Читать книгу Blood Ties Book Four: All Souls' Night - Jennifer Armintrout, Jennifer Armintrout - Страница 12

Ziggy was still unconscious when we returned to the bookshop.

“Stay with him,” Nathan ordered, motioning me into the backseat. “If he wakes up…knock him out again.”

It wasn’t the most tender, fatherly suggestion, but he was right. If Ziggy could, he would go back to his sire.

On the chance Dahlia was still inside somewhere, Nathan searched the bookstore. When it was clear, they carried Ziggy downstairs, to the hidden shelter that Nathan kept below the shop floorboards.

“I can’t say I’m glad to see this place again,” I muttered as I followed them down the steep few steps.

There was a thud, and Bill swore. “There isn’t much head clearance down here,” Nathan warned belatedly.

The hideout was a short, narrow space with a dirt floor and stone masonry walls that were crumbling. The sleeping bags, medical kit and camping lantern we’d left behind were still there, as well as the empty bags from the blood we’d consumed while in hiding. But we didn’t have any blood now, and Bill was human. “We’re not going to be here long, I hope?”

I’d whispered the question to Nathan, but the space was too crowded and confined for secrecy. Bill’s gaze darted from me to Nathan and back as he helped to maneuver Ziggy into a sleeping bag. “I don’t feed from the vein, okay? So you guys need a plan in place.”

“We’re going back to Chicago as soon as the sun goes down,” Nathan answered tersely. “That’s the plan.”

He settled on the floor, his back propped against the rough stone and crumbling cement of the wall. Bill retreated to the other side of the shelter and I sat beside Nathan.

“Do you really think that’s smart?” I asked, my voice low not to keep our conversation private—that would have been impossible—but to indicate that Bill should try to politely ignore us. “I mean, with the Soul Eater having his heart and every—”

“I know what the Soul Eater has!” Nathan exploded. He banged the back of his head against the stone, just once, and dropped his forehead to rest on his hands. His next words were softer, full of heartrending dismay. “What a mess this is.”

I leaned against him, my head on his shoulder, one hand on his back. Comforting with words isn’t something I’m good at.

“We can’t go back to Chicago,” I said, quieter. “At least, not now. The Soul Eater will be looking for us, and he’ll follow us there. At least here we have the resources to protect ourselves.”

“And there we have security,” Nathan argued, but I cut him off.

“What about those creatures? Who do you think will stop them? The doorman? The janitor? The head of the building association?” My voice had grown louder, and I lowered it. “Have you thought of how many people will die when he lets those things loose in Chicago?”

“But the book, Dahlia’s spell book—”

“Is in the car. I’m not an idiot, Nathan. I wouldn’t leave something like that behind. We have to stay here, where we can keep a closer eye on what the Soul Eater is up to.” I watched as he tried to form another protest, and then as defeat finally registered on his features.

He looked up, acknowledging Bill for the first time. “Thank you. For your help. You’ve done more than I ever would have asked you to.”

Bill held up one hand, letting it fall in obvious exhaustion. “It’s nothing. I mean, it’s something. If it were my kid, I’d want someone to help me.”

“Do you have kids?” It was something I hadn’t thought of. Had I dragged him away from his family, possibly to get him killed?

“No. But if I did.” He shook his head. “You’re right. If we head back to Max’s place, they’re going to follow you guys. And if this Soul Eater guy is going to track you down wherever you go, well, why not stay where you can keep a closer eye on him, rather than be surprised when you wake up dead?”

Nathan snorted. “Well, when you—a human who has little knowledge of the situation aside from vague rumblings in the Chicago underground—frame it that way, in the context of the knowledge you don’t have, I really can’t argue.”

When he tries to, Nathan can be an incredible ass. “I filled him in on the details on the drive up here. To save you. Which he helped with. You’d be in your sire’s living room sipping tea right now, if he hadn’t. So, can you at least pretend he’s a human being, worthy of respect?”

We sat in silence for a minute. I studied Nathan’s face, amazed as ever to watch it visibly healing. My head still throbbed. I probably had—and would have—a fractured skull for a few days. The pressure behind my eyes forced my eyelids closed, sleep making my thoughts heavy. Just as I dropped off, I roused myself. “I’m sorry, I’m falling asleep,” I mumbled, rubbing my eyes.

Nathan patted my shoulder, urging me to lean against him. “Go ahead, get some rest.”

