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. Jennifer Armintrout
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Ziggy, nor did I feel comfortable just turning the kid loose on the streets. I would hand him over to one person, and one alone. “I need you to deliver a note.”
He appeared reluctant. “You could ask the Master. He has messengers.”
“No. Cyrus can’t know about this.” Almost without thinking, I smoothed back a damp strand of Ziggy’s hair. His gaze darted over my face and his mouth moved slightly, but I could tell the drug hadn’t yet worn off completely. Had he been given another dose?
I wanted to be able to smile, to give him some reassurance, but I couldn’t. I turned back to Clarence. “Please. I want to notify this boy’s father. I want to get him out of here.”
Ziggy’s body spasmed. Great, I thought, he’s allergic to whatever Cyrus gave him, and he’s going to have a seizure. To my relief, the twitches that followed were much tamer, a sign that his muscles were slowly coming back to awareness after their paralysis.
“Give me your letter,” Clarence said somewhat reluctantly. “And tell me the address.”
“1320 Wealthy Avenue,” I said, choking back tears of relief. “The note’s on the table there. Do you want me to write down the number?”
“No, ma’am. 1320 Wealthy Avenue. Will you require anything else?”
A declaration of loyalty like the knights gave Arthur in all those Camelot movies would have been nice, but I doubted I would get one from Clarence. The only guarantee I had was the fact he hated Cyrus and probably wouldn’t go out of his way to make his master happy.
Clarence nodded as though he’d read and agreed with my thought, then he left without another word. Once he had gone, I knelt at Ziggy’s side.
His eyes searched my face, and his mouth worked feebly to speak. I laid my hand on his chest, hoping the touch comforted him. “Ziggy, I believe the drugs he gave you are wearing off. Did he give you another dose? Blink once for yes.”
With visible effort, his eyes closed briefly, then snapped open.
“You have some bite marks I think might need cleaning. Can I examine you?”
Two blinks and an angry glare.
I sighed. “I’m sorry I bit you. I really am. But I couldn’t let Cyrus know who you were. He’d kill you. You know I wouldn’t have done it in any other circumstance.”
Two blinks.
“Ziggy, please. I don’t want you to get an infection I can easily prevent.”
After a long moment, one blink.
I went to the bathroom and scrubbed my hands thoroughly. Then, with the consideration I’d give a sexual assault case in the E.R., I began my examination.
“I’m going to take this sheet off of you, but I’ll rearrange it so you’re not completely uncovered. Right now, all I’m doing is evaluating the severity of your injuries.”
And some were pretty severe. Long, but fairly shallow cuts latticed his chest. Hideous, purple bruises darkened his skin, and claw marks showed where Cyrus had gripped the boy’s shoulders. When I moved lower, I saw bite marks, not inflicted by fangs, but blunt, human teeth, on the inside of his thighs. I turned my head away.
When I looked back, I saw a tear roll from Ziggy’s eye. He wouldn’t look at me.
A few hours ago, he’d been indulging in what looked like some pretty terrific sex. Then he’d run away from the only home he’d ever known, just to come here and be violated and humiliated by Cyrus. And me.
I debraded the bites and scratches and covered the worst with squares of gauze. “Do you hurt…anywhere else?”
He answered with two blinks, but croaked a barely audible “No.”
I went to wash my hands and snag an extra blanket from my bed. When I came back, I tucked Ziggy in, then dropped wearily into a chair. He spoke again, with more strength behind his voice this time. “Thank you.”
I heard the emotion in his words and tried to sound casual. “It’s okay. If you need anything else, just let me know.”
“Some aspirin would be nice. I’m sore all over.” He swallowed with a wince.
I looked through the medicine kit and found a bottle of acetaminophen. “This will have to do. I don’t want to thin your blood, with all those…wounds.”
I couldn’t say bites. I crushed the pills into quarters so they’d go down easier and got a paper cup of water from the bathroom sink. Slipping my hand behind his head, I helped him to ingest the pills. “Why did you come here?”
He choked a little on the water, and it roughened his voice. He sounded like a man, not the boy who’d attacked me in the bookshop. “You saw what happened. He kicked me out.”
“That doesn’t explain why you’d come here. You knew who lived here.”
“I knew you lived here.” His arm jerked in an effort to wipe away his tears, but he couldn’t yet control his limbs. “I thought you’d let me stay. I didn’t know you were going to feed off me and let him do w-what he did to me.” The last part came out as a shamed whisper, and he closed his eyes. “I love irony, when it doesn’t happen to me.”
He felt he was being punished. I wanted to weep for him, trapped in his prison of self-loathing, but he didn’t need that now. He would shun my pity and turn away from me. Then he’d have no allies left. “You didn’t deserve this.”
“Yeah, well. That’s your opinion.” He laughed bitterly, and more tears rolled silently from his eyes to wet the hair at his temples.
“It’s not an opinion. It’s a fact,” I told him sternly. “You didn’t deserve what he did to you.”
He looked away, and I could practically feel the blame radiating from him.
I cleared my throat softly and decided to change the subject. “Ziggy, when you got here, did you tell anyone you knew me?”
“Yeah. The guards at the door. I told them I was looking for the doctor, that I knew you from the hospital.” He sniffled. “Don’t worry, I didn’t mention the Movement. I figured they would have probably killed me.”
Rage brought me to my feet. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
With enough strength to splinter the hinges, I wrenched the secret door open and strode into Cyrus’s chamber. Two guards stood at his bedroom door, but they stepped aside and even opened it to admit me.
Cyrus was sprawled naked across the bed, the sheets and blankets in a tangled heap on the floor. Blood spattered the linen beneath him, and he snored in the depths of a contented sleep.
I could kill him right now and he’d never see it coming. The thought came before I had a chance to guard my mind from him, and I tensed, waiting for a response. His breath hitched, but he didn’t wake.
I stepped to the side of the bed, intending to wake him, but his arm shot out and caught my wrist. He pulled me down and pinned me beneath him.
“You’re mad enough to kill me, then?” he murmured against my neck. “You should have brought a weapon, because I can guarantee you won’t be able to do it with your bare hands.”
I didn’t struggle. “How could you do that to him?”
“How could you lie to me?” He twisted a hand in my hair, wrenching my head back painfully. “‘Who is he?’ you asked, as though you hadn’t the faintest clue that he’d come asking after you. As if I were stupid enough not to notice you’d cut yourself off from the blood tie, become so closed down to me that it was obvious you hid something. Who is this man to you, Carrie?”
I wanted to spit in his face. “He isn’t a man. He’s practically a child. And he’s a friend of mine. He was looking for a place to stay.”