Blood Ties Omnibus

by Jennifer Armintrout

  I put my hand on his knee, smiling when his leg jumped under my touch. “I was enjoying watching you be happy.”

  He glanced at me, his expression suddenly tender. “You’re not used to it.”

  “You’re right. When I left, you were grumpy, morose Nathan. It will take me some time to adjust to happy, humming Nathan.” I swallowed the knot my sudden tears made in my throat. “But I like the change.”

  I reached for his right hand, resting on the gearshift, and covered it with my own. We rode the rest of the way to the apartment in silence. Though I’d only been gone a few weeks, the sight of familiar neighborhood landmarks—La Vitesse, the courthouse, the veterans’ memorial, heck, even the Brandywine Inn on the corner of our block—nearly had me dissolving in tears of relief. We parked down the street—all the convenient spots were full—and headed toward the building.

  Nathan stopped me before he unlocked the outer door. “Listen, before you see the apartment—”

  “It’s a total nightmare of clutter and unwashed dishes?” I snorted. “Believe me, I’ve braced myself for this possibility before tonight.”

  “No, that’s not it.” He paused. “Well, it is a nightmare of clutter, but I washed the dishes. What I meant is, I made some changes. To your room.”

  “Oh.” My heart sank. “What kind of changes?”

  He scratched his forehead and looked down the street, as if the answer would drive up and rescue him. “Maybe it’s better if you see it, and then you can scream at me. Or not.”

  I tried not to charge up the stairs once he got the door open, and I waited with unbelievable patience as he unlocked the one at the top. In the living room, books were scattered and stacked on every available surface. Despite his assertion that he’d washed dishes, I spotted four or five blood-crusted mugs he’d missed, and the couch seemed to have become some sort of holding pattern for laundry of indeterminate cleanliness. In the hallway, the door to my room stood open.

  “Go look,” he said quietly.

  When I clicked on the light, the first thing I noticed was the new paint job. Somehow, Nathan had managed to cover with pale lavender the matte black walls Ziggy had preferred. My desk and computer were just as I’d left them, but a sheet of plastic speckled with paint and sawdust draped over them. Brand-new built-in bookcases lined the wall where my bed used to be.

  I leaned against the doorjamb and tried to catch my breath, collect my thoughts, anything to help me comprehend without getting my hopes up too much.

  “I know I was taking a chance, but I thought you needed a proper office. Or, at the very least, a place where you can get away from me when I drive you crazy.” Nathan hovered behind me for a moment, then brushed past me to enter the room. He gestured to the bookcases. “I had the same contractor who fixed up the store work on this. Do you like it?”

  “It’s very nice, but…” The thought of the few research projects I’d begun with the intent to distribute the information to the vampire community reminded me of our current situation. Without the Movement, there was no communication network among vampires. It wasn’t as if my metabolic studies and dissertations on vampire digestion were publishable in the New England Journal of Medicine. And they certainly weren’t going to hit the bestseller fiction lists. “Nathan, I really don’t have any reason left to continue my projects.”

  “Because of the Movement?” He fell silent, running his hand along the edge of a shelf. “That would be a stupid reason to give up all the work you’ve done.”

  There was admiration behind his words, and it seemed somehow worth more coming from him. In my entire career as a human doctor, I’d tried to sustain myself on praise from my professors and bosses, to no avail. Nathan’s unspoken praise was like water to a dying plant, and I was strangely moved.

  My emotion waned a little as I stared at the place where my bed used to be. “Um…where’s the bed?”

  “Oh, I put it downstairs, in the back room of the shop.” He thumped one of the shelves with his knuckles, as if testing for sturdiness. “Do you like the color? I thought it might be too girlie—”

  The back room? The cement-walled, spider-infested utility room with the water heater and a single bulb for illumination? I glared at him. “Well, I definitely prefer it to lime stains from where the pipes drip!”

