Seventy on a dirt road. Might as well have shot ourselves in the head right then.
It took two tries—bumping, scraping, screeching tries—to edge past the car enough to make a good hit. Before I could revise the plan, Bill shouted, “Hang on!” and jerked the wheel hard to the right, crashing us against the other car. They pushed back, just for a second, before spinning across the road. As the driver, another of the skeletal superhumans, struggled to turn the vehicle, Bill reversed, revved the engine and shifted into Drive, T-boning the car and spinning it into the ditch.
We both got out, Bill drawing his gun. “More effective than a stake,” he said with a shrug, and I couldn’t argue with him, though I didn’t think a bullet would stop those things in the car.
“Nathan? Are you okay? Can you hear me?” I eased down the bank and wrenched the back door open.
“I can hear you,” Nathan said as he pulled himself out. Inside the car, the humans were either unconscious or dead. At least something could hurt them.
Nathan’s face was bruised and misshapen where he’d been hit, bleeding where a shard of broken glass protruded from his forehead just below his hairline. “You couldn’t think of a better way to rescue me?”
I threw my arms around him. I knew but didn’t really care that one of those superfreaks could wake and we’d have another fight on our hands. I just wanted to touch him, to make sure he was okay. Well, aside from the gash across his forehead.
He put his arms around me for just a moment, squeezing me tight. Then he let me go and gestured up the bank, to where Bill stood, his eyes wide as he surveyed the damage he’d done. Nathan gestured to the open door, and Ziggy’s unconscious form inside. “I need your help, my son is in the car.”
I stepped aside while they pulled him out. It took some maneuvering from all three of us to get him up the steep slope, but we managed to get him into the backseat. The car groaned as we pulled away, and something squeaked ominously, but Bill assured us we could make it back to the bookshop.
“Before sunrise, if you don’t mind,” Nathan added. He sat in the back with Ziggy, cradling his head in his lap.
“What happened?” I asked, my heart still aching with relief. I didn’t want to believe what I couldn’t deny was true. Ziggy had set Nathan up.
Nathan looked down at his son’s face, a shadow of hurt crossing his battered features. “He was trying to take me back to the Soul Eater. Jacob has him brainwashed into believing that he doesn’t want to hurt me, that he wants us all to be a family. He’s Ziggy’s sire.”
A lump of tears I couldn’t shed formed in my throat. Of all the things Nathan feared, his sire was number one. And now, the Soul Eater had his son. “What are we going to do?”
Nathan shook his head, stroking the hair back from his son’s face. “I don’t know. It’s up to Ziggy. I can’t force him to turn his back on his sire.” He laid his hand gently, almost reverently, on the front of Ziggy’s T-shirt and frowned.
“What?” I asked, leaning over the seat, though I had a terrible inkling of what Nathan had felt there.
With trembling hands, Nathan jerked the fabric of Ziggy’s shirt up, exposing a long, puckered scar bisecting his torso from his collarbones to his navel. My breath froze in my chest. I knew what that scar was. I had one, myself. So had Cyrus, when he was alive the first time.
“Jesus,” Bill said, his eyes fixed on the rearview mirror. His skin paled, and he turned his gaze back to the road. “That must have been some serious injury.”
But he had no clue how serious it was. Nathan and I did. The Soul Eater had taken Ziggy’s heart.
My eyes filled with tears as they met Nathan’s. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.” His voice was tight, hopeless. “I don’t know.”
Chapter Five: Heartless
Ziggy was still unconscious when we returned to the bookshop.
“Stay with him,” Nathan ordered, motioning me into the backseat. “If he wakes up…knock him out again.”
It wasn’t the most tender, fatherly suggestion, but he was right. If Ziggy could, he would go back to his sire.
On the chance Dahlia was still inside somewhere, Nathan searched the bookstore. When it was clear, they carried Ziggy downstairs, to the hidden shelter that Nathan kept below the shop floorboards.
“I can’t say I’m glad to see this place again,” I muttered as I followed them down the steep few steps.
There was a thud, and Bill swore. “There isn’t much head clearance down here,” Nathan warned belatedly.
The hideout was a short, narrow space with a dirt floor and stone masonry walls that were crumbling. The sleeping bags, medical kit and camping lantern we’d left behind were still there, as well as the empty bags from the blood we’d consumed while in hiding. But we didn’t have any blood now, and Bill was human. “We’re not going to be here long, I hope?”
I’d whispered the question to Nathan, but the space was too crowded and confined for secrecy. Bill’s gaze darted from me to Nathan and back as he helped to maneuver Ziggy into a sleeping bag. “I don’t feed from the vein, okay? So you guys need a plan in place.”
“We’re going back to Chicago as soon as the sun goes down,” Nathan answered tersely. “That’s the plan.”
He settled on the floor, his back propped against the rough stone and crumbling cement of the wall. Bill retreated to the other side of the shelter and I sat beside Nathan.
“Do you really think that’s smart?” I asked, my voice low not to keep our conversation private—that would have been impossible—but to indicate that Bill should try to politely ignore us. “I mean, with the Soul Eater having his heart and every—”
“I know what the Soul Eater has!” Nathan exploded. He banged the back of his head against the stone, just once, and dropped his forehead to rest on his hands. His next words were softer, full of heartrending dismay. “What a mess this is.”
I leaned against him, my head on his shoulder, one hand on his back. Comforting with words isn’t something I’m good at.
“We can’t go back to Chicago,” I said, quieter. “At least, not now. The Soul Eater will be looking for us, and he’ll follow us there. At least here we have the resources to protect ourselves.”
“And there we have security,” Nathan argued, but I cut him off.
“What about those creatures? Who do you think will stop them? The doorman? The janitor? The head of the building association?” My voice had grown louder, and I lowered it. “Have you thought of how many people will die when he lets those things loose in Chicago?”
“But the book, Dahlia’s spell book—”
“Is in the car. I’m not an idiot, Nathan. I wouldn’t leave something like that behind. We have to stay here, where we can keep a closer eye on what the Soul Eater is up to.” I watched as he tried to form another protest, and then as defeat finally registered on his features.
He looked up, acknowledging Bill for the first time. “Thank you. For your help. You’ve done more than I ever would have asked you to.”
Bill held up one hand, letting it fall in obvious exhaustion. “It’s nothing. I mean, it’s something. If it were my kid, I’d want someone to help me.”
“Do