Blood Ties Read online

  “I cannot bring him to you.”

  Lucidia’s face curled into an angry snarl. “You,” she cursed. “Why couldn’t you have left him alone! Why didn’t you just let him go?” She shook him with a weak movement that made a wave of black cross over her eyes and sent the world in spirals. When she’d recovered some sense of stability, she continued, words slipping out from all the years she’d let it fester inside of her. “It’s your fault,” she sobbed, burying her head in his cloak. “You took him from me.”

  “I am sorry, Lucidia. You will never know how sorry I am,” he said softly.

  Her voice was hot venom, spewing into the air around them. “I don’t want your apology, I want my father back. I want the years back.” The urge to cough sent a shudder through her, and she felt the muscles inside of her twitching, trying to clear, but there wasn’t enough strength left inside of her. The world faded, darkening even further, until her vision returned, and the sun had dipped down another few degrees. The sky was a deep red now, crimson and maroon, like the eyes of a vampire. It was the last thing she’d see; their burning eyes, those creatures that she’d been forced to pledge her life to, like her father before her, those creatures that lived through anything and everything, that were untouched by the world as its pain and sorrow ripped her people apart. She blinked, trying to clear her eyes, and they fell onto her own arm, so thin and so small against the sunset. It was a sickly gray color, gray and green, like she was dead already. A wave of terror crashed over her, the most overwhelming one yet; a cornered animal, a creature faced with death, with nowhere to run. “I’m scared.”

  Darian nodded.

  “I don’t want to die,” she whispered.

  “Death comes for everybody,” Darian said softly.

  She shook her head, a futile twitch. “Not like this. Not for me,” she sobbed, clutching onto his purple robes as though they could keep her tethered to the ground, to this world. “It can’t end this way. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.”

  “Shhhh,” Darian hummed. His arm tightened around her, and he held her even closer, rocking them back and forth. “It won’t be long now.” Lucidia watched the sky darken, each breath exhausting her further, holding onto the hope that she could see the glimmering stars just one more time, imagining that spider, dancing across them, lacing the heavens with silk.

  Robin

  Robin tapped her foot, watching Chadwick work as the late afternoon sun grew heavy and burned into the evening, cutting in diagonal beams and illuminating patches of Chadwick’s exceptionally dirty lab floor. Chadwick hadn’t spoken at all, deep in his work, but chugged another energy drink and crumpled it, tossing it to the top of a growing pile in the corner. He cracked his neck, taking a moment to loosen his shoulders, and then dipped his head back down to work. Robin’s curiosity and boredom won out and she got up, walking over to him and leaning against the table. “What is that?” she asked.

  She was referring to the bird bath he’d found lying on the side of the road, two blocks down in their desolate mirror plane. He’d been working on it for days, scrubbing it with something and then filling it, emptying it, filling it again, casting magic into it, growling in frustration and shattering rows of his little glass vials, and then begrudgingly returning to it again. “A peep hole,” he muttered bitterly, pushing a hand through his hair.

  “I’m sorry, a what?”

  “Oh, relax,” he hummed, measuring out a clear liquid carefully. “It’s nothing creepy. Casters use this little contraption to keep an eye on the rest of the world while we’re safely hidden away in our magical panic rooms.”

  “Ah,” Robin said, her eyebrows pulling together as she examined what looked like a regular bird bath.

  “It’ll allow us to see a person, any person, for a brief period of time.”

  “Like a vision?” Robin asked.

  “Well, yes, except we can only see. No audio, I’m afraid.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Still, that’s amazing. Who are you gonna spy on first?”

  “Other than Selena Gomez?” he shot back with a crooked grin. “Probably a couple of the vampire masters.”

  Robin’s eyes widened. “We can do that?”

  “Oh honey, I’ve made an entire career out of doing everything that I’m not supposed to. Of course, we can do that.”

  “Will they know?” she asked. “Darian had some magical talisman that protected him from my abilities.”

