“Glad to see you’re getting on so well down here.” Angie’s face morphed back to its human form. She looked better as a vampire.
His mouth dry, Cyrus slipped the photographs into his pocket. He said nothing, but he knew what they meant. The Fangs knew he valued Mouse. That knowledge was a formidable weapon, one he hadn’t even known the existence of until he saw it with his own eyes. They could hurt her, to test him, to force him to cooperate, for no reason other than because it would be fun to torture him.
“It helps to know what we’ve got for bargaining material. Don’t you think?” Angie stubbed out her cigarette on the plastic tabletop.
His mouth dry, Cyrus nodded. “I suppose it does.”
He had to take a few steps toward the door before he could regain some of the confidence she’d shaken from him. When he did, he stopped and faced her. “Remember, I’ve got bargaining material, as well. I need her. I’m still too weak to care for myself.” A lie, but an easy one to tell. “If she dies, I die, and you lose your money.”
“Repaying your father’s money would be the least of my worries.” Angie folded her arms over her chest. “Besides, I could always just raise you again.”
Cyrus watched her until she disappeared at the top of the stairs and closed the door behind her. He raced up and locked it, mentally berating himself for not requesting the key or whatever other method Angie had used to get in.
Mouse still perched on the edge of the bed, her thin arms wrapped around her middle. She leaned over her knees, sniffling softly.
“Damn it.” Cyrus couldn’t help the curse as he hurried down the stairs. “What’s the matter?”
She looked up, large eyes red with tears. “What will happen when you’re gone? What will they do to me?”
“It will be all right.” He hated himself for the empty promise. He had no idea what would happen when his father sent for him. But he sat beside her on the bed, unable to stop the hollow vows tumbling from his lips. “I’ll make sure no one hurts you.”
You weren’t able to save the rest of them, a mean voice in his head taunted. It didn’t bother him so much to be reminded of his past failures to save his companions, but that he suddenly thought of Mouse in the same category.
“And what if they…change you?” It seemed as though the words were hard for her to say. “If you become one of them, will you kill me?”
Probably. He thought of what his father had done to Nolen, forcing him to devour the one person he’d wanted to protect with his last human breath. If the Fangs decided to change Cyrus and lock him up with Mouse, the time would come when he would kill from necessity. And if his father did the deed himself, Mouse still might die at his hands.
Cyrus didn’t tell her that, though. “No. I won’t become some mindless monster. I promise, I will never hurt you.”
But he had the distinct impression they were both already dead.
Chapter 8
Victim of Circumstance
Max Harrison had never liked Michigan. Yet somehow, he kept ending up there.
He’d seen Carrie off in Ziggy’s old heap of a van with a silent prayer and a dozen false assurances that the vehicle would make it. He didn’t like lying, but they didn’t have another option. He’d need his car to track down Nathan, and the van’s windowless back would at least give Carrie shelter from the sun.
She’d left him the keys to the apartment and told him to make himself at home, but she’d wanted to make it as far as she could before daylight.
As if he could make himself at home in a city where everything shut down at nine o’clock.
He trudged up the stairs to Nathan and Carrie’s apartment, shaking his head. The last place he’d stayed for any length of time was Chicago. Blues and booze until the wee hours of the morning. Nothing could beat it. But he couldn’t stay there for long. There were too many memories of Marcus. Too much pain.
Now, he wished he could be there. He wished he could be in Zimbabwe. Anywhere but here.
He didn’t doubt for a minute Carrie’s story. Nathan probably was possessed. But while she was full of hope and determination, all Max could muster was a lesser level of bone-weary despair.
Demonic possession of a vampire wasn’t something that could be cured without drastic measures. Those measures usually involved the sharp end of a wooden stake. Though it was hard to imagine actually killing Nathan, Max knew it would be far better for him to die than be miraculously cured and have to face the death he’d visited on innocent people.
