At Grave's End (18 page)

Telling myself it was coincidence and nothing more, I went inside. I had a job to do and there was no time for groundless fears. After all, I had enough to be afraid of that wasn’t imaginary.

M
ANY THINGS WERE CLOSED
C
HRISTMAS
Day. Restaurants. Bars. Clubs. Malls. Of course, one establishment was notoriously busy. The movie theater.

Today’s six o’clock showing of a romantic comedy starring two big-named Hollywood actors was about to get interesting. It helped that this was an upscale theater with balcony seating. More chance to show off the aerial abilities of the undead.

Vlad Tepesh rose out of his seat in the front row as if he’d been pulled by strings. His body was in stark outline against the wide screen behind him. He spread his arms and let the emerald beams in his eyes settle on the shocked faces turned toward him.

“You shouldn’t have come, Reaper.”

A show hound
, Bones had called him. Right now I had to agree. Even his long dark hair swirled around him, blown as if by an invisible breeze. I hid my smile and stood, holding a crossbow at the ready.

“Time to die, suck head.” Okay, cheesy, but if he was piling on the dramatics, so was I.

“What the fuck…?”

The guy next to me barely got the words out when I fired four arrows in rapid succession. Vlad spun in midair, dodging the arrows. They landed in the screen right as there was a close-up of the actress’s face.

Somebody screamed.
Finally
, I thought. Jeez, did I have to cut his throat to cause a panic? People were so jaded nowadays.

Vlad flew at me, mouth open and fangs on display. With that, one of the patrons howled out a word.

“Vampire!”

“Run for your lives,” I yelled, knocking over several people as I avoided Vlad’s tackle. He caught the edge of my jacket and used it as leverage, throwing me across the theater to crash into the wall. It was a spectacular toss and knocked the wind out of me, causing me to gasp even as I ducked from his fist.

“We’re playing it that way, huh? Good. I like it rough.”

I returned the gesture, slamming him so hard into the nearby wall that it caved inward. Insulation and concrete showered those who hadn’t made it out of the theater yet. Then when Vlad sprang forward, I head-butted him hard enough to split the top of my hairline. It rocked him back, though, allowing me to ram two blades into his chest. Blood poured from my scalp, causing more screams as the houselights went up and the two of us were clearly illuminated.

Vlad ignored the knives in his chest and yanked me closer, licking the flowing red stream from my forehead.

“Doesn’t hurt now,” he murmured.

“Overactor,” I snapped.

A gunshot went off, causing both of us to turn in amazement toward the back of the theater. Sure enough, there was a guy, popcorn all over him, sighting down a barrel at us for another shot. Tate, who was also in the theater, knocked him so hard in the head that I hoped there wouldn’t be permanent damage. The shooter dropped to the floor.

“Americans,” Vlad muttered over the fresh screams from the remaining patrons. “Every other person in this country’s armed. Good thing that his aim was as poor as his judgment.”

“Come on, let’s finish this. Flashy ending, isn’t that your favorite?”

“Oh, Cat, you’re going to make me do something I’ve never done before.” He laughed, kicking me hard enough to break my ankles before flinging me into the fake velvet seats. They crumpled beneath me even as I sprang to my feet, wincing but still erect. I leapt up as he charged me, causing him to crash into empty air instead of my body.

“And what is that? Be humble?”

Vlad rolled, yanking the knives from his chest like they were splinters. His eyes flicked to the last of the fleeing bystanders as they trampled one another to get to the exit.

“Nothing can force me to do that.”

The empty seats around him suddenly exploded into flames. I blinked, taken aback. Tate looked shocked, too. Vlad’s lips curled, and he waved his hands in the direction of the fire. Like candles being doused, the blaze subsided.

“You’re pyrokinetic,” I breathed. “Impressive.”

“As are you.” At last the theater was empty of everyone still conscious.

“Young man, the projector room?” Vlad prodded Tate.

Tate leapt onto the tiny window, jerking the camera through the opening. It served to block the view of someone dumb enough to stand there and gawk down at us.

“Here, your ankles.” Vlad lost his offensive posture and walked toward me. “If you’d permit?”

