Blood Ties

by Mari Mancusi

  Magnus frowns. “Francis and Tanner are out there. They’ll take care of him.”

  “But he might be hungry.” I glance at my watch. “It’s almost time for his feeding.”

  My boyfriend lets out a long breath. “He’ll be fine, I assure you. We’ll give him some regular blood to hold him over.” He tries again to pull me down on the bed. “Just five minutes,” he pleads.

  I find myself hesitating. Torn.

  “It’s okay if you don’t want to do anything else,” he adds, evidently mistaking my guilt for cold feet. “Just cuddle with me. Please?”

  Reluctantly, I lie back down on the bed, my body facing the door. Magnus spoons me against my back, his fingernails lightly scraping up and down my arm. It should feel amazing. But I just can’t relax. I keep thinking about Jayden. Hearing his agonizing moans echoing through the cabin.

  I sit up in bed. Magnus groans. “Really, Sunny?” he asks. “You really want to waste the fleeting time we have together on this guy?”

  I turn to him, annoyance welling up inside me. I mean, selfish much? “Magnus, this isn’t a vacation, remember?” I retort. “We’re only on this flight to begin with to try to save Jayden’s life. How can I just lie here and cuddle while he’s out there, all alone, scared and suffering and maybe even dying? It just wouldn’t be right!”

  “What wouldn’t be right is for you to go and leave your loving, sweet boyfriend all alone in the bedroom,” Magnus replies sulkily. “Refusing to fulfill his lifelong dream of being kissed by his loving girlfriend for five hours straight.”

  I sigh. There was a time I would have done anything to be kissed for five hours straight by Magnus. But there is no way I could enjoy it now. Not with Jayden in the next room.

  I pull out of Magnus’s grasp. “I promise, I’ll be right back,” I assure him as I climb out of bed. “I just want to check on him and maybe give him some blood if he needs it.” I turn back to my boyfriend. “Okay?” I plead, hoping for understanding.

  But Magnus is already out of bed and walking over to his desk at the far end of the room. “Whatever,” he mutters. “I’ve got that paperwork to do anyway.” He sits down at his computer, keeping his back to me.

  I sigh. “Please don’t be mad.”

  “I’m not,” he replies automatically. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an important phone call to make.” He picks up the plane’s phone for emphasis.

  Giving up, I head out the door and into the main cabin of the private plane. Francis and Tanner, Magnus’s bodyguards, are sitting on the couch, drinking from blood bags and watching Jersey Shore reruns, laughing hysterically, while ignoring Jayden’s continued moans from the next room.

  “Um, hello?” I cry angrily, stepping in front of the flat screen. “What are you doing?”

  Francis strains to look around me. “Checking out the Situation?” he quips.

  “Well, maybe you should consider the real situation,” I admonish. “Like the guy you’re supposed to be watching? You know, the one crying out in pain and agony in the next room?”

  Tanner rolls his eyes. “Newbie vamps are always like that,” he rationalizes. “Just like babies, sometimes it’s best to let them cry it out.”

  I squeeze my hands into fists. “Well, I think maybe we should give him some blood.”

  “He ate two hours ago.”

  “Well, maybe he needs some more.” “Nobody likes a fat vampire, Sun.”

  I grit my teeth. “Just give me the damn syringe, okay? I’ll feed him myself.”

  The two meathead vampires exchange glances. “If you move away from the TV...”

  I take a deliberate step to the side.

  “Oh man!” Tanner cries, pointing at the flat screen. “You made us miss the fight scene!”

  I glare at him. “If you don’t give me the syringe this second, I’ll start another one right here in the cabin.”

  “Fine, fine,” Francis says, tossing me the kit. “Go to town.” Then he and his buddy turn back to the TV.

  Rolling my eyes, I head into the plane’s small second bedroom, where Jayden sits on the decidedly less luxurious bed than the one in the master bedroom. His hands and feet are chained to the bedposts and he’s staring listlessly at the television, which is, for some reason, tuned in to CSPAN.

  Jayden’s eyes light up as he sees me. “I think they’re hoping I’ll stake myself from boredom before we get to England,” he says wryly, nodding his head toward the television. I grab the remote and turn the channel to Animal Planet. After all, I know he misses his dog and cat friends back in Vegas.

