Then I went over to Bones, framing his face in my hands.
“It was you who taught me to judge people by their actions instead of their species. You saved me from a life of misery, regret, and well-earned recriminations. Now it’s time to let me do my thing, Bones”—I smiled wryly—“and trust that you taught me to be the best damned killer I could be.”
He covered my hands with his own, his flesh vibrating with the power he kept so tightly under control. Then he kissed me, gentle yet full of scorching passion.
Which was why, when he drew away and spoke, I couldn’t believe what he said.
“You’re right, luv. But I still refuse to be a part of this.”
Then I really didn’t believe it when he walked out of the apartment.
Thirteen
This wasn’t the first time Bones had gotten pissed enough to walk out on me. Whoever said marriage was easy? Not me.
“He just needs time to cool off,” I told Denise, who hovered in the doorway, holding a bottle of gin in one hand and a pint of Häagen-Dazs in the other. Had to give it to my best friend: She knew how to cover her bases.
I pointed at the gin. She came inside, handing it over. Then she sat next to me on the bed and popped the lid off the ice cream, digging into that one herself.
“Of course he’ll be back,” she said between spoonfuls. “But are you, you know, okay in the meantime?”
I took a swallow of gin before I answered. “I’ve been better. When Bones does return, we’ll have it out over the way he chose to express his dissenting opinion, but marriage is a marathon. Not a sprint.”
Denise raised her spoon in salute. “True, that.”
I patted her arm, taking a last swig of gin before I put the bottle on the nightstand. Then I pulled out one of my burner phones, dialing a number that used to connect me to my uncle when he was alive.
“Madigan,” a brusque voice answered.
“This is Cat Russell,” I said. “We need to talk.”
The space of two heartbeats went by before Madigan replied, “Aren’t we doing that now?” in a manner that sounded more cautious than sarcastic.
I let out a short laugh. “Humor never was your strong suit, Jason. I mean face-to-face, and sooner rather than later.”
“Come on over, then. You know where I am,” was his reply.
“So I can stand in the cross fire of dozens of machine guns concealed in your walls?” My scoff was soft. “Thanks, but no.”
This time, his silence stretched longer than a couple heartbeats. Probably trying to figure out how I knew about the guns.
“What did you have in mind?” he asked at last.
“Midnight tonight at the Rat Branch Pier off Watauga Lake. It’s just east of Hampton, Tennessee. Come alone, and I’ll do the same.”
Laughter floated across the line, harsh as glass being ground by rocks. “You’ll do the same? We both know Bones is glaring over your shoulder right now, silently vowing to accompany you.”
“If he were here, he would be,” I said, and that was the unvarnished truth. “But we already had this fight, and he got pissed and left. That’s why our meeting has to be tonight. He won’t be gone long, and once he’s back, he’ll insist on coming.”
Another extended silence. Either Madigan was mulling this over or trying to trace the call, but he’d get nowhere with that. Finally, after long enough for me to wonder if he’d hung up, he spoke again.
“This intrigues me, Crawfield, but I don’t think I’ll give you an opportunity to kill me. You want to talk? Come to me here.”
“It’s Russell,” I said at once, “and see if this intrigues you: Don made arrangements for a letter to be mailed to me in the event of his death. I’ve moved around a lot the past several months, so I only just got it. In it, he apologized for the horrible things he allowed to go on while the two of you worked together—”
“What things?” Madigan interrupted.
I smiled. Have your interest now, don’t I?
“That’s what I want to find out, but not enough to give you home-field advantage. The pier on Watauga Lake tonight or forget it. Hell, maybe forget it anyway. Another letter’s probably on its way with more information.”
Frustration practically seethed through the silence on the other end. Not only did Madigan really want to capture me; like all bureaucrats, he was nothing if not paranoid about keeping his secrets. The last thing he’d want was a group of vampires poking around his illicit experiments, and the idea that his former nemesis might spill the beans posthumously must be giving him an ulcer.
