Читать книгу Blood Ties Bundle: Blood Ties Book One: The Turning / Blood Ties Book Two: Possession / Blood Ties Book Three: Ashes to Ashes / Blood Ties Book Four: All Souls' Night - Jennifer Armintrout, Jennifer Armintrout - Страница 10

Decisions, Decisions

I woke to the gentle sound of someone humming Pink Floyd’s “Brain Damage.” My eyes snapped open in alarm.

Judging from the clutter around me, I was in Nathan’s apartment. I couldn’t remember how I got there. My stomach growled, and my memory slowly returned. I’d been hungry. I’d gone in search of blood. Then I’d met Dahlia.

Being stabbed, now that’s something I definitely remembered. I lifted the blanket that covered me. My wounds were carefully bandaged. Dried blood stained the gauze wrappings, but I resisted the urge to poke at them. It didn’t take much to upset a fresh wound, and I didn’t want to start bleeding again.

I reached up and gingerly felt my face. Completely monster-free. Aching all over, I sat up. My torn sweatshirt had been carefully folded on the arm of the couch. I pulled it over my head quickly, trying not to dwell on the fact that Nathan had seen me in my ratty, laundry-day bra.

“Feeling better?” he asked as he entered the living room.

I could smell the blood in the mug he carried. My throat was a desert and my stomach was trying to digest itself, but I turned my face away.

“Drink,” he said, holding out the cup to me. He must have sensed the reason for my reluctance. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve seen a few vampires in my time.”

“Not like me.”

“Exactly like you.” He knelt in front of me, and I hid my face. My bones shifted under the mask of my fingers as he pressed the cup against the backs of my hands. “You need to drink this.”

I heard the resolve in his voice and knew I wasn’t going to win.

“Don’t look at me,” I whispered.

“Okay.” He moved to the farthest corner of the room and turned his back.

The blood was warm, as Dahlia’s had been, but thicker, as though it had already begun to clot. It coated my tongue and left a faint taste of copper in my mouth. It was like drinking penny-flavored Jell-O that hadn’t set. This repulsed me, but instead of gagging, I gulped half of it down. I felt gluttonous. If I were drinking straight from someone’s neck I probably wouldn’t have thought of manners, but it was much different sitting in Nathan’s living room, drinking from a mug like a civilized vampire.

I sipped the blood self-consciously and studied him. It was my experience that people weren’t nice to strangers. In med school it’s every student for his- or herself. In fact, most of us went out of our way to intimidate the “competition.” The eat-or-be-eaten attitude had become so ingrained in my psyche, that I’d come to expect such behavior from everyone. But Nathan had been nothing but helpful from the start, which was surprising considering he was a week away from killing me if I didn’t join his vampire cult.

It didn’t seem right that a man so attractive would be such a complete stickler for the rules. He must have worked for the IRS in a past life.

Of course, I didn’t know much about Nathan’s current life. In the brief phone conversations we’d had during the past week, he’d revealed only generic information about himself and hadn’t given me much room to ask questions. If I was going to trust anything he told me, I needed some answers.

There was no time like the present.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Thirty-two.”

“I meant including…” I didn’t know how to phrase the rest.

“Oh, that,” he said, and it sounded as if he didn’t care to dispense that information. “I’ve been a vampire since 1937.”

I tried to conceal my disappointment. I had expected to hear he was hundreds of years old, that he’d walked the battlefield with Napoléon and discussed the mysteries of the cosmos with Nostradamus, like the vampires in the movies. “That was the year ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ became the national anthem, you know.”

“I didn’t know that. I wasn’t an American at the time.” He glanced over his shoulder, and I immediately covered my face.

“It’s okay,” he assured me. “You’re back to normal.”

I leaned over a clear patch of the glass-topped coffee table to check my reflection.

“It’s the hunger,” he said as he straightened up the room. “The worse it is, the worse you look. The same goes for anger, pain and fear. It’s very animalistic.”

How anyone could be blasé about his entire head morphing into a Harryhausen-esque special effect was beyond me.

“The scary part is that it gets worse with age. Some of the real old vampires even get horns when they change, or cloven feet. But you can control it, with practice. You just have to calm yourself, find your center, all that New Age crap. It’s very Zen.” He took the empty cup from my hands and headed to the kitchen sink.

New Age crap? This from the guy running the witchcraft minimart?

“Now, how about telling me what happened tonight?” he called over the sound of running water.

I shuddered. “Can’t we start with what the weather’s been like?”

“No.”

“It was nothing, really,” I said, trying to sound casual.

“‘Nothing’ rarely stabs people.” He came in and sat next to me on the sofa. The scent of him teased my nostrils, and I rather seriously debated whether or not to lean against him and inhale deeply.

I really need to get out more.

“I needed blood.”

Nathan frowned. “You didn’t hurt anyone, did you?”

“Okay, even if I had, did I look like I won that particular fight?”

He looked relieved that he wouldn’t have to chop off my head.

“I followed a girl into a club downtown. One of those…Goth clubs.” I lowered my voice, as if Goth were a dirty word.

“Club Cite?” he asked, and I nodded. “That was very dangerous. Clubs like that are full of all kinds of undesirables. People who think they’re vampires, wannabe vampires and vampire hunters. Amateurish vampire hunters, but with enough knowledge to kill you, even if it is just a lucky accident.”