  “Better?” I ask with a small smile as I sit down on the edge of the bed.

  He grins. “Much.” But from his look, I’m not sure he’s referring to the TV.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, looking him over. “I heard you moaning in here. Are you in pain?”

  “Ugh,” he says, looking sheepish. “I didn’t realize anyone could hear me. How embarrassing.”

  “It’s okay,” I say, resisting the urge to reach out and give him a comforting touch. After all, I promised Magnus I’d stay at arm’s length. “Are you hungry?”

  “Starving,” he admits. “I’ve drunk tons of blood and it doesn’t even begin to satisfy me. The only stuff that does...” He trails off, looking longingly at my neck bandage. “And, let’s just say, I don’t want to be that guy.” He bites his lower lip. “God, I’m already humiliated beyond belief that I just drank from you like that. I don’t know what I was thinking! I mean, I guess I wasn’t thinking at all. I was just so hungry. And once I started—well, I just couldn’t stop myself.” He trails off, his face red as a tomato. “I’m so sorry, Sunny. If I had hurt you...”

  “It’s okay,” I assure him, hating to see him so traumatized. “I’m totally fine now. And hey, I don’t blame you one bit! After all, everyone knows I’m just too, too delicious to resist!”

  He grins. “Like a hot fudge sundae with extra, extra whipped cream.”

  “Really? I was thinking more like a Bloody Mary.” I wink.

  “Or maybe a bottle of Sunny D?” “Sunny A-negative, to be precise.”

  We both start giggling hysterically and for a moment everything seems like it’s going to be okay. Then reality hits and we both sober.

  “I’m so sorry this is happening to you, Jayden,” I say, reaching over to squeeze his hand. Yes, I know I’m not supposed to be touching him. But he’s chained up. What harm could he do?

  He squeezes my hand back with a vampire strength that makes me wince. Oh yeah. That harm. “Sorry,” he says quickly, loosening his grip. “I’m just glad you’re here now. All of you. I was completely freaking out back in Vegas, on my own, not knowing what was going on or what I could do. But now I feel like I’ve got this whole vampire family looking out for me. I mean, even if this doesn’t work—even if I’m doomed to be a vampire forever—at least I know the Blood Coven’s got my back.”

  I give him a sad smile, my heart wrenching at the hope in his voice. If only he knew the truth. That the Blood Coven isn’t the happy family he so desperately wants it to be. That they would have put him to sleep in five seconds flat if it wasn’t for my intervention.

  But he doesn’t need to know that. And once we cure him with blood from the Grail, he’ll never have to deal with vampires again. Even if I can never go back to being normal myself, I can make sure that he does. And he deserves that, at the very least.

  “I’m going to give you some of my blood,” I inform him, rising to my feet and walking to a nearby chair. “If I drain it in here, will that bother you?”

  He shakes his head. “No, it’s fine,” he says. “As long as you talk to me while you’re doing it.” He pauses, then adds shyly, “I’ve missed you, you know.”

  “I’ve missed you, too,” I admit as I sit down on the chair and tie a rubber band around my arm. It makes me feel like one of those heroin addicts you always see in movies. “And I’m really sorry I didn’t get in touch once I got back to Vega
s. Things have been… Well, crazy doesn’t even cover the half of it.”

  “What happened?” Jayden asks. “I thought everything was cool with the Blood Coven and you were just going back to Massachusetts.”

  I slap at my arm to find a nice vein to draw blood from. “Yeah, so did we. Until our parents dropped the ultimate bombshell on us.” I stab at the vein with the hollow needle and a moment later thick, syrupy blood drains down a tube and into the awaiting blood bag. It hurts like a mother, but I remind myself that this small sacrifice may very well save my friend’s life and so I’m going to have to deal.

  Jayden leans forward in bed, his eyes greedily watching the process. “Bombshell?” he manages to ask without drooling.

  And so I give him the 411. About our fae heritage, the threat on our lives, hiding out at Slay School, being kidnapped by fairies. The works. And it’s not ’til I come to the part about my dad sacrificing his life to save my sister that my voice cracks and the tears well up in my eyes.

