LITMIR.BIZ

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turned back to the page. “Does Nathan speak any other languages?” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “Aramaic, Hindi, Greek? Something with letters that look different from ours?”

      I shook my head. “Gaelic, from childhood, but the letters look the same. He slips into it sometimes when he’s tired or drunk, but—”

      Max chuckled. “I’ll file that away for future reference.”

      The fact he believed Nathan had a future reassured me a little. I sat on the couch while Max punched up a number on his phone. “Who are you calling?”

      “Movement,” Max said casually as if he wasn’t standing in the home of two fugitive vampires.

      I lunged for the phone.

      He yelped in surprise and jumped back. “Hey, what are you doing?”

      “You can’t call the Movement,” I whispered fiercely as though they could hear me. “They’ll kill us.”

      “They’ll want to know something happened to Nathan. Besides, who’s going to help us? The oh-so-reliable spell books downstairs?” He turned away to speak into the phone. “Hola, baby. It’s Harrison. Get me Anne.”

      My heart pounded in my chest as I stood helplessly by while Nathan’s only friend turned Judas.

      “Anne, cómo está? It’s Harrison.” He paused, then burst out with a hearty laugh.

      How could he do this? I seethed, tuning out his conversation. Nathan had quit the Voluntary Vampire Extinction Movement when he’d sired me. We’d been flying under the radar ever since, and now Max was going to bring us to their attention?

      “Gotcha.” His smile widened. “We’ll be on the plane at sunset.”

      “Plane?” I barely held the word in until he’d hung up the phone. “Where are you going?”

      “We are going to Movement headquarters. In Madrid,” he added casually as if location would be my prime concern.

      “Excuse me? We? You expect me to march into a building full of assassins who’ve been commanded to kill me on sight?” I shook my head emphatically. “No way.”

      Max laughed. “You give yourself a lot of credit, you know that? There are thousands of renegade vampires roaming the earth. You’re a two-month-old who killed her sire. Even if you mentioned your name to every person in the place, I bet you wouldn’t come across one vampire who recognized it.”

      “But you told them about Nathan.” I gestured to the phone in his hand. “They’ll know to look out for him, then.”

      Max tossed the cell onto the coffee table and sat beside me. “He was a good assassin. They’re upset that he’s left the fold, but they’re not going to put a bounty on him unless he really steps over the line. There are way too many vampires out there doing worse damage to humankind.”

      I knew it was true. Nathan had told me as much. If they’d wanted us dead, we would have been staked within the week after I’d killed Cyrus. “Over the line?” My heart jumped into my throat. “Like?”

      “Like killing someone or making a new vampire.” Max tried to maintain a neutral expression, but it grew more serious by degrees. “Listen, I’m not going to tell you this is an ideal situation. Nathan’s in grave danger. If I thought we had the resources to help him ourselves, I would never have involved the Movement.”

      “You won’t let them kill him, will you?”

      Max shook his head grimly, but a steel band of worry clamped around my heart. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” I murmured.

      Max sighed heavily. “We’ve been monitoring the Soul Eater. There’s been…activity.”

      Of course there had been. Jacob Seymour, Cyrus’s father and Nathan’s sire, had haunted my nightmares ever since I’d first seen him at Cyrus’s Vampire New Year party. He cannibalized other vampires, consuming their blood and their souls to stay alive after years of maniacal acquisition of power had taken their toll on his metabolism. Most of the year he slept safe in his coffin with a full retinue of guards, but a Movement strike team had thrown his feeding schedule off.

      “What kind of activity?” My fingernails bit into my palms as I clenched my fists. I wanted to scream, “Just get it over with! Tell me what’s going on!” But I couldn’t treat Max that way. He was trying to help me by breaking the news gently. He didn’t know it was like pulling a Band-Aid off slowly.

      “His known fledglings have gone missing. Even Movement guys. Carrie, there’s a reason the Soul Eater is so weak. He’s made, like, a fledgling a year for five centuries. Now they’re all disappearing.” Max shrugged helplessly. “And he’s getting stronger.”

      If I’d thought I’d hit bottom before, I’d had no idea. At Max’s words, the bottom truly dropped out. “You don’t think…” I couldn’t say it. There was only one way the Soul Eater grew stronger: consuming a vampire’s blood and soul.

      “Hey, I only know what they tell me,” he said, trying to sound encouraging, I’m sure. “But this thing…listen, there’s only one person who’s going to be able to tell us what’s wrong with Nathan. Unfortunately, she’s a little dangerous. That’s why the Movement has her.” He paused, cursed and ran a hand through his short blond hair. “I don’t like the plan, but they think it’s the best idea, and frankly, we don’t have anything else to go on.”

      With a shock, I realized my night hadn’t started out this way. I’d gotten up, spoken to Nathan, gone for a walk, with no suspicion that another hardship was waiting for us. The unfairness of the situation crushed me. All I wanted was Nathan, to have him with me, to tell me everything was all right. I tried the blood tie, but I felt nothing. Pain, so powerful I couldn’t express it with a sound, forced its way from my body, my mouth frozen open in a silent scream. I wrapped my arms around my middle and tried to stand, only to collapse to my knees on the floor.

      Max was beside me in a heartbeat, grabbing my upper arms to haul me upright and onto the couch. He put his arms around me, and I collapsed against him. His cotton T-shirt was comforting against my cheek, and for a moment I let myself pretend it was Nathan holding me.

      Then I pushed the fantasy away. It would never stop hurting if I didn’t face reality. Nathan was gone, maybe forever.

      “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I sobbed, more to myself than to Max.

      His voice was thick as he struggled to keep the emotion out of it. “I know what you’re going to do. You’re going to get through tonight and probably tomorrow, then we’re going to get on that plane to Madrid. We’ll meet with the Movement, do some sightseeing, get gloriously drunk and catch a flamenco show. Sound good?”

      “How can you joke at a time like this?” I wiped my nose pathetically on the back of my hand, glaring at him. “What if we don’t get Nathan back?”

      “This isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to Nathan. He’ll come out of this.” Max hesitated. “I haven’t told anyone this…”

      I sat up. “Haven’t told anyone what?”

      He looked away. “I don’t know if it will help you if I do tell you.”

      “It’s worth a shot.” Nothing he could say would make things worse.

      “My sire died.” Before I could make any attempt at condolences, he rushed to speak again. “About ten years ago. He wasn’t Movement. I wasn’t either, at the beginning. I was living with him—nothing gay or anything—and I started talking to this girl. She was an assassin. I didn’t know. She used me to get to him, then she gave me a choice. I could join the Movement or die. After I saw what she’d done to Marcus—”

      “You don’t have to go on,” I whispered. The pain in his voice overwhelmed me.

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