That, and the raging emotions flowing over the blood tie. Ziggy had thought it was a damned powerful connection on the fledgling end. That was nothing compared to what it was like to be a sire. Still, he kept his face completely neutral, even raised his eyebrows in an expression of “come on already” as he juggled the table leg from one hand to the other.
He had no clue what he would do if Bill didn’t back down. If he said, “Do it. Stake me,” he wouldn’t be able to. It would kill him, too, both figuratively and literally. Then what? Bill would still be pissed-off and Ziggy would have lost all kinds of respect and there would be nowhere to go from there.
Great, he loved unfixable situations where everyone ended up unhappy.
Bill’s mouth compressed into a tight line, and he took a deep breath before his shoulders sagged in defeat. “I don’t want to die.”
“Great, then I saved your life. And you can stop being so goddamned judgmental.” Ziggy tossed the table leg aside and went to the kitchen, where he took the last of the blood that was left from the freezer. It had gotten freezer burned; he could tell as soon as he opened the bag and dumped the frozen brick of blood into the teapot.
He did everything by muscle memory. Light the burner, put the lid on the kettle, find a mug, all while listening to Bill in the living room. It was difficult, with the stream of garbled emotion that flooded in through the blood tie. Anger was the most heavy, but there was fear underneath it, all sorts of different flavors of fear. Fear of what he might become now that he was one of them. Fear that he wouldn’t be able to drink human blood to survive. Fear of rejection.
Whoa. Ziggy did a mental backup and probed a little deeper into that one. It wasn’t wishful thinking. It was actually there, in Bill’s head, available to him courtesy of the blood tie. He was afraid that now the relationship he’d hoped for with Ziggy was way, way too final, and that would freak one or both of them out and the whole thing would be over, in the messiest way possible. He’d wanted to keep flirting, to maintain the casualness for a while, to gradually fall in love with him, to build a bond that would mean something. And now the chance was gone, because there was an artificial bond between them that he didn’t want.
Ziggy closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to think, but not so Bill could hear him. That would be a disaster and a half. But anything he wanted to hide wouldn’t stay hidden for long. He had plenty of practice shutting out a sire, but not a fledgling. That was going to be damn near impossible. It hurt just imagining closing himself off from Bill.
“Listen,” he said, not bothering to walk into the living room. He knew Bill would hear him. “As far as I’m concerned, this whole sire-fledgling thing? It’s just what happened. I don’t expect anything from you. We can keep going the way we were. In fact, I would prefer it. Because I’m freaked out knowing that as long as I live, I’m bound to you.” He took a deep breath. “To know that even if this thing doesn’t work out, you’ve got my heart.”
Bill’s heavy footsteps brought him to the door, and a wave of defensiveness rushed through the blood tie in time with his arrival. “See, that’s exactly it. You say something like that, and where does it leave me? What if I say I don’t feel the same way? You’re all crushed and hurt and I’ve got to put up with it because you happened to be the one who made me a vampire.”
“I wouldn’t feel all crushed and hurt. I don’t mean my love and romance heart. I mean my actual, physical heart.” Ziggy looked down, unable to watch the horror on Bill’s face. “Yours was ruined, so Carrie gave you mine.”
“You put your…” Bill staggered away, and Ziggy followed him a few steps behind. When Bill sat on the couch, Ziggy stood at the end of it. What he really wanted to do was sit down next to him, put his head on his shoulder, kiss him. Do something so he would feel the way he’d felt a few hours ago, when they’d lain on a pile of blankets in the storage room, not talking, just touching each other and enjoying how new everything was to them. It sucked to think that was all over, and it actually caused a pain in Ziggy’s chest where his heart should have been.
Bill looked up, his eyes rimmed red. “I can’t believe you would do that for me.”
“Well, I didn’t. Carrie did it.” God, he wanted to find out where the cocky, defensive Ziggy who was snapping at his fledgling hid out and wring his fucking neck. “I mean…I couldn’t let you die.”
