Possession-Blood Ties 2 (29 page)

That memory sparked the nagging feeling of having misplaced something, and he scrambled from the van, falling to his knees on the shoulder of the road. Mouse!

“You have to take me back,” he insisted before he heaved up his dinner on the sand. He got to his feet, head still reeling from the effects of whatever she’d used to drug him. “I have to go back.”

“You’re not going anywhere.” Carrie followed him the few steps he managed away from the van.

“They’re going to kill her.” Words seemed impossible. He couldn’t get them in the right order, couldn’t think of the ones that would convince her to take him to Mouse. “I don’t know anything about Nolen, just let me go back. I love her.”

“Right. Like you loved me.” Carrie laughed, becoming for a moment the great, heartless creation he’d wanted her to be. He should have been careful what he’d wished for.

“Listen, I’m not letting you run back to your undead girlfriend so you two can plot whatever you’ve got going.”

Undead? “No, you don’t understand.” But he couldn’t make her understand, either. He was drunk from…was it chloroform? A bitter trickle stung the back of his throat. “Please, I have to go back.”

She stepped closer, squinting at him as though she could see into his mind and detect an ulterior motive.

Let her search. She won’t find anything.

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
)

“Please.” He clenched his fists at his sides. There was some vital detail that would make her bend, he knew it. But his muddled brain wouldn’t seize on it. So he just repeated over and over, growing more frustrated by the minute, “Please.”

Something changed in her eyes. She was much harder, almost angry. “Get back in the van.”

“I won’t.” He realized he sounded like a petulant child, and must look ridiculous standing naked in the desert and refusing shelter. But he had to get to Mouse, before they knew he was gone. “I have to get back to her.”

“Get in the van, Cyrus,” Carrie repeated, pointing for emphasis. There was nothing to be done. She was stronger than him, he knew. And he was still drunk from the chemical. So he fell into the back of the van, weeping like a child. They would kill Mouse, and he would be alone again.

As they pulled onto the road, a brown bottle wrapped in a scorched rag slid to him as if pushed by a divine hand. If he’d believed in God, he would have thanked him. The front seats were partitioned from the back by heavy canvas drapes. He wet the rag with the chloroform and thrust his arm through the opening between the curtains. She tried to push his hand away, and the van swerved, nearly tossing him back. He clutched at the drapes and tried again, this time managing to cover her face. She had the sense to put on the brakes, and the vehicle slowed to a crawl as she went limp. Then her foot fell from the pedal and they rolled to a stop.

“We have to go back for her, because she’s human,” he explained as he pulled Carrie’s rag doll body into the back. As he situated himself behind the wheel, he shook his head to clear it. “Human. That was the word I was searching for.”

17

The Mouse

W hen I came to, I thought I was on a ship. In a storm. Then I recognized the van, and wondered who the hell was driving so badly.

And then I remembered Cyrus.

I pulled back the curtain and he shouted in surprise, swerving even worse than he’d already been, “Get back, Carrie, or I swear to God I’ll stake you!”

“With what?” I demanded, reaching toward my back pocket. He grabbed the stake he’d propped in the cup holder. “With this. Now sit down and shut up. We’re going back for her.”

“For who? Angie?” I laughed. “I’m sure you’ll find a replacement for her.”

“Angie?” He hit the accelerator hard, then let off abruptly. “No! Mouse. We have to go back for her before they figure out I’m gone. Damn it, is this the right way?”

A cold, sick feeling gripped my stomach. “Mouse?”

He glared at the road and hit the gas again. “Yes. It’s what I call her. Her real name is just ridiculous. She’s human.”

“She was human?” I eased into the passenger seat, shock slowly numbing my body. “I didn’t know she was human.”

“She is. Is human,” he insisted, pounding the steering wheel. “Am I even going the correct way?”

I nodded woodenly. I’d left a human being behind in that place? With those vampires?

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
)

Trembling, I reached into my pocket and withdrew the key. “Take this.”

He looked down for just a second, the car heading for an instant toward the shoulder as he did. “What is that, a marble?”

“It’ll help you find the place. Unless…you want me to drive,” I offered.

“No time,” he answered tersely.

