“Not exactly,” Bella said, glancing uncertainly to Max. I should have been somewhat grateful for her admission, but what she said next destroyed my relief. “I am not as advanced as some members of my race, but I did have an opportunity to study necromancy during my training with the Movement. I can call Marianne’s soul forth from the astral plane for a short time.”
“The astral plane, is that where I was when I died?” I asked, a cold chill running up my spine at the thought of the shadowy figures that were probably gliding unseen through the very room we sat in.
She shook her head. “Not unless you died human. The astral plane, or heaven, or the Summerland—whatever you call it—is only for uncorrupted souls. Vampires, anyone who is cursed, goes to an in-between world. Hell, for those who believe in the Judeo-Christian God. Those spirits still exist on this physical plane, but they are separated from the living.”
“Limbo?” Max asked, lines creasing his forehead. “I thought the Catholic Church did away with that teaching years ago.”
I gave a soft laugh. “Well, the universe must have missed that memo, because I’ve been there.”
The room fell so silent all I could hear was the ticking of the clock in the kitchen. It worried me, that Nathan was so quiet. “What did you give him?”
“He’s getting worse. The herbs didn’t help him at all. I had to shoot him again with the tranquilizer to keep him from gnawing off his hands to escape.” Max winced at his phrasing. “I probably could have spared you that detail and just said I took care of it.”
I couldn’t stand the thought of Nathan panicking like a trapped animal. He was usually the one who calmed me down, the one who kept things under control. “We’ve got a stash of drugs in the emergency first aid kit, morphine and merepidine, some Valium, I think. When the tranquilizer wears off, I’ll try a pharmaceutical cocktail before you go shooting him again.” I chewed my thumbnail and stared at a spot on the carpet as my brain worked furiously over the details of the night.
Marianne. My undeclared rival for Nathan’s affection. So far, she was winning, and she didn’t even have a pulse. I had no doubt if we used Marianne’s soul as bait to pull him back from whatever dark place he’d gone to, it would be for nothing when we had to return her.
“I don’t know. Let’s say it works, for just a minute or so, and when we send her back to the astral plane, he flips out again. Then what? We’d be back to where we are now. Is this the only way?” I didn’t want to sound confrontational, but the tension in the air made me jumpy. I hated having the decision rest solely on me, to the point I almost resented being involved at all. If we’d returned from our lapse in judgement to find they’d already done it—“Sorry we didn’t wait for you, but we raised Nathan’s dead wife and fixed his possession problem”—I wouldn’t have necessarily minded.
“As long as he breaks free, even for a second, the spell is over. The Soul Eater would have to recast it.” Bella looked at Cyrus as though expecting him to speak, but he was lost in his own shame, staring blankly ahead through swollen eyelids. “And ultimately, it would be impossible for him to do so, if we can get Nathan to stop feeling guilt over her death.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Max said with a tired sounding laugh. “We guys, we like to hang on to stuff.”
I hated that he would use our private conversation to mock me. “Shut up.”
“What, I’m just telling it like it is,” Max said, but the tone of his voice implied anything but innocence. “Your little friend there raped your sire and forced him to murder his wife, and now he’s messed up in the head over it. And you’re afraid to fix it because you’re afraid that once Nathan has seen Marianne again, he’s not going to want you anymore!”
“Shut up,” I repeated, the words a hurt whisper.
“Max, you’re not helping,” Bella snapped.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was supposed to be a pillar of goddamn strength here while everyone else starts making bad choices!” Max jabbed his finger at his chest so hard it made a thumping noise. “I’m sorry, but it’s my turn to fall apart. That’s my friend in there, and I’ve been caring for him, feeding him, cleaning up his puke and his blood and sitting at his side while he freaks out, while she runs around with the bad guy! Only he’s not a bad guy anymore, because now he’s human. It’s bullshit!”
“Max!” Bella shouted, rising to her feet.
