He lay down beside her and took her hands in his, frowning down at his, the way his missing fingers and gnarled scars seemed grotesque against her perfect skin. “I’m glad you have so much faith in me. Because I’d much rather stay with you.”
She lifted his hands to her mouth and pressed a kiss to each of his palms. “No. You would go where your friends needed you.”
He wanted to argue, but she opened her mouth and sucked one of his fingertips inside, swirling her tongue around it. She laughed at his groan and released him, her hands wandering down, over his chest, to lift his T-shirt.
“Finishing what you started earlier?” Max asked, trying to keep the hopefulness out of his voice. “Because otherwise, this is just cruel.”
Her golden eyes glittered as she slipped her fingers inside the waist of his jeans. “I cannot let you leave without a proper goodbye.”
He couldn’t say he didn’t agree.
Chapter Three: Resurrected
“Hello? Is anybody there?”
There was no way it was possible. Ziggy was dead. I’d seen him die—or had I? Nathan had told me of his death, but I’d never checked. Still, there was no way he could have survived the injuries. No human could have.
Please, God, no.
Nathan took the phone from my shaking hands. I could hear Ziggy calling, “Are you still there? Is anyone still there?” over the line.
Nathan heard it, too. I covered my mouth and nose with both hands, eyes wide as I watched him. Slowly, he lifted the phone to his ear. I watched his face as he listened. One moment he stood before me, holding the phone, listening to his dead son’s voice imploring him to talk to him. The next, his knees shook, collapsing him to the floor. He held the phone like a drowning man clutching a piece of debris after a shipwreck, unable to believe his luck, terrified he’d lose his hold on the one thing saving his life at the moment.
Ziggy’s pleading on the line halted. My heavy breathing seemed to only heighten the tense silence. I caught the tinny whisper of Ziggy’s voice in Nathan’s ear. “Dad?”
Nathan’s lips pulled back in a grimace or a smile—I couldn’t tell which—as his shoulders shook with silent sobs and he covered his eyes with his hand. “I’m here,” he managed, his voice strangled.
“Don’t cry. Christ, Nate, don’t cry.” Even at reduced volume, I could tell Ziggy struggled to follow his own command.
Nathan’s emotions overwhelmed him to the point he couldn’t stop them from slamming into me like waves in a storm. I’d never stopped to imagine what I would feel if, after believing them lost forever, someone I loved, my parents, perhaps, could suddenly come back into my life. To know exactly how it felt—relief so sharp it cut through the cascade of doubt, hope shadowed by fear, a million questions meshing and conforming until they incapacitated the mind totally—wasn’t a gift. It was a burden. I staggered backward a few steps to one of the chairs and fell into it.
Nathan pulled in a shuddering breath, but he still couldn’t speak without tears clouding his voice. “Where are you?”
I didn’t hear Ziggy’s answer, but I felt Nathan’s sharp shift in emotion. He was afraid. Terrified. “You have to get out of there, now. The Soul Eater will be looking for me. I don’t want him to find you instead.”
“He’s at the apartment?” I whispered. Of course he would have gone there. But why hadn’t he gone home before now?
“I don’t care if you think you can handle yourself, get out of there now!” Nathan growled. It was a little comical, the way he lapsed into full-on dad mode so quickly.
Something horrible pulled at the back of my mind. Some vague, terrible knowledge that wouldn’t come readily to the surface, as though I wasn’t ready to know it. “Nathan…”
“I’m going to give you directions to somewhere we can meet up.” He ignored me. “What do you mean, you can’t come right now?”
“Nathan, something about this isn’t right.” I held out my hand. “Hang up the phone.”
He covered the phone with his palm. “No, I won’t hang up!” Returning the phone to his ear, he demanded, “Stay right where you are, I’m coming to get you.”
I watched with growing dread as Nathan folded up the phone. No goodbye. He couldn’t tell his son goodbye, when he’d done it more permanently once before. Turning to me, he said, more gruffly than he probably intended, “Stay here. I’ve got to go get Ziggy.”
As he brushed past me without waiting for an answer, I grabbed his elbow. “Nathan, wait!”
“What?” He jerked his arm back. It hurt me to see the impatience in his eyes, knowing I would have to tell him that I sensed a trap.
“This isn’t right. Why didn’t Ziggy contact us before now?” I wasn’t sure I believed it wasn’t Ziggy, but I wasn’t sure I believed it was him, either. “Please, think about this!”
“The only thing there is to think about is that my son is alive!” He stalked up the stairs to the second level of the library, where the doors were.
I followed him, pushing words past my puffing breaths as I ran after him. “Exactly! Why do you think he’s alive? There were two other vampires in that room besides us when Ziggy died. Why do you think he’s alive now?”
“I know this!” He whirled, catching me off guard, and I stumbled. He didn’t see it, though, too focused on the time that was slipping away from him. “Do you think I didn’t realize it the moment I heard his voice? But I’ve got to go, Carrie. He’s my son!”
I couldn’t argue with that. But it still wasn’t right, still didn’t make any sense. Why now, after all this time? “Please, don’t go. There are other ways of contacting him. But going alone, when you don’t know where he’s been or what he’s been doing…that’s crazy, Nathan.”
“You think he’s going to betray me?” His expression grew colder than I’d ever thought possible. “Do you think my son is going to stab me in the back?”
“I think,” I began, choosing my words carefully, “I think that you know as well as I what a sire’s influence can make a fledgling do. We know that Dahlia was somewhere on the grounds being turned. She would have been too weak to make another vampire. Cyrus didn’t make him. I would have seen it when I sired him. So that leaves the Soul Eater. You said yourself he forced you to do things you didn’t want to do.”
The war between dying anger and acceptance raged for a few seconds in Nathan’s eyes. I prayed common sense would win, but some primal, protective instinct in Nathan forced a curse from his lips and he stalked out of the room.
Something desperate welled up inside me. I didn’t want him to go to Ziggy. He could get killed. And I didn’t want another person in Nathan’s life.
Do you hear yourself, the way you’re thinking? I scolded myself. It’s his son. His son!
But I didn’t care. All I cared about was the sadness, the crushing sadness I felt at the thought of him choosing someone else, anyone else, over me. I didn’t know where it came from, and I knew better than to try and justify it. I was acting like a big baby. I knew it—anyone who was privy to my deranged thought process would know it—but I couldn’t stop myself. And above everything else, I hated being out of control.
I caught up with Nathan in the foyer. He didn’t look at me, focusing instead on opening the coat closet and rifling through it. “I have to get on the road.”
“On the road?” I glanced up at the shuttered window.
“Once I get a few things together. I don’t want to leave unarmed.” He pulled out a