Blood Entangled

by Amber Belldene

  The smell burned his sinuses. Not just soot and ash, but something chemical—concentrated gasoline. Lena coughed, and he hugged her tighter.

  “Napalm,” Uta shouted. “We are landing there—” she pointed at the former Hunter lookout “—so no strapping firehunks are seeing us.”

  “Firemen,” Lena shouted back.

  “Whatever.” Uta dismissed her with a wave.

  They touched down on the bald rock. Lena’s bare feet looked so delicate on the rough stone. He lifted her again and skidded down a steep hill, carrying her with Uta behind.

  At the edge of the highway, Uta said, “Lena, give me jacket so you are not explaining blood to firehunks.”

  As Lena shed the thing, Kos said, “Uta. Later, you must tell me the other secret. About Bel.”

  Her eyes went to Lena’s and back to his. The muscles in her throat rolled down, as if she’d swallowed a golf ball, but she pressed her lips tight together and nodded.

  The hair stood up on the back of his neck, and he soldiered on down the hill with Lena in his hands. What else was there to do?

  The dotted yellow lines between highway lanes lulled Ethan into a kind of seething hypnosis.

  “With the vines destroyed, the vampires will continue to waste away. You scored the greatest victory.” Gwen patted his knee.

  He took one hand off the wheel to grab hers and squeeze it, hard. She gasped. Her knuckles would bruise from the pressure across their breadth.

  She dared to comfort him, to rationalize with him?

  “You are out of line. Say you’re sorry.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whimpered.

  He released her hand. “Who was the female?”

  After a steadying breath, she answered with some composure. “She’s an authority of some kind. She rescued me from Mason, and placed me in counseling.”

  An authority? Did vampires have a formal social structure? That made them more sophisticated than Hunters.

  “Ethan, may I ask what is next?”

  Ah. That tone was much prettier. He eased up his grip.

  “You may. Now we start the war.”

  Chapter 33

  THE FORTRESS-LIKE WOODEN DOOR of the house loomed before Lena, and her hand refused to press its lever. She’d already spent her last drop of courage, and facing Andre was the scariest thing she’d ever had to do, scarier even than jumping into the surf.

  Kos covered her hand and opened the front door. She tap-danced behind him, but he dragged her around.

  Just inside, Zoey and Andre were engrossed in a heated conversation with two firemen. Both stood too close to Andre. They were both big men, and surely didn’t realize they should be frightened. She knew better.

  Andre turned to look at the new arrivals. When his gaze landed on her, he smiled, his whole face becoming genuinely kind.

  Her knees went soft.

  He reached out to her. “I am so very glad to see you.”

  She stared at his hand before she worked up the nerve to take it. Once he had a firm grip on her fingers, he pulled her into a bear hug. With her cheek pressed against his chest, she looked at Zoey.

  The vampire’s mouth spread into a huge, unexpected smile. “Welcome to the family. I’ll go get you a blanket.”

  Lena stepped back, and Andre released her. Puzzled, she turned to Kos for an explanation.

  He took her hand again—he’d hardly let go since they took off from his house. “We have a lot to talk about.” His eyes were a cloudy color somewhere in between the telltale shades of blue or gray that made him so transparent to her.

  One of the firemen coughed. “Listen. I don’t know what kind of circus your little winery is, but the motive for this fire is very suspicious, and nobody in the Sacramento or San Francisco FBI offices knows anything about anti-Croatian hate groups. I’m calling homeland security.”

  “Ralph?” Lena stepped forward to read his badge.

  “Lena?”

  “You’re a fireman? I thought you owned an ice cream shop.”

  “Arson investigator by day, ice cream maker by night.” He raised one shoulder in a shrug, a boyish gesture on such a bulky man.

  “Oh.”

  “Are you okay?”

  Glancing at her bare feet and filthy clothes, she tried to think of an explanation for the gashes on her head and her neck—nothing. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  “You live here?”

  “Sure do. We love your ice cream. Andre here is the biggest fan. Eats most of it himself.” She waggled her eyebrows at Andre.

  “It is true, Captain. I like the…um, chocolate?”

