Blood Ties Omnibus

by Jennifer Armintrout

  “I like to be alone.” Ziggy turned and headed for the door.

  “Okay, I get it. You go roam the streets, and I’ll somehow pick this padlock and then you can lock me in so I don’t get away.” He gestured to Ziggy. “Give me one of those safety pins off your boots.”

  Nate had never padlocked the storage room before. But then, judging from the rest of the place, it was probably good that he had. Ziggy forced down his growing irritation and made his way to Bill’s side.

  “I’ve got a better idea.” Ziggy gripped the lock and jerked it down sharply. It held together a hinged metal rectangle that slotted over a U-shaped loop attached to the door. The whole thing snapped free from the bolts, bending the door a little where the closure was attached. The whole destruction took less than a second, and Ziggy felt pretty pleased with himself, until he saw the look on Bill’s face. He appeared to be torn between being impressed and just plain being scared shitless.

  “My sire is pretty strong, and I drink his blood, so…” That was the worst thing to say. He just shut his mouth and went inside.

  “Why didn’t he have the rest of the place this secure?” Bill asked as Ziggy found the pull cord for the dusty lightbulb overhead.

  “I don’t know. It used to be. Stuff changed.” Stuff like Carrie. Stuff like dying. Stuff like dying because Carrie let Cyrus nearly rip his head off.

  Bill pulled the door closed. As closed as he could now that it was bent, anyway. “Well, I’ll just have to improvise. You don’t have to stay.”

  “Nah, it’s all right. Not like I have anything better to do.” And wasn’t that the truth. Vampires in New York, Chicago, those were lucky vampires. Stuff stayed open late.

  But he supposed it could have been worse. He could live in Alaska.

  Bill ran his hand across one of the dusty shelves as if he was testing it for stability. “You fed already, right?”

  “Jesus.” Ziggy leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. That was officially the very last thing he needed, for Bill to be afraid that he was looking at him like some all-you-can-eat buffet.

  “You know, you bit me once already. I’m just playing it safe.” Bill sounded defensive.

  Ziggy laughed, and he could taste the bitterness of it in his throat. Of course this guy wouldn’t trust him. Why should he? Why should any human trust him?

  They’re not the same as us, Jacob whispered in his mind. You deserve someone to match your power.

  It was a huge struggle not to respond to him. In fact, it made him feel a little bit like crying, and that was the last thing he wanted to do in front of Bill.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Bill was right beside him in the next second, looking worried as hell.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” He wiped his forehead with the palm of his hand and started for the door. When he glanced down at his hand, he saw red. Great. Sweating blood. That was probably really healthy.

  “I don’t know if I’ve made it clear or not,” Bill said, quiet enough that it wasn’t normal volume, but too strong and self-confident to be a whisper. “But I like you. Despite the fact you bit me. That doesn’t mean I expect anything. But just so you have that information handy.”

  Ziggy swallowed hard as Bill’s footsteps came up close behind him. A big, warm, human hand touched his shoulder. And then, without asking permission or giving any sort of warning that he was going to do so, Bill spun him to face him, and kissed him.

  And Ziggy realized that he hadn’t been kissed since…well, since before he died.

  It wasn’t a timid, gentle kind of kiss, either. It reminded him of one of those movie kisses that he used to think looked painful. Now he knew better. They felt damned good.

  True, the only guy he’d ever kissed before was Jeremy and look how well that had turned out. But Jeremy had been a fling, a sort of test to see if he was really, really gay. He definitely hadn’t been into Ziggy as much as Ziggy had been into him. And Bill sure seemed to be into him.

  That was the best part. Oh yeah, Bill’s hands in his hair and his tongue in his mouth, those were good parts, too. But knowing that the other guy had an interest in him besides getting laid—hell, at least suspecting the guy had an interest besides getting laid—that made it more than a kiss. It made it a validation somehow.

  It was a shame that it ended too soon. Suddenly, Bill jerked back, leaving Ziggy dazed and disappointed.

  “Did you hear that?” Bill looked at the door of the shed as if he could see through it. “I thought I heard…”

  And then Ziggy heard it, too. It was Carrie, screaming.