  He frowned in confusion. “What are you talking about? Carrie, I don’t want you to sleep down there, I just put your bed in storage.”

  I threw my hands up in frustration. “Well, what the hell do you expect me to do, sleep on the couch?”

  “I expect you to sleep in my bed with me, like a proper girlfriend!” He stared at me, baffled for a moment, then laughed. “Christ, can’t we get anything right?”

  I stepped up to him and looped my arms around his neck. “We’re not so bad at the naked, sweaty part.”

  He grinned at me, and I was struck all over again by how much taller he was than me. He leaned down to kiss me, breaking his motion to ask, “So, do you like it?”

  “I like the office,” I admitted. “I like just being home more.”

  “You’re not going to like it tomorrow night,” he warned. “Did you see all the books in the living room?”

  “I did. I was trying to ignore them.”

  He brushed his lips against mine again and stepped back, motioning for me to follow him to the living room. “We’re going to have to look through them for any mention of the ritual the Soul Eater was collecting the souls of his fledglings for, some information on the spell he was using to control me, and anything else that might come in handy for him now that he’s got the Oracle on his side. It’s going to take awhile. If you’re not too tired—”

  “I’m too tired,” I interrupted, before he could suggest we begin work right away.

  “Then I hope you’re not too tired to get in that kitchen and cook your man some dinner.” He affected a Midwestern accent to enhance the misogyny of the statement.

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh, like a proper girlfriend?”

  “You said it, not me.” He had the nerve to smack my backside as I turned toward the kitchen.

  “I’ll chalk that up to the fact you’re too tired to realize how very close to death you are,” I called over my shoulder. In the kitchen I put the kettle on the stove and snagged a bag of blood from the refrigerator. “So, what have you found out so far?”

  I expected to hear sounds of shuffling papers and opening books, but didn’t. “Nathan?”

  “Sorry.” Judging from the tone of his voice, Nathan was a million miles away. “Yeah, Bella found two more versions of the spell she thinks I was under. The three we’ve got now are remarkably similar. What scares me is the number of variations that are probably out there.”

  I cut off the top of the bag with the kitchen shears and dumped the contents into the kettle, licking a smear of red off my thumb. Four months ago, I would have stopped to analyze that action. Now, consumption of blood was background noise.

  In the foreground was my concern for Nathan and the realization we’d never actually talked about what had happened to him just weeks before.

  I lit a burner and set the kettle over the low heat. Once it’s warming, blood can’t be left untended for long. I went to the doorway and looked into the living room. Nathan sat in his armchair, elbows on his knees, leaning forward and staring at the impossible pile of books on the coffee table.

  “Do you think he’ll try it again?” The possibility terrified me. When the Soul Eater had possessed Nathan, he’d driven him mad. Tormented by reliving the moment he’d killed Marianne, Nathan had become like a wounded animal, with no reason or control. Though Bella had managed to break the spell, it had been at a cost. Nathan had nearly killed me, and our relationship had been destroyed, as well. I wasn’t about to accept those consequences again.

  Nathan shrugged. “I don’t know. But I didn’t know he was going to do it last time.”

  I shifted uncomfortably. “Bella said that if you didn’t feel gui
lty anymore, since Marianne forgave you—”

  The teakettle gave a low, mournful whistle, and I hurried to remove it before our dinner burned.

  “Well, that sounds simple enough. But it’s not easy to forget that you’ve killed the woman you loved.” His voice startled me. I hadn’t heard him come into the kitchen.

  More startling was the fact he’d said “loved,” past tense. Though the look on his face made it clear he’d done so on purpose, I didn’t know if he was trying to make me believe it, or himself. I took two mugs from the cupboard and poured the blood into them. “Maybe, since we’re trying to make these great strides in our personal relationship, you could talk to me about it.”

  “I could.” He took his mug and headed back to the living room.

  I ground my teeth. “Well, are you going to?”

