was trying to get to the river, he realized, his small heart beating furiously in his chest. She needed water, needed help. Without a thought for the sharp rocks and protruding roots, he grabbed the bucket and slid down the bank. It seemed to take forever, while the screaming went on and on. The bucket filled slowly, as if with tar instead of water. The

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weight was insubstantial, though, and he bounded up the slippery bank faster than he'd ever managed before. His legs and arms should have ached from the exertion, but he gained the top and raced to where his mother had fallen, her body still smoldering, blackened skin indistinguishable from her burned garments. When he threw the water over her, steam rose.

She didn't move. She made no sound. Made no sound, but he couldn't stop the screams in his head.

Men and women from the village had crowded around. More ran toward them. And there was his father, fists clenched so hard blood ran from where his nails bit into his palms, though his face was an impassive mask. "Go home, Simon. Finish making supper." In an agonizing second, like pulling off a Band-Aid, I returned to the present. Cyrus looked at me with pity. After what I'd seen him go through, he pitied me?

"For having seen it." He stroked the side of my face, and I realized it was wet with tears. Sniffling against the threat of more, I asked, "How old were you?"

"Seven, as far as I know. I'm not sure when I was born." His hand stilled, coming to rest on my hair. "She was my father's third wife. He didn't love her, but… I think it was the horror of it. It changed him. Very shortly after that he met the man who would sire him. The man bought our bond and we moved away from the village to live in fealty to him. Father told us to forget everything before. It was a new start."

"How did it happen?" If someone had told me even an hour ago that I would feel something other than hatred for the Soul Eater, I wouldn't have believed it. But the look I'd seen on his face, the suppression of emotion that was clearly intended to hide his pain from his son…

"She was hanging the pot over the fire, and her skirt brushed the embers. That's all it took." Cyrus cleared his throat. "It wasn't uncommon, then."

"Whether common or not, it was horrible." I couldn't stand it anymore. I put my arms around him. "For you and your father."