I was as eager to get the girl out of there as he appeared to be, but I wasn’t willing to die in a fiery crash to do it. “Have you ever driven before?”

“No.” He sounded impatient. “It looks much easier in the movies.”

Ahead was the intersection just before the church. In the distance, where I should have seen the small, black shape of the burned-out ruin, the ghostly outline of the church broke the line of the horizon. Whatever spell the Fangs had cast on the place was wearing off.

“Maybe they’ve just gone and left her behind,” I said hopefully. But I knew better. So did Cyrus.

The tires squealed as he pulled into the parking lot. If he thought the Fangs were still there, he was sure making plenty of noise.

Grabbing a stake, he kicked the door open. “They won’t hurt me. They’ll probably kill you, though.”

“I’ll take my chances.” I pocketed a stake, too, just in case.

“Mouse!” he shouted as we entered the dark vestibule. But his voice fell silent at the sight of the sanctuary doors ripped from their hinges and lying like splinters of firewood on the carpet.

He seemed to freeze for a minute, his Adam’s apple the only part of him moving as he swallowed. “No.”

“Cyrus, wait,” I begged as he ran toward the basement door. I wanted to go first, for some crazy reason intent on shielding him from seeing something terrible. I was two steps behind him on the stairs. A single bulb hanging from the ceiling illuminated the apartment, and on the other side of the light I saw pale legs, barely distinguishable from the sheets, splayed at an unnatural angle across the bed. The sight didn’t stop him, didn’t register, just as the sight of the bloody bedclothes didn’t keep him from climbing onto the half-bare mattress beside her and slapping her face lightly. “Mouse? Wake up. Wake up.”

“Cyrus…” I began, but he couldn’t hear me. The girl’s dead eyes were open. They seemed to stare accusingly at me.

“Mouse?” Grief sounded strange in his cultured, British voice. “Wake up. Please.”

He buried his face close to her ruined neck, ripped from ear to ear by claws or teeth. He laid an open hand on her bloodstained hair, but his fingers curled into a fist and he lifted his head, making a sound that was a wail and a scream and a sob all in one. My back to the cinder block wall, I slid to the floor. I’d never seen an emotion so genuine and powerful from him as this. I’d never imagined him capable of this kind of sincere feeling.

He loved her. It struck me like a cold hand slapping my face. Had I known? Had I sensed it and intentionally left her behind? The thought made me sick. If I had done such a thing, I’d abandoned a human to die a cruel and humiliating death, and I’d done it out of spite. You didn’t know. The voice of sanity in my head didn’t belong to me. It was Nathan, in a moment of rare lucidity. And he was more concerned for me than for himself. That broke

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
)

my heart more than it should have.

Nathan. I don’t know if I can help you. I was tired, tired from my journey and tired from witnessing this carnage. I just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep for years. Nathan’s elusive clarity disappeared again, leaving me no way to escape Cyrus’s raw hurt, which so closely resembled the agony in Nathan’s soul.

“I’m sorry,” Cyrus whispered, cradling the girl’s limp body to his. “I’m so sorry.”

Burdened by Nathan’s pain and my own guilt over the death of this innocent girl, I closed my eyes. There was nothing I could do to fix my error, no way to comfort Cyrus or make things better. The life of this girl was snuffed out forever, and I’d caused it. Her death would hang like a noose around my neck for the rest of my life. When Ziggy had died, I’d blamed myself for not protecting him, but I’d been able to lay most of the blame on Cyrus, who’d done the actual killing. I’d even blamed Nathan some, for overreacting to finding his son in a compromising position and driving him away. But I had no way of avoiding my guilt now, no way of reasoning it away. I’d fucked up, and now this girl was dead.

No wonder some vampires didn’t enjoy the killing. How could they, with this feeling always hanging over them? For the first time, I began to understand a fraction of Nathan’s pain and heartache. The agony I felt over this girl eerily mirrored the turmoil Nathan experienced now.

Something shifted in my mind, as though one of those jumbled puzzle pieces had fallen inexplicably into place. But I didn’t have time to ponder it. When I looked up, Cyrus’s cold, blue eyes locked on me with murderous intensity.

