Blood Ties Omnibus

by Jennifer Armintrout

  The people closing in on them were not vampires. I could tell by the smell of their blood. As disgusting as it sounds, humans smell like food, and they were definitely food. But when one grabbed Nathan and he spun, landing a punch squarely to the thing’s jaw, nothing happened. Well, a close approximation to nothing. Its head snapped back the way anyone’s would when taking a punch. But these…people, for lack of a better term, looked half-starved. Their dirty skin showed through ragged clothes, their eyes were sunken, skin tight across the sharp bones of their skulls. They looked like famine victims. Nathan is strong, even by vampire standards. The one he hit should have ended in a shower of exploded skull and bits of brain.

  The surprise on his face mirrored my own when the skeletal man shook off the pain, wiped the blood from his nose, and repaid the blow with a right hook that came so fast and hard I heard the bones of Nathan’s face crack.

  I rushed forward, a stake drawn. Even if they weren’t vampires, a stake to the heart will kill most things. Ziggy caught sight of me and held his hands out in front of himself, as if from the distance he stood he could stop me. “Don’t!”

  I ignored him, my stake sinking into the back of the creature that had hit Nathan. The man screamed and fell forward. His body stiffened up, the wounded muscles contracting to lock the stake in place. I had to plant a foot in the small of his back and use both hands to jerk the weapon free, releasing a tremendous arc of blood.

  Going in, my intent had been to save Nathan. I don’t know if I thought it would be enough to cause a distraction, or if I thought killing one would scare the others off, but neither plan panned out. As I stepped back from the dying creature, two more attacked me. I killed the first easily, jamming the stake in her throat as she charged me. The second grabbed my shoulders from behind, holding me in a punishing grip. My flesh turned to pulp under the squeezing fingers, my bones audibly cracked. I couldn’t fight. I could barely breathe from the pain. I watched as the others caught Nathan and dragged him, struggling, to the other open end of the alley, and Ziggy followed.

  “Bill!” I screamed, taking a deep breath to gear up for another when the creature holding me let go, dropping me to the pavement with a blow to the back of the head. I managed to keep my face from smashing into the ground, but I couldn’t get up. The world spun, and in the whiteouts of light from the pain exploding in my skull I saw the taillights of a car at the other end of the alley.

  They didn’t want to kill Nathan. They wanted to take him.

  Behind me, I heard the squeal of tires, and the sound sent pain like jagged glass through my brain. I focused on Bill’s voice shouting, “Get up, we’re going to lose them!” and managed to climb to my feet and to the car. My door wasn’t completely closed yet when Bill hit the gas. The tires squealed and the car jolted after the vehicle in front of us.

  “We don’t have enough…” I cradled my head in my hands and searched for the words between the flashbulbs of pain popping behind my eyelids. “We can’t go after him alone. They’re going to the Soul Eater.”

  “I hate to tell you, but we are alone. I don’t know anybody around here, and your crowd is apparently not too friendly.” He dropped his speed and changed lanes, putting at least four cars between us and the car carrying Nathan.

  “What are you doing? You’re going to lose him!” I leaned forward, gripping the dashboard as if the pressure from my hands could make the car go faster.

  Bill glanced at me sideways, an annoyed kind of look. “I’m not going to lose them. I know how to follow people without being obvious. Believe me, they’ll think we lost them, and they’ll be wrong.”

  I settled back reluctantly, keeping my eyes on the car as it zoomed ahead of us. “I don’t know what I’m worried about. If they get away, I can always get directions from Nathan.”

  “Yeah, that’s a handy trick,” he said offhandedly as he barely squeaked through a yellow light. “Do you know where we’re headed?”

  “We’re going south.” I shrugged. “Pretty soon we’ll run out of city, so keep an eye on them. Wherever they’re going has to be within a few more miles.”

  But it turned out I was wrong. They skipped all the major numbered streets and just kept heading south on Division Avenue, until there were no more streetlights and the buildings gave way to swamps and trees. Soon, we were the only cars on the road. There was no way they didn’t know we were following them.

