Ziggy leaned back in his seat, pressing his knuckles to his mouth. The torn leather of his fingerless gloves scraped his lip. “Bill, what do you think Carrie’s chances are? Of doing this thing alone, I mean?”
“Not good.” The answer came fast, and Bill lowered the binoculars, looking a little guilty at pronouncing her dead on arrival. “I mean, that’s why we agreed to go after her, right?”
Ziggy nodded slowly. “Yeah. But she wasn’t the only one who said we shouldn’t meddle in the fight. Nate said it, too. He said we needed to let her do what she needed to do, and let him do what he needed to do. What do you think about that?”
“I think it sounds kind of fatalistic,” Bill said with blunt honesty. “It sounds like they don’t want to be responsible for leading lambs to the slaughter.”
“That’s what I thought, too.” Ziggy shook his head. “I think there’s something going on.”
As Bill looked through the binoculars again, Ziggy thought of all the possible scenarios he could come up with. Did it have something to do with the fact Carrie was a Soul Eater now? He’d never actually seen Jacob fight. Was it possible that Soul Eaters became demonic killing machines, and Nate and Carrie knew this and didn’t want Bill and him to get caught in the cross fire?
What about the werewolves down there? Max had said he didn’t know if he would recognize them in his wolf form. Maybe Carrie had done a spell to make her recognizable as a good guy, but she just didn’t have enough juice left to cast the same spell on two other people? And that was why they needed to stay out of the fight?
Or, it could have been that they would be a distraction. Ziggy knew how hard Carrie would fight to protect another person. She’d done it when they were trapped in Cyrus’s mansion together. She’d done it when she’d agreed to put Ziggy’s heart in Bill. It seemed as if she cared too much about everyone, and Nate was afraid she’d be too busy protecting them to fight.
That seemed more reasonable than any of the other possibilities. He absently scratched his chest through his T-shirt, feeling the bumpy ridges of his scar beneath.
Then, he remembered the box. And Nathan’s secrecy regarding it. And he felt more stupid than he had in a long, long time.
“I need you to know before you leave here tonight that I love you. You might not be my flesh and blood, but you’re my son. And I’ve been so stupid, letting you think I would reject you over something as trivial as…who you go to bed with. No matter what happens tonight, I need you to know that I love you, and that I have always been proud to call you my son.”
“We’ve got to get back to the apartment,” Ziggy said, sitting up in the seat and snatching the binoculars out of Bill’s hand.
“What? Why?” Bill at least started the van while arguing. “What’s going on?”
It took a lot of Ziggy’s effort to keep the tears from coming out when he said, “I think Carrie is going to die. And I think Nate is going to be the one who does it.”
The Soul Eater’s eyes sparkled with genuine amusement as he stalked toward me. “What a wonderful performance. Remind me to thank Nolen for sending you along. You have such a flair for the dramatic.”
“As do you,” I said, nodding to the throne made of people parts. “But I didn’t come here to banter with you.”
“No, you came here to kill me.” He chuckled. “It’s a pity that you won’t succeed—”
“Because you have some grand plan and I’m too late and you’re going to tell me all about it before putting it into action and you have never, ever seen a single movie in your whole life, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this discussion.” I wouldn’t have normally wasted the time I just had, either, but my irreverence in the face of his grand act seemed to infuriate him even more, and odds seemed to be more in my favor if I could incapacitate him with rage before striking.
“Fine,” he said with false graciousness. He nodded at the necromancer. “Kill her.”
I rushed at him. He raised his hands. I cut one of them off.
I’d meant to kill him outright, but it was harder to aim my strikes than I’d anticipated. I’d never used a sword before. By the time I got the blade back under control, he shouted a spell.
You’re so dead, Dahlia giggled in my head.
The rows of dead bodies wriggled and squirmed, coming to life before my eyes. I didn’t give them a chance to get to me. I held out my hands and screamed, “Apart!”
