Unhinged: Blood Bond: Parts 4, 5 & 6 (Volume 2)

by Hardt, Helen;

  Dizziness swept over me, and I gulped. “Uh…what?”

  “Erin,” Dante said. “I can’t see him. Are you sure you see him?”

  “Of course I’m sure. But I sure wish I weren’t.”

  My knees wobbled, and Dante steadied me and helped me to a chair. “Apparently my father is here. With us. As a ghost. Which means he’s dead.”

  I felt a little sick. The two half-drunk glasses of blood sitting on the coffee table didn’t help my queasiness.

  “You can convince him,” Julian said. “You can convince my son that I’m real.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I sank my head into my hands. Not only vampires, but now ghosts? And demons? According to Bea, anyway.

  What new reality was going to foist itself on me next? Werewolves? Zombies? Dancing lobsters?

  “You need some water, Erin?” Bill asked.

  I shook my head. “I think I need some Valium, to be honest.”

  “Baby, you really see him? Hear him?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Dante

  She nodded into her hands.

  “All right.” That was all the evidence I needed. “Dad? Help me. I trust Erin. If she sees you, I believe you’re here.”

  Dante.

  “Yes, I hear you speaking into my head. I need to hear you like Erin and Bill hear you.”

  Dante.

  “It might take a little time, son,” Bill said.

  Erin needs you.

  Clear as day. But in my head. It was all I needed though. “Baby, why are you here? You said you weren’t going anywhere tonight.”

  She lifted her head out of her hands. “I nearly forgot. That’s why I came here. I went out to get groceries.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “Of course in the middle of the night. I work nights and sleep days. My nights off are when I do my shopping. Anyway, I ran into Abe Lincoln.” She paused a few seconds. “Yes, he’s the one.”

  “Who are you talking to?”

  “Your father, apparently.”

  “Stay out of this, will you?” I said to thin air. “It’s annoying when they can hear you but I can’t.”

  No response. Of course not. I couldn’t hear him anyway.

  “He says okay,” Bill said. “That he understands.”

  “Great,” I said sarcastically. Then I turned back to Erin. “What happened?”

  “He said he was meeting a vampire at Walmart.”

  “At Walmart?”

  “Yeah, I thought it was weird too, but that’s what he said. Anyway, he asked if I wanted to meet the vampire.”

  “And you said yes?” Pin pricks covered my skin, and my gums itched.

  “Well…yeah. We need to find out who’s been—”

  “For God’s sake, Erin. I’ve told you how irresistible you smell to vampires. And this is a vampire who has no qualms about feeding on humans if he’s the one who’s been feeding on Abe.”

  “I know all that, but I thought—”

  “You weren’t thinking at all!”

  “Dante, would you let me finish? I waited in the parking lot for about fifteen minutes—”

  “In a parking lot. In the dark. Waiting for a vampire.”

  “That’s not letting me finish, Dante.”

  “How do you expect me to just—”

  “Let her finish, son.”

  I looked to Bill…but the words hadn’t come from him. “Dad?”

  “I’m here.”

  “I can hear you now. But I can’t see you.”

  “It will come,” Bill said. “Now let Erin finish. She’s obviously upset.”

  “I’m sorry. Go ahead, baby.”

  “So I waited, and then I got sick of waiting, so I went to get in my car, but suddenly Abe Lincoln was there. He told me to come with him, that they wanted to meet me.”

  “They?”

  “Yeah, apparently more than one now. Behind Walmart. No way was I going. He persisted, but I yanked my arm away and got in my car and drove straight over here.”

  My gut churned. Never again would I ignore my intuition. “Was this recently? Like twenty minutes ago?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Nothing.” Only it wasn’t nothing. I’d felt Erin. Felt that she was in danger. Never again would I ignore my instinct. Thank God she’d gotten away. If she hadn’t… I couldn’t go there. Especially since it would have been my fault. “Please, Erin. Don’t ever do anything like this again. Please.”

  “I won’t. Trust me. I learned my lesson. I’ve never been so scared in my whole life. Except for—” She stopped abruptly, her eyes darkening.

  Except for when she learned what I truly was. She didn’t have to say the words. I felt them in my soul as if she’d yelled them from the rooftop.

  They were a thud to my gut.

  She still hadn’t accepted all of me.

  “She will, son.”

  My father again. Could he read my mind as well?

  “I know what you’re thinking. And no, I can’t read your mind. At least not in the way you imagine.”

  Erin let out a huff. “All right. What the heck are you people talking about? I feel like I’ve walked into crazy town.”

  “Baby, you and I need to talk in private. Would you excuse us, Bill. And…Dad?” Talking to someone I couldn’t see was more than a little disturbing.

  “Of course.”

  I ushered Erin to the bedroom I was using, though I hadn’t slept there since I’d started feeding from her. I shut the door.

  “I need to move in with you,” I said.

  She lifted her eyebrows. “What?”

  “You heard me. That’s the only way I can keep you safe.”

  “Dante, even if you moved in with me, which you’re not going to, you couldn’t be with me all the time. I’m a big girl.”

