Unhinged: Blood Bond: Parts 4, 5 & 6 (Volume 2) Read online

  “I don’t think so. It’s still pretty early. But people could have been in the parking lot going to work.” She plunked down on the bed, lay down on her back, and put her arm over her forehead. “Speaking of work, I should get some sleep. I’m back on tonight.”

  “Do you want some breakfast? I can make something.”

  “Your famous toast?” she said without moving her arm from her eyes.

  “Yeah. That’s about it.”

  She sat up. “I’ll make us something. No problem. Come on.” She got up and left the room.

  I followed.

  When I reached the living area, my heart nearly stopped, and I gulped audibly.

  On her coffee table lay what looked suspiciously like Bill’s leather bound Vampyre Texts.

  Chapter Twenty

  Erin

  “What is that, Erin?” Dante asked quietly.

  “Oh!” She smiled. “It’s for you.”

  But his brow was furrowed. He didn’t look happy about my acquisition.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “I…borrowed it. This morning. From Bill.”

  “Does he know you took it?” Dante shook his head. “Of course he doesn’t. He doesn’t let anyone touch that book. Erin, what were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking about you. Of all the questions you have. You’re learning French so you can read this thing. I wanted to help.”

  He paced around the living room, raking his fingers through his already disheveled hair. He was upset, angry. And all I could think of was how delicious he looked.

  What was wrong with me? How had I made such a stupid mistake?

  “I-I’m sorry. I’ll take it back.”

  “No.” He turned back to me. “What you did was wrong. You know that as well as I do. But I need this book, Erin.”

  “That’s why I took it. I know you need it. We both need it, to figure out what’s going on between us. Taking it wasn’t my best moment in life. I’ll grant you that. But once I saw it, all I could think about was this thing between us, and how this book might be able to explain it. You know?” Tears welled in my eyes. I’d done something ridiculous that I knew in my heart was wrong. And I’d done it anyway. That wasn’t me at all. “I’m so sorry. I really am, Dante.”

  He came to me swiftly then and took me into his arms. “It’s okay, baby. We’ll make it all right. And you were right. I do need this book.”

  “Will Bill understand?”

  He didn’t respond right away. Just kissed my forehead a few times.

  “Dante?”

  “I don’t know, honestly. I don’t really know my grandfather anymore.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “I think he will understand. But it’s not his book, Erin. It’s Bill’s. I have to tell him.”

  “I know. Tell him I’m sorry, okay?”

  He kissed my forehead again. “I will.”

  “Are you going to return it right away?” I asked.

  Again, he took a few moments to respond. “I’m not sure. We both need to get some sleep now. I’ll decide tonight.”

  I nodded against his neck.

  When I got to the ER that night, chaos had broken out. Not only had the missing patient from a few nights ago not been found or returned, Logan was now missing. He hadn’t come in two nights in a row, and Dr. Bonneville was livid.

  Lucy filled me in once I’d clocked in.

  “She’s really raging tonight, Erin. Just stay out of her way.”

  Staying out of her way was easy enough to do on a busy night. All the nurses had to work with all the doctors on a busy night, but so much was going on that no one had a chance to be angry or treat anyone badly.

  Unfortunately, tonight was not a busy night.

  I’d just finished giving a toddler an asthma treatment when I heard Dr. Bonneville yelling at one of the residents.

  “I’ll have his medical license,” she said. “He’ll never practice medicine in this state again. Or anywhere else if I have any say about it. Find him, or I’ll have your license too.”

  “Doctor, we’ve tried—”

  “Try harder! Now I have to get another resident in here to pick up the slack. I’m a doctor, and this hospital thinks I’m an HR person. Somehow I’m responsible because one of the residents is missing. Now get the hell out of my sight.”

  I walked by the resident, Dr. Nice—yes, that was her name, and it fit her well—trying to make myself invisible.

  To no avail.

  “Sorry you had to hear that, Erin,” Dr. Nice said.

  I smiled weakly. “We’ve all been there.”

  “I wish I knew why she thinks I have any idea where Logan could be. He and I aren’t close at all.”

  “You’re just her target du jour,” I said. “She’ll be yelling at someone else soon.”

  “I know. I never seem to get used to it, though.”

  “You shouldn’t have to. But there will be doctors like her everywhere you go.”

  “I hope I never get like that.”

  “You won’t,” I said, chuckling. “Your name won’t let you.”

  She pasted on a nervous smile. “Erin, I don’t want to pry, but I know you and Logan dated. Do you have any idea what could have happened to him? It’s not like him to leave without calling in.”

  “First of all, we had one date, and it didn’t go well. Second, I honestly have no idea. We’re not close at all. I can ask Lucy. She dated him once.”

  Dr. Nice laughed. “So he’s a one-time-only thing?”

  I joined her laughter. “Neither Lucy nor I felt a connection, I guess.”

  “He’s cute in a geeky kind of way,” Dr. Nice agreed. “But not my type either. I just wish I knew where he was, so I could go yell at him for putting all of us through this.”

