Blood Ties Omnibus

by Jennifer Armintrout

  And in another flash of inspiration, he rounded on me. “You!”

  I backed up as he came forward, and Nathan got between us. The Soul Eater knocked him aside as though he were made of straw.

  “Nathan!” Torn between wanting to dive for him, to protect him and see if he was hurt, and my instinct to flee the Soul Eater, I found the latter winning out. But I wasn’t fast enough. Jacob had centuries of reflex training over me. The instant I thought about running, he had me.

  “Perhaps you were the weak one.” He spun me, my back pulled up tight against his chest as his clawed hands gripped my arms. Nathan and Cyrus stood, their helplessness written in the dire expressions on their faces, unable to save me. Unable to do anything, really, until the Soul Eater made his next move, and that might leave me dead.

  “Now your resistance toward me seems all the more peculiar. Nolen at least had some fire in him, some passion. Simon…oh, my dear Simon.” His hold relaxed, and he brought one hand up to stroke my neck. “What ever are we going to do with you?”

  I couldn’t tell if he was talking to Cyrus or me, so I didn’t answer him. Through clenched teeth, I whispered, “Let me go.”

  For a moment, he seemed to consider it. Then he gripped my chin and pulled my head up. “Isn’t it funny, that my son is your fledgling, and my fledgling is your sire? We’re blood related, in a way.”

  “Then what you were proposing before would be incest,” I wheezed, barely able to catch my breath.

  “Why are you doing this, Jacob?” Nathan attempted to draw the Soul Eater’s attention away from me. It worked, but only a little. I could breathe again, but my head was still pulled up at an uncomfortable angle. My spine popped and my muscles screamed in protest.

  Still, I sent Nathan a mental Thank you.

  Hang on, sweetheart. His gaze met mine for just a second before he addressed the Soul Eater again. “Why are you on this demented quest? Do you really think there isn’t going to be another vampire just as ambitious as you are, gunning for you once you become a god? Imagine the kind of trophy you would make!”

  “More ambitious?” The Soul Eater cackled at that. “Have you met an ambitious vampire in your life? Look at yourself. You could have stayed with me, never wanting for anything, if only you would have done what I’d asked of you. Instead, you chose to live out your pathetic existence serving those who would see us subjugated and exterminated. Living in a filthy apartment and running your pathetic shop full of superstitions you’ve never believed.

  “And you, Simon! All I ever asked is for you to carry out my wishes, to be my eyes when I could not rouse from my slumber. But you were more concerned with finding a woman to adore you, as if that would make you more of a man. You embarrass me!” He gave a grunt of disgust. “If you intend to serve me, I suggest you rid yourself of your insipid humanity.

  “A new age is dawning, my children. Vampires will rule this earth, as we’re meant to. No more of this ‘the meek will inherit’ preaching from the Movement. Let the meek have the kingdom of heaven. The strong shall rule on earth.” As he spoke, his hand tightened around my neck. His body trembled with rage. “The Oracle has fulfilled her role. She has secured the child I need. She sees a vision of chaos, thinking to impress me with horror. But the true horror will come when I rule, when I kill the Oracle and reign in her stead.”

  His hand at my throat relaxed once again, stroking down the column of my windpipe. He took me by the hand, the strength of his grip a warning, and turned me to face him. “Despite your failings and your naive alliance to those who would destroy me, your death is not essential, Carrie. You’re of my line. You could serve me. Or can die here tonight.”

  “If they die, I die.” I said it with as much steel as I could inject into my voice, but I was terrified.

  The Soul Eater smiled. “So brave. I should kill you for that alone. But I am feeling kind tonight.”

  “Thank you?” I looked over Nathan and Cyrus, saw their grim faces. They knew better than I how the Soul Eater displayed his kindness.

  He hooked his index finger beneath my chin, lifted my face and gazed into my eyes. “You may pick which one of them lives.”

  “Excuse me?” I blinked rapidly, as if that would help me clear my head. I couldn’t have heard what he’d said.

  “You can pick which one lives.” He shrugged elegantly. “Oh, they’ll both die eventually. I need Nathan’s soul to complete my ritual, and I’m sure my son will do something to rouse my anger before long. But at your word, one of them can leave this house tonight.”