He didn’t look at her, but glared directly at me. “It’s bullshit and you know it, Carrie! Why aren’t you jumping at the chance to save Nathan?”
“Because I’m afraid of losing him!” The words tore from my throat in an agonized wail. “You’re right, I am afraid of what will happen when he sees Marianne again! I’m afraid of the pain he’ll feel when she’s taken once more, because I honestly think it will destroy him. And I’m not strong enough to live without him!”
I dropped my head to my hands, and in the next instant, strong arms enfolded me. I knew from the cold radiating from his skin that it was Max.
Another set of hands rested on me, one on my head, the other rubbing my back gently. Bella leaned close to my ear to whisper soothing words in her native tongue. Then, softly, she said, “I need you to be strong for this. What I will ask you to do will be very hard.”
I looked up to meet her guileless, golden eyes. I don’t remember what I said through my tears, but it must have been something that convinced her of my strength, because she responded, “I need you to be a host for the soul.”
Fear knifed through me at the thought of the in-between world and the possibility of being lost forever. “What do you mean, be a host?”
“You will remain in your body,” she said quickly, as if she could read my thoughts. “But you will not control it. Most of you will belong to Marianne, for as long as I can keep the spell going. Through you, she can speak to Nathan and hopefully forgive him for what he did to her.”
“Hopefully?” Max asked quietly, lifting his face from my hair.
“I will not lie. If Marianne’s spirit is angry, if she does not forgive him, I cannot make her. But perhaps just the confrontation will be enough.” Bella tried to sound hopeful, but it was clear she had as much doubt as she did optimism.
“I’ll do it,” I said firmly.
From his corner, Cyrus almost whimpered, “No.”
“I have to.” I looked to Cyrus, then to Max, and then to Bella, beseeching them silently to understand. “If we don’t do this, Nathan is already gone forever. Even if things don’t work, I’d rather be able to say we tried everything we could.”
There was a moment of silence before Cyrus spoke again. “But my father is still alive. This will never be over. He’ll never let it be as long as he needs Nathan’s soul to complete his ritual.”
Max rubbed a hand over his chin, working the flesh of his face out of shape in a gesture that betrayed his exhaustion. “After we get Nathan tip-top, I’ll call the Movement and get a strike team assembled. We’ll take the bastard out once and for all. No offense.”
Cyrus shook his head. “None taken. I would most definitely like to see someone ‘take the bastard out.’”
“So, when do we do this ritual?” Although I was truly supportive of whatever Bella had planned, a part of me prayed for more time. To do what, I wasn’t sure. But I wanted to stave off the inevitable.
She rose and retrieved a notebook from the coffee table, flipping pages as she paced before the couch. “I need to gather supplies and do more research, but the spell must be performed by midnight. It is the last night of the waning moon.”
She’d said the words as if I’d know what they meant. I stared back at her, clueless. “Which means?”
“The waning phase of the moon is the best time for banishing magic. Minor banishing can be performed at any time, but this…”
“Is not minor,” I finished for her. “And if we don’t do the ritual tonight?”
“It will be another month before we could successfully perf
orm it.” She let the statement hang in the air for a moment before saying, “I will go and make preparations. Please be ready at midnight.”
Midnight. Before I could think about it too much, I nodded. “Sounds great.”
Damn the consequences, at midnight, Nathan would be reunited with his wife, and I would abandon myself to an uncertain future.
Chapter 24
First Impressions, Reconciled
Though I was exhausted mentally, I wasn’t physically ready for sleep. It was too early in the night. Bella went to the shop to further prepare for the ritual. Max mumbled something about needing time to himself, and left. I don’t know where he went, but I hoped it wasn’t far. Cyrus remained where he was on the floor. He refused all my attempts to comfort him.
“I just need some time to think, Carrie,” he said, brushing my hand away when I laid it on his arm. “It’s nothing personal.”
I told him I understood, and I did. Still, I didn’t want to be alone. If I was alone, I could think, and the only thoughts my mind was particularly interested in were frightening ones of what would happen at midnight.
