I jumped on him, sinking my fingernails into his face. One finger slipped into his empty eye socket, and it was all I could do to keep from yanking my hand away in disgust. He twisted violently, dislodging me, but I landed on my feet. When he stopped to wipe the blood from his eyes I was on him again, locking my legs around his waist and pummeling him from behind. He threw himself backward, crushing me between his body and the wall. The breath rushed from my lungs in a great whoosh and I slid to the floor, clutching my chest. He stood over me, ready to strike.
Nathan got to his feet and slammed his elbow into the back of Cyrus’s head, bringing him to the ground. Once he was down, Nathan delivered vicious kicks to the back of his head until he stopped struggling.
“Is he dead?” I gasped, using Nathan’s proffered arm to climb to my feet.
He didn’t look at me. His gaze was locked on Ziggy’s motionless body. “No. And he won’t be out for long. Let me get Ziggy and we’ll go.”
As soon as he uttered those words, the doors to the foyer blew off their hinges.
A forceful and foul-smelling wind blew us both against the wall in a shower of wood splinters. Ashes exploded from the cold fireplace as flames leapt up seemingly from nowhere, and the remaining furniture turned over from the magnitude of the blast.
A tall, sickly vampire slid into the room. His eyes burned red, and his long white hair trailed behind him as he floated effortlessly above the ground. Although he looked much older, and though I was nearly overcome by the stench of decay, I recognized him.
It was Cyrus’s father.
The Soul Eater.
“Carrie, run!” Nathan shouted. He sprang toward Ziggy’s body.
I grabbed him by the arm. “No, Nathan, there’s nothing you can do for him!”
The ancient vampire slowly came closer, his bloody, dripping claws outstretched.
“Don’t go. I’m so hungry,” he said, the sound of many voices speaking all at once.
“Fuck you!” Nathan screamed, and for a moment I thought he’d charge him without a weapon. “You took everything from me!” He’d totally lost it. I’d never seen anyone so angry. All the resentment and rage that Nathan had been holding back from the world finally surfaced as he howled at the Soul Eater.
The vampire cocked his head, like a child who couldn’t understand why he was being punished. “Just let me have a taste. A little taste.”
The Soul Eater pointed to me. “You. Come to me.”
“No!” Nathan grabbed my hand and ran for the door.
“Don’t run from me, boy!” The Soul Eater’s tone was like fire. “I smell my blood on you! Why do you not serve your master?”
“I will never serve you again.”
The assassins poured down the stairs. Some had removed their hoods, and they high-fived each other on a job well done.
“Get out!” Nathan shouted. “The Soul Eater’s awake!”
It had never occurred to me their plan might have hinged on the Soul Eater’s vegetative state, but power had radiated from the old vampire. Logic and instinct collided in my brain, and I knew even this large number of assassins were no match for his awesome strength.
They knew it, as well. It didn’t take them long to move. They ran for the back door, some jumping over the stair railing to save time.
But Nathan had a different exit planned for us. I tripped over my ridiculous shoes and wrenched my ankle. Nathan never missed a beat.
“Hang on,” he ordered, scooping me up in his arms. He slung me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and ran out the front door, down the steps and onto the driveway, then across the snow-covered lawn.
“Just a little farther,” he repeated over and over, a determined mantra more for his benefit than mine.
I held on to him for dear life with my one usable arm as he struggled to keep his footing on the grass.
Please don’t fall and break both of our necks. Not now, not when we’re so close to getting away.
The front gate was closed. “Can you climb?”
I wiggled my good arm. “I can try.”
“Good enough for me.” He boosted me up. I scrambled to the top, but slipped going over and fell to my feet on the pavement. The wicked heel of my shoe slid from beneath me, further twisting my injured leg. I swore loudly at the pain.
Nathan was at the top when he heard me. He jumped and landed next to me, rolling to his feet. “Can you walk?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
He lifted me into his arms and ran across the street, where Ziggy’s van waited.