Max dropped his bag at the end of the couch out of habit. The last time he’d stayed in the apartment had been the time he’d helped Nathan and Carrie kill Cyrus. She was a piece of work, running off to face him again after all he’d done to her. Max wasn’t sure if, given the same circumstances, he could have managed it.
In the kitchen, he looked guiltily through the refrigerator. No matter how many times someone told him to make himself at home, he always felt as if he was snooping. He grabbed a bag of blood and poured it into the teakettle, praying Carrie hadn’t tampered with the contents for one of her experiments.
The hiss of the burner reminded him how quiet it was in the empty apartment, and he went to the stereo. Glancing over the rows of CDs, he found it easy to tell which were Nathan’s and which belonged to Carrie. Nathan was all about mellow, moody classic rock. He had a decent selection of Zeppelin and some Floyd. Carrie had a small but respectable jazz collection and some pop albums of questionable taste.
Like oil and water. Max chuckled to himself as he slid a Led Zeppelin album into the CD player. The machine cycled, then the opening notes of “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You” wafted from the speakers.
“Excellent,” Max affirmed to no one in particular. He went to the kitchen, poured the warmed blood into a mug and seated himself at the cracked Formica dinette table. With no time left to canvass the city, he decided to wait out daylight and start at dusk. Wherever Nathan was, he’d find him. He owed it to his friend to let him die at the hands of a vampire, not some werewolf assassin who reeked of dirt and campfire smoke. The only thing Max hated more than werewolves were hippies, and even he had a hard time telling them apart.
As the tempo of the music slowly picked up, he stood and wandered around the apartment, sipping his dinner. Everywhere he looked were books with creased spines, notebooks and scraps of paper, framed snapshots on the shelves. It was a home. Someone lived here.
He picked up one of the photos. It was a souvenir snapshot people buy at amusement parks, a freeze frame of a moment on a roller coaster, at night, of course. Never in the entire time he’d known Nathan had Max ever seen him look like he was having that much fun.
Carrie was good for him. An ache grew in Max’s chest. It would be hell on earth for her when Nathan died. Not just because of the blood tie. Whether or not they admitted it to themselves or each other, Carrie and Nathan were in love.
The constant, fevered wind-up of the song started to grate on Max’s nerves. He moved to change the track, and the floorboard creaked. Another creak echoed from the other end of the hall.
He straightened. So, it wasn’t the racing tempo of the music that set him on edge. Someone was there, lurking in the dark, empty rooms.
He hoped it was just a garden-variety prowler.
The only weapon at his immediate disposal was a wooden stake. He slipped it into his back pocket, just in case, and retrieved a knife from the kitchen. The plan was to charge in, knife waving, in full monster face. Whoever had broken in would go out the way they’d come and hopefully not break their necks on the way down the fire escape or drainpipe or whatever they’d shimmied up. He changed his face to feeding mode and ran down the hall.
Two steps into Nathan’s bedroom, a spike-heeled, leather boot caught Max in the forehead. The wicked thing cut across his face, and he stumbled back, the surprise flashing his vampire face back to human. Two more blows, a punch to the stomach and a knee to his groin forced him against the wall, doubled over,
and brought the monster back to his countenance.
When he drew in a gasp of breath through his mouth and nose, he caught the spicy scent of her perfume. Werewolf. DeCesare.
With a cry of rage, he launched himself at his assailant. She tumbled backward and he crushed her to the floor. Though he had a good forty pounds on her, she almost wriggled free. She clawed at his face with razor sharp nails, and he leaned back. It was all the space she needed to flip him onto his back and aim a stake at his heart. He froze.
“Nolen Galbraith,” she wheezed in a strange accent, “by order of the Voluntary Vampire Extinction Movement, you are sentenced to death for the murder of Marianne Galbraith and Christine Allen. How do you plead?”
“Turn on the light,” he said between deep breaths. You dumb bitch, he added silently.
She squinted in the darkness. “Nolen Galbraith?”