I showered, letting the water wash away some of my tension, but more importantly the feeling of Cyrus’s hands on my body, the smell of him that still clung to me.
What a stupid thing to have done. What misfiring synapse in my brain had convinced me having sex with Cyrus, even just as a “one last time” thing, was a good idea? Had it ever been a good idea before?
I stepped from the shower and toweled off, strenuously avoiding my reflection in the mirror. Sex should just be off-limits for me. I never made good choices where it was concerned.
All of my clean clothes were still in Nathan’s room, but I didn’t want to disturb him. At least my duffel bag was still packed from the trip. I went to my bedroom to retrieve some of the more gently used clothes in it.
Cyrus had seemed pretty safely comatose when I’d left him in the living room, so it was a shock to find him in my room, sitting motionless in the dark on my bed.
I pulled my towel tighter around my body, not that it would cover much more. “I didn’t know you were in here, I’ll—”
“I wish we hadn’t done that.” When he looked at me, his eyes were filled with tears.
I sat beside him and awkwardly maneuvered my arm around his shoulders while trying not to expose myself. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
He wiped his nose on the back of his hand—a very un-Cyrus thing to do—and shook his head. “No. You have no idea what I mean.”
He stood, but there was no place to go in the closet-size space. It was a miracle I’d fitted a bed and a desk in there, let alone two people and a duffel bag. He unzipped the bag and pulled out a shirt and jeans, making a face—I assumed at the smell and not the style. “Put something on.”
“You’ve seen me naked before,” I said softly as I pulled the shirt over my head, while he stared resolutely at the wall. “And I do know what you’re thinking about.”
“Really?” His laugh was short and harsh. “Then tell me, oh wise one, why exactly do I regret our ill-advised tryst?”
“You can turn around now.” I shimmied the jeans over my hips as he did. “You’re feeling bad because of the girl.”
“She has a name.” Until he pointed it out, I hadn’t noticed my reluctance to use it.
“Because of Mouse.” That crazy, jealous part of me that had reared its head in the desert wondered why he’d given her that nickname. “You think you betrayed her.”
“Did I?” He leaned over my computer and parted the dusty, never-opened blinds. The window faced the narrow alley behind the building, where he’d left me for dead. It took a moment for the recognition to settle in. When it did, he let the thin, metal blinds snap decisively closed. “I can’t betray her. She’s dead.”
My door stood open a few inches. He moved to it and closed it the rest of the way, then leaned his back against it. “I’m never going to be rid of you.”
“Excuse me?” I put my hands on my hips. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
His beautiful lips bent in a sad smile. “Don’t take it personally. There was a time I would have done anything to keep you. But I’m human now.”
“And the people around you aren’t,” I finished for him.
“I’m never going to get away from this life. The blood and sex and horror. I knew what was going to happen between us. It was just a matter of time. And I knew what it would mean when we did it. I was willingly giving in to that part of me I should be fighting against.” He paced the tiny area in front of the bed, no more than three steps, his forefingers pressed in a steeple at his lips. “I could have just killed you in the desert and disappeared.”
“There’s a cheery thought.” I eyed the nail file on the edge of my desk, thinking I could use it as a weapon if he tried to attack me. You could use yourself. You are a vampire.
He cleared his throat, actually looking remorseful. “I’m sorry, it’s not meant to be insulting, it just is what it is. I could have started over, completely new, and had all the things I wanted the first time I was a man.”
“What did you want?” I imagined the Soul Eater’s corruption had begun early. The thought Cyrus had, at one time, had wishes and needs of his own seemed impossible.
He knew exactly what I was thinking. “He didn’t become so hungry for power until he fell in with his own sire.”
“What did you want?” I repeated quietly.
There was a long pause. He was no longer with me, in my room. The faraway look in his eyes suggested he’d removed himself from me by seven centuries. “A peasant knows better than to want more than a reasonable life and an easy death. In my wildest fantasies, I had a home of my own and a real bed. As it was, my first wife had to spend her wedding night on the hard-packed dirt of my family’s cottage, with my brothers and father and their wives not a foot from us.”