“I know that now,” I said bitterly, remembering the metallic taste of Dahlia’s blood on my tongue. I took a deep breath. “I met a girl there. She told me she’d let me—” I stumbled over the words. “Drink her blood. I paid her.”

Nathan sighed and shook his head, reaching for one of the notebooks on the table. “What was her name?”

“Dahlia.” I looked over his shoulder as he flipped through the pages. There were crudely drawn diagrams and notes in the margins. A paper clip held a Polaroid in place at the top of one page. He handed the photo to me.

“Is this her?”

I looked at the photo. The woman did look like Dahlia, but a black Betty Page wig covered her red curls. The eyes were the same. Hard and crazy. I wondered how I hadn’t noticed that before. I told him it was her and returned the picture.

He stood, cursed and threw it down on the table. I shrank away, surprised at his sudden vehemence.

“I told you to come here if you needed blood! Why didn’t you come to me?” he shouted.

“I did! You weren’t home!”

“You should have waited!” He glared at me and braced himself for my next retort.

Raising my voice had calmed me considerably. When I didn’t respond, he swore and turned away, running a hand through his hair.

“Are you finished?” I asked.

He sighed angrily. “Yes, dammit. But you should have waited.”

“Maybe I should have. But I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time.” I scooped up the picture. “Do you know her?”

“Who?”

I rolled my eyes and held up the photo. “Dahlia.”

When he sat beside me, he seemed to take up more of the couch than before. I didn’t want to give him the impression that I was intentionally trying to be close to him, so I moved to the armchair.

“I know of her,” he said, examining the notebook. “She’s a very powerful witch.”

“A witch?” I laughed.

Nathan stared at me in annoyance before turning his attention back to the notebook. He laced his fingers together and brought them to his mouth, and his eyes glazed in deep concentration. Watching him, I realized why I’d been so disappointed to hear he wasn’t centuries old. Everything about him seemed anachronistic, as though he’d stepped from the Middle Ages into the present. He would look less out of place standing on a blood-drenched battlefield than sitting on a secondhand couch in an apartment full of musty old books. I imagined him charging into battle, face grim with purpose, his strong arms wielding a sword with both hands, his muscular thighs—

“See something you like?” His voice jolted me from my lusty historical imaginings. I was caught.

Nathan smiled that arrogant, knowing smile all males produce when their ego has been thoroughly stroked.

“Sorry, I guess I just zoned out.” Even I wasn’t buying that lame excuse, so I quickly changed the subject. “Why do you think she attacked me?”

He pushed the book aside. “I have no idea. She’s been trying for years to hook up with different vampires in the area, without much success. She isn’t someone to be trifled with. She has a lot of power.”

His grave expression worsened my growing unease. I didn’t know just how powerful Dahlia really was, but she’d been violent and dangerous enough without the aid of any spells or tricks. “She was really pissed at me. For taking Cyrus’s blood. Do you think she’s, you know, with him? Or just bat-shit crazy?”

“I’ve known Cyrus for a long time. He likes people who are easy to manipulate, and she definitely has powers he could exploit.” His brow furrowed as he considered his statement. “But I don’t think he would turn her. He’s not that stupid.”

“She said it wasn’t time. Or that he said it wasn’t time.” I threw up my arms in frustration. “So, how, exactly, do we proceed from here?” I glanced nervously at the window. “Can you kill her? Or is she off-limits because of that human thing?”

“Off-limits,” he answered automatically. “Besides, I don’t have any reason to kill her. I keep an eye on her, sure, but nearly every vampire hunter around here does. I’ve seen her around, but the vampires I’ve seen her with usually disappear after a while. As long as they don’t turn her, I don’t care where they go.”

“She kills them!” I triumphantly jabbed my finger in the air. “She said she’d killed Cyrus’s other fledglings before, so you’ve got to be able to—”

“No, Carrie, the goal of the Movement is to rid the world of vampires. She’s actually doing us a favor.” He looked away from me. “But it does trouble me to hear he’s been making fledglings we haven’t heard of. If Dahlia were a vampire…but I can’t imagine Cyrus would be foolish enough to turn her.”

“He was foolish enough to turn me,” I reminded him.

“Yes, but you’re not a witch.” His tone was the vocal equivalent of a condescending pat on the head. “A vampire’s blood is very powerful. Combine that with a witch’s abilities and you’ve got spells to raise the dead, summon armies from hell, et cetera. But as it stands, I think it would be safe to assume Dahlia merely wants to become one of us for her own selfish reasons. Is there anything else she said that might give us a clue why she targeted you specifically?”

I thought hard, but the entire evening was still a blur. “Just my ties to Cyrus.”

He looked helplessly around the apartment, as though an answer hid in the bookshelves. “Well, if she assumes you’re dead, at least she won’t come looking for you. That’s something.”

Cold, sick realization made my stomach constrict as I remembered everything in my purse spilled all over the dirty floor of the donor house. “She has all of my identification. I left my purse behind.”

Nathan frowned. “Well, that was careless of you.”

“Yeah, I guess I should have gone back for it after she stabbed me!” I snapped. I was too tired to keep up the sarcasm for long. “What am I going to do now?”

He went to the window and lowered the shades. “The sun is going to be up soon. I don’t think you’ll make it home before dawn, and I’d rather have you where I can protect you. Why don’t you stay here until dusk?”

I looked doubtfully around the cluttered apartment. There was one dead bolt on the door. It seemed a far cry from the safety and security of a building with a night watchman. Especially since a crazed witch was out to get me.