  “Even if they do know, it’s entirely untraceable, so if anything, they’ll just be a little weirded out. On the terra plana, yeah it’d be risky, but luckily for us, you can’t track inter-planar facetime calls.”

  “That’s awesome,” she said. “You’re like a wizard.”

  He looked up from his contraption. “Technically, yes, I am.”

  “Right. I forget that sometimes,” she said with a grin, inspecting another vial that was bubbling with no heat underneath. She leaned a little closer, and Chadwick glanced over to her. “Wouldn’t touch that if I were you.”

  “Sure thing,” she said, leaning back to a safe distance and watching him work on the bird bath. An hour passed, and then another, until finally, Chadwick’s eyes lit up and he yelled loud enough for Robin to nearly throw her paperback across the room. “Jesus,” she breathed. “What is it?”

  “I did it. Finito!” he grinned.

  She tented the book on the table and walked over to him. “Really?”

  “Oh yeah,” he beamed, running his hands along the rim of the birdbath. It was brimming with cloudy liquid, glassy and serene.

  “Who are we going to use it on first?” she asked, peering into the basin.

  “For calibration purposes, let’s do our dear strongblood friend,” Chadwick said, holding his palms directly above the surface of the water and closing his eyes. The amulet around his neck began glowing white, brighter and brighter, until Robin held a hand up to the glare, training her sights on the water, her hair standing on end as magic sizzled around her. At first, the cloudy liquid just swirled under the surface, but after a moment, colors emerged, like ink spreading through the canvas of white. They darkened, sharpening and collecting until there was a crystal-clear image in front of them, and one that she’d recognize anywhere: Reykon.

  He walked in the shadows, lit up by pools of light coming from orange streetlamps. He kept his head down, moving with expert stealth, until he turned into a bar on the main drag and they glimpsed the packed nightlife of Nashville. Robin’s eyes lit up at the sight of him, his dark hair, and was thrown back into their first night, a smile of nostalgia dancing on her lips. They watched him for a few more minutes before Chadwick waved his hand and the image collapsed, swirling around underneath the surface, returning to the same cloudy hue that it was before. “Well, it definitely works,” Robin said in amazement.

  “I made it, didn’t I?” He clapped once and then rubbed his hands together, a large grin spreading on his face. “Just call me King Midas.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Right.”

  “Any others?” Chadwick asked. “I’m taking personal requests for the moment.”

  Robin thought about it, her mind running over the implications of being an unseen fly on the wall. “Anybody?”

  “The President himself, if you so choose,” he grinned.

  A wave of emotion rose up inside of her, and she felt her lungs tighten in anticipation. “My parents,” she whispered.

  Chadwick raised an eyebrow and then nodded. “Alright. Bit heavier of a mood than I was thinking, but you’re certainly entitled to it.”

  She swallowed hard, interlocking her fingers and squeezing them together. “How does it work?”

  “I’m going to have you picture them, like really, really get them in your head, and then you’re just going to dip your finger in the water until I’ve got enough to lock in on them.”

  “Just think about them at any point?”

  “Mm-hmm. It’s not really an exact science...” he said. �
��Well, actually, it is, but it’s way over your knowledge base, so I won’t bore you with the intricacies of the semi-collective consciousness.”

  Robin raised an eyebrow, but decided to just chock it up to Magic, with a capital ‘M’. Her heart quickened in her chest as she thought of her parents, as she pictured seeing them again. She pictured them, the last really good memory she’d had of them. It was her twenty-fifth birthday party, and she’d stayed over at their house, late, a long while after the others had left. She’d been increasingly busy getting her photography business up and running, moving away from graphic designing and into entrepreneurial freelancing. A consequence of that was that communication had fallen to the wayside. She hadn’t talked to them for a while before that party, and once she started, the time just seemed to melt away. They’d sat around the fire pit for hours, Duke, their golden lab, curling around her feet. She pictured it in her head, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from breaking down in front of Chadwick. She missed them, terribly. But worse than that was the idea of them missing her.