He gave a grim chuckle. “That was how it always was then, there was no help for it. But I was a shiftless dreamer, like my father. That’s probably why we managed to tolerate each other for so many long years.”
“Did you have any children?” When I’d been his fledgling, he’d dispensed information on a need-to-know basis—namely, what he thought I needed to know. The subject of his family had never come up.
“No. I wanted them. And it wasn’t as if I didn’t do my husbandly duty by her. I just never got a child on her.” The corners of his eyes lifted at the mention of his wife, then fell when he seemed to remember how long ago and unalterable the past was. “She killed herself, after I turned her.
“That’s why I didn’t want to fall back into this life. This was supposed to be my second chance.”
The similarity between his words and Nathan’s was jarring.
“It still can be,” I insisted, but I wasn’t speaking only to him. “You can have anything you want. You just have to get through this.”
“The ritual Bella mentioned, it made me think…” His words died on his lips. “It was a foolish thought.”
“Tell me.” I liked the human Cyrus, and I wanted to encourage him. Maybe it was a comparison exercise. If he could survive all this, I could survive what lay ahead of me. Stranger things had happened.
“If making peace is all Nathan has to do to be well, maybe I should look into it myself.” Cyrus laughed. “But, no. I have too much to atone for.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to try.” If anything, it would steer him away from another fall. Despite his pretty words of apology and lament, he was still dangerously unstable. He might want to make amends, but he’d likely fall to evil again like an alcoholic falling off the wagon. As long as he was making a conscious effort to avoid his old ways, I would sleep easier during the day.
“I suppose you’re right.” He smiled, an expression meant more for himself than for me, and ran a hand through his hair. “Or maybe I’m agreeing out of exhaustion.”
I rose and made a sweeping gesture of invitation
toward the bed. “Please, make yourself at home. I’m going to sit up with Nathan.”
As I turned to leave the room, Cyrus caught my wrist. I let him pull me in. Hooking his normal, human fingers, which seemed so out of place on him under my chin, he tilted my face up. “I wasn’t using you.”
“I know.” I rose on tiptoe and kissed him chastely on the side of the mouth, the way an old friend would.
It wouldn’t hurt to let him believe that of himself, that he hadn’t merely used me to satisfy some need. But as I sat beside Nathan’s sleeping form through the long night, I knew why Cyrus and I had done what we’d done.
We were lonely, and we were punishing ourselves for it.
Chapter 25
The Heart’s Filthy Lesson
I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I woke to the gentle touch of Bella’s hand on my shoulder. I lifted my head and saw Nathan. He was awake, but clearly drugged. I’d pulled a chair to his bedside just hours before. When I’d finally collapsed from exhaustion, I’d rested my head on the bed next to him. Now, my back ached and a cold sheen of drool coated my cheek. “Good morning.”
“We must talk,” she said humorlessly. “About the ritual.”
I didn’t think we’d talk about the weather, but now wasn’t the time for sarcastic quips. “Just tell me what I need to do.”
She led me to the kitchen, where Max and Cyrus waited. The former handed me a mug of blood and the latter rose to offer me his chair. I waved for him to sit, and turned to Bella. “Okay, give me the gory details.”
The basic form of the ritual sounded simple enough. Despite his unreliable state, Bella insisted Nathan not be given another sedative. It would ensure he could become conscious during the ritual and reap the full benefits. But since he was still crazed, Max would stand in for him, a proxy or a magical power of attorney, I supposed, as Nathan wasn’t truly able to give his consent. The whole thing seemed oddly democratic for a magic ritual. Of course, my notion of “magic” came from various sensational news reports about witches, and David Copperfield specials. The combination created a strange picture in my mind of Max wearing a hooded robe and waving burning herbs while Bella sawed me in half.
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