The Turning-Blood Ties 1 (38 page)

Ancient peoples believed the heart to be the seat of a person’s soul. Maybe they were on to something. The fact I could be removed from this plane of existence if my human heart is destroyed appeared to prove their hypothesis. I promised myself I’d research it, if I lived long enough.

Several times I found myself nearing Cyrus’s neighborhood and turned back. When the sun began to rise, I headed back to the apartment. My legs had grown tired hours before, but my anger propelled me to stay away.

Nathan hadn’t come to look for me. Ziggy’s van still rusted beside the curb, and I saw light in the living room windows.

Max sat on the couch, flipping through television channels with a bored look on his face. He held up a hand in a halfhearted wave to greet me. There was no sign of Nathan. “Where is he?”

Max pointed down the hall. “He’s been in there since you left. At least he stopped playing Dark Side of the Moon. I was about to go in there and fling the damn CD player out the

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window.”

I stomped toward Nathan’s bedroom, but Max’s next statement stopped me.

“We’re going in tomorrow night. Nathan didn’t want me to tell you, but I thought you should know, seeing as it’s your sire and everything we’re going to off.”

So Nathan hadn’t told Max what had transpired the night of the meeting. He must have had his reasons. Maybe Max was as fanatical about the Movement as Nathan had been.

“Why didn’t he want me to know?”

“Probably because he’s crazy about you and doesn’t want you to get hurt.” Max shrugged. “Or maybe he just thinks you’re going to fuck everything up.”

I laughed. “I’ll bet it’s the second one.”

Max dropped the remote and patted the couch beside him. “Come, have a chat with me.”

I really wanted to go into the other room and give Nathan a piece of my mind, but the way Max was looking at me told me that might not be a good idea. I sat next to him, bristling when he wrapped a companionable arm around my shoulder.

“I’m not getting fresh,” he assured me. “I just think better with my arm around a beautiful woman.”

I rolled my eyes. “Then think fast, before I remove that arm.”

“Okay, okay.” He chuckled. “Just let me give you some real quick advice. I’ve known Nathan for a while now. He hasn’t had a girlfriend since, God, I think it was ’84. And she wasn’t what you would call a wild woman. I think she was a CPA.

“The point is, Nathan doesn’t get attached to people, and when he does, he has a tendency to shut down. There’s some scary shit in his past. I’m not even going to pretend to know the whole story. But he won’t let himself get close to anyone. So, if you’re thinking of going in there and tearing him a new one, keep in mind you might hurt him a little more than you intended to. And you’ll just prove his ‘love hurts’ theory right.”

I swallowed hard, remembering words Cyrus had spat in anger. “Max, did Nathan really kill his wife?”

It must have been a secret he was warned not to reveal, because he chewed his lip thoughtfully for a moment.

“Don’t lie to me, Max. I’ll know if you do.” I lifted his arm off my shoulders. “Did Nathan kill his wife?”

Max sighed. “Yes. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.”

“But it wasn’t his fault,” I said, shaking my head. “I mean, he didn’t mean to do it, right?”

“I wish I could tell you that, kiddo.” Max’s expression was heartbreakingly tender. “But he was a different person then.”

I excused myself and headed for the room I’d only recently begun to think of as mine. The couch springs creaked miserably as Max stood. “He didn’t want you to go with us because he didn’t want you to get hurt. That was his main concern. I don’t know what’s going on with you two, but don’t waste the time you’ve got left. Take it from me, eternity gets pretty damn lonely after a while.”

I lay awake for a long time, pondering Max’s words, and the knowledge that at any moment, I could just poof out of existence.

It wasn’t fair to let Nathan and Max risk their lives to kill Cyrus. Not when he’d just end up killing me, too. No matter how many times I thought it through, I came to the same conclusion. I should go to Cyrus and kill him myself. If he took me out in the process, the

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only loss would be me. And as far as I was concerned, I was dead already. I listened until I heard Max turn off the television, then I crept into Nathan’s bedroom. He woke immediately, bolting upright in bed. “Carrie? What’s wrong?”