“No,” I protested. “We’ve got to keep an eye out, in case—”

With a beleaguered sigh, he wrapped his arm around me. Not around my shoulders, but around my head, bringing his hand to neatly cover my mouth as he pulled me close to him.

Bill chuckled, and Nathan dropped his arm to my shoulders. My eyes eased open for a moment and I saw Ziggy, still unconscious, like something out of a dream. He was alive. And he was back home.

Morning came too soon.

Lately, it always seemed to come too soon, Max realized. When night was the time for him to be up and moving around, cleaning, doing laundry, going to the bar, hanging out, the night seemed to be plenty of time to get everything done. He’d even found himself bored on occasion. But now, when he had to tear himself away from Bella’s warm, soft body, the night seemed unfairly short.

Now, the dawn loomed on the horizon, and with it inevitable separation. He was trying hard not to be morose, but it was more difficult than he’d expected. A few months ago, he would have been aching for a fight, any kind of danger to break up the monotony of the everyday. And it never occurred to him then to worry about what would happen if he didn’t survive. Bella was his everyday now, and it terrified him to think he might not get back to her.

He supposed he was the perfect example of “be careful what you wish for.”

Rising from the bed as gently as he could, trying not to wake Bella until absolutely necessary, he reached for the jeans wadded up on the floor. He pulled them on, set a teakettle of blood on the hot plate by the bathroom sink and went out to the balcony while he waited for it to warm.

The sky over the lake was a black-tinged blue, turning slowly golden near the eastern horizon. Some mornings he saw pink reflected on the clouds. Some mornings, the sun seemed to just appear; one moment it was night, the next, day, without him even noticing. It wasn’t something he’d ever experienced in his human life, definitely nothing he’d purposely hung around to watch in his vampire days. Usually, it put him in a great mood. Now, as the sun rose in the east, his gaze was drawn to the runway at the cliff’s edge. The jet parked there had its lights on, a small truck was stopped next to it.

“Great, don’t rush me along or anything.”

“Max?” Bella’s sleepy voice called. “You are already awake?”

He strolled into the bedroom, his heart catching in his throat a little bit at the sight of her, struggling to sit up, reaching for her robe that was impossibly far away. How would she fare when he was gone? Sure, one of her surly relations would probably help her, but how could they be there for everything she needed? How could anyone take better care of her than him? It was another reason that he would have to make damn sure to stay alive and get back to her.

As if she’d read his thoughts, Bella’s expression turned dark. “Do not look at me with such pity. I am capable on my own.”

“I know you are,” he said, trying not to sound patronizing but handing her the robe all the same. “I’m just worried that you won’t have everything you need here. That you’ll be…neglected.”

She arched a sardonic brow. “You think I would tolerate being neglected?”

“I think your family will take better care of you than they would me, were the situation reversed.” Max helped her ease her arms into the robe, lamenting the loss of all that tight, tanned skin from his view. He didn’t want to be so shallow as to add “see my girlfriend naked again” to his list of reasons to survive.

“That is probably true,” Bella agreed, then, slowly, she said, “I…have been thinking. About you leaving.”

The smell of the blood alerted him to the imminent prospect of overwarming, and he went to the bathroom to retrieve the kettle. “I’m listening.”

“I thought perhaps…” She hesitated, as though it was difficult for her to speak. Max supposed he should worry that she would say she thought the separation was a good idea, that they should make it permanent, but he couldn’t quite get to that state of hysteria. He knew Bella too well, and he was secure enough in their relationship to know that whatever she would say next would be something along the lines of “I want to do something incredibly stupid and dangerous to protect you that I know you will reject outright.”

“I want to gather a few of the women, the other magic workers, and maintain our contact with you while you are gone. Perhaps we will be of use—”

“Until your father finds out, hates me more, banishes you and the other women—” Max interrupted, only to be cut off again by Bella.

“My father will not banish me. Sometimes I fear he cannot make the best decisions for the pack when acting as both my father and the pack leader.” She closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose with the back of her hand. “I worry what will happen when werewolves become involved in this fight. My father only sees himself as potentially being rid of a nuisance.”

“Thanks,” Max interjected.

“He has no concept of how enraged the Soul Eater will be, and what repercussions might affect the pack as a whole.” She looked to Max, golden eyes pleading. “Please, just keep in contact with me. I will rally support quietly, and when the time is right, if the time comes, I will be able to do my part.”

