Ashes to Ashes-Blood Ties 3 (23 page)

With shocking speed, Nathan seized my wrist. "Not fair is having the guy who sodomized you and bled you dry, while your wife lay dying not two feet away, sleeping down the hall."

"Gee, and just a few minutes ago, you sympathized with him." I jerked against his hold.

"Let go of me!"

Nathan growled a warning, his face flashing to vampire form, but he released my arm. I rubbed my wrist as he stalked toward the door. "Where are you going?"

"To the shop," He barked.

I glanced at the clock. It was only a few hours until sunup. "What for?" He disappeared from view at the end of the hall, and I heard his keys jingle. "For the day." The slam of the door punctuated his statement.

I spent the day in the bedroom with the door locked but I wasn't able to sleep. Alternating between my anger toward Nathan and my fear that Cyrus would burst in and stake me while I slept, I watched the light behind the blinds grow stronger and brighter. Once, a knock on the door startled me out of a light sleep. I threw back the covers and stood, calling, "Nathan?" before I realized he couldn't have come back upstairs without first walking through broad daylight.

"No." Cyrus's voice was uncharacteristically timid. "Are you all right?"
Let me in.

"I can hear your thoughts," I told him. "You know that." My palms itched to open the door, but I didn't know what his intent was. Why didn't I tie him back up? My reasoning that I would be safe and secure while he healed seemed insubstantial now.

"I know. I want to be near you." I heard him swallow a sound of disgust, even through the door. "Never mind."

A vision of Cyrus and me lying beside each other in bed, not in a sexual embrace but a comforting one, assembled in my mind. It took me a moment to realize I hadn't dreamed it up on my own. It came from him.

I listened to his footsteps retreat down the hall as I stood with my palm against the cool wood of the door, pretending I could feel him on the other side.

Chapter Twelve: Back to Not Normal

The nights after Cyrus's rebirth into vampire form were almost unbearable. After my first and only rejection of him, Cyrus became even more sullen and difficult. When he wasn't verbally antagonizing me, he abused the blood tie to his advantage, sending graphic visions of us performing lurid acts. The first few days I could tolerate it. After a while, the joke—

and my resolve to resist him—wore thin.

Nathan came back to the apartment. I didn't kid myself that it was because he'd forgiven me. There wasn't a bed in the storage room of the bookshop anymore, and the floor probably wasn't very comfortable. We barely spoke, and with Cyrus equally frosty, I found

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the apartment a chilly place to be, indeed.

Not to mention the fact that, after countless hours of research, we hadn't gotten any more information about the Soul Eater and what he might be up to with the Oracle. I'd called the brothel the Soul Eater had supposedly been staying at. That is to say, I called the only brothel it made sense for him to be staying at. I wasn't entirely surprised to find that March's phone number no longer existed and her establishment had been removed from the list of licensed brothels in Nevada.

"They're not going to stay put, waking for someone to come find them," Cyrus had said, an edge of taunting in his voice. "Unless you want to waste another week visiting the desert?"

And I didn't. Neither did Nathan. Though we agreed on little else, we knew that the Soul Eater moved around too much to justify going after him. And that he moved much faster than we could.

If the Soul Eater didn't want to be found, we wouldn't find him. And I had the distinct impression that when he wanted to, he would come to us.

"I've run out of ideas," I complained to Nathan as I sat beside him on his bed one morning. We hadn't made up after our fight, but for the time being we were politely ignoring the spat. It seemed he wouldn't be tempted to even consider making amends. It would probably be only a matter of time and defeating the Soul Eater before he kicked Cyrus and me onto the street.

Nathan laid his book on his chest—he would often read until I'd gone to bed, probably to avoid talking to me—and rubbed his eyes. "Don't worry about it now. It's been a long night."

"Well, I am worried about it, as we have a finite amount of time before Max and Bella find the Oracle."

Max had called that evening to update us on their status. They would reach Danvers by sunup, install themselves at a base of operations and begin networking. Nathan agreed that it wouldn't be long before the Oracle's minions sought them out. Nathan sighed. "I'm aware of the time issue, Carrie. But there's nothing we can do about it right now."

