Blood Bound

Wonder what it feels like …

I’d actually pulled my hand from the plastic bag before I realized what I was doing, and when he glanced at my bloody fingers, I felt myself flush.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Did you lose the pull?”

“No.” I shoved my hand back into the bag and ran my fingers over the stiffening material, staring straight out the windshield. He couldn’t guess at my thoughts if he couldn’t see my face. “Just keep heading west.” Deeper and deeper into Jake Tower’s side of town.

“So … how long have you been bound?” Cam asked, when I motioned for him to take the next left.

My heart jumped so high I could practically taste it on the back of my tongue. “I told you, Cavazos doesn’t—”

“I meant Anne. How long have you and Anne been bound to the others?”

Oh. Yeah.

I tried to relax, but that was hard to do, considering I was clutching the bloody evidence from a murder scene, riding into the territory of a man who’d kill me as soon as look at me and sitting next to the man I’d thought I’d spend the rest of my life with. “Fifteen years. Since I was twelve.”

Cam whistled, as if he was impressed. Or horrified. “So, the whole time we were together, you were bound to your three best friends?”

“And vice versa.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“After high school, it didn’t seem to matter. We hardly saw one another.”

“Anne said it was an accident …?” he prompted, and I wondered how much else she’d told him.

“Yeah. We didn’t know what we were doing. Some guy at school made Anne cry, so Kori made him cry. Then we went back to Kori’s house to comfort Anne with junk food, and we wound up swearing lifelong loyalty and assistance instead.”

“How do you accidently sign and seal a lifelong binding?”

“We didn’t know it was a binding.” I twisted to half face him, and only then realized how comfortable that felt. How easy talking to him had become—again—as if we could just pick up right where we’d left off.

But we couldn’t. Ever. And forgetting that would get one of us killed.

“It was different then, you know?” I made myself stare out the window to avoid looking at him. “The revelation was still recent, and our parents hadn’t told us we were Skilled. They were afraid that if we knew, we’d be in danger. Turns out ignorance is more dangerous than the truth.”

“It usually is,” Cam said, and suddenly my throat felt thick. He was talking about his own ignorance, about all the things I still couldn’t—wouldn’t—tell him.

“We were just being kids. Best friends standing around the kitchen, making promises we probably never would have kept, just to make Anne smile. But then Kori’s little sister, Kenley, came in and overheard us, and she wanted to help. She said it wouldn’t be official unless we wrote it down.”

Cam’s brows rose halfway up his forehead, and he looked away from the road long enough to make me nervous. “Kenley Daniels was your Binder? Sixteen years ago?”

I nodded. “If we’d known that ran in her family—turns out her mother’s a Binder, too—we probably would have realized what she was doing, even if she

didn’t.”

“Displaying the first instinctive manifestation of a very serious Skill?”

I couldn’t resist a smile. “Good guess.”

“How old was she?”

“Ten.”

“Damn. It doesn’t usually show up so early.”

“I know.” I’d met more than my share of Binders since that day fifteen years ago, and not one of them had displayed a stronger Skill or instinct than Kenley Daniels had at ten years old. Without even knowing what she was.

“So … she what? Scribbled a promise in crayon and told you to sign it?”

I laughed again, but more out of nerves than amusement. He wasn’t far off. “It was pink glitter pen, actually. And after we signed, she said it still didn’t feel right. She said it wouldn’t be ‘real’ unless we used blood.”

The four of us had been losing interest by then, but Kori had perked up when she realized that meant she’d get to use her knife. And I have to admit, I was curious—perhaps the beginnings of my own talent with blood.

“Oh, shit!” Cam glanced at me again, then back at the road. “Kenley’s a blood Binder? I thought she worked with signatures….”

“Actually, it turns out she’s a double threat.” Blood binding was a much rarer Skill than name binding—binding a written oath with a signature—and those who could do both were rarer still. And someone with the power to do both at such a young age was almost unheard of.

“So, I’m guessing that contract is ironclad …?” Cam said, flicking on his turn signal when I pointed toward a side street ahead.