  “A big girl who got herself into an unsafe situation tonight.”

  “And who also got herself out of it,” she said.

  “Yes, you did. But those vamps have smelled you now, and they will hunger for you. They’ll go looking for you.”

  “Well, they won’t find me.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because you’ll be protecting me.”

  “I can’t protect you. Not if you won’t let me move in.” I gripped her shoulders. “I love you, Erin. I want to protect you. I need to protect you. Please. If anything happened to you—”

  “Nothing will happen to me. I’m perfectly safe.”

  “Start having your groceries delivered. Please. Or I’ll take you.”

  She nodded. “All right. I agree. I don’t like what happened tonight any more than you do. I was scared out of my mind, Dante.”

  “You’re safe now.” I pulled her to me and crushed my mouth onto hers.

  She opened, and we kissed with a new fire. A fire that came from inside me, a desire to protect her always, to keep her in my arms and away from anything that wanted to do her harm.

  Vampires. Were they the Claiborne vamps River had mentioned? Thugs, he’d called them. Bea had said they were drug runners for a female boss. She probably wasn’t a vampire because females were rare.

  I didn’t know.

  I knew only one thing. Erin had to be protected. And I was the only one who could keep her safe.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Erin

  Vampires.

  Ghosts.

  Demons.

  My universe had been tilted beyond belief.

  But that didn’t matter at the moment, because Dante was kissing me. My nipples hardened as he deepened the kiss, devouring my mouth with his. Our lips slid together, and his thigh went between my legs. I ground against it, my hunger deepening, expanding, until I had to have him.

  But he broke the kiss, panting. “Not with Bill and… I can’t even say it.”

  I was panting also, and I squeezed my thighs together to ease the throbbing between them. Didn’t help.

  “Your
father,” I said.

  “My father,” he repeated.

  “Dante, how did your father…die?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know. He and my uncle went after me when I disappeared. They never came back.”

  Ice sliced into me as my hand flew to my mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

  “My father is dead because of me.” He turned away from me, his shoulders trembling.

  I reached forward to touch him, but he inched farther away, as if he could sense me and didn’t want to be touched.

  “Dante, your father is…here.” Wow. Totally weird to actually say that. A dead guy was here.

  Dante turned to face me, his dark eyes sunken. “He’s still dead.”

  Reality was really taking a big hit today. “But he’s here. You can make whatever peace you need to make with him.”

  He shook his head and let out a sarcastic laugh. “Bill said there was a ghost protecting me. I didn’t believe him, of course. It was nonsense, and I figured he was losing it. Ghosts don’t exist, after all. That’s what we’ve always believed. But I heard my father’s voice today. Clear as a bell on Sunday morning. Turns out Bill was right. I just never dreamed the ghost would be my own father.”

  “Who better than your father to be your protector?” I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth.

  “In theory, sure. But my father was missing for as long as I was. If he was truly protecting me, then where was he when—”

  “When what?”

  “I can’t go there yet. Not with you.”

  A spear of fear lanced into me. What had Dante been through? Would he ever tell me? Could he? The thought of him enduring anything unpleasant nauseated me.

  “Dante…”

  “It’s all right, love. I just…can’t. Not yet.”

  “There is something you can do, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You can ask your father. You can find out how he died, why he wasn’t protecting you when you needed him to. Maybe he has a good reason.”

  “I can’t. Not when I can’t look him in the eye. I need to be able to see him, Erin. Why can everyone see him but me?”

  I hesitantly touched his forearm, and he didn’t jerk away this time. “I don’t know. I wish I did. I think I see him because…”

  “Because why?”

  “Because I never realized he was a ghost. I didn’t know him, so I had no way of knowing he was dead. He helped me with my car one day when it wouldn’t start, and then he told me something.” The event raced back into my head. “He told me to keep an open mind.”

  “About what?”

  I smiled. “I think he was talking about you. He must have known we were— In fact, I told him I had a date. It was that first night when we went out to dinner. He must have been talking about you. About what…you are.” God, I still had a hard time with the V word when it came to him.

  Silence from Dante.

  “He was trying to help. He must have been. He knew it would be hard for me to accept, and he was asking me to keep an open mind. I had no idea what he was talking about at first, and then…”

  “Then what?”

  “I was sure I saw him at home that night, remember? But then he disappeared.”

  Dante slid his index finger over his cheek. “I remember. There was nothing there, but I felt a draft—” He walked swiftly out of the room.

  Huh? What could I do but follow. He rushed back into the living room.

  “Dad?” Dante said, looking around. “Are you still here?”

  “Yes, son.”

  “You said that coldness on my neck is you.”

  “It is.”

  “Earlier tonight, right before we left the restaurant. That spear in my neck. It was more than a chilly draft.”

  “That was also me, warning you to leave.”

  “What was there? What was following me? I felt it in the bathroom.”

  “I don’t know, Dante. It’s something I’ve never encountered before.”

  “Is it a dark presence, like what Bea said?”

  “Yes. I believe so.”

  “Is it a ghost?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s not visible to me.”