Nathan unlocked the door and dumped me onto the passenger seat. He hopped into the driver’s side and started the engine, and I braced myself against the dashboard as he stomped on the gas.
I looked in the rearview and watched as we sped toward safety. Behind us, three black helicopters rose into the night air as the tiny, flickering lights of distant police cars approached.
“You’re going to be okay,” Nathan said hoarsely. “We’re gonna be fine.”
I took the assurance at face value, and since there was nothing left for me to do, I slumped against the seat and closed my eyes.
Nineteen
The Assassins
I woke beside Nathan in his bed. The last rays of sunlight were fading from the sky, and all around us the room glowed a rosy pink.
I sat up, careful not to disturb him or jostle my wounded arm. He’d taken the time to fashion a makeshift sling out of an old T-shirt before we’d both collapsed with exhaustion, but I still wasn’t healed. I might have been in a lot worse shape if Nathan hadn’t helped me.
His eyes were closed, his face smudged with dirt and sweat and blood. He still wore his black uniform, but the shirt had come untucked as he slept. His flat stomach was exposed, and I lay my hand there, taking comfort in the feeling of another body beside me.
“Please tell me you’re in the process of giving me the best wake-up call I’ve had in a long time,” he mumbled sleepily.
I smiled. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It would have happened sooner or later.” He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, frowning at the boots he still wore. “You want some breakfast?”
“Maybe in a little while. I think I want to go back to sleep.”
He got to his feet. “We’ve a busy night ahead of us.”
I groaned and shuffled my feet as I followed him down the hall. My injured ankle caused me to limp pathetically. As we entered the bathroom, Nathan halted at the sight of two half-used bottles of blue and magenta hair dye.
The giddy relief I’d felt at escaping death had filled me so completely that I hadn’t had room for anything else. But this reminder of Ziggy created plenty of space for sorrow, anger and, above all, guilt.
“I’m so, so sorry,” I whispered. I wanted to touch Nathan, to comfort him. But as usual, he seemed untouchable.
With an unconcerned shrug I knew he didn’t mean, he pulled his shirt over his head. His body looked less tempting than usual, as though pain and exhaustion had sapped him of some of his perfection. Or perhaps my body wasn’t in any shape to fool around.
“We’ve got to meet with the assassins tonight. Cyrus is still out there.” Nathan turned on the shower and unfastened his belt as if I wasn’t there, as if he didn’t care I was. Debating whether it would be more awkward to stay or make a fuss about leaving, I pretended to look for something in the medicine cabinet. His belt buckle jingled as he kicked off his pants, and I waited to hear the rattle of the curtain rings before I allowed my gaze to roam anywhere else.
“So, are you okay?” I said as I closed the cabinet door.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because Zi—” I couldn’t say it. “Because of what happened last night.”
“People die.”
“Yeah, they do, but he was kind of your only family.”
“Let’s not talk about it right now. I’ve got other things to wo
rry about.”
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled.
I left the bathroom without another word. The clothes Nathan had bought me were still at Cyrus’s. I swiped a pair of Nathan’s jeans and a sweater that required some maneuvering to put on over my injured arm.
I listened as the water cut off in the bathroom. Nathan came in to retrieve some clothes, a towel wrapped around his waist. He didn’t speak to me, but eyed my attire with an expression that would have been amusement had his eyes not looked so sad.
I’d never felt so in the way in my entire life. If not for the dim light outside, I would have just made some excuse to leave. As it was, I had to settle for a different part of the apartment.
The living room looked cold and alien. A pair of Ziggy’s shoes sat by the door. A stack of heavy metal CDs took up the corner of the coffee table, and a backpack full of college textbooks leaned against the couch. It was like a pharaoh’s tomb, a museum of my failure to protect him and of Nathan’s loss.
I went to the kitchen and pulled a bag of blood from the refrigerator. I was looking for something to cut the top of the bag with when Nathan’s hand gripped my arm.