  We were on the way down to the bookshop when it happened. Maybe we were too sex-drugged to be observant, and that was our big mistake. When we stepped onto the sidewalk, Nathan’s arm around my waist, hips bumping as we walked, loose limbed and giggling, headed just a few feet to the steps down to the shop, we caught their scent on the air.

  A dozen of the Soul Eater’s foul humans shuffled out of the alley, like deceptively slow monsters in a horror film. Nathan looked up, and my gaze followed his, to the rooftop, where more stood.

  “Carrie, grab me,” he said, sounding oddly calm as he locked his arms around me. I had no choice but to grab his shoulders and squeeze my eyes shut tight as he vaulted us both over the iron railing and down the stairwell.

  He hit first, landing on his feet on the lip of one step. We both tumbled, rolling down, every other stair finding a new part of me to bite into. We crashed through the door at the bottom and I was on my feet first, pushing it closed and locking it while Nathan wheezed and groaned on the floor.

  Of course, the door wasn’t as secure as it had been in the past. The window, smashed out months ago, was still covered only in flattened cardboard boxes. The tape keeping them up had lost much of its hold, so all that really separated me from the monsters was a bit of cardboard now pinned over the opening only by my shoulder.

  “Help!” I screamed, not knowing who would come to our aid. Max was asleep in the shelter, so I pounded on the floor with my foot as hard as I could while Nathan got to his feet and ran to the trapdoor.

  The door to the storage room scraped open and Ziggy and Bill rushed out, Bill with his gun drawn. I’d never been more happy to see a firearm pointed at me in my entire life.

  Then, two skinny but ruthlessly strong arms crumpled the cardboard on either side of me and clutched my shirt, pulling me into the hole where the window had been.

  Nathan shot forward and grabbed my arms, but I pushed him back. “My shirt,” I wheezed as the collar cut into my throat. He grabbed the fabric and ripped, and the whole thing tore away, sucking out of the hole with the arms and the cardboard.

  Max rushed up the stairs, bare chested and jeans unzipped, a stake in his hand. He looked from my near-topless state to the clutching, blood-crazed humans outside the door and shouted, “Cover the window!”

  It didn’t matter. Before I could move out of the way, the door creaked under their weight and fell in, almost in slow motion, and the creatures rushed in after the four of us.

  I didn’t have time to think things through. I just started fighting. The first one I came up against wasn’t armed. It was a good thing, too, because I couldn’t get to any kind of weapon before the first one struck. It was a short, middle-aged woman with a grown-out bleach job and sagging skin. Her dirty, broken fingernails dug into my shoulders as she pulled me against her. She was going to bite me.

  The hell she was. Despite the enormous pressure on my shoulders, I raised my arms and grabbed at her head, her ears, anything to distract her, and I pulled. I held two handfuls of bloody hair before she realized what had happened and let me go. She staggered back, but her eyes were empty as she charged at me again. Without full comprehension of why I did it, I grabbed one of the overturned wooden tables that used to hold metaphysical merchandise and held it up in front of me. She twisted to make another grab at me and managed to get my wrist, forcing me to drop the table, but her listless legs tangled and fell backwar
d onto the upturned legs. Oh, for fuck’s sake, I thought, falling on top of her and ramming her as hard as I could onto the table. Her hold released immediately and I staggered to my feet before another one could fall on us and inadvertently stake me. The blonde didn’t get up, her mouth opening and closing, body jerking. One square table leg protruded through her forehead and the bridge of her nose, another through her abdomen. The end of the leg jammed through her head was smeared wet and sticky with harsh gray bits of bone and chunks of flesh.

  I felt the vomit rising in my throat. I turned away from the scene when another set of hands grabbed me. There was nothing elegant about this attack. Whoever had me lifted me over their head and hurled me into the counter. I saw the cracked top of the display case before I hit it, but it was too late. I crashed through, feeling the bite of a thousand shards of glass as they exploded around me.

