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

“Well, Doctor, I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said, leaning casually against the counter. “Do you think you can live up to the hype?”

I smiled back sweetly, but narrowed my eyes at her challenge. “I’m sure I can, and then some.”

“I hope so.” She turned to Nathan. “I need to speak to you. Alone.”

The last word was added like a bullet aimed at both Max and me. I folded my arms, some evil little urge to antagonize her compelling me to stay.

Max threw his arm around my shoulder. “Fine. We know when we’re not wanted. Well, Miss—”

“Doctor,” Nathan snapped.

I put on my best flirty smile, making sure he saw and understood why I’d done it before I turned to Max. “Call me Carrie.”

He gave me a nod, as if to say “good play.” “Well, Miss Doctor-Call-Me-Carrie, I have a fantastic room over at the Hampton Inn on Twenty-eighth Street, complete with a mini-bar. What do you say we get slightly buzzed on very small bottles of schnapps and paint Mallsville red?”

Despite his ridiculous come-on, it was hard not to like Max. I laughed and shook my head. “Actually, I’m kind of tired, after last night. I think I’ll go upstairs to bed.”

I said a brief, polite goodbye to Rachel and Max and headed up the stairs.

The night air was cool, but the day must have been warm. The snow had nearly melted. For once in the last few hectic days, I didn’t feel as if I had to rush anywhere, or dread anything. In fact, I was actually looking forward to tying up the bathroom with a nice long bubble bath.

When I got to the door, I realized I didn’t have any keys to get into the apartment. That’s when the hair stood up on my neck, and I desperately wanted to get inside.

I didn’t know what had spooked me, but every instinct in my body screamed run. I wasn’t going to argue. I’d nearly gained the top of the stairs when something caught my hair and tugged me backward. I opened my mouth to scream, and a hand stifled the sound.

A cold, clawed hand.

A startlingly familiar hand.

My sire’s hand.

Twenty

Transfusion

He wrenched my head back, hard. “What a nest of vipers you’ve fallen into.”

I shuddered. “All I have to do is scream, and—”

“But you won’t.” His fingers slid across my shoulders, dipping into the neck of my shirt. “Because you don’t want to fight me.”

“You’re right. I don’t want to fight you.” I clenched my teeth. “I want them to come up here and tear you to pieces.”

The unmistakable chill of metal pressed against my throat.

“I don’t think I’m the one who’s going to go to pieces here.” He drew the blade across my neck, and though I barely felt the sting of the cut, a warm cascade of blood wet the front of my shirt. Blood gurgled from my mouth.

“That should take care of your annoying talking problem.”

I heard the door open at the bottom of the stairs, but my vision swam. I couldn’t see who it was.

When I heard her call a farewell over her shoulder, I recognized Rachel’s voice.

If I could have called out, I would have. But Cyrus quickly backed into the narrow alley beside the building, dragging me with him.

“Imagine that. They’re all leaving.” He lowered his head and lapped at the blood flowing from my neck. “And you don’t have much time.”

He raised the knife again, and I was too weak to dodge it. The blade split my sternum, and for a terrifying moment I thought he’d struck my heart.

“I wouldn’t do that to you, Carrie,” he whispered against my ear as he sawed the blade upward. “If I punctured your heart, you’d be nothing but a pile of dust. No fun for Nathan to find you that way.”

As he wedged his fingers between my separated rib cage, his memories flashed through my mind.

The Soul Eater’s sadistic face filled my vision. “Hold still, boy. Your brother didn’t carry on so!”

My bones and cartilage cracked as Cyrus yanked my chest open. When I screamed in agony, I gagged on my blood.

The pictures in my head scrambled and jumped. I saw the face of the dead woman I’d seen before, the same one I’d seen beside Cyrus at the dinner party. She laughed and trailed her finger down the scar on Cyrus’s chest. “And why would I let him do that?” she asked.

Her mocking wounded him. “So we can be together forever.”

My vision cleared, and I saw Cyrus looming above me, his hands and clothes drenched in my blood. “And you’ll be with me forever.”

Those evil bells jingled again. I had no idea how long I’d been lying there. I couldn’t see Cyrus, but I heard his voice from somewhere in the alley. “If you live through the night.”

The blood on my shirt wasn’t warm anymore. It was nearly frozen to my skin. In the gap between the buildings, I saw no stars in the cold, clear sky.

Dawn would come soon.

I closed my eyes, unable to worry or care what would happen to me when the rising sun touched my flesh. It seemed simpler than being rescued. If someone found me, how would they fix me? I’d been damaged beyond repair, gutted like a fish.

I thought about what Nathan would think when he went upstairs and found the apartment empty. Maybe he’d think that I’d turned my back on his friendship again. Or that I’d been so angry with him that I’d returned to the man who’d killed his son.

Would he spend the rest of his life hating me?

Something soft and cool brushed my ear, a breeze in the windless night. I opened my eyes. All around me, the alley grew dim. Colors bled together into shapeless blobs that darkened with the rapid deceleration of my heart. The pain in my chest ebbed into a warm, focused feeling that lifted my whole body from any sensation.

Then the space that separated the shapeless blobs got smaller and smaller as the darkness became absolute. In the distance, I saw a point of light. It swelled and spiraled toward me.

In medical school, we’d been taught the Kubler-Ross theories of death. A glimmering tunnel, all your relatives and the deity of your choice waiting to welcome you.

When I’d gone on to my internship, I’d heard the nurses talk about “The Man at the End of My Bed,” a vision they claimed patients always reported on the night of their death.

Both versions of dying had been terrifying and alien to me, looming in the future like a standardized test or a root canal, something unpleasant you couldn’t avoid. What I was experiencing now was peaceful and gradual, my senses dropping away one by one as the intense light widened in my fading vision.

Instead of seeing heaven, I saw the alley and the street beyond. At my feet, I saw my lifeless body, torso splayed open like a macabre storybook.

I wished I could see the world around me all my life as it appeared now, painted in the washed-out tones of a water-color. Suddenly, where the sidewalks had been empty before, pale shadow forms drifted aimlessly in an eerie ballet. A big orange tabby cat jogged down the alley, pausing to sniff my body.