  Lena forced an amused laugh, patting Andre’s forearm. “He means the Deep Dark Chocolate Secret. And Kos here likes the peppermint, or the lavender, when it’s in season.”

  “I’m partial to the lavender myself.” The captain took a step away from Andre. “So, Lena, do you know anything about this alleged anti-Croatian hate group.”

  “Yes, sir.” Her chin bobbed in a rapid nod.

  “Just Ralph is fine.”

  “Okay, Ralph. They’ve been giving us a lot of trouble. Started off with pranks, then threats—”

  “Phone calls?”

  “No, too smart for that, I think. Those can be traced.”

  He scribbled in a little notebook. “True, true. Why didn’t you call the police?”

  “Oh, well.” She stepped close to him and stood on her tiptoes. “These Croatian guys are kind of macho. They want to take care of things themselves.”

  He grunted. “Typical. Well, I’m afraid you boys will have to turn this over to the professionals.”

  Kos extended his hand. “Yes, Captain. I’m Kosjenic Maras, Andre’s son, and I can assure you we have every intention of doing so. Clearly, we’re in over our heads.”

  Ralph looked Kos up and down, then did the same to Andre.

  “Yes. About that. I am very sorry. I guess you’ve lost your life’s work.”

  Andre’s jaw bulged, and he rubbed his eyes with the heels of both hands, nodding in agreement.

  “I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I lost the ice-cream shop.”

  Good Lord, did he just say that? And it had been going so well. Lena patted his elbow. “Yes, that would be a tragedy too, Ralph. So, if you’re finished with your questions, I think the family needs some time to grieve.”

  “Oh, of course. Here’s my number, if you think of anything else.” Ralph pressed a business card into Kos’s hand.

  He closed the door behind them. “Lena, that was amazing. Some of the best obfuscating I’ve ever seen.”

  What the heck did obfuscating mean? Maybe it didn’t matter. It sounded like a compliment. She smiled. “Thanks.”

  Zoey appeared with a thick robe—Kos’s—and wrapped it around Lena. Andre reached one long arm toward her and patted her on the shoulder just like her father used to, and suddenly everything fell into place.

  “I’m so sorry. I wish you hadn’t done that for me.” Tears fell down her face. Andre’s eyes filled with bloody tears too, and without thinking, she reached up to wipe them away.

  He managed a forlorn smile. “I do not think Kos could have lived with himself, or with me, if I had not.”

  Pedro and Lucas came out of the dining room hand in hand. Lucas’s eyes homed in on Kos, and Lena’s stomach flopped—he knew. Kos lunged for him, growling.

  Pedro cut him off, stepping between then. “It’s true then?”

  “What?” Andre asked.

  Pedro’s face twisted. “We need to talk. Let’s go into the dining room.”

  Lena scanned the faces. “Where’s Uta?”

  “I here.” She practically floated out of the cellar door, dangling Leo from his ankle. His hair brushed the floor, but his head cleared it by inches. Until then, Lena hadn’t really noticed how tall she was.

  Pedro pushed Lucas into the dining room ahead of him, shielding him from Kos, who tugged Lena through the door. Uta followed, sweeping the floor with Leo’s cu
rly mop. Andre sagged on Zoey, who braced him with her shoulder. Lena expected him to be angry or suspicious, but he just looked defeated. Everyone filed around the table, taking places, but no one sat. Finally, Lena pulled out her chair and everyone did the same.

  A window stood open, and an acrid breeze blew in, chilling her. She shivered.

  Kos pulled her chair closer to his, and rested his warm hand on her thigh. “You need a hot bath.”

  Hell yes, she did. But it could wait. “I’m fine. We need to be here.”

  He nodded, then his eyes went gray and he leaned across the table. “Did you know, Lucas?”

  “I don’t know anything.” His eyes flicked to Andre and back. “But something felt wrong about the phone call.”

  Kos stood, his chair toppling over backward. “Why the hell didn’t you say so—”

  “And risk being wrong? Risk Lena? I wasn’t certain.”

