Blood Ties Book Two: Possession. Jennifer Armintrout

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СКАЧАТЬ through his heart, he asked quietly, “Gone?”

      I shook my head and wiped my eyes. “Not like that. He was here. His body was here. But he wasn’t.”

      “He was possessed?”

      “Not exactly.” How could I explain it? “There wasn’t anything of Nathan left at all. Could you turn off that radio?”

      Max nodded and fumbled with the alarm clock until “Go Your Own Way” cut out in the middle. “I hate that song, anyway.”

      I covered my eyes, and he pulled me into his arms again. No matter how good the physical comfort felt, it did nothing to dull the ache in my heart.

      “What happened?” he asked softly.

      I didn’t let go of him. “I felt it through the blood tie. Something was wrong. So I went downstairs.”

      When I couldn’t finish, he shushed me and patted my back. For all his come-ons and attitude, Max was actually a very understanding man. “Listen, I’m going to go downstairs and look around. You stay up here where you’ll be safe.” He leaned back and looked me in the eye. “Okay?”

      I followed him to the living room and watched him pull some stakes from his bag. “Be careful.”

      He looked up, the most fake smile I’d ever seen on his face. “I can take care of myself, Doctor.”

      “No, not that. I mean, if Nathan is down there…”

      Max followed my gaze to the stake in his hand. When our eyes met, his expression broke my heart more than it already was. “Give me a little credit, Carrie.”

      “Sorry.” Dangerously close to tears, I turned away and pretended to be interested in something on one of the many bookshelves lining the wall. Only when I heard the door click softly closed behind me did I allow myself to wipe my eyes. When I looked up, the spines of Nathan’s ridiculously large collection of books confronted me. When I glanced away, I saw his chair, his shoes. A half-finished mug of blood atop a stack of notebooks. All of the components were there, all of the little parts that made Nathan’s life, waiting for him to return to them. It made his absence more real somehow, and mocked my pain. If we never found Nathan, these little reminders of him would remain for me to deal with.

      I don’t know how long I stood there staring at the photo, but when the rattle of the doorknob heralded Max’s return, his speed surprised me.

      He shrugged off his jacket and tossed it over the back of the chair. “There’s nothing. Just a lot of really nasty-smelling blood. I’m assuming that was his?”

      I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

      “There’s nothing else we can do tonight.” He rubbed the back of his neck and swore. “Tell me what happened.”

       The symbols.

      “There were marks.” I scrambled for a notebook and pen I spied on the perpetually cluttered coffee table. “Strange things he’d carved all over his body.”

      “Carved? As in cut?” Max came around the chair and stood beside me, looming hopefully over my shoulder as I scribbled what I could remember of them.

      “I think they were sigils, or something.” I closed my eyes, but couldn’t get a clear picture. “It all looked like random angles with circles on the end.”

      When I handed him the paper, he frowned and traced his fingers over the symbols. “You’re sure this is right?”

      “Well, I didn’t take a picture of them, but when a bleeding, naked man with funky writing carved all over his body is pinning you to the ground, you have other things on your mind.” I chewed my lip and pointed to the page. “What do you think?”

      “He attacked you?” Max’s eyes darted over me, looking for signs of injury. “Are you okay?”

      “Yeah.” I hadn’t thought to mention the attack, and the omission seemed ridiculous now. I almost laughed at my stupidity. “He stopped. I think…I think he knew it was me. He smelled me and then he just…stopped.”

      Max considered the information for a moment, then turned back to the page. “Does Nathan speak any other languages?” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “Aramaic, Hindi, Greek? Something with letters that look different from ours?”

      I shook my head. “Gaelic, from childhood, but the letters look the same. He slips into it sometimes when he’s tired or drunk, but—”

      Max chuckled. “I’ll file that away for future reference.”

      The fact he believed Nathan had a future reassured me a little. I sat on the couch while Max punched up a number on his phone. “Who are you calling?”

      “Movement,” Max said casually as if he wasn’t standing in the home of two fugitive vampires.

      I lunged for the phone.

      He yelped in surprise and jumped back. “Hey, what are you doing?”

      “You can’t call the Movement,” I whispered fiercely as though they could hear me. “They’ll kill us.”

      “They’ll want to know something happened to Nathan. Besides, who’s going to help us? The oh-so-reliable spell books downstairs?” He turned away to speak into the phone. “Hola, baby. It’s Harrison. Get me Anne.”

      My heart pounded in my chest as I stood helplessly by while Nathan’s only friend turned Judas.

      “Anne, cómo está? It’s Harrison.” He paused, then burst out with a hearty laugh.

      How could he do this? I seethed, tuning out his conversation. Nathan had quit the Voluntary Vampire Extinction Movement when he’d sired me. We’d been flying under the radar ever since, and now Max was going to bring us to their attention?

      “Gotcha.” His smile widened. “We’ll be on the plane at sunset.”

      “Plane?” I barely held the word in until he’d hung up the phone. “Where are you going?”

      “We are going to Movement headquarters. In Madrid,” he added casually as if location would be my prime concern.

      “Excuse me? We? You expect me to march into a building full of assassins who’ve been commanded to kill me on sight?” I shook my head emphatically. “No way.”

      Max laughed. “You give yourself a lot of credit, you know that? There are thousands of renegade vampires roaming the earth. You’re a two-month-old who killed her sire. Even if you mentioned your name to every person in the place, I bet you wouldn’t come across one vampire who recognized it.”

      “But you told them about Nathan.” I gestured to the phone in his hand. “They’ll know to look out for him, then.”

      Max tossed the cell onto the coffee table and sat beside me. “He was a good assassin. They’re upset that he’s left the fold, but they’re not going to put a bounty on him unless he really steps over the line. There are way too many vampires out there СКАЧАТЬ