Possession-Blood Ties 2 (6 page)

“The flight probably won’t,” he admitted. “It’s the waiting for sundown on the tarmac that’s the real problem.”

At the thought of sunup, I panicked. It was one thing to be in the big, sturdy shelter of a house or even Ziggy’s old Ford Econoline van when dawn broke, but a plane seemed terribly risky. “We’re gonna be in this thing with the sun up?”

“Well, yeah.” Max seemed annoyingly unconcerned. “Long flight, short night. Especially since we’re flying through it. Why do you think they built this bad boy without windows?”

“Oh, God! What if we crash? Max, we could die!”

“So? You’d die in a crash if you were human, too. If you wanna worry, worry about the pilots offing us for their cause.” On that reassuring note, Max led me to the other end of the cabin, where he pulled open a mahogany door with gold fixtures. At the end of a narrow hall there was another equally tasteful, equally neutral room with twin beds.

“Damn.” He shook his head as if disappointed. “Unless you want to share?”

“I’ll pass. Don’t take it personally. It’s the whole crushing-emotional-pain thing I’m concentrating on right now.” It hadn’t gotten any better, but I’d tried my best not think about it. It was something I’d become very good at when my parents had died. If I ignored

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the grief, I wouldn’t be incapacitated by it when there were more important things that needed my attention. Closing my eyes, I sank to the bed. “I left my bag in the other room.”

“I’ll get it.”

When Max returned with the bag, I gave the contents a quick once-over. I’d decided to leave my heart in the wall safe in Nathan’s shop. After we’d retrieved it from Cyrus, I’d given my heart to Nathan for safekeeping. He’d really outdone himself in the security department. The box containing my heart was fireproof and welded shut, so nothing short of total apocalypse would harm the contents. Still, I couldn’t help the spike of fear when I thought of being separated from it. Though I knew nothing could get to it in the hidden safe—and that leaving it behind was much better than trying to sneak a human heart through customs—it was another thing entirely to convince myself my fear for my life was irrational.

A slender, friendly-looking vampire knocked gently on the doorway to alert us to her presence. A wide grin split Max’s face when he saw her. “You’re new here.”

The young woman flushed, then seemed to remember her duty to be professional. “Yes, I am. My name is Amanda. I’ll be your flight attendant.”

“I’m Max. Max Harrison. I’ll be your passenger.” He offered her his hand, and she shook it with a look of mild bewilderment.

She turned her apologetic gaze to me, and I waved dismissively. “He doesn’t belong to me.”

“The captain says we’re cleared for takeoff. You both need to find a seat and buckle your seat belts,” she said primly as if clinging to her rehearsed speech would help her resist Max’s charms.

“Will do.” He winked at her, which sent her scurrying from the room.

“Do you always sexually harass innocent young women?” I rolled my eyes at him before heading down the hall.

He laughed. “I’m sorry, have we met?”

Once we’d taken off and I was reasonably sure we weren’t in imminent danger of plunging into the sea while burning to death, I unbuckled and stood. “I’m tired. I didn’t sleep well yesterday. Mind if I crash?”

“Not the best terminology to use on a plane, but knock yourself out.” Max shook his head, his mouth turned down and his gaze still fixed on the television. “Nine hundred channels. I think I’m good here.”

“Great.” Truth be told, I was more tired of the Spanish variety show he’d been watching during takeoff than I was actually tired. “Wake me before we land, if I sleep that long.”

“Will do.”

I briefly heard the staged moans of an over-enthusiastic porn actress blare from the television as I headed to the bedroom. At least he’d have something to occupy his time. Not that I’d been on a lot of private jets or anything, but the beds were more comfortable than I’d expected. The sheets had a thread count equivalent to Egyptian cotton butter, and the incessant whir of the machinery around me created a womblike environment, or at least what I’d imagine the womb to be like. I should have been able to drop off immediately, but my brain kept replaying the horror of my circumstances. I didn’t have a clue where Nathan was or if he was even alive. When I tried to communicate through the blood tie, all I got back was crippling pain. Did that mean he was dead? Just imagining it

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intensified the agony, so I shielded myself from his thoughts…or the void where they once were. All I wanted was to feel Nathan’s arms around me, to hear him tell me that everything would be all right. Instead, I cried, grateful for the mechanical noises that would keep Max from overhearing my sobs.

