The Turning-Blood Ties 1 (29 page)

Still holding my hand, Nathan reached through the gate and pulled me into an awkward and slightly painful hug. When he stepped back, a slight flush colored his face. So, vampires blush.

“This is the plan,” he said, clearing his throat. “Lie low when we get here, and whatever you do, don’t fight anyone. Stick close to Ziggy. They’re not going to hurt him. And for God’s sake, stay away from Cyrus. He’s a main target.”

“Just don’t do anything stupid.” After the vision I’d seen, I knew he had a score to settle. It was a good thing he didn’t know what Cyrus had done to Ziggy.

“I think it’s too late for that.” The intense way Nathan’s gaze roamed over my face lent an uncomfortable meaning to that statement. But in the next moment, the intensity was gone. Nathan dug in his pocket and produced a tiny bottle. “Take this.”

Without thinking, I stuck it in my bra for safekeeping. “What is it?”

“Holy water.”

I fumbled to remove the vial. “Jesus Christ, you could have warned me!”

He laughed. “Sorry. I didn’t know you were going to stuff it down your shirt.”

“What do I do with it?” I asked as I held it in my hands.

“Be careful with it. It’ll cause a nasty burn. But use it to defend yourself if you have to.”

Hoping to ease his mind, I shook my head. “I’m not going to need it. He hasn’t paid any

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attention to me for a while.” Realizing I sounded wistful, I quickly added, “Not that I care, or anything.”

“You do care,” Nathan said softly. “That’s why he doesn’t deserve you.”

“Nathan—” I began, but he cut me off.

“I’ve got to go. Keep in mind what I said, and go over the plans again. I’ll see you Saturday.” He turned, took a few steps, and stopped. He didn’t look at me. “Thanks for saving my life.”

I knew him well enough to realize that when Nathan got choked up, his accent grew thicker. It was almost impossible to understand his next words.

“And maybe after we get you and Ziggy out, you’ll tell me how you liked the drawing.”

When I returned to my room, I pulled the sketch from its hiding place. After the party, I’d have to tell him it didn’t look anything like me. Because the woman on the page was a completely different person. Things used to happened to her. This person was about to make things happen.

Making things happen proved to be more difficult than I expected. Cyrus was increasingly moody, constantly fretting over the impending fete and his seemingly permanent houseguests. A huge part of my plan to help Ziggy hinged on my ability to manipulate Cyrus, but it was hard to manipulate someone when they wouldn’t talk to you. Saturday loomed like impending death. I grew desperate, and not just because my plan might fall through.

As sick and dishonest as it seemed, I wanted to spend one last day with him. It was a death wish, considering how adept he was at reading my mind, but he either had been too busy to uncover my deception yet, or he had figured it out and was waiting to punish me for it at a more convenient time. For reasons I wasn’t willing to explore, I would risk being found out for just a few more hours with him, even after he’d made me feel so…used.

Eventually I decided that if I were to get myself back into Cyrus’s good graces, I’d have to take the first step. Friday morning, I went to his bed without an invitation. Dressed in a white silk nightgown I’d found in my wardrobe, my heart pounding so loudly I thought it would burst from my chest, I stared down the guards at his door. When I entered his bedroom, I’d expected to find him with Dahlia or Ziggy, but he lounged on the bed beside a slender girl with blond hair. Her back was turned to me as they lay sideways across the bed, and one of her arms draped across Cyrus’s waist. He looked up with eyes of mismatched blue and the smile of a man who’d just learned he’d be having his favorite meal for dinner.

“I hope I’m not interrupting,” I said, surprised at the smoky sound of my voice. It must have been the sexy lingerie, or the perfume, or the makeup, because I was really getting into character.

Cyrus gave the girl a kick. Instead of scrambling to her feet and rushing from the room, she fell limply to the floor at the foot of the bed. Her head lolled to the side on her broken neck, and I saw her missing eye.

I almost turned back. No. Do what you came here to do. I called over my shoulder for the guards and they stepped through the open door. I gestured to the dead girl, trying not to look too revolted as they carried her away. “I

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didn’t want an audience.”