  I took in the conversation, still not able to wrap my mind around all of it. Julian Gabriel stood in my vision, looking as solid as Bill and Dante. Yet Dante still couldn’t see him. His gaze flitted around the room, as if he were trying to zoom in on something that was out of his reach.

  “I think you need to talk to your father alone, Dante. I should go.”

  “No,” he said. “You’re not going out there again without me at your side. It’s not safe.”

  I opened my mouth but closed it before anything came out. I could take care of myself, but I’d had a huge scare, and right now it wasn’t worth arguing about. “All right. Then I’ll be happy to go back into your bedroom so you can talk to your father and grandfather in private.”

  This time he opened his mouth. He was going to tell me to stay, but I knew he wasn’t ready to talk freely in front of me. I gestured him not to speak.

  “Please. Let me do this for you. I understand what you need right now.” Without letting him argue, I walked out of the kitchen and back into his bedroom, shutting the door behind me.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dante

  “She’s a special girl, Dante,” my father said. “Very understanding.”

  Hearing a voice out of thin air was really fucking with my head. “She is special, no doubt. I need her. And I really wish I could see who the hell I’m talking to.”

  “It will come. It took a little while for me too.” Bill stood. “Let’s move to the kitchen. I need a snack.”

  I had no appetite at the moment, except for Erin. But I—along with my ghost father, I assumed—followed Bill into the kitchen.

  “I was as surprised as the rest of you,” my father said after Bill and I had sat down at the kitchen table. “We’ve never believed in ghosts, despite the alleged hauntings all around New Orleans. I guess we got a little full of ourselves, as a species that no one else believed existed.”

  “I need to know, Dad. If you’re really here to protect me, where were you when…” I couldn’t even say the words. The wounds were still so raw and real.

  “Dante, when Brae and I went after you, we knew the risk we were taking.”

  “Bill seems to think you and Uncle Brae were the primary target of whoever took me. But I can tell you—” I drew in a deep breath, gathering my courage. “The person who took me used me, stole my blood.” Let her goons torture me. But I couldn’t say that to the man who’d fathered me. Not yet. It was too humiliating. “If that wasn’t her primary purpose, why didn’t she let me go?”

  “Bill and I have discussed that,” he said. “We think she became infatuated with you and decided to keep you.”

  “But then she let me go. I escaped, but she arranged it. I’m almost sure of it.”

  “Yes, and we need to figure out why.”

  I shook my head. “I have questions first. Many, many questions.”

  “Then ask,” Bill said.

  “I need to see him!”

  “I’m here. I will answer as best I can,” my father said. “You’ll see me when you’re ready to.”

  “I’m ready now!”

  “Dante,” Bill said. “I’ve been telling you since you returned that there are certain things you’re not ready to know yet. This should prove that to you. If you were ready to see your father’s ghost, your eyes would let you.”

  I heaved a sigh. No use arguing. Apparently I no longer had control over my vision. Great. I had so many questions for my father, so I’d have to deal with him being invisible for the moment.

  “How did you die, Dad? Where is Uncle Brae? What did they do to you? Why didn’t you protect me while I was captive?”

  “One at a time, son. First, I only died recently, and it was by my own hand.”

  A slice of rage hit me fu
ll force. “You killed yourself? Why would you do that?”

  “Dante,” Bill said. “Let him explain.”

  “I don’t know where Braedon is. We weren’t held together. He is still alive.”

  “How do you know?”

  “For one, I would have seen him by now in the netherworld.”

  “You can see…others?”

  “Only those who have recently crossed over. But recently doesn’t have the same meaning to us as it does to you. To us, recent is as long as ten years. So yes, I would have seen Brae by now if he were dead.”

  As much as I hoped my uncle was still alive, my mind kept going back to what my father had done. “Why? Why would you take your own life?” I shook my head, trying desperately to understand.

  “Very simple,” he said. “Your mother told me to.”

  “My mother? She’s been gone over twenty years. You just said—”

  “She came to me in a dream. All who have crossed over have that ability when the need is dire. Have you ever had a dream, son, where you could swear it had meaning? You could swear in some way it was real?”

  I had. About Erin.

  About her.

  I nodded.

  “That’s how this was. She came to me in a dream. I knew without a doubt that it was Vivienne, and she was still as beautiful as ever.”

  My mother. I’d been thinking a lot about her since Em’s pregnancy. Did my father even know about that?

  He continued. “She told me you were still alive, and you needed me. She gave me explicit instructions where to find what I needed. She told me I’d become a ghost and I could watch over you and protect you. She said you had a purpose to fulfill. A nearly divine purpose, and you needed to be protected so you could fulfill your destiny.”

  I arched my brows nearly off my forehead. “What? I’m just me. I’ve been through hell. There’s no way I have some divine purpose.”

  “Nearly divine, was how she put it. And no, she didn’t elaborate.”

  “How am I supposed to deal with any of this?”

  “You will deal with what you have to deal with,” Bill said. “You’re a Gabriel vampire, and your strength will see you through. It has already.”