“But your heart…if something happens to me, then you die, too?” He said it as though it was unbelievable that someone would do something like that for him.
He sounded, Ziggy realized, just like himself.
Sitting beside him on the couch, Ziggy tentatively touched his face. “I didn’t do it to trap you or anything. But I looked at you, lying there, almost dead. And maybe it was a little selfish, but I couldn’t let you die and never know if…” He caught himself before he did something really stupid, like maybe cry. But he had to force his next words out, because they hurt where they were stuck in his throat. “If you were the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”
Bill put his arms around him then, and Ziggy heard his own heart beating in his chest. When their lips touched, it didn’t feel the way it had the day before. It felt as though they had skipped over a lot of the fun stuff that was a part of being with someone. But maybe, if they gave it enough time, they could get back to that.
It wasn’t as if they had anything but time ahead of them.
The sun had just started rising when Max made it back to the apartment. The cooler at his side was full—someone had to think of the practical necessities while everyone else was busy playing mad scientist—but he didn’t feel like going upstairs. The blood would keep, and he needed his space.
And he needed Bella. The longing almost choked him as he made his way down the stairs to the bookstore. Damn, he needed her. Not just in the physical sense, but he needed to be able to talk to her for longer than a few garbled minutes over the cell phone.
Behind the counter he located the trapdoor to Nathan’s underground shelter and ducked down the few stairs. It wasn’t a bad place, for a werewolf. A vampire would go nuts down there in a couple of days, he was sure, but it was small enough that it calmed the primal need in him to hide.
There was also a small utility sink fed by a hose. Not a proper bath by any means, but he’d do about anything to get the blood and dirt off him. He plugged up the sink, went back up the couple of stairs to find the faucet the hose was attached to, got it running and gave it some time to really fill up before he shut it off and went back down.
He was pleased to find he’d judged it about right when he saw the half-full sink waiting for him. He stripped down and dunked his dirty T-shirt into the water, trying to get the worst of the gunk out before using it to wash himself. When he was clean—cleaner, anyway—he rinsed out his clothes and left them draped over the edges of the sink. He’d worry about the dirty water after he got some rest.
When he lay down, he expected to fall asleep right away. But the sleeping bag under him didn’t smell all that great, and his mind wouldn’t calm down. He thought about calling Bella, then remembered he’d left his phone upstairs, and he didn’t want to deal with the inevitable drama that he would encounter there. He was beginning to wonder if there would ever be a time in his life when he could be around these people and not be tangled up in some crisis.
So much had changed since the last time he’d been here. It was like finally having Bella all to himself made him resent anything that took him away from her. And that wasn’t healthy. But neither was constantly fighting to stay alive. There had to be a happy medium.
Just above his head, a phone rang, and he remembered, with the kind of joy he imagined a crack addict felt when they found a rock they’d forgotten, that Nathan’s shop had a landline. He wrapped himself in the sleeping bag and climbed out of the hole, then waited for the caller to hang up before he grabbed the receiver. The lengthy process of connecting to an international operator, getting throug
h to the compound, actually getting the call to Bella’s room, and then miraculously catching her awake and alone, was a little more bearable this time, as he didn’t get cut off three or four times by the crappy reception on his phone. When her voice, breathy and seductive all at once, came over the line, he almost passed out with relief.
Yeah, he definitely had problems.
He filled her in briefly on the way the evening had gone, and she’d taken it in stride, the way only Bella could. Then, with no hesitation whatsoever, she said, “My father brought your replacement by today.”
“Excuse me?” She’d better not mean what he thought she meant, or he would be on a plane back to Italy so fast her father wouldn’t have time to stop him.
She actually laughed, as if the whole thing was funny. “You are not angry with me, are you? I did not even speak to him. But according to my father, this man is more than willing to accept my bastard child as his own. And I believe he is only a second cousin, so future children would be pure members of the family bloodline.”