He held out his hand and glanced at my knives. I knew what he meant. Refusing would be both rude and stupid, since limping after him would hardly look imposing. With a nod, I sliced a neat line in his hand, then held it to my mouth and swallowed.

Vlad watched me with that same faint smile. “You don’t like the taste of blood, do you?”

“No. Well…no.”

He must have read the rest of my response in my mind, because he let out a derisive chuckle. “Acquired a taste for Bones’s, have you? Really, he has more intelligence than I’d credited him, binding himself to you. It sorely hinders his competition.”

“He doesn’t have any competition,” I answered at once, glancing at Tate.

“That’s where you’re mistaken. I wasn’t talking about your scorned suitor there.” Vlad gave a dismissive nod to Tate, who bristled. “I meant me. That’s what you’re going to make me do—envy Bones, a man I have little regard for. How galling.”

His self-deprecating tone made me smile. Now Tate really glowered.

“You’ll get over it, Vlad. Give it two weeks, you’ll be sorry you even met me.”

“Perhaps. Shall we take our final bows now?”

I stamped my feet to make sure my ankles were back to normal, then gestured toward the exit.

“After you.”

“…in front of the Palace Twenty on Montrose Avenue, where terrified spectators are telling an incredible tale. Hugh, can you pan to the right to show the firefighters?…Witnesses report gunshots, flames, and possible occult-related activities during this otherwise quiet Christmas evening…You, yes, you, miss, can you tell us what occurred inside?”

“He flew!” a shaking blond girl gasped, grabbing the microphone away from the reporter. “I think he had wings or something…and then she shot him, and the theater started to burn, oh God, I thought I was gonna die!”

“Okay, clearly we have a distraught observer, let’s see who else we can talk to.”

The newswoman tried to keep it professional, but then an impromptu tug-of-war occurred over the microphone as the blonde refused to let go.

“Miss, let me have that back, I’m sure you’ll want to speak to the authorities—”

“There she is,” she shrieked, pointing at me. “That’s her. She’s the one who shot that thing. She’ll tell you I’m not crazy!”

The reporter surged forward and the cameraman pointed that large black lens right at me. I gave it one full glance before hurrying into the van under heavy escort. This was live coverage, broadcast nationwide.
Hi, Patra. See? I’m on the opposite coast from where the informant is supposed to meet you, and you’d
NEVER
expect Bones to be away from my side on a job during Christmas, would you?

“FBI, no one’s allowed past this point,” Tate barked, shoving the reporter to the side. He pushed the camera down, cutting off any additional views of me or my entourage. After all, one quick look was all we needed. Any more and Patra might notice that Bones wasn’t shadowing me.

Our hysterical witness kept up a steady stream of shrieking until she was dragged to the side by the local police. Either this would work or it wouldn’t, we’d soon find out. Cooper, playing the informant, was supposed to be meeting Patra’s contact within an hour. With luck, Patra would believe Bones and I were both here in Los Angeles.

Tate appeared in the doorway of the van and slammed it closed. Vlad was seated next to me, and Tick Tock and Zero were also inside. Tate gave the command to leave to Doc, our driver for tonight, and sat across from me.

“All right, Cat. If anyone pokes around there, they’ll see the usual cleanup crew and all the brass. There’d be no reason to think Bones wasn’t with you. I’ll be glad to get out of here, no point in painting a target on your head.”

“It went pretty well,” I commented, bouncing as the van sped away. We’d change cars two times and then fly the rest of the way. Bones was adamant about that. “I hope his goes off without a hitch.”

Tate compressed his mouth and said nothing.

“When will you call the Master?” Zero asked.

It always unnerved me when he called him that. Zero seldom addressed Bones otherwise, no matter
how often Bones had urged him to. His milky gray eyes were trained on me expectantly.

“I won’t. He’ll call me when it’s over, maybe in about two hours, maybe more.”

My stomach twisted with worry. It was all I could do not to snatch up my cell and ruin everything with a fervent, useless plea for him to be careful.

“We’ll be halfway to Mencheres’s house by then.” Vlad stretched his legs. “A good thing, too. I’m hungry.”

