Blood Mate (19 page)

“Of course I’m
not going to kill them. I’m going to alter their memories. It’s
time to cut ties. You must end your former life. I’ll take you and
Dominic to my estate in Rome soon, but your parents believe you’re
in the hospital. They must be dealt with now.”

She stopped
struggling. The relief that no one else would die tonight had taken
the last of her will to fight. “I’ll never see them again?”

“I’m sorry,
Nicolette. I should have made this decision sooner.”

It shouldn’t be
his decision to make.

She followed him
to the front door. He’d been invited into this house once; he now
had free reign forever. Her mother answered, startled by the strange
man, then panicked when August pushed his way inside. Nicole found
herself crossing the threshold after him.

“Good evening,
Mr. and Mrs. Maguire.”

Nicole’s father
aimed his shotgun at August’s chest. A moment of panic gripped her.
She’d been so used to the vampire being invincible. How fragile was
he now that he’d turned another? She jumped in front of him as the
gun went off, and the bullet tore through her shoulder. She convinced
herself even as she did it that she was trying to save her own life
and not his.

August was across
the room, already snapping the gun in half. She’d forgotten his
speed. As if he couldn’t protect himself. She felt herself fall.
The flow of time she’d existed in slowed and separated from
everything else. Then August’s wrist was at her mouth, his blood
jump starting the clock again. She wanted to protest, but she still
couldn’t heal a bullet wound as fast as he could. And the fucker
hurt.

Her parents were
less afraid than the last time they’d done all this, though still
in shock. Perhaps a bit of déjà vu had slipped around the edges of
their wiped memories. Perhaps seeing August and fangs and blood had
brought it all flooding back.

“How do you want
me to do it? I can make them think you had a falling out and no
longer speak and that you moved away or that you died or never
existed.”

“Why can’t you
just order them never to tell anyone? Then I could still see them.”
Was he
trying
to make this more painful for her? Did he want
her to hate him more?

“I don’t have
that kind of power. I can take or alter a memory or change how
someone sees something. I can give a short term order, but I can’t
enthrall someone to obey an order for the rest of their life. It’s
just not how it works. I’m sorry, I wish it was.”

“Do you?”

She tried to pull
away as he stroked her cheek. The tender way he touched her stirred
things she didn’t want stirred, particularly while her husband was
slumped in the back seat of the Bugatti like a dead man. How could
anything stir inside of her when this monster touched her? And after
the vicious way he’d behaved tonight? She started to cry again.

“We have to do
this, poppet. Believe me, I wish there was another way.”

At least he didn’t
know what had provoked her tears—the inner torment that might never
go away whenever his skin brushed against hers. The fires that were
ignited. These feelings were an abomination.

“He’s real.”
Nicole’s mother found her ability to speak.

“Yes. He’s
real,” August said. It was less of a neener-neener told-ya-so, and
more a resigned admission. A delusion would have been too simple.
“What do you want to do?” August pressed.

“Mom, Dad, can
you swear you won’t tell anybody about August? You have to keep
what he is a secret. People will think you’re crazy, and it could
put us in danger.”

“Nicolette, I
said no.”

She rounded on the
vampire. “Why not? What if they swear? Who are they going to tell?
How will it hurt anything? It’s not like they know where you’re
taking me. It’s not like they know anything!”

“You aren’t
taking my daughter anywhere!” Ray said, now aiming the handgun. “I
will hunt you, you son of a bitch. Where’s my son-in-law?”

“Dominic is in
the car. He’s coming with us,” August said.

Nicole couldn’t
take it anymore. She ran out the front door, slamming it behind her.
It was only a moment before August joined her.

“Poppet…”

“Don’t. Just
don’t.” She held a hand up and took another step away from him.
It was all she could do to hold onto herself. She fantasized about
Dominic waking and beating the shit out of August.
Please, God,
let him be on my side when he wakes.

“We have to
finish this.”

“No,
we
don’t have to do anything. You’re going to do whatever you’re
going to do, and I can’t stop you. I can’t go back in there. I
can’t do this. I can’t say goodbye to them.”

