The Turning-Blood Ties 1 (40 page)

He’d meant it literally. He’d wanted her to willingly give him what he’d stolen from me. I would have been sick if I had a body left to feel.

Wrenching myself from his mind, I watched the doors to the room open. Nathan and his wife entered. I couldn’t access her mind, but Nathan’s was, for once, wide-open. He recognized Jacob Seymour, the faith healer they’d traveled across the world to meet, but was surprised by the strange robe the man wore. And he wondered who all the people seated around the table were. Jacob’s son, he knew. The handsome young man was Simon, and the woman seated beside him was his wife, Elsbeth. But what were they all doing here? Had they arrived too early and interrupted a dinner party?

When the doors slammed shut behind them, I felt his alarm. He knew something was wrong, in the way he’d known Jacob Seymour’s promises were too good to be true. He’d tricked Marianne, his beautiful Marianne, into hoping for a cure for her illness, because he’d wanted to believe.

I wish I’d never brought her here.

As the dispassionate faces seated at the table began to twist into their true forms, Nathan began to pray. But the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, and the Blessed Virgin all turned their backs, the way he’d turned away from them when his prayers did nothing to stop the cancer that ravaged his wife’s young body.

“Nolen?” Marianne whispered, her already pale face white with terror. I fled his mind as the monsters closed in on him. If I’d had eyes to close, I would have, but

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there was no way to avoid the sight. Nathan tried to shield Marianne from fangs and claws, but gnarled hands dragged him from the pack.

“This one is for me!” the Soul Eater roared. Then, propelling Nathan toward Cyrus, he said, “Simon, make your father proud.”

Nathan struggled as Cyrus pulled him into his arms. He reached for Marianne, but the distance was impossible, and too many vampires blocked the way. This is hell. I am damned.

I tried to block his panicked thoughts, but they were too strong. Cyrus slashed the buttons from the front of Nathan’s shirt in one smooth motion. He splayed his clawed hand across the tanned skin that was revealed, stroking down, over Nathan’s tightly muscled abdomen. Marianne’s screams were weak and growing fainter by the moment.

“Let her live!” Nathan begged. “Please, let her live!”

The Soul Eater considered a moment, then clapped his hands, a gesture I’d seen Cyrus mimic many times. The vampires who’d fallen on Marianne looked up, confusion showing as best as it could on their demonic faces.

“A change of plans,” the Soul Eater snarled. “Out, all of you.”

They cleared, grumbling their displeasure. Some hissed as they slid past their master. On the floor, Marianne moaned, her fang-marked limbs deathly still. Her chest rose and fell with shallow breaths.

Elsbeth scowled at her father-in-law. “You’re always doing this, Jacob. You change your plans without consulting any of us. It’s not fair. I haven’t fed in days!”

The Soul Eater grabbed her. “You’ll find it much more difficult to feed when I snap your pretty head off your neck. Now get out.”

“Father?” Cyrus still held his prize, but his attention was focused on Elsbeth.

“We’ll let the sick one die on her own. With any luck, she’ll live to see him killed.” With a final nod to Nathan, the Soul Eater stepped out the door. “It’s been lovely meeting you, Mrs. Galbraith.”

Without willing it, I was once again in Nathan’s mind. Marianne lifted a limp hand toward him, her eyes imploring him to help her. But he couldn’t. He was tired. Tired of chasing a cure from continent to continent, only to see one hope die after another. Tired of dreading her death, tired of the guilt he felt when he wished it would just be over. Perhaps this was his punishment. He turned his head away.

“It appears that it’s just the three of us,” Cyrus rasped against Nathan’s ear. The feeling of another man’s hands on him made the bile rise in Nathan’s throat. He squeezed his eyes shut tight as those hands moved lower, releasing the button of his trousers. The cold fingers closed over him, stroking him to arousal against his will. He sobbed a Hail Mary as Cyrus’s fangs sunk into his neck. Please, I begged no one in particular. Please, I don’t want to know this. So instead, I watched the frescoed ceiling, concentrating on the fat cherubs smiling down on the horrific scene instead of Nathan’s screams of pain and terror. The nightmare was sadistically long. After he’d broken him physically, mentally and emotionally, Cyrus left Nathan naked and violated on the freezing marble floor, small amounts of his blood leaking from a dozen open veins. He was dead by the time anyone returned.