His eyes darted to the door, then back to me. “I swear, nothing will happen to you as long as you’re here.”

As if to reassure me, he stood and opened the door of the coat closet, revealing an impressive array of medieval-looking weapons.

“Beats a night watchman,” I said in awe.

Nathan suggested I take his bed. “I’m going to wait up for Ziggy, make sure he gets in okay.”

Glancing at the couch, I realized I shouldn’t argue. It didn’t look comfortable, and since it lived in the company of two men, it didn’t look very clean, either. I didn’t mention that. “You look out for him, don’t you?”

“Ziggy?” he said the name with genuine fatherly affection. “Yeah. Well, he hasn’t got anyone else.”

“Neither do you.”

I’d said the words without thinking, but their impact was visible. Nathan’s faint, unguarded smile faded. I glimpsed a flicker of pain in his eyes before the emotionless mask was back in place and he returned to being the polite acquaintance that held me at arm’s length.

I had no idea why it bothered me, but it did.

“Listen, you’ve had a rough night, and those wounds aren’t going to heal without some rest.” He pointed toward the hallway. “The bedroom’s straight back.”

I knew a dismissal when I heard one. I was halfway down the hall when he spoke again. “There are some T-shirts in the bottom dresser drawer. You can borrow one if you want.”

I went mechanically to the bureau. I’d just met Nathan. Spending the night in his bed was intimate enough. I didn’t need to wear his clothes, too. But the thought of sleeping naked didn’t appeal to me, either. I undressed, grimacing at the pain that tore through me when I moved. When I eased into the bed, I hissed in agony.

Loud footsteps charged down the hall, and Nathan burst into the room just seconds later. “Are you okay? Do you need something for the pain?”

His immediate reaction to a sound I didn’t think he’d been able to hear unnerved me. So did the sincere concern etched on his face.

He didn’t give me a chance to answer him. With a speed that surprised me, he left and reappeared with a large metal toolbox. Sitting on the bed, he placed the box in his lap and sprung the latches. “Okay, what do you want? We’ve got morphine, meperidine, Vicodin…I’ve got local anaesthetic, but I’d really like to save that.” As he continued to rattle off drug names, I peeked around his arm. The man’s first aid kit was better stocked than the Pyxis medicine cabinet in the E.R., but I was willing to bet he didn’t come by the stuff legally. “How’d you get all this?”

“Connections in the Movement.” He lifted out a bottle of pills and squinted to read the label.

“I thought you guys were all about the extinction of your species.” I reached for a syringe and the vial of meperidine. “This should put me right to sleep. Got a tourniquet?”

He handed me the stretchy strip of latex. “The rules state we can’t save a vampire’s life, not even our own. If our healing abilities don’t take care of things, that’s the end of it. Nothing in here is going to save me if I get in a bad way. There’s no rule against keeping yourself comfortable for your last few hours. Do you need a hand?”

I had the tourniquet between my teeth and tried to wind it around my arm the way I’d seen them do it in Trainspotting. I’d started enough IVs in my time that it should have been a piece of cake, but doing it yourself wasn’t as easy as it looked. When I shook my head no in answer to Nathan’s question, the stretched length of rubber shot from my lips, snapping me painfully in the face.

“Here, let me.” He chuckled as he deftly tied the tourniquet and thumped the fat vein on the inside of my forearm. “That looks like a good spot.”

I watched as he carefully filled the syringe. This obviously wasn’t the first injection he’d given. “Did the Movement teach you how to do this?” I asked.

He tapped the air bubbles toward the needle. “I picked it up somewhere. Now, hold still.”

I felt the needle slide into my unsterilized arm. I remembered what I’d read in The Sanguinarius regarding disease: The humors that delight in causing sickness and death will not touch the vampire. He will not be affected by the plagues of Pandora.

I could only assume the same went for modern-day germs and bacteria.

The medicine stung as it entered my vein, but Nathan’s touch was gentle and reassuring. Even so, I fixed my gaze on his face to keep from looking at the needle in my arm—I was never good at being the patient. “So we can heal from serious injuries on our own?”

“The depth of severity is determined by age. If someone had done to me what I did to Cyrus, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now. I would’ve healed from your stab wound in an hour, whereas you’re lucky you didn’t need stitches. By the time I found you, though, you’d already started to heal. It’s a good thing you’d fed some.” He held his thumb over the injection site as he withdrew the needle, then reached for a Band-Aid. “There. That should take the edge off, and it will help you get to sleep.”

“What about me? How long will it take until I’m completely healed?” I really hoped the answer wasn’t two months.

“You’ll be fine in the morning,” he said as he recapped the needle.

I snatched it from him. “Don’t do that. It’s a universal hazard.”

He looked amused. “A what?”

“A universal hazard. It’s been in contact with body fluids, which transmit diseases that cause death. You could stick yourself in the process and end up dead. It’s a universal hazard, and not recapping needles is a universal precaution.” Realizing I sounded like one of my old professors, I pinched the bridge of my nose in embarrassment. “I can’t believe how easily I just rattled that off.”

“It was very educational.” Nathan laughed. He had a great laugh, deep and genuine. It was the best thing I’d heard all day.

He shrugged. “But I’m not worried about diseases. I’m more worried about a stake to the heart or an axe to the neck.”

“Is that all?” I teased. “I would have thought a strapping lad such as yourself would be concerned about his cholesterol levels.”