  I looked to Nathan. What do I do?

  I trust you. The reply didn’t help me, but it was the only communication we could manage. The Soul Eater made a move….

  I’m not sure what he intended to do. But in that second, Cyrus rushed forward, a stake drawn. He swung the weapon at his father, and before my eyes could track the Soul Eater’s movements, he had Cyrus’s arm bent at an unnatural angle behind his back.

  “Why do you fight me?” Jacob sounded pained as he twisted Cyrus’s arm. I heard the bones crack and saw the stake fall from his fingers as he screamed. The Soul Eater grimaced. “Why would you make an attempt on my life?”

  “Because I know you’re a coward! You’ll kill her, just like you kill anyone else who threatens your power!” Cyrus shouted. The tears rolling down his face were from the pain in his arm and the grief he felt. Both sensations overwhelmed me, and I clutched my chest, crushed under the weight of his sadness and frustration. “You won’t steal her from me!”

  The Soul Eater looked taken aback. “She is worthless. You value her life above mine?”

  “Yes, I do!” Cyrus cradled his ruined arm to his chest, mouth frozen open in a silent cry of anguish as he dropped to his knees in defeat. “I don’t know. I’m tired of this pain.”

  I wanted to go to his side and wrap my arms around him. But it was his father who comforted him, placing a hand on his head. “And I can take it from you. My son. I can take it all from you.”

  Don’t listen to him, I begged him silently, but my thought bounced back to me with a desolate echo. Cyrus wasn’t listening to me. He’d made up his mind.

  “Let me help you, son.” The Soul Eater knelt at his side. “Come home to me.”

  He’s going to drain him! I screamed silently at Nathan. He’s going to drain him and re-sire him.

  Calm down, Carrie. Don’t say a word.

  If I’d been in the right frame of mind, maybe I would have recognized the sense in Nathan’s words. But all I felt was unimaginable pain that my fledgling would be stolen from me, that my life would be meaningless.

  That’s why I didn’t see the stake Cyrus had pulled. My gaze was focused on the Soul Eater’s face as it changed, his fangs as they pierced Cyrus’s skin.

  So I screamed, “He killed your stepmother!”

  The Soul Eater paused. I couldn’t stop talking. “He pushed her into the fire. He was the one who killed her.”

  The Soul Eater actually withdrew, as if to apologize. He saw the stake in Cyrus’s hand and raised his arm to strike him.

  Cyrus was faster. He kicked his father’s feet from beneath him. Jacob landed hard on his back and couldn’t recover before Cyrus pinned him with a foot to the chest.

  “You killed her?” His face contorted in rage. “You killed her?”

  “She was a worthless cow,” the Soul Eater wheezed. The sound of his ribs slowly crunching under Cyrus’s foot was followed by a gurgle of blood from his mouth. “And now, I’ll send you to join her!”

  He planted his feet on the floor and sprang up, grabbing Cyrus’s arm. But he grabbed the wrong one. It took only a second for Cyrus to implant the stake firmly in his father’s chest.

  I braced myself for the whoosh of wind and the violent storm of ashes that was sure to follow. But nothing happened. The Soul Eater’s shout of pain died into sinister laughter.

  I thought of Cyrus’s heart, how he’d kept it in a box.

  I thou
ght of my own heart in its casket in Nathan’s bedside table.

  The Soul Eater’s hand closed around Cyrus’s neck. He lifted him off the ground with one arm and wrenched the stake from his chest, releasing a spurt of blood.

  Then, without another word, he stabbed Cyrus in the heart. There was no rush of wind, no spectacular flame. Cyrus’s second vampire life ended in an inconsequential burst of ash.

  Crippling pain gripped me, almost exactly what I’d felt when I’d sired him. But that pain had been a sort of stitching together. This was an agonizing rending of the fabric that had bound us. And the last thing I heard through the blood tie was his scream of terror.

  I collapsed to the floor at the same moment the Soul Eater did. He clutched his chest as though his hand could stop the blood that poured from him. A ball of blue flame shot upward from the wound, but still he didn’t burn.

