Ashes to Ashes-Blood Ties 3 (31 page)

"But you do have a duct tape."

She didn't have to say it twice. Max grabbed the dusty roll of tape from the top of the refrigerator, stepped forward and started immobilizing their friend.

"Leave one of his arms free. Tape that hand to the table, palm down." She jerked the bolt from his shoulder, and blood gushed out, first a strong pulse, then a trickle.

"You're not going to let him bleed to death, are you?" Max pulled a strip of the tape free and morphed his face, using his fangs to bite through the heavy material. Bella laughed at him. "No, but he will wish for death when we are finished."

"I told you, I don't know anything." The vampire let them lay his arm across the table, too distracted by their threats to put up any resistance.

Max had seen this too many times. The realization hit him like a ton of bricks, and he paused in his bondage duties to absorb the blow. He'd gone soft somewhere between his last job and this. He didn't want to cause pain and death anymore. He didn't want any part of this.

Most of all, he didn't want to see Bella do these things. He wanted to pull her from this cabin and drag her to the car, start driving somewhere else and never look back.

"Max?" Bella frowned at him. How long shed been doing so he had no clue. When his gaze met hers, her eyes flared, then narrowed in silent understanding. She pursed her lips and nodded toward the tape in his hand. "Keep going." If asked to describe Bella's methods of torture, the words
cruel efficiency
would have been the only appropriate answer. She didn't bother with a lot of talk once her victim was secured.

"What
is
your name?" she asked him.

When he answered, "Arthur Dent," she stabbed the arrow that had previously been lodged in his shoulder straight through his hand.

"I take it that's another fake one, huh?" Max asked, raising his voice to be heard over the vampire's screams.

She wrenched the bolt free and repeated her question. "What is your name?"

"Patrick! It's Patrick!" he howled, straining against his bonds. To Max's surprise, they didn't break. All that stuff they said about duct tape was true.

"Patrick, do you work for the Oracle?" She twirled the arrow through her fingers and held it poised above his already healing hand. The speed with which the injury closed was an indication of Patrick's age. And power.

Careful with this one, baby
. As soon as he'd thought it, Max saw her eye the wound. She took a step back, her retreat so subtle Patrick would never notice. She motioned Max in with a tilt of her head.

He pulled a leather glove from his back pocket and slipped a small vial of holy water from one of the fingers. He set the vial on the table in plain view while he pulled on the glove,

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then retrieved it and unscrewed the top. "We're waiting, Patrick."

"I w-work for the Soul Eater," he stammered, eyeing the liquid.

"The Soul Eater?" Bella gave Max an arch look "What are you doing here then?"

"Yeah, the Soul Eater is in San Francisco." It was a lie, but to Max's relief, Bella played along.

So did Patrick. "San Francisco?"

The vampire's outrage spurred Max's story along. "Yeah, didn't you know? Man, they keep you way out of the loop."

"Bullshit!" Patrick tried to raise his hand. "If they're in San Francisco, why would they send me up here?"

Max snorted. "That's what we want to know. What is the Soul Eater up to with the Oracle?"

Suddenly brave again, Patrick spat once more at Bella. "I'm not telling you shit!" She nodded to Max. He let a drop of holy water fall onto the freshly healed skin of Patrick's hand. A cloud of foul steam rose from the wound as the skin scalded away under the droplet.

"Plenty more where that came from, sport." Max tilted the vial theatrically. Patrick stopped his howling long enough to dissuade him. "Okay, okay. I'll tell you." When he didn't answer fast enough, Bella nodded to Max.

"No! No!" Patrick begged. "I'm here to pick something up." Now they were getting somewhere. Max pulled the vial back a few inches. "Pick what up?"

Patrick calmed a little once he saw he was out of immediate danger of scorching. "A weapon. I don't know what it is."

"This weapon… You will take it to the Soul Eater?" Bella's voice sounded strange and tight.

Max didn't register that until it was too late. Patrick lunged in his chair, not quite breaking his bonds, but twisting enough to flip the table and tear his hand free. Max fell back just as the other vampire lurched awkwardly to his feet. He swung the chair still taped to his back against the wall, shattering it. With a cry of fury, he ripped a piece of the splintered chair from the tape that still dangled from his elbow. He advanced on Bella, brandishing his makeshift stake.