Suddenly serious, Nathan caught my chin in his hand and forced me to look at him. “Your heart and your head. Lose either one and you’re dead.”

How will you kill me? I thought. “What about burning? Can you die from burning? Or drowning?”

As if horrified by the morbid conversation—or the realization that he’d started it—he removed his hand apologetically. “The short answer is yes, you can die from anything that causes more damage than you can heal in a feasible amount of time. But let’s not talk about this now. You need to rest.”

I wanted him to tell me more, but I just cried gratefully. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do all this.”

He didn’t look at me as he began gathering up the medical debris from the bed. “No one ever died from being too polite. Besides, you need help. The next couple of months will be rough.”

“I can’t imagine it will be any worse than it already has been.”

“You’re going to have to say goodbye to your family, your friends. Everyone.” He stood. “It’s lonely being one of us.”

“I don’t have any relatives I talk to anymore. I mean, my parents are dead, and I haven’t seen any of their family since I was little, except for at their funeral. I only moved here eight months ago, so I haven’t had time to make any friends.” I stopped myself. “Well, except for you, I guess. You’re the closest thing to a friend that I’ve got so far.”

He didn’t look pleased to be drafted into the role. “You’re going to have to quit your job. You can’t continue to work at the hospital. The people there are too vulnerable to you.”

I couldn’t argue with that. I’d stolen their blood, not exactly a move in the best interest of patient care. But the thought of giving up being a doctor was, well, unimaginable. After four tedious years of college and three grueling years of med school, I’d finally gotten the prize I’d been striving for. I’d sacrificed my personal life in pursuit of my goal. If I let it go, I’d have nothing. I wasn’t about to let fate, or anyone else, take away the one thing left that I cared about. “I’m not even going to discuss this. It’s not your call to make.”

He sighed. “You’re right. It’s not. But how are you going to explain to them that you can’t work day shifts or attend morning meetings? How are you going to play off the fact that in twenty years you’ll still look…how old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“In twenty years, you’ll still look twenty-eight. What are you going to tell people?”

“Botox?” I yawned. The drug was taking effect. “Can’t I wait and work this out in a week? If I join your club they’ll tell me to quit, anyway, and if I don’t, you’re going to kill me.”

The words appeared to surprise him, as though he’d forgotten he wasn’t yet on my side. He opened his mouth to speak but turned away and snapped off the light. “Get some sleep. We can talk about this later.”

Like I had a choice. Within minutes of Nathan leaving the room, I dropped off and slept like a log.

When I woke, I blinked sleepily and tried to remember when I’d gotten a goldfish.

The creature stared expectantly at me from his little castle in the bowl on the bedside table. An odd feeling of loneliness swelled under my ribs. As messy and small as Nathan’s apartment was, it boasted homey, lived-in touches that were decidedly lacking at my place. I imagined going home to my high ceilings and bare walls, and the idea was too awful to contemplate. I buried my face in the pillow and pulled the covers over my head. It had been a while since Nathan had laundered the sheets. They smelled like him, and I shamelessly took a deep breath. I visualized him lying naked where I lay now. Did he bring women here?

I couldn’t see the Nathan I knew forming a relationship with anyone. Yes, he cared for Ziggy the way a father watched over a son, but familial love came with ready-made boundaries. I’d only met him a week ago, but it didn’t take a genius to deduce that emotional intimacy and Nathan were not terms that went hand in hand. It was probably a miracle he even had a fish.

The sun hadn’t set. No sounds of life came from the living room. Forsaking my bloodied sweatshirt, I slipped my jeans on under Nathan’s T-shirt and padded quietly to the bathroom. Despairing at my lack of a toothbrush, I brushed my teeth with my finger before venturing into the rest of the apartment.

Nathan was sprawled across the armchair with a book in one hand and a loaded crossbow in the other. A thin line of drool hung from the corner of his mouth. On the floor at his side were two wooden stakes and the axe Ziggy had attacked me with.

“Expecting company?”

He startled awake. “I wasn’t sleeping!”

I jumped aside as the bolt shot from the bow and stuck in the door.

“For Christ’s sake, I could have killed you!” He leapt to his feet. “Do you always sneak up on people like that or just when they’ve got a deadly weapon in their hand?”

I stepped back. “I’ve never happened upon a sleeping person with a weapon before.”

He stretched his arms wide and yawned loudly. Apparently, he’d slept well enough when he was supposed to be protecting me. “How’re the stab wounds this morning? Healed?”

I rolled up the edge of the T-shirt. Nathan pulled the tape from the gauze pad over my belly to reveal a faint pink scar.

“Holy crap,” I breathed, poking the spot with my finger. The tissue wasn’t even bruised. My body had mended while I slept. “How the hell did I do that?”

“The Sanguinarius says that humors in the blood we drink sustain our tissue and imbue it with a potent healing ability. I’m sure that’s not very scientific, but it’s the best answer we’ve got so far.” He paused as an idea came to him. “You’re a doctor. If you join the Movement, maybe you could work in their research department.”

If. It hung between us again, destroying the friendly truce of the morning. We stood, staring at each other as potential enemies instead of a host and houseguest.

A knock at the door broke our awkward silence. Nathan grabbed one of the stakes and motioned for me to stand back. Just as he reached for the dead bolt, the door burst open.

Nathan lunged forward, tackled the intruder and brought him to the ground. His arm was raised, poised to thrust the stake into the man’s heart.

