Blood Ties Omnibus

by Jennifer Armintrout

  Dying. Cyrus was dying. Right now, as I touched him, he faded more with each passing second. There was nothing I could do to stop it.

  “I needed…to tell…I know where he is.” He coughed and more blood spilled from his lips. I was amazed he had any left.

  He couldn’t speak anymore. Though he still breathed, his eyes rolled back in his head.

  I was alone, with a dying human, in an unfamiliar place. My immortality felt false and traitorous. I might as well have been a fixture in this bathroom, for all my humanity.

  I needed Nathan. Desperately needed him. I crawled to the phone in the other room, because it seemed I wasn’t abandoning Cyrus as long as I didn’t stand and walk away. My hands trembled as I punched in the numbers.

  Nathan picked up on the first ring. “Carrie, what’s going on?”

  A calm wave flowed over me through the blood tie. He’d felt my shock and sorrow; he’d just waited for me to reach out to him for help.

  “He’s dead. Or almost.” Tears spilled from my eyes and my breath caught on a hiccup as I tried to drag it in. I had the fleeting thought that I shouldn’t grieve for Cyrus so openly to Nathan, considering their shared past. I dismissed it. No matter what I tried to show Nathan, he wouldn’t be blind to my feelings. “Oh God, Nathan. He’s going to die!”

  “What happened? Can you do anything for him?” The earnestness in his voice brought more tears to my eyes. “Should I bring you the med kit?”

  Staring down at my blood-drenched clothes, I felt bile rise in my throat. I closed my eyes. “There’s nothing I can do.”

  Unless…

  There was an audible hitch in Nathan’s breathing.

  “Forget it, forget I thought that.” My words tumbled out in a rush as I desperately tried to cover my mental ramblings.

  “Carrie…” Nathan’s voice held a pitiful note of pleading.

  I wanted to slam the receiver back into the cradle and flee from the scene of my heinous crime. It would have been the sensible thing to do. Instead, I kept talking. “He knows something. He knows where the Soul Eater is, but he couldn’t tell me.”

  “We can find another way—”

  “He’s going to die!” I gripped the phone so hard the plastic creaked.

  The silence seemed endless. For all I knew, this could have been a pointless argument. Cyrus might already be dead.

  “I’ll be over in a minute with the med kit.” Nathan’s voice sounded tight, strained. The tension shattered with a guttural sob. “Please, don’t do anything until I get there!”

  But it was far too late. The seed of the evil notion had been planted, and I would see it through to harvest.

  “I’m sorry, Nathan.” I hung up the phone with shaking hands and slowly stood. Every step I took toward the bathroom seemed to require more effort than the last, as though I were wading into deeper and deeper water. When I finally reached Cyrus’s side, I knew I couldn’t hesitate. He was so close to death I could feel the angel in the room with us.

  “Sorry to send you back empty-handed,” I muttered, rolling up one of my sleeves. There was a cup with a toothbrush and a razor on the edge of the sink. My hands shook so badly I knocked it the floor when I reached for it.

  The noise, coupled with my jostling of him while I groped for the razor, brought Cyrus back from the brink for a moment. His eyes searched my face, his mouth worked soundlessly as understanding cascaded over him.

  He managed one word. “No.”

  I flicked the blade across my wrist. The pain surprised me. In the movies, it never looks as though it hurts. The blood didn’t well up gracefully. It spurted, hot, wet jets from my torn veins.

  He gathered enough strength to rise on his elbows and pull back. His mouth clamped in a tight line, and I had to force his jaw open with my free hand.

  “No,” he begged, trying to spit out the blood that had already fallen on his lips. “Not this…”

  I couldn’t bear to hear it, to hear him say he would rather die than let me save him. I gripped his shoulder to pin him to the ground, and pressed my slashed wrist to his mouth to stifle his protests.

  Cyrus had once warned me not to test his will. His might have been strong, but mine was stronger.

