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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“Attacked by vampire. Please advise.”
I didn’t have to wait long for a reply. Before I could get up for a bathroom break, my e-mail program chimed.
The first response informed me I was a psycho. The second suggested I might be watching too many late-night movies. Another tried to lovingly counsel me away from my obviously abusive relationship. For people who were supposed to believe in vampires, they sure didn’t seem very open to the possibility one might actually exist.
I began deleting responses as they rolled in, until one subject line caught my eye.
1320 Wealthy Ave.
I recognized the street. It wasn’t far from where I lived. Just outside of downtown, it was a street where the college students spent money from home on Georgia O’Keeffe prints in poster stores next to bodegas where migrant families bought their meager groceries. I’d driven through the neighborhood, but I’d never stopped.
The content of the e-mail was simply this: after sundown, any night this week.
The digital clock in the corner of the computer screen’s display read 5:00 p.m. After sundown.
I didn’t have to go to work for six more hours.
I only had to get in my car and drive.
But it seemed a dicey proposition. Curiosity had nearly killed this cat already. The sender could be a deranged groupie or vampire fanatic. Sure, he or she might be perfectly harmless and just having a bit of fun, but I didn’t relish the thought of spending another month in the hospital.
How could I go to an unknown address at the advice of an anonymous e-mail? Well, it wasn’t exactly anonymous. [email protected] wasn’t exactly the most common e-mail address I’d ever seen. I logged on to usmail.com in hopes of finding a user profile, a Web page, something to give me a line on who had sent the message to me. I came up with nothing.
That sparked another, more terrifying proposition. What if the sender was John Doe himself, quietly monitoring my activities? Though it seemed a long shot that the creature of my nightmares would give himself such a ridiculous online moniker, I didn’t exactly know what he was. He could have been cleverly crafting a trap for me, finding out where I lived, how to contact me and lull me into a false sense of security.
“Fuck it.” I vigorously stubbed out my cigarette in the ashtray beside the keyboard before entering the address into the search engine.
The Crypt: Occult Books and Supplies.
There was a phone number and driving directions.
Nothing could happen to me in a public place, in a busy neighborhood. I used that line of reasoning as I grabbed my keys and headed out the door.
Though it was an hour after sunset, the sky was still bright enough to make my skin feel tight and itchy. I wore a baseball cap as a disguise. If John Doe was waiting when I got there, I wanted to see him before he spotted me. I popped a painkiller and one of the pills prescribed for my light sensitivity, then wrapped up in my wool trench coat to guard against the December cold.
The 1300 block was only about five miles from my home. It was in the middle of three crisscrossed streets and housed a cluster of eclectic storefronts and trendy restaurants. There were women in broomstick skirts and crocheted coats scurrying through the snow next to men in Rastafarian hats and corduroy pants. Most of the footprints on the sidewalk were made by Doc Martens.
I found a place to park in front of a crowded coffeehouse. With my jeans, cap and ponytail, I felt rather conspicuous. I stepped onto the sidewalk and tried to ignore the stares of the ultrahip art majors huddled behind the steamy windows. I must have looked like a mascot for the capitalist culture they all gathered to complain about.
It proved difficult to find 1320 Wealthy. I passed it several times before I spotted it. A vintage clothing store and a corner grocery, 1318 and 1322 respectively, jutted up against each other with nothing but a sandwich-board sign between them. Had I been patient enough to read the sign in the first place, I would have saved myself much frustration. “The Crypt: Occult Books and Supplies, 1320 Wealthy,” the silver lettering fairly shouted at me from the sign’s black background. A large red arrow pointed to a staircase that descended below the sidewalk in front of the clothing store.
I peered down the dubious-looking hole. The steps were wet but not icy. I took a deep breath and started down.
The door at the bottom of the stairs was old and wooden, with a window in the top half that bore the name of the shop in gold paint. Bells jingled when I entered.
The sights and smells of the place immediately overwhelmed me. Incense burned, a particularly noxious scent, and the air of the place was hazy with it. New Age music played softly, some peaceful Celtic harp composition punctuated with birdsong. I didn’t know if it was the smoke or the flaky music that made me gag.
The shop wasn’t horribly bright, but enough candles were lit to cast flickering shadows along the rows and rows of bookshelves.
I covered my nose with my sleeve to avoid the heavy smell of incense that rapidly formed a metallic taste in my mouth. I looked toward the sales counter.
The shop seemed empty. “Hello?”
I heard the heavy thunk of the door scraping shut. When I turned toward the sound, something struck me hard in the chest. Lifted off my feet, I landed flat on my back on the unfinished wooden floor.
Muscles all over my body that still weren’t used to movement after such a long recuperation screamed in agony, but an instinct completely foreign to me forced me to move. I quickly rolled to my side just as an axe blade splintered the floor right where my head had been.
With strength I hadn’t realized I possessed, I arched my back and pushed off the floor with the palms of my hands, springing to my feet in a move like something out of an action movie. Only then did I come face-to-face with my attacker.
If I had to guess, I would have placed him at about fifteen years old. But the tattoo on the back of his hand and his multiple ear and eyebrow piercings told me he must have been at least eighteen. His long, greasy-looking hair was shaved into a thin strip down the middle of his head, and despite the temperature in the shop, he wore a heavy overcoat.
I held my hands up to show I meant no harm, but he swung the axe again, this time breaking the glass display window of the counter. “Die, vampire scum!”
Like any sensible person would, I ran. Though he was fast on his feet, I managed to get past the baby-faced psycho and gained the door just as it swung open. I couldn’t raise my hands in time to protect myself. The heavy wood door smashed into my face and knocked me off balance. I hit the floor again in time to see the axe sail through the space I’d just inhabited.
“Nate, look—”
Two thoughts went through my mind when I saw the man who’d stepped through the door. The first was holy crap. He’d stopped the axe that was just centimeters from striking his very broad chest, catching the blade between his palms before the juvenile delinquent who’d thrown it could finish his shouted warning. My second thought was also holy crap.
The man was sex walking. Wide shoulders, flat stomach, wavy, dark hair…I suddenly realized the appeal of those firefighter calendars that the nurses ogled in the coffee room.
“I’m so, so sorry,” he said to me.
I took the hand he offered, nervous electricity zinging up my arm at his touch, and got to my feet. I almost said “It’s all right,” before I realized it definitely was not. My hands shook as I reached for the door.
“What the hell were you thinking, Ziggy?” he raged at the younger man before turning back to me. “Are you hurt, do you need anything? An ambulance?”
He put his hand on my shoulder, and I shrugged it off angrily. “Do most customers leave in an ambulance?”
Ziggy pointed his finger accusingly at me. “She’s a fucking vampire,