I saw the word leave me like a sonic boom that spread across the air in the barn. It knocked the necromancer to the ground. It even tossed the Soul Eater back into his now-reanimated throne of flesh. The wave of disruption hit the bloated bodies, exploding them to a shower of meaty, putrid sand that rained wetly over all of us.
Cyrus made a noise of disgust and thrashed, spitting, against his restraints. One arm came free. Blood poured from nearly a dozen wounds on his chest and face, probably because I hadn’t thought to exclude him from the spell that had just obliterated the would-be zombies around us.
“Nicolas, say the words!” the Soul Eater screamed, lurching for Cyrus. His teeth sank into Cyrus’s shoulder. The necromancer began to chant.
I could leave Cyrus to be devoured in an instant by his father, or stop the Soul Eater’s transformation by killing the necromancer.
I knew I would regret it. But I went for Cyrus.
My sword sank into the Soul Eater’s back and shoulder, and he released Cyrus immediately, blood dripping from his mouth.
Cyrus was too weak to get away. I was awed at how fast the Soul Eater had drained him. His lips were blue—I had no idea we could look like that—and he trembled as he tried to crawl to safety.
While the Soul Eater struggled to remove the sword from his body, I pulled Cyrus to his feet and helped him limp to the door of the barn, where he collapsed against it. “Don’t go out. There are still vampires.”
He nodded that he understood and I spun, weaponless, ready to attack the necromancer, hoping I would be in time.
The necromancer was still chanting, cradling the stump where his hand used to be in his robe. I charged him and he faltered in his chanting, backing away from me.
“Don’t stop, you fool!” the Soul Eater ordered.
Nicolas the necromancer was a much more loyal henchman than I’d ever seen. He sputtered in fear, but he kept chanting. I made a grab for him and he dodged me, running behind the bubbling cauldron. I charged around it, but he managed to keep the distance between us. I saw only one option. I dived across the cauldron, grabbed him by the head and pushed him in.
I screamed as my arms sank into the boiling tar, but I held him down. I saw chunks of skin float to the surface and prayed it wasn’t mine, then nearly vomited at the thought it could be Nathan’s. But I didn’t let go, not until Nicolas stopped thrashing.
“Carrie!” I heard Cyrus scream, and I pulled my scalded arms from the cauldron, shaking as much of the boiling potion off of them as I could.
The Soul Eater was suspended in the air, glowing an eerie green-gold that seemed to dim the candlelight in the barn. He’d thrown his head back, a rapturous expression serenely gilding his face. His clothes melted away. His hair fell in shimmering, green-gold strands that floated to the ground and disappeared. His skin turned paper white. When he opened his eyes, they were bloodred. No pupils, no iris. Just a curtain of blood.
He looked the way the Oracle had looked. I wondered if she’d been on the path to godhood, and had just been interrupted. It seemed so logical now.
“Cyrus, get out of here,” I commanded. When I spoke, a huge wind blew through the barn, tumbling me over the hard, slippery ground.
“No!” he screamed back, trying to get to his feet. “Carrie, run! Don’t stay here with him!”
You know what you have to do, Carrie. It was Nathan’s voice, across the blood tie. He’s a god. Dahlia can tell you what to do. You can invoke him. Bring him into you.
“How do I do that?” I asked aloud, shouting over the raging wind.
The skin was gone. Some of the muscle. I saw a chunk of blond hair rip free and fly into the maelstrom surrounding the Soul Eater. I was literally blowing away.
“Cyrus, get out of here!” I shouted back, struggling to my feet. My jeans were tattered and ripping apart fiber by fiber. I stumbled closer to the Soul Eater. He didn’t appear to see me, but the wind increased and knocked me down.
Carrie, try. Try to invoke him. Nathan’s words were infuriating, because I had no clue what they meant.
Dahlia didn’t tell me anything. But I pried her memories away from her. I saw her standing, naked, in a grove of trees. She was much younger, maybe thirteen or fourteen. There was no makeup on her face, and her red hair hung down her back in softly brushed waves, except for the beaded braids at her temples.