  “All this time we thought he was just a selfish jerk,” I blurt out, emotions hitting me hard and fast. “Abandoning us to start a new family—not caring whether we lived or died. But instead he was out there that whole time, forcing himself to stay away in an effort to keep us safe from harm. Before he died, he told us that not a day had gone by that he didn’t think of us, wishing there was some way to rejoin his family.” I make a face. “Meanwhile I was basically sticking pins in a Dad-shaped voodoo doll, cursing his existence on the planet. Some daughter I am.”

  Jayden gives me a sympathetic look. “You didn’t know,” he reminds me gently.

  I scowl. “I didn’t bother to find out either. I just took it all at face value without questioning what was really going on. And now he’s gone. And he’s never coming back. And I’ll never get a chance to tell him how much I love him. How much I’ve always loved him...”

  “Maybe you didn’t get a chance to tell him,” Jayden replies quietly, “but I bet he knows all the same.”

  I look over at him, through my veil of tears. “I hope you’re right.”

  “I am,” he says, his voice leaving no room for argument. “And I can tell you something else, too. Your father would definitely not have wanted you to be sitting here, beating yourself up over the ‘what if’s.’ To negate his sacrifice with regrets. He’d want you to think of all the good times you shared together, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose so…”

  “Try it. I mean, what’s your favorite memory? Something the two of you shared.”

  I don’t even have to think before answering. “Every night when we were little, he’d curl up in bed with me and Rayne and tell us the best bedtime stories known to man. They’d always start out exactly the same. ‘Once upon a time there were two fairy princesses, Sunshine and Rayne.’” I grin. “Who would have thought those stories were actually nonfiction?”

  Jayden gives a low whistle. “Fairy princesses. Seriously, that’s, like, the sweetest thing ever, Sun!”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “So do you have...” Jayden pauses, grinning sheepishly. “This seems so silly to ask.”

  My face heats as I realize what he’s wondering. “What, wings? Yeah. I do.”

  “Can I see them?” His voice betrays his eagerness, which totally makes me blush hard-core.

  “I don’t know. They’re kind of... weird...” “Please? I’ll show you my fangs...”

  “Um, been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Or the bandage, in this case.” I remind him teasingly, gesturing to my neck.

  “Oh yeah.” He grimaces.

  The blood bag is full, so I pull out the needle and press a cotton swab over the wound. I’m more than a bit light-headed from so much blood loss and I find I have to grip the chair as I rise to my feet to steady my weakened legs.

  Jayden frowns. “I don’t like to see you doing this to yourself,” he says. “Not for me.”

  “I want to,” I reassure him, sitting back down on the bed and handing him the bag. “And besides, it won’t be for long anyway. We’ll get the Grail blood and you’ll be cured and we’ll all live happily ever after.”

  “Happily ever after. I like the sound of that,” he says before sinking his teeth into the bag. I can’t help but watch as he sucks the thick red liquid into his mouth, his cheeks flushing with renewed color as my blood drains down his throat. I know I should be creeped out beyond belief, but instead I just feel warm inside, knowing my blood is curbing his desperate hunger and offering him a few moments of peace. The dark shadows in his face seem to fade away and his eyes are brighter and full of life as he drains the bag dry, then sets it down on the nightstand. He looks up at me with an affectionate smile.

  “You sure you’re a fairy?” he teases softly. “And not an angel, sent from heaven?”

  The line should have been cheesy as hell. But with Jayden saying it, it just sounds so sweet. And I find myself blushing all over again.

  “Flatterer. You just want another sip,” I accuse, trying to keep my tone light.

  “No. I just want you.”

  My heart lurches at the naked truth in his voice. “Jayden—”

  “Sit by me, Sunny,” he begs, patting the side of the bed with his bound hand. “Please.”

  And so I sit. Against my better judgment. Against the voices in my head screaming in protest. I sit beside Jayden and allow him to take my hand in his. He strokes it softly as his eyes find my own, looking up at me with a wide, wondering gaze.

  Jayden. Sweet, sweet Jayden. I start to lean down to him...

  NO! Common sense returns with a vengeance and I rip my hand away, stumbling backward to put space between myself and the vampire.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I demand, staring down at him with horror.

  He looks up at me, confused, crestfallen. “What do you mean?”

