“It will be.” I couldn’t believe I was endorsing the prospect, but it was the truth. “Someday, it will be.”
“No.” He turned, still supporting himself on the dresser. “You’re the second woman I’ve said those words to. After everything went so wrong with Marianne, not just her death, but everything that went wrong between us before she died, I never thought I would be able to love someone again. And now I have you, and I can’t believe how blind I was back then. But what we have is different, Carrie. I won’t get another chance at this.”
“You’ll try the spell,” I said, willing him to trust the words I didn’t quite believe myself. “You’ll try it and if it works everything will be the way it was. And if it doesn’t work, you’ll go on. And you’ll never stop missing me, just like you’ll never stop missing Marianne. And it will hurt and you’ll suffer, but, Nathan, you’ll live forever. You’ll have another chance.”
He came to the bed and sat down beside me. “I’ll live until something else like this happens. Until another witch skins me alive.”
“Then you’ll have to choose your dates more carefully.”
We laughed. It would have been masochistic to resist the break in tension. He kissed me, holding my face between his palms, and I covered his hands with my own. When he pulled away, he linked our fingers on the bed between us and rested his forehead against mine. “There won’t be any others. I mean it, Carrie. I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to bring you back if I have to.”
I didn’t argue with him. He meant for his words to be a comfort, but if bringing people back from the dead were a simple thing, there would be more dead people walking around.
You have no idea how hard it is, Dahlia hissed. You’re not coming back.
I didn’t need her to tell me that. I could feel it.
Nathan kissed me again, this time with a much different intention. I laid a palm flat against the tight, shiny skin of his healing chest and pushed him back gently. “You’re not better yet.”
“Then you’ll have to be gentle with me.”
And it was more gentle than we’d ever been with each other, slower and much, much longer. I’m sure he felt the same urgency I did in the face of the uncertainty ahead, but it created an incredible tension to have that urgency denied. But the biggest difference was that this time, for the first time, when he told me he loved me, it didn’t sound forced for my benefit.
Afterward, when he lay in an exhausted sleep beside me, I thought about what he’d said. He loved me, maybe more than he’d loved Marianne. Selfishly, I’d wanted to hear that. Now, when it was the thing that would make it most difficult to give him up, now was the time I heard it.
It wasn’t fair, but I would take it.
The night of the Soul Eater’s ritual came too quickly. Of course, Ziggy was fairly certain a death row inmate’s execution date came too soon, too. But that was negative thinking, and Bill had been trying, in the short time they’d been together so far, to break him of that.
Bill half woke and rolled over. “You’re still awake?”
“Can’t sleep. I guess I’m just so damned excited.” Ziggy scooted down on the pile of blankets. “Like a kid on Christmas morning.”
“We never had big Christmas mornings when I was growing up.” Bill rolled to face away from him again. “Try to get some sleep.”
Ziggy lay down beside him and looped one arm across Bill’s waist. “I don’t want to waste the entire day sleeping. What if one of us dies tomorrow?”
“Look, I’m really tired. But as arguments for sex go, yours is pretty strong.” Sleepily, Bill turned to Ziggy and leaned his head against his neck, nibbling the skin there.
Ziggy pushed him away. “That’s not what I meant.”
“And I woke up for nothing,” Bill quipped, sliding his hand down Ziggy’s stomach.
“Wait, wait.” Ziggy gripped Bill’s wrist, even though his mind was changing fast on the sex issue. “I don’t want to go and get killed and not have said…some things.”
“Oh, you mean you don’t want to get killed without telling me goodbye? In that case, I really did wake up for nothing.” Bill tried to turn over, and Ziggy stopped him.
“I don’t want to say goodbye. If you get killed, it’s not like we’ll be separated for that long.” Ziggy sighed in frustration. “I just want to make sure you know some stuff, in case.”
Bill shook his head. “It’s the same thing. But go ahead. Whatever you have to say, I’m listening.”