  When I followed him, I found him sitting in his chair again, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “The Soul Eater is my sire. He knows everything about me.”

  “Through the blood tie?” It seemed so strange, that although Nathan and his sire were enemies, they were still bound. “Do you hear him?”

  He looked up, his eyes rimmed in red from fatigue. “If he wants me to. And he can hear me. He knows how to hurt me. He did it with Marianne, and he could do it again.”

  “With your memories of Ziggy?” The thought hadn’t crossed my mind until now. No wonder he was afraid. “Nathan, if that happens, we know how to stop it. You won’t have to go through what you did before.”

  “When he put that spell on me, I didn’t know it was a spell. I was reliving the night I killed Marianne, over and over. I could live with it, because it isn’t as though I hadn’t already lived it on my own every night. But Ziggy…” Nathan looked away. “Once was enough.”

  “The Soul Eater was only able to control you because you felt responsible for Marianne’s death. You’re not responsible for Ziggy dying,” I pointed out.

  He laughed bitterly. “Have you noticed my habit of blaming myself for things I can’t control?”

  I remembered the look in Nathan’s eyes as he’d pleaded with me outside Cyrus’s mansion to keep Ziggy safe, and the way he’d cradled his dying son in his arms when I failed. If Nathan was peripherally responsible for Ziggy’s death, I was the central figure in his demise. I’d been the one who’d inadvertently marked him for death.

  “You could blame me,” I said quietly, but I added a smile in case Nathan was more comfortable interpreting it as a joke. “I had more of a stake in it than you did.”

  “If he’d been a vampire, that would have been a pun.” Nathan’s eyes crinkled as he smiled. “I don’t want to blame you, Carrie. I just want to talk to you.”

  “I’m not going to complain. You kept everything in before.” It is the central irony of my life that when I want something and end up getting it, it makes me profoundly uncomfortable.

  Shaking his head, Nathan reached for one of the many books on the coffee table. “Grab a book and start reading.”

  “I said I was too tired,” I protested.

  “I know. Consider it payment for your new office.” He settled back in his chair and turned his attention to the open page.

  I grumbled, but complied. I’d only managed to halfheartedly scan two pages when the phone in the kitchen rang.

  Nathan stood and went to answer it, taking his mug with him. “Want me to top you off while I’m in there?”

  I shook my head and covered the rim of my mug with my palm.

  On the page, the letters swirled and blurred before my tired eyes, and I had to double my concentration. I wasn’t paying attention to the phone call, until I noticed the change in Nathan’s tone.

  “Fine. I’ll tell her.” He hung up without saying goodbye and returned to the living room. “That was Cyrus. Dahlia is going to be there tomorrow after sundown. You should go over at ten.”

  “You didn’t let me talk to him.” It was part accusation, part question.

  Nathan shrugged. “He didn’t ask for you.”

  I tried to not look as rejected as I, for some reason, felt. “Are you going with me?”

  “I’d rather not.” He resumed his position in the armchair and picked up his book. “You can take my cell phone if you’re worried he’ll try something.”

  “No, nothing like that.” I waved my hand to dismiss the idea that Cyrus would try to harm me. “But you don’t mind me going, do you?”

  “Of course not,” Nathan said, a little too confidently. “It’s the reason we came back here.”

  Something in his tone said he wished we hadn’t, but it didn’t matter. Tomorrow, I was going to see Cyrus.

  Eight:

  A Bad Case of Nerves

  O f all the horrible things Max could have envisioned happening on their trip, Bella being horrifically carsick every fifty miles was not one of them.

  “You know, we could get a lot farther if I didn’t have to stop and hose puke off the back seat four or five times a night,” he grumbled, wiping his hands on coarse, gas station bathroom paper towels.

  Bella lifted her head from the toilet seat—it was proof of her bravery, or stupidity, how close she let her face get to the damn thing—and tried to respond, only to let loose a spectacular arc of vomit.

