Possession-Blood Ties 2 (38 page)

“He’s going to be all right, you know,” Cyrus said, interrupting my reverie. With an

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apologetic smile, he added, “You had that look.”

“What look?” It seemed too intimate, too soon for him to be able to read my thoughts from my facial expression. Part of me didn’t want to give him that power. The same part worried that if Cyrus knew how important Nathan was to me, it would give him ammunition to hurt me. In my logical mind I recognized the changes in him, but my emotions still lived in a place where Cyrus was my manipulative sire.

“You have a look when you’re thinking of him. It used to drive me crazy.” What began as a smile on his face faded to a tight grimace of regret. As if he could still read my thoughts—maybe he could—Cyrus said quietly, “What would yours be? If the spell had been cast on you? That’s all I could think of, when I realized what had happened. What if my father had put that spell on me?”

“My parents?” I laughed at how absurdly human that seemed now, compared to all the hell I’d faced since. “Or you. I don’t know.”

“Me?” He didn’t sound at all surprised. “When I first turned you, I suppose? It wasn’t an ideal circumstance.”

“No. When I killed you.” The tear that slid down my face surprised me, and I swiped it away. Not before Cyrus saw, though, and came to my side. An emotion that would have been sadness if it hadn’t held so much relief clouded his face.

“I heard what you said to your friend this morning. About me.”

I’d suspected as much, but I hadn’t wanted to discuss it. “I didn’t intend for you to hear—

”

“You don’t have to worry about making me a monster. You weren’t the one making me a monster when you lived with me. I chose to behave the way I did. Yes, there were times you hurt me. Particularly when you stabbed a knife through my heart and sent me to some bizarre purgatory. But you were not so devastating as to destroy my humanity with your rejection. There wasn’t any left to destroy, by the time I met you.”

Unexpected tears sprang to my eyes. I wiped them on the back of my hand. “I’m not so egotistical that I thought…Well, I don’t know what I thought.”

Nathan screamed, the sound ripping down the hallway and pushing me over the edge. A loud, hiccuping sob tore from my throat.

Cyrus held out his arms, but didn’t embrace me, clearly waiting for me to make the first move. I walked into his embrace, for the first time not doubting his motives or his humanity, because he was human, he saw my pain and he wanted to help. His arms were strong around my back, his face warm where he buried it against my shoulder. If he’d been this honest when he was my sire, I could have fallen in love with him.

He drew back, smoothing a tendril of hair from my face. “May I ask you a question?”

I nodded, feeling a bit foolish for my breakdown. “As long as it’s not ‘Will you marry me.’”

We laughed liked old friends reunited after a long time apart, not an easy laughter, but one that suggested we were at least working up to that comfortable place. His expression turned serious. “Let me kill my father?”

The easy moment dissipated like vapor into the air. “Absolutely not!”

“Why? Afraid I’ll turn to the dark side?” He scoffed. “You’ll never believe I’ve changed.”

I swallowed the lump of tears that formed in my throat. “I believe you’re changed. I do.

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But I’m not willing to take that kind of risk.”

Nathan screamed again, the headboard thumping the wall and echoing through the house. This time, I ignored the way it unsettled me, and concentrated on Cyrus.

“The risk that I’ll return to my father? That I’ll become the monster you remember?” He shook his head. “That’s not going to happen.”

I didn’t respond, trying to block out the sounds of Nathan’s frantic, pleading voice coming from the bedroom.

“Right. I’m just a weak-minded human who’ll succumb to the Soul Eater at the first promise of power and wealth.” Cyrus twisted angrily away, marching down the hallway to my room. I followed.

The way he paced inside the small room alarmed me. I worried he would snap and do something violent or break something. Instead, he grabbed the framed picture of Ziggy off of my desk and thrust it at me. His face twisted with remorse. “I killed this boy. I killed him, because that’s what I was told to do.”

Ziggy’s face smiled at me from the photo. The glass of the frame caught the light in a glare, and I could only make out his mouth and eyes, giving him the faded appearance of an accusing ghost. My chest tightened.