Now that he had the go-ahead, Ziggy wasn’t sure where to start. He might be Bill’s sire, but they still hadn’t known each other that long, and it wasn’t as if they’d made great strides in their relationship beyond memorizing who liked what where in bed.
So how did he say what he wanted to say without sounding like a psycho? How did he launch into a long, long list of all the things he liked about Bill, from the in-between color of his hair to the way he pronounced the letter R, without turning into that really clingy guy who goes out on one date and then decides to start naming their children?
“I love you,” he blurted, and then he realized that maybe the laundry list of cool things about Bill might have been a better way to go.
“I see.” Bill didn’t look him in the eye. “Well, that’s a stupid thing to say, considering.”
Ziggy flopped onto his back and stared up at the exposed beams of the floor above and tried to ignore the sound of Pac-Man dying, which currently echoed through his head. “Yeah. That’s me. Stupid guy.”
Bill didn’t seem to hear him. “I mean, when I was almost killed, you gave me your heart without having any idea how I would deal with it or what would happen if we didn’t end up together. And you’ve been hurt so many times in the past by people, it would have made more sense just to let me die and protect yourself. But you didn’t. And the stupidest thing is, you thought you had to tell me you love me for me to know it.”
The knot in Ziggy’s stomach relaxed and he covered his face, unsure whether to laugh or cry. He chose laughter. “Don’t you ever fucking do that to me again.”
When he uncovered his face, Bill had risen up on one elbow and looked down at him. He smoothed some of Ziggy’s hair away from his face and let his hand linger at his jaw. “I know you love me. And I know how lucky I am to have somebody like you in my life, even if we did find each other in really strange circumstances. And I hope you stay in my life. So I’m not going to tell you that I love you, because no matter what you call it, before a thing like this, it’s goodbye. And I don’t want to tell you goodbye.”
It should have made him feel better to know he’d said it, Ziggy thought later as, still sleepless, he held Bill and stroked the tight muscles of his back. But the truth was, Bill had been right. It felt more like goodbye than I love you, and Ziggy wasn’t ready to tell him goodbye, either.
The sun was almost down. Max could feel it under his skin, like something wanting to get out. He’d been too keyed up to sleep, and he definitely hadn’t wanted to listen to Ziggy and Bill doing it in the back room, so he’d come upstairs to the apartment to ignore Carrie and Nathan doing it in their bedroom. Now, he was trying to figure out the best way to say “See ya later—forever” in a note so he could take off and join up with his kind.
His kind. God, he hated that. Bella had a point, and he knew it. He wasn’t just a vampire anymore. He could spend time with vampires and try to live like a vampire, but he just wasn’t one anymore.
Still, he wasn’t a werewolf. He was a lupin. And he knew Bella wanted him to forget the vampire side of himself because it was the very thing that made him a lupin. It seemed as though his only option was to choose one half of himself and run with it.
And of course he would choose the half with Bella. That was a no-brainer. It just seemed so unfair that he had to choose at all.
Growling low in his chest, he ripped the first page of the notebook off and wadded it up. He didn’t want to write a stupid note. He wanted to see the
moon and become the beast that was rampaging through his veins. He wanted to run and hunt and howl. He wanted to get the big fight over with so he could go home to Bella. He wanted…hell, he just wanted.
“You’re up early.” Carrie came down the hall, tying the belt of Nathan’s ratty old bathrobe.
“Same to you,” Max said, trying hard not to smile at the picture she presented with her bare feet and badly mussed hair. “And it didn’t sound very restful in there.”
She blushed and looked away, smoothing her hair. “We weren’t loud.”
“No, but the bed was.” Max chuckled. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t tease you.”
Carrie dropped into the armchair and moved a rumpled-up ball of paper with her toe. “Great American novel not going well?”
Sheepishly, Max crouched down and picked up the trash. “Not exactly Moby Dick. More like a Dear John. Or Dear Carrie, Nathan, Ziggy and Bill. I’m leaving.”
