The Turning-Blood Ties 1 (10 page)

“Heroin?” I asked, casting a disapproving look at the track marks on his wrists and the backs of his hands.

“Not that it’s any of your business, Doc, but no. I’m the cleanest donor in the city. And Nate’s not my only customer.”

In my opinion, his cleanliness was debatable. I didn’t say so and resisted the urge to wipe my hands on my jeans after I touched him.

“You should be more careful with the needles,” I said, trying to sound as concerned as I possibly could. “You can’t just poke around in your arm like that.”

“Duly noted,” he replied, too distracted with the intricacies of plastic connector tubing to pay my warning much heed.

I dropped onto the couch and averted my eyes. I didn’t trust myself to catch sight of his blood. I heard the water running in the shower and muffled singing.

“So are you and Nate like special friends now or something?” Ziggy asked.

“No,” I replied, “and if we were, I don’t think it would be any of your business.”

He laughed. “Hey, no offense or anything. I just wondered because you’re, you know, wearing his clothes and all.”

I looked down at the T-shirt and wrapped my arms around myself. “My shirt had blood on it.”

“Listen, I don’t care. I was just trying to make conversation.” He lit a cigarette then, and noticed my expression of utter longing, he held the pack out to me.

“No, thanks.” I waved them away, knowing I’d get no satisfaction from them. “It’d be a waste.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, tossing them on the table. “But a lot of vampires smoke, you know. It doesn’t matter much what you do when you’re dead. You can’t get cancer or anything.”

“Yeah, but you can’t get anything out of it, either,” I said, my voice wistful. The acrid smoke smelled better than baking cookies.

“Not true.” He held the cigarette out.

I took it and inhaled experimentally. He was right.

“It’s the blood,” he said. “Blood rules all.”

I passed the cigarette back. “But it didn’t do anything for me before.”

“Because you were craving blood,” he explained, prodding his arm where the needle entered his skin. I cleared my throat noisily, and he jerked his hand back with a grin. “It’s

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like if you were craving chocolate cake, and you just kept eating SpaghettiOs. The SpaghettiOs aren’t going to do it for you, you know?”

I hadn’t even known that vampires existed until I suddenly became one. Now some smartassed kid was telling me, a doctor, the ins and outs of my own physiology. The collection bag filled. He kinked the tubing and switched to an empty one. I motioned to the bag. “Do you want me to put that in the fridge?”

He nodded. “So, how long have you been a doctor?”

“Less than a year.” I hesitated. “I’m not sure I’m going to be a doctor much longer. Because of the vampire thing. After I worked so hard for it… I can’t believe it’s over.”

“That’s a bitch.” He sounded genuinely sympathetic. The sound of the water stopped, and my mind briefly diverted to a vivid flash of Nathan emerging from the shower. I tried in vain to force the image from my thoughts. A loud crash, followed immediately by a yelp and a dull thud, snapped me back to reality. For a moment, I thought Nathan had fallen out of the shower. Then I noticed the brick rolling awkwardly across the floor. The window behind the armchair was broken. Sunlight streamed in, and Ziggy slumped to his knees, unconscious. Nathan rushed from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist. He hurried to Ziggy’s side and felt frantically for a pulse.

“What happened?” he shouted, looking from Ziggy’s lifeless form to me. I tried to focus on the emergency at hand, but it was hard to ignore a half-naked man standing in front of me, regardless of the circumstances. His chest was well defined and droplets of water still clung to his broad shoulders. I felt heat rush to my face as I imagined gripping those strong arms and raking my nails across his back.

Yelling from the street snapped me back to the present. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

I knew that voice.

“I know you’re up there! So does Cyrus! If I were you I’d come down here and burn before he gets to you!” She laughed. It was the same crazy sound she’d made the night before.

“Nathan?” I whispered, paralyzed with fear.

Ziggy tried to stand. As soon as he was upright, he crashed back to the floor and clutched his head.

“What the hell happened?” He looked the room over through barely opened eyes. Nathan raised a hand, shiny with blood, and motioned frantically for me to help him. “I don’t know where he’s bleeding from.”

