Chapter 33

Thirty-Three

The words sound so wrong coming from a woman drenched in blood, I can't help but laugh.

"I really wish I knew."

She doesn't reach out her hand to help me up and I don't think I'd have accepted it if she had.

Her gaze moves past me and I pull myself upright with the flat rocks of the fence, starting to get feeling back in my leg. My grandmother glares at Aphrodite and I wish I could push through the Carraway gate and go after her.

But I can't.

I watch her use the closest tree to stagger to her feet, her hand clutching her messy throat.

"She's weak." My grandmother says, as if she can read my mind. "You can wait to go after her until we're done."

A clatter and rush of sound pulls my attention from her as her vampire tumbles out of the underbrush, his clothes are torn, his face slashed, but none of that seems to slow him down.

It's my grandmother who stops him.

Eyes wide, he flinches to a frozen, statuesque stance.

"Holy…" Aphrodite's vampire stares at us. "You're—"

"Yes I am. Go now, before I make you regret every drop of blood you've ever tasted.

For a long moment I think he'll challenge her, but a second later, he bolts through the trees.

Aphrodite is nowhere to be seen.

And the brief sense of the guys I'd felt has vanished with her.

The wolves though… The wolves felt them too.

They've abandoned me to go search for them. And I wouldn't have wanted anything else.

Stretching, my grandmother's bones pop and crack and in the end, she sits on her headstone.

"You grew up, cutie pie."

"That's how it works."

She studies me for a moment too long.

"You're not going to bite me, are you?"

Chuckling, she shakes her head. "I love you child, but your blood reeks of werewolf."

"It does?"

She raises both brows and taps her nose.

"I could have picked out any man you'd had sex with, but them… You're saturated in their scent." She looks at me ascanse. "Taking on a whole werewolf pack would certainly be a handful."

"They don't change anymore."

"Don't they?"

"Last month was a Samhain blue moon."

She looks up at me, something like admiration in her eyes.

"But I might not have them for much longer if Aphrodite gets her way. She kidnapped them, and now that you've bitten her, I imagine she's desperate."

"Blood magic can make you feel that way, certainly."

"Is that what happened to you?"

She scowls, looking down at the grave. "That is a story that will take too long to explain in full. And we need to do some spelling if we're going to find your lovers in time.

"Will your magic work the same way now that you're…?"

"A blood sucker? Yes." She looks down at her blood drenched fingers. "I was trying to help a friend. Blood magic and vampirism… they go hand in hand, don't they? So I pushed a little harder than I probably ought to have."

"Mom said you were going to California on vacation."

"She always did like to lie to you. I went to find answers. The hive of vampires I found though… they didn't want to give them."

"They attacked you?"

"The Change is not a pleasant process. It doesn't surprise me that so many of them focus on their rage and let it sustain them." She touches her neck, even though the mark of what happened is gone. "They didn't kill me. And your mother won't. So I've been taking a very long nap."

"Until Aphrodite woke you up, unknowingly offering herself as a snack."

"Honestly… I was so thirsty I couldn't help myself. It's a good thing you stopped me or that other witch would have died."

"Maybe I shouldn't have."

"Who knows what would have happened to her spells if she died before they were unwoven."

Her words trail off as her eyes lose their focus. The moment passes in a flash of red across her irises.

"That's not important right now, is it?" She wraps her shroud more tightly around her. "What do you think she wants your wolves for?"

"Power. That's all she's ever wanted. And I think she's going to drain my wolves and her acolytes to do it." I can't stop the shiver that wracks me. "I have to get them back."

"You'll have to find them first."

Instinctually, I step in front of the exit.

Gran's smile lets her fangs peek out beneath her top lip. "I put myself here, I'm not about to leave."

Turning her back to me, gran goes to the soupy corner of the plot. "There's far more here than my desiccating corpse. And some of it is going to help you find them."

She mutters something under her breath and it sounds like she's mad at my mother. And then I hear her say, "You're old enough to know all the family secrets."

But she's muttered that to the mud too as she leans into it, muck up to her shoulder.

"There you are." She drags a jar from the muddy depths and scrapes the dark soil from the glass, glaring at the contents for a moment before nodding her head as though she wasn't actually certain the first time.

Moving to one of the many buckets filled with rain water, she pulls one up and pours it onto her arm, washing it, and the jar clenched tightly in her hand.

"Have you ever fallen through the veil?"

"Only once."

"When?"

I swallow the ugliness, not wanting to remember. "You know when."

My grandmother looks up at me, her eyes narrowing for a moment before they clear. "Yes, you were five, weren't you?"

I nod, not wanting to relive the night I tangled up in someone else's thoughts. I almost didn't make it out of that nightmare alive.

"It will be easier this time." She moves around the plot, collecting a wooden basin before she returns to her coffin, to sit on it as she unscrews the jar.

When she spills half the contents into the bowl, it sizzles and a puff of smoke vanishes into the night overhead.

Her eyes never leave it as she seals up the jar once more and tosses it—not looking—back into the mire.

From here, I can smell dill and lavender but the rest of the dark liquid is a mystery. At least it is until she spits in it. Dark and heavy words drop from her lips to the bowl below her, and I stay put. I don't dare take a step forward. Not when her fangs are out.

But they aren't for me.

She drags her teeth across her arm and blood pours out into the basin.

More words, bouncing through three different languages, she casts the spell that will tether me to this plane.

But when she presses her palm flat against the surface and raises it to me… I hesitate.

"It won't be like last time."

"I know."

"Then you will have to set your fear of me aside in order to get them back. I know you don't trust me. I know very well what you were taught. But if you want them back, this is the quickest way."

I blow out a long breath. I have to do this.

It's not about trusting her not to bite me while I'm under…

With a quick nod, I step forward and sit on the ground in front of her.

"Good luck." Her palm presses against my face, and I fall back.

I fall through the ground and lose my tether to the mortal plane.