“I didn’t think you’d be sticking around.” Carrie’s voice held a note of sadness, as though she was trying hard to be brave.
It was exactly the reaction he hadn’t wanted to face, and the reason he’d wanted to be out of the house when they all found out. “Yeah. That’s the thing about the family life, you know. Not as much time for running around with your old college buddies.”
“Well, there is that. And the fact that when night falls you’ll be a vampire-killing machine.” She tried to smile, and it faded too quickly. “You aren’t coming back again, are you?”
“I don’t know.” And he really didn’t. It probably would have been better to let them think he wouldn’t, then surprise the hell out of them ten years later. “To be honest, I’m not even sure you’ll be here to come back to.”
Her face went ashen, but she visibly forced the expression away. “Yeah, well. I mean, I hope you’ll check. I mean, I hope you’ll be there for Nathan if something happened to me. God forbid.”
“I wouldn’t worry about Nathan. For one, nothing is going to happen to you. And for two, he’s got Ziggy. And Bill now.” Though Max was pretty sure he knew how Nathan felt about that. If Max was uncomfortable thinking of the kid getting it on with a guy at least a decade older than him, he could guess that Nathan was even less enthusiastic about it.
Carrie laughed. “Yeah, I’m sure that will be a real comfort for him.”
They fell silent, until she said, “Max, I’m going to miss you.”
“Hey, you might see me again. You never know.” But it seemed like a lie.
She didn’t play along, either. “No. I won’t.”
He had the strongest urge to hug her. And who was he to deny that urge?
She stood when he came over to her and squeezed him so hard he was pretty sure she would break his neck. “No funny business,” he assured her. “I’m not going to try anything.”
“Because you’re not drunk.” He heard tears in her laugher, and he buried his face in her shoulder.
He should have been sadder when he left. Maybe he should have looked back over his shoulder. But by the time his feet hit the pavement, his muscles bunched to run, ready to find the warriors through the call of the wild in his veins, his vampire life was already behind him.
Twenty-One:
Battle Lines
T rue to his word, Cyrus sent me a disguise. The sun had just set when a shaking, frightened teenager knocked on the door bearing a package wrapped in brown paper. I took it from him and advised him not to return to his master, but whether he did or not was out of my hands.
A lot of things were out of my hands now.
“What is it?” Nathan asked grimly, looking up from the unpleasant task he was working on. When he’d packed away my heart for safekeeping, he’d put it in a box and padlocked it, not bothering to retain the key for any reason. He’d been sawing through the padlock for a while now, with very little progress to show for it. If I were going to be alive after this, I would definitely purchase more of that company’s locks in the future.
I set the package on the table and carefully untied it. A glimpse of vibrant purple peeked from between the edges of the paper. “I think it’s my disguise for tonight.”
The Soul Eater, like his son, had very ornate tastes. The costume for the ritual was apparently a floor-length-and-then-some, hooded, purple brocade robe. The pattern woven into the fabric was a near-exact rendering of Jacob Seymour’s personal symbol, a serpentine dragon wound around a huge gem. Lilies were bizarrely incorporated into the design, and I turned the fabric this way and that, hoping the pattern looked less tacky from a different angle. “This is not exactly the look I imagined for my funeral clothes.”
“Don’t say that,” Nathan said quietly. He reached for the golden mask that had come lovingly wrapped in the robe. “Does this fit?”
The mask was smooth and featureless, a perfect, generic oval with two holes roughly where a person’s eyes would be. Definitely not a “one size fits all” situation, but obviously meant to be. I raised it to my face, ignoring the stab of dread in my stomach, and tied the leather thongs behind my head. “I think there are going to be some very uncomfortable people at this ritual.”
“Probably more uncomfortable when they’re ripped limb from limb by werewolves.” Nathan went back to work on the box. “Get that out of my sight. I don’t want to see it again.”