  He stopped struggling, jaw going slack beneath my wrist, but he didn’t draw the blood into his mouth willingly. It didn’t matter. All he needed was to ingest some.

  The process didn’t appear to be working. I’d never changed someone, so I didn’t know exactly what I was supposed to be feeling. There was no blood tie forming, though, no bond I could notice. All I felt was light-headed from lack of blood, and Cyrus seemed to fade faster and faster. His chest no longer moved with breath. His face turned blue.

  What mistake had I made? My blood should have made him a vampire, the way his had made me when our blood had exchanged in the morgue.

  Exchanged! Carrie, how could you be so stupid?

  I needed to drink his blood—if there was any left—to complete the process. I just hoped it worked out of order. Pressing my lips to one of the gaping wounds on his chest, I gently touched my tongue to the gory, exposed muscle there. We’d accidentally exchanged blood when he’d turned me, so little I hadn’t even noticed it. A few drops now had to do the trick. I sucked against the wound and a hot trickle slipped past my lips.

  The change was immediate, unpleasant and violent. Cyrus’s body bucked against the floor. Pain ripped through my chest, my head, my heart. I think I screamed. White-hot light flashed behind my eyes, and I collapsed on top of Cyrus’s dead, yet somehow curiously alive, body.

  A familiar, yet different channel opened in my head. It was Cyrus, and he was filled with hate, even as he drifted between the worlds of the living and dead.

  He was my fledgling.

  I was his sire.

  Eleven:

  Fools Rush In

  A s much as Max hated being cooped up in the Prancing Pony Motor Inn, he was relieved that so far, the Oracle hadn’t messed with Bella.

  In fact, Bella seemed to actually enjoy their captivity. During the day she slept at his side, except for the few times she’d sneaked away to buy food from the gas station across the road. At night, she took almost domestic pleasure in caring for him, propping pillows beneath his injured knee and warming bags of blood in hot water from the tap.

  “I think the diet of Twinkies and chips is agreeing with you,” he said with a laugh when she brought him his breakfast on the third night.

  She smiled and helped him sit up, fluffing the pillows behind his back as she did. “Perhaps. Perhaps I am just a nice person and you never gave me credit for that.”

  He shook his head. “You’re not a nice person.”

  She slapped his injured knee lightly, and he yelped.

  “Not nice at all,” he grumbled, taking the bag of blood from her and biting off a corner.

  He took a few long swallows and carefully lowered the bag, pinching off the opening between his fingers. Motel staff, no matter how low-rent the establishment, didn’t tend to appreciate blood on their bedding. And Bella didn’t have to look so damn disgusted when he ate.

  “So, what’s with you lately? Why are you so…happy?” He adjusted his wounded leg gingerly. It would be healed in a day or two more, but he planned to milk the injury for as long as he could, until he figured out what to do about the Oracle situation. In the time he’d wasted so far, he’d consulted an atlas and found a town called Danvers just north of Boston. Next to Salem, oh joy of joys, and he was sure it wasn’t just a coincidence. The thought of coming up against a horde of witches like Dahlia made his whole body tense, but it wasn’t as if Bella and he were helpless. When not puking her guts out, she had some fierce magical powers.

  Unaware that he’d just counted her as a part of their arsenal, Bella reclined on the bed beside him, her head propped on her arms. “I am happy to be spending what could be our last days doing something useful.”

  It took a moment for her words to sink in. When
they did, he had an overwhelming urge to push her off the bed. “You know, that’s just great.”

  If he could have gotten up and stalked away from her, he would have, but if he could do that, he could drive the car, and she’d have them on the road in an hour.

  She sat up, a heartbreaking, wounded look on her face. “I do not understand. Why are you angry?”

  “Because you won’t stop harping on this death shit!” He pounded the mattress with his fist. “You’re not going to die.”

  “You do not know that,” she insisted, her tone a little too reasonable. “Neither one of us knows when death will come for us.”

  “You don’t know shit!” He sat up in turn. “And if you think you’re going to die, you don’t know much about me.”