“What memories
do you want me to give them?”

She turned away.
“I don’t give a shit.”

The door opened
again and shut quietly. Nicole sat on the front stoop, looking up at
the stars, wishing wishes worked. Occasionally she glanced at the car
where Dominic lay. Several minutes later, the front door opened.

“It’s done.”

She didn’t
acknowledge the vampire.

“Do you want to
know what…?”

“No. Leave it.”
Her shoulders shook as strong hands sought to steady them.

“You must
believe me when I say I didn’t want this. There was no other
choice. They would have been a security risk. You can’t trust
humans. Even those who have been closest to you. These secrets…
they can never be told to anyone not like us.”

Nicole went back
to the car and got into the driver’s side. The keys were still in
the ignition. August stood in the beam from the headlights, a pained
expression on his face as if he were waiting for her to stop her
theatrics. She put the car in reverse and floored it out of there.

There was nothing
better than a car that moved this fast. She didn’t have the luxury
of super speed like August. She couldn’t blur around through life
as he could. The Bugatti was the fastest she would ever move under
her own power. The highway was dead this time of night, so she
pressed her foot to the floor, letting it accelerate to over
two-forty.

Let a cop try to
pull her over. He’d never catch her. No one could catch her but the
one being she most wanted to outrun. As if to prove that point,
August appeared in front of the car, causing her to swerve and lose
control. The Bugatti flipped twice before the door flew open and
chucked her out into the night.

When she stopped
rolling she turned back toward the car and screamed, “Dominic!”

“He’s fine.
Nothing can harm him during the transition. He’s even more durable
than you.” August glared at the damage the car had taken, but it
was his own damn fault standing in the middle of the road like that.
How had he thought it would end?

The soreness was
already dissipating. A broken bone would have taken longer. Somehow
nothing had broken. If she were merely human, it would have been a
miracle worthy of front page news.

She suddenly
couldn’t breathe; she’d hit her breaking point. It was too much
all at once. The tears choked her, and she started to hyperventilate
in the panic. August’s arms closed around her, and he held her.

“You know I can
take the pain. You don’t have to feel this. Let me take it from
you.”

The Bugatti was
still turned upside down as the two of them sat together in the
ditch.

“I can’t let
you take every emotion I have. What will be left of
me
?”

“Please,
Nicolette. Let me do something.”

How many times
would she allow him to use the bond like this? To erase the parts of
her that were too painful to feel? How could she forget that all of
that pain had been created by August’s very existence? She dug her
fingers into the earth, ripping up dirt and grass, a shriek tearing
from her throat.

A moment later,
she smelled the blood. She was sure she couldn’t smell blood, but
she could smell
his
blood.

“Come here. Let
me help you. Let me mute it.”

“I said no! You
said you’d give me anything. I want to see my parents again. I
don’t want tonight to be the last time.”

His face looked
pained. “I think it’s important that we go somewhere else for a
while.”

“A while isn’t
forever. Please, August. Let me come back. Let me see them. Can’t
you make it so I can see them again? Some day they’ll be gone
forever. Please.”

“We’ll discuss
it.”

“But that’s
not no?”

He shook his head.
“It’s not no, poppet. We’ll figure something out.”

She flung herself
into his arms. “Thank you.”

***

The
Bugatti was—amazingly—drivable. When they reached the house,
August carried Dominic inside and down into the cellar.

Nicole
followed. “Where are you going with him?”

“I’m
keeping him downstairs until we know the status of things.” August
laid her husband on a cot and locked the cage.

“And
then what?”

“I don’t know,
Nicolette. I really don’t.”

She backed toward
the stairs as he finished securing Dominic.

“Don’t run
from me.”

She closed her
eyes and breathed slowly, ignoring the dank smell of the cellar that
had once been her prison. Somehow being underground made it feel as
if the memories could come back to life and hurt her again, even with
the magic he’d done with the bond to ease the pain.

