LITMIR.BIZ

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      JENNIFER ARMINTROUT was born in 1980. She has been obsessed with vampires ever since the age of four and her first crush was on Vincent Price. Raised in an enormous Roman Catholic family, Jennifer attributes her interest in the macabre to viewing too many funerals at a formative age. Jennifer lives in Michigan with her husband and children.

       Also by

      Jennifer Armintrout

      BLOOD TIES BOOK ONE: THE TURNING

      BLOOD TIES BOOK TWO: POSSESSION

      BLOOD TIES BOOK THREE: ASHES TO ASHES

      BLOOD TIES BOOK FOUR: ALL SOULS’ NIGHT

      To everyone who has stuck with Carrie and co. to the bitter end.

      Acknowledgments

      This series would not have been possible without the people in my life who love me, support me and understand that while I might not be writing about something “important,” I am writing something worth reading.

      And as always, big thanks are owed to the fast food and beer industries.

      Also, the Fourth Coast Café in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where a large portion of this book was written and revised.

      Prologue: Daymare

      Some days, I dream of the time that I spent in Marianne’s soul. Or is that the time that she spent in me? In reality, it was horrible, but in the dreams, it feels wonderful. Powerful. Another soul gliding over mine like silk, whispering in my head.

      I stand over Nathan. He’s still restrained, babbling, senseless with fear and the spell his sire had cast over him, bleeding from the wounds scored deep into his flesh by his own hand. Marianne leans tenderly over her husband, kisses his mouth, calms him. And then the power swells up inside me, and she screams for mercy in my head. All I know is blood and tearing flesh. Darkness and warmth with the copper-tinged smell of slowly ebbing life urging on my bloodlust.

      I don’t even consciously drink. I don’t feel or taste the blood, and though I know, somehow, that I am dreaming, I find it unsettling, as if some understanding is just out of my reach. If only I could see the greater picture.

      I consume without drinking, reach my fill without satisfaction. And when I raise my eyes to the evaporating darkness, I see the ballroom where Marianne met her fate. All around me are the bodies of people I know: Nathan, Max, Bella, even old friends long since dead, like Cyrus and Ziggy. Their blood is on my hands. Their life in my veins. Their tortured screams rolling through my head like the sweetest symphony I’ve ever heard.

      And then Jacob Seymour is there, seated at the head of the massive dining table. He wears a crown of thorns and the blood that drips from his wounds is black tar, staining his white hair and shining golden robes. A huge, silver-domed platter covers the table, and I remember—in that dream memory that doesn’t quite see reality the way it happened, but still manages to catalog every horror you’ve ever known—what will come next. Clarence appears, as if from nowhere, his dark, regal face a mask disguising the hate he feels for the task, and removes the cover. On the platter, arranged in a way that is familiar, yet shocking, is Dahlia, her skin pale and mottled blue with death, a carpet of rose petals beneath her halo of red curls.

      And then, with the voices still screaming in my brain, I laugh. Blood flows from my mouth, splashing to the tabletop, my hands, my lap that is suddenly and inexplicably dressed in a voluminous gown to match Jacob’s attire, and I laugh.

      But when I wake, I’m screaming.

      Chapter One: A Shot In The Dark

      This day, when I bolted upright in the bed, throat tensed, vocal cords poised to emit a scream as soon as the gasping breath I’d drawn forced its way out, a hand clamped over my mouth. Nathan was already awake.

      Don’t make a sound, he warned through the blood tie, his body rigid with tension that jumped through our mental connection, filling me with his anxiety.

      Something was seriously wrong. In the past few weeks, since we had fled Grand Rapids and come to Max’s Chicago penthouse, Nathan’s entire focus had been my recovery. I’d gone mute and practically catatonic after Cyrus, once my sire, then my fledgling, had died. After I’d wake from one of my many nightmares—daymares, I supposed, since we vampires are third-shifters on account of that pesky sun thing—Nathan would hold me and try to reassure me that it had all been a dream, that he wouldn’t let anything harm me. Now, though, I felt his irritation and acute distraction through the blood tie, the telepathic and empathic connection that coursed between a fledgling vampire and their sire, and I knew something wasn’t right.

      Before he could explain, I heard a thud and some violent cursing upstairs.

      There’s someone in the apartment, I practically screamed into his head, and the pressure of his hand on my jaw subsided slightly.

      I know. That’s why I said not to make a sound. I’m going to check it out. He let go of my face and threw back the blankets. I could tell from the faint light outlining the heavy curtains that it was still the middle of the day, but Max’s apartment was specially designed to be dark as a tomb and just as protected from unwanted sunlight.

      Be careful, I warned. As if someone could be careful apprehending an intruder in their home. At least Nathan would be armed.

      Crap. He wasn’t armed.

      “Nathan!” I whispered after him, so the cause of the disturbance wouldn’t hear me. Unfortunately, neither did Nathan. He was probably halfway up the stairs by now. Rolling my eyes, I got out of bed and pulled on the jeans I’d discarded the night before, realizing how ridiculous a silk camisole nightgown looked with jeans. Good thing this wasn’t a fashion show. I grabbed a stake from the drawer in the bedside table. Forget something? I shot across the blood tie, letting him feel all my aggravation at having been pulled out of a comfortable bed. I hoped it would cover the fear that pounded through my veins.

      Besides pants? he quipped. He was scared, joking with me to disguise it.

      We’d been sleeping in the room I’d used when I’d stayed with Max, after the spell we did to free Nathan from his sire’s possession went all sorts of haywire. No, that wasn’t true. The spell had worked perfectly. It was our relationship that had gone all kinds of haywire. I’d left with Max to try and sort through the disaster of my personal life, but—as seemed to be the case ever since I’d become a vampire—the preternatural world didn’t slow down for boyfriend-girlfriend drama. Nathan’s sire, the Soul Eater, was still out there, trying to become a god and turn the world into his own personal feeding trough.

      Though I’d spent a lot of time in the penthouse, I still wasn’t familiar enough with the halls to navigate in the dark. The place was huge and, as huge places often were, decorated with lots of expensive and sharp-edged little tables bearing fragile objects that held the potential for lots of noise if they came crashing down. The guest rooms were on the first floor. Who or whatever had broken in would have had to access the place through the main entrance on the second floor, or the roof door on the third. I felt along the wall, recoiling whenever I encountered the shape of a painting or a light switch. My toes painfully found the bottom step of the stairs to the next floor, and I wondered

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