  “You cannot prevent everything.” She put her hand on his arm. “It could be out of your hands.”

  “Is this something the Oracle told you? Because she could be trying to trick you.” How could Bella blindly believe anything that crazy bitch planted in her head?

  “I have feared her since the moment I first saw her, the day I came to the Movement.” Bella gave a soft laugh. “It is not unlikely she will be the death of me. Or you.”

  She knelt beside him and tenderly put her hands on his face, turning his head so she could look into his eyes. He didn’t resist her.

  “I am not lying. But she did show me something.” A tear rolled down Bella’s cheek. “A long time ago, when I first saw her. She showed me that I would find you.”

  Injured knee be damned. Max pulled Bella into his arms and kissed her, hard, as if the intensity of his physical actions could keep her safe from her own mortality.

  “I thought you were hurt,” she whispered against his cheek when his mouth moved from her lips to her jaw.

  He smiled and brushed her ear with his lips. “Not so much as I let on.”

  Trying to ignore the gentle pressure against his chest, he kissed her mouth again. She turned her head.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, leaning up on his elbows. But he already knew.

  “Why would you lie?”

  He groaned and flopped onto his back, sucking in a breath at the surprising pain that ripped up his leg. “I didn’t lie. I really am hurt. Just not as badly as I let on.”

  “You pretended to be hurt more than you are. That is a lie,” she said quietly, accusingly.

  “No, it’s not, really.” How could he explain it to her? “I just didn’t want to go any further on this trip before we got some concrete information. I don’t want to rush headlong into something bad.”

  She shook her head. “We do not have to rush headlong. We simply need to get there. It is a long drive. How can you waste our time so?”

  “I’m not wasting our time, I’m preserving your life!” He swore. If she wasn’t going to let him protect her from the Oracle, he wasn’t going to protect her from the truth. “She told me, through you, that the closer we come to her, the more power she has over us.”

  “I know this!” Bella sat up, uttering some angry words in Italian. “I swear you think I am a child, Max.”

  She rarely spoke his name, at least, not to him. He covered his face with his hands. “Bella, listen to me. You’re afraid of the Oracle. You admit she’s a danger to us.”

  Bella nodded.

  “Maybe, just maybe then, if we don’t go find her, we won’t die.” He bracketed her face with his palms. “We can get in the car and drive. It doesn’t matter where we go, as long as it’s away from her.”

  Bella’s hands came up to cover his, to grip his arms and gently force them down. “What about Nathan and Carrie? They are depending on us to help them.”

  “We can throw out the cell phone and forget them.” He didn’t know what shocked him more, the fact he suggested leaving his friends—and the world—at the mercy of the Oracle and the Soul Eater, or the desperation required to talk about it. Or what that desperation meant. “We can just forget everything. No one will ever find us.”

  “No.” She lifted his hands to her lips and kissed them. “We would always be running from our pasts.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not going to take you to her. Not if you have this feeling of dread. Not if you’re certain you’re going to die. Never gonna happen.”

  “If you do not, I will find a way by myself!” Closing her eyes, clearly an attempt to calm herself, Bella asked, “Why does this bother you so? You used to want to kill me.”

  “Well, things have changed.” He’d rather pull out his tongue than confess any more feelings for her, but he didn’t want her to die, either. Maybe it would take some kind of grand gesture to knock some sense into her.

  Maybe that was exactly what she was looking for.

  He closed his own eyes, because if there was any mocking in her expression he wouldn’t be able to stand it. “Bella, I—”

  “I love you,” she blurted, her voice hitching, as if she couldn’t believe she’d said it, or she wanted to take it back.

  Opening his eyes, he caught a glimpse of Bella as he’d never seen her before. Frightened, not of an enemy or unseen force, but of her own actions. Terrified of rejection. Ashamed that she’d displayed human feelings.

  His chest constricted so painfully he wondered if it were possible for vampires to have heart attacks. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t have any words. What could he say when faced with such an unlikely reflection of himself?

