Ashes to Ashes-Blood Ties 3 (20 page)

I wrote the latter off. With my senses on hyperalert all day, I would have heard the sirens. I paced the floor, breathing deeply, willing my blood to stop beating in my ears. Then I caught the coppery, warm scent of external blood. Maybe he'd left a trail. If it was fresh enough, I could follow it.

Two steps out the door, I remembered the one room I hadn't checked. How I'd missed the bathroom, I would never know. The cracked tile floor was coated with blood. Scarlet handprints smeared the walls. It was like a scene out of a horror movie, and splayed right in the middle of the floor was Cyrus.

"Not" I knelt at his side in what seemed like way too much blood for one human being to lose and still be alive. My brain flashed back to the night I'd first seen him, in a bloody mess much worse than this. But he'd been a vampire then. I checked for a pulse, though it seemed futile. He must have lain here all day. Unbelievably, he was still alive. His eyes slowly opened, slid from side to side before focusing on me. "Carrie?" I laid one hand on his chest to gauge his shallow respiration. "I'm here." My fingers were sticky with blood when I pulled them back. A dozen deep cuts scored his arms, to the bone in some places. Three long slashes banded his chest.

"I thought—" He struggled to breathe, wincing as the wounds on his torso parted with the motion. "I thought you were… Mouse."

My vision swam with tears. "No. No, you're not going to see her for a long time."

"Don't… lie. Carrie." Red bubbled past his lips. "Dahlia knows. Everything."

"I'm so sorry." I stroked his hair back from his forehead, not sure whether the action was too familiar or if I wasn't being tender enough. They taught comforting the dying in med school, but somehow it always got lost in memorizing muscle groups and dissecting cadavers.

Dying. Cyrus was dying. Right now, as I touched him, he faded more with each passing second. There was nothing I could do to stop it.

"I needed…to tell… I know where he is." He coughed and more blood spilled from his lips. I was amazed he had any left.

He couldn't speak anymore. Though he still breathed, his eyes rolled back in his head. I was alone, with a dying human, in an unfamiliar place. My immortality felt false and traitorous. I might as well have been a fixture in this bathroom, for all my humanity. I needed Nathan. Desperately needed him. I crawled to the phone in the other room, because it seemed I wasn't abandoning Cyrus as long as I didn't stand and walk away. My hands trembled as I punched in the numbers.

Nathan picked up on the first ring. "Carrie, what's going on?" A calm wave flowed over me through the blood tie. He'd felt my shock and sorrow; he'd just waited for me to reach out to him for help.

"He's dead. Or almost." Tears spilled from my eyes and my breath caught on a hiccup as I tried to drag it in. I had the fleeting thought that I shouldn't grieve for Cyrus so openly to Nathan, considering their shared past, I dismissed it. No matter what I tried to show

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Nathan, he wouldn't be blind to my feelings. "Oh God, Nathan. He's going to die!"

"What happened? Can you do anything for him?" The earnestness in his voice brought more tears to my eyes. "Should I bring you the med kit?" Staring down at my blood-drenched clothes, I felt bile rise in my throat. I closed my eyes.

"There's nothing I can do."

Unless…

There was an audible hitch in Nathan's breathing.

"Forget it, forget I thought that." My words tumbled out in a rush as I desperately tried to cover my mental ramblings.

"Carrie… " Nathan's voice held a pitiful note of pleading. I wanted to slam the receiver back into the cradle and flee from the scene of my heinous crime. It would have been the sensible thing to do. Instead, I kept talking. "He knows something. He knows where the Soul Eater is, but he couldn't tell me."

"We can find another way—"

"He's going to die!" I gripped the phone so hard the plastic creaked. The silence seemed endless. For all I knew, this could have been a pointless argument. Cyrus might already be dead.

"I'll be over in a minute with the med kit." Nathan's voice sounded tight, strained. The tension shattered with a guttural sob, "Please, don't do anything until I get there!" But it was far too late. The seed of the evil notion had been planted, and I would see it through to harvest.

"I'm sorry, Nathan." I hung up the phone with shaking hands and slowly stood. Every step I took toward the bathroom seemed to require more effort than the last, as though I were wading into deeper and deeper water. When I finally reached Cyrus's side, I knew I couldn't hesitate. He was so close to death I could feel the angel in the room with us.

"Sorry to send you back empty-handed," I muttered, rolling up one of my sleeves. There was a cup with a toothbrush and a razor on the edge of the sink. My hands shook so badly I knocked it the floor when I reached for it.