  “It’s not his heart,” Nathan whispered, staring in horror.

  The doors flew open. Dahlia rushed in, screaming.

  Kill me. Let her kill me. When it seemed I couldn’t stand another second of the pain, it doubled, tripled, multiplied into oblivion. I stared at the spot where my fledgling had stood, rocking with my knees drawn up to my chest.

  “No!” I’d never heard Dahlia sound so crazed, and for her, that’s saying something. But it didn’t register with me immediately. Not until Nathan was pulling on my elbow—how long had he been doing that?—urging me to my feet. When I didn’t stand, he swept me up in his arms, cradling me to his chest, and charged through the window. A flash of light illuminated the study—probably a spell of Dahlia’s intended for us—and then we were slipping down the lawn the way we had the night Nathan had lost Ziggy in the very room I’d just lost Cyrus.

  The irony would have been more poignant if I hadn’t been losing my mind to grief at an accelerated pace.

  Once we were off the grounds and hidden for a moment, he slowed. I noted from a faraway place the blood streaming down his face from cuts left by the shattered window glass.

  “Carrie, are you all right?” He shook me. “Carrie, say something. Say something!”

  I turned my eyes to the sky. “I can’t see the stars.”

  And then I couldn’t say another word.

  Twenty-Five:

  Bite

  I t only took a second for the kid to make up his mind. Max saw the decision-making process in slow motion: recognition, realization that the plan must be changed, new plan taking shape.

  Ziggy lifted his arm as if he was going to drive the stake into Max’s chest. Bella screamed. The kid spun and let the stake loose. It punctured the Oracle’s chest, fast and clean, but she didn’t burn.

  She laughed. The laughter grew louder as the guards approached them, stakes drawn. Without hesitation, the kid slipped two from his sleeves straight into his hands, and let them fly in quick succession. This time, the strikes hit home. The vampires exploded into dust.

  Ziggy turned to the Oracle. “Hold still, bitch, unless you want another abnormally large splinter.”

  “You think you can kill me?” The Oracle laughed again, twisting the stake free from her chest. “You think you can cause me pain? You have no idea of pain. No concept!”

  “Oh, lady. You have it so fucking wrong.” He reached into the back of his shirt and pulled out another stake, twirling it in his hand as he raised his arm.

  Max had worked with a lot of assassins in the past. The Movement had the most specialized hand-to-hand training program outside of the Israeli military. But Max had never seen reflexes like this, let alone spatial accuracy in the blink of an eye.

  But the kid didn’t get a chance to use his mad skills. Without warning, the Oracle burst into flames, from the feet up. Fire shot from her eyes and mouth, her fingers melted and flames licked up her arms from the stumps.

  “Looks like the Soul Eater had the balls to do it, after all! This one is gonna be bad,” Max called to Ziggy, dropping to cover Bella. “Grab something and hang on.”

  The Oracle screamed—no, roared was more like it—as the flames burned her body. The skin dissolved slowly, leaving her a creature of raw muscle and tendons for a split second before they flaked away to ash, leaving nothing but a skeleton suspended around a ball of blue flame. When the flame extinguished and dropped to the ashes on the ground, the wind came.

  The shutters tore from the windows. The sun had set—at least that was in their favor—but being sliced in half with a piece of metal would be just as bad.

  “Keep your head down,” Max shouted over the howl of the wind. The last word had just left his mouth when a chunk of debris whacked him in the back of the head. His arms gave out and he fell onto Bella. A sharp pain in his shoulder a second later indicated another piece of flying something had taken a chunk out of him. “Son of a bitch!”

  The Oracle’s bones, still suspended, were surrounded by a cyclone of her own ashes. They eroded away as if being scourged by a superaccelerated desert sandstorm. And when they were gone, so were the ashes, and the wind.

  “You guys okay?” Ziggy helped Max to his feet. “Dude, are you okay?”

  Max brushed him aside. “Bella, are you all right?”

  “Yes. A little…dizzy.” She trembled as he helped her into the chair. “I will be fine.”

  Max turned to Ziggy. “Yeah, we’re fine.”

  “She’s fine.” Ziggy gestured to Max’s shoulder. “You’re bleeding.”