“That’s disgusting.” Max couldn’t help but laugh. Bella would never leave him for some flea-ridden, banjo-playing country cousin. But his guts still boiled at the thought of his father-in-law being so damned sure of his imminent demise. “Tell him not to count his chickens, okay? Because I’m definitely coming back.”
“I will tell him you are of sound mind and body,” she giggled over the line.
He sighed. “That’s not quite true. I’m not sure whether it’s my mind or my body, or a little bit of both, but I’m going crazy without you.”
Quietly, she replied, “I understand. I miss you. I do not want to sound as though I do not love all of the time I spend with you, but what I miss the most, at least, at this moment, is—”
“Believe me, I get it.” He couldn’t hear her say the words, or he would explode. His cock was already hard just talking vaguely about having sex with her. “Let’s not dwell on that just now.”
It took her a long time to respond. Then, very clearly, she made one of those low, growling moans the way she did when they were—Oh, sweet Christmas. She wasn’t…was she?
“Bella, that’s not funny.” He balled up a fistful of sleeping bag and squeezed it, hard. “Really not funny.”
“Are you not alone?” she whimpered into the phone, and her words ended on a gasp.
“No, I’m alone. I’m just not in an appropriate place.” If he could reach her now, he would be undecided whether to fuck her or kill her. “I’m in the bookshop.”
“Why is that an inappropriate place? Do you forget what we did there?” She gave another moan, then purred, “I am touching myself, Max.”
“Yeah, I kind of guessed that you were.” He tried not to think of what they had done in this room, hell, not even ten feet from where he was standing. He looked at the broken door and the faint sunlight outside. Would someone come down here? Would anyone even bother to be up this early? There was the occasional noise from a car on the street, but beyond that, nothing.
Ugh, come on, man! How can you even be considering this? It’s phone sex, for God’s sake. If you need a reason not to do it, think of how dated and cliché it is.
Bella moaned again, and he gripped the base of his erection. “I’m right there with you, babe,” he groaned, and she breathed a throaty little laugh into the phone.
“Does it feel good?” she asked innocently.
It did. Oh, it did. He flexed his fingers, imagining her wet, tight flesh rippling around him as he tugged up. “It doesn’t feel as good as you.”
“I wish you were here,” she whimpered, echoing his thoughts. “On top of me. Inside of me.”
“Baby, if I was inside of you right now, I wouldn’t last two seconds.” As it was, he was almost ready to blow.
“Neither would I,” she gasped. “Oh, Max…I…I…” Her words dissolved into a loud, keening wail, and he pumped his fist harder, almost dropping the phone when he came.
“Max?” she asked a few seconds later, her voice raw from shouting. “Are you still there?”
“In a manner of speaking. Hang on, I’ve got to find something to clean up with.” He grabbed a handful of out-of-date flyers for a tree-planting party and tried carefully to wipe himself off without giving himself the worst paper cut of his life.
“I am becoming very tired,” Bella said apologetically. “But I do want to tell you, before we hang up, that there are others here besides you and I who feel my father is not making wise decisions. I cannot tell you any more today, but I sense we will soon be able to help you.”
“What do you mean, help me? You’re not going to do anything stupid or dangerous, are you?” It was less question, more warning.
It didn’t matter, because she ignored him anyway. “I cannot tell you more now. Please trust me. I love you.”
“I love you,” he replied, but she had already hung up.
Fifteen:
Patch Job
I dreamed about making a piñata out of strips of papier-mâché, and when I woke up, I knew how to fix Nathan.
When I told him how I came about my groundbreaking solution, he wasn’t entirely thrilled at the comparison.
“So, in this scenario, I’m a piñata?” Just being fed had given him back a lot of his strength, at least enough to make sardonic quips while I tried to make him an informed patient. “Am I to assume that when the treatment is all done you’ll string me up and beat me with a stick?”
“I might do it before the treatment is done if you don’t shut up.” I couldn’t help but smile though. He wasn’t telling me I should have let him die, and that was enough for me.