“Shh.” I peeled off my nightgown and climbed in beside him. His arms closed around me and he pulled me beneath him.

This time, the only urgency came from his desire for me. He touched me as though reassuring himself I was still there, we still had time. We didn’t speak. I think we were both afraid of making it mean too much. Perhaps Nathan thought to spare me the pain of his death. I know I would have done anything to spare him the pain of mine.

So when he kissed me, I kept the contact brief. When he slid down my body to tease me with his mouth, I didn’t cry out his name. And when he finally spoke to ask me what I wanted, I didn’t say I wanted him to make love to me. I told him to fuck me. Angrily, he obliged. He spread my legs wide and plunged into me. Besides that, the most contact our bodies made was the slap of his hips against my thighs and the hard grip he had on my ankles as he held them high and apart. The bed shook and slammed against the wall, and I didn’t bother to muffle my screams of pleasure. He came with a shudder that sounded like a sob and pulled me into a fierce embrace. I kissed his forehead and held him tight. Who was I kidding? Trying to block off my emotions for him would be like trying to stop a leak in the Hoover Dam with a cork. I had to know that eventually, the cork would shoot out and my feelings would just gush everywhere, bringing nothing but death and destruction to the valley below. Okay, maybe it wouldn’t be that dramatic. But it was foolish of me to think that I could deny the bond created by the blood tie, or my feelings for Nathan that had existed long before our tie was created.

“Nathan,” I said softly through my tears. “Nathan, I—”

“Please, don’t say it.” His words might have hurt me had I not felt the meaning behind them.

Please, don’t say it, or I won’t be able to deny that I feel it. And I’m too afraid to let myself feel it.

“I won’t,” I promised.

He laced his fingers with mine and raised my hand to his lips. “Thank you.”

But when he fell asleep, I kissed him and whispered, “I love you, Nathan.”

Or Nolen. Or whatever. Even if I never get to find out who you are, I love you. Minutes after sunset, I slipped from his arms and dressed quietly. I didn’t leave a note because I had no idea what I planned to do.

Only one thing was certain: by sunrise, either Cyrus would be dead, or I would be.
Twenty-Three

Welcome Home

M y vampire heart beat loud in my chest as I approached Cyrus’s mansion. The windows were dark, and for a wild, panicked moment, I thought I’d missed my chance. Cyrus had moved on, my heart tucked away in some box that was hopefully marked Fragile. Then I saw a gentle glow in the huge, floor-to-ceiling windows of his study, and my heart sank further. Nothing would take this confrontation from me. It was time.

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While charging through the front gate would have probably been the brave thing to do, I’d never prided myself on being exceptionally brave. It also didn’t seem like a good idea to walk, barely armed, up to the gates of a heavily guarded castle and politely ask to be let in. I patted my hip pocket, where I’d concealed a stake beneath the hem of my shirt. I didn’t even know if I had the physical power to use one against another vampire, especially Cyrus, but at least I’d have something to jab into one of the guards if they got too close. I followed the sidewalk around the end of the block. The entrance to the guardhouse was so far from the main gate that someone would naturally assume they were two separate residences. I passed the gate where Nathan and I had shared our secret meetings to plot Ziggy’s escape, and I thought of Nathan, still asleep in his bed. It seemed like all I had to do was walk into my room and Ziggy would be there, just like all those weeks ago. I glanced up the lawn. The lights were on in my old room. I felt an unexpected pang of jealousy at the thought I’d been replaced. A thin figure picked his way gingerly down the lawn, toward the hedge maze. I recognized that profile.

“Clarence?” I called out. My voice echoed back at me in the cool air, and I gasped. He squinted, then straightened quickly as recognition dawned on him. “Doc?”

My heart in my throat, I watched the old man scurry across the grass. The last thing I wanted was for him to break his hip. “Be careful!”

“Be careful,” he mocked. “You’re a damn fool, coming back here. They told me you were dead!”

From the pocket of his neatly pressed trousers, he produced a key ring covered with antique keys. After much muttering, he selected one and slipped it into the gate’s lock. Instead of crumbling to dust, it actually swung inward with a minimum of screeching. A few leaves from the clinging ivy pulled off, but no one would notice the gate had moved in a hundred years.