  Still, it was advantageous in that when I got to my feet, I had a weapon. A weapon that scored my palms and coursed blood down my arms, but still, a weapon. And when the creature who’d thrown me, a thin, young-looking guy with greasy black hair slashing across his eyes, came at me to finish the job, I sank a huge piece of glass into his body just under his rib cage and ripped up with all my might, praying my fingers wouldn’t get severed in the process. But you know that old saying about an object in motion—what holds true for rear-ending car accidents also holds true for eviscerating a human with a jagged piece of broken glass. The thing moving fastest causes the most damage. The man dropped, spewing a huge arterial spray, and my hand came away just a little bit worse for wear.

  I turned and caught sight of Bill, who was holding his own, shooting anything that moved. He had a worrisome gash across his forehead and a fresh bite on his forearm, but he moved like a total killing machine. I revised my battle plan against the Soul Eater. We didn’t need an army. We needed the Marines.

  Max wasn’t doing too bad himself. He wasn’t, to my disappointment, in werewolf mode, but he battled the guy who’d had him in a headlock previously with just his fists, and though the guy was a bull, he didn’t appear to be winning.

  I was about to jump back into the fray when I saw Ziggy, and horror made my blood run colder than it already was.

  Ziggy didn’t have a weapon. He didn’t need one. In the space of time it takes to blink, he grabbed a woman, twisted her head to the side, and ripped her throat out with his teeth, spitting a huge wad of flesh to the ground as she fell, almost instantly dead. Another rushed at him, and he punched straight through the man’s chest, jerking his bloody fist back as the man fell. There was a broken neck. Then a head torn off, spine dangling from the skull like the fuse of a bomb. Ziggy threw it aside nonchalantly and moved on to the next one.

  If he’d been in some primal rage, if he’d shown some sort of emotion while killing, I wouldn’t have been so bothered. And I wouldn’t have been bothered enough to be distracted. And that distraction wouldn’t have cost me Nathan.

  I’ve never been staked before. And I suppose, technically, since my heart wasn’t in my chest but in a little metal box under the guest bathroom sink back at the penthouse, it wouldn’t kill me. But when the creature sank the sharpened wood into my chest—how could anyone move so fast, so quietly?—I thought I would die. Prayed I would. I looked down, horrified, at the thick wood protruding from my chest, and my vision went hazy. The pain intensified tenfold, the way skinned knees always did as a child when I would look at them. I tumbled backward, little black spots of agony forming in my vision.

  “Carrie!” Nathan shouted, and I heard a scuffle. He rushed at the creature who’d grabbed me, but the man knocked him aside as if he were a fly. Nathan tumbled onto his back, and two of the other creatures spotted him. They advanced, but they threw their makeshift weapons aside.

  I watched in horror as one of them hit Nathan with a punch that sent him flying across the room. He landed with a sick crunch against one of the broken bookcases and went limp, though he tried for a moment to raise one of his hands. He slid to the floor, eyes rolling to the back of his head. Blood pooled on the wooden planks beneath him, a bright red streak behind him showing the path of his fall.

  I got to my feet and started to run for him, but the one who’d staked me held me back. The awful smell of him, whether from his filthy, tattered clothing or his grimy body, made me gag.

  Max headed for the two who closed in on Nathan, only to be tossed aside like a broken toy. Bill shot one of the pair, but, like the others that he’d shot, they were only slowed down. A dark-complected creature with a bullet wound in his neck gurgled, blood pouring from his mouth, but he still managed to get behind Bill and restrain him.

  Ziggy had better luck. One of them took a swing he easily dodged. The other made a clumsy grab for him.

  Immediately, alarms went off in my head. Either the Soul Eater had sent out his B squad, which I found doubtful, or they weren’t here to kill us. They were here for Nathan.

  I struggled against my captor and did the only thing I could think of: I screamed for help, as loudly and shrilly as I could.

  “Poor baby, does she need some help?” The voice behind me sent a fresh wave of anger and despair through me.

  Dahlia strolled into the room, clicking her long, black fingernails against a length of black vinyl tarp. She unrolled it to reveal a zipper. It was a body bag.

  She actually had the nerve to step close to me and pat me on the head. I spit in her smug face.

  All the humor went out of her expression. She produced a black handkerchief—she was nothing if not a perfectly color-coordinated cliché—and daintily wiped her cheek. A streak of white pancake makeup stained the cloth when she pulled it away. “Break her arm.”