  “I agree, Dr. Nice.”

  “Erin, please call me Fiona. We’ve been through this.”

  We had, but I was more comfortable using doctor in the workplace. “I will, outside of work. If Dr. Bonneville heard me addressing any of you by your first name…”

  “I get it.” She smiled. “Thanks for the conversation.”

  I walked away but didn’t get far. Dr. Bonneville headed straight toward me, fire in her blue eyes. “Erin, I hear you and Dr. Crown were apparently an item. We need to have a chat.”

  Great. Not only would I be interrogated on Logan’s whereabouts, I’d also get the “don’t fraternize with the work colleagues” lecture. Which, unfortunately, I probably deserved.

  “My office,” she said. “Now.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Dante

  Once I’d gotten over the fact that Erin had taken the Vampyre Texts, I was glad she had. I had every intention of returning them…after I’d had a full look.

  The book wasn’t as long as it appeared, as the words were printed on thick parchment. It was still long, though—about the size of the New Testament.

  That was a lot of Old French.

  I’d done a little more research on the language, and I’d found that Old French was more of a spoken language. Very little literature written in it still existed.

  Whoever translated the Texts apparently thought Old French was a good idea. I couldn’t say I agreed.

  I leafed through the first couple of pages. It might as well have been written in Greek.

  Ten online lessons in contemporary French didn’t amount to much.

  Unless I learned a lot more, I wouldn’t be able to read this volume.

  After getting over being pissed off about that, I went back to Erin’s computer and tried researching again. I was led to the same old thing—paranormal websites claiming to know all about vampires, most of which were filled with one myth after another.

  I usually skipped right over these, but today I decided to attack the issue from a different angle. I scrolled through site after site, looking for anything that might ring true.

  Nope. Same old thing.

  Until—
/>   An obscure site called Nocturnaltruth.com. It was way down on the list. I’d scrolled through at least ten pages of entries before I found it.

  Nothing about vampires was mentioned in the blurb on the search engine, but something made me click anyway.

  It was only one page with no links.

  Do you want the truth? Email me at [email protected].

  Crown.

  The name was familiar somehow. I’d heard it recently. I was sure.

  Bill had asked me if I still had an email address. I’d had one in high school, so I logged into it.

  Wow. Junk mail galore! I cleared out all the mailboxes and then updated some information. Then I began an email to Lucien Crown:

  To whom it may concern:

  I want the truth. If you know the truth, you’ll know who I am. You’ll know why I need the truth.

  I struggled with whether to sign my real name and then decided not to. I’d use my father’s name. He was dead, so no harm could come to him.

  But harm could come to Em. Or me.

  “For God’s sake,” I said aloud.

  I deleted the email.

  This was most likely a hoax and would lead me down a rabbit hole. That wasn’t what I needed. I needed the truth. The real truth.

  My phone buzzed. Bill.

  Of course. He’d noticed his book was missing.

  “Yeah?” I said into the phone.

  “Return my book, Dante.”

  “Is the translation ready for me?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Then I’m keeping the book. I need it.”

  “You won’t be able to read it.”

  “I’ll figure it out one way or another.”

  “You must return it.”

  “I won’t harm it. You’ll get it back when I’m done.”

  “You’re not ready for what’s in there,” he said adamantly.

  “I’m nearly thirty years old. I’ll decide myself what I’m ready for.” I moved the phone from my ear, ready to end the call, when Bill’s voice came at me loudly, as if on speaker.

  “Dante, no one knows what’s in the Texts. It’s too dangerous to know.”

  I clamped the phone back onto my ear. “Excuse me?”

  His sigh whooshed into my ear. “I didn’t want to have to tell you this.”

  “Tell me what? That you don’t even know what’s in the book? And you expect me to believe that?”

  “I don’t expect you to believe anything. I expect you to respect me enough to have faith—”

  “Respect you? When all you’ve done is keep me in the dark since I got back? You’ve been reading my mind, Bill.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Bullshit. I know you have been. It’s not only annoying, it’s creepy as all hell. I need answers. I need to know why I was taken. Why Erin and I are bonded. Why that bitch who kept me stole my blood. I need to know, Bill. I have the right to know. If the answers are in that damned book—”

  “No one knows what’s in the book.”

  “Please don’t treat me like a child. That’s a lie, and you know it.”

  “Come over, Dante. Bring the book. We need to talk.”

  The book stayed at Erin’s. Bill had another copy in his office. If he needed to refer to it, he could use that one.

  I wasn’t surprised to see my father in Bill’s office as well, standing.

  “Do you ever sit?” I asked him.

  “Ghosts don’t really sit,” he said. “We’re constantly on the move, and we don’t really have bodies.”

  “Fascinating,” I said dully, sitting down across from the desk Bill sat behind.

  “This will be news to your father as well, Dante,” Bill said. “He wasn’t old enough when he left—”

  “He didn’t leave any more than I left. He was taken. He might have gone after me, but it wasn’t his idea not to come back.”