“Mother Goddess! Mother Goddess! Mother Goddess!” she called out, stretching her arms wide. “I humbly beg that you join with me, merge your energies with mine!”
I pulled myself to my feet again, raising my arms against the onslaught of debris that sanded the flesh off my bones. “Jacob Seymour!”
He looked at me then, a truly evil smile on his face.
“Jacob Seymour! Jacob Seymour!” I took a huge breath, and when I spoke, I imagined the words surrounding him. “I humbly beg that you join with me. No, fuck that! I order you to merge your energy with me! Do it, goddamn it!”
The green-gold energy that surrounded him sucked into me, and I drew it in. Reveled in it. I felt drunk. I felt invincible.
The Soul Eater’s body fell to the floor, wrinkled, pale and useless. “No!” he shouted, pounding at the hard-packed dirt like a child throwing a temper fit.
I wanted to stay just as I was, swaying in the currents of the awesome power I’d pulled into myself. But I knew in the back of my power-drunk mind that I had to end it.
I staggered to the sword lying on the ground. It glinted ethereal white, but it might have been because everything in my vision had a strange aura around it.
“No,” the Soul Eater rasped as I approached him. “No, please. Take pity….”
I thought of all the people he had hurt in his life, those I knew of and those I didn’t. And I thought of what he’d done to Nathan. I thought of Nathan’s face as he held his dead wife. And the rage that built up in me wasn’t my own. It was Nathan’s, pouring through the blood tie. When I raised the sword and screamed, it was with Nathan’s rage and pain. It was Nathan’s hand that struck Jacob Seymour, cleaving his head from his neck in one stroke. It was Nathan who raised the bloody sword in his hand and screamed to the sky in triumph.
It’s done, I told him, though there was no need. But it felt good to give the signal myself.
I love you, he told me. I already felt the pain in my chest, where my heart should have been.
It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I heard Cyrus screaming my name, felt my body falling to ash around me. But the last thing I knew was Nathan telling me again, over and over, that he loved me.
And then it was only peace and the endless, murky blue.
“Nate!” Ziggy heard the panic in his voice as he crashed through the apartment door. Bill stumbled across the felled wood after him, but he didn’t stop. “Nate!”
He tore down the hall. The light was on in the bedroom. He shouldered that door down, as well. Nate didn’t say anything or even look at him. He had a stake in his hands, the tip positioned against his bare chest.
“Dad!” Ziggy screamed, but it didn’t seem to penetrate Nate’s brain. He shoved hard, embedding the stake in his chest. He exploded into ash, all but his heart, which flamed blue for a moment before falling to the bed in another puff of ash.
Ziggy fell. He didn’t feel the floor beneath him. He barely felt Bill’s arms around him. Nate was dead. The only man who’d ever truly loved him like a son, the first person to care for him without expectations in return…was gone.
“Ziggy!” Bill shouted, but he could barely hear him. Then Ziggy realized it was because he was screaming and sobbing.
“I can’t believe it! I can’t fucking believe it!” He pushed Bill away and fell full on the floor. It seemed as if the flatter he got, the less it hurt.
Bill picked something up from the bed. A book.
It took a long minute for Ziggy to realize what it was.
Bill’s eyes were rimmed in red, and his voice trembled as he turned it so the pages faced out. “I don’t think he intends to stay dead, Ziggy.”
Max followed the warriors back to Italy. He wasn’t sure what had happened to Carrie and the guys. He was more shocked to realize that it wasn’t his problem.
The plane touched down on the pack’s private runway just after dusk. He helped unload the wounded, left the others to unload the body bags of those who hadn’t made it through the battle. He needed to see Bella.
The change in attitude at the compound was apparent immediately. The first people Max saw spoke to him in English—he’d been suspicious that they could, but just hadn’t wanted to—and they spoke warmly of Bella and how glad she would be to see him back.