“I wish Dr.
Cronan had been right. I wish you were only real in my mind. That
life would have been better than this one.”

She tried not to
cringe when his lips brushed against her forehead.

“Go rest,
poppet. Things will look different when you wake.”

Chapter Fourteen

Nicole squeezed
her eyes shut against the sunlight streaming into the room. Light was
not a feature of August’s home. He’d always kept it dark as a
tomb. Heavy curtains stood guard everywhere, blocking the brightness
of the day—as if it were offensive to him.

She shielded her
eyes, still not ready to open them yet. God, it was bright. “August?
Dominic?” Should she dare hope her husband had changed? They could
be one big fucked-up immortal family.

“Mrs. Rose? We
thought you’d sleep the day away. Dr. Cronan is ready to talk to
you now.”

Nicole forced her
eyes open and took in the gray walls, the awful gray sweats and white
T-shirt, the canvas shoes tucked under the bed. A far too cheery
nurse stood in the doorway holding a clipboard.

Nicole pinched
herself. “Ouch.”

The nurse’s
smile thinned into medically professional concern. “What we gave
you was pretty strong. You needed rest. Did you sleep okay? Sometimes
it causes very vivid dreams, but you were so upset last night we
thought it best.”

This can’t be
real.

“F-fine,”
Nicole said. Her mouth tasted like cotton.

“If you need
some breakfast first, I’m sure Dr. Cronan would approve that. Help
you get oriented?”

“Okay.” She
didn’t bother with the tennis shoes. Putting on shoes meant
acceptance of this Twilight Zone reality, and she wasn’t ready to
go there.

She followed the
nurse into the cafeteria. It was mostly cleared out, but they were
still serving. The hot stuff was gone, though. Nicole grabbed a
banana and a bowl of cereal and sat at a table in the far corner. The
nurse hovered.

“Am I on suicide
watch? Are you afraid I’ll drown myself in my milk?”

The nurse gave a
short, nervous titter that was probably supposed to pass for a laugh
and excused herself.

The banana was too
mushy and definitely tasted real. The cereal and milk were the same.
As she drank her orange juice, Nicole ran her fingers over the wood
grain on the table. Was it wood grain… or a convincing plastic? It
felt real and solid, whatever it was.

She tried to
remember what had happened with August and Dominic. How real had
that
felt? She hadn’t bothered to stare at or touch wood grain. Too much
had been going on. She hadn’t had a reason to question the reality
of what was happening.

A tear slipped
down her cheek, and she brushed it away with the back of her hand.
There was no way she could say she wasn’t deluded. She was in the
midst of a delusion. Either it was this world or the world with the
vampires in it. And which made more sense? If you knew you were
delusional, a mental hospital was most likely to be real.

Standing in the
cellar last night with August, she remembered wanting him not to be
real. Could he have done something? Had he created this? But how
could he? Her mind was too strong for him to control. Maybe the link
made her more vulnerable. It had obviously made her want him more. Or
maybe he’d lied from the start. Maybe there was nothing special
about her mind at all. Maybe he hadn’t really had to kill people.
Maybe he was just fixated on her. But that pointed back to mental
illness, because why was she
that
special?

“Mrs. Rose, How
are you feeling this morning?”

Nicole was
irritated to be interrupted by Dr. Cronan as she tried to sort what
was real and what wasn’t. Both realities felt equally real and
equally illusory. Maybe none of it was real. Maybe there was a third
option that was more weird. Wouldn’t that be a hoot? She held back
laughter at the idea. It would make her seem crazier to have a
maniacal laughing fit over soggy cereal.

“I’m fine,”
she said, downing the last of the orange juice.

“You can leave
your tray here, and we’ll go to my office to talk.”

Nicole left the
tray and followed the doctor down several dimly-lit hallways until
they reached his corner office. He motioned for her to go in the room
first.

She chose the navy
leather chair across from his desk, not the couch. She wasn’t quite
ready to
surrender to the process—
whatever that meant. She
lacked too much power here as it was. There was no reason to make the
disparity sharper.