Jeaniene Frost - At Grave’s End

A burst of noise jerked my head toward the window. The last thing I saw was glass smashing-and then there was a burning in my neck and my vision went black. I thought I heard screams, but all at once, everything seemed farther away. I couldn’t feel anything, either. It was a relief to be free from the pain.

Awareness came back with something wet being poured down my throat. I tried to cough it out but couldn’t. The flow wouldn’t stop, forcing me to swallow. Again. And again.

“…don’t you let her die!” I thought I heard my mother scream, then there was Bones’s voice, very close.

“…come on, luv, drink! No, you have to have more…”

I gagged, the liquid overflowing my mouth, when shapes around me formed into clarity. I had my mouth plastered to a blood-slicked neck, and I pushed away even as I coughed and swallowed once more.

“Stop it,” I managed to say.

Hands set me back. It was Bones’s throat I’d been pressed against. His neck wasn’t the only thing smeared red, either. So was the entire front of him.

“Christ Almighty, Kitten,” Bones breathed, stroking my throat.

“Catherine,” my mother cried. I jerked my head around in time to see her slip in something as she staggered toward me. That drape was still tied around her neck, but the other end was no longer attached to the banister. In the far corner of the room, I heard Max’s muttered cursing and a feminine English reply.

“Don’t you move, you little shite.”

“You’ve got him?” Bones asked in a truly chilling voice.

Annette sounded as fierce as I’d ever heard her. “I’ve got him, Crispin.”

My mother reached me. She was hugging me and trying to pull me from Bones’s arms even as she kept feeling my neck.

“Did he fix it? Are you all right, Catherine?”

That’s when I noticed the rest of the blood. It wasn’t only splattered on Bones, but all over me, around me, even on the nearby wall.

“What happened?” I asked, torn between dizziness, numbing gratitude that we were alive, and being aghast at all the blood surrounding us.

“Max ripped your throat out,” Bones replied. There was the weirdest mixture of relief and rage in his blazing green gaze. “And he’s going to dearly wish I’d kill him before I’m through with him.”

DON ARRIVED AT MY MOTHER’S WITH THE full team less than fifteen minutes after I called him. They must have broken every traffic law known to man, not that any local cops could give them speeding tickets.

Bones and Annette strapped Max into the capsule. Don was taking him-for now. Bones curtly said he’d send someone by later to collect Max, and the tone he used made me glad my uncle didn’t argue. Of course, I didn’t think Don wanted Max on his hands very long. The look the brothers had exchanged while Max was being strapped into that capsule was filled with so much history, Don glanced away even before Max started to curse him.

I had to be given several pints of blood to replace what I’d lost. Bones’s blood had healed my multiple injuries, but my pulse had been dangerously weak.

“That was close,” I said to Bones with a shaky smile after my final transfusion. I was sitting in his car. He’d used a towel to wipe off as much blood from me as possible. We were leaving soon. Bones didn’t want to stay longer than necessary here, since we couldn’t be sure who else Max and Calibos might have told about their ambush plans.

Bones met my eyes with an unfathomable look. “I’d have brought you back one way or another, Kitten. Either as a vampire or a ghoul, even if you hated me for it afterward.”

“Not if Max had his way,” I muttered. “He was going to cut me into pieces.”

Bones let out a hiss that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Then he seemed to get himself under control.

“I’ll remember that,” he said, each word bitten off.

So many emotions were surging in me. Relief, delayed panic, anger, exhilaration, and the urge to clutch Bones and babble about how thrilled I was to evensee him again. But there wasn’t time for a meltdown, so I stuffed those feelings back.Get it together, Cat. Can’t have you turn into a mass of psychological goo, there’s too much to do.

My mother was in the backseat. She’d refused to go to the compound, even though she wouldn’t have been there long. Don was moving everyone out. Max had found my mother’s house, so it was an easy guess to make that he knew where the compound was, too. Don wasn’t taking any chances that Max had told other vampires where to find it. Don’s operation had killed enough of them that some might decide to pay it a visit.

So my mother was leaving with Bones and me now, and Don would get her set up with another place to live later. Once he finished relocating our entire team.

“I’m sorry, Catherine,” she mumbled, not meeting my eyes. “I didn’t want to call you. I heard myself saying the words, but I couldn’t seem to stop.”

I sighed. “It’s not your fault. Max used mind control. You couldn’t help what you were saying.”

“Demon power,” she whispered.

“No,” Bones said firmly. “Max is the one who told you all vampires were demons, right? You think he’s capable of telling the truth, even after this?”

“Whatever Max told you back then,” I added, “you would have been compelled to believe, just like you were compelled to call me before. Vampires are another species, Mom, but they’re not demons. If they are, why are you still alive? You’ve tried twice to get Bones killed, but today he saved you instead of letting you hang.”

Her face was twisted with emotion. Being confronted with the reality that what she’d fervently believed for twenty-eight years might be wrong was a hard thing for anyone to swallow.

“I lied to you about your father,” she said at last, so soft I could barely hear her. “That night, he didn’t…but I didn’t want to believe Icould have let him, not after I saw he wasn’t human…”

My eyes closed for a moment at her admittance. I’d suspected that the night I was conceived wasn’t rape, but here was confirmation at last. Then I met her gaze.

“You were eighteen. Max had you believing you were giving birth to a modern-day version of Rosemary’s baby, just because he thought it was funny to tell you all vampires were demons. Doesn’t make him any less of an asshole. Speaking of that…” I pulled the IV out of my arm, then put on the jacket Cooper had kindly left for me, since my own shirt had been cut open and was sopping with blood. When I was covered, I hopped out of the car. No more horizon-tilting dizziness. It was amazing the difference vampire blood and three bags of plasma could make. I didn’t even have a mark on me anymore, whereas by rights, I should be in a body bag.

“What are you doing?” Bones asked, lightly holding my arm.

“Saying goodbye to my father,” I replied, walking over to where the capsule sat like a huge silver egg in the driveway.

“Open it,” I said to Cooper, who was standing guard until it could be loaded into our specialized van.

Cooper unsealed the outer locks. He didn’t look away when the capsule’s door slid open and Max was revealed, so I figured he’d swigged some vampire blood on the way here. That was the only thing that could inoculate a human from falling victim to nosferatu mind control, even if it did have other side effects.

My father was pronged in several places with silver. The hooked end of those spikes made it impossible for him to pull himself free without shredding his heart, not to mention several other choice pieces of him. Once the door closed, he couldn’t even wiggle, because the inner structure prevented movement while the spikes continued to drain the blood and strength out of him. I knew all this, because I designed it.