“My father taught me to kill for fun and pleasure. He asked me to do terrible things for him, and I did them. How did he repay me? By taking away everyone I loved, until I couldn’t feel love anymore. I could only feel this burning, selfish want. I desired to possess them, that was all.” He sounded as though he would break down and sob. I didn’t know how I would handle it if he did.

On the other side of the wall, Nathan had become more restless. I closed my eyes and pressed my hands to my temples. Cyrus was there in an instant, this time wrapping his arms around me without looking for permission. He kissed my hair, whispering, “If my father is dead…As long as he’s alive there is always a chance I’ll turn to him, return to the way I was. I never want to become that man again! Do you understand? I want to kill my father.”

Another pained howl rent the air, and I gasped, shocked by the violence of the sound and the hurt that had caused it. “I have to go. I can’t stand this.”

I ran out of the room, to the front door, ignoring Cyrus’s call of, “Carrie, wait!” I took the steps two at a time, burst through the door at the bottom before I took a breath. I dragged the chilled night air into my lungs, wanting to drown in it. From here, I couldn’t hear Nathan crying out, but the memory haunted me. It was worse now that I knew what caused it. The thought of Nathan forced to kill his wife every second, the wife he still loved so much he could not let her go, was too much for me to fathom. I stumbled to the van parked at the curb and leaned my forehead against the side, not bothering to stop the shuddering sobs that racked my body.

Behind me the door opened and closed, and I knew it was Cyrus just from the sound of his footsteps. He put one hand on my shoulder, and I spun at his touch, startling him.

“I don’t think you’ll become a monster,” I blurted, a bit too loudly, but I didn’t care who heard. I just needed to get some of the crushing, confusing emotion off my chest. “I don’t want you going to him because I don’t want you to die! I don’t know what I’d do if—” I choked on the rest of my words, but they echoed in my head. If I lost you again. Though I hadn’t spoken them, Cyrus heard them. He stared at me, hard, his blue eyes,

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which had always looked so cold boring into me with an intensity he could have been pretending.

I thought of Nathan upstairs, struggling and in pain. I thought of the agony Cyrus must be going through, over what his father had done to him and the girl in the desert. I wanted the pain to be somehow deeper in me, fearing I wasn’t feeling it enough to truly understand. And then I realized that was all I had been doing—feeling all that horror and guilt until it felt normal, numb.

When Cyrus kissed me this time, it wasn’t passion and anger overcoming him. His hands tangled in my hair, his mouth crushed against mine as if through touching me he could erase my pain. He did care that he had hurt me in the past, and now he sought to make up for that.

I didn’t resist him. I still loved Nathan. He was my sire; it was impossible not to feel something for him. But too much lay unresolved between Cyrus and me. It wasn’t betrayal, it was closure.

Cyrus fumbled beside me for an instant, and I heard the back door of the van swing open. He never let me go, never moved his mouth from mine as he shifted me toward it and laid me back on the horrible gold carpet inside. Maybe he thought if he broke contact and gave me a second to think, I would tell him to stop. I wouldn’t have. I hurt. I wanted for just a moment to feel something that didn’t.

I scooted back as he climbed in beside me and pulled the door shut. There was a second of hesitation on his part where I saw the thought, We shouldn’t be doing this, flicker across his face. I pulled my shirt over my head and grabbed him, smashing my lips across his. He straightened with shock, then relaxed again, laying me back and covering my body with his.

When he shrugged out of his borrowed T-shirt, I forced every thought from my mind, for better or worse. We didn’t speak, but moved in a strangely easy dance of pulled clothing and hurried kisses on reachable skin. It wasn’t romantic and it wasn’t tender. It was fucking, in the most disconnected sense of the word. He slipped inside me easily and I gasped involuntarily at how warm and alive he felt. Vampires were cold, room temperature. He was human. When his hands closed over my hips to pull me harder, faster against him, they were human hands, not the twisted talons of a monster.

I clutched at his back and shoulders, shocked all the more by the warmth of him. When he spilled into me I shuddered, but I didn’t come. He withdrew immediately, not looking at me.

“That was a mistake,” he said, his voice hoarse.

I nodded, trying to find my voice. “Let’s forget it, then.”