“If I thought you had a shred of honesty in you,” he finally gritted out, “I’d make you swear on Bones’s life that you’ll come without him. Or anyone else.”
“I swear it,” I said evenly. “And out of the two of us, I’m not the biggest liar.”
The noise he made was too low for me to determine if it was a scoff or a laugh.
“I guess at midnight, we’ll find out.”
“See you then,” I said crisply, and hung up.
Denise stared at me, her hazel eyes wide with alarm. “You’re not really intending to go alone, are you?”
“Of course.” My lips stretched into a cold, predatory smile. “As I said, between Madigan and me, I’m not the biggest liar.”
The Rat Branch Pier at Watauga Lake was a public place, yet even if I’d chosen high noon instead of midnight for our meeting, it was still very isolated. More than half of the lake’s sixteen-mile shoreline was bordered by the Cherokee National Forest, while a snaking road overshadowed by steep, wooded terrain bordered the other side. Only the moon provided illumination since the single light post next to the pier was broken.
The steady rain plus countless rustling trees and the nearby dam muffled the natural sounds from the forest’s inhabitants. Still, here and there I caught the glow of eyes as nocturnal creatures foraged for food, mates, or both.
I waited at the very end of the pier, my clothes already soaked from the summer rain. Clouds concealed most of the light the moon cast, but with my enhanced vision, I had no difficultly seeing Madigan pull up in a sleek black Cadillac before parking next to the boat launch. Even if I’d suddenly been struck blind, his mind broadcast his arrival. Tonight, he’d chosen to sing the chorus to U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” over and over to block me from his thoughts.
And here I’d thought the prick had no sense of humor.
Madigan parked, but then sat in his car instead of getting out. It was a little before midnight; was he going to wait until exactly 12:00 A.M.? Or did he not see me at the end of the pier? Then I tensed when he began rooting around in the front seat, but all he pulled out was an umbrella.
Candypants.
He got out of the car, holding his umbrella over him with one hand and carrying a small but powerful flashlight in the other. His steps were sure as he walked onto the pier, and when he turned the corner toward the last section, his flashlight briefly blinded me as he shined it onto my face. Guess he knew where I’d been waiting all along.
“Evening,” I said pleasantly.
“Show me your hands,” he replied in a far less cordial manner.
I pulled them out of my coat pockets, not bothering to hide the curl to my lips as I wagged my fingers at him.
“You’re alone in the dark with a vampire and your first concern is whether I’m packing weapons?” Really? my tone implied.
His mouth thinned, emphasizing wrinkles caused by frowns instead of smiles.
“You should know if I don’t return from this meeting, I’ve left instructions to carry out a drone strike on your mother’s location.”
My half smile never slipped. “If you knew where she was, I’d believe that.”
His gaze swept over me, cold and calculating. “You’re careful. She isn’t. Can you believe she returned to your childhood home in Ohio, as if I haven’t had the place watched since you visited it last fall? Sentimentality can be such a curse, can’t it?”
I didn’t know who I wanted to throttle more—Madigan for his threat or my mother for returning to a location she knew had been compromised. Wait, no contest. Madigan, but I couldn’t. Not yet.
“Why tell me your fail-safe? If I was going to kill you, now I know to call my mother afterward and tell her to hightail it outta there.”
His smile didn’t reach his eyes. It never did. “Cell service has been temporarily disabled in her area.”
I let out a short laugh. “You’re clever, I’ll give you that, but I have no intention of killing you tonight.”
Then my eyes blazed green, cutting through the darkness with more intensity than his flashlight. When I spoke again, my voice resonated with nosferatu power.
“I do, however, have some questions.”
Madigan stared right into my bright emerald gaze. And laughed.
“Did you actually think it would be that easy?”
Quick as flipping a switch, I turned the lights off in my eyes. As I’d suspected, he’d inoculated himself against mind control by drinking vampire blood.
“No, I didn’t.” Then I gave him a lopsided smile. “Still, had to try, right?”
He smiled back. “My thoughts exactly.”
