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

“What?” He half lifted his arm.

“The voice. I like your accent.”

Nathan looked at me as if he’d never seen me before. His eyes searched my face but provided me no clue to what was going on in his head.

“In the bookstore tonight…if I had kissed you, would you have let me?” His voice sounded deeper than usual and rough from the alcohol.

My mouth went dry. I had some more Scotch, but it didn’t help. “I don’t know.”

“Would you let me now?”

A feeble noise escaped my throat.

He took it as a protest. “No expectations. Just a kiss.”

I nodded.

His lips were soft but cold. He brushed them lightly over mine, and butterflies the size of B-52s took up residence under my rib cage. I closed my eyes. I felt dizzy, either from the Scotch or the scent of Nathan that surrounded me. Probably both.

I opened my mouth under his. The tip of his tongue slipped past my lips, and I put my arms around him, one hand resting against the soft hair at the back of his neck. Excitement tickled my stomach every time I inhaled.

Without warning, Nathan pulled away. I opened my eyes in time to see him slump sideways and fall to the floor.

Dahlia glanced over his motionless body with a surprised expression that gave way to a satisfied smile. She shrugged her round shoulders. “Just as good, I guess.”

Before I could ask her what she meant, she clapped her hands and disappeared.

Eight

A Bargain

I knelt beside Nathan’s unconscious body and rolled him onto his back. He was breathing, but just barely.

“Open your eyes!” I shouted into his face. I hoped whatever Dahlia had done was only temporary. “Nathan, open your damn eyes!” His eyelids opened a fraction and a slow smile formed on his lips. I sighed in relief.

“Marianne?” he whispered. His eyes closed again and his body went limp. As if someone had flicked a switch, my relief turned to immediate dread. I called his name again, but he didn’t respond.

Looking frantically around the room, I spotted the cell phone on the table. Ziggy.

My hands shook as I punched up the speed dial. Ziggy’s number was the only one listed. Once the call was sent, all I could do was wait.

I’d never felt so helpless in my entire life. I tried to summon the impartiality and calm I’d had when working on a patient, but I couldn’t. Not when the patient in question was someone I knew.

I sat by Nathan’s side, unable to offer anything but my presence. Was he still breathing? Did he look a little blue in the face? I was checking his pulse rate against the cell phone’s clock when Ziggy’s call came through.

“What?” was the unceremonious greeting I got when I pushed the connect button.

“It’s Carrie. I’m at your place.” I glanced down at the unconscious body beside me, not sure how to deliver the bad news. “Listen, where are you?”

“Just about to leave the hospital. It’s a good thing I wasn’t mortally wounded. I could have died six times before they bothered to help me. What do you need?”

“Nathan’s hurt.” I figured saying it really fast, like ripping off a Band-Aid, would make it easier. “Dahlia sort of poofed in here and zapped him, then poofed out again.”

“Shit!” He was so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear.

I could only imagine the looks he was getting as he stood in the E.R. lobby swearing at the top of his lungs. “Calm down. Can you get here, fast?”

There was no answer but a dial tone. I swore and tossed the phone across the floor. If he’d stayed on the line he might have been able to tell me how to help Nathan. Now all I could do was wait for him. Again.

I didn’t want to just sit there and watch Nathan die, but it appeared I had little choice. His breaths grew more shallow, and his chest jerked with every inhalation. I hadn’t been paying much attention to my own breathing, but it suddenly seemed stifled. In fact, the air in the little apartment had become hazy.

With smoke.

“What is it with her and fire?” I wheezed. Jumping to my feet, I grabbed Nathan from under his arms and struggled to drag him. Nathan hadn’t included lack of oxygen as a potential cause of undead fatality, so I assumed smoke inhalation wouldn’t kill us, either. But even with increased vampire strength, I had no hope of getting him down the stairs if I couldn’t breathe. At least, not without dropping him and breaking his neck in the process.

I searched for an escape from the acrid smoke and I finally decided on the bathroom. The tiny, windowless room had an exhaust fan, so I flipped the switch and wet a towel to shove under the crack in the door. It kept the smoke out, but unless Ziggy hurried, Nathan and I would burn to death.

No sooner than the thought crossed my mind, I heard the front door slam open.

“We’re in here!” I called, realizing too late that the heavy footsteps clomping toward the door could belong to a fireman and not Ziggy. Though I wouldn’t turn down the help, I couldn’t come up with a convincing enough lie to keep Nathan out of an ambulance. If he lived to make it to the hospital, I doubted they’d be able to help him. He’d wind up in the morgue like John Doe had, only more dead.

Luckily, it was Ziggy who called through the door, already choking on the smoke. “Are you guys, uh, decent in there?”

“Of course,” I snapped. “He’s unconscious.”

Ziggy pushed the door open, coughing. He pulled the collar of his T-shirt over his nose. “That fucking pyromaniac bitch set the bookshop on fire. I beat the trucks here, but they’re coming. We need to get him out.”

“It’s only a couple hours till dawn. Where are we gonna go?”

Ziggy stooped and lifted Nathan by the arms. “My van. Get his legs.”

I complied, and we shuffled toward the door, Nathan hanging between us like a jump rope.

Ziggy hacked against his shoulder. “This reminds me of the scene in Return of the Jedi where the Ewoks take Han and Luke and Chewie prisoner and tie them to those big sticks.”

“Conserve your oxygen. I can’t carry you both out.”

The night air had turned freezing. The phrase “too cold to snow” sprung to mind. I slid on the sidewalk and collided painfully with the brick wall of the building. Ziggy eased Nathan to the ground and opened the back of the van.

I peered over the iron railing to look down at the bookstore. The glass in the door had been broken, and foul-smelling smoke poured out. My mind raced with thoughts of the building burning to the ground and where we’d go to wait out daylight. We didn’t have time to gather Nathan’s things. His goldfish. His wedding picture.

I thought of how Nathan had rescued my diploma and the photo of my parents from my burning apartment. Those were still upstairs, too. But the sirens of approaching fire engines squashed any notion of knickknack heroism.

“Get him in the back,” Ziggy urged, picking Nathan up by the shoulders. With a count of three, we swung him into the van and slammed the door.

“Click it or ticket,” Ziggy reminded me, pointing to the seat belt as I climbed into the passenger seat.

As the fire trucks rounded the block, he started the engine and guided the van down the street at an inconspicuous pace.