armintrout.jennifer: blood ties 2 - posession
POSSESSION
Blood Ties Book Two
By Jennifer Armintrout
Â
Prologue - Welcome Back
He didn't know how long he'd been dead. There was no time, no season, no change, only eternity.
Shadows stumbled around him on the other side of the veil. Two in particular caught his attention. He knew
what they were. He'd been one of them.
The life he craved was accessible to them. Now, as in his living death, he wanted to leech it from the mortals
who couldn't protect themselves. If he could envy this undead pair, he would, but there was no time. They had
no life, so they were none of his concern.
On the other side, they couldn't see him. When he was of the world but not alive, he couldn't see the ones
who'd gone before him, either. Despite their sightlessness, they appeared to follow him. He moved away. He
wanted life.
It was a fool's errand, his never-ceasing search for that mortal energy. It throbbed in the people and animals
he passed every day, but he could not touch it. Thin though the veil was, it separated him from what he craved.
He could reach for it, hold it in his hands, but the film of the shadow curtain always kept him from it.
Color, alien to this existence, would have shocked his senses, if he'd had any. The lifeless pair held something
between them, shimmering and frightening like the fiery sword the angel held at the gates ofEden . It drew
shadows to it like moths to the flame, though he hated such cliché description. He hated more that the thing
drew him, as well. The shining rift split wider, and a hand, not full of life but real nonetheless, thrust through.
The other shadows clamored for it, sliding over it. Like water on oil, they rolled off the corporeal skin. As if
searching specifically for him, the intruder pushed the others aside and grasped him. He stuck.
Page 1
He hadn't felt panic since he'd died. Hadn't felt despair since her betrayal. He felt it now as the rough, real
fingers pulled him through the rift.
Thick and heavy, feelings he'd almost forgotten happened all at once. Slippery and hot, sensations he
remembered being pleasant at one time engulfed him. His formless being squeezed and conformed into a
shape at once familiar and horrifyingly foreign.
Too bright. Too cold. Too real.
Too loud.
One of the pair laughed like jagged glass. "We fucking did it! I can't believe we fucking did it!"
The light stung his eyes. He blinked, but his vision didn't clear. In his chest, he felt a thump that hadn't been a
part of him for centuries-the beating of a human heart.
Alive. He was alive.
He dropped to the floor, screaming and clawing at his mortal prison.
The one who'd done it leaned over him and slapped him on the back. The connection of flesh against flesh
drove needles of sensation to the bone.
"Welcome back, Cyrus."
Chapter 1 - Nightmare
Page 2
"You dreamed about him this morning, Carrie."
At the sound of Nathan's voice, my hands froze on my keyboard. "You're watching me sleep again?"
This worried me. Besides being phenomenally creepy, my sire's habit of spying on my nightmares usually
flares up when there's trouble on the horizon. Before our big fight with him two months ago, I'd often wake to
find Nathan in bed beside me, staring at me as though I'd disappear if he looked away. Just three weeks after
that, when our new blood donor had broken in with the intent to stake us in our beds, Nathan had been sitting
in my desk chair, watching over me, waiting for something, anything to happen.
Rather than looming in my doorway, he'd come in and sat down on my bed-there really was no place else to
go, the room was so small-and settled in as though he'd been invited. Not that I'd been offended. It was his
apartment, and Ziggy's old room didn't feel quite like home to me.
I studied Nathan as he watched me. I assumed he tried to gauge my mood. He detests arguing with me, and
he'd obviously had other hopes for how the conversation would go.
Tough.
"So, I'm worried." At my arched brow, he acceded, "Fine, I'm irrationally angry with you."
Damn him for looking good. Time stops bothering with you when you become a vampire, and Nathan was
frozen at thirty-two. Despite the pallor that comes with seventy years of avoiding sunlight, he remained just as
young and handsome as he'd appeared in the photographs he'd saved from his prevam-pire life. More so,
actually, because this Nathan was in my bedroom, in living color. Dark hair, gorgeous gray eyes, a body so
toned and hard he looked like he'd been a statue of a Greek god in a past life. But it was his eyes that had made
me fall for him. Even though he'd been acting tough, and threatening my life the first time we'd met, I'd seen
the kindness and sorrow in them. His eyes weren't just windows to his soul. They were doors that let out things
he wouldn't have been able to hide from me even without a blood tie between us.
