Blood Ties Book Four: All Souls' Night. Jennifer Armintrout
Читать онлайн книгу.
two weeks.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Nathan told him, sounding menacing and reassuring at the same time. “But if you tell anyone that we’re here, and what we’ve asked you about, I can guarantee you’ll come away from this place with more than a bruised-up hand.”
Since we’d pretty much covered everything and made all the threats we could reasonably make, we all sealed the deal with an awkward three-way handshake.
“What do you think?” I asked Nathan later as I stood at the windows in the library, watching the traffic pass on the street below. The sun had set, but twilight kept the sidewalk around Grant Park bright with a diffused glow. In the reflection in the glass, I saw myself, just as blond and pale and plain as ever, and Nathan, coming to stand behind me, all brooding dark, like an undead Heathcliff with his mussed black hair and hard, chiseled features.
He wrapped his arms around my waist and leaned his face close to mine, so that his deep voice, softly accented with his native Scots Gaelic, stirred my hair and tickled my ear. “I don’t know. I think that we will either find information that will be helpful to us and get us into a lot of trouble, or we’ll find information that isn’t helpful to us and we’ll still get into a lot of trouble.”
“Trouble is inevitable.” I turned and stepped out of his embrace, putting some distance between us. Being close to Nathan always affected my judgment. “Do we really need to find it for ourselves? You’ve already been shot. Speaking of which, let me look at it.” I crossed the space between us and reached for the bottom of his T-shirt. I pulled up the fabric to see the wound, nearly healed, just a paler patch of white against his normal pallor. “It looks okay. Thank God.”
He pulled his shirt down, a little reluctantly, as if he didn’t want to break the contact of my fingers against his skin. “It’s like any wound. Nothing to be alarmed about.”
“Nothing to be alarmed about? Nathan, I would be worried if you had a paper cut, let alone a gunshot wound.” I rubbed my temples to ease a headache I didn’t have, but I suspected I would later on. “I’m worrying needlessly, aren’t I?”
“It’s nice to be worried about,” he assured me. The corners of his eyes crinkled when he fake smiled the way he was now. “Really, it’s just nice to know you still worry about me.”
I didn’t respond with more than a smile. He wanted a different answer, that much was clear. But I wasn’t in a position to give it to him.
It was the story of our relationship, it seemed. From the moment we’d met, we’d both been on very different pages with each other. At first, he’d been in love with his dead wife, and I’d been enthralled by Cyrus, my first sire. When I’d finally gotten over that—and Nathan had accidentally resired me and saved my undead life by giving me his blood after I was attacked by Cyrus—Nathan realized he wasn’t anywhere near finished grieving for his lost wife. Then, when he finally was, Cyrus had come back into my life, and departed it just as quickly and painfully. Every day I began to appreciate more the way Nathan must have felt when I had pressed him again and again to give me love he just hadn’t felt. I wasn’t whole enough to give him love now, but I could certainly give him sympathy.
“Ah, well,” he said to break the awkwardness between us. Still, I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I was relieved when Nathan’s cell phone chirped.
“Nathan Grant,” he said after he’d flipped the phone open. I’ll never understand why men always seem to answer the phone that way, stating their names instead of just saying “hello.” I shook my head as I turned toward the fireplace. A fire might be nice, in the morning.
I heard the soft drum of something falling to the carpet, and I turned. Nathan stood, empty-handed, the phone still open on the floor. He stared at it as though it were a talking frog or a shimmering mirage, something you hear about but never see. A mixture of fear, disbelief and, strangely, happiness warred on his face.
As he made no move to pick up the phone, I knelt and lifted it to my ear.
The voice through the speaker was tinny and broken by static, but a chill of recognition ran up my spine. “Hello? Hello? Nate, are you still there? Dad?”
It was Ziggy.
Chapter Two: Unhappy Returns
“Scusilo, dove è il deposito di pattino?”
“That sounds terrible. Your accent is all wrong.”
Max turned from the mirror and pulled his headphones from his ear, hitting the pause button on his iPod. “You know, your ‘helpful’ criticism really isn’t helping. We’ve been here three weeks and I still can’t talk to anyone. It doesn’t hurt to try and learn something new.”
With a sympathetic look, Bella held out her arms, and Max crossed the bedroom to join her on their bed. The French doors to the balcony stood open and afternoon sunshine poured in. He stepped around a band of it on the floor, forgetting, as usual, that he no longer needed to fear it. Taking a deep breath, he walked through the warm rays and slid onto the crisp white bedspread.
“Why do you always do that?” Bella asked, her voice still rough from sleep. She slept all the time lately, but Max couldn’t fault her for it. It was common, apparently, for pregnant women to be exhausted, and he guessed that doubled for pregnant women who were recuperating from nearly mortal injuries, as well.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, turning his gaze back to the sunlit windows. “I just always have my fingers crossed.”
His full change from vampire to half-vampire, half-werewolf hybrid creature—the word lupin was as hated as he’d expected it would be in a werewolf pack, so he never used it—had been more gradual than he would have liked. The worst part was, they’d had no idea what traits would stick until after he’d actually shifted into his wolf form. After that, a whole world of weirdness opened up to him, and between hairier legs and a sadistic urge to pull riders off their bicycles and devour them, the vampiric aversion to sunlight had somehow vanished.
It had been a fortunately happy accident that they’d discovered it at all. From the moment they’d arrived to, in Max’s opinion, a hostile welcome in Italy, members of Bella’s family had made it very clear that no concessions to his vampirism would be made. And, since the family—the entire family—lived in the same, window-covered villa on a sunny, sun-drenched cliff, he’d found himself confined to Bella’s bedroom every day. Only when one of Bella’s “well-meaning” aunts had come into the room while they slept and opened the curtains, flooding the room with frying light, had he realized that he no longer had to worry about such “well-meaning” people burning him to death with UV rays.
He’d also realized that it would take a lot more than Bella’s love for him to convince her family he was an okay guy. Hence the studying Italian, so that he could fit in and also, admittedly, so he could tell what they were saying about him.
More importantly, he’d realized that he really didn’t give a damn about what they might try to do to him. He was actually, really, truly in love with the woman who was carrying his child, and, despite having to drink blood and change into a wolf at the full moon, he felt more normal than he had in years.
He dipped his face to sniff Bella’s neck and planted a kiss on her sleep-warmed skin. Rather than simply patting his thigh and rolling away from him, as she had been doing for the past few weeks, she stretched her neck and writhed her body against his. Jackpot.
He loved her. God, did he love her. And he understood that pregnancy could be rough on a woman, even one as strong as Bella. But it had been a long, long time, and he was only…not human.
“So, is this official, or are we just getting my hopes up to dash them again?” He smiled against her neck and gave her jaw a playful nip, so she would know he was half joking. And he ground his hard-on into her hip, so she would know he was half-serious, too.
Bella laughed, a sound that was so oddly