“Yeah. And what’s worse is that she had plenty of Skill, but no training. It was really more an oath than a contract. Just a promise that we would help one another whenever asked. There was no expiration date, no stipulations and no exceptions. There weren’t even enough words to form a decent loophole.”

“Why didn’t you just burn it?”

Burning it to ashes was the only surefire way to destroy a blood-sealed contract, which is why certain notorious crime lords had started sealing their employee bindings in the flesh—literally—with tattoo marks as a fail-safe in case the corresponding written contract was destroyed. Fortunately, Kenley hadn’t foreseen that advancement. I wasn’t even sure she was capable of flesh binding, not that any of us knew what that was fifteen years ago. Her first sealed contract could easily be destroyed—if it could be found.

“By the time we realized what we’d done—the first time Kori’s grandmother had to pick her up from the police station—the oath was gone. We looked everywhere. Our parents got together and tore the Danielses’ house apart, and when it wasn’t there, they searched their own houses. But we never found so much as a scrap of powder-blue paper or pink glitter pen.”

“You think someone took it?” he asked, and I could only shrug.

“It didn’t walk off on its own. But I have no clue who could have taken it. Or why. Until Kori got arrested, only the four of us knew about it—Kori, Anne, Noelle and me. And Kenley, of course. And we all wanted it destroyed.” Badly, by the time we got to high school. “We explored different theories over the years. A parent trying to teach us a lesson. Kori’s brother, Kristopher, being a pain in the ass. Their dog burying a new prize. But no one ever admitted anything, and Anne didn’t know she was a Reader yet, so it never occurred to her to look for a lie. And every time we tested it, the binding was still intact, which meant that the oath was still whole, wherever it was. And obviously it still is now,” I said, gesturing to the entire car to indicate our current vigilante mission.

“That sounds like a total pain in the ass.”

“Worse. We started hating each other. Even the most offhand, ridiculous request became a geas—a compulsion that had to be obeyed, to the exclusion of everything else. We wound up cheating, and lying, and stealing, and starting fights for one another. We got hurt, and arrested, and kicked out of school. And the cycle was self-perpetuating. Anne would get pissed at Kori for making her help cheat on a test, so she’d ask Kori to go to the drugstore and shoplift only hemorrhoid cream and Vagisil, knowing that when she got caught, she’d be humiliated.”

Cam laughed. “When I met them, the four of you seemed to get along pretty well.”

“Part of that was the fact that we rarely saw one another after high school. The rest of it was the second oath.”

“There was a second oath?”

“Yeah. My senior year, Kenley got tired of all the bitching and backstabbing. And I think she felt guilty, because she was the reason for the trouble in the first place. So she conned us all into the same room long enough to show us a new oath she’d penned, which basically made us swear never to ask one another for anything.”

“So, did you sign?”

“Hell yes! We fought over who got to sign first. After that, everything was fine. We weren’t best friends anymore, but we didn’t hate each other, either. We just kind of … left each other alone. That New Year’s Eve party six years ago? That was the first time we’d spent more than an hour together since high-school graduation. It was also the last time I saw any of them. Until this morning.”

“Because Anne burned the second contract?” I scowled. “You were eavesdropping?” He shrugged. “I could only hear bits of it from the hallway.”

After a moment of hesitation and concentration, I motioned him through the next red light, but I could tell his thoughts were no longer on the drive. “So, why did you guys let Anne keep the second oath?”

“We didn’t,” I said. “It didn’t seem fair for any one of us to have it, so we let Kenley keep it. She was the only neutral party, and she was the one who sealed it.”

“Well, Anne must have gotten ahold of it somehow, if she burned it.”

My hand clenched around the bloody material. I hadn’t thought of that. “And she must have gotten to it quickly….” I mumbled, mentally counting the few hours between Shen’s murder and the moment Anne showed up in my office. And she’d found Cam even before that. “Maybe she’s still in contact with Kenley….” I began, then realized that we’d rolled to a halt three cars back from a four-way stop.

“Which way?” Cam asked, and I forced my mind back to the energy signature I was tracking.

