The Turning-Blood Ties 1 Read Online Free PDF Page A

shoulder, and I shrugged it off angrily. “Do most customers leave in an ambulance?”
    Ziggy pointed his finger accusingly at me. “She’s a fucking vampire, man! Don’t let her out of here!”
    With a ferocity that startled me, the man yelled at the boy. “Get her a compress for her head!”
    Ziggy sputtered in disbelief. “Maybe I should get her a cup of my nice warm blood, too?
    Sprinkle some marshmallows in it?”
    “Upstairs, now!”
    The kid pushed past us as he mumbled furiously under his breath, slamming the door behind him so hard the glass in the window rattled.
    “I don’t think he’s coming back with the compress,” I observed dryly.
    “No, I don’t, either.” The man laughed quietly, holding out his hand. “I’m Nathan Grant.”
    “Carrie Ames.”
    Get out of here, you moron, my brain screamed. He’s still got the damn axe! Yet my feet stayed rooted to the spot, completely under the control of the morbid curiosity that had brought me this far and the ruthless attraction that urged me to stay as close to this man as possible.
    Nathan cocked his head and regarded me with sparkling gray eyes. Clearing his throat, he leaned the axe against the doorpost and crossed his arms over his chest. “Ames. You’re the doctor from the newspaper?”
    His voice was deep and seductively masculine, his words pronounced with a distinctly

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    Scottish accent. I had a hard time concentrating on his question, distracted as I was by his perfect mouth. “Uh…yeah. That would be me.”
    He smiled, but it wasn’t the friendliest expression I’d ever seen. It reminded me of the way the dentist looks right before he says you have to come back for a root canal. “Then we’ve got a lot to talk about, Doctor. I apologize for Ziggy. He’s got it in his head that he’s a vampire hunter. How’d he find you?”
    “Find me?” Zigmeister69. I’d been set up. “E-mail.”
    Nathan chuckled. “Figures. Nightblood.com?”
    I coughed deliberately to hide my answer. “Yes.”
    He shook his head. “Rule number one, don’t go public.”
    “Rule number what? What are you talking about?”
    As if he had all the time in the world to explain himself, he turned away. He stepped behind the counter and pressed a button on the CD player, cutting off the annoyingly soothing New Age droning.
    “What are you talking about?” I demanded, tagging after him as he walked through the shop and snuffed the candles. “Would you stop and talk to me?”
    He sighed and dropped his head, bracing his arms on a table that looked far too dainty to support his weight.
    “The rules you have to follow. The rules every vampire has to follow.”
    My hand was on the door before I realized I’d intended to run.
    “Wait!” he called after me. He caught my arm and gently turned me around to face him just as my hand found the lock. “If you run out of here, this will only end badly.”
    His grip on the sleeve of my coat unnerved me, as did the tension in his voice. My words sounded thick and strange as I spoke. “Is that a threat?”
    “Listen,” he began, some of the urgency of his tone gone now. “I know you have some questions. Otherwise you wouldn’t have run into Ziggy.”
    “Yeah, I have questions.” I spat the words in my anger. “Who the hell are you? Why did I get attacked when I walked through that door? And what the hell makes you think I’m a vampire?”
    I yanked open the shop door and stepped into the pitiless cold, fishing in my pocket for my half-empty pack of cigarettes.
    He followed me to the threshold and let me get halfway up the steps before he spoke again. I was struggling with my lighter when he called after me.
    “What makes you think you’re a vampire? That’s why you were trolling the vampire message boards, right? That’s where Ziggy found you. It’s his M.O.” He moved up the stairs with a grace I’d thought