One thing Bella wasn’t good at—the only thing Bella wasn’t good at, actually, if Max didn’t count being humble or ugly—was being helpless. And he sympathized with her. There were times in the past when he’d gone about crazy waiting for orders from the Movement to go ahead and do what he already knew would have to be done. But he didn’t trust her father not to banish her or, God, hurt her, even. Julian was, after all, the man who’d tattooed multiple lines of ancient prophecy into Bella’s skin when she was a teenager. It might be a cultural difference that kept Max from understanding Julian’s motives, but culture be damned, he wasn’t about to let Bella’s father’s weird vendetta against him harm her.

But then again, Bella had been a teenager once. She’d probably defied her father’s orders hundreds of times then without being caught. And pack pecking order or no, Bella’s aunts were frightening creatures who would bristle like porcupines if anyone, Julian included, tried any funny business.

“Fine,” he conceded wearily. “Do what you have to do. But I want no part of it. Plausible denial is the best tool one can possess in some situations.”

“Come,” she said, putting her arms out to him. “Help me into the chair. Then get yourself some blood and we will watch the sun rise together.”

It was as much of a goodbye as he knew he would get from her.

I woke, disoriented, to the sound of Nathan cursing and shoes scuffing on the dirt floor. My brain became aware reluctantly, an inconvenience at a time when clearly all hell was breaking loose around me. I staggered to my feet and promptly struck my aching head on one of the overhead beams. When I was finished swearing and rubbing my head, I finally saw what was going on.

Ziggy had woken up. He’d made it halfway up the steps, from what I could tell, and now Nathan had one of his legs in a death grip, trying to pull him away from the trapdoor. Bill leaned against the wall, hands to his throat, a look of shock—the clinical kind—on his face.

“Carrie!” Nathan shouted, and I realized that was what had woken me in the first place. “Help Bill before he bleeds to death!”

I walked awkwardly on my knees to Bill’s side. Blood cascaded from between his fingers to stain the front of his T-shirt. “He bit me,” he mumbled. “He bit me.”

“I take it you’ve never been bitten by a vampire before,” I started, completely calm, completely oblivious to the struggle behind me. If I got him talking, diverted his focus, I might be able to save him. “It hurts like hell, doesn’t it?”

His forehead shone with perspiration, and he looked not at me, but through me. “He bit me.”

“I know. Let me just…” I gently pried his hands away from his wounded throat. I’d braced myself for the blood to spray, and thankfully, it didn’t. I replaced his hand with my own, pulling the bottom of his shirt up to press against the wound.

Behind me, Nathan growled to Ziggy, “Sit down and we’ll talk about this!”

“Talk, my ass!” There was a thud, and I imagined Ziggy’s foot connecting with Nathan’s chest. There was a scrabbling sound against the wood, and the trapdoor banged open. “If I don’t get back there, he’s going to fucking kill me!”

I grabbed Bill’s hand and held it over the wound. “He didn’t hit anything critical, but you need to hold this here until the bleeding stops. Not too tight.” I felt behind me for the sleeping bag and pulled it around his shoulders. Somehow, I resisted licking his blood off my fingers. “Are you all right?”

He nodded toward the sound of the struggle, wetting his lips. “Help him.”

Ziggy broke free of Nathan and made it up the few steps into the bookshop. Nathan and I raced after him in time to see the door fling open, admitting scorching sunlight. Ziggy managed to close it before he burst into flame, but when he sank, panting, with his back to the thick, scarred wood, his face was orange with sunburn.

“Fuck daylight,” he rasped, closing his eyes, his head falling back in defeat. “I’m going to die.”

“You’re not going to die,” I reassured him, knowing he wasn’t talking about his burn.

Ziggy shook his head and yanked up his shirt, displaying for us the scar we’d already seen. “Jacob has my heart. He’ll kill me.”

“Jacob,” Nathan muttered behind me, disgust plain in his voice. I knew what bothered him, without feeling it through the blood tie. I’d heard that same reverence in Nathan’s voice, when he’d willingly let me into his memories. The Soul Eater’s power over his fledglings ran deeper than the blood between them. Jacob Seymour was a powerful, ruthless, charismatic man. If a person didn’t fall for his promises of power, they were frightened by his cruelty. But always, always they were impressed by his way of making them feel as though they were the only person who mattered to him.

