Jeaniene Frost - At Grave’s End

BONES ARRIVED AT TEN AFTER MIDNIGHT. I went outside to watch the helicopter land, Cooper at the controls. Bones was the first one off. Then came my mother, Rodney, and Cooper. Cooper looked downright ghostly, but my mother seemed almost blase.

“Nowthat was informative,” were her first words. “Catherine, you never told me that no matter how many times you sliced something off a vampire, it grew back.”

Charming. “Guess I don’t have to ask if you had a nice time,” I muttered. “I suppose it’ll make you easy to shop for this Christmas, though.”

She frowned. “Must you always wisecrack? Never mind, I’m tired and I just want to get some sleep.”

I swept out an arm. “The barracks are right this way.”

She gave a disparaging glance around. “I remember barracks all too well from when you first started with Don. It’s like sleeping in a coffin and since I’m not a vampire, I’ll pass on that.”

“Mom.” My teeth ground together. “It’s only temporary. We’ll get you another place soon. I would say you could stay with Bones and me, but then there’s the whole vampire thing again.”

“I can get a hotel,” she insisted.

“Registered under the same name Max found you at?” I shot back. “No. Don’s going to get you a new ID and another house, but until then-”

“She can stay with me.”

The offer didn’t come from Cooper. No, he’d been studying the ground in a rapt way during this exchange. Bones lifted his brows in surprise.

Rodney shrugged. “I have a house about two hours from here. I’m not there much, since I travel a lot, and it would be safe until your uncle found her something else, Cat.”

I sighed. “Rodney, thanks for offering, but-”

“You don’t have body parts there, do you?” my mother interrupted. “I don’t want to open the refrigerator and find a head on the shelf.”

Rodney laughed. “No, Justina, it doesn’t look like Jeffrey Dahmer’s hideaway.”

She gave a measuring look toward the exterior of the building and then back at Rodney. “If my choices are staying in a barrack with a bloodsucking new vampire on the premises, or at the home of a ghoul, I’ll take the ghoul. Catherine, I’m sure one of your soldiers can give us a ride?”

She swept away toward the barracks, Rodney following after her.Dead Man Walking, I thought, and it had nothing to do with him being a ghoul.

Bones watched them go and then turned to me. “That woman is frightening.”

I snorted. “I’ve felt that way my entire life.”

Bones stared at me, his expression guarded. No doubt he was wondering if I was going to start bitching at him again over how he’d kiddie-tabled me, but I wasn’t. I still disagreed with his reasons, but Annette’s admonition struck a chord in me. My relationship with Bones was worth a hell of a lot more than my wounded pride over what he’d done. I had to work through this issue with him, and avoidance or whining wasn’t the way to do it.

Still, I felt awkward, not knowing what to do with myself. I hadn’t given him a real greeting. My normal routine would have been to kiss him, but that didn’t feel appropriate, either. I settled on stuffing my hands into my pockets and shifting uneasily on my feet.

“So…”

I let the single word trail off. Bones gave me an ironic smile.

“Better than ‘rack off,’ as it were.”

“I understand why you did it, but we need to find a way to get past this sort of thing,” I said in a rush. “Protecting the other person from what we assume he or she can’t handle, I mean. I didn’t think you could handle Don and my mother years ago, so I left, but I should have trusted you to make that decision for yourself. Just like you should have trusted me to decide about this.”

Bones snorted in disbelief. “You’re comparing my leaving you for one night to you disappearing on me for over four years?”

I felt a flush rise in my face. “Well, no…er, I mean, the principle’s the same,” I stammered. “What I did was wrong and stupid and I can honestly say I regret it more than anything in my life. But tonight you didn’t give me a choice, Bones.”

I paused, taking a deep breath and trying to let my eyes convey what I was having a hard time articulating.

“If you would haveasked me not to go, for the same reasons youordered me not to, I would have been okay with it. I would have still thought you were being paranoid, but it wouldn’t have made me feel like you were pulling a ‘me big bad vampire, you silly little girl’ routine.”

Bones shot me a frustrated look. “Of course I don’t think you’re a silly little girl.”

He began to pace. I watched him, saying nothing.

“I’m very weary of being the reason you need to be strong,” he said, his eyes edging with green. “Because of me, you dangled yourself out as bait to a group of murdering white slavers years ago. You had to drive a car through a house to rescue your mum-while covered in your grandparents’ blood. You took a job with Don that’s nearly gotten you killed countless times. All because of me.”

He stopped pacing to come over to me, grasping my shoulders.

“I am well sick of seeing you forced to prove your strength on my behalf, so I didn’t want you to do it yet again with Max. Can’t you understand that?”

I covered his hands with mine. “Yes. But you didn’t make me do any of those things, Bones. Even if I’d never met you, I’d still be going after vampires, and I wouldstill have to handle the consequences of that.”

He was silent for a long moment, staring into my eyes with that hard, penetrating gaze of his. Then at last, he gave a short nod.

“All right, luv. Next time I’ll give you the choice, not make the decision for you.”

I gave his hands a squeeze. “I promise not to decide things for you again, either.”

His mouth twisted. “Turns out I’ll be the first to make good on my word over this new accord. There have been some developments. Max gave us the name of the chap who sold him the missile he was going to use on your car.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“Yes.”

I felt cold anticipation at the thought of confronting that person.

“I’m going with you.”

Bones’s expression said he hadn’t expected any other response.

“Tomorrow.”

This was my third trip to Canada. I’d traveled there on missions for Don, but maybe one day I’d get to just visit Niagara Falls as a tourist and not kill anything.

I sat in a van with my companions. Dave was half a mile away, negotiating the sale of three hundred surface-to-air missiles, five hundred grenades, and three high-powered explosives. He was acting as the front man, since Bones was much more recognizable. With Dave’s extensive military background, he could talk shop with the best of the black market arms dealers. Even now they were quarreling over the grade of plastique for the potential car bombs.

No one spoke in the van. We could hear every word ourselves, so that meant any undead ears trained in our direction could as well. Cooper and Juan rechecked their machine guns, which were equipped with silver bullets. That modified ammunition wouldn’t kill any ghouls, but it would make a vampire’s day very unpleasant. Our numbers were low for a reason. Less chance of getting noticed that way.

Spade was there, picking at his fingernails as the time ticked by. He wasn’t carrying a gun. Master vampires like him and Bones didn’t need to, since they were weapons themselves. Deadly ones.

The modified bulletproof bodysuit I wore chafed underneath my clothes. It was the newest thing, a thin, flexible