  “What’s the plan, Stan?” Bill asked, jerking the wheel to make a hard turn onto a dirt road. The car ahead of us roared and shot farther from us.

  “We have to get Nathan before they get him to the Soul Eater.” I closed my eyes. “I just wish I knew how to do that.”

  “Well, I could run them off the road,” Bill suggested, clearly uncomfortable with the idea. “It’s dangerous. But it’s not like they’re going to stop to get gas out here and we could just grab him then.”

  I nodded, remembering something Nathan had told me when I’d first become a vampire, that a car crash could kill me if the damage done to my body was bad enough that I couldn’t heal it quicker than it killed me. He’d used it as an example back then. I’m sure he didn’t expect that I’d be using it to brace myself mentally for ramming a car he was riding in off the road. “Let’s do it.”

  I suppose I should have felt more guilty for endangering a human, but things went so fast. Bill hit the gas and we swerved as the tires resisted the pull of the loose gravel. We caught up with the other car fast enough that we nudged them with our bumper, but it wasn’t enough. I watched, wary, as the needle of the speedometer went higher and higher.

  Seventy on a dirt road. Might as well have shot ourselves in the head right then.

  It took two tries—bumping, scraping, screeching tries—to edge past the car enough to make a good hit. Before I could revise the plan, Bill shouted, “Hang on!” and jerked the wheel hard to the right, crashing us against the other car. They pushed back, just for a second, before spinning across the road. As the driver, another of the skeletal superhumans, struggled to turn the vehicle, Bill reversed, revved the engine and shifted into Drive, T-boning the car and spinning it into the ditch.

  We both got out, Bill drawing his gun. “More effective than a stake,” he said with a shrug, and I couldn’t argue with him, though I didn’t think a bullet would stop those things in the car.

  “Nathan? Are you okay? Can you hear me?” I eased down the bank and wrenched the back door open.

  “I can hear you,” Nathan said as he pulled himself out. Inside the car, the humans were either unconscious or dead. At least something could hurt them.

  Nathan’s face was bruised and misshapen where he’d been hit, bleeding where a shard of broken glass protruded from his forehead just below his hairline. “You couldn’t think of a better way to rescue me?”

  I threw my arms around him. I knew but didn’t really care that one of those superfreaks could wake and we’d have another fight on our hands. I just wanted to touch him, to make sure he was okay. Well, aside from the gash across his forehead.

  He put his arms around me for just a moment, squeezing me tight. Then he let me go and gestured up the bank, to where Bill stood, his eyes wide as he surveyed the damage he’d done. Nathan gestured to the open door, and Ziggy’s unconscious form inside. “I need your help, my son is in the car.”

  I stepped aside while they pulled him out. It took some maneuvering from all three of us to get him up the steep slope, but we managed to get him into the backseat. The car groaned as we pulled away, and something squeaked ominously, but Bill assured us we could make it back to the bookshop.

  “Before sunrise, if you don’t mind,” Nathan added. He sat in the back with Ziggy, cradling his head in his lap.

  “What happened?” I asked, my heart still aching with relief. I didn’t want to believe what I couldn’t deny was true. Ziggy had set Nathan up.

  Nathan looked down at his son’s face, a shadow of hurt crossing his battered features. “He was tryi
ng to take me back to the Soul Eater. Jacob has him brainwashed into believing that he doesn’t want to hurt me, that he wants us all to be a family. He’s Ziggy’s sire.”

  A lump of tears I couldn’t shed formed in my throat. Of all the things Nathan feared, his sire was number one. And now, the Soul Eater had his son. “What are we going to do?”

  Nathan shook his head, stroking the hair back from his son’s face. “I don’t know. It’s up to Ziggy. I can’t force him to turn his back on his sire.” He laid his hand gently, almost reverently, on the front of Ziggy’s T-shirt and frowned.

  “What?” I asked, leaning over the seat, though I had a terrible inkling of what Nathan had felt there.

  With trembling hands, Nathan jerked the fabric of Ziggy’s shirt up, exposing a long, puckered scar bisecting his torso from his collarbones to his navel. My breath froze in my chest. I knew what that scar was. I had one, myself. So had Cyrus, when he was alive the first time.

