Page 51 of Blood Ties (City of Blood #1)
Bash
Every day that passes, it becomes easier to let defeat creep into my heart.
Sarah has withdrawn into herself and rarely speaks to us about anything but our next plan. A week ago, Rian called and let us know that Amelie hadn’t been to work and no one is able to locate her.
“Amelie is missing, Bash,” Sarah tells me as she hangs up the phone. It was Rian—I recognized her voice on the other end of the phone.
“What do you mean? Since when?” I ask. Jack looks at me questioningly. “Amelie is the waitress I was with the night I met Elina.”
His eyes widen with recognition. “Seems you may be the target after all, Bash. That is definitely personal.”
Ethan spends every night trying to draw Sarah out of her misery and encourage her to live in her immortality.
Jack strategizes with our allies and walks the streets of the French Quarter from dusk til dawn every night.
And me? I do everything in between. I search.
I strategize. I plan. I have almost worn a path in the streets.
I have stopped at the door of every house and business in the quarter.
Everyone else mimics my movements in the other parts of the city.
I try to lighten the mood. I lash out in fury and take my anger out on the streets.
On more than one occasion, I have antagonized someone until we’ve come to trading blows, even Jack wasn’t spared my wrath.
Standing, our chests heaving, covered in blood, I finally gain some mental clarity.
Every French-speaking vampire in the city is seen as a potential suspect—too many have fallen by my own hand. There is no such thing as innocence when the other half of my soul is missing.
“Where is she?” I ask the tall man hanging from my outstretched arm by his neck.
“I- I don’t- Sebastien, I have no idea,” he says, sobbing through his words.
“Well, you have about thirty seconds to tell me anything you know about her disappearance before I rip your head off.”
“I don’t know who has her, I don’t even know her!”
His words fuel the anger that is residing in my chest as I squeeze his throat, tighter and tighter.
I feel blood start to seep between my fingers wrapped around his neck.
Giving my arm a twist, I hear the thunk of his head landing next to my foot as his light flares before going out.
Dropping his body, I draw my foot back and kick his severed head into the brick wall ahead of me.
It smashes hard and bounces, hitting the ground, blood splattering me.
We are falling apart without the glue for our family.
I know she is alive, she has to be. If she isn’t, there is nothing left for me. I will find her, and if I don’t, I will burn down every single building in this city until I know what happened to her.
Sometimes, I feel her like a phantom at my back, but when I turn—she’s gone.
“Fuck. I wish I knew where to go from here,” Jack speaks quietly as we walk the streets, listening for even a whisper of a clue.
It’s the 5th night in a row we have started from the outside edges of the city and worked our way to the Velvet Tomb where we end the night in commiseration with a glass of whiskey.
The City of Blood feels hushed, like a blanket has been thrown over it.
The humans have retreated into their safe places—the increased presence of vampires walking around, searching and inquiring, has made everyone jumpy.
It feels as though even the air in the French Quarter is full of angst, the very stones that hold up the city are aware that something is wrong.
Zelie told her all those months ago, that her blood is in the land and she is a part of this place, and now, I find it a little easier to believe that’s true.
Marcus has granted me a progressively larger army as the days wear on.
He didn’t want his soldiers involved, but once Talia told us who has Elina, he knew he could no longer wait on the side-lines.
The French gaining a foothold in our territory is a threat to us all, even if we didn’t know who she was at the time.
He still won’t allow me to pull people from their homes, or destroy the city, in my search but every day that passes is one day closer to me snapping and embracing the darkest parts of my nature.
Telling my family and the council that Elina is the lost daughter of Ezekiel Devereaux was the turning point.
I think back to the night as my feet walk down the familiar path, recalling the stunned faces of everyone in the room.
“Mother, Marcus, I have some news to share.”
“Did you find her? Do you have anything?” Mother asks me inquisitively.
“No. And yes. We haven’t found her but we have found something.
” I pause and take a deep breath. Marcus notices my hesitance and narrows his eyes.
“I met with Elina’s grandmother tonight.
She revealed something she has not even told Elina.
” Curiosity turned to hunger in my mother’s eyes, ravenous for information.
“She is…Ezekiel Devereaux’s daughter.” I say it plainly, letting it drop into the room like a bomb. Marcus looks slightly stunned and my mother’s mouth gapes open.
“That is news indeed,” Marcus responds, excitement evident on his face.
Ever since that day, mother has stars in her eyes at the thought that I will finally settle down, with a bloodline vampire of my own. Marcus, always the strategist, believes that uniting Elina and myself through a bond will bring an end to any potential war.
Whatever their motivations, I am grateful to have their support in the search.
As we walk, side-by-side down Royal Street toward St Phillip, we keep our heads down and our senses on high alert. We are making our way toward the bar—I like to finish my nights there, if only to feel slightly closer to my heart, which feels as if it has been ripped from my chest.
“Do you- do you smell that?” Jack’s whisper breaks through my concentration. My head snaps up and I breath-in deeply as we reach the corner.
It’s her. I know it’s her. It’s so faint I might have missed it if not for Jack, but it’s definitely her. I freeze in the middle of the road. My head swims with the realization that she is here somewhere. After weeks of nothing, she’s here. I don’t know where but I know it’s her.
“Yes,” I answer in a hushed whisper. “Where? Where is it coming from?”
He prowls around in larger and larger circles, starting in the middle of the empty street and moving outwards, until he reaches the sidewalk.
He stops atop the sewer opening and scents the air.
We are at the intersection surrounded by buildings.
Hotel Royal is across the intersection with its mirrored windows and a retail shop with apartments above it is on my left.
A restaurant with tables overlooking the street on my right, and an empty parking lot.
I scan the windows and balconies around us, trying to see or hear anything.
I tilt my head curiously toward the mirrored windows.
Something that appeared so innocuous before is fairly suspicious now.
We have knocked on these doors before but I never got the feeling she was here and we’ve never smelled her despite walking here, every day, for two weeks.
Leaning down, he puts his face closer to a grate set into the curb. “Here. I can smell her here.”
I walk closer and follow his movements—her scent gets stronger the closer I get to the opening.
There are dozens of other scents emanating from the sewer but I can tell it’s her mixed in.
“Get it open.” I point to a manhole cover in the sidewalk as I pull a phone from my pocket.
“Meet us at the corner of Royal and St Phillip. Hurry. We found something.”
I hang up before I get a response, as Jack lifts the sewer cover and jumps into the hole. I peer down at him, watching him scent the fetid air before I drop in next to him.
“This way.” He points to his left and starts moving, me following closely on his heels. We walk, maybe 10 feet, before I hear splashes behind me. I immediately crouch in a defensive position until I recognize Sarah and Ethan’s presence.
Standing upright, I press a finger to my lips and motion them to follow.
Jack leans up and rubs his fingers across a pipe draining into the sewer, pulling them back; bloodied.
He holds them out to me and I inhale a lungful of a familiar scent, the first in weeks—Elina.
And it's coming from the blood on his fingertips. The pipe that is dripping Elina’s blood into the sewer disappears into the concrete ceiling.
That’s her blood. Her life dripping from a disgusting sewer pipe into dark dirty water flowing over my shins. I feel relief at knowing she's here, but the idea that someone is hurting her, making her bleed, fills my chest with an emotion so far beyond rage that I can’t think straight.
Red clouds my vision as I lose control.
I scream out in frustration before ripping a pipe that is hanging over my head out of the ceiling. I smash it into the wall, rage lashing out of me like a whip.
“I will kill them all,” I whisper, my wrath like a living creature inside me, writhing around, trying to find an outlet and building up to an explosion.