Possession-Blood Ties 2 by Jennifer Armintrout Page A

with desert temperatures reaching record highs over the weekend, they are presumed dead.”
    Cyrus eyed the girl on the bed, shaking his head. “Pickles?”
    More disturbing than the Mouse’s ridiculous name—though barely—was the matter of the fire. Why would the authorities believe the building had burned? And if the weekend had passed…
    “Get up.” He stood, glad of the little strength sleep had returned to him, and shook her.
    “What day is it?”
    She stared at him in bleary confusion. “Tuesday or Wednesday. I lost track. You’re standing.”
    Tuesday or Wednesday. Which meant he’d been raised on Monday. But they’d been here since Friday. “What happened when people showed up for Mass on Sunday?”
    “I don’t know. No one came. When Father Bart mentioned it to…” She wet her lips.
    “That’s when they killed him. He tried to tell them people would be coming soon for services. They laughed at him and said no one was coming to help us.”
    Cyrus turned away from her tears. They might spark that dangerous human guilt in him, and he had no time for it now. “Did they tell you why?”
    “No. They just started killing.”
    “But they kept them for two days before they killed them. Why?” The timeline didn’t make sense. If he’d taken hostages, he would have dispensed with the useless ones right away.
    When he turned to face the Mouse, her eyes were wide and rimmed with red. “They were doing things. Occult things. Satan worship.”
    “Impossible. The Fangs think Satanists are pussies.” When she flinched at his coarse language, it buoyed his mood. “What, exactly, were they doing?”
    She curled her legs beneath her and toyed with the hem of her dress. A perverse memory of the night before came to his mind. He expected guilt, and when it didn’t come he found its absence far more disturbing than its presence would have been. As if sensing the change in him, she wrapped her arms across her chest, hugging herself. “I don’t know what they were doing. They didn’t tell us. But I heard them say the time had to be right, they had to be sure it was him. And they needed Father Bart’s hand.”
    “He had to take part in the ritual?” It made sense. Though Cyrus didn’t believe in all the Catholic tripe he’d been made to swallow as a child, the power of a priest was similar to, if not greater than, that of a practiced magician.

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    “Not him. Just his hand.” The words left her in a whisper. “The rest of the stuff they did to them, that was for fun.”
    “Why did they spare you?” Cyrus sat beside her on the bed, ignoring the sting of shame he felt when she cringed from him. “Why not use you and feed from you like they did the nun?”
    “Because I wasn’t as fun.” She trembled as she spoke. A tear slid down her cheek. “I didn’t scream or pray. That’s what they wanted. They wanted her to pray while they did it.”
    The thought would have amused Cyrus in the past, but it didn’t now. Not when this girl was so visibly traumatized by what she’d seen. “Why didn’t you?”
    For the first time, the Mouse looked him in the eye. He saw no life or hope in those dull brown depths. Her body steadied, and her voice was strong. “Because no one was listening.”
    She sounded so like him centuries ago. He tried to keep the emotion from his tone as he spoke. “That is the most important thing you’ll ever learn. Because no one is listening, and no one is looking out for you.”
    She broke down then, gulping great lungfuls of air as she sobbed. He stood and walked to the tiny kitchenette, trying to ignore the trembling in his legs. He would not abide becoming so weak again, so fast. “We’re out of milk.”
    “What’s happening?” Her face was swollen and red from crying, contrasting starkly with the white gauze at her neck. “What are they doing?”
    “I have no idea.” He