The Soul Eater slid into the room with Cyrus at his side. “Very good, Simon. You’ve

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given him real potential.” He knelt beside Nathan’s abused body and cradled his head in his lap.

“I don’t know if I’d call it potential. He’ll only last until your next meal.” There was an edge of annoyance in Cyrus’s voice.

The Soul Eater stroked Nathan’s arms lovingly. “No, I think I have other plans for this one.”

He lifted his wrist and bit down hard, audibly puncturing the skin and veins. Then he pressed his wounded wrist to Nathan’s slack mouth.

The blood slowly brought animation to Nathan’s body. First, his mouth as he twitched his lips. Then his arms as they lifted to clutch at the Soul Eater. It took less than two minutes for the change to complete.

Alarm flared through Cyrus. I could feel it without entering his mind. “Father, think of what you’re doing. Your blood is weak already. It will barely keep him alive. You won’t be able to feed from him. Let me turn him, as we planned.”

Nathan lurched to his feet, his eyes wild. Hungry.

The Soul Eater ignored Cyrus, focusing instead on his new child. “Look at you. You’re parched. My old blood can’t sustain you.”

At that inopportune moment, Marianne cried out feebly. Like the moan of a dying animal, it caught the attention of the predators around her. To his credit, Nathan tried to fight it.

“It will just get worse,” his sire taunted. “The hunger will gnaw at you. It will drive you crazy.”

Cyrus grew more anxious by the second. “Father, kill him. You can’t survive another year without feeding.”

The Soul Eater continued to ignore his son. “Nolen, please. You know she’s going to die, anyway. Look at her. She’s barely alive.”

Contrary to what he said, the haze in Marianne’s eyes lifted. I was glad that I couldn’t see inside her head, to know what she saw when she looked at Nathan. “Nolen, what are you doing?”

He covered his face. “I can’t.”

The fatherly affection in the Soul Eater’s tone vanished. “You will. You’re feeling the hunger I have carried for centuries. If you think it hurts now, imagine how you’ll feel in a week. In a month. Take her and ease your suffering, or I’ll be sure you wish you had!”

Nathan’s pain reached out and sucked me in. I’d felt hunger before, but nothing like this. The Soul Eater’s blood was already depleted. The cells and tissue of Nathan’s body tried to draw nourishment from the blood, but it was a by-product, stripped of the power needed to fuel his vampire flesh.

It was too much to fight both the hunger and the will of his sire. Marianne screamed when Nathan grabbed her.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he murmured against her neck an instant before he pierced her flesh with his newborn fangs.

“I don’t want to see anymore!” I cried, unaware I’d regained control of my body. But the vision didn’t end.

The Soul Eater watched with perverse satisfaction as Nathan drained the last drops of Marianne’s blood.

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“Let her out of it, Cyrus!” The Nathan I saw before me in the vision hadn’t spoken, but it was his voice I heard from the present.

“She needs to see!” Cyrus’s words overlapped an echo of his voice as he spoke to the Soul Eater. “Father, kill him! He’s fed, his blood is replenished. Feed from him!”

The Soul Eater shook his head. “He is too strong. Remarkably so. I couldn’t possibly waste him. I do believe he will be of greater use to me in the future, through the tie. We must always think of the future, my son. I’ll have to find another.”

“There’s no time. If you don’t feed, you’ll die!”

On the floor, Nathan rocked Marianne and sobbed.

Cyrus met his father’s gaze, horror dawning on his face. “No.”

“She’s been a thorn in my side since you turned her.” The Soul Eater strode to the doors.

“Father, no!” He gripped Jacob’s robe.

Furious, the Soul Eater jerked the fabric from his son’s hands. “Stop your sniveling, boy. Would you rather I take you instead? You’ll find another. One who obeys. One more worthy of sharing our blood.”

He kicked Cyrus backward, and before he could rise to his feet, the doors snapped shut, barring him from the outside.

“Elsbeth! Elsbeth !” He screamed until his throat grew hoarse. His talons gouged the wood of the doors, but they remained locked. The minutes slipped past, the wait unbearable. Finally, her horrified cries shattered the silence in the house, then just as quickly subsided.