A lingering anger at Julian burned through his veins, but he pushed it away. He didn’t want to see Bella that way. He felt as though he’d come home, and he wanted her to feel that way, too.
The door to their room was unlocked. He pushed it open and found it empty, but the curtains over the balcony door wafted in a soft breeze, and he knew he would find her there.
She didn’t look at him when he stepped onto the balcony. She sat in her wheelchair, facing the mirror black of the lake. “Max. You have returned.”
“Yeah. Don’t sound too enthused.” Great. He’d wanted to show her how different things were, now that he knew where he belonged. Now that he knew his place in the world, and that it was with her. All he’d done was fall back on sarcasm just as he’d always done.
Bella’s hands grasped the arms of her chair, and she pushed as though she would stand. But it was impossible. Wasn’t it?
She did stand, and Max felt hot tears coursing down his face.
“I was worried that you would not live,” she said, her voice choked on her own tears. “I never thought I would see you again.”
“I’m here now, baby,” he said quietly, not wanting to take a step toward her, not wanting to do anything that might ruin this moment.
But there was something he had to say to her. “I’m glad you can stand up. That is the best present I could have possibly come back to. But I think you should sit down.”
Her brow creased with confusion, but she did as he asked, and wheeled her chair around to face him. “Max?”
“I need to tell you something. And I have to be honest with you. And it’s going to be hard, because I haven’t been honest with myself.”
“All right.” She smoothed down the ivory silk of her nightgown. He noticed that her hair was loose around her shoulders, but the top was pulled back, held away from her face with combs. He loved when she wore it like that. She must have known they were returning this evening. She’d done it in the hopes he would be coming back, he realized.
Brutally suppressing the urge to take her in his arms and make love to her until neither one of them could move, he cleared his throat. “I’m a vampire.”
She laughed, and it was like music to him. “I know this. Max, you are behaving very strangely. You used to be a vampire, I know.”
“No.” He shook his head vehemently. “I am a vampire. I will always be a vampire. But I will always be a werewolf, too.”
How to explain it to her, the woman who was content to accept his unfortunate disability and spend the rest of her life with him? How could he make her understand?
“I’ll never be just a werewolf. There will always be a part of me that doesn’t fit in. But I know where I belong. For the first time, maybe in my whole li
fe, I know where I belong. And it’s with you. Not because I’m a werewolf or a vampire, just because I’m me. And I want you to love me because I’m me, not because someday I’ll forget what I was or where I came from.” He stopped himself, before he sounded like a total wuss. “Can you do that?”
There were tears in Bella’s eyes, and she wheeled a little closer to him. “Max, I had no idea you felt this way. I do not love you because I believe that one day you will no longer be a vampire. I loved you when you were a vampire and nothing more. I would love you if you were a human. I would love you if it meant I had to leave my pack behind. I would love you if it meant I must sacrifice my very life.”
He caught her up then, and whirled her around. Then he set her on her feet, but she was too weak from her earlier display of her progress, and he had to support her. He carried her inside and laid her on the bed. It was almost more than he could endure not to rip the nightgown from her body and have her, right then. He ran his hands down her sides, then smoothed one palm over her expanded abdomen.
A tiny, hard lump brushed his palm and retreated, and his breath froze in his body. Torn between a feeling of wonder and disgust, he could only laugh. “That’s the baby? It’s really in there?”
Bella nodded and pulled his face to hers, kissing his stubbled cheek. “Yes, it is really in there.”
He pulled away from her and pressed his cheek to her stomach. “That’s kind of gross. And kind of cool.”
They both laughed then, Bella stroking his hair as he waited for another tiny wriggle, his child, proving it was there.
“We could leave, if you wish to return to your old life,” Bella said, and it wasn’t just to appease him. She meant it, in every syllable she meant it.
“No.” He pulled himself up the bed to nestle his head in her neck. “No, my home is where you are. And you’re here.”
He meant it. Frightening as it was, he meant it. And even more frightening, he knew he wouldn’t miss his old life.
He had a new one, and it was right here.
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