“Get your ass in here,” he scolded, glancing nervously up at the house. “Now, you got some explaining to do. Did you eat that boy?”

“What? No!” I said, a little too loudly.

Clarence shushed me. “Keep your voice down. The master’s home, and he’s been in a real bad mood since his daddy left.”

“I thought the Soul Eater couldn’t survive without his annual feeding?”

“Ain’t nothing going to kill that bastard. Believe me, this isn’t the first time somebody tried.” Clarence shook his head. “What happened to the boy?”

“Cyrus killed him.” I thought of the barrels in the basement and what Clarence had told me. “What did you do with him?”

“I didn’t do anything with him. I had the night off. They probably burned him with the rest of them.”

At least he wasn’t crammed in some barrel. I pointed to the house. “Where’s Cyrus?”

“In the study. He’s been there since the night of the party, trying to avoid her.” His last statement was delivered in an accusing tone.

“Her? Dahlia survived?”

Clarence’s face scrunched in an almost comical expression of disapproval. “Seems somebody told her she should find herself a vampire to turn her at the party.”

I ground my teeth. It would be one thing to fight Cyrus, but Dahlia was way out of my

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league. “What about the guards?”

“They’re trying to steer clear of Dahlia and the Master, but they’ll find you if you go in there.” He squinted at me. “You got backup coming, right?”

“No. I might as well stake myself right here on the lawn,” I muttered, looking up at the looming facade of the house.

“I got one in my back pocket,” Clarence offered. “This is gonna be ugly, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “You might want to get out of here.”

“No, when he’s gone, someone’s got to tidy things up around here,” he said with a sad smile.

“You don’t have to stay. I’ve got friends, we could help you get a condo in Florida or something. Anywhere you want.”

“I ain’t going nowhere.” He made a halfhearted shooing motion with his hands. “I told you before. I come with the house. You give him hell, Doc.”

I wanted to hug him, but I wouldn’t ask him to lower himself to hug a vampire. I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t jump at the chance for freedom. I also couldn’t understand the strange compulsion people had to stay in their homes to face hurricanes and floods rather than evacuate. Fear of change, maybe. Or denial of their mortality. Whatever the reason, Clarence seemed to share their stay-put mentality, and I knew I wouldn’t change his mind. I made him promise to stay near the guardhouse and not show his face until morning. I watched until he disappeared into the maze. Then I headed up to the house. After spending weeks in close quarters with the Fangs and Cyrus’s human groupies, the house felt downright empty. Apparently, he hadn’t gotten around to replacing the numerous pets he’d expended for the feast.

The guards were there, though. The second I opened the French doors to the foyer, all hell broke loose.

Two bodyguards waited for me in the center of the room. No doubt they’d watched me as I spoke to Clarence on the lawn, because reinforcements—a lot of them—jogged down the staircase. Behind me, the front doors flew open. I whirled to see Nathan and Max framed in the wide doorway. Relief and dread crashed through me. I’m saved, I thought. Then I thought, We’re all dead.

“Don’t put on the coffee, we’re not staying long,” Max announced with a wide smile.

“Get out of here, Nathan,” I screamed as the first guard reached me. His hands crushed my shoulders. I grasped his forearms and fell backward, flipping him over my body as another guard came at me. I sprang to my feet and elbowed the next contender hard in the face. Blood spurted from between his fingers as he covered his broken nose. I punched him in the groin. When he doubled over I grabbed his shoulders and rammed the top of his head into my knee. He dropped limply to the floor.

I looked to Max and Nathan. Max had knocked out one guard and used a stun gun to put down another. Nathan was cornered by an opponent brandishing a stake. He tried to dodge it, but the blow landed the wooden spike in his shoulder.

“No!” I charged forward. Another set of hands closed on me. In my haste to get to Nathan, I gave a hard shove and sent the man flying into the wall. He crumpled like a rag doll.

I reached Nathan’s side as he pulled the stake free and a torrent of blood spilled out. The guard pulled another stake from his belt and lunged, but not before I caught him. I bared

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