The vision became grainy. I hovered in a void, surrounded by the sound of Nathan’s weeping and Cyrus’s enraged sobs.

“She’s dying! Help her!”

I opened my eyes to the present to see Nathan struggling against the guards that held him. A third stepped in to help, but he wasn’t needed. As soon as I stopped gasping for breath and sat up, he calmed.

Sometime during the dream, I’d rolled from the sofa. My head throbbed and my back ached, from hitting the floor or as a result of some weird aftereffect of the sanguine cocktail, I had no idea.

Cyrus gripped my bound wrists and hauled me to my feet. His touch was purposely rough.

“I hope that shed some light on our difficult situation here. And I hope you understand why I did what I did.”

“To whom?” I snarled. “To Nathan? Or his wife? Or your fledgling? What exactly am I supposed to understand here?”

“That he’s a killer!” Cyrus’s rage was so sudden and violent, I trembled in fear. All the anguish of the past centuries curled into his words. The pain in his voice cut into me so deeply that I felt it myself, even without the blood tie between us. As quickly as it had come, his anger subsided. In the defeated tone of a tired child, he spoke again. “He is a killer, and you left me to be with him.”

“I didn’t.” I turned and looked him in the eyes, and the sorrow there stole my breath.

“When you took my heart in that alley, you let me die. Nathan saved my life. It wasn’t my choice.”

“It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. When he is dead, things can go back to the way they were.” Cyrus snapped his fingers to the guards. “Kill him.”

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Nathan roared and rushed past the guards. With his hands bound, he could do little more than charge headfirst at Cyrus and knock him into the wall beside the fireplace. And that’s what he did. The collision was loud, and it dented the dark wood paneling, but Cyrus recovered quickly, kicking Nathan to the floor. Laughing, Cyrus grabbed the fireplace poker from the rack on the hearth and raised it over Nathan’s back. Even if I warned him, he wouldn’t be able to get out of the way in time. With a scream of rage, I yanked my hands apart. The plastic tie cut into my skin, but it broke. I was free. Before the guards could react, I ran toward Cyrus, barreling shoulder first into him. We toppled onto the Persian rug, knocking over two chairs as we fell. I grabbed a handful of his hair and tugged, forcing him to face me. “If you’re going to kill me, just do it and leave him alone!”

He yanked free, leaving a white-blond lock twined in my fist. He brushed himself off and stood. “I don’t want to kill you, Carrie. But it’s out of my hands now.”

Guards lifted Nathan from the hearth and threw him into a chair. He breathed hard. The jagged wound where Cyrus had stabbed him seeped fresh blood.

“What do you mean, it’s out of your hands?” I asked. Another guard stepped forward to grab me, and I growled at him.

“Leave her,” Cyrus commanded with a smirk. “I have a proposition for her.”

I grabbed the guard and twisted his head to the side, exposing the pulsing artery in his neck. “You better start explaining or so help me God, I’ll kill him right here.”

Cyrus laughed. “What do I care? I have dozens more just like him.”

Touché.

Out of frustration, I wrung the guard’s arm until it snapped. He sagged to the ground, howling in agony, and I kicked him forward, pinning his head to the floor with the heel of my shoe. “Talk, or you’ll be cleaning brains out of this fancy-ass rug!”

“Very good. It’s amazing you’ve come this far, with only him to learn from. The power in you…it’s intoxicating.” Cyrus moved toward me slowly. I took a step back, and the sentry crawled away, cradling his ruined arm to his chest. I backed into the marble-topped table. Cyrus kept advancing. “Think of what you could become, if only you’d come back to me. I could make you mine again. Drain your blood, bring you to the point of death and then fill you up again.”

He stroked my cheek, his fingernail scoring a painful incision through my skin. I gritted my teeth to keep from wincing. “You never filled me up before, so I can’t imagine you accomplishing it now.”

“That’s rather cheap, Carrie. I thought you knew better.” He turned away from me to face Nathan. “I sent Father a rather interesting package last night. He should be receiving it any moment now.”

Nathan shrugged. “Is this information in any way relevant to our current situation?”

“As a matter of fact, it is.” Cyrus looped his arm around my waist and pulled me forward.

“Since he missed his annual feeding and the victim intended for him is deceased, I thought it only fitting to send him a little takeout. Carrie’s heart.”