  “You tried to vampire scent me, didn’t you? So I’d let you drink my blood.” Suddenly it all makes perfect sense. The sleepy attraction. The almost kiss. Vampire pheromones. Irresistible to mortals. He wanted to lure me into his trap and—

  “But I already drank your blood. You gave it to me.” Oh, right. I bite my lower lip. Confused. “Maybe you wanted more?” “Sunny, I swear I would never—”

  I shake my hands in front of my face as I back out of the room. “Whatever. I’ve got to go. Enjoy The Dog Whisperer.” And with that, I make my exit, slamming the door behind me, my heart pounding a mile a minute.

  “Are you okay?” Francis asks, not looking away from the TV.

  I don’t answer him. Partly because I don’t think he really cares one way or another. But mostly because I’m not sure of the answer myself. Am I okay? Did I just fall under a vampire spell?

  Or do I still have real feelings for Jayden?

  No. That’s impossible. I rush past the vampire guards and push into Magnus’s bedroom, my whole body shaking as my brain continues to treat me to relentless fantasies of Jayden’s lips on mine. I have to break this spell—and fast. And I can think of only one way to do it.

  “Sunny! Are you okay?” Magnus rises from his desk, looking concerned. I catch a glimpse in the mirror and realize my face is stark white.

  I close the door behind me and lock it.

  “I’m fine. Let’s do it,” I blurt out, desperately trying to catch my breath.

  Magnus stares at me. “Do... what?”

  I grit my teeth. “It. You know. Do I have to spell it out?” From his confused face, I gather I do. “You wanted to get your mile-high club membership, remember? Well, let’s make it happen.” “But, Sunny, you said...”

  “I don’t care what I said. I want to do it. Now.” I start yanking off my shirt.

  Magnus is by my side in a flash, so quickly I don’t even see the movement. He pulls my shirt back down. “No,” he says.

  “But I thought you wanted to—” “I do. Of course I do. But not like this.” I scowl. “Like what?”

  �
�Like you trying to punish yourself for feelings you have for another guy.”

  I stare at him, horrified. “But I’m not...” I trail off, catching his pointed look. “Oh God.” I sink down onto the bed. “Magnus, I’m sorry. I just... well, I think Jayden just tried to vampire scent me. It was awful. All of a sudden I was thinking all these crazy thoughts and...” I realize my boyfriend is shaking his head. “What?”

  “He didn’t,” he says softly.

  “Didn’t what? Vampire scent me? Yes, he did. He totally did. You weren’t there. You don’t know how—” “Sunny, he can’t. The doctors... well, they essentially neutered him before releasing him into our custody. They removed his pheromone glands so he wouldn’t be a danger to mortals while we worked to find his cure.”

  “Well, they must have missed one,” I protest. “Because he totally—”

  “Turned you on? He doesn’t need a vampire scent for that.”

  Oh God. I collapse onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling, horrified beyond belief. I can’t believe I just told my boyfriend I’m hot for another guy. A guy whose life is dependent on my boyfriend wanting to save him.

  Magnus sighs and joins me on the bed. He reaches out and takes my hand in his. The same hand that, moments before, I let Jayden hold. I feel dirty and gross and undeserving of his caress.

  “I’m sorry,” I manage to say. “I didn’t mean...” I trail off. What can I say? What excuse can I give to make any of this okay?

  But Magnus places a cool finger to my lips as he continues to stroke my hand. Evidently he doesn’t want excuses—or explanations. At least right now. And I am grateful for that kindness.

  “Just hold me,” he murmurs, curling up in my arms. And so I do. Forcing myself to stop thinking of Jayden.

  5

  We land at London’s Heathrow Airport the next morning and climb aboard an awaiting limo to continue the twoand-a-half-hour journey to Glastonbury, where the druids commissioned to guard the Holy Grail live. After falling asleep in Magnus’s arms on the plane, I’m energized and ready to go. The vampires, on the other hand, are ready for bed—for them, the emerging sun is more powerful than a double dose of Ambien. One by one their heads loll back against the cushy black leather seats as they succumb to a deep vampiric slumber. Even Jayden abandons me for dreamland, though at least he doesn’t snore like Francis and Tanner do. I mean, I’d say their snoring would wake the dead, but considering technically everyone in here (except for me) is dead (and still sleeping like babies) I guess that’s not exactly true.