“Hey, hey!” the trespasser shouted. He rolled out from under Nathan.

Ziggy got up and brushed off his clothes. He smoothed back his long, greasy hair and looked me over. “Sorry, Nate, I didn’t know you had company.”

Nathan snapped at his young ward with barely restrained anger. “Where the hell were you?” He turned his puzzled gaze to the door. “And I could have sworn I locked that.”

“So much for protection,” I snorted. Nathan’s warning glare stifled further comment.

“Hanging out,” Ziggy said, answering Nathan’s first question with a shrug. “I slept in the van and went to class this morning. I’m just here to donate, then I’ve got an art history night class. So, what’s up with her? Is she like, your new girl or something?”

“New girl? What happened to the old one?” I asked Nathan, raising an eyebrow.

He wasn’t amused. “There hasn’t been an old one for a while.”

I couldn’t imagine somebody who looked like Nathan going without a date for long. Then again, most women I knew—the nurses I overheard gossiping in the break room, anyway—weren’t looking for vampires as potential mates.

Nathan hung up the heavy overcoat that Ziggy had discarded on the floor. “I don’t like you going out all night, especially with Cyrus in town. And you forgot to use the special knock. I could have killed you.”

“That’s a phrase you seem to be using quite a bit today,” I interjected, but Nathan ignored me.

Ziggy went straight for the kitchen, with Nathan and I trailing behind. He pulled a can of soda, marked with a territorial Z in black marker, from the refrigerator and swallowed it in one long gulp. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and coughed. “Once, then twice, then once again. Yeah, I know. I did it. You just went all Rambo on me.”

“You knocked four times,” Nathan said. “That’s not the same thing.”

While Ziggy consumed another soda, Nathan retrieved sterile packets of IV tubing and needles from the cupboard.

The younger man sniffed the air and made a face. “Damn, Nate, you reek.”

Surreptitiously, I leaned a little closer to Nathan. He did smell a bit like the bedsheets, but I’d thought it was a sexy smell. There’s pheromones for you.

Nathan looked mildly offended, but his expression quickly changed to amusement. “I’d value your input a lot more if you hadn’t just admitted to sleeping in that crusty old van of yours.” He handed Ziggy the medical supplies. “If you have any trouble, Carrie here is a doctor.”

Ziggy’s face blanched as he looked from Nathan to myself. “Oh, yeah, new vampire, fresh, tender Ziggy flesh. Like I’m going to let her near me when I’ve got an open vein.”

I rolled my eyes. I wouldn’t shake hands with someone who looked like Ziggy, let alone suck blood from him. “You’re totally safe, I assure you.”

Nathan headed toward the bathroom. “I paid for two pints, I want two pints.”

“Two pints!” I exclaimed once the bathroom door was closed. “You can’t give him two pints of your blood!”

Ziggy settled comfortably in a chair and tied a rubber tourniquet around his arm, much in the way I’d tried the night before. He was a bit too proficient at it.

“Sure I can. In case you get hungry, you should know I’ve got a stake in my pocket with your name on it.” He took a few trial stabs with the needle, missing the vein each time. I didn’t know what to say. I was a little insulted he thought I was some wild, uncontrollable animal. “Here,” I said gruffly. “You’re turning yourself into a pincushion.” I took the needle from him and slid it smoothly into the only undamaged vein I could find.

“Heroin?” I asked, casting a disapproving look at the track marks on his wrists and the backs of his hands.

“Not that it’s any of your business, Doc, but no. I’m the cleanest donor in the city. And Nate’s not my only customer.”

In my opinion, his cleanliness was debatable. I didn’t say so and resisted the urge to wipe my hands on my jeans after I touched him.

“You should be more careful with the needles,” I said, trying to sound as concerned as I possibly could. “You can’t just poke around in your arm like that.”

“Duly noted,” he replied, too distracted with the intricacies of plastic connector tubing to pay my warning much heed.

I dropped onto the couch and averted my eyes. I didn’t trust myself to catch sight of his blood. I heard the water running in the shower and muffled singing.

“So are you and Nate like special friends now or something?” Ziggy asked.

“No,” I replied, “and if we were, I don’t think it would be any of your business.”

He laughed. “Hey, no offense or anything. I just wondered because you’re, you know, wearing his clothes and all.”

I looked down at the T-shirt and wrapped my arms around myself. “My shirt had blood on it.”

“Listen, I don’t care. I was just trying to make conversation.” He lit a cigarette then, and noticed my expression of utter longing, he held the pack out to me.

“No, thanks.” I waved them away, knowing I’d get no satisfaction from them. “It’d be a waste.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, tossing them on the table. “But a lot of vampires smoke, you know. It doesn’t matter much what you do when you’re dead. You can’t get cancer or anything.”

“Yeah, but you can’t get anything out of it, either,” I said, my voice wistful. The acrid smoke smelled better than baking cookies.

“Not true.” He held the cigarette out.

I took it and inhaled experimentally. He was right.

“It’s the blood,” he said. “Blood rules all.”

I passed the cigarette back. “But it didn’t do anything for me before.”

“Because you were craving blood,” he explained, prodding his arm where the needle entered his skin. I cleared my throat noisily, and he jerked his hand back with a grin. “It’s like if you were craving chocolate cake, and you just kept eating SpaghettiOs. The SpaghettiOs aren’t going to do it for you, you know?”

I hadn’t even known that vampires existed until I suddenly became one. Now some smart-assed kid was telling me, a doctor, the ins and outs of my own physiology.

