Blood Ties Omnibus

by Jennifer Armintrout

  “Well, we did ‘mate,’ so to speak. And I owe you guys for some broken dishes—”

  “Yikes.”

  “Yeah.” He shook his head. “The thing is, she thinks I’m in love with her.”

  “I take it you’re not?” I chuckled. “Max, you could save yourself a lot of trouble if you just kept your pants zipped.”

  “It’s not like that, this time. She thinks I love her, and she doesn’t love me, so she thinks she’s hurting my feelings or something.” The teakettle’s whistle sputtered, and Max jumped up to turn off the burner. Once blood boils, it burns, making for an unpleasant, scorched-pot-roast taste.

  “Well, you’ve really got no problem then, right?” I moved past him to snag a couple mugs. “If neither of you love each other, then you’re free and clear.”

  “And she walks away thinking she dumped me?” He swore, though I couldn’t tell if it was at the idea of being rejected by another sentient being, or if he’d made contact with a hot part of the kettle.

  “Is that the worst thing in the world?” I knew Max had a major pride problem, but I hadn’t realized it went so deep.

  He poured the blood into the mugs and set the remainder on the back burner. I assumed he left that portion for Nathan, and his thoughtfulness brought unexpected tears to my eyes. I quickly shooed them away, blaming my overemotional state on the fact I hadn’t had any sleep.

  “It’s not the worst,” Max conceded as he returned to the table with our breakfast. “But it’s not good. I got a rep to uphold.”

  I reached across the table to slap him lightly on the shoulder. He laughed, but the levity was brief. “Besides, I couldn’t be with her permanently. I think of that, then I think about Marcus—”

  “Your old sire?” I asked for clarity.

  He gave an affirmative nod. “I think about the fact that he’s gone, and all I’ve been carrying around is this yearning for him, wanting to feel what I felt with him. You know, in a totally not gay way. But then I think, wow, love. That’s a thing I have no power over, and it might feel good to know I’m not alone, and it’s like I’m betraying him.”

  “You’re not betraying him by moving on.” I spoke so vehemently the sound of my own voice startled me. Embarrassed, I cleared my throat and continued more softly. “What is it with you men, you think you have to hang on to everything.”

  “What do you mean?” He took a swallow of blood, his eyes meeting mine in a silent question over the rim of the mug.

  “You know exactly what I mean.” And if not all the details, well, it wasn’t my place to spill Nathan’s personal beans. “Nathan thinks he has to carry around a sack load of guilt over Marianne, and because of that, he can’t just get over it. You’re doing the same thing. Your guilt over the way your sire died is so precious to you, you refuse to give it up for even a second in case you might actually get over it and move on.”

  “You should have been a head doctor,” Max said in a way that didn’t quite sound like a compliment.

  We sat in silence, sipping our breakfast and doing our best to ignore the conversation we’d just had. Occasionally, Max would look up at some imagined sound from the living room, but when Bella didn’t appear he settled down in a disappointed funk.

  I thought he was imagining things again when he swore and shot up from the table, nearly toppling it as he tore from the kitchen. “What are you doing?”

  Despite the fact Bella still slept, he raced through the living room, turning on lights and lifting books, swearing repeatedly.

  Bella sat up sleepily, a crease on the side of her face from the blankets she’d slept on. “What’s going on?”

  “Where’s the book you were reading last night?” Max tossed aside an expensive-looking volume with gilt-edged pages.

  Rubbing her eyes, Bella frowned. “Which one?”

  “Max, what are you doing?” I saved a particularly prized text from knocking over a glass of water on the coffee table.

  “You said Nathan is carrying around loads of guilt over killing Marianne. Who, besides you and me, know about that?” He grabbed the book Bella held out to him and began flipping through the pages with such force I worried he would rip them from the binding. A lock of golden hair fell across his forehead, accentuating the madness that seemed to have gripped him.

  “Well, Cyrus knows. He was there. And so was the Soul Eater.”

  “Max, you don’t think that has something to do with…” My stomach roiled. I had a feeling the blood I’d drunk would soon be wasted.

  Strong hands closed over my shoulders, and I realized belatedly I no longer heard the water running in the shower.

  “Has something to do with what?” Cyrus’s breath stirred the hair at the back of my neck.

  Max coughed and I stepped out of Cyrus’s proprietary embrace.

  “Do you remember the name of the spell Bella told us about last night?” Max asked, the proverbial look that could kill on his face.

  Cyrus and Bella answered at the same time, in two different languages. Cyrus’s words were the ones I could understand. “Dark Night of the Soul.”

  Fully awake now, Bella stood beside Max and tried to take the book. “You are going the wrong way, it is in the back!”

  I turned to Cyrus, dismayed to see he wore only a towel draped low across his hips. “We think we know what your father is doing to Nathan.”

  “I told them exactly what he’s doing. They didn’t believe me, until she ran across it in that blasted book.” He rolled his eyes. “Apparently, my word is only good if I can back it up with written proof.”

  “What is he doing?” I took his hands in mine, not caring what Max would think. “Please, Cyrus. I have to have him back.”