I explained to him what I planned to do. To remove a few strips of healthy skin from his back, the way doctors did to perform a skin graft. But I would take narrower strips, so that the hole I made would heal in a day, and I could harvest the fresh skin again the next evening. The skin I took I would graft onto the front of him, wherever it was needed. The edges of the wound would, in theory, heal to the skin the way it does when we get a cut: the two edges come together and just sort of meld. By the next night, the patch of missing skin would be smaller, as it would be every night until he was completely covered again.
“I don’t know how well it will actually work. In the worst-case scenario, it doesn’t work at all. In the second-worst case, you end up with lots of pink, shiny, patched-together skin like a burn victim. You wouldn’t have chest hair. Maybe not nipples. Or a belly button. But you’ll be able to function.”
“I liked my nipples,” he grumbled. Then he sighed. “You’re asking me to consent to you skinning the other bits of me. I have to admit, I’m reluctant.”
“I’ll be doing it under local anesthetic.” When he started to protest, I spoke over him. “I’m not going to listen to you sit and tell me that you can take the pain. You’re going to get the anesthetic every night like a good boy and shut up. We can always get more somehow.” I wasn’t sure where, but that wasn’t the point. I wasn’t going to do to him what Dahlia had done.
He turned his head, looking at the nightstand as if it would lovingly advise him. “I suppose it’s a good thing she couldn’t go through with…you know. Down there, then.”
“Yes. I would say it’s a very good thing.” Once a nerve was gone, it was gone. No fixing it. Call me a mindless hedonist if you will, but I don’t think I could live without ever getting off again.
It just seemed too cruel, Dahlia said in my head, and I pushed her firmly out. She might be trapped in me, but I didn’t have to acknowledge her.
“It’s up to you, then. Do you think you could still love me if I looked all pieced together like Frankenstein?” Nathan said it in all seriousness and self-pity.
I laughed at him. “I love you now and you look like The Visible Man. I think I could love you better with some skin on you.”
“I’m being an ass, I know.” He gave another heavy sigh. “Fine. Do it.”
I left Nathan with a firm orde
r to try and get some more sleep while I gathered my supplies and refreshed my skinning skills on some of the frozen chicken breasts in the freezer. Actually, I left off that last part. I didn’t think he would appreciate it any more than the piñata comparison.
Ziggy and Bill were still asleep on the couch, half sitting up, leaning on each other. I was glad to see Bill had woken, but less happy to see that the remaining blood was gone. I took the kettle off the stove and put it in the sink to rinse it out. I barely heard Ziggy, wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the chain on his wallet jingling as he walked into the kitchen behind me.
“I was thinking about hitting Club Cite tonight and looking for a donor. Do you think that’s too risky?” He leaned on the door frame, trying too hard to appear casual.
“I don’t think it’s too risky. I think it’s too risky for all of us to sit around starving.” I nodded toward the living room. “Are you going to take him with you?”
Ziggy nodded. “Probably. He’s better at networking than I am. He did it for a living.”
I made a noise in agreement, and let the silence hang for a minute before I said, “You’re taking him with you so you don’t have to explain to Nathan.”
“That’s not it,” Ziggy said, his denial coming too quickly. “The last time he found out I had a boyfriend, nothing good came of it. Maybe you could put in a word or two? Like, after we’ve left?”
I squirted some dish soap into the kettle and reached for the little spongy, macelike thing that we used to clean out glasses. I gave the kettle a few good swishes before I spoke again. “Don’t you think you should just speak up and be honest with him?”
“I’m not saying I won’t,” Ziggy protested. “I just want you to…break the ice. You know?”
I looked up at him, his adorable, boyish face that would always look young, no matter how old he got, and my heart caved in. He wasn’t asking me to talk to Nathan because it would be easier for him. He was asking me to protect him from the rejection of his father. “Of course. I’ll talk to him.”
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