Ashes to Ashes-Blood Ties 3 (46 page)

"What about you?"

"Have you ever known me to back down from a fight?" She smiled encouragingly at him.

"Even half-crippled?"

"Listen, guys, if we make it through this, you gotta do something for me, okay?" Ziggy held Max's gaze so long it became a little uncomfortable.

Still, Max nodded. "Sure, kid. I think I've got a pretty good idea what you want."

"Good." Ziggy put his hand on one of the wooden panels. "Ready?" Max took Bella's hand and squeezed it. "I love you."

"I have always told you that." She smiled up at him. "We will be fine. It is not our destiny to die today."

"Good. Then let's kick some ass."

Ziggy pushed on the panel, and they started to move.

Chapter Twenty-Six: Grave

At the end, we went underground. Literally.

We stopped at the apartment briefly, where Nathan loaded up on blood and weapons, then he took me down to the bookshop. He put a Closed for Remodeling sign on the door and locked us in, then began pushing aside the counter. I wondered what he was doing, but it was from a faraway place, and not enough to motivate me to speak. The counter, which I'd always assumed was fixed to the floor, moved aside after a lot of work on Nathan's part. Beneath it, a trapdoor slid aside to reveal a narrow wooden staircase leading into a subbasement.

It was what I'd heard people in the area refer to as a Michigan basement, with a dirt floor and stones packed into concrete to form the rough walls. There was a sleeping bag and a cooler, a camping lantern and a utility sink connected to a single hose that disappeared into the floorboards above. Nathan unrolled the sleeping bag and helped me into it, and I could feel the dampness from the floor seeping into my bones already. He went back up the stairs and I heard him pulling the counter in place to cover the hole before he slid the trapdoor closed.

"We'll be fine for now," he said, taking the stairs faster than he would have if they'd been a bit less steep. "Max will be on his way, and we have enough blood for a couple days. And anyone who comes into the shop probably won't… " He stopped when he looked at me, and cursed.

I know what he probably saw. My eyes, glassy and blank as I stared at nothing, seemingly checked out of my head. But I was there. I saw everything, took in everything that was happening. I knew when the Soul Eater recovered, he'd come looking for us. I just couldn't make myself not long for death. And my despair was so complete, I couldn't speak to tell Nathan not to bother, to save himself.

I heard his thoughts, though, and his anger. Anger at me for mourning Cyrus, anger at himself for being angry with me, and fear that we would be found.
If I sleep, I won't think,

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and he won't be able to find us
.

So he climbed into the sleeping bag beside me and held me close, despite the fact that I'd probably assumed the temperature of the floor beneath us. We lay like that, probably for days, in the dark, because Nathan was afraid the light from the lantern would show through the cracks in the floorboards and give us away. He barely spoke to me, except to offer me blood, which I refused. Twice we woke to voices and footsteps upstairs. Nathan went completely still with fear beside me as we heard the intruders overturn bookshelves and tables in their destructive search.

The seclusion was good for me, though. With nothing else to concentrate on and nothing to distract me from my grief, I moved through it quickly. I didn't talk to Nathan—I wouldn't ask him to understand—but I did talk to myself, inside my mind. I began to understand why I couldn't speak. It wasn't a prison, but a retreat. I wouldn't have been able to put my pain into words, anyway. I taught myself to forget the pain of losing Cyrus, and remember the joy of loving him. The hatred I'd felt for him when he'd been my sire was important to remember, as well. It kept my sorrow in perspective. I had loved him, but I couldn't divorce him from the monster who'd made me, or it would hurt all the worse.

And when I woke one night—or day; it was hard to tell with no windows—I could talk again.

I rolled to my side and touched Nathan's face. He snapped awake as if waiting for me to come back to my senses, his eyes full of concern. "Carrie, are you all right?"
No, I'm not
. "Why didn't you ever tell me about this place?" A quick intake of breath warned me of the explanation ahead. "In case I ever had to use it. In case you… went to the other side again."

"Oh." I picked at the zipper on the sleeping bag. "I was never on the other side."

"You were always on the other side, Carrie." He touched my cheek. "Or on your own side. You've never truly been on my side."

"I have to be on my side. If I'm not, who is?" I thought of Cyrus. No, he was never on my side. No one was.

"I would have been." Nathan said it so earnestly, I think he believed it.

"No. You wouldn't have." And it was something I had to learn. No one was ever truly devoted to anyone else.

There was a long silence. Then Nathan put his hand over mine. "I do love you. I didn't say it because we were going to die."

"It has nothing to do with love." I didn't say that to wound him. "I love you. But you hurt me. And I hurt you. Whether we love each other or not, we can't ignore that, or we're just… building our foundation on sand."

"I know."

We didn't say anything else. I think we reached some sort of understanding. Our timetables were off once again. One of us was ready to open up and love, the other was retreating into solitude. But I needed time to grieve and think and let what had happened change me. At the end of that change, maybe I could build a relationship with Nathan out of the ruined components of our previous attempts. Or maybe I'd be strong enough to start from scratch. Maybe it would be easier, both of us coming from a place of loss. Perhaps that unequal footing had been our problem all along. But right now, I needed to

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be me, not "us." And it wouldn't be fair to give him anything less.

It was the damnedest thing, life. Once you decide exactly how things are going to go, something—or someone—comes along and messes it all up.

Max looked at Bella, really looked at her for the first time in days. She sat ramrod straight on the bench at the T station in Salem, working hard to keep her balance on the seat without the aid of her legs to steady her. They'd ditched the wheel-chair—the Oracle's people would be looking for a werewolf in a wheelchair—and had used all manner of tricks to get themselves this far.