  The monster jerked sharply where he hung on to one of my wrists and bone instantly splintered under his hand. I stared, too stunned to feel pain, at the jagged end of my ulna emerging from a split in my skin.

  She unrolled the bag beside Nathan and lifted one of his arms, letting it drop back to the ground.

  “Is he alive?” I screamed, stamping my foot in a futile effort to get their attention. “I want to know that he’s alive!”

  With a giggle, she raised one bloodied palm to her mouth and darted her tongue out to taste Nathan’s blood.

  I howled in rage and lunged forward, but the shock of the broken bone had worn off and my knees buckled. I hung helpless in my captor’s grasp, only able to watch as Dahlia rolled Nathan into the bag and zipped him in.

  “You two, carry him,” she ordered, and one of the humans holding Max clubbed him over the back of the head. He fell with a curse and tried to stand, but the creature hit him again, and he wisely stayed down. They moved forward and grabbed the body bag containing Nathan.

  “Please, just tell me if he’s alive!” I screamed at them as they disappeared through the door.

  Dahlia sniffed delicately as she passed me on her way out. “Kill them,” she ordered.

  As the creatures moved to do her bidding, Ziggy shouted, “Jacob is going to kill you when he finds out what you did.”

  “Who do you think sent me?” she asked, then stopped in her tracks and turned, a sick smile on her face. “Besides, I don’t recall seeing you here. Alive. They must have killed you before I got here. What a tragic, tragic accident.”

  “What about me, baby?” Max wheezed from the floor. “We got along, didn’t we?”

  A laugh exploded from her, a burst of pure evil. “You weren’t that good.”

  And then, she was gone. There wouldn’t be any further bargaining. Once, she’d told me that not everything was as black-and-white as I painted it, that evil was more a force of nature. Just the way you couldn’t reason with a tornado ripping your town apart, you couldn’t reason with Dahlia when she was ripping a life apart.

  My only consolation was that the awful feeling I’d gotten when Cyrus had died—the rending of the blood tie that had bound us—hadn’t happened when they took Nathan away. And because of that, I knew I had
to fight.

  I couldn’t just let these creatures kill us. I didn’t need a weapon. Dahlia being so close, her power so close to me I could taste it, made me realize I already had a weapon. I closed my eyes. I’m sure the others saw it as anticipation of the death blow. I remembered Dahlia using illuminate to turn on lights, how easily it had come to her. I remembered the way Nathan had taught me to visualize what I wanted to achieve when we’d used Dahlia’s invisibility spell. The word flame came to me as easily as if it were printed on the backs of my eyelids. I knew the difference between what I wanted to do and now, and the difference between what I’d seen Dahlia do and what I wanted to happen. I didn’t want to light something up. I wanted to burn it down.

  In my mind, the word unfurled in fury, with a roar like an explosion that rang off the inside of my skull. I opened my eyes, and the word burned from my lips, so hot I thought they would blister. And with the word, came the flames. They coiled out of my mouth like grasping hands, lighting the creatures’ clothes and skin instantly. They screamed and fell back, consumed before they hit the ground, and Max, Ziggy and Bill ducked away from the flames.

  Something in Dahlia’s blood responded to fire, I realized as the flames died around us. When I’d consumed her blood and taken in her power that night in the mansion, the power hadn’t changed its shape. A burst of energy, as hot as any flame, shot through me and I stumbled over a smoldering corpse and toward the door. Bill, Ziggy and Max were right behind me, but by the time we reached the top of the stairs, it was too late.

  A black limo careened down the street, bearing Nathan away from us, to the arms of his sire.

  Eight:

  Creation

  T he evening went by in a weird, dreamlike way. I let Max pull the stake from my chest. It hurt almost as much as when it had first gone in. Bill’s limited experience with field medicine was enough to help mend my arm, and with some direction from me he set my wrist with a makeshift splint and an Ace bandage after he picked out the bone shards that protruded through my skin. Inwardly, I was a sea of freakish, calculating calm. Outwardly, I must have been a wreck. I saw Ziggy and Bill give each other “looks” indicating they were extremely concerned for my mental well-being. I wondered what had happened in that storage room and when, exactly, they’d started to use “looks.”