Blood Ties Bundle: Blood Ties Book One: The Turning / Blood Ties Book Two: Possession / Blood Ties Book Three: Ashes to Ashes / Blood Ties Book Four: All Souls' Night

I tried to conceal my disappointment. I had expected to hear he was hundreds of years old, that he’d walked the battlefield with Napoléon and discussed the mysteries of the cosmos with Nostradamus, like the vampires in the movies. “That was the year ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ became the national anthem, you know.”

“I didn’t know that. I wasn’t an American at the time.” He glanced over his shoulder, and I immediately covered my face.

“It’s okay,” he assured me. “You’re back to normal.”

I leaned over a clear patch of the glass-topped coffee table to check my reflection.

“It’s the hunger,” he said as he straightened up the room. “The worse it is, the worse you look. The same goes for anger, pain and fear. It’s very animalistic.”

How anyone could be blasé about his entire head morphing into a Harryhausen-esque special effect was beyond me.

“The scary part is that it gets worse with age. Some of the real old vampires even get horns when they change, or cloven feet. But you can control it, with practice. You just have to calm yourself, find your center, all that New Age crap. It’s very Zen.” He took the empty cup from my hands and headed to the kitchen sink.

New Age crap? This from the guy running the witchcraft minimart?

“Now, how about telling me what happened tonight?” he called over the sound of running water.

I shuddered. “Can’t we start with what the weather’s been like?”

“No.”

“It was nothing, really,” I said, trying to sound casual.

“‘Nothing’ rarely stabs people.” He came in and sat next to me on the sofa. The scent of him teased my nostrils, and I rather seriously debated whether or not to lean against him and inhale deeply.

I really need to get out more.

“I needed blood.”

Nathan frowned. “You didn’t hurt anyone, did you?”

“Okay, even if I had, did I look like I won that particular fight?”

He looked relieved that he wouldn’t have to chop off my head.

“I followed a girl into a club downtown. One of those…Goth clubs.” I lowered my voice, as if Goth were a dirty word.

“Club Cite?” he asked, and I nodded. “That was very dangerous. Clubs like that are full of all kinds of undesirables. People who think they’re vampires, wannabe vampires and vampire hunters. Amateurish vampire hunters, but with enough knowledge to kill you, even if it is just a lucky accident.”

“I know that now,” I said bitterly, remembering the metallic taste of Dahlia’s blood on my tongue. I took a deep breath. “I met a girl there. She told me she’d let me—” I stumbled over the words. “Drink her blood. I paid her.”

Nathan sighed and shook his head, reaching for one of the notebooks on the table. “What was her name?”

“Dahlia.” I looked over his shoulder as he flipped through the pages. There were crudely drawn diagrams and notes in the margins. A paper clip held a Polaroid in place at the top of one page. He handed the photo to me.

“Is this her?”

I looked at the photo. The woman did look like Dahlia, but a black Betty Page wig covered her red curls. The eyes were the same. Hard and crazy. I wondered how I hadn’t noticed that before. I told him it was her and returned the picture.

He stood, cursed and threw it down on the table. I shrank away, surprised at his sudden vehemence.

“I told you to come here if you needed blood! Why didn’t you come to me?” he shouted.

“I did! You weren’t home!”

“You should have waited!” He glared at me and braced himself for my next retort.

Raising my voice had calmed me considerably. When I didn’t respond, he swore and turned away, running a hand through his hair.

“Are you finished?” I asked.

He sighed angrily. “Yes, dammit. But you should have waited.”

“Maybe I should have. But I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time.” I scooped up the picture. “Do you know her?”

“Who?”

I rolled my eyes and held up the photo. “Dahlia.”

When he sat beside me, he seemed to take up more of the couch than before. I didn’t want to give him the impression that I was intentionally trying to be close to him, so I moved to the armchair.

“I know of her,” he said, examining the notebook. “She’s a very powerful witch.”

“A witch?” I laughed.

Nathan stared at me in annoyance before turning his attention back to the notebook. He laced his fingers together and brought them to his mouth, and his eyes glazed in deep concentration. Watching him, I realized why I’d been so disappointed to hear he wasn’t centuries old. Everything about him seemed anachronistic, as though he’d stepped from the Middle Ages into the present. He would look less out of place standing on a blood-drenched battlefield than sitting on a secondhand couch in an apartment full of musty old books. I imagined him charging into battle, face grim with purpose, his strong arms wielding a sword with both hands, his muscular thighs—

“See something you like?” His voice jolted me from my lusty historical imaginings. I was caught.

Nathan smiled that arrogant, knowing smile all males produce when their ego has been thoroughly stroked.

“Sorry, I guess I just zoned out.” Even I wasn’t buying that lame excuse, so I quickly changed the subject. “Why do you think she attacked me?”

He pushed the book aside. “I have no idea. She’s been trying for years to hook up with different vampires in the area, without much success. She isn’t someone to be trifled with. She has a lot of power.”

His grave expression worsened my growing unease. I didn’t know just how powerful Dahlia really was, but she’d been violent and dangerous enough without the aid of any spells or tricks. “She was really pissed at me. For taking Cyrus’s blood. Do you think she’s, you know, with him? Or just bat-shit crazy?”

“I’ve known Cyrus for a long time. He likes people who are easy to manipulate, and she definitely has powers he could exploit.” His brow furrowed as he considered his statement. “But I don’t think he would turn her. He’s not that stupid.”

“She said it wasn’t time. Or that he said it wasn’t time.” I threw up my arms in frustration. “So, how, exactly, do we proceed from here?” I glanced nervously at the window. “Can you kill her? Or is she off-limits because of that human thing?”

“Off-limits,” he answered automatically. “Besides, I don’t have any reason to kill her. I keep an eye on her, sure, but nearly every vampire hunter around here does. I’ve seen her around, but the vampires I’ve seen her with usually disappear after a while. As long as they don’t turn her, I don’t care where they go.”

“She kills them!” I triumphantly jabbed my finger in the air. “She said she’d killed Cyrus’s other fledglings before, so you’ve got to be able to—”

“No, Carrie, the goal of the Movement is to rid the world of vampires. She’s actually doing us a favor.” He looked away from me. “But it does trouble me to hear he’s been making fledglings we haven’t heard of. If Dahlia were a vampire…but I can’t imagine Cyrus would be foolish enough to turn her.”

“He was foolish enough to turn me,” I reminded him.