I jumped, dropping the bag. He caught it and cradled it against his chest as if it were a priceless artifact.
“What?” I demanded, rubbing my offended arm.
“It’s the last one. I don’t want to drink it.” His voice was tight and he strained to get the words out.
My heart lurched at the full import of his statement. “Oh. Oh, God.” I stared, mesmerized by the shimmering liquid contained within the dull plastic. The millions of cells were the last physical evidence of Ziggy’s life on earth.
Nathan opened the freezer door and unceremoniously dumped the bag inside. “How about we talk about this?” I said without thinking, and I was glad. I might not have said it otherwise.
“How about you mind your own business?” Nathan didn’t exactly hide his face from me, but he didn’t look at me, either, as he went through the cupboards, taking out pans, bowls and pancake mix. “You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”
I planted my hands on my hips, cringing at the sting the motion caused. “It’s kinda tough to be a vegetarian vampire. Unless you’re Bunnicula.”
He actually laughed at that.
I arched an eyebrow. “You know Bunnicula?”
He grew serious again. “I read it to Ziggy when he was younger. Will you get the bacon out of the freezer?” He turned away from me in an effort to hide his suffering. I couldn’t believe that after all we’d been through together that he would continue to shut me out. I walked over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder, and he immediately jerked away from it.
Tears of anger sprang to my eyes. “You asshole.”
Nathan turned around, his expression dark. “Fine. I’ll make sausage instead.”
I clenched my good fist. “You know what I’m talking about.”
He opened the fridge and pulled out eggs and milk, pointedly turning the side of the carton labeled Z away from himself. “I do. And I told you before, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, I do!” I stamped my foot.
Nathan poured the milk and the pancake mix into the bowl without measuring, the way a mother would after years of preparing breakfast for her family. Except I’d never seen a mother with such a murderous scowl. Nathan suddenly threw down the wooden spoon in his hand. It bounced off the rim of the glass bowl and splattered half-mixed batter everywhere. “Just because I don’t want to stand here and have a Hallmark moment with you doesn’t mean I didn’t love Ziggy. I cared about him more than somebody like you could ever understand!”
“Somebody like me?” I hated the shrillness of my voice when I was mad. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
He folded his arms across his chest. “You tell me. What exactly did you have to do to keep him safe, Carrie? And so I can appreciate how indebted to you I should be, how much did you enjoy it?”
His remark twisted like a knife in my heart, just as he’d intended. Rage set my limbs trembling. I lashed out. “I did what I had to do! Unlike some people in this room!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Why didn’t you give Ziggy your blood? You could have saved him. All it would have taken was a little of your blood! Why didn’t you do it?”
The question had hung between us since the moment we left the mansion. It had been the cause for the tension we’d felt all morning.
Nathan looked at me, his eyes filled with confusion. “You think I let him die?”
The pain in his voice stole my will to fight. “Do you think you let him die?”
With a growl of fury, he shoved all the dishes and utensils off the counter. The glass bowl shattered at his feet, and the clang of metal nearly deafened me as the pans collided with linoleum. Nathan stalked forward, and I took a step back out of reflex more than fear. He wouldn’t hurt me. No matter how tough he tried to appear, he wasn’t the type to abuse someone weaker than himself.
“I would rather have him dead than be one of us!” he shouted, so close to my face that his cold breath stirred my hair. “You only know your change. You got to stay the same person you were before. Not everyone is so lucky. The blood has different effects on people. It does something to you, it makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do.”
I looked down, all too aware that I could have just as easily saved Ziggy with my own blood.
“You saw that, that thing.” Nathan spat the word, as though no reference to his sire could ever accurately describe his hideousness. “His blood is in mine. How could I put that into my son? How could I make him…”
He was running out of anger, and all that was left for him was despair. “How could I make him like me?” On the last word, his face went ashen and his shoulders sagged in defeat. He crumpled to the floor with a cry of anguish.