“No. Nice try, though.” Max shoved her off him and stood, brushing at his clothes as though they had been soiled.
In the faint illumination from the mercury light outside, he recognized her. “You met with the general last night. Or should I say, ‘your boyfriend, the general’?”
“You turn on the light,” she demanded, an exotic lilt adding haughty authority to her words. “I do not have the same quality night vision as you do.”
“Could that be because, oh, I don’t know, you’re not a vampire?” But he turned on the light anyway, because she still had a stake and he was curiously allergic to wooden splinters through the heart. “I always thought dogs could see in the dark. Or is that cats?”
“General Breton sent me. Apparently he was worried about an assassin who is not capable of finishing the assignment.” Her last words morphed into a growl.
“That still doesn’t explain why you’re in my friend’s house. Especially when he’s running berserk on the streets. What the hell were you thinking, coming here?” The knife was on the floor at his feet. He just had to figure out a way to grab it without getting skewered.
Thankfully, she didn’t appear to have noticed his frantic glance downward. “I could ask the same of you. You are walking around, drinking their blood supply, using their appliances. It seems like you might be playing both sides.”
“There’s only one side, sweetheart. I hate to disappoint you, but Nolen—” Max sketched quotation marks with his fingers “—is on it.”
“He has killed.”
“Under very extenuating circumstances!”
Bella shook her head. “There are no extenuating circumstances. He has killed, he will be killed.”
“Unless I kill you first.” Max expected to see some reaction in her eyes, but there was none. Just the cold, calculating stare of a predator who lived only for the hunt.
Moving faster than any mortal creature he’d ever seen, the werewolf threw the stake at him. He ducked it and scooped up the knife. The wooden missile embedded itself in the wall, near where his heart would have been.
She ran for the door, grabbing a handful of clothes from the laundry hamper as she passed.
For the scent, he realized with an inward curse. He admitted with sick fury that she might have the upper hand in this fight. You could train a person to be a hunter, but animals…they were born with it.
He ran after her, nearly catching her at the bottom of the stairs, but when she threw open the door, newborn sunlight flooded the stairwell. He hissed and jumped back.
As she fled down the street, she called, “Stay out of my way, vampire. I will kill you if I must.”
I hooked up with I-94 and hauled ass over the state line before the sun rose. After a boring, cramped day in the unbearably stuffy van, I hit the road with a travel mug of cold blood from the cooler I’d brought, and set my sights west.
Just outside of Chicago I caught the junction of 80-90, which would lead me into Iowa, and the landscape flattened almost immediately. With no tape deck and a broken radio, I exhausted my voice—and repertoire of Abba songs—quickly.
With nothing to occupy my mind, my thoughts turned inevitably to Nathan. I knew he wasn’t dead. I tried the blood tie vigilantly, though all I ever got in return was the tiniest pull. I filled my mind with as much love and support as I could, and sent it his way, hoping he would get the message. Eventually, memories I would rather have ignored started popping to the surface.
I thought of all our failed attempts to play Risk. The way I’d shouted “Bad omen! Bad omen!” every time he’d rolled the dice. It had driven him mad, but not so mad he couldn’t see the humor in it.
I remembered the time we’d tried to repaint The Crypt.
“What the hell is that?” he’d demanded of the botanical border I’d begun sponging around the top of the walls.
I’d squinted at it with what I’d considered a critical eye. “A fig leaf.”
Apparently, I’d not been critical enough. He’d looked deeply offended by my artistic skills. “Apparently your idea of a leaf and my idea of a leaf differ greatly.”
Frowning, I’d dabbed at the paint protectively. “I think it looks fine.”
“All I’m saying is if you were in charge of the Garden of Eden, I’d be glad not to live there.” It had been close to dawn and we’d been working since sunset. Nathan’s tired voice and his accent, grown thick with exhaustion, had rendered his words barely distinguishable as English.