  “Jesus,” Bill said, his eyes fixed on the rearview mirror. His skin paled, and he turned his gaze back to the road. “That must have been some serious injury.”

  But he had no clue how serious it was. Nathan and I did. The Soul Eater had taken Ziggy’s heart.

  My eyes filled with tears as they met Nathan’s. “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know.” His voice was tight, hopeless. “I don’t know.”

  Five:

  Heartless

  Z iggy was still unconscious when we returned to the bookshop.

  “Stay with him,” Nathan ordered, motioning me into the backseat. “If he wakes up…knock him out again.”

  It wasn’t the most tender, fatherly suggestion, but he was right. If Ziggy could, he would go back to his sire.

  On the chance Dahlia was still inside somewhere, Nathan searched the bookstore. When it was clear, they carried Ziggy downstairs, to the hidden shelter that Nathan kept below the shop floorboards.

  “I can’t say I’m glad to see this place again,” I muttered as I followed them down the steep few steps.

  There was a thud, and Bill swore. “There isn’t much head clearance down here,” Nathan warned belatedly.

  The hideout was a short, narrow space with a dirt floor and stone masonry walls that were crumbling. The sleeping bags, medical kit and camping lantern we’d left behind were still there, as well as the empty bags from the blood we’d consumed while in hiding. But we didn’t have any blood now, and Bill was human. “We’re not going to be here long, I hope?”

  I’d whispered the question to Nathan, but the space was too crowded and confined for secrecy. Bill’s gaze darted from me to Nathan and back as he helped to maneuver Ziggy into a sleeping bag. “I don’t feed from the vein, okay? So you guys need a plan in place.”

  “We’re going back to Chicago as soon as the sun goes down,” Nathan answered tersely. “That’s the plan.”

  He settled on the floor, his back propped against the rough stone and crumbling cement of the wall. Bill retreated to the other side of the shelter and I sat beside Nathan.

  “Do you really think that’s smart?” I asked, my voice low not to keep our conversation private—that would have been impossible—but to indicate that Bill should try to politely ignore us. “I mean, with the Soul Eater having his heart and every—”

  “I know what the Soul Eater has!” Nathan exploded. He banged the back of his head against the stone, just once, and dropped his forehead to rest on his hands. His next words were softer, full of heartrending dismay. “What a mess this is.”

  I leaned against him, my head on his shoulder, one hand on his back. Comforting with words isn’t something I’m good at.

  “We can’t go back to Chicago,” I said, quieter. “At least, not now. The Soul Eater will be looking for us, and he’ll follow us there. At least here we have the resources to protect ourselves.”

  “And there we have security,” Nathan argued, but I cut him off.

  “What about those creatures? Who do you think will stop them? The doorman? The janitor? The head of the building association?” My voice had grown louder, and I lowered it. “Have you thought of how many people will die when he lets those things loose in Chicago?”

  “But the book, Dahlia’s spell book—”

  “Is in the car. I’m not an idiot, Nathan. I wouldn’t leave something like that behind. We have to stay here, where we can keep a closer eye on what the Soul Eater is up to.” I watched as he tried to form another protest, and then as defeat finally registered on his features.

  He looked up, acknowledging Bill for the first time. “Thank you. For your help. You’ve done more than I ever would have asked you to.”

  Bill held up one hand, letting it fall in obvious exhaustion. “It’s nothing. I mean, it’s something. If it were my kid, I’d want someone to help me.”

  “Do you have kids?” It was something I hadn’t thought of. Had I dragged him away from his family, possibly to get him killed?

  “No. But if I did.” He shook his head. “You’re right. If we head back to Max’s place, they’re going to follow you guys. And if this Soul Eater guy is going to track you down wherever you go, well, why not stay where you can keep a closer eye on him, rather than be surprised when you wake up dead?”

  Nathan snorted. “Well, when you—a human who has little knowledge of the situation aside from vague rumblings in the Chicago underground—frame it that way, in the context of the knowledge you don’t have, I really can’t argue.”