“She was boring, anyway. Kept crying about wanting to go home.” He leaned up on one arm. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

I approached him slowly, trailing my hands across the silk that covered my stomach, my breasts, then the bare skin over my collarbones. “I’ve missed you.”

Suspicion clouded his eyes. “I thought you didn’t like me very much. Those were your words, were they not?”

“Maybe I don’t like you. I might just be here for sex.” My body throbbed at the thought. I looked down the length of his body and saw he was just as hungry for me, despite his previous encounter. “You want something more, I can tell.”

I stepped to the edge of the bed, ignoring the blood on the carpet at my feet. “Maybe I do.”

He smiled, flashing the tips of his fangs, which had not yet retracted since his feeding. The vampiric feature in his otherwise normal face made him seem more dangerous than usual.

“Is this something I can give you?”

I feigned helplessness. “I don’t know. It could be.”

“Everything comes at a price, Carrie.” He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

Taking a deep breath, I hiked my nightgown above my knees with one hand and gently pushed him to the bed with the other. I straddled him, lifting the silk to my waist, and guided his erection into my body.

He moaned and I gasped as I sank down his cold length. I lifted my hips, letting him slip almost completely out, and pressed my throat to his mouth. The change came over him almost immediately as he pierced my neck. I forced myself to concentrate on the feeling of him inside me, the sensations that made my head swim, so he wouldn’t see the true reason for the favor I would ask. Or the pain that suddenly knifed through my heart.

This would be the last time we’d be together. I don’t know why it bothered me so much. I blamed all the feelings I had for him on the blood tie. But maybe that blame had been misplaced. Maybe I really did care for him. But the decision had already been made. I’d promised Nathan, and I had a duty to protect Ziggy. There was no changing my mind now. If I grieved for Cyrus in the end, it would be my burden to bear. I rose on my knees, letting just the tip of him rest against me. He strained up from the bed, trying to reenter me. I made a move to get off him completely, and he stopped fighting.

“You’re trying to hide from me,” he whispered, leaning up to run his tongue over the scar he’d created on my neck. “But you aren’t strong enough. I can see what you want. Say it.”

My hands shook as I stroked his hair back from his forehead. Was this a trick? How much did he really see? “I want to choose who the Soul Eater gets.”

His body went still at the words, and for a moment, I thought he would turn me down. Or worse, reveal that he’d seen through my ruse and kill me on the spot. Wrapping his powerful arms around me, he flipped me onto my back and filled me in one, brutal thrust. “Whatever my princess wants.”

I suppose I should have felt like a total whore at this moment, but my relief was so overwhelming I almost laughed. I threw my head back and surrendered to the feeling of

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my sire’s hands on me, his cock filling me. When I came, I shouted so loud I was sure I’d woken the entire household.

Cyrus finished soon after, collapsing on top of me with a smile.

“Saturday will be a night to remember,” he rasped against my cheek. A tear fell from my eye.

You have no idea.

Seventeen

Happy New Year

W hen I woke the next night, Cyrus was gone. I curled into the space he’d vacated, expecting warmth but finding none. Of course. Vampire. No body heat. I sat up, chuckling at my stupidity, but my good mood vanished at the sight of Dahlia leaning against the closed door.

“What are you doing?” I pulled the sheets up to my chest and groped through the bedclothes for my nightgown.

Dahlia’s face was emotionless, and she didn’t make eye contact with me. “Do you love him?”

I had no idea what to say that wouldn’t set her into a flying rage. I hoped the truth was good enough. “No.”

“Then why are you still here?” She kicked the door with a slow, deliberate rhythm.

“I can’t leave.”

“I wish you could.” She laughed, not in the crazy way I’d heard before, but in a dry, bitter laugh of weariness. “I wish I could.”

“You can.” I felt a little guilty for lying to her. In less than twenty-four hours, I planned to have her fed to the Soul Eater. I bolstered my resolve by remembering the time she’d stabbed me in the gut, burned down my apartment, attacked Nathan, and the fact she was pretty much the reason I was stuck here.