  “Semantics,” Bill said. “Can we get past that, please? I’m doing the best I can. I’m about to break old Vampyre law divulging what I’m about to tell the two of you.”

  I scoffed. “What the hell is old Vampyre law? We follow the laws of the place where we live.”

  “We do,” he agreed, “but when vampires reach a certain age, they learn about old Vampyre law.”

  “What age is that?”

  “Ninety-two.”

  “So you’ve known about this for ten years,” I said.

  He nodded. “Since shortly after the two of you le— were taken.” He cleared his throat.

  “And who told you?”

  “One of the elders. He’s gone now. Only two of us on the council know.”

  “What is there to know?” Then I turned to my father. “You’re eerily quiet.”

  “Only because this doesn’t concern me. For all intents and purposes, I don’t exist anymore. I’m here only as your protector. I need to know everything you know.”

  Sounded reasonable enough.

  “No one has read the Texts in their entirety. Old Vampyre law cautions us against doing so.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because there are secrets in the Texts,” Bill said. “Secrets that could ultimately destroy us.”

  “This is ridiculous,” I said.

  “I have to agree, Dad,” my father said. “None of this makes any sense. You taught me that the Texts were historical. What about our history could possibly destroy us?”

  “Believe me. It didn’t make any sense to me when I found out either. But it’s something we are supposed to accept. On faith.”

  Faith. That word again. I had to have faith that my father was here, as a ghost, and once I’d accepted that, I’d been able to see him.

  But faith was still a foreign concept to me. Religious people had faith, but I wasn’t a religious person.

  Did I have faith in anything?

  Erin. I had faith in my bond with Erin. I accepted it, even though I didn’t understand it.

  Could I apply my faith to what Bill was about to tell me?

  Time would tell.

  I’d previously thought Bill was sounding dogmatic. Perhaps I’d been right.

  Bill cleared his throat and continued, “Apparently the Texts were originally written in ancient hieroglyphs. A vampire scientist named Olivier Le Berre translated them in the early thirteenth century into Old French. It was Le Berre who insisted they never be read by any vampire after him. He devised our current teaching of the necessary elements through symbolry passed to each generation orally, so no one had to actually read the Texts in their entirety. What lay between those pages, he said, could be our undoing.”

  “So you truly don’t know what’s in the Texts,” I said, still unbelieving.

  “I know some of it. The history. What I taught you,” he said to my father. “That is what was taught to me by my father, and what I taught River and Emilia when they came of age.

  “And I’m still in the dark,” I said.

  “There’s a reason for that,” Bill said. “Hear me out. I was as curious as both of you, and my ego got the best of me. I’m a logical person. What could be in a book that could possibly harm us? I thought I knew more than the elders, so when I was told the truth about the Texts, I decided to read them myself.”

  “You can read Old French?”

  He shook his head. “But I can read contemporary French. It was a stretch, but I was able to translate a few sections. Most of what I read I already knew. It was what I’d been taught, and what I taught you, Julian. But I eventually came across a passage so dark that I closed the book and vowed never to open it again.”

  “What did the passage say, Dad?” my father asked.

  Bill closed his eyes. “I can’t reveal it to you. It’s too dangerous. I’m asking you to believe me. To take it on faith.”

  I stood. “That’s bull.”

  “Dante, hear him out,” my father said.

  “I can’t repeat it,” Bill said. “Not in good conscience.”


  “Then why are we having this little discussion?” I asked. “You’ve already refused to teach me what you taught River and Emilia. Are you really having parts of the Texts translated for me? Or is that another lie?”

  Bill didn’t respond.

  Yup. A lie.

  “It’s not what you think,” Bill finally said.

  “And exactly how is that?” I asked, not nicely.

  “Your father is here. He might be dead, but he’s here. He will be the one to teach you. I lied about the translation to keep you satisfied until you were able to accept your father as a ghost.”

  I turned to my father. “Dad?”

  He nodded. “I will teach you son. But I can only teach you what I know.”

  “Then what about Erin and me? What about the blood bond?”

  Bill stood behind his desk. When he opened his mouth to speak, his fangs had descended. “Dante, the answers you seek aren’t in the Texts. The Texts will only darken your world. What you seek is light.”

  “What I seek is understanding of the blood bond between Erin and me. Where else would I find it?”

  “I don’t know. I was only able to come up with a tiny bit of research, and though it rings true with your situation, we’ll never know if it’s truly accurate.”

  “Where did you find your information?” I demanded.

  “An obscure site on the web. Nocturnal Truth.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Erin

  I sighed as I sat down beside Lucy at my workstation.

  “You okay?” she said. “You look like you’ve just been through major trauma.”

  Major trauma? Major trauma was what we saw every night in the ER. Even so, my run-in with Dr. Bonneville had taken it out of me. She’d demanded to know how her research project was going, and when I’d told her I hadn’t found anything of substance, she’d gone off the deep end. “You’re worthless.” Then she’d pulled a hundred-dollar bill out of her pocket and shoved it at me. “I suppose I’d better pay you, or you’ll haul me into small claims court and God knows I don’t have time for that shit.”