I didn’t get a chance to ask what he meant by that because power blasted through the air. I only had a split second to recognize its source when something large dropped out of the sky, landing behind Madigan with a thump that shook the pier.
“Hallo, mate,” Bones said, yanking the older man against him.
Madigan didn’t struggle. He didn’t even look surprised though you could’ve knocked me over with a feather at my husband’s sudden appearance.
“You lied to me, Crawfield,” Madigan hissed.
“Russell,” I corrected him automatically, still staring at Bones in disbelief.
Then my head jerked up as noises crashed through the woods, the sky, and even the waters around the pier.
Madigan managed a smile despite the tight grip Bones had him in.
“That’s all right. I lied, too.”
If he said anything else, I didn’t hear it. The sound of machine-gun fire was too loud.
Fourteen
I vaulted into the air, wincing as bullets pierced me faster than I could fly out of range. Being shot multiple times hurt, but the pain quickly faded, which meant the bullets weren’t silver.
That surprised me until I remembered that Madigan wanted me alive. He must think I had something really special in my DNA to risk using non-lethal force to capture me, but the joke was on him. I’d be happy to deliver the punch line once we had him back at the apartment, where Denise would morph into his non-evil twin and we’d—
Wait, why was gunfire still going off below? Didn’t Madigan’s people realize we were long gone? Speaking of which, why hadn’t Bones caught up with me yet? He was by far the faster flier.
I stopped and twirled in a circle to search the sky from every direction, but all I saw were storm clouds. There was no telltale charge of supernatural energy in the air, either. Where the hell was he?
Then a fresh barrage of gunfire made my stomach clench. He couldn’t still be on the pier, could he?
I dove straight down like a hawk streaking after prey. As I cleaved through layer upon layer of opaque storm clouds, the scene below finally became visible. Soldiers converged on the pier from the woods, boats on the lake, and cars that screeched up to the launch ramp. All with automatic weapons that spit bullets at the lone vampire kneeling on the end of the pier.
“Bones!” I screamed. “Fly, dammit!”
But he didn’t. He fell forward instead, his body slumping against the rough wooden planks. Then the only movement I saw was his clothes ripping as bullets pitilessly continued to strafe him.
I landed next to him so hard that half my body went through the pier. It only took me a second to scramble up and fling myself over him, glad at the icy-hot needles of pain that meant the bullets were piercing me instead of him. Then, over the sound of gunfire, I heard a shout.
“Hold your fire!”
Madigan’s voice, amplified by some sort of device. I lifted my head, a snarl escaping me as I saw him treading water a few dozen feet away from the pier. Somehow, he’d escaped Bones and jumped for it. That was fine. I could carry both of them as I flew—
A shock wave knocked me off Bones and sent me sprawling against the other side of the pier. Concussion grenade, I mentally diagnosed. One amped up enough for vampires. Madigan had really upgraded his toys, but before I could scramble back to Bones, I saw something that froze me into immobility. A line appeared in his blood-spattered cheek, dark as pitch and snaking across his skin like a crack in a statue. Then another line appeared, and another one. And another.
No.
It was the only thought my mind was capable of producing as black lines began to appear all over his skin, zigzagging and splintering off into new, merciless paths. I’d seen the same thing happen to countless vampires before, usually after twisting a silver knife in their hearts, but denial made it impossible for me to believe the same was happening to Bones. He couldn’t be slowly shriveling before my gaze, true death changing his youthful appearance into something that resembled pottery clay baked too long in an oven.
My immobility vanished, replaced by terror such as I’ve never felt. I vaulted across the pier, snatching Bones into my arms while my tears joined the rain in soaking his face.
“NO!”
Even as the scream left me, the changes in him grew worse. His muscular frame felt like it deflated, the hard lines of his body becoming rubbery before they began to shrink. I clutched him tighter, sobs turning my tears scarlet, while something started to hammer in my chest. It felt as though I were being pummeled on the inside with hard, steady blows. My heartbeat, a part of me registered. It had been silent for almost a year, but now, it pounded more strongly than it ever had when I was a human.