  Robin had no troubled upbringing. She had no deep-seated trauma that lent itself to a tortured backstory. She’d had an amazing childhood, and she had an amazing family of aunts, uncles, grandparents. People that she saw every thanksgiving and Christmas, up until this point. A normal girl, in a human world. Clearly, that had changed, and she’d made peace with the fact that she’d never recover that life. But what she had with Reykon, that was a start to repairing the massive hole that these past months had left in her heart. She drew in a deep breath and slipped her finger past the rim of the birdbath, into the cloudy liquid, imagining herself out by the fire once more. Her eyes were squeezed shut, wanting to look but also wanting to hang there, in the past, not facing the image of her parents for fear that it would break her. After a moment of tense silence, Chadwick touched her on the shoulder. “It’s ready.”

  She nodded, taking another slow, controlled breath before opening her eyes. It only took her a moment to recognize the park that they used to take her to when she was a little child. It was all lush grass and tall evergreens, nestled in the neighborhoods of Portland. The sky was an overcast gray, the sun still high above them, over on the west coast. Duke was curled up at Robin’s mother’s feet, salt and pepper hair dusting his snout. Her father stood a few feet away, throwing a tennis ball to a rambunctious young puppy, a mix, with deep brown fur that curled slightly. A wide smile spread out on Robin’s lips as her eyes welled up. “They got another dog,” she whispered.

  “They look very happy,” Chadwick offered. “I wish I‘d had a family like that.”

  “They are happy,” she murmured, her eyes tracing over the faces of her mother and father, all the love and memories welling up inside of her. They’d aged since she’d last seen them, her father’s hair grayer, her mother’s a little thinner, cut differently. No doubt the stress of losing their daughter had put them through hell, but seeing them with a new dog, seeing them blissfully unaware of the vicious world she now belonged to, was enough to assuage her concerns for the moment. She watched them, laughing as her dad wrestled with the puppy, as her mom’s crinkly smile shone out like a sunbeam. She could have watched them for hours. Her family, her loved ones. Those that she’d been ripped away from. In that moment, she was glad that she hadn’t called them when she’d broken away from Reykon in Colorado. She was glad that they were protected from all the horrors of her situation. They would be alright without her.

  And now, she had a new family. A husband. A sister.

  Robin wiped the tears from her eyes and nodded, pulling herself away from the pool. “Can we look up one more person?”

  “Of course,” he said. “This is as close to television as we’re going to get, so we can look up your entire high school year book if you want.”

  She smiled softly and nodded. “Lucidia.”

  “Ah,” Chadwick said, rubbing his hands together again. “I don’t need your assistance for that one, because she’s blood to you.”

  Robin watched as her parents swirled away, until all that was left was cloudy white and a different picture came up in the pool, one of a burning sunset, two figures front and center. She waited for the image to clear, to settle, and just as her sister’s once-fierce face came into view, Robin’s hand flew up to her mouth, a stab of terror driving straight through her. “No,” she whispered in horror.

  Chapter 5 Friends and Foes

  Megan

  How many fireplaces do you need? she thought absentmindedly, eyeing the beautiful stonework on the hearth. This one was in the antechamber to the war room. That’s another thing you should know: medieval vampire architects loved antechambers. Megan, who’d grown up in trailer parks and motels, with McDonalds and riverside trout fishing, hadn’t even known what an antechamber was, but apparently all the important, official rooms had to have little parlors attached to them, and they all needed fireplaces, too. She glanced at the ceiling, wondering how much money it would take to heat a place this large, trying to figure out where you’d even put the ducts and vents. It seemed to her to be a wise investment, rather than sending people for firewood every two seconds, but she didn’t know anything about the logistics of living in a castle.