  When he tries to, Nathan can be an incredible ass. “I filled him in on the details on the drive up here. To save you. Which he helped with. You’d be in your sire’s living room sipping tea right now, if he hadn’t. So, can you at least pretend he’s a human being, worthy of respect?”

  We sat in silence for a minute. I studied Nathan’s face, amazed as ever to watch it visibly healing. My head still throbbed. I probably had—and would have—a fractured skull for a few days. The pressure behind my eyes forced my eyelids closed, sleep making my thoughts heavy. Just as I dropped off, I roused myself. “I’m sorry, I’m falling asleep,” I mumbled, rubbing my eyes.

  Nathan patted my shoulder, urging me to lean against him. “Go ahead, get some rest.”

  “No,” I protested. “We’ve got to keep an eye out, in case—”

  With a beleaguered sigh, he wrapped his arm around me. Not around my shoulders, but around my head, bringing his hand to neatly cover my mouth as he pulled me close to him.

  Bill chuckled, and Nathan dropped his arm to my shoulders. My eyes eased open for a moment and I saw Ziggy, still unconscious, like something out of a dream. He was alive. And he was back home.

  Morning came too soon.

  Lately, it always seemed to come too soon, Max realized. When night was the time for him to be up and moving around, cleaning, doing laundry, going to the bar, hanging out, the night seemed to be plenty of time to get everything done. He’d even found himself bored on occasion. But now, when he had to tear himself away from Bella’s warm, soft body, the night seemed unfairly short.

  Now, the dawn loomed on the horizon, and with it inevitable separation. He was trying hard not to be morose, but it was more difficult than he’d expected. A few months ago, he would have been aching for a fight, any kind of danger to break up the monotony of the everyday. And it never occurred to him then to worry about what would happen if he didn’t survive. Bella was his everyday now, and it terrified him to think he might not get back to her.

  He supposed he was the perfect example of “be careful what you wish for.”

  Rising from the bed as gently as he could, trying not to wake Bella until absolutely necessary, he reached for the jeans wadded up on the floor. He pulled them on, set a teakettle of blood on the hot plate by the bathroom sink and went out to the balcony while he waited for it to warm.

  The sky over the lake was a black-tinged blue, turning slowly golden near the eastern horizon. Some mornings he saw pink reflected on the cloud
s. Some mornings, the sun seemed to just appear; one moment it was night, the next, day, without him even noticing. It wasn’t something he’d ever experienced in his human life, definitely nothing he’d purposely hung around to watch in his vampire days. Usually, it put him in a great mood. Now, as the sun rose in the east, his gaze was drawn to the runway at the cliff’s edge. The jet parked there had its lights on, a small truck was stopped next to it.

  “Great, don’t rush me along or anything.”

  “Max?” Bella’s sleepy voice called. “You are already awake?”

  He strolled into the bedroom, his heart catching in his throat a little bit at the sight of her, struggling to sit up, reaching for her robe that was impossibly far away. How would she fare when he was gone? Sure, one of her surly relations would probably help her, but how could they be there for everything she needed? How could anyone take better care of her than him? It was another reason that he would have to make damn sure to stay alive and get back to her.

  As if she’d read his thoughts, Bella’s expression turned dark. “Do not look at me with such pity. I am capable on my own.”

  “I know you are,” he said, trying not to sound patronizing but handing her the robe all the same. “I’m just worried that you won’t have everything you need here. That you’ll be…neglected.”

  She arched a sardonic brow. “You think I would tolerate being neglected?”

  “I think your family will take better care of you than they would me, were the situation reversed.” Max helped her ease her arms into the robe, lamenting the loss of all that tight, tanned skin from his view. He didn’t want to be so shallow as to add “see my girlfriend naked again” to his list of reasons to survive.

  “That is probably true,” Bella agreed, then, slowly, she said, “I…have been thinking. About you leaving.”

  The smell of the blood alerted him to the imminent prospect of overwarming, and he went to the bathroom to retrieve the kettle. “I’m listening.”