could have hurled a spell at me, could have just gone for it and tackled me to the floor, two vamps go down, one comes up. But she did neither of those things.
“What’s your game, Dahlia?” I paced a wide circle around the living room, noting that she moved away, keeping the same amount of space between us. “What are you really doing here?”
“What do you mean?” It wasn’t like her not to have a smart-ass answer. Posing a question to my question was a sign she was delaying physical aggression. Which meant…“Dahlia, what are you trying to keep me from?”
She giggled, but said nothing.
“It’s a trap, isn’t it? Ziggy set up a trap.” I watched her from the corner of my eye as she moved behind me. I tensed, listening to her footsteps. If she hesitated, even for a second, I would turn and take her out in a heartbeat.
But she didn’t try anything at all. She just wandered past me, to the bookshelf, where she pulled out a leather-bound journal and began ripping pages from it, slowly.
“Fuck it,” I muttered under my breath, my heart beating hard against my rib cage. She was trying to delay me. And I had to find Nathan.
Where are you? I called out with the blood tie. Dahlia followed me to the top of the stairs, threatening me with words I didn’t bother listening to. I was focused too intently on the blood tie, on what might come back to me.
Bill lay at the bottom of the stairs where I’d left him, his eyes squeezed shut, an indication he was conscious. “Jesus…” he rasped. “My head is killing me.”
“Get up,” I ordered, grasping him under his arms and pulling him to his feet. He could worry about his headache later. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“You’ll never find him,” Dahlia called from the top of the stairs, sounding truly angry for the first time since we’d arrived. “He’s probably already dead!”
“No, he’s not,” I retorted calmly, putting myself between her and Bill while he staggered out the door. “If the Soul Eater wanted him dead, he could have done it years ago. He wouldn’t need the help of some second-rate witch to do it.”
I made it out just as another bolt of whatever spell had knocked out Bill hit the door. I slid into the driver’s seat of the car and grabbed the keys from him. “Are you okay?”
“I feel like my skull is going to crack open. I feel like my brain has been in a centrifuge. No, I’m not okay.” He leaned his head against the dashboard as I pulled away from the curb. “Where are we going, and who was that?”
“That was Dahlia,” I said, scanning the road as I drove for any sign of Ziggy’s big, crappy van. “And I don’t know.”
I hope you brought backup, sweetheart. Nathan’s thought shot through my head with an urgency that definitely indicated there was a problem.
I did, but he got a little damaged. Where are you?
You won’t believe me…
It was the location that made him doubt Jacob.
Ziggy paced around the alley, the place where he’d first met the only real parent he’d ever had. He’d been a stupid, stupid kid then, thinking he was some big shit who could hunt down vampires. Only then, a real vampire had shown up, and it had gone from being a cool game where the bigger kids included him to a life-or-death situation. And he’d lucked out. It could have been someone like Cyrus, out to find a kid to feed off, or torture to death. But it had been Nate, out to scare the hell out of stupid kids who thought it would be cool to hunt for vampires. And he’d taken a stupid kid out for pie and coffee, and then home to a normal life.
Now, to repay that, Ziggy was going to return Nate to his sire? Jacob had made it seem like common sense. “Bring my son, my true son, home to me,” he’d said, and he’d looked so pathetic and sad and pained. Something inside Ziggy had ached to comfort his sire, to do the right thing. He’d thought of being separated from Jacob for so long, imagined the immense effort it would require to seal himself off from the blood tie the way Nate had for something like seventy-five years. It would be hell on earth, and Jacob had made it seem that tricking Nate into coming home was something necessary for Nate’s happiness. Now that he was here, though, and Nate was on the way, Ziggy wasn’t so sure.
So why are you still selling him out? Why don’t you get the hell out of here and stay away from him forever? Ziggy forced the voice away. His conscience had never worked before, so why the hell did it think he needed it now? He wasn’t hurting Nate. He was saving him.
On the street outside the alley, he heard the squeaking hubcap from when he’d driven the van over the curb in front of the apartment. The engine sounded a little better—Nate probably changed the oil when he was supposed to—but the driver’s side door still screeched when it opened.
Nate was here. He was here, and Ziggy couldn’t stop panicking. What the hell would happen? Would he be glad to see him? Would he still be ashamed? Jesus, was he just coming to pass judgment again?
And then Nate was in the mouth of the alleyway, and Ziggy saw him, and they both froze.
“Ziggy?” It was a whisper that ended like a shout, and Nate ran at him.
Since he’d run away from home, he’d wondered a thousand times how things would have been different if he’d never left. Now, with his dad’s arms around him—and Jesus, was he crying?—he realized nothing would have been different. Nate would still love him. He still did.
“Hey, come on. Don’t cry.” He stepped back a little, his arms on Nate’s shoulders, worried that if he didn’t hold on he’d crash to the ground. “Come on, Dad. Don’t cry.”
“I can’t believe you’re alive.” Nate staggered back, sniffling, as though he was crazy or drunk. Or standing in front of a person who was supposed to be dead. “I held you. While you died.”
“I know you did.” Now Ziggy’s throat felt tight, like he was going to start blubbering, too. “I remember.”
“I never would have left you. If I had known—”
“I know. I know.” But if he’d taken you with him, you would have died. He didn’t turn you. He wouldn’t. He was going to let you die. Ziggy hated his sire’s voice in his head. And he hated that he was right. Nate could have saved him, but he didn’t.
It helped him overcome some of his guilt at tricking him like this. “Listen, I wanted you to come here for a reason.”
“Of course. But we’ll talk about it on the road. It’s not safe for you here.” Nate grabbed his wrist, but Ziggy stood firm.
“No.” He took a deep breath. Somewhere, he’d heard that the moment a guy really becomes a man is when he first hits his father. No way in hell was he going to hit Nate. But he wasn’t going to let him walk off. Not now. “No, you’re not going anywhere.”
“Ziggy, you can be honest with me. For Christ’s sake, it’s me. What’s going on?”
Stay strong. Ziggy cleared his throat. “You can’t leave. You’re supposed to come back with me.”
“Come