  Fausta was in the war room with her most powerful supporters, possibly discussing tactics or possibly ripping people apart or possibly having pillow fights. Megan wasn’t really sure what went on in there, but she did know that Darian Xander was making a comeback, attacking the fringes, and that he was a growing threat that severely annoyed Fausta Ambrose. The war room was on the first floor, along with all the other administrative offices, which had been cleaned up since the last time she’d been downstairs. It seemed to have changed overnight, as though one second they were pillaging and the next second they were repairing. She caught a few of the royal vampires chatting about it, comparing this siege to others they’d been involved with, throwing out historical dates that she’d never even heard of. She supposed they didn’t cover paranormal history in public high school. This antechamber had the same rectangular shape as the others, cold tile, and intricate fillagree. Most of the space was empty, save for several couches and elegant chairs that looked far too expensive to sit on. A large rug covered the floor, and long tables lined the walls, empty without all the artifacts that were supposed to be showcased on them. Megan noticed pale spots on the regal wallpaper where paintings or mirrors or tapestries had once hung. Large windows let in pale, overcast light, overlooking the field and gardens. As far as Megan tried to see, she couldn’t find a human city over the trees, or even another house for that matter. She knew strongholds were secluded, but she still couldn’t wrap her head around how they stayed hidden when they were this extravagant.

  The large doors swung open from the other side, the hallway to the castle, and two more royal vampires came strolling in, along with two younger heirs, one of them dragging a young human woman by her hair. Megan was getting pretty good at discerning what type of vampire they were with one glance. Apparently, not all vampires were made equal. There were old vampires, which put the fear of God into you and made you want to find the closest rock to hide under, and then there were royal vampires, which reminded her of tight-lipped British generals. They mostly just looked at everything with silent judgement. Then, there were the vampire heirs and heiresses (masters-in-training), which were just spoiled young adults who’d been given a yacht for their twenty-first birthdays. The ‘my dad’s a lawyer’ kind of folk. They were terribly entitled and honestly, the most dangerous. Then, there were soldiers, who were a bit more serious but still foolhardy, and then there were the servants. The servants were fine if there was an older vampire around, but as soon as you were alone with them, they started to get wandering eyes and they sometimes flagrantly broke Fausta’s orders, snickering behind her back. Megan was always careful to never end up in a room alone with them. The woman they dragged in was wearing a pencil skirt and a pale pink blouse that had been neatly tucked in a
t one point. Now, it was just as disheveled as the rest of her. The vampire heir that had brought her along was one that Megan recognized. His father, or maker, or whatever you called them, was Henrich something or another, and a very powerful member of Fausta’s supporters. The heir’s name was Ryan, and boy, he was a mean one. Megan knew a kid when she was little that kept a big magnifying glass in his pocket so he could kill ladybugs at recess, and every time she saw Ryan with his latest human toy, she was reminded of Neal Bushaw and his mean-looking overbite.

  Ryan strolled in with his tailored Victorian-era coat, his light brown hair pulled into a small ponytail, his burning red eyes a sharp contrast to the rest of the peacock-blue ensemble. He plopped onto the scrolling couch, next to Reema, a vampire heiress to Master Godrick, on the other side of the sitting area were two of Fausta’s royal vampires that weren’t included in the meeting for some reason, smoking tobacco pipes and amicably chatting. The woman was fiendishly pulling her arm away, but Ryan had her by the wrist, smiling as she nearly pulled her shoulder from its socket trying to get free. Reema raised an annoyed eyebrow at the heir, the human slumped over next to her stirring at the commotion. Ryan noticed her agitation and turned to her. “Just got her off the streets,” he announced. “She’s a lively one, isn’t she?” He gave her arm a yank and sent the woman flying onto him, catching her by both shoulders and knocking her off balance.

  “Let me go!” she cried.

  Reema closed her eyes, and Megan could see the irritation bubbling underneath the surface, the tension in the room rising. She remained quiet, as still as possible, a silent watcher by the fireplace. The human continued tugging, fighting Ryan, despite all the amusement it was bringing him. “You can’t do this!” she shrieked. “Let me go!”