I’d been unable to resist a guttural “Och!” The ensuing paint fight had splattered the shelves and the ceiling. We would have gotten around to painting over it if we hadn’t ended up jumping each other’s bones right there on the plastic sheets on the floor.
I pulled all the happiness I could from these memories and gave it over to the blood tie. Maybe it would reassure him we were looking for him, and keep him from despairing.
I wished I could pull the van over and cry, but there was no time. I swallowed my pain and kept my eyes on the road.
What would happen if Max caught up with him? Though Anne had sounded pretty sure he wouldn’t finish Nathan off, she’d also seemed certain the Oracle wouldn’t hurt anybody, and look where that had gotten her. The thought of Max doing anything to Nathan…I wasn’t confident if I would ever be able to face him again should that happen.
Then there was the Cyrus problem. It had been easy to let my grudge against him die when I thought he was dead himself. But how could I possibly endure seeing him again? Would he still have that sick, seductive power over me?
There was very little I feared now that I had become the thing that went bump in the night. Unfortunately, my old sire figured largely in that very little. He’d had a hold over me that had surpassed the power of the blood tie. He’d made me believe he’d needed me, that I could have that power over him. For a person who’d wanted nothing more in life than that kind of control, it had been a dream come true. How would I react to him now that he was human and he really did need me?
Assuming he was still human when I got there. I couldn’t imagine him tolerating such a state for long.
Outside the windows, the miles passed by. I never knew why they referred to this landscape as “rolling plains.” They didn’t roll at all. They just stretched out endlessly into the night, with only the occasional farm or small town to break the illusion of standing still.
As close to dawn as possible, without any clue as to what state I was in, I pulled into a rest stop and climbed behind the heavy canvas curtains to sleep.
Out of loneliness more than hope, I tried the blood tie again.
We’re going to fix this, Nathan. I promise, we’re going to fix this.
At first, I thought there would be no response at all, not even the strange tug I’d felt when I’d tried to communicate before. This time, though, I heard him.
Help me.
His reply was faint, but I knew it was him and not my frantic imagination. It was definitely Nathan.
And he was in unimaginable pain.
Cyrus woke at sunup. Mouse lay curled at his side, a rare smile on her sle
eping face. Whatever she dreamed of, he hated the thought of waking her.
He rose as carefully as he could to avoid disturbing her, and walked to the bathroom. He closed the door, then thought of the monsters lurking upstairs, and opened it a crack so he could hear them if they came down. Though he was sure his counterthreat had made an impact with the leader, he knew from experience a deal with a vampire was really no deal at all.
He drew a bath, hoping the thunder of water in the tub wouldn’t wake Mouse. She deserved to sleep. Every moment she slept was a moment she didn’t have to think of their dire situation.
Though he knew she had a name, he couldn’t bear to think of her as “Stacey.” Certainly not “Stacey Pickles.” He made a face at that. She deserved a better name than Mouse, but it fit her, and he couldn’t think of a better one.
He slipped into the water and slid down to submerge his head. Though he’d always enjoyed the sensation of being completely enveloped by water, he couldn’t stand it now. His mortal lungs cried for air and every faint noise seemed sinister. He sat up, gasping for breath.
He was surprised to see Mouse jump back from the tub. He hadn’t heard her come in, and his lack of awareness frightened him. “You scared me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. She still wore the T-shirt she’d slept in, her skinny legs jutting from beneath the short hem, which afforded her little modesty. “I heard you get up. I didn’t want to be alone.”
He leaned into the curved end of the tub and let his arm drape over the side. “It’s okay.”
She took a tentative step forward. “The door was open. I didn’t know you were—”
“I don’t mind.” He liked having her close. At least then he knew she was safe.
Her eyes darted from his naked form beneath the water to the floor as she moved to kneel beside the tub. When he reached out and lazily stroked her hair with his damp hand, she blurted, “Today is my birthday.”
“Really?” He didn’t know why he was so interested. Captivity was doing strange things to him. “How old are you?”
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