  Max touched his shoulder and winced. “Yeah, something hit me. And then something else hit me.”

  “Something bit you,” Bella said quietly. When Max looked at her, questioning, she dipped her head. “It was the only opportunity I thought I would have.”

  Ziggy’s eyes went wide. “Wait a minute, you’re a—”

  “Werewolf,” Bella finished for him.

  “And you bit him. That would make him—”

  “A lupin.”

  Max froze. “My God. Bella. Why—”

  “We will need a place to hide. To hide our baby. The clan will not accept you if you are not one of us.” She stated it like he just had to accept it, like there was no other way. “They will know you are a lupin, of course. But the elder will understand the circumstances. She will let you stay. And if not, we will seek out Titus’s sanctuary.”

  “What the fuck, Bella?” Max spun away, kicking a twisted chunk of what used to be a shutter. “What the hell happens now? When the full moon comes or the daylight gets me? What the hell happens now?”

  He felt her approach, felt her at his side before she got there. It was so like the blood tie he’d shared with Marcus…but not violent or fearful. This was like….

  Coming home.

  She laced her fingers with his. “Whatever comes, we will figure it out together. The three of us.”

  He squeezed her hand. “This isn’t how I expected to end up, you know?”

  “Guys, I hate to break up your moment, but we have to get the hell out of here. Those weren’t the only guards in the place, and I can guarantee others are headed up those stairs right now.” Ziggy ran toward the section of wall that had rotated to reveal the Oracle. “They’ll be behind here, too. Are you ready for a fight?”

  “It’s all we’ve been doing for the past week. I think we’ll manage.” Max looked at Bella. “What about you?”

  “Have you ever known me to back down from a fight?” She smiled encouragingly at him. “Even half-crippled?”

  “Listen, guys, if we make it through this, you gotta do something for me, okay?” Ziggy held Max’s gaze so long it became a little uncomfortable.

  Still, Max nodded. “Sure, kid. I think I’ve got a pretty good idea what you want.”

  “Good.” Ziggy put his hand on one of the wooden panels. “Ready?”

  Max took Bella’s hand and squeezed it. “I love you.”

  “I have always told you that.” She smiled up at him. “We will be fine. It is not our destiny to die today.”

  “Good. Then let�
�s kick some ass.”

  Ziggy pushed on the panel, and they started to move.

  Twenty-Six:

  Grave

  A t the end, we went underground. Literally.

  We stopped at the apartment briefly, where Nathan loaded up on blood and weapons, then he took me down to the bookshop. He put a Closed for Remodeling sign on the door and locked us in, then began pushing aside the counter. I wondered what he was doing, but it was from a faraway place, and not enough to motivate me to speak. The counter, which I’d always assumed was fixed to the floor, moved aside after a lot of work on Nathan’s part. Beneath it, a trapdoor slid aside to reveal a narrow wooden staircase leading into a subbasement.

  It was what I’d heard people in the area refer to as a Michigan basement, with a dirt floor and stones packed into concrete to form the rough walls. There was a sleeping bag and a cooler, a camping lantern and a utility sink connected to a single hose that disappeared into the floorboards above. Nathan unrolled the sleeping bag and helped me into it, and I could feel the dampness from the floor seeping into my bones already. He went back up the stairs and I heard him pulling the counter in place to cover the hole, before he slid the trapdoor closed.

  “We’ll be fine for now,” he said, taking the stairs faster than he would have if they’d been a bit less steep. “Max will be on his way, and we have enough blood for a couple days. And anyone who comes into the shop probably won’t…” He stopped when he looked at me, and cursed.

  I know what he probably saw. My eyes, glassy and blank as I stared at nothing, seemingly checked out of my head. But I was there. I saw everything, took in everything that was happening. I knew when the Soul Eater recovered, he’d come looking for us. I just couldn’t make myself not long for death. And my despair was so complete, I couldn’t speak to tell Nathan not to bother, to save himself.

  I heard his thoughts, though, and his anger. Anger at me for mourning Cyrus, anger at himself for being angry with me, and fear that we would be found. If I sleep, I won’t think, and he won’t be able to find us.