I wasn’t sure when I crossed the line between conscious and asleep, so it was quite a shock when I opened my eyes and found myself in Cyrus’s bedroom in his palatial mansion. The mattress beneath me was soft, the linen sheets as cool and crisp as I remembered.

Clarence has really kept the place up.

“You’re awake.”

I hadn’t heard the voice of my former sire, even in dreams, since the night I’d killed him. I’d seen him many times, but always through a murky blue filter. We’d never spoken. Still, I remembered his cloying praise and manipulative words. His gentle tone should have put me on my guard, but I somehow knew I dreamed, so he could do me no harm. I had no reason to resist him. Not that I’d ever been able to in the past. I rolled onto my side to face him. His long, white-gold hair covered his shoulders and the pillow beneath his head. A smile formed slowly on his beautiful mouth, and I ached to touch him.

“I’m not awake.” I couldn’t force the sadness from my voice. “I’m on a plane. I’m sleeping.”

He nodded and reached for me. His hands weren’t the clawed nightmares they’d been after five hundred years of living death. They were smooth and strong when he brushed my hair from my eyes. They slid down my neck to the scar he’d left on the night he’d changed me, and a shudder of longing passed through me at his touch. In reality, Cyrus would have been pleased with that reaction. In my dream, regret softened his usually cruel face.

“You’re right. You’re not awake. But now your eyes are open.”

I leaned forward and kissed him. There was none of the need for control or power in it that there had been when he was alive. I surrendered completely, willed him to do the same with my mind. In my dream, I could have him again, the parts of him that I’d loved and not feared. The parts of him that had seduced me into questioning whether my humanity was truly worth keeping.

When I opened my eyes again, I was awake, and a very startled Max was pulling away.

“I was trying to—to wake you up,” he stammered, rubbing his chin as though I’d hit him. The look in his eyes was just as accusing. “And you kissed me.”

“Sorry.” I resisted the urge to wipe off my lips. “I was dreaming.”

“Must have been a hell of a dream.” He slid his hands into his jeans pockets and rocked back on his heels while looking at anything but me. “There was something on the news I thought you should see.”

In the other room, Max had CNN on the television. The picture-in-picture function displayed MSNBC. I dropped onto the couch. “No porn? This must be important.”

“Shh, it’s on again.” He gestured to the screen. “It’s been coming on after the ‘top of the hour’ shit.”

The anchorwoman, who’d previously reported a story about a toilet-trained horse, put on a more somber expression. “Police in Grand Rapids, Michigan, are searching for a suspect in a brutal slaying that took place in front of several eyewitnesses Monday night.”

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“That was last night—” The words stuck in my throat. I grabbed one of the throw pillows and hugged it tight to my chest.

The anchorwoman continued. “The victim, whose name has not been released, was jogging down a public bike path when an unidentified man tackled her to the ground and cut her throat.”

A teenager appeared on the screen, her face blotchy and red from crying. “It happened so fast, no one could do anything. His face was all messed up, like it got burned up or something. It was like he just ripped her whole neck out.”

“We’re following up with witnesses and pairing them with police sketch artists, and we’re hoping to get an arrest as soon as possible.” I recognized the middle-aged police officer on the screen as the one who’d given me a speeding ticket earlier that year. He looked a lot more forgiving of the psycho killer than he had of my measly eighty in a fifty-five. Back in the studio, the anchorwoman fixed the camera with a somber gaze. “Police artists have compiled this drawing….”

Though it was hastily sketched in pencil and the jagged snout of his feeding face had somehow translated to a larger nose and whorled burn scars, there was no denying the man in the picture was meant to be Nathan. The reporter’s voice continued. “Police say the suspect is Caucasian, in his midthirties, with facial scars and several tattoos. He should be considered dangerous.”

“Tattoos.” I pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and index finger. “The sigils. Of course.”