The collection bag filled. He kinked the tubing and switched to an empty one. I motioned to the bag. “Do you want me to put that in the fridge?”

He nodded. “So, how long have you been a doctor?”

“Less than a year.” I hesitated. “I’m not sure I’m going to be a doctor much longer. Because of the vampire thing. After I worked so hard for it…I can’t believe it’s over.”

“That’s a bitch.” He sounded genuinely sympathetic.

The sound of the water stopped, and my mind briefly diverted to a vivid flash of Nathan emerging from the shower. I tried in vain to force the image from my thoughts.

A loud crash, followed immediately by a yelp and a dull thud, snapped me back to reality. For a moment, I thought Nathan had fallen out of the shower. Then I noticed the brick rolling awkwardly across the floor. The window behind the armchair was broken. Sunlight streamed in, and Ziggy slumped to his knees, unconscious.

Nathan rushed from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist. He hurried to Ziggy’s side and felt frantically for a pulse.

“What happened?” he shouted, looking from Ziggy’s lifeless form to me.

I tried to focus on the emergency at hand, but it was hard to ignore a half-naked man standing in front of me, regardless of the circumstances.

His chest was well defined and droplets of water still clung to his broad shoulders. I felt heat rush to my face as I imagined gripping those strong arms and raking my nails across his back.

Yelling from the street snapped me back to the present. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

I knew that voice.

“I know you’re up there! So does Cyrus! If I were you I’d come down here and burn before he gets to you!” She laughed. It was the same crazy sound she’d made the night before.

“Nathan?” I whispered, paralyzed with fear.

Ziggy tried to stand. As soon as he was upright, he crashed back to the floor and clutched his head.

“What the hell happened?” He looked the room over through barely opened eyes.

Nathan raised a hand, shiny with blood, and motioned frantically for me to help him. “I don’t know where he’s bleeding from.”

“Oh, shit!” Ziggy’s eyes grew wide at the sight of his blood on Nathan’s hands. He struggled to his feet. The window shade had nearly been torn down during the brick’s dramatic entrance. A few rays of sunlight spilled into the room. Ziggy was careful to keep those beams of light between Nathan and himself.

When the smell of the blood hit me, I understood his reaction. I felt the muscles and tendons of my face rhythmically clench, and my fangs began their aching descent.

“Not now, Carrie!” Nathan snapped.

His sharp tone surprised me, and my transformation stopped instantly.

Ziggy looked from Nathan to me, as if trying to judge the best escape route. Nathan approached him cautiously. “Remember who you’re talking to, Ziggy. I would never hurt you. I know you’re not food.”

Dahlia was still in the street, but she appeared to be running out of steam. “Are you waiting for sunset so you can come out and kick my ass? I’ll have a lot of backup by then.”

“Get out of here, Dahlia, or I can’t be responsible for my actions!” Nathan roared.

“Oh, I’m so scared,” she yelled back. “What are you gonna do, bookstore man? Read me to death? I’m going. I was just supposed to deliver the message.”

“What message?” Nathan asked.

Just then the shade fell completely from the window, flooding the room with sunlight. Nathan cursed and dropped to the floor. My reflexes weren’t as good.

Words can’t accurately describe how sunlight feels when it hits vampire skin. The worst sunburn couldn’t compare with the searing pain that rocked through me. My skin bubbled then burst into flame anywhere the light made contact with it. My shirt caught fire from my incinerating skin, spreading the flames to the rest of my torso. The only thing I could think of was that my burning flesh smelled like hot dogs. Nathan leapt up and grabbed me, smothering the flames as we tumbled to the floor.

Ziggy grabbed the blanket from the back of the couch and draped it across the window. “I’ll try to rig this up so it doesn’t fall again.”

“Are you all right?” Nathan asked, his face hovering mere centimeters above mine.

“I’m fine,” I wheezed, unable to take sufficient breaths. “Except for the third-degree burns.”

Nathan actually smiled at that. He didn’t seem in much of a hurry to move, and despite the fact that I couldn’t breathe, I didn’t really mind. Until I remembered Ziggy had an open head wound.

“And I can’t breathe. Will you let me up?” I squeaked, shifting slightly beneath him. I realized too late what effect my wriggling might have on a half-naked man.

He looked embarrassed and apologetic as he rolled off me, clutching his towel closed.

While Nathan tended Ziggy, I sat up and gingerly inspected the burned patches on my arms and chest. The skin was blackened. When I ventured an experimental poke it flaked away, revealing tender new flesh beneath. “Why didn’t I burn up?”

“Because I saved your ass with my mad blanket-throwing skills,” Ziggy answered.

Nathan made a sound in the back of his throat. I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed at Ziggy’s comment or upset by the gash in his skull.

“This is going to have to be stitched up,” he said with a sigh of resignation as he examined Ziggy’s wound.

“I can do that,” I offered, but Nathan shook his head.

“I don’t have the supplies on hand, and you don’t have enough control yet to be around this much blood.” He turned to Ziggy. “It’ll be safer if you go to the hospital. Do you mind?”

“Better than hanging around here,” he said with a shrug. “It’s like swimming in a pool of sharks with a paper cut in here.”

Nathan went to his room. He returned with pants on his body and a roll of cash in his hand. “Take this,” he ordered. “Go straight to the E.R.”

Ziggy stuffed the money in his jacket. “Where else would I go? Denny’s?”