“Oh, shit!” Ziggy’s eyes grew wide at the sight of his blood on Nathan’s hands. He struggled to his feet. The window shade had nearly been torn down during the brick’s dramatic entrance. A few rays of sunlight spilled into the room. Ziggy was careful to keep those beams of light between Nathan and himself.

When the smell of the blood hit me, I understood his reaction. I felt the muscles and tendons of my face rhythmically clench, and my fangs began their aching descent.

“Not now, Carrie!” Nathan snapped.

His sharp tone surprised me, and my transformation stopped instantly. Ziggy looked from Nathan to me, as if trying to judge the best escape route. Nathan

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approached him cautiously. “Remember who you’re talking to, Ziggy. I would never hurt you. I know you’re not food.”

Dahlia was still in the street, but she appeared to be running out of steam. “Are you waiting for sunset so you can come out and kick my ass? I’ll have a lot of backup by then.”

“Get out of here, Dahlia, or I can’t be responsible for my actions!” Nathan roared.

“Oh, I’m so scared,” she yelled back. “What are you gonna do, bookstore man? Read me to death? I’m going. I was just supposed to deliver the message.”

“What message?” Nathan asked.

Just then the shade fell completely from the window, flooding the room with sunlight. Nathan cursed and dropped to the floor. My reflexes weren’t as good. Words can’t accurately describe how sunlight feels when it hits vampire skin. The worst sunburn couldn’t compare with the searing pain that rocked through me. My skin bubbled then burst into flame anywhere the light made contact with it. My shirt caught fire from my incinerating skin, spreading the flames to the rest of my torso. The only thing I could think of was that my burning flesh smelled like hot dogs. Nathan leapt up and grabbed me, smothering the flames as we tumbled to the floor.

Ziggy grabbed the blanket from the back of the couch and draped it across the window.

“I’ll try to rig this up so it doesn’t fall again.”

“Are you all right?” Nathan asked, his face hovering mere centimeters above mine.

“I’m fine,” I wheezed, unable to take sufficient breaths. “Except for the third-degree burns.”

Nathan actually smiled at that. He didn’t seem in much of a hurry to move, and despite the fact that I couldn’t breathe, I didn’t really mind. Until I remembered Ziggy had an open head wound.

“And I can’t breathe. Will you let me up?” I squeaked, shifting slightly beneath him. I realized too late what effect my wriggling might have on a half-naked man. He looked embarrassed and apologetic as he rolled off me, clutching his towel closed. While Nathan tended Ziggy, I sat up and gingerly inspected the burned patches on my arms and chest. The skin was blackened. When I ventured an experimental poke it flaked away, revealing tender new flesh beneath. “Why didn’t I burn up?”

“Because I saved your ass with my mad blanket-throwing skills,” Ziggy answered. Nathan made a sound in the back of his throat. I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed at Ziggy’s comment or upset by the gash in his skull.

“This is going to have to be stitched up,” he said with a sigh of resignation as he examined Ziggy’s wound.

“I can do that,” I offered, but Nathan shook his head.

“I don’t have the supplies on hand, and you don’t have enough control yet to be around this much blood.” He turned to Ziggy. “It’ll be safer if you go to the hospital. Do you mind?”

“Better than hanging around here,” he said with a shrug. “It’s like swimming in a pool of sharks with a paper cut in here.”

Nathan went to his room. He returned with pants on his body and a roll of cash in his hand. “Take this,” he ordered. “Go straight to the E.R.”

Ziggy stuffed the money in his jacket. “Where else would I go? Denny’s?”

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“Knowing you, anything is possible. But I’m not kidding,” Nathan warned. “Stay off the street tonight. I want you in by curfew.”

“No problem,” Ziggy said. “They’ll probably give me some wicked pain medication at the E.R.”

Nathan watched him descend the stairs, then closed the door and turned to me. “Here we are again. Just you and me, alone together. Not completely dressed.”

The comment was so playful and unexpected, I didn’t know what to say. I wrapped my arms around my chest to cover the burn holes in the T-shirt and tried to force a laugh.

“I’m not having much luck with shirts lately.”

“Well, I’d loan you another but I saw what you did to the last one.” His voice sounded weary, but he smiled, anyway. “Besides, I like the view.”