“We’ll all be better when we reach Mencheres in Colorado,” I said. “Vlad, you’ll get your dinner, Tate, you can see Annette, and I’ll see Bones sometime before midnight. At least we’ll have a few minutes of Christmas together. Maybe.”

God, how I wanted to be at our own home with no one but Bones around. Not shoved in a van surrounded by five vampires on my way to one of Mencheres’s many houses. Life. You could only make plans for it, not dictate orders to it.

“Doc.” I rapped on the metal panel. “Step on it, will you?”

The sounds of a helicopter brought me bolting out of my chair with a glance at the clock. Eleven fifty-one, Colorado Mountain Time. Jeez, Bones had cut it close.

Not bothering to throw on a coat, I went outside in my thin cardigan, shivering as the helicopter landed. Snow flurries were swept away by the churning rotors that whipped hair into my face. They slowed and the side door opened, revealing Spade, Rodney, and Ian.

“Someone get me a bloody
good
set of irons, I’m
sick of sitting on this sod,” Ian spat. His chestnut hair was flying almost as much as mine.

Three of Mencheres’s vampires scurried to obey. The other half dozen went to assist Spade, Rodney, and Ian as they restrained a struggling, cursing figure.

“Angel, fetch your husband and have him give us a hand,” Spade sang out. “Where is the lazy sod—?”

He stopped at the look on my face. Ian halted as well, giving a brutal blow to the unknown vampire they carted like so much luggage.

“Where’s the other chopper? We were delayed, so Crispin should have beaten us here.”

Ian had never sounded so edgy. As if in slow motion, I raised the cell phone in my hand. I’d been clutching it for the past several hours waiting for his call. Nerveless fingers punched in those ten numbers, and then I waited again for that metallic buzzing that served as a ring.

Mencheres came to stand next to me, but I didn’t look at him. All I could do was stare at the helicopter rotors like I was transfixed. My heartbeat was so loud, I almost couldn’t hear the phone as it rang.

One…two…three…four…

God, please. I’ll do anything, please. Let him be all right. Let him be all right.

Five…six…seven…

He has to answer, he has to!

Eight…nine…ten…

There was a click and then background noise. I didn’t wait for more, but screamed his name.

“Bones! Where are you?” I couldn’t hear his voice, just more residual sounds. “Can you hear me?” I yelled even louder. Maybe we had a bad connection.

“Yessss…”

It was a hiss that drove straight through me, chilling me more than the snow falling around me. The voice wasn’t masculine, and it had a distinct Middle Eastern accent.

“Who. Is. This?”

Each word was a growl coming from the center of me. I saw Spade grip my arms, but I didn’t feel it.

A woman laughed, low and vicious.
Her voice is deeper than I imagined
, I found myself thinking.
What else was I wrong about? Why am I sitting on the ground?

If she said anything else after her next four words, I didn’t hear it. I knew I was screaming, that Mencheres snatched the phone from me, and Spade jerked me toward the house even as I fought to stay outside. My eyes were still fixated on the slowing helicopter rotors as if they could magically change everything.
They can’t stop
, the thought streaked through my mind.
If they stop, then Bones won’t come out of that chopper. Someone, turn them back on! Turn them back on!

No one did. They halted with a last, lazy rotation even as Spade forced me inside the house. Something exploded in me then, more powerful than the word
pain
could ever encompass, and all I could hear in my mind was Patra’s taunting, brutal, satisfied question.

Is this the widow?

I
WAS SEATED NEXT TO
S
PADE, ANGUISH IN MY
soul gouging me like a rabid monster trying to claw its way out.

But to Spade, I simply asked, “What happened?”

Pink tears streaked his face. “Cooper waited at the train station, and about ten minutes later, we saw Anubus sneaking up on him with several Master vampires. We wanted Anubus alive, so Ian and I secured him while Rodney and Crispin fought the rest of them. Then one of the sods managed to run off, so Crispin told Rodney to fall back with us while he went on to skewer the wretch. He was supposed to meet up with us here. We reckoned he’d beat us, since he didn’t have to take the long way with a hostile prisoner. I’m so sorry, angel. So damnably sorry…”

Mencheres strode into the room, and the rush of animosity that swept over me left a small, detached part of me curious.
Why are you mad at him? This was all
your
fault.