  Oh God. They’d all sacrificed so much for her. She couldn’t look at any of them. She slid to her knees on the floor and righted Kos’s chair. He brushed her face with his palm, his touch and his eyes promising she was worth all their costs. Warmth seeped into her from his hand.

  Then he turned back to Lucas and tucked his chin, the barest hint of a bow.

  “I’m sorry.” Lucas clenched his fists on the table. “I’m so sorry. I thought…”

  Lena pitied him. But when he saw it in her eyes, he shook his head, and she swallowed the humiliating emotion. He didn’t deserve it any more than she ever had.

  Pedro clasped one of Lucas’s balled hands between his own. “What happened?”

  Kos took a deep breath. “Lena dove off my deck into the ocean so we wouldn’t sacrifice the vines.”

  “Oh, no.” Zoey covered her hand with her mouth.

  Lena’s body flushed. They didn’t wish she’d succeeded at all—didn’t think her life was less important than what they’d lost.

  Kos went on. “Uta went after Bennett, but she got skewered when my house exploded.”

  She snorted. “Fuck you.”

  “It’s true. Ethan got away. Afterwards we realized that a Hunter, we guessed he was Leo’s father, had my voice on tape.” Kos took a deep breath, and Lena willed him courage. “I never called Andre. They tricked us.”

  Leo squeaked, his head still dangling above the floor.

  But where was Andre’s bellow? His fist pounding into the table? His cursing? He stared at the wall, his jaw slack for once, his eyes glassy.

  Zoey sniffed. Her words came out as sobs. “All for nothing?”

  “No.” Lucas spoke with the definitiveness of a leader, capturing Lena’s attention. “You cannot do this to yourselves. You didn’t know. This is how Ethan wins. He gets inside you. Eats at you. Don’t. Let. Him. Win.”

  Kos was riveted to Lucas, too, and nodded in agreement. “He’s right.”

  “Why do you think it was Leo’s father?” Lucas asked.

  Uta lowered Leo’s head to rest on the floor, and then released his ankle. He landed on his back with a thud, grunting.

  She yanked him to sitting, took out her phone, and showed him the screen. “This your father?”

  Leo crawled up to sitting, caught his lower lip with his teeth, and nodded. “Is he dead?”

  Lena’s heart grew heavy for his grief. How was that possible, given how many times it had already been burdened and broken in one day?

  Uta sheathed her phone in the pocket of her jacket. “The explosion is killing him.”

  “Krist. You did it.” Kos jumped up, lunging at Leo. “You tapped my phone, just like my email. You set the whole thing up.”

  Uta blocked him.

  “No. I—” Leo crumpled to the floor. “I’m sorry. I suggested it, during the operation. We got all of your numbers. But that was the last I heard. If I’d known, I would have told you…”

  Kos gasped, rubbing his sternum.

  The gesture panicked Lena. “What is it?”

  He stared at Leo, palm over palm pressed against his chest, frowning.

  “Kos?” She prodded him with her elbow.

  “He’s telling the truth. I can feel it. I fed from him, and I can feel his emotions.”

  Zoey groaned. “You fed from him?”

  “Really, Zoey?” Kos lashed out in a rare display of anger. “Ms. I-Used-To-Fuck-Ethan-Bennett.”

  The table split in half with a loud crack, collapsing along the fault line. Andre’s fist hung over it, in mid air.

  Lena slumped in her chair. Oh thank God. Pissed-off Andre was so much better than paralyzed-with-grief Andre.

  “I have had enough. I do not blame any of you, even you, boy. But I cannot listen to another word. I am going to lock myself in my room with my Zoey, and it will be a long, long time before we come out.”

  He moved in a blur to the door, holding Zoey around the waist like she was a football.

  Chapter 34

  WITH KOS’S HAND on the small of Lena’s back, he guided her from the dining room. His oversized clothes hung from her, stiff and crusted with salt. Her hair had dried into a wind-blown sweep of gold waves, and somehow, bedraggled as she was, he’d never seen anything more beautiful. When they reached the foot of the broad stairwell in the foyer, he tried to pick her up.

  She retreated. “I want to walk.”

  Okay. It was probably a good sign that she was still stubborn as hell.