With a grunt of utter annoyance, I rolled onto my side so I wouldn't have to look at him. My mind wouldn't settle down, though, racing to every dead end it had already visited ad nauseum. "What about Dahlia?"

"What about her?" Nathan's voice held that weary, just-drop-it-already tone he'd perfected. "She'll kill you, and we certainly don't want her around Cyrus."
Stop talking about me like I'm not right down the hall.

I pushed Cyrus's thoughts out of my mind.

"I know. Maybe I could break in. Or something." To Cyrus, I asked,
Do you have any
ideas
?

What about Clarence ?
Cyrus's voice echoed through my head.
He helped you betray me,
and I know for a fact he cared even less for Dahlia. At least, he did when I was around
.

"That's a thought," I murmured out loud, accidentally.

"What's a thought?" Nathan tried to sound bored and disinterested, but I still had a blood tie to him, as well. His annoyance and his jealousy, which had been radiating off him in waves since I'd turned Cyrus, spiked.

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"Nothing." I waved a hand dismissively, but a mean, antagonistic part of me added, "It was supposed to be mental."

He closed his eyes and his brow creased in frustration. For a second I expected an angry outburst. Cyrus must have felt my fear, because a deeply protective vibe thundered through the blood tie. The role reversal startled me. I never thought I'd see the day when Cyrus cared if I lived or died.

But Nathan didn't lose it. He opened his eyes and looked at me, really looked at me for the first time in days "I hate this."

Before I could ask what he meant, he went on. "I hate that he's in your head again. Actually, I didn't really hate it before. But I do now." For some reason, his admission stung. "You didn't care that he was my sire when we first met?"

Nathan shrugged. "No. It was a bit of a relief."

"Not for me. As I recall, you threatened to kill me." Some of the tension seemed to ease between us, but I tread carefully. "Why does it bother you now?"

"Because I know you loved him." He made it sound so definite, so matter-of-fact. Even I couldn't have said it without immediately following it up with a qualifier like "in a way" or "sorta."

Is that true ? Did you love me?

I put Cyrus off for a moment. "Do you think I chose him over you? Is that what all this is about?"

"How could it be about anything else?" Nathan smiled sadly. "I can't offer you unswerving devotion. I can't give you all of my heart. Not after this. But I don't want to lose you, either."

"Well, you can't really have me, can you? If you're not willing to give me something in return?" I wanted to reach out to him, to touch him, because that always seemed to make everything all better. But it would be a lie. "You're not going to lose me. Cyrus is…different now. He doesn't need me."

Don't be so sure…

"He doesn't need me," I repeated, for myself, for him.

"I think that was what made him so endearing before. Despite all the manipulation and torture, he really needed someone to love him. He's had that now, and he won't want the brand of love I can give him."

And what is that?

"And what brand is that?" Nathan echoed Cyrus's telepathic question. I made sure to leave my link to my fledgling wide open as I spoke. "The false kind. The pitying kind."

Sweet girl.

Nathan smiled. "The type you think I'm giving you."

"Maybe it's what I'm giving you," I suggested, not unkindly. "In any case, he doesn't want me the way he did then, so he won't pursue me as he did before." And I wouldn't be tempted the way I had been then, because I wouldn't want the secondhand, watered-down kind of love he could offer me, if he did see fit to do so. I wouldn't be the next best thing to yet another lost love.

Nathan had heard the unspoken portion of my statement. "Then why do you want mine?"

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Why did I? I'd been attracted to Nathan from the moment I'd met him. I'd been infatuated with his devotion to his mysterious dead wife and unofficially adopted son. Then he'd become my sire, and that brought its own kind of feeling. But why did I love Nathan?

I opened my mouth cautiously, not sure what would come out. "Because I see the way you loved Marianne. I see the way Cyrus loved Mouse. And I wonder… " My unexpected sob interrupted my words. "I wonder if someone could ever love me that way." Wordlessly, he pulled me into his arms.