“Knowing you, anything is possible. But I’m not kidding,” Nathan warned. “Stay off the street tonight. I want you in by curfew.”

“No problem,” Ziggy said. “They’ll probably give me some wicked pain medication at the E.R.”

Nathan watched him descend the stairs, then closed the door and turned to me. “Here we are again. Just you and me, alone together. Not completely dressed.”

The comment was so playful and unexpected, I didn’t know what to say. I wrapped my arms around my chest to cover the burn holes in the T-shirt and tried to force a laugh. “I’m not having much luck with shirts lately.”

“Well, I’d loan you another but I saw what you did to the last one.” His voice sounded weary, but he smiled, anyway. “Besides, I like the view.”

I rolled my eyes. “If you’re going to be a smart-ass, I’ll just ignore you.”

Nathan clearly dealt with stress through humor. As long as I had to deal with him, I hoped he had enough stress to cause an ulcer. He was much more pleasant when he was using his coping mechanisms.

The fading sunlight that had peeked from the edges of the blanket over the window disappeared. If Dahlia’s brick had broken the window five minutes later, it would have already been night. I checked my scorched flesh again. It had nearly healed.

“Why did that happen?” I asked, holding up my seared hand.

“Because you’re a vampire. Haven’t you seen any movies?” Nathan asked.

“I’m more of a werewolf fan, for your information.”

He made a face. “You wouldn’t be if you ever met one.”

“Werewolves are real?” I smiled in spite of myself. I’d always liked the idea of wild guys who were animals in bed. Not that I’d ever actually experienced said animalism for myself, but a girl can dream.

Sighing deeply, Nathan stretched out his legs. “Why is it you women find them so damned attractive? Is removing ticks from a guy such a turn-on?”

“I never said I was attracted to them. I just said I favored them to, well, humanoid leeches, for instance.” I spied Ziggy’s cigarettes that lay forgotten on the coffee table, and snuck one from the pack. “Anyway, why did it happen now? It’s been nearly two months since the attack, and I’ve been in the sun since then.”

Nathan pushed an ashtray toward me. “You hadn’t drunk any blood yet. You might have been light sensitive before, but after feeding, the sensitivity turns deadly. It’s in The Sanguinarius.”

“Yeah, but I haven’t finished it yet,” I confessed sheepishly. “But it makes sense. After I started…feeding, artificial light doesn’t bother me as much as it used to.”

“You were going through a prolonged transition into vampirism. Once you stopped denying your hunger, the change completed.” He snagged the cigarettes from me. “Are these Ziggy’s?”

Biting my lip, I considered the answer to that question. I didn’t want to get Ziggy into too much trouble.

I decided the best course would be the parental guilt trip. “You shouldn’t let him smoke. It’s not good for him.”

Nathan slid out a cigarette and lit up, another surprising development. “I know. These things will kill you.”

“Har, har.” I rolled my eyes. “You can make a joke about it because your lung function isn’t going to be seriously compromised in twenty years.”

“I don’t believe all that crap they say on television. I smoked when I was much younger than Ziggy, and it never hurt me.”

“Yeah, because you didn’t live long enough to get emphysema or cancer.” For the first time, I realized how wide the gap in our age really was. People from his generation hadn’t worried about carcinogens and tar and nicotine addiction. He was a century old. He was probably more concerned with the danger of women wearing pants.

He studied me, an amused smile on his face. I felt naked, and not from the gaping holes in my shirt. I plucked at them self-consciously. “Would you mind?”

He headed into the bedroom. He playfully tossed me a new T-shirt as he returned.

There was a dull thud and he yelped in surprise. He bent down and picked something off the floor. It was the brick Dahlia had thrown. She’d tied a scrap of paper to it.

“Did you see this?” Nathan asked, dropping into the chair to nurse his stubbed toe.

I shook my head. “It must be the message she was talking about.”

As he scanned the paper, his eyes lit up with alarm. He held out the note and I took it.

“‘Lady bug, lady bug, fly away home. Your house is on fire…’” I read aloud. The rhyme wasn’t complete. “You don’t think…Nathan, my whole life is in that apartment!”

“Not to mention The Sanguinarius.” He wrenched open the closet door and pulled his leather trench coat on over his bare shoulders.

“You didn’t give me the only copy, did you?” I imagined my eyes bulging from my head as I spoke.

“No, but it’s the only copy I have. The last thing I need is some firefighter finding it in the rubble and showing it off. Besides, we don’t know if this is Dahlia being vindictive, or if she’s done this on Cyrus’s orders. He might have someone waiting for you, and if he does, I can take them out.”

“I can’t see Dahlia doing anything that was going to bring me closer to Cyrus, even if he ordered it. She definitely doesn’t want me around.” I noticed that Nathan had pocketed several stakes while I spoke and had yet to hand one to me. “Planning a road trip?”

He nodded. “Yup.”

“Where?”

“To your apartment.” He turned back to his arsenal and strapped a leg holster to his denim-covered calf, dropping another stake into it.

I waited expectantly as he pulled out Ziggy’s axe. “Um…were you going to give me something to protect myself, too?”

“You’re right.” With an embarrassed smile, he headed down the hall. When he returned, he pressed something into my hand. “I’m sorry, I don’t know where my head was.”

I frowned at the cell phone in my palm. “So…is this a James Bond type of device that shoots fireballs or sprays acid or something?”