“Hopefully, the Movement will have more information on this when we land,” Max said softly.

“They’re going to kill him, aren’t they?” I couldn’t remember ever feeling so tired. This was where Max was supposed to say something to comfort me. He remained silent. I covered my face with my hands. “I hope they do kill him. Because if they don’t, he’ll never forgive himself.”

4

A Rabbit Hole

I f the dead priest hadn’t owned a television, Cyrus might never have known what was happening.

Not that he felt he owed the Father any gratitude. Cyrus hated television. Since its horrible birth, the blasted thing was all humans could talk about. In this wretched captivity, though, Cyrus needed something to occupy his mind, and he wasn’t about to take up Bible study. The Mouse still slept. After she’d finished crying and he’d rested long enough to manage sitting upright again, he’d demanded she bring him a first aid kid to bandage her bruised and bloody neck. He’d let her sleep in the bed. He had no use for it. The care and, God help him, nurturing, he’d displayed had unsettled him. There’d been no chance of sleeping after that.

For the first few hours, he’d busied himself ripping pages from the Bible on the shelf to make paper cranes. He’d worked through the first half of Genesis when he grew bored and flipped on the television. It helped him cover the sounds from upstairs. Though any sensible vampire would have been sleeping by now, the Fangs seemed content to blast pounding, repetitive noise that barely qualified as music.

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There were three channels, and only one showed anything of interest. The local news anchorwoman wore too much rouge and her hair looked like one perfectly molded plastic piece. Exactly the kind of woman Cyrus liked to charm, then torture to death. He leaned forward in his chair.

“Authorities in Louden County are calling off their search for three people who were reported missing after a church fire in Hudson .” The picture cut to three photos. The dead priest and nun, and a pretty girl with a bright smile wearing a cotton sundress. The Mouse.

The anchorwoman’s nasal voice continued. “Police say Father Bartholomew Straub, Sister Helen Jacobs and Stacey Pickles were working at Saint Anne Catholic Church on Friday when the fire broke out, but the three have not been seen since. Footprints leading away from the building suggest they may have attempted to walk to safety, but with desert temperatures reaching record highs over the weekend, they are presumed dead.”

Cyrus eyed the girl on the bed, shaking his head. “Pickles?”

More disturbing than the Mouse’s ridiculous name—though barely—was the matter of the fire. Why would the authorities believe the building had burned? And if the weekend had passed…

“Get up.” He stood, glad of the little strength sleep had returned to him, and shook her.

“What day is it?”

She stared at him in bleary confusion. “Tuesday or Wednesday. I lost track. You’re standing.”

Tuesday or Wednesday. Which meant he’d been raised on Monday. But they’d been here since Friday. “What happened when people showed up for Mass on Sunday?”

“I don’t know. No one came. When Father Bart mentioned it to…” She wet her lips.

“That’s when they killed him. He tried to tell them people would be coming soon for services. They laughed at him and said no one was coming to help us.”

Cyrus turned away from her tears. They might spark that dangerous human guilt in him, and he had no time for it now. “Did they tell you why?”

“No. They just started killing.”

“But they kept them for two days before they killed them. Why?” The timeline didn’t make sense. If he’d taken hostages, he would have dispensed with the useless ones right away.

When he turned to face the Mouse, her eyes were wide and rimmed with red. “They were doing things. Occult things. Satan worship.”

“Impossible. The Fangs think Satanists are pussies.” When she flinched at his coarse language, it buoyed his mood. “What, exactly, were they doing?”

She curled her legs beneath her and toyed with the hem of her dress. A perverse memory of the night before came to his mind. He expected guilt, and when it didn’t come he found its absence far more disturbing than its presence would have been. As if sensing the change in him, she wrapped her arms across her chest, hugging herself. “I don’t know what they were doing. They didn’t tell us. But I heard them say the time had to be right, they had to be sure it was him. And they needed Father Bart’s hand.”

“He had to take part in the ritual?” It made sense. Though Cyrus didn’t believe in all the Catholic tripe he’d been made to swallow as a child, the power of a priest was similar to, if not greater than, that of a practiced magician.