  Taking his silence for rejection, she looked down at her hands. “Now you will mock me.”

  “No.” His voice was oddly hoarse. He cleared his throat. “At least, not for this.”

  “You are mocking me now.” Her shoulders slumped. She didn’t wear defeat well.

  Having never been in love—at least, not this way—he found himself in wholly uncharted territory. It wasn’t fair he had to feel so vulnerable.

  “I’m not making fun of you.” He slid two fingers under her chin to turn her face to his. “If I had said what you just did, would you have made fun of me?”

  She lifted one eyebrow in a mocking expression, and for a second the Bella he knew was back. Just as quickly, though, she grew serious. “If you had said it to me, it would have been different. Because I would have wanted to hear it.”

  “I wanted to hear it.” He dropped his hand and shook his head. “But something tells me you won’t believe that.”

  “Why would I?” She laughed bitterly. “You wish me to believe that you do not love anyone. That you drown yourself in meaningless sex. That was fine, when it was what I wanted from you. But you wanted more from me than that, and I would not give it. And now, you will reject me as a punishment.”

  “I didn’t want more then,” he insisted, out of habit. “I mean…I used to do the meaningless sex thing. Because I did love someone, once. He died. And no, it wasn’t a gay thing. He was my sire. I know you think the whole vampire thing is disgusting, and I know you’re not going to believe this, but the blood tie…does something to you. And when he died…It was easier for me to think I wasn’t lonely if I was going home with a different woman every night. Then things happened with you. And when I tried the meaningless sex thing again, it just didn’t work.”

  He groaned and swung his legs over the side of the bed, sitting up. “I better stop talking. I’m just fucking this up more.”

  “You are not fucking up anything.” Color rose in her cheeks. He realized he rarely heard her use profanity. “Max, we must talk about this or we will not be happy.”

  “We won’t be happy anyway. We’re going to die, remember?” The bitter retort rode a wave of bile up his throat, and he choked it back. “God, this is really happening to me again. I’m gonna fall for you and some horrible shit is going to happen.”

  She put her arms around his shoulders, rested her cheek against his. “Let’s not think about that now.”

  He shook his head. “This isn’t how I wanted it to happen.”

  “It is not how I wanted it to happ
en, either.” Her voice was a whisper that tickled his ear.

  His mouth went dry at the thought of the month he’d spent apart from her, a month he would never be able to reclaim. “We wasted so much time.”

  “Then let’s not waste any more.” She buried her face against his neck and he felt the hot wetness of her tears. “Do you love me?”

  He twisted slightly to face her. “What a stupid question. Of course I love you.”

  “Then let’s not waste any more time,” she repeated softly, pulling her shirt over her head.

  If he had walked away from her, maybe he could have rebuilt some of his armor. Maybe he could have protected himself a little from the pain of her death.

  But he couldn’t walk away, and he wouldn’t force himself to.

  I don’t know how much time passed between when I blacked out in Cyrus’s bathroom until I woke up in Nathan’s bed, but I felt as if I’d aged twenty years. My head throbbed and the faint light in the room seemed to have a personal grudge against me. My muscles were painfully tight, like I’d done a grueling workout without stretching properly. I groaned and my throat felt as though it would crack and bleed, it was so dry.

  “You’re awake. Thank God.”

  Nathan. I turned my head and tried to focus, but the light assaulted me. “Where’s Cyrus?”

  Nathan stroked the back of my hand. “He’s on the couch. He woke up a few hours ago, but he’s still healing from what she did to him.”

  “He lived.” I took a deep breath, wincing at the soreness in my chest. “Well, that’s something.”

  “Are you okay?” Nathan’s voice held an edge of neediness that set my teeth grinding.

  Pathetic as ever.

  “That wasn’t me.” It was Cyrus’s voice in my head, criticizing Nathan.

  “What wasn’t?” Nathan sat beside me on the bed. The mattress dipped and the axis of my world twisted.

  “Nothing, nothing.”

  Tell him you can hear me. It will kill him.