I rolled my eyes. “If you’re going to be a smart-ass, I’ll just ignore you.”

Nathan clearly dealt with stress through humor. As long as I had to deal with him, I hoped he had enough stress to cause an ulcer. He was much more pleasant when he was using his coping mechanisms.

The fading sunlight that had peeked from the edges of the blanket over the window disappeared. If Dahlia’s brick had broken the window five minutes later, it would have already been night. I checked my scorched flesh again. It had nearly healed.

“Why did that happen?” I asked, holding up my seared hand.

“Because you’re a vampire. Haven’t you seen any movies?” Nathan asked.

“I’m more of a werewolf fan, for your information.”

He made a face. “You wouldn’t be if you ever met one.”

“Werewolves are real?” I smiled in spite of myself. I’d always liked the idea of wild guys who were animals in bed. Not that I’d ever actually experienced said animalism for myself, but a girl can dream.

Sighing deeply, Nathan stretched out his legs. “Why is it you women find them so damned attractive? Is removing ticks from a guy such a turn-on?”

“I never said I was attracted to them. I just said I favored them to, well, humanoid leeches, for instance.” I spied Ziggy’s cigarettes that lay forgotten on the coffee table, and snuck one from the pack. “Anyway, why did it happen now? It’s been nearly two months since the attack, and I’ve been in the sun since then.”

Nathan pushed an ashtray toward me. “You hadn’t drunk any blood yet. You might have been light sensitive before, but after feeding, the sensitivity turns deadly. It’s in The Sanguinarius.”

“Yeah, but I haven’t finished it yet,” I confessed sheepishly. “But it makes sense. After I started…feeding, artificial light doesn’t bother me as much as it used to.”

“You were going through a prolonged transition into vampirism. Once you stopped denying your hunger, the change completed.” He snagged the cigarettes from me. “Are these Ziggy’s?”

Biting my lip, I considered the answer to that question. I didn’t want to get Ziggy into too much trouble.

I decided the best course would be the parental guilt trip. “You shouldn’t let him smoke. It’s not good for him.”

Nathan slid out a cigarette and lit up, another surprising development. “I know. These things will kill you.”

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“Har, har.” I rolled my eyes. “You can make a joke about it because your lung function isn’t going to be seriously compromised in twenty years.”

“I don’t believe all that crap they say on television. I smoked when I was much younger than Ziggy, and it never hurt me.”

“Yeah, because you didn’t live long enough to get emphysema or cancer.” For the first time, I realized how wide the gap in our age really was. People from his generation hadn’t worried about carcinogens and tar and nicotine addiction. He was a century old. He was probably more concerned with the danger of women wearing pants. He studied me, an amused smile on his face. I felt naked, and not from the gaping holes in my shirt. I plucked at them self-consciously. “Would you mind?”

He headed into the bedroom. He playfully tossed me a new T-shirt as he returned. There was a dull thud and he yelped in surprise. He bent down and picked something off the floor. It was the brick Dahlia had thrown. She’d tied a scrap of paper to it.

“Did you see this?” Nathan asked, dropping into the chair to nurse his stubbed toe. I shook my head. “It must be the message she was talking about.”

As he scanned the paper, his eyes lit up with alarm. He held out the note and I took it.

“‘Lady bug, lady bug, fly away home. Your house is on fire…’” I read aloud. The rhyme wasn’t complete. “You don’t think…Nathan, my whole life is in that apartment!”

“Not to mention The Sanguinarius.” He wrenched open the closet door and pulled his leather trench coat on over his bare shoulders.

“You didn’t give me the only copy, did you?” I imagined my eyes bulging from my head as I spoke.

“No, but it’s the only copy I have. The last thing I need is some firefighter finding it in the rubble and showing it off. Besides, we don’t know if this is Dahlia being vindictive, or if she’s done this on Cyrus’s orders. He might have someone waiting for you, and if he does, I can take them out.”

“I can’t see Dahlia doing anything that was going to bring me closer to Cyrus, even if he ordered it. She definitely doesn’t want me around.” I noticed that Nathan had pocketed several stakes while I spoke and had yet to hand one to me. “Planning a road trip?”

He nodded. “Yup.”