“You did this,” he whispered. “You killed her.”

“I didn’t know.” I rose slowly, aware the gesture betrayed my fear of him. But what did I have to fear? He was human. I was a vampire. I had more physical strength and faster reflexes.

But he had nothing to lose, now.

“I tried to tell you.” His voice was that calm one I knew so well from my days as his willing prisoner. A calm that would turn to fury without warning. “You didn’t let me explain. And now she’s dead.”

“You will be, too, if we don’t get out of here.” It was an empty threat. The place was abandoned.

He shook his head with an expression of stony resolve. “I’m staying with her.”

“There’s nothing you can do for her now.” I highly doubted there was anything that could have been done for her if we had gotten there just after they’d attacked.

“I deserted her.” He kissed her bloodless forehead the way a mother would kiss her child’s head. “I’m not going to do it again.”

“You didn’t desert her. You were kidnapped,” I reminded him. Stupidly, since he’d apparently moved on from blaming me, and for a moment I’d stood a chance of not being staked while I slept. “Please, Cyrus. Let me get you out of here before your father finds you.”

The words fell like a veil over him, obscuring the strangely human Cyrus before me long enough for him to assume the cold expression of the Cyrus I knew. Though it was familiar, it wasn’t comforting.

“My father.” He rolled the words in his mouth like a bit of food he was considering

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
)

spitting out. “No, I think I’d like to see my father.”

I forced away the chill that crept up my spine. “I can’t let you do that. You know I can’t.”

“Why?” He laid her on the bed and stood. “Do you think you have the power to stop me?”

He advanced with the predatory grace I remembered. The languid movements that had made me weak-kneed with desire and terror alternately. Even without his vampire charisma, he seemed dangerous.

“You have to sleep sometime.” The way he said it, as a casual comment and not a threat, made it all the more frightening. “When you do, I’ll toss you out into the hot sand and watch you burn, the way you watched me burn.”

I wanted to swallow, to soothe my suddenly dry throat, but I didn’t want him to take it for a sign of weakness. So I spoke with a voice like a pack-a-day smoker. “And how did I watch you burn?”

“Without remorse.” It didn’t take him any time to answer. “With pleasure.”

He turned away again, went to the dresser and pulled out clothes. The act shocked me. I’d grown so used to his nakedness, I hadn’t truly seen it until now. I waited until he had some pants on to respond. “That’s not how I remember it.”

He snorted. “I’m so concerned with how you remember it. Do please write it down, so I can read it should I ever find I care.”

“Whether or not you care, you can’t accuse me of being heartless.” Shocking wetness stung my eyes, and I blinked it away. The thought that I was about to say things I wished so many times I could have said to him before lent an air of importance to the moment. It dried my words up, and I floundered to think of what I should say. “I wanted to save you so many times.”

His back went rigid, and though he didn’t face me, I saw his jaw tighten in profile. “Oh?”

“I wanted you to be a better person. I thought if I could see just a little of the good in you…” I shook my head. “But I never did. You never showed me an ounce of the good in you. If you had, I could have loved you.”

He looked at the ceiling, his head limp on his neck as if in defeat. Then he rounded on me with frightening speed, catching me off guard and pushing my back to the wall. His grip on my shoulders was painful, but I didn’t struggle. He leaned close to my face, so close it was hard to focus on his furious eyes. “I was supposed to show you the good in me? I was supposed to make you love me?”

My breath exploded when he shoved me into the wall. He pointed to the corpse on the bed, stabbing the air forcefully as though he could wound it. “She loved me. She loved me! So maybe the problem didn’t lie with me.”

“She was trapped in a basement with you! You were the only other human here!” The words were cruel, but I couldn’t stop them. “Of course she loved you, if you protected her from them!”

He slapped me, but his heart wasn’t in it, and I barely felt the blow. “Don’t say these things to me! Do you think I haven’t thought them myself? She loved me. She loved me and I—”

His face crumpled and tears spilled over his eyelids. “She loved me,” he repeated, grasping my shoulders, shoving me against the cinder blocks over and over. I could have reacted with anger. I could have knocked him out and dragged him back to the van. There was still the threat of the Fangs, and the even greater threat that a passerby