“Not exactly.” He took the phone and pressed a button, lighting up the screen. “But it does speed-dial Ziggy’s pager. If you have any trouble, call him.”

My jaw dropped. “What? Ziggy’s at the hospital and you told him to stay off the streets.”

I wanted him to be annoyed by my protestations, but he remained perfectly calm as he prepared for battle. “Ziggy is better equipped to handle an emergency than you are. I trust him to keep you safe. Besides, there are plenty of weapons in the closet that you can use, and I really doubt that Dahlia will be back.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Hey, it’s my apartment burning down! I’m coming with you.”

“No.” Nathan shook his head adamantly. “Too dangerous.”

“Too dan—” I sputtered in my anger. “You’re supposed to want me to die! Hell, if you’re so loyal to the Movement, you should be shoveling vampires into burning buildings by the truckload.”

“This isn’t open for discussion. You don’t know how to fight, and you’ll be nothing but a distraction to me.” When I opened my mouth to argue further, he held up a hand. “I’m leaving. If you want to live through the night, you’ll stay here.”

Grabbing the axe, he stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door so hard the walls rattled.

“Well…fuck you!” I shouted, kicking one of the couch cushions to the floor.

How dare he! As if I were somehow incapable of looking out for myself in my own, albeit probably on fire, apartment. And what did he mean when he’d said I’d be a distraction? Did he think I was going to get in his way, asking questions with painfully obvious answers and twirling my hair while looking on with a vapid expression?

Jerk.

I tossed the cell phone on the table. It slid across the glass top, colliding with the notebooks piled there. Papers cascaded to the floor. Frowning, I knelt to straighten them. I lifted the papers one sheet at a time and shuffled them into a uniform stack. When I laid the pile aside, I noticed the top page was an Internet printout of a map. It was a map of the very affluent neighborhood on the east side of town, with a big red X drawn on in marker.

Now, this was interesting. I flipped the paper aside to examine the sheet underneath. It was a fax, dated three days before John Doe had attacked me. Sent from VVEM to N. Galbraith, the letter contained only an address. The same address on the map.

“I thought his last name was Grant,” I muttered to myself. I was about to flip to the next page when the cell phone rang.

“Nate, it’s me. I’m stuck in this emergency room. They put me in this curtained-off little room and haven’t been back since. I think they’re calling the police.”

I cut Ziggy off when he stopped for a breath. “Nathan isn’t here. Dahlia set my apartment on fire. He went to check it out.”

“No shit? And he left you there?” He sounded as surprised at Nathan’s actions as I was.

“He thinks I can’t defend myself.” I looked over at the computer desk in the corner. “Listen, a fax came after he went out. From VVEM? Is that the Movement?”

His curse resonated down the line, and no doubt through the stark, sterile emergency room. “Yeah. That’s them. I wonder what they want.”

“I didn’t read it,” I said, compounding my lie.

“It’s probably another kill order.” He cleared his throat. “Just stick it on the fridge. It’s the first place he goes after a fight.”

“Thanks, Ziggy.” I bit my lip. “When exactly did the order come down for Cyrus?”

“The original one? I don’t know, he’s got like forty by now. Hey, somebody’s here to take my blood and they’re not happy I’m on a cell phone here, so—”

“No, the last order for him,” I practically shouted into the phone. “When did that come through?”

“Why?” Ziggy’s tone was suddenly suspicious. “Maybe you should ask Nathan when he gets back. I have to—”

“Ziggy, wait!”

The line went dead. I threw the phone to the floor in frustration. This was too much of a coincidence, I concluded as I stared at the map. Three days. What were the chances he’d gotten this message about a different vampire three days before he’d attacked Cyrus?

I flipped a page. There was my answer, in black and white.

From: VVEM

To: N. Galbraith

Re: Case #372-96 Part 9Y

Assassination Order: Simon Seymour, aka Simon Kerrick, aka Cyrus Kerrick for Crimes against Humanity.

Well. There it was.

I glanced guiltily at the door and wondered how long Nathan would be gone. But did I really care if he found me missing?

Remembering his condescension earlier, I decided that I definitely would not care. This wasn’t any of his business, and I only had a few precious days left to make my decision about the Movement. I deserved to know the truth about my undead birth. As much help as Nathan had been, it wasn’t his blood flowing through my veins.

A curious ache filled me at the thought of Cyrus, and I wondered if this yearning was a symptom of the blood tie. And if it was, would this strange link protect me from more harm at the hands of my sire?

Without allowing myself to dwell on fear, I stuffed the map into my pocket. I called in to work to say I wouldn’t be in. When I hung up, a vaguely empty feeling came over me, the realization that I might not return to the hospital. I forced the thought aside and opened the closet.

Though there were plenty of weapons at my disposal, I took a stake, the smallest and easiest to conceal of the bunch. Besides, I knew what to do with a stake. The spiky-ball-on-a-stick thing looked considerably more complicated to operate. Of course, a stake wouldn’t protect me from Dahlia, if she was still waiting for me. But Nathan was a vampire hunter, not a witch hunter. I suppose I could douse her with water and melt her like in The Wizard of Oz, if it came to that.

I almost left a note for Nathan but decided against it. I realized there was nothing I could write that wouldn’t seem like I’d turned my back on all of his help. There was no way to soften the truth.

As helpful and considerate as he’d been, there were some questions Nathan couldn’t answer. For those, I’d have to face my fear the way I had that night in the morgue.

I had to meet my sire.