Her eyes drifted shut a moment, then snapped open, a new, more firm resolve visibly gripping her. Max smiled. Now that they weren't in mortal peril, weren't walking blindly into danger, he realized how stupid he'd been. Of course he loved her. And yeah, there was a chance something might happen to them. It wasn't fair, it wasn't the life he would have picked for himself, but there it was. And he would be an idiot to throw away what he had because someday, something might hurt him again the way Marcus's death had. God, he could be dense sometimes.

"When the train arrives, we will take it to North Station," she repeated for the fifth time since they'd sat down. More to keep him awake than to actually reiterate the facts in her mind, he was sure. Bella's mind was like a steel trap. "There will be a car there for us, to take us to the airport. The helicopter will be there."

"Now, is this the helicopter that takes us to your clan, or the helicopter that takes us to the sanctuary?" He hadn't listened in on Bella's whispered phone conversation in Ziggy's car. Max didn't want to jinx things somehow.

"To New York City. My father's jet will be waiting at JFK, to take us to Rome ." She closed her eyes, intentionally this time, and breathed deeply. "Back home." He didn't know what to think about the prospect of meeting Bella's family. Her obviously rich family. "Listen, if they don't like me—"

"It does not matter if they like you. What matters is keeping this child safe. They will understand that." She placed a hand on his knee and gave a comforting squeeze. "Now, don't you have a call to make?"

Reluctantly, he pulled the phone Ziggy had given him from his back pocket and flipped it open. "How do you do this?"

"Dial the number and talk." She pointed out, arching her eyebrow as if to imply he had lost his mind.

"That's not what I mean." He glanced at the sky, starless thanks to the bright lights of the nearby condo development. "How do you tell someone goodbye? How do you say, 'Nice knowing you, I'll never see you again?'"

Bella's eyes took on a faraway look for a moment, then turned with pity to him. "You do it knowing that it is for the best."

He opened the phone and dialed.

Later, I finally ate. Nathan had to prop me up on his arm and hold the bag for me to drink, but the blood restored me somewhat. By the end of the second bag, I could sit up and remain conscious. But I tired quickly, and I'd nearly nodded off again when the sound of Nathan's cell phone, muffled in the sleeping bag, woke me. Groggy, I sat up, fumbling for

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it. "I think you have voice mail. I can't believe you didn't put that on silent." Nathan reached for the phone, glancing up at the ceiling of our little tomb. After a long moment, when he'd decided no one was lurking upstairs, he opened the phone and punched in some numbers.

I watched his face scrunch up with tension, then melt in relief at whatever he heard. "Oh, thank God. Max and Bella, are all right."

He listened to the rest of the message, then handed the phone to me. It was already replaying, Max's voice sounding better than it ever had as he assured us of the Oracle's death and informed us of his plan to go into hiding with Bella.

"I can't go into details. You guys just have to trust me that this is for the best. And I really hope you're okay. If you need someplace to hide, use the penthouse. It has great security, and Carrie is still cleared with the doorman.

"Something else went down up here. I have no idea how to tell you this, but here's the deal—" A loud burst of static cut off his words, and the message ended.

"I wonder what that was about?" I looked up at Nathan for some kind of enlightenment. He shrugged. "I have no clue."

We fell silent for a minute. My voice shook a little as I said, "So, I guess that's the last of him."

"Sounds like." Nathan moved to the bottom of the stairs and reached up to open the trapdoor. "We're all clear. No one has been back for days." I followed him up the stairs. It felt good to get out of the hole. To stretch and get my feet under me.

It was less good to see what they'd done to trie shop. The door was torn from the hinges. Tables were overturned, merchandise crushed underfoot.

"Jesus," Nathan whispered beside me, and his horror at the scene pierced my heart.

"Most of this stuff… I mean, it's not like we could have been hiding in a box of tarot cards. Most of this they did just for the hell of it." I covered my face.

"Weil, it's a good thing we're going to Chicago, then," Nathan said in that manful, stiffupper-lip way only guys have perfected. I bent and scooped up a few tumbled stones—amethyst, if I remembered the inventory right—and juggled them from one hand to another. "Are you going to be okay?"

"It hurts my customer base to close down without warning. There are special orders waiting to be called, things like that. But since I'm obviously not coming back, I don't think it will be an issue." Nathan paused. "I'd rather lose my money than my life. Or your life, especially. But it's the memories that really hurt when I think about leaving. Ziggy was a child here. Some days I wake up and swear I can hear him running down the hall."

"We don't have to leave forever," I said hopefully. I certainly couldn't foresee spending the rest of my unlife camped out in Marcus's condo.

"I know." Nathan drummed his fingers on the thin strip of metal that used to surround the glass of the counter. "But who knows what they'll do to this place while I'm gone." The thought of leaving Nathan's home—my home—twisted my heart. Like so many times before, I wondered if it was worth it. Had it been worth it to go into that morgue after John Doe? Had it been worth it to lose my mortal life, if this was where it all led?

Yes. A resounding yes. Despite the horrible things I'd endured, being a vampire wasn't the worst thing that could have happened to me. I'd experienced paralyzing sadness, but I'd

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also had incredible joy. I had a new perspective on where my place was in the world. I had a new perspective on myself, too. I didn't have to be a wannabe human, hating myself every moment for being what I am. I didn't have to be a monster, either. I could be a sort of… ethical vampire. Or not. I had the rest of my life to figure it out, if I wanted to take that long.

And I had Nathan. He'd waited out my unhealthy relationship with Cyrus. Twice. He'd proved he would wait again, until I figured more out. Because it had taken him so long to tell me he loved me, I knew he really meant it.

Of course, as always, I have no clue what lies ahead. We stand on a fearful precipice and the currents of events beyond our control push us closer to the edge, with no way of turning back.

But at least now, I'm not alone.

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