“It’s not safe here,” he announced. “Patra may have learned our location from Bones, so we have to leave.”

“Could she have lied?” I was grasping at straws, but drowning hands reached for anything.

Mencheres cast a look at me that was no less sympathetic for its briefness. “I know her well enough to know when she’s lying. She was not.”

We cleared out in a hurry. Randy, Denise, Annette, and my mother were on their way here when a phone call from Spade had rerouted them. He didn’t say why, which I was grateful for. I could hardly bear to think the words, let alone hear them out loud again.

“…all of my people moved at once, we are taking no chances,” Mencheres snapped into his phone before throwing it to the ground and smashing it to pieces.

Another vampire hurried to hand him a fresh one. “The number is new,” the lackey said, bowing to him and then, oddly, to me. I didn’t acknowledge it. He could have shriveled at my feet and I wouldn’t have cared. For now, I was letting myself be hustled by the current of people around me.

We left by the same helicopter Ian, Spade, Cooper, and Rodney had flown in on. My eyes were dry, staring at nothing. That’s all I seemed to see no matter what I looked at. Nothing.

With a lurch we were airborne. Tate called Don and told him what happened, ending with a warning for him to evacuate. Whatever my uncle said in reply was drowned out by the sounds of the helicopter and my own apathy. What was there to care about anymore? My heart was in pieces.

“Cat,” Tate sighed when he hung up, putting his arm around me, “Don said—”

He stopped and stared almost stupidly at his chest. The knife I’d pulled from my coat and jammed into him was less than an inch from his heart. I smiled, feeling my face crack like pottery that dried too quickly.

“That was a warning. The next one won’t be. Did you think you could just slide into Bones’s place and I wouldn’t miss a beat? You lay your hands on me again and I’ll finish you, Tate.”

I meant every bitter word. If there was one person happier than Patra right now, it was Tate. He’d hated Bones from the moment he’d met him, and that wasn’t even counting when he shot him at first glance. I’d be damned if I was going to let Tate dishonor Bones’s memory by petting me like a lapdog. Whatever chance he thought he’d gained by Bones’s death, he was wrong.

Tate yanked the knife from his chest without a word. He wiped the silver clean on his pants and then handed it back to me.

“I’m here when you need me,” he murmured, and got up to move to the rear of the craft.

No one else spoke after that, the whole two hours north to Canada.

We landed in a frozen grass field a hundred yards from a house surrounded by thick trees. It was bitterly cold, or maybe it was just me. I couldn’t seem to remember what warm felt like.

“Cat, we must talk,” Mencheres stated, holding out a hand that I ignored as I hopped down from the helicopter.

“What time will Denise and my mother be here?”

He folded his arms, oblivious to the stiff wind. “Dawn. They were picking up supplies on their way.”

“Whatever it is you want to talk about, can it wait until later?”

My emotional armor was on with full reinforcements, but that wouldn’t last. I needed to be alone so I could break down, I didn’t want to do it with an audience.

Mencheres nodded.

“Afterward, of course. I shall get you settled until then.”

“Don’t bother. Dawn’s in less than two hours and I won’t sleep. I just want to be alone. I don’t have to tell you this has been the worst day of my life.”

I started walking toward the tree lines.

“Where are you going?” Mencheres called out.

“It’s hard to be alone with a passel of vampires scuttling around me. I assume you consider this place safe since you brought us here, so I’m taking a walk.”

There were mutterings of objections behind me from varying voices. As my response, I held up my middle finger and kept walking.

The pines were thick in places. Tracks in the snow showed many different species called this frigid area home, and at this hour, it was quiet.

As I walked, I let myself remember the first time I saw Bones, bent over a table at a club with the lights reflecting off his hair. How he’d called my bluff when I drove him to a lake under the pretense of seduction. Waking up chained inside a cave, hearing him mock me with a Tweety Bird impression. His face when he first saw my eyes glow and he realized I’d told him the truth about what I was. That smug grin he gave me after I challenged him to a fight to the death. Our first kiss. The first time we’d made love. And the smile he’d given me the first time I told him I loved him…

My rapid pace carried me miles away. When I saw the cliffs, I started climbing them without much thought as to why. Judging from the low-hanging moon, there was still about forty minutes until dawn. Soon after that, Denise and my mother would arrive. I didn’t want to see them. I didn’t want to see anyone.

