Page 8 of This Blood that Bonds Us

It made me sad, but I didn’t say that. I wasn’t ready to hash out my feelings just yet. I wanted to save them up and spew them on Luke when I saw him next. I would see him again, and it would be soon. This was just some temporary madness.

“That’s a good way to put it.” He did that weird half-smile thing. Normally, it didn’t work on me, but he looked wiped. I needed to be nicer to him.

“Do you . . . feel it too?” I asked.

“Yeah, I feel this dull ache. Sadness but mostly thirst. It’s stronger than any of that. That’s all I can think about. Like it knows that’s my weakness or something.”

Hell Bitch caused that too.

“Give it to me straight. Are we fucked?” I asked.

“No, Pres. We’re going to get through this.”

“We’re going to find them, right?”

“Yeah, when we get to where Luke wanted us to go, I’m sure he left us some kind of instruction.”

I nodded.

He did. I know he did. He always had a plan. This would be no different. We would be together soon. I hoped. In time for Christmas even; it wasn’t that far away.

Four

Kimberly

I’d decided to dye my hair. It was too easy to describe a redhead finding her way into bars and luring men into the alley with two blond guys following her around. We might as wellhave been writing our own crime reports. The incident at the bar had made the local news, and we couldn’t risk it.

As I pulled the black dye through the ends of my hair, staining my neck and fingernails, I wondered why I thought it was a good idea. Pools of dye fell in droplets and stained the hotel’s porcelain tile beneath my feet. Swirls of blue and gray kept flowing. No matter how much I washed, the darkness kept coming.

I got out and wrapped my hair in a towel. I’d already dyed my brows and couldn’t stand to look at the two black bars unnaturally framing my eyes. Staring at myself in the mirror, all I saw were my dark circles. I’d always thought Zach had a monopoly on it. Turned out, I would give him a run for his money.

I wrapped another hotel towel around my body and shivered. It was always cold. My body couldn’t be cold. Not really. But I still felt it. This slinking chill in my bones that never went away. I stared at my reflection long enough for my fingers to stiffen and bend around the porcelain. Being a vampire meant I could stand as long as I wanted and never tire. I could stand there for days if I desired it. I liked that part of the change. It made all the uncomfortable parts of being human easy. There was never any ache or pain. I didn’t have to take bathroom breaks or stop to eat.

I finally got the courage to pull the ruined towel from my head, then gasped at the tangled mess that fell to my shoulders. Raven-black hair laid against my cool pale skin. It would take years to grow my natural hair back out. Years before I’d see myself again. Did we have years?

A deep gnawing feeling in my chest told me I was staring at my fate. As the Calem boys grew closer to their fate, so did I. It was shrouded in uncertainty and sealed in black blood. The fartherwe drove, the more it haunted me, drawing me into its clutches and seeping into my pores.

You can’t save him.

Akira’s words echoed in the silence of the bathroom. For some reason unknown to me, I imagined him laughing in my face. He’d want me to be wavering, sad, and sniffling about our fate. I would save them. Somehow. I didn’t exactly know how, but I’d keep trying to navigate them in every way I knew how and helping however they needed.

And oh, how the Calem boys needed help.

A soft knock startled me.

“Are you okay?” Aaron’s soft voice was right next to the door. It was a little raspy. He must have been outside.

I didn’t answer.

“Can I come in?”

I unlocked the door without a word, and he examined my face. I expected his eyes to widen when he saw how much I changed with the bundle of black hair knotted at my shoulders and the stains of dye along my neck. It was just hair, but then why did I have tears rolling down my cheeks?

I moved to wipe them, and he beat me to it.

He never stopped gazing at my face. Not once did he look at the hair lying on my shoulder or the towel wrapped around me, not even the gray water dripping on his feet.

“Do you want me to help you brush it?”