I closed my eyes and placed my hand flat over the tacky sock, inside the bag. The pull was still there, but fading as the blood dried. “Straight,” I murmured. “But slightly to the right …”

“There’s no slightly to it,” he said, and I opened my eyes as we rolled through the intersection to find the street sandwiched by tightly packed rows of buildings—mostly neighborhood businesses and apartments.

“Slow down.” I closed my eyes again and let the blood guide me. The pull was getting stronger, but not definitively so. “Stop,” I said at last, when the blood began to pull me from behind. “We passed it.”

He backed into the first available parking spot on the curb and turned off the engine. “Up there, maybe?” he said, twisting to peer through the rear windshield at the building on the right. “In one of the apartments?”

“That’s my guess.” I pulled a packet of wet wipes from my satchel and started cleaning blood from my hand. Again. The wipes wouldn’t work as well as lye, but they were portable and didn’t make me want to peel my own skin off to stop the burning.

Cam glanced at the slight gun bulge beneath my jacket as I stuffed the used wipe into a plastic sandwich bag in the side pocket of my satchel. “Are you really going to do this?”

“I don’t have any choice. Or did you forget what compelled means?”

“I haven’t forgotten anything, Liv,” he said, and I realized we were having two different conversations. “Do you have a silencer for that thing?”

“No, I don’t have a silencer. Because I’m not an assassin.” I dug through my satchel for a thin box of surgical gloves and plucked two from the slit on top, then shoved them into my right jacket pocket.

“Well, that’s too bad, because this is an assassination.”

“No, this is an execution.”

“The difference would be …?”

“Assassination is murder. Execution is justice.” I pulled a small, folding blade from my back pocket and flicked it open, then folded it closed again, satisfied that it was still in working order.

“So now you’re an executioner?”

“No, I …” Too late, I caught the hint of a grin and realized he was teasing me. I scowled. “Are we going to sit here and argue until he comes out and begs to be shot, or you wanna go in?”

“Honestly, arguing sounds like more fun. And on that note … you sure have a lot of weapons for not-an-assassin.”

I shoved the knife back into my pocket and met his gaze, the butt of my gun digging into my side. “Do I look dead to you?”

His grin grew. “You look all pissed off. It’s kind of hot.”

It took serious effort for me to stay focused when I realized he wasn’t joking. “I don’t know about your line of work—” I wasn’t even sure what he did for a living, come to think of it “—but most of the people I track don’t want to be found, and people who don’t want to be found are usually armed. And dangerous. And on hair triggers. So yeah, I’m armed. Because I don’t want to die.”

“If you’re the muscle, that must make me the brains of the operation.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re the chauffeur. Here’s the plan—find him, kill him.”

Cam laughed out loud, and my teeth ground together. “That’s not a plan. It’s not even a complete sentence.”

“You got something better?”

“How ‘bout this?” He pulled back the right side of his jacket and showed me his gun. It was bigger than mine. And it was fitted with a long, barrel-shaped silencer in what had to be a custom-made holster.

“Nice,” I admitted, and his grin was back. But I couldn’t help wondering why the hell he even owned a silencer.

“I had a feeling you’d appreciate the reminder that I come well equipped.”

“I’d appreciate it more if I thought you knew how to use that,” I said, without thinking. His eyes lit up, and that’s when I realized I was flirting. We’d fallen back into that old familiar pattern as if the past six years had never happened.

“What, you don’t remember?” he teased, while I silently cursed myself.

“This isn’t going to happen, Cam.”

His good humor faltered, then resurged. “The execution?” He was as stubborn as ever.

“No, that’s going to happen. Then you go back to your life and I go back to mine.”

His grin vanished. “What life?” Cam demanded softly, his gaze holding mine like the earth holds the moon captive. “What could you possibly have now that’s better than what you left behind?”

Nothing. I had nothing now but the knowledge that I’d made a tough choice for us both, because I couldn’t live with the alternative. And neither could he. But that knowledge did little to ease the hollow ache in my chest or warm the empty half of my bed, and admitting regret now would only make the whole thing worse. So I closed my mouth, opened the car door and got out without a word.

Turning away from him this time hurt no less than it had the time before.