I’d climbed for twenty minutes before I found a wide enough ledge to sit on. A blast of wind made me rub my hands together, and the red diamond caught my eye. My engagement ring for a wedding that would never happen.

I got up and stared out over the ledge. The rocks below seemed mesmerizing, the distance to them somehow not far or frightening. After a moment, my eyes closed, and I felt myself take a step forward. And then another one.

“It must be difficult for you.”

At the first syllable, my eyes snapped open. Vlad was seated on a ledge almost thirty feet below my perch, watching me.

“Yeah, it’s difficult that the man I loved is dead. How brilliant of you to notice.”

Vlad rose. “Oh, I didn’t mean that. I meant it must be difficult for you to decide what you are. I never had to wrestle with that. When I changed into a vampire, I couldn’t revert back to my humanity under any circumstances. Yet you wake up every day trapped in yours. As I said, difficult.”

What the hell was he rambling on about? “I said I wanted to be alone, Vlad. Get out of here.”

“That’s not why you’re really here, Catherine.”

“Don’t call me that,” I said out of habit, then shook my head. Like it mattered now what he called me?

He gave me a contemptuous look. “Why not? Stand
ing on that ledge is Catherine Crawfield, not Cat, the Red Reaper. Catherine has no obligations, no responsibilities, and she’s decided to follow her husband to the grave. In the end, it appears you’ve chosen your human side. How interesting.”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” I snapped, and then stilled.

Wasn’t it?
I’d walked out in the freezing cold, climbed a cliff, and was teetering on the edge of it with my eyes closed. Falling at this height would likely knock my head off, so there would be no chance of anyone bringing me back, as a ghoul or anything else. Who was I kidding? I’d known just what I was doing as soon as I left that helicopter, even if I’d refused to acknowledge it until now.

You could do it
, the thought teased me.
Don will look after your mother, your team will be fine with two vamps and a ghoul to lead them, Denise has Randy…It’s not like before when you left Bones and had people depending on you. You can go to him. You’re ready.

“You’re ready, Catherine?” Vlad baited me, using that name again as he picked the thought from my mind.

“Fuck you, Dracula,” I snapped. “No wonder Bones didn’t like you. You’re pissing me off as well.”

“We didn’t care for each other, but we did respect one another. Would Bones want you to do this? Is this what
he
would have done, if you’d been killed?”

No.

The answer came to me without needing a moment to ponder it. I knew what Bones would do if the tables were turned. If Max had murdered me, Bones would’ve been as shattered as I was now, but as a
vampire, he wouldn’t have allowed himself the option of suicide. No, not until he’d tracked down each player in my death and treated them to a horrible payback first. Only after he’d extracted his revenge would Bones have allowed himself to even think about his own death. That’s how vampires were.

But Vlad was right. I had an excuse. I was half human. I could wrap that humanity around myself and leap off this cliff into Bones’s arms on the other side. But vampires had no such luxury. If I were a vampire, I’d have no choice but to climb off this cliff and commit myself to a bloody retribution, broken heart or no. But if I was human, I could go ahead and jump.

Vlad gave me an assessing, unmerciful rake of the eyes as he listened to my internal struggle.

“So then, what are you?”

Since I was sixteen and my mother told me about my father, I’d wrestled with that same question. The sound of my heartbeat seemed to mock me. Each breath I took was a taunt. Yeah, I had many similarities to a human, and yes, I wanted the peace of that free fall to the other side where Bones waited for me. God, how I wanted it! But I wasn’t human. I hadn’t been since the day I was born, and I couldn’t let myself pretend to be human now.

“Well?” Vlad asked with more emphasis.

I gave one last regretful glance at the ravine’s rocky bottom before meeting Vlad’s eyes.

“I am a vampire,” I said, and backed away from the ledge.