I'd turned back to my computer, where my latest dissertation on vampire physiology had waited with an
impatiently flashing cursor. You can take the human out of the doctor, but you can't take the doctor out of the
vampire. Or something like that. I'd been working on A Case Study of Blood Type Compatibility for
Metabolic Efficiency to kill time and distract me from the craziness of the past two months. But it had
inevitably caught up with me, so when Nathan had burst in I'd been typing "Crazy Yellow Tube Socks" over
Page 3
and over again. "You said irrationally, not me."
"I can't help it." His embarrassment was evident through the blood tie, but it didn't quell my annoyance.
"What's going on?"
"Well, for one, I'm tired of this stupid research project-"
"You're tired of it? I was the one drinking AB negative all damn week." Though he chuckled, there was a
wearing note to the sound.
"And you've been watching me sleep, which usually means something major is about to happen. Plus, I've
been having these nightmares." I covered my face with my hands, massaging my tired skin. "I'm sure it's
nothing."
"It didn't sound like 'nothing.'" The bedsprings squeaked as he stood.
I dropped my hands and gave him a withering look. "Oh, he listens as well as watches."
The ghost of a sarcastic smile crossed his face as he knelt beside my chair. "You make it sound so dirty."
I knew he couldn't help the surge of playful lust that reached me through the blood tie, because our brains
were on a weird, telepathic party line. Unless he blocked me or vice versa, we heard each other's thoughts and
felt each other's emotions. If one of us had even the slightest inclination toward getting physical, the other one
knew-and usually acted on-it.
Unfortunately, the blood tie doesn't filter negative emotions out, so I always got a heaping helping of after-sex
guilt. Thoughts of Marianne, his dead wife, were never far from his mind, so the punishment game usually
kicked in within minutes of la petit mort. Once I felt his guilt, I added some of my own over the fact I'd helped
cause it, and the resultant snowball effect was a good enough reason to avoid sex with him altogether.
At least, not beyond a few just-to-get-it-out-of-our-system flings. Giving those up would be like kicking
Page 4
heroin cold turkey.
The thought depressed me, so I put it aside. I swiveled my desk chair around and leaned back. "Seriously,
why are you watching me?"
"The nightmares."
I shrugged, hoping to pass off my terrifying dreams as a regular occurrence. "I have a lot of nightmares."
"You said his name."
Nathan wasn't my first sire. Cyrus, whom I only knew as "John Doe" when he'd attacked me in the hospital
morgue, had made me a vampire. He'd also nearly made me dead when I hadn't been willing to satisfy his
twisted desires. When I'd turned to Nathan and the Voluntary Vampire Extinction Movement for help, Cyrus
had removed one of my two hearts-a strange physiological trait unique to vampires-and left me bleeding to
death in the alley behind Nathan's building. When Nathan found me, I'd already died. He'd revived me by
giving me his blood, and it'd had the desired effect-I was alive, after all. He just hadn't realized he would
"re-sire" me.
He'd already had a deep-seated hatred of Cyrus. Now, as my new sire, he felt it ten times stronger. He hated if
I even mentioned my first sire in passing. The evil, antagonistic side of me couldn't help but do it now.
"Maybe my dreams about Cyrus are a subconscious thing to rile you."
He raised an eyebrow. "That's the same excuse you use for leaving the cap off the toothpaste."
He was right. He's usually right. Damned sire's intuition. I shut off my computer monitor and leaned back in
my chair. "I'm guessing you have some sort of theory here."
"Not yet. I was hoping to form it while you tell me-in detail-about these dreams. Then I was going to cut you
off with a big, dramatic exclamation, something along the lines of 'aha!' at which point you'd find yourself
impressed and slightly aroused by my genius." He shrugged. "But now, I guess I'll just settle for the detail
part."