"Hey, no!" Max climbed to his feet, pulling a stake from his pocket. Though she wasn't a vampire, Bella
was
mortal, and she would have been stupid to ignore the consequences of having something plunged through her heart. With lightning fast reflexes, she grasped her assailant's forearms. Her face contorted in fighting rage as she tried to subdue him, but she wasn't strong enough. He threw her off and she fell, bringing her legs up to connect with his chest as he lunged toward her. Max jumped across the overturned table, knocking Patrick off of Bella. He had him pinned to the floor with a foot against his throat before she got to her feet.

"Where's the Oracle?" Max dug the point of the stake into Patrick's chest. The vampire laughed. "I could take you to her."

"Fuck you! Where is she?" Max pushed harder and saw blood well around the edges of the stake. "Where the fuck is she?"

"Max! You will kill him!" Bella's voice cut through the red haze of Max's anger. This

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asshole had tried to kill her.

He'd tried to push a stake through her heart. He'd put his hands on her in anger.

"Max, please, we will not get any information from him this way." Bella grasped his arm. Relenting with the stake, just a little, Max twisted his foot. Patrick's face went purple.

"You're going to die. You can tell us where to find the Oracle and I'll send you out fast, or you can hold out. I could make this last all night. What do you say?" Patrick grasped Max's ankle, trying to dislodge his foot, but when it didn't work, he settled for giving him the finger.

"Get the holy water," Max growled. He dropped to a knee on the vampire's chest and gripped his jaw, forcing his mouth open.

Patrick's loud, angry sounds of protest changed in pitch to frenzied panic when he saw the vial in Bella's fist.

"You gonna talk?" Max reached toward Bella for the vial, but something in the way she clutched it tighter warned him off.

It didn't translate to Patrick. "Fine, fine. I don't know exactly where. Her people came here the other night."

"Are they coming back?" Max struggled to keep a grip on the stake. Why were his hands suddenly sweaty?

"In two nights." The whites of Patrick's eyes were becoming a spiderweb of broken vessels. "They'll be here right at sundown. They're supposed to take me to the Oracle. She'll have what she wants by then. She thinks… she thinks I've got a message from the Soul Eater that can only be delivered to her."

"It is never the same ones twice," Bella interjected with a delicate sniff. "Many have been here since you arrived… two weeks ago."

"You're good," Patrick said, with a sneer to show he didn't appreciate it. "Another guy was here before me. One of the Soul Eater's own babies." Max applied a little more weight to his knee. "What's the message?"

"No message," the vampire groaned. "It's a sham. I'm supposed to go in and get what the Soul Eater wants. The other guy has his own instructions."

"What's that?" Max asked, something cold clenching in his guts. Patrick looked at Bella, a crazed light coming to his eyes. His mouth parted in a sickening smile. "You're going to die. You know it. You should have let me stake you."

"Shut up." Max pressed the stake into Patrick's chest. He didn't pay any attention to his imminent demise, his eyes still trained intensely on Bella.

"You'll suffer. And you'll die. And you'll know you are powerless to protect your child."

"What?" Max looked to Bella for a denial. She backed away with her hand over her mouth.

This can't be happening
. The last few weeks unspooled in his mind. The riddle was so obvious now that he knew the answer.

The vampire beneath him laughed. "You didn't know?" He burned before he could scream.

Max grabbed Bella's arm and jerked her from the cottage, oblivious to her protests. He knew he should have investigated the room for more evidence. No, he didn't care they'd come all this way for nothing.

Once they were in the car, driving way too fast down the dirt road, he exploded.

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"What the hell was he talking about? A kid? It sure as hell can't be mine!" The vehicle went airborne for a minute when they reached the road. For a second, he wasn't sure they wouldn't sail into the ditch.

Bella sobbed silently beside him. "It has to be! I have not been with anyone except you."

"Hate to burst your little lie bubble, but vampires aren't exactly fertile!" He gunned the engine to make it through a yellow light. "Meaning that can't be mine!"

"Well, how else would you explain it?" She pounded the dash with her fist. "I do not know how it happened. But it happened! And now the Oracle will take our child!"

"There is no child!" He clenched the steering wheel almost hard enough to snap it. "We're going back to Chicago. We'll get this all sorted out there." She nodded, for once being reasonable. "You are right. We will leave. We will leave."

"Finally, something you say makes sense." They'd get as far away from the Oracle as Max could get them. As for Bella's story of how she got knocked up… well, they could figure that one out later.