  She clung to the handrail and paused at every step. At the landing, she halted in front of the old painting, the one of the house on Šolta, with a young Kos playing in the foreground. Perched behind her, he couldn’t see her face. Her pulse, her breathing remained steady. But, her posture was unreadable, which left too much room for his dread. After everything, would she leave him? He couldn’t let her.

  At the top of the stairs, she veered left, toward her old room.

  “Lena.” He pulled her to the right.

  “Really, I can stay in my room, there’s no nee—”

  He held his ground. “We’re past this.”

  She didn’t look at him.

  “We have a lot to talk about, but first you need a hot bath, and there is no way I’m letting you go back there to take it.”

  Wordlessly, she let him pull her along.

  Once she’d settled into the tub, he knocked on the door. “I’m going to shower in a guest room. Take as long as you need.”

  She took forever.

  He brought her a tray of food—fruit, a ham sandwich, cocoa, baklava leftover from the party.

  Clean, warm, dressed, he waited for her in his armchair, unable to read a word of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. He even tried Agatha Christie…

  Would she still want him, after everything she’d been through?

  The door knob clicked, and wrapped in a towel, she emerged, pink from head to toe.

  “Better?”

  “Much.” She sat on the end of the bed, facing him with her knees together. Good thing it was a big towel, it covered most of her tempting skin from armpit to kneecap.

  He sucked his thumb into his mouth and leaned forward to trace his saliva over the wounds on her neck. The flesh repaired itself instantly, becoming the lovely ivory of her healthy complexion.

  “Eat.” He pointed at the tray. “I’m sorry the cocoa’s cold.”

  She swallowed it in one gulp and started on the sandwich.

  “I need to tell you I didn’t know about Mason. I should have, but I never connected the dots.”

  She took her time chewing. “I know. You never would have let me go there. I hope he wastes away in a tiny hot hut in the Mexican desert.”

  “Wastes? No, he’ll have a worse fate than that, once Uta gets her hands on him.”

  “Good.” She stared over his shoulder at a blank patch of wall.

  “One day, when you’re ready, I hope you will tell me what happened.”

  She tilted her head and fixed him with her bottomless eyes. Would he ever look at them again without imagining the sea he’d nearly lost he
r to?

  She curled her hands around the edge of the mattress, sheets and blankets rasping under her weight. “You’ll imagine worse if I don’t tell you now.”

  He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.

  “He wanted to push me. To scare me.”

  Kos’s stomach clenched, but he kept his face impassive. “Go on.”

  “He bit me, while another woman…touched me.”

  His clenching gut contorted into a full-fledged knot. To have your body tricked into wanting what you did not want—it was sick. “Krist—”

  She let go of the mattress to drape a comforting hand over his knee. “Actually, it wasn’t so bad. Not my thing, but at least now I know. Susan always told me I should try it at least once.” Her slight smile turned all the way into a chuckle.

  Damn, she was either braver than a special ops unit, or completely hysterical.

  “Did he force…” His tongue got stuck against the top of his mouth.

  “Another woman. But, no. Not me. We didn’t even…”

  When he grasped her meaning, tension melted from Kos’s muscles. His shoulders dropped to their natural, relaxed position for the first time in days. He drew in a full breath. “Thank God.”

  “I’m sure it would have come to that, and worse. But Ethan arrived. Who’d have thought I’d be grateful to him?”

  “Can you eat some more, or have I stolen your appetite?”

  “I can eat.”

  She finished the sandwich, an apple, the baklava. Watching her tongue dart out to catch stray flakes of pastry stirred his desire, reminding him of their honey-hunting expedition in the pantry. But she treated the dessert no differently than the rest of her food. She only left a banana on the tray. He didn’t blame her. He’d never tasted one, but it did not smell at all enticing.

  He knelt down—the obligatory position for what he had to say. “Lena. I’ve made so many mistakes with you. I don’t know where to start the apologies. But—”

  She wrapped her hands around his forearms, trying to pull him to standing. “You don’t have to—”

  “Let me finish. I was afraid. But now I know I was wrong.”