  “Do you love him?” The words sucked the air out of the room. Even Max and Bella stilled.

  I swallowed what felt like a ball of razor blades. “Does it matter?”

  We stared at each other a long moment. In Cyrus’s eyes, I saw the hurt he felt at losing the girl in the desert, and the hurt he would feel if he thought there was no chance I’d ever return to him.

  I felt the word leave my lips before I thought to say it. “Yes.” The admission sliced something open inside me, and I felt the poison that had festered there for the past two months spill free and evaporate. “Yes, I do love him.”

  Whatever had opened in me corresponded to something closing off in Cyrus. He shrugged as though indifferent to the entire conversation, and looked away. “Dark Night of the Soul goes way back. It started out as a spell to test the faith of a shaman or mystic. Basically, it forces them to live the most troubling, painful moments of their life over and over. The only thing that keeps them from going mad is the strength of their mind and their belief in the training they’ve received. For example, a very religious person might call on the Judeo-Christian God for strength when enduring such a trial, and their very faith would break the spell.” He stopped, a hard set to his jaw, but the emotion in his eyes was unreadable.

  “But if you used it on someone who had no hope to begin with…” I knew instantly what Nathan’s Dark Night entailed. “He’s killing her.”

  “Over and over again,” Cyrus agreed grimly. “Father wouldn’t let him off too easily.”

  “But why?” Bella asked, looking up for a moment from the book. “What purpose does it serve to make him insane?”

  “He’s not insane,” Cyrus explained. “He’s sane enough to know what he’s doing, but he can’t control the memory. It’s already happened, so he’s helpless to repeat his actions. He knows who is responsible, at least who is responsible for making him kill his wife in the first place. Father needs to gather to him the souls he’s corrupted. What better way than enrage and torture them until they seek him out to end it?”

  “If we kill the Soul Eater, will the spell stop?” Good old Max, always ready to hack and slash his way out of any problem. Not that I blamed him. At this point, I wanted to kill Jacob Seymour myself.

  Cyrus shoo
k his head. “That’s the beauty part. Even after the caster is dead, the spell continues.”

  “The sigils,” Bella interjected. “They are the anchors.”

  Cyrus nodded, looking a bit too impressed with his father’s cleverness. I turned away, disgusted. “Well, then what, he’s just screwed?”

  “No.” Bella’s golden eyes scanned the pages. “It will not be easy, but there has to be a way to fix this.”

  “Does there?” Max laughed, a weary sound despite the fact he’d just gotten up. “Well, that’s a relief.”

  “Everything has an opposite. No spell exists that cannot be broken.” She sniffed derisively and snatched the book from his hand. “I will be downstairs. I assume I have the supplies there at my disposal?”

  “Of course.” I was fairly certain Nathan would have given away his entire inventory to escape the hell he was in.

  Bella closed the book and slipped it under her arm as she walked toward me with unnerving grace. “Do I have you at my disposal?”

  “Of course,” I repeated, though this time I sounded less certain. “What will I have to do?”

  She tossed her hair and gave a thoroughly European shrug. “Maybe nothing.”

  As she passed Cyrus she paused to give his near nakedness an appreciative once-over. Then she took the keys from the hook on the wall and left.

  “Don’t you have any clothes?” Max growled.

  An antagonistic grin twisted Cyrus’s mouth. “They are, unfortunately, the same ones I’ve been wearing for nearly a week now.”

  “I’ll loan you some of mine. And keep them on.” Max shoved past us and went to the foot of the couch, where his duffel bag lay open. He pulled out a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and tossed them to Cyrus. With an angry glare my way he added, “I’m going to go feed Nathan.”

  “Stay away from my girl,” Cyrus muttered in an exaggerated American accent when Max emerged from the kitchen and stalked down the hall.

  “Leave him alone. He’s kind of having a rough time.” I turned my back as Cyrus let the towel drop. He’d been naked in the desert, but those were extenuating circumstances. I didn’t need to see it every chance I got.

  “Having a rough time? Is that emblazoned on some twisted family crest you people wear?” His words were muffled, indicating the shirt was going over his head.

  I turned in time to see him hitch the jeans up his hips. They were at least an inch too big around the waist.

  “The way you people are intermittently feeding me, my weight won’t be a problem,” he quipped.

  “I’m sorry. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen.” If there was anything in the kitchen. I hadn’t even looked since returning home. Funny, that when I was a human woman food had seemed to dominate every facet of my life. Was I eating too much? How many calories were in that slice of pizza? Were eggs good or bad that particular week? Now that I was a vampire, the necessity for food had completely slipped my mind.

  Not the enjoyment of it, though. Nathan kept a huge stock of junk food. I looked forward to the nights the supply seemed to be waning, as it often resulted in a manic trip to the twenty-four-hour grocery store. We’d load up on all the bad-for-humans treats we could find, from Doritos to birthday cake, head back to the apartment, snack ourselves into a sugar coma and fall asleep watching videos. Nathan preferred war movies and intense psychological dramas. I always voted for romantic comedies or historical movies with sumptuous costumes. Inevitably, our disagreement would be settled with a screwball comedy like Young Frankenstein or Half Baked.

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