I couldn't stop crying. Although I considered myself pretty much in touch with my feelings, there was obviously one emotional area. I'd boarded up. Now, all my frustration and pain crashed through the barrier I'd erected, and I couldn't hold it back any longer.
Someone could love you that way. I would have, if you'd given me the chance
. Cyrus's thoughts stung me with a barrage of images, of moments that had never occurred between us. Lying with him in his big bed at the mansion, my lips curved in a contented smile as he held me. Cyrus watching me with pride as I moved gracefully across the ballroom, the picture of beauty and elegance in a couture gown. The same gown in a rumpled heap on the floor as I climbed into bed with an unidentified young man, then a flash of his dead eyes as I feasted from his throat.

Gagging, I sat up.

"Carrie, what's wrong?" Nathan went from comforting to urgently protective in a split second.

Tell him, Carrie. Tell him what's wrong.

Blood running in rivulets from my scarlet-stained mouth, flowing down my neck, between my breasts. Cyrus's cold hands on my shoulders, his rough tongue lapping the blood off my skin.

"No!" I clutched my head, desperate to make the visions stop, but terrified Nathan would guess the root of the problem and harm Cyrus in some way.

He did guess, but instead of tearing to the living room and ripping Cyrus to pieces, he gripped my shoulders and shook me gently. "Come on, Came, you can stop him. You re in control Just concentrate and shut him out."

I'd had plenty of practice switching the blood tie between Nathan and me on and off. It turned out to be much easier from the sire's side of things. I took deep, metered breaths and mentally constructed a brick wall. Nathan had once suggested a bubble of white light, but I preferred my creative visualization more heavily fortified. I was relieved when Cyrus's barrage of hateful images faded, then disappeared altogether.

"What did he show to you?" Nathan's brow creased in concern, the kind he routinely exhibited before he completely lost his mind in anger.

There was no way I was going to admit to him what had happened, not when he'd almost chopped Cyrus apart in the past. "I'll take care of it tomorrow." He gazed at me as though I might lose it again at any moment. "Are you sure?" I nodded and gave what I hoped was a reassuring smile. "Yeah. Just… hold me?" Nathan stroked my hair as we lay close together beneath the covers. Whether he thought I was asleep or not I couldn't be certain, but after a long, long time he kissed my ear and whispered, "I'm sorry we fought, sweetheart. That doesn't mean I'm not right, but I'm sorry we're in this again."

I drifted to sleep with a bittersweet smile on my face and my head blessedly empty of

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horrors.

I woke to hands on my breasts, my stomach, dipping between my legs. I smiled against lips that pressed to mine, and I stretched, slowly and lazily, enjoying the attention. Winding my arms around Nathan's neck, I moved against him so his cold, firm body was flush to mine.

He guided my leg over his hip, his thick cock hard and eager against my sex. I was wet and ready for him, so he slipped into me easily, and I cried out at the intense pleasure of it. His fingers traced shivering trails down my arms, up my neck. Another set of hands slid between our bodies. My eyes flew open and I shrieked in alarm. Nathan smiled, seemingly unperturbed that another person was in bed with us. Cold flesh brushed my back, and I craned my neck to find Cyrus there, his body curved to mine. As he teased my intimate flesh with his hands, he gave me the same knowing smile I'd seen on Nathan's face. I leaned against Cyrus, eyes sliding closed with the pleasure.
This is wrong
, my brain screamed.
This can't be happening
. But it wasn't happening. It was a trick, a dream.

It felt so real.

I opened my eyes and glanced down to where Nathan slid in and out of me. Cyrus's fingers bracketed Nathan's cock, slick with my secretions, and Nathan buried his face in my neck with a groan. I felt his features change against my skin, and his fangs pricked me tentatively. Cyrus's erection prodded my backside as his fingers danced wickedly over my flesh. The pressure in my tortured body grew almost unbearable. I begged mindlessly, held Nathan's mouth to my neck. Cyrus guided his cock to my ass and pushed inside as Nathan's fangs pierced my neck.

I cried out in surprise at the discomfort and fullness of Cyrus's entry, but his skilled assault on my intimate flesh, coupled with Nathan's mouth drawing at my neck and his cock pumping inside me, drove me over the edge. Impaled between them, I screamed in release. My eyes snapped open. Though I was alone in the bed, my body throbbed from the ecstasy of the dream, and the wetness between my legs testified to the very real physical effect it'd had on me. I rolled over, pushing sweat-damp hair from my forehead, and grabbed the note Nathan had left on his pillow: "Working. Nathan."