Faced with a man’s tears, I reacted much in the way a male would to a woman crying. I stood silently and watched his misery, feeling helpless in the awkwardness of the moment. Then I realized I had to do something, so I knelt on the floor of the tiny kitchen and put my arms around him. “Nathan, you’re nothing like them.”
I thought he’d push me away, but he returned my embrace, clinging to me like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood. “You don’t know me, Carrie. You don’t know what I’ve done.”
I wondered how long it had been since he’d let himself cry or talk to anyone or, God, even feel. Unable to think of any better way to comfort him, I held him while his cold tears wet the front of my shirt and his back shook with unrestrained sobs.
A long time later, when he’d composed himself, we salvaged the dishes that had survived his wrath. As if nothing had happened, we set about making breakfast side by side in the tiny kitchen.
Because there was nothing else to talk about, I asked about Ziggy.
At first, Nathan resisted, giving short, perfunctory answers. I’m not sure if it was talking through the tragedy that soothed him, or making breakfast, but he soon fell into an easy pattern of storytelling. “Ziggy was a runaway. He left home when he was nine. Can you believe that?”
I shook my head sympathetically and let him continue.
“His mom was on drugs, his dad was in jail. His stepdad beat him so badly that he had two broken ribs when I found him. Every few months, I’d do the rounds at the Goth clubs. I’d look for wannabes and vampire hunters, and kids who got into the role-playing and took it too seriously. Usually, I’d give them a good scare and send them home.” He motioned for me to flip the bacon I’d arranged in a frying pan, and leaned to turn down the heat.
“Ziggy had fallen in with some pretty stupid kids. They were in their early teens, but they let him hang around. They called themselves vampire hunters, but I’m glad I got to them before they could get in any actual trouble. These kids had no idea how to fight. They all ran from me. Except Ziggy. We stood in that alley for two hours, staring each other down. I
even did the whole—” He waved his hands in front of his face. “He just kept insisting he was going to kill me and rid the world of, I think the term he used was ‘hell spawn.’”
I imagined a nine-year-old Ziggy staring down a killer vampire, and it brought a smile to my face. “What did you do?”
“I would have washed his mouth out with soap, if I’d known he’d had a gift for that kind of language. I took him to Denny’s to get some pie.” He smiled at the memory. “He hadn’t eaten in days. He was so skinny, you could have turned on a flashlight on one side of him and it would have shone through to the other. I asked if he had a place to stay, and he tried to play it off like he had all sorts of options. I told him he could stay with me, and he’s lived here ever since.”
He paused, clearly noticing he’d used the present tense. But he didn’t correct himself. “You know, I feel like any second now he could walk through that door.”
Before he could get too emotional again, he reached for a whisk and set to mixing the pancake batter. “He was only my donor for about a year. I don’t want you to think I was taking advantage of him.”
“I didn’t.”
“And I don’t want you to think I didn’t love him because of what happened before he left. I followed him. I looked all over town for him until the sun came up and I had to come back here. I had a hell of a burn.”
“I’ll bet.”
Without saying anything further, I got two plates and laid out some silverware. I wasn’t sure pancakes would hit the spot in the absence of blood, but cooking seemed to be therapeutic for Nathan. By the time we finished, we had pancakes, eggs Benedict, sausage and bacon. He had just gone rummaging through the cupboard, muttering under his breath about muffin mix, when I stopped him.
“I’m sure this will be enough. I mean, I don’t know if vampires can gain weight, but I really don’t want to take a chance.”
He laughed softly. “I’m sorry. I’m used to cooking for a teenage boy. It’ll take me a while to get used to this.”
Not sure how he’d react, but needing the contact to reassure me, I laid my hand over his as he reached for a plate of bacon. “Nathan, you don’t have to put on an act about this. Not with me.”
Blood Ties Book One: The Turning Page 25