Page 5
I rolled my eyes and folded my arms across my chest. "I never see his face, but I know it's him."
Nathan nodded, indicating I should continue.
"There aren't any colors except blue." I bit my lip. "The watercolor kind of blue I remember from when I
was...dead."
A deep frown creased Nathan's brow, a sure sign I'd piqued his interest with my story. "Are you sure it's not
your super-conscious working through that night?"
When I had those dreams, I always saw the same things. The bright orange cat that had passed my splayed
body. The thick shapes of the shadow people coming to claim me. I didn't bother Nathan with these memories.
My brief death-the second one-had traumatized him enough. "Cut the psych bullshit. You think I'm having
these dreams for a reason, don't you?"
He let out a long breath as his mind searched for nonanswers. "I suppose it could be some residue of your
former blood tie to him."
"But why now?" I shook my head. "It's been two months. What could have happened to reactivate the tie
now?"
Nathan stood, trying-and failing-to look unconcerned. "It could be anything. I'll have Max do some digging in
the Movement files."
The Voluntary Vampire Extinction Movement was a harsh, totalitarian organization demanding the death of
vampires who didn't live by their strict code. Nathan had been on probation for seventy years for killing his
wife, though it hadn't been entirely his fault, and by siring me he'd broken one of the cardinal rules: preventing
the inevitable death of a wounded vampire. Rather than wait until they found out and killed him, Nathan had
chosen to go outlaw. But he maintained ties to Max Harrison, the only other vampire who knew the
circumstances surrounding Nathan and me.
Page 6
I smiled. "I'm sure he'll be thrilled with the assignment."
"He doesn't have a choice," Nathan said cheerfully. He no longer hid the fact he lived to make Max's life hell.
"Well, the sun's long down. I'd better get downstairs and earn my keep. Are you going to work tonight? I've
got some inventory that needs cataloging."
"As tempting as it sounds, no." I'd clocked enough unpaid hours in Nathan's occult bookshop to last several
lifetimes. If I never saw another Book of Shadows or packet of herbs, it would be too soon. I gestured to the
computer. "I need to finish this before it drives me insane."
"Likewise." He made a face. "Next time you want to do some crazy experiment, use someone else as your lab
rat."
I heard the door shut behind him as he left. Usually, he locked it, but I heard no telltale jingle of keys.
Vampires take the bond between sire and fledgling as seriously as humans do the bond between parent and
child. Normally, Nathan was frighteningly overprotective of me. I tried to push aside the feeling that
something might be wrong. Those thoughts were like poison ivy. Once you scratch it, the infection spreads
and grows. I didn't need to spend the night on pins and needles, jumping at the slightest sound.
I flipped on the monitor, hoping to lose myself in medical jargon, but I couldn't concentrate. My unease grew,
my palms began to sweat and my stomach tingled. I ticked off the symptoms in my mind and only then
recognized my body's reaction.
Fight or flight.
The primitive response to fear had slowly built in me, but I was in no immediate danger. My heart did a
panicky flip-flop in my chest as I stared at my reflection behind the words on the screen. My pupils had
dilated. My face began to morph into monster mode. I stood, willing myself to calm down. There was no
reason to feel this way.
Unless it was the blood tie.
Page 7
Nathan.
I ran from my room, knocking over my desk chair as I took off. Our apartment was on the top floor of
Nathan's building. The bookstore was in the basement. I tore down the stairs as fast as I could, gripping the
rails as my feet tripped gracelessly over themselves. The door at the bottom seemed light-years away. I burst
through it and onto the street. The chill air of the early spring night took my breath away.
Then pain took it, and I gave up hope of getting it back.
The blood tie was gone. Not in the way it felt when Nathan simply hid his thoughts from me. That was like a
brick wall. This was...void. If the tie were a length of cord stretched between us, one end had simply gone
slack.
Nathan was dead.
...
jessab