We dressed silently, feeling dirty and used without really blaming each other. Only when he pushed open the door to the van and the clean, night air spilled in did I speak.

“You asked me what I would see, if the Soul Eater had put me under that spell. What if it had been you?” I asked, and he looked at me, his face grim. “What would you be living, if it were you under the spell?”

“Fire,” he said without hesitation, and my heart twisted at the thought of the girl in the desert. “I would remember fire.”

22

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Do-Over

A good, long walk always helped Max clear his head, but for some reason, wandering the streets with the Soul Eater’s goons in town seemed like a bad idea. He’d headed downstairs to the shop, remembering belatedly that Bella was there. So he sat on the steps in the misting rain, paralyzed by the maelstrom of thoughts whirling around his head. How could she? He’d just finished drugging Nathan for the night when Carrie and Cyrus had stumbled in, clothes disarrayed, post-sex guilt written over both their faces. It was bad enough that Carrie had brought that bastard into Nathan’s house, but sleeping with him?

After what he’d done? The very thought of it made Max feel used. Betrayed. Oh, other words were hot on the heels of that one. Words like conned and slut and bitch. Then, more forgiving words. Stressed. Hurting. Confused. He forced those resolutely away. He didn’t want to rationalize her behavior. The cold, hard fact of it was Carrie had fucked her old sire while the new one lay practically dying in their bed, trapped in his nightmares.

Fine, it wasn’t their bed, per se. Nathan and Carrie hadn’t really committed to each other, aside from the blood tie. But in Max’s opinion, that was commitment enough. Even if he wasn’t practically dying—that had been an exaggeration, and Max hated to exaggerate—Nathan was still out of commission. Every second, Nathan relived the worst night of his life, a night whose horror Cyrus had taken part in. Max was a smart man. He could fool himself with anger for only so long before it would inevitably desert him. When it did, he would have to face the real reason her betrayal bothered him so much.

It mirrored his own.

A light drizzle made the pavement wet. He ducked his head and brushed his palms over his hair, slicking it back from his face with the rain. It would be morning way too soon. He should be seeking shelter. But if he went upstairs, Carrie was there, either waiting for Nathan to get better so she could dump him, or waiting for him to die so she wouldn’t have to, and downstairs was Bella.

And temptation. God forbid Max forget that one.

Whether from a natural attraction or the revulsion between them, Bella made him painfully aware of his body. She made his blood vibrate in his veins just by speaking. His cock got hard at the sight of her. The memory of her taste and smell tormented him. Even her weird, canine habits seemed sexy in a disturbing way. He hadn’t slept the last two days because she was too damn there.

In that time, he’d barely thought of Marcus.

He had no right to forget. Hell, he had no right to have to remind himself that his own stupid actions had gotten his sire killed. The image of the girl with the sweet smile and cold eyes flashed through his brain. As always, the parade of what-ifs followed. What if he’d resisted the ridiculous urge to meet her again? What if he’d told Marcus about her before things had gotten out of hand?

No, he knew why he hadn’t. Marcus would have told him to end it, whether he’d known the girl’s true identity or not. Marcus had loved Max fiercely and far too protectively. If only Max had realized she’d been an assassin. The signs should have been obvious, if he hadn’t been so horny and stupid and young and in love. But now he knew better. Love didn’t get you anything, and it was more trouble than it was worth. Not that he loved

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Bella, or the bitch that had killed his sire. It just seemed better to nip the notion in the bud before things went any further.

With the air growing warm despite the drifting rain, he chose Bella, and stepped into the bookshop.

She’d taken to the place the way only a truly strange person could. It had good “energy,”

she’d claimed. Max had explained that the pipes had broken earlier in the year; the good energy was probably the lingering mildew smell. Yet another example of how different they were. He could squirrel it away in the back of his mind, with the others he’d been squirreling away for days now as ammunition against his attraction to her. When he opened the door, the bells announced his intrusion, and she looked up. Her eyes narrowed and her body tensed in the split second before she recognized him and smiled. Her smile was amazing, but then, nothing about Bella was less than incredible. The way she moved, as though she were aware of every muscle in her body at every moment. The way she kept her expression maddeningly neutral, so there was no hope of discerning what was going on in her mind.