  “No more vending machine sandwiches for you.” He crumpled the paper and tossed it on the pile spilling over the sides of the wastebasket. “Can you hold back the tide for a couple minutes so I can get us to a hotel?”

  Her answer was the resounding echo of retching into the bowl.

  Max leaned against the wall, then changed his mind and straightened quickly. “This place reeks.”

  “I am sorry I could not wait until the Ritz-Carlton,” she spat, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

  He grabbed a handful of paper toweling and offered it to her. “Don’t get bent out of shape. Clean off your face and we’ll hit the road.”

  Snatching it, she hissed, “A fine way to treat a sick person!”

  “Carsick is not sick. It’s an annoyance, but it’s not sick.” He met her glare head-on. Her eyes seemed duller, and dark circles ringed them. “Oh, shit.”

  “What?” Her face blanched. She looked around the bathroom as if planning an alternate escape route.

  “You’ve got some weird dog disease, don’t you?” He backed away.

  Her panicked expression turned to anger. “I do not have a dog disease. I am a little under the weather. Most likely from being violated by one of your kind.”

  Max couldn’t help his grin. “So, are you talking about the Oracle now, or—”

  “Go to hell!” She turned back to the toilet and groaned with a painful-sounding dry heave.

  He wet a paper towel and knelt beside her to press it to her forehead. “Take it easy. Getting pissed at me will only make things worse.”

  “Perhaps I should not go on this trip with you,” she whispered. “I will not be useful if I am vomiting and ill. I certainly cannot fight in this condition.”

  “Who said you’d be doing any fighting?” The thought hadn’t crossed his mind. Not that he didn’t believe Bella could hold her own. He’d seen her fight plenty, and been on the receiving end of her ire. But lately she seemed more fragile, far too mortal for his tastes. Before, he wouldn’t have cared if she’d gotten maimed or killed. In fact, when she’d had him pinned to the floor in Nathan’s bedroom, ready to drive a stake through his heart, he would have laughed his ass off at her demise.

  Sex, no matter how meaningless, changed things. Who was he kidding? If she got so much as a stubbed toe on this trip, he’d call the whole damn thing off, Oracle or no.

  “I am a Movement trained assassin. I will do my part in a physical skirmish.” She didn’t sound confident about it. Probably because of all the vomiting.

  “Come on. We’ll find a Motel 6 or something and call it a night.”

  He helped her to the car with an arm around her shoulders. For someone who’d just been squatt
ing on the floor of a gas station bathroom, she smelled fine.

  “You throw up lilacs and perfume in there?” he joked, but her sense of humor, nearly nonexistent to begin with, had taken a nosedive since her unfortunate stomach bug.

  “I do not feel like talking,” she snapped as he opened the passenger door for her.

  He slammed it closed behind her, and waited to retort until he’d rounded the car and dropped into the driver seat. “Good. Because every time you open your mouth, puke comes out.”

  He pulled out of the parking lot a little less gently than he normally would have, not because he wanted her to barf all over the dashboard, but it wouldn’t hurt to put the fear of it into her.

  By the time they checked into a motor lodge a few exits down the highway, Bella was sweating and pale again. She pushed past him and rushed through the shabby room to the bathroom.

  In the light of the floor lamp, Max examined the two beds and took the rough, brown flannel blanket with the most suspicious stains and draped it over the window, tucking it behind the blinds rod. Hopefully, that would keep the sun out, once it rose.

  In case it didn’t do the trick, he stripped the bed the rest of the way and laid the sheets on the floor next to the bed farthest from the window. He’d be trapped between the wall and the platform box springs all day, a lot like lying in a coffin, but better that than being a human fire hazard.

  More disgusting retching sounds came from the bathroom. It was amazing Bella had anything left to choke up, considering how her output had far surpassed her input. “I’m gonna go get our stuff out of the car. Will you be okay for a sec?”

  More heaving, then a muffled, “I will be fine.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”