The noise, coupled with my jostling of him while I groped for the razor, brought Cyrus back from the brink for a moment. His eyes searched my face, his mouth worked soundlessly as understanding cascaded over him.

He managed one word. "No."

I flicked the blade across my wrist. The pain surprised me. In the movies, it never looks as though it hurts. The blood didn't well up gracefully. It spurted, hot, wet jets from my torn veins.

He gathered enough strength to rise on his elbows and pull back. His mouth clamped in a tight line, and I had to force his jaw open with my free hand.

"No," he begged, trying to spit out the blood that had already fallen on his lips. "Not this… "

I couldn't bear to hear it, to hear him say he would rather die than let me save him. I gripped his shoulder to pin him to the ground, and pressed my slashed wrist to his mouth to stifle his protests.

Cyrus had once warned me not to test his will. His might have been strong, but mine was stronger.

He stopped struggling, jaw going slack beneath my wrist, but he didn't draw the blood into

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his mouth willingly. It didn't matter. All he needed was to ingest some. The process didn't appear to be working. I'd never changed someone, so I didn't know exactly what I was supposed to be feeling. There was no blood tie forming, though, no bond I could notice. All I felt was light-headed from lack of blood, and Cyrus seemed to fade faster and faster. His chest no longer moved with breath. His face turned blue. What mistake had I made? My blood should have made him a vampire, the way his had made me when our blood had exchanged in the morgue.

Exchanged! Carrie, how could you be so stupid?

I needed to drink his blood—if there was any left—to complete the process. I just hoped it worked out of order. Pressing my lips to one of the gaping wounds on his chest, I gently touched my tongue to the gory, exposed muscle there. We'd accidentally exchanged blood when he'd turned me, so little I hadn't even noticed it. A few drops now
had
to do the trick. I sucked against the wound and a hot trickle slipped past my lips. The change was immediate, unpleasant and violent.

Cyrus's body bucked against the floor. Pain ripped through my chest, my head, my heart. I think I screamed. White-hot light flashed behind my eyes, and I collapsed on top of Cyrus's dead, yet somehow curiously alive, body.

A familiar, yet different channel opened in my head. It was Cyrus, and he was filled with hate, even as he drifted between the worlds of the living and dead. He was my fledgling.

I was his sire.

Chapter Eleven: Fools Rush In

As much as Max hated being cooped up in the Prancing Pony Motor Inn, he was relieved that so far, the Oracle hadn't messed with Bella.

In fact, Bella seemed to actually enjoy their captivity. During the day she slept at his side, except for the few times she'd sneaked away to buy food from the gas station across the road. At night, she took almost domestic pleasure in caring for him, propping pillows beneath his injured knee and warming bags of blood in hot water from the tap.

"I think the diet of Twinkies and chips is agreeing with you," he said with a laugh when she brought him his breakfast on the third night.

She smiled and helped him sit up, fluffing the pillows behind his back as she did. "Perhaps. Perhaps I am just a nice person and you never gave me credit for that." He shook his head. "You're not a nice person."

She slapped his injured knee lightly, and he yelped.

"Not nice at all," he grumbled, taking the bag of blood from her and biting off a corner. He took a few long swallows and carefully lowered the bag, pinching off the opening between his fingers. Motel staff, no matter how low-rent the establishment, didn't tend to appreciate blood on their bedding. And Bella. didn't have to look so damn disgusted when

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he ate.

"So, what's with you lately? Why are you so… happy?" He adjusted his wounded leg gingerly. It would be healed in a day or two more, but he planned to milk the injury for as long as he could, until he figured out what to do about the Oracle situation. In the time he'd wasted so far, he'd consulted an atlas and found a town called Danvers just north of Boston. Next to Salem, oh joy of joys, and he was sure it wasn't just a coincidence. The thought of coming up against a horde of witches like Dahlia made his whole body tense, but it wasn't as if Bella and he were helpless. When not puking her guts out, she had some fierce magical powers.

Unaware that he'd just counted her as a part of their arsenal, Bella reclined on the bed beside him, her head propped on her arms. "I am happy to be spending what could be our last days doing something useful."

It took a moment for her words to sink in. When they did, he had an overwhelming urge to push her off the bed. "You know, that's just great." If he could have gotten up and stalked away from her, he would have, but if he could do that, he could drive the car, and she'd have them on the road in an hour. She sat up, a heartbreaking, wounded look on her face, "I do not understand. Why are you angry?"