She looked me straight in the eye. “Are you familiar with the Stockholm Syndrome?”

Am I ever. I nodded. “It’s when the victim of a hostage situation forms an attachment to her captor.”

“You probably think that’s what’s going on here, right?” She ran a hand over her mussed curls.

“Maybe,” I said quietly, reaching for Cyrus’s robe at the end of the bed. Her eyes dropped to the black silk in my hands, and narrowed when I pulled the robe over my shoulders. But she didn’t move from the door, or cease her cadenced kicking. “You don’t know shit about why I’m here.”

“Dahlia,” I began, wetting my parched lips. I needed to feed, and soon. Her plump neck was beginning to look far too good for my liking. “Are you in love with Cyrus?”

“I didn’t know he was a vampire. Not before.” She pressed her palm to her forehead as tears slid down her face. “He told me he loved me.”

I tied the robe and hurried from the bed over to her. I didn’t know what else I could do but stand beside her and offer a shoulder to cry on in her misery. “He probably did—

does—love you.”

She sniffled. “He was fascinated with me, with my power. And now I’m trapped here.”

“He’s afraid of you,” I blurted. Her face was the picture of hopelessness, and it broke my

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heart. As much as I disliked Dahlia, I sympathized with her. “He’s afraid of your power. That’s why he won’t turn you.”

“I know,” she snapped. “But that doesn’t help me, does it.”

“It could. There are going to be a hundred vampires here tomorrow night. If you could find just one of them to turn you, you could get away from Cyrus.” The thought of Dahlia with unlimited power smacked me in the cerebral cortex about a half a second too late. But the words were already out there and I couldn’t take them back. To my relief, she shook her head and her old venom returned. “Right. Because it’s so easy to just get a vampire to make a fledgling.”

I couldn’t help my sarcastic reply. “It was for me.”

In an instant, her hand left a stinging impression on my cheek. Her eyes flashing with rage, she whirled around and waved at the air as though she were batting away a fly. The door flew back, practically tearing off the hinges, and she stalked into the dark anteroom. Trembling, I pulled Cyrus’s robe tighter around me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d either just performed an incredible act of mercy or made a huge mistake.

Saturday night arrived with a flurry of flamboyantly gay party planners and confused teenagers who thought they’d been invited to a rave. The former were led quietly around the side of the mansion to set up a garden party in nearly freezing temperatures, and the latter were lured into the house with promises of alcohol and social drugs. Ziggy and I stood on the balcony in the foyer and watched as guards herded a group of the hapless victims toward the cellar.

“So I’m basically toast, is that what you’re telling me?” Ziggy wore a neatly pressed dress shirt and slacks, a stylish black tie draped around his neck. Even with the change in wardrobe, he looked antisocial and slightly intimidating. But not to those who knew him well. I could practically see the word fear written across his forehead. I hoped he didn’t share my keen insight. I wouldn’t seem so reassuring if he could tell my insides shook like barren branches in the winter wind. “You’re not toast. I get to pick who the Soul Eater takes. Cyrus will turn Dahlia, and then he’ll throw you to the crowd. It’s all very simple.”

“Right.” Ziggy stretched the word out. “Thrown on the mercy of hungry vampires. And yet I’m somehow missing the part where I’m not toast.”

“You know how to fight, and Nathan will get here in time. Don’t worry about it. I’m not.”

I was, but there was no point letting him know that.

“What about the secret service down there?” Ziggy pointed toward the guards below.

“Nate and those guys can’t touch them. They’re human.”

“Then they’ll be easier to subdue,” I pointed out. “Besides, there aren’t many of them here tonight.” It was a protective measure, Clarence had told me before he’d left for the guardhouse earlier in the evening. Fewer humans meant less chance of a feeding frenzy. Most of the guards had been dismissed already. The mansion now ran with a skeleton crew on hazard pay.

It seemed a little strange that Cyrus would leave the party so vulnerable. Of course, there was the Soul Eater’s own security team. They were apparently scary enough that Cyrus felt comfortable entrusting them to guard a house full of Movement exiles on the most notorious night of the year.

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