I knew I almost had been.

“Ziggy, he won’t kill you,” I began, steamrollering past whatever Nathan had opened his mouth to say. I had the distinct feeling that whatever words he chose, they wouldn’t be constructive. “He has your heart, but he had Cyrus’s heart for years. He never did anything with it. And eventually, he gave it back.”

“Cyrus never ran off on him, either.” Ziggy practically spat the words. “He’s going to think I’ve betrayed him. He’s going to think I don’t 1—”

“He’s going to think what you make him think,” Nathan interrupted. His face was a mask of pain. He didn’t want to hear that his son loved a monster. “You haven’t been blocking him from the blood tie. He knows you’ve been kidnapped.”

“He does.” Ziggy nodded vigorously. “He does. He’ll come back and get me.”

“Is that what you really want?” My heart ached for him. I knew what it was like to feel so strongly for someone who was so destructive. Of course, it also terrified me to think that Ziggy might send out a homing beacon, leading the Soul Eater straight to us. “You don’t have to go back to him—”

“No,” Nathan said quickly. “No, don’t make him think about that.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he shook his head so vehemently I closed it again. He never took his eyes from Ziggy. “If he doesn’t think about it, he doesn’t have to give anything away to Jacob. And he hasn’t had the practice disguising his thoughts that I’ve had. The Soul Eater will see through him in a minute.”

“Well, he’d better start practicing,” I said, sounding more harsh, I’m sure, than I intended. “We can’t afford to have him broadcasting all our plans to the enemy.”

“Your enemy,” Ziggy snapped, rising to his feet.

“Do I need to tie you to something?” Nathan stalked toward his son with a decidedly unfatherly glare.

To his credit, Ziggy didn’t flinch in the face of Nathan’s stare down. “Jacob is my sire. Some of us stay loyal.”

“He might be your sire, but you’re still my son,” Nathan snapped, hands clenching at his sides. “And I’m not losing you again.”

When he grabbed for him, Ziggy moved out of the way. But it wasn’t murderous intent that made Nathan reach for his son. His arms swooped around his shoulders and pulled him away from the door. And while I stood there, watching as Ziggy remained passive, stoic, Nathan embraced him.

I didn’t know what had happened to turn Ziggy from the unnervingly self-possessed, friendly youth he’d been to the jaded drone he seemed to be now. I didn’t want to know—I’d heard enough about the Soul Eater’s cruelty to last a lifetime. But it rent my heart to imagine it.

While Nathan buried his face in his son’s shoulder, I saw Ziggy’s hand raise to lie, comforting, on his father’s dark hair. The gesture was so private, I turned away, ducking back into the shelter to check on Bill. I had no qualms about leaving Ziggy alone with Nathan. He wouldn’t hurt him. He’d had a chance to kill him once, and he hadn’t. In fact, if Ziggy was to be believed, he thought returning Nathan to the Soul Eater would save him, not damn him. I wondered how long it would take to deprogram him from that way of thinking, and whether or not it would be worth it.

Bill’s neck stopped bleeding without further intervention—thank God for small mercies—but the bite was still puffy and nasty-looking. “Do you want something for the pain?”

He grimaced and shook his head. “No. I’m tough.”

“You don’t have to impress me.” I arched an eyebrow and subtly nudged the tool kit containing our amped-up first aid kit. “I won’t tell them.”

“You’re an all right lady, for a vampire,” he said with a forced smile. “Now, the other two…”

“Don’t get started on the other two,” I admonished playfully.

His smile became more relaxed and natural. “How can I not? He bit me, remember?”

“Yeah. And bites hurt worse than everyone seems to think.” I pressed a clean gauze pad over the wound and set to sticking it down with tape.

“They never get it right in the movies,” he mused, his eyes rapidly taking on the glassy look of someone who’d just mainlined an opiate. “They always make it look erotic. Like sex, you know?”

“I know.” A distinctly uncomfortable memory of sitting in my apartment on a Friday night, watching Gary Oldman’s Dracula seduce and turn Winona Ryder as Mina, flashed through my mind. If I’d known how much more complicated being a vampire would be, I might not have found it so romantic then. “Of course, I don’t have to wear a corset, so I suppose it’s a trade-off.”

“Excuse me?” Bill asked with a loopy laugh. “I don’t think I’m so far gone that I could have possibly misheard that.”