I did as he asked, tucking the robe and the mask into the open bag of weapons he’d prepared for Ziggy and Bill. “Where are they?” I asked, knowing Nathan would know who I spoke of. “We need to leave soon.”
“Don’t be in too much of a hurry.” Nathan didn’t look at me as he spoke. “I’m certainly not looking forward to it.”
I took one of his hands in mine. He didn’t resist me. “This is not hopeless.”
“Let’s not talk about it.” He pulled his arm away. “I’m not ready to say my goodbyes just yet.”
Ziggy and Bill came upstairs, and Nathan and I both put on masks of indifference, as though we were just waiting to get the fight started. We’d agreed that telling Ziggy and Bill what was about to happen would only cause another argument, and we didn’t have time for it. We let them in on the part where I infiltrated the ritual, but kept a tight lid on the fact that after I went in, I wouldn’t be coming out.
“The van is in some rough shape,” Bill said, wiping his hands on a grease-streaked towel. “The stuff I can fix, I don’t have the equipment for. The stuff I can’t fix, I just don’t know how to.”
“But will it get us there? All of us?” I thought of the Henries. They would certainly look a little strange walking as one big group toward the Soul Eater’s farm. Not exactly something the Soul Eater’s goons could overlook.
“There, but maybe not back,” Bill answered grimly.
“Maybe we should set up a place to meet after the whole thing goes down, and Nate can come pick us up?” Ziggy asked, looking from me to Nathan.
Nathan didn’t even look up from his work on the box. “No. I’m still too weak to drive.”
“You don’t look very weak with that hacksaw,” Ziggy said, nodding toward the table. “What are you doing with that, anyway?”
“There’s something inside that Carrie needs to fight the Soul Eater. Something I stole from him when I left Brazil, after he sired me,” Nathan lied smoothly. “I lost the keys for the padlock.”
Ziggy didn’t look as if he believed him, but he didn’t argue. “Well, that was smooth. So, should we figure out a place to meet?”
“How about an ‘every man for himself’ scenario?” I suggested, mentally crossing my fingers that they wouldn’t sense something was wrong. “It’s such a long way…maybe we’ll say that if the van still works, whoever gets there first drives to a predecided location and waits for the rest of the group. And then gives them until two hours before sunrise to show up. That way, if the van stops working on the way back, there will still be time to call a cab and get back before the sun fries everyone.”
“But what about th
e Henries?” Bill appeared to be honestly concerned about them. “Are we just leaving them?”
I hadn’t thought of what we would do with them, once they had served their purpose. “I guess I can tell them to find their way back here. As long as they don’t do it in a group. Then, they can store themselves in the shop, where they have been.” I bit my lip. “Is that okay with you, Nathan?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he grunted, sawing at the padlock with renewed vigor.
“What about Max?” Ziggy asked, looking around the apartment. “I thought he would be up here, raring to go.”
I looked at Nathan and, seeing that he would be no help, sighed. “He left this morning. To find the warriors Bella sent. He won’t be coming back.”
“That’s a hell of a thing,” Bill said quietly.
“It’s a traitorous thing. Kind of.” Ziggy shrugged. “I mean, just taking off. Even if he is on our side.”
“No, I think we just can’t understand.” Bill’s face took on a look of momentary panic, expecting us, I suppose, to tell him that we understood and not to call us stupid. When he didn’t get that reaction, he went on. “His life has been turned upside down. He’s been a vampire for over twenty years and now he’s suddenly a werewolf. Think about what it felt like being turned into a vampire. He just did that again. His entire life just changed. And it’s going to change again when his wife back in Italy pops their kid out, right?”
I hadn’t tried to look at it that way. I really hadn’t tried to look at it from any way except how it affected me. “You’re right. It’s probably better, anyway. He’s pretty sure that when the full moon hits him, he won’t be able to remember who we are and keep from killing us.”
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