Perhaps we will be of use—”
“Until your father finds out, hates me more, banishes you and the other women—” Max interrupted, only to be cut off again by Bella.
“My father will not banish me. Sometimes I fear he cannot make the best decisions for the pack when acting as both my father and the pack leader.” She closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose with the back of her hand. “I worry what will happen when werewolves become involved in this fight. My father only sees himself as potentially being rid of a nuisance.”
“Thanks,” Max interjected.
“He has no concept of how enraged the Soul Eater will be, and what repercussions might affect the pack as a whole.” She looked to Max, golden eyes pleading. “Please, just keep in contact with me. I will rally support quietly, and when the time is right, if the time comes, I will be able to do my part.”
One thing Bella wasn’t good at—the only thing Bella wasn’t good at, actually, if Max didn’t count being humble or ugly—was being helpless. And he sympathized with her. There were times in the past when he’d gone about crazy waiting for orders from the Movement to go ahead and do what he already knew would have to be done. But he didn’t trust her father not to banish her or, God, hurt her, even. Julian was, after all, the man who’d tattooed multiple lines of ancient prophecy into Bella’s skin when she was a teenager. It might be a cultural difference that kept Max from understanding Julian’s motives, but culture be damned, he wasn’t about to let Bella’s father’s weird vendetta against him harm her.
But then again, Bella had been a teenager once. She’d probably defied her father’s orders hundreds of times then without being caught. And pack pecking order or no, Bella’s aunts were frightening creatures who would bristle like porcupines if anyone, Julian included, tried any funny business.
“Fine,” he conceded wearily. “Do what you have to do. But I want no part of it. Plausible denial is the best tool one can possess in some situations.”
“Come,” she said, putting her arms out to him. “Help me into the chair. Then get yourself some blood and we will watch the sun rise together.”
It was as much of a goodbye as he knew he would get from her.
I woke, disoriented, to the sound of Nathan cursing and shoes scuffing on the dirt floor. My brain became aware reluctantly, an inconvenience at a time when clearly all hell was breaking loose around me. I staggered to my feet and promptly struck my aching head on one of the overhead beams. When I was finished swearing and rubbing my head, I finally saw what was going on.
Ziggy had woken up. He’d made it halfway up the steps, from what I could tell, and now Nathan had one of his legs in a death grip, trying to pull him away from the trapdoor. Bill leaned against the wall, hands to his throat, a look of shock—the clinical kind—on his face.
“Carrie!” Nathan shouted, and I realized that was what had woken me in the first place. “Help Bill before he bleeds to death!”
I walked awkwardly on my knees to Bill’s side. Blood cascaded from between his fingers to stain the front of his T-shirt. “He bit me,” he mumbled. “He bit me.”
“I take it you’ve never been bitten by a vampire before,” I started, completely calm, completely oblivious to the struggle behind me. If I got him talking, diverted his focus, I might be able to save him. “It hurts like hell, doesn’t it?”
His forehead shone with perspiration, and he looked not at me, but through me. “He bit me.”
“I know. Let me just…” I gently pried his hands away from his wounded throat. I’d braced myself for the blood to spray, and thankfully, it didn’t. I replaced his hand with my own, pulling the bottom of his shirt up to press against the wound.
Behind me, Nathan growled to Ziggy, “Sit down and we’ll talk about this!”
“Talk, my ass!” There was a thud, and I imagined Ziggy’s foot connecting with Nathan’s chest. There was a scrabbling sound against the wood, and the trapdoor banged open. “If I don’t get back there, he’s going to fucking kill me!”
I grabbed Bill’s hand and held it over the wound. “He didn’t hit anything critical, but you need to hold this here until the bleeding stops. Not too tight.” I felt behind me for the sleeping bag and pulled it around his shoulders. Somehow, I resisted licking his blood off my fingers. “Are you all right?”
He nodded toward the sound of the struggle, wetting his lips. “Help him.”
Ziggy broke free of Nathan and made it up the few steps into the bookshop. Nathan and I raced after him in time to see the door fling open, admitting scorching sunlight. Ziggy managed to close it before he burst into flame, but when he sank, panting, with his back to the thick, scarred wood, his face was orange with sunburn.
“Fuck daylight,” he rasped, closing his eyes, his head falling back in defeat. “I’m going to die.”
“You’re not going to die,” I reassured him, knowing he wasn’t talking about his burn.
Ziggy shook his head and yanked up his shirt, displaying for us the scar we’d already seen. “Jacob has my heart. He’ll kill me.”
“Jacob,” Nathan muttered behind me, disgust plain in his voice. I knew what bothered him, without feeling it through the blood tie. I’d heard that same reverence in Nathan’s voice, when he’d willingly let me into his memories. The Soul Eater’s power over his fledglings ran deeper than the blood between them. Jacob Seymour was a powerful, ruthless, charismatic man. If a person didn’t fall for his promises of power, they were frightened by his cruelty. But always, always they were impressed by his way of making them feel as though they were the only person who mattered to him.
I knew I almost had been.
“Ziggy, he won’t kill you,” I began, steamrollering past whatever Nathan had opened his mouth to say. I had the distinct feeling that whatever words he chose, they wouldn’t be constructive. “He has your heart, but he had Cyrus’s heart for years. He never did anything with it. And eventually, he gave it back.”
“Cyrus never ran off on him, either.” Ziggy practically spat the words. “He’s going to think I’ve betrayed him. He’s going to think I don’t 1—”
“He’s going to think what you make him think,” Nathan interrupted. His face was a mask of pain. He didn’t want to hear that his son loved a monster. “You haven’t been blocking him from the blood tie. He knows you’ve been kidnapped.”
“He does.” Ziggy nodded vigorously. “He does. He’ll come back and get me.”
“Is that what you really want?” My heart ached for him. I knew what it was like to feel so strongly for someone who was so destructive. Of course, it also terrified me to think that Ziggy might send out a homing beacon, leading the Soul Eater straight to us. “You don’t have to go back to him—”
“No,” Nathan said quickly. “No, don’t make him think about that.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he shook his head so vehemently I closed it again. He never took his eyes from Ziggy. “If he doesn’t think about it, he doesn’t have to give anything away to Jacob. And he hasn’t had the practice disguising his thoughts that I’ve had. The
