Blood Ties Book Four: All Souls' Night

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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.

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.

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.

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.