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

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?”

“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.”

“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.”

“Where?”

“To your apartment.” He turned back to his arsenal and strapped a leg holster to his denim-covered calf, dropping another stake into it.

I waited expectantly as he pulled out Ziggy’s axe. “Um…were you going to give me something to protect myself, too?”

“You’re right.” With an embarrassed smile, he headed down the hall. When he returned, he pressed something into my hand. “I’m sorry, I don’t know where my head was.”