Six

Liv opened the passenger’s side door and stepped onto the sidewalk without acknowledging my question. She might think she could sweep me under the carpet again when this job was over, but she was wrong. I’d given her time. I’d given her space. I’d given her every opportunity in the world to find someone else and start a family, or at least start a life that included more than just the job she obviously lived and breathed. The closest she’d ever come was moving in with some asshole who cheated on her—I’d tracked him, even if she hadn’t thought to—then stolen her car.

I could see the truth as well as any Reader could have. If she really didn’t want me, she would have gotten serious with someone else. She wouldn’t grimace every time she told me to go away, as if the words tasted bad. She wouldn’t still look at me like she used to, when she thought I wasn’t watching.

Olivia still wanted me, just as much as I wanted her, but something was holding her back. Something she couldn’t move past. I could take care of that obstacle for her—I’d tear down anything standing between us—but I couldn’t destroy what I couldn’t even see. She’d have to show me the problem. I’d have to make her show me the problem.

Bolstered by fresh determination, I fell in at her side, and we headed for the entrance without even a glance around the neighborhood.

Rule #1 in tracking: don’t look like a Tracker.

It’s always best to go unnoticed. Even near my own neighborhood.

Especially with Liv at my side.

Even if she wasn’t marked or bound, word on the street was hard to overcome, and most people thought she was sleeping with Cavazos at the very least, which meant that Tower’s men would see her either as a trespasser to be booted from this side of town, or a prize to be offered up to the boss.

No easy outs, either way.

I jogged up the front steps and she followed me into a tiny, dusty entryway leading into a long hallway lined with doors and apartment numbers. “Well?” I said, relieved to have her off the street and out of sight.

Liv reached into her pocket to feel the bloody sock again. Then she nodded toward the staircase, and I followed her up the first flight of stairs. On the second-floor landing, she reassessed, then started down the hallway, eyes half-closed, obviously letting the energy signature pull her.

She had told me once that the blood pull was really more of a feeling than a scent, and though I had little blood-tracking skill myself, I knew she was right. But as she worked her way down the hall, she sniffed the air softly, like a real bloodhound, though she didn’t even seem to know she was doing it.

About halfway down, she stopped and turned to me. “It starts to fade here….” She stepped back toward me, then stopped, closed her eyes and nodded, as if she was sure of something. “And it’s strongest here.” She stood directly between two apartment doors. “Is that 208 or 210?”

I glanced at the end of the hall, toward the first door, then followed the pattern to where we stood. “Two-ten,” I whispered, and reached for the doorknob. But then her hand landed on my arm, warm against my bare skin.

“Let me,” she insisted. “Men are still less threatened by women than by other men. I’ll have a better shot of getting in there without causing a scene.”

I nodded and stepped back from the door, not because I agreed with her—I didn’t—but because I could still feel her hand on my arm, and the surprise of being touched by her again had yet to fade.

She may not have looked scary, with her big blue eyes and jacket that hid her gun but not her curves, but Liv could track better than any man I’d ever met, and if word on the street could be believed, Rawlinson had turned her into a damn fine fighter. Over the past six years, living and working in this city had turned the funny, charismatic girl I’d loved with every cell of my body into a jaded, hard-edged loner I still couldn’t look at without catching my breath.

I’d never felt more alive, watching Liv prepare to charm—or maybe force—her way into some stranger’s apartment. Olivia was a wire wound too tight, always about to snap, but she lived on excitement and thrived under pressure. Being with her was like holding a bomb in both hands, watching the numbers tick back toward zero. I knew she’d eventually explode, and this time it might kill me.

But it was hard to care about the potential for collateral damage when just being near her again felt so good. So I pressed my back against the wall to the right of the door, gun drawn and ready in a two-handed grip. Liv’s gun was still concealed, but I had no doubt she could get to it in a hurry. She knocked on the door, but no one answered. There was no sound from inside.

Liv knocked again, but again got no response. “The pull’s still strong, which means he’s home but not answering. Or, he’s lying unconscious and near death from whatever wound Shen managed to inflict before dying.” She glanced up at me, brows raised in question. “Plan B?” she whispered, and I nodded.

B always stood for breaking and entering.

She stepped aside and pulled her gun while I holstered mine. I took the doorknob in both hands and twisted sharply. The lock broke with a metallic snap that seemed to echo much louder than it should have. But the door didn’t swing open.

“Dead bolt,” I said.

“Is that a problem?”

I gave her a disappointed look. “It’s like you don’t know me at all…. Step back.”

She stepped away from the door hesitantly as I dropped into a deep squat to stretch—which is when she figured out what I had in mind. “Wait, don’t …!” she whispered, but I was already in motion. My foot slammed into the door just beneath the knob and wood creaked loudly. Liv cringed over the noise, then shrugged. “May as well finish it now….”

I kicked again, and the interior frame gave way with the loud splinter of wood. Maybe not the most subtle entry, but definitely the fastest.

The door swung open, and I lurched to the right, watching her from across the doorway with my gun already drawn. For one long second, neither of us moved.

I couldn’t break Cam’s gaze, and my own breathing was heavy in anticipation. We shared that single, taut moment of expectancy until we realized that if the target was in there, he wasn’t coming out.

Finally, I nodded at the ruined door, reluctantly impressed by the damage, and lifted both brows in question. Cam gestured for me to go first. Which I liked.

I rounded the door frame and into the living room, gun aimed at the floor, scanning the room with my gaze and the entire apartment with whatever sense it is that feels the pull of blood. That pull was still there, but not as strong as it should have been. Not as strong as it would have been if the target were in the apartment, even if he wasn’t bleeding.

Cam came in behind me and pushed the front door closed, but it swung open a couple of inches again, because of the busted lock. I heard him checking behind doors and under furniture while I opened all the kitchen cabinets big enough for a man to crawl into.

“I think it’s clear,” I said, flicking the safety on my 9mm. But I kept the gun out, just in case. “Damned if I understand it, though.”

“Maybe he just left.” Cam kicked open the bedroom door and glanced beneath the bed, then in the closet, checking both potential hiding places gun first. “He is a Traveler, right? So he probably just stepped into a shadow and out of the apartment the minute he heard us.”

Which was why tracking a Traveler could be a real bitch. The only way to catch one was to trap him in a room with no shadows big enough for him to walk through. And that’s a lot harder than it sounds. Kori was a shadow-walker, and her grandmother had given up on grounding her when she was fourteen.

But.

“That shouldn’t matter,” I said. “So long as he’s alive, his energy signature should lead to him, not to his apartment.” Which Cam would know if he were a bloodhound—name-tracking works a little differently, and Cam was no better with blood than I was with names. “But the pull still feels like it’s coming from …

here.”

“Here … where?”

I closed my eyes and clutched the sock in my pocket again, through the plastic bag. The energy signature was fainter now, as the sock continued to dry, but I could still feel it. Eyes still closed, I turned until I faced the direction of the pull, and when I opened my eyes, I found myself staring at the open bathroom door.

“There.”

Cam crossed the room in a heartbeat. He pushed the door open all the way with one hand, then scanned the interior with his gun aimed and ready. He’d had training. The same kind of training I’d had. And he was good.

For a moment, I wondered if he was a cop. Was that why Anne had wanted us to work together? Was Cam actually using his criminal-justice degree, while I’d let my B.A. in philosophy rot in a drawer?

And if not, how was he making a living?

A second later, he took two steps into the bathroom and pulled the shower curtain back in one swift movement. It rattled on the rod, but revealed an empty—if filthy—tub. There was barely space for two people in the room, but I squeezed in with him anyway, already half suspecting what I’d find.

Sure enough.

I dropped the toilet lid—the bowl was no cleaner than the tub—and sat, then pulled the wastebasket in front of me, between my boots. Inside was a pile of blood-soaked rags, tissues and bandages.

“Shen must have got him good.” Cam sank onto the edge of the tub.

“I guess. But why would he leave them here?” Every Skilled person I knew carried a bottle of ammonia—or at least bleach—in their car, and most of us had an entire collection of chemicals that would destroy blood in our homes.