Ashes to Ashes-Blood Ties 3 (45 page)

I thought of my own heart in its casket in Nathan's bedside table. The Soul Eater's hand closed around Cyrus's neck. He lifted him off the ground with one arm and wrenched the stake from his chest, releasing a spurt of blood. Then, without another word, he stabbed Cyrus in the heart. There was no rush of wind, no spectacular flame. Cyrus's second vampire life ended in an inconsequential burst of ash. Crippling pain gripped me, almost exactly what I'd felt when I'd sired him. But that pain had been a sort of stitching together. This was an agonizing rending of the fabric that had bound us. And the last thing I heard through the blood tie was his scream of terror. I collapsed to the floor at the same moment the Soul Eater did. He clutched his chest as though his hand could stop the blood that poured from him. A ball of blue flame shot upward from the wound, but still he didn't burn.

"It's not his heart," Nathan whispered, staring in horror. The doors flew open. Dahlia rushed in, screaming.

Kill me. Let her kill me
. When it seemed I couldn't stand another second of the pain, it doubled, tripled, multiplied into oblivion. I stared at the spot where my fledgling had stood, rocking with my knees drawn up to my chest.

"No!" I'd never heard Dahlia sound so crazed, and for her, that's saying something. But it didn't register with me immediately. Not until Nathan was pulling on my elbow—how long had he been doing that?—urging me to my feet. When I didn't stand, he swept me up in his

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arms, cradling me to his chest, and charged through the window. A flash of light illuminated the study—probably a spell of Dahlia's intended for us—and then we were slipping down the lawn the way we had the night Nathan had lost Ziggy in the very room I'd just lost Cyrus.

The irony would have been more poignant if I hadn't been losing my mind to grief at an accelerated pace.

Once we were off the grounds and hidden for a moment, he slowed. I noted from a faraway place the blood streaming down his face from cuts left by the shattered window glass.

"Carrie, are you all right?" He shook me. "Carrie, say something. Say something!" I turned my eyes to the sky. "I can't see the stars." And then I couldn't say another word.

Chapter Twenty-Five: Bite

It only took a second for the kid to make up his mind. Max saw the decision-making process in slow motion: recognition, realization that the plan must be changed, new plan taking shape.

Ziggy lifted his arm as if he was going to drive the stake into Max's chest. Bella screamed. The kid spun and let the stake loose. It punctured the Oracle's chest, fast and clean, but she didn't burn.

She laughed. The laughter grew louder as the guards approached them, stakes drawn. Without hesitation, the kid slipped two from his sleeves straight into his hands, and let them fly in quick succession. This time, the strikes hit home. The vampires exploded into dust.

Ziggy turned to the Oracle. "Hold still, bitch, unless you want another abnormally large splinter."

"You think you can kill me?" The Oracle laughed again, twisting the stake free from her chest. "You think you can cause me pain? You have no idea of pain. No concept!"

"Oh, lady. You have it so fucking wrong." He reached into the back of his shirt and pulled out another stake twirling it in his hand as he raised his arm. Max had worked with a lot of assassins in the past. The Movement had the most specialized hand-to-hand training program outside of the Israeli military. But Max had never seen reflexes like this, let alone spatial accuracy in the blink of an eye. But the kid didn't get a chance to use his mad skills. Without warning, the Oracle burst into flames, from the feet up. Fire shot from her eyes and mouth, her fingers melted and flames licked up her arms from the stumps.

"Looks like the Soul Eater had the balls to do it, after all! This one is gonna be bad," Max called to Ziggy, dropping to cover Bella. "Grab something and hang on." The Oracle screamed—no, roared was more like it—as the flames burned her body. The

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skin dissolved slowly, leaving her a creature of raw muscle and tendons for a split second before they flaked away to ash, leaving nothing but a skeleton suspended around a ball of blue flame. When the flame extinguished and dropped to the ashes on the ground, the wind came.

The shutters tore from the windows. The sun had set—at least that was in their favor—

but being sliced in half with a piece of metal would be just as bad.

"Keep your head down," Max shouted over the howl of the wind. The last word had just left his mouth when a chunk of debris whacked him in the back of the head. His arms gave out and he fell onto Bella. A sharp pain in his shoulder a second later indicated another piece of flying something had taken a chunk out of him. "Son of a bitch!" The Oracle's bones, still suspended, were surrounded by a cyclone of her own ashes. They eroded away as if being scourged by a superaccelerated desert sandstorm. And when they were gone, so were the ashes, and the wind.

"You guys okay?" Ziggy helped Max to his feet "Dude, are you okay?" Max brushed him aside. "Bella, are you all right?"

"Yes. A little… dizzy." She trembled as he helped her into the chair. "I will be fine." Max turned to Ziggy. "Yeah, we're fine."

"
She's
fine." Ziggy gestured to Max's shoulder. "You're bleeding." Max touched his shoulder and winced. "Yeah, something hit me. And then something else hit me."

"Something
bit
you," Bella said quietly. When Max looked at her, questioning, she dipped her head. "It was the only opportunity I thought I would have." Ziggy's eyes went wide. "Wait a minute, you're a—"

"Werewolf," Bella finished for him.

"And you bit him. That would make him—"

"A lupin."

Max froze. "My God. Bella. Why—"

"We will need a place to hide. To hide our baby. The clan will not accept you if you are not one of us." She stated it like he just had to accept it, like there was no other way.

"They will know you are a lupin, of course. But the elder will understand the circumstances. She will let you stay. And if not, we will seek out Titus's sanctuary."

"What the fuck, Bella?" Max spun away, kicking a twisted chunk of what used to be a shutter. "What the hell happens now? When the full moon comes or the daylight gets me?

What the hell happens now?"

He felt her approach, felt her at his side before she got there. It was so like the blood tie he'd shared with Marcus… but not violent or fearful. This was like…

Coming home.

She laced her fingers with his. "Whatever comes, we will figure it out together. The three of us."

He squeezed her hand. "This isn't how I expected to end up, you know?"

"Guys, I hate to break up your moment, but we have to get the hell out of here. Those weren't the only guards in the place, and I can guarantee others are headed up those stairs right now." Ziggy ran toward the section of wall that had rotated to reveal the Oracle.

"They'll be behind here, too. Are you ready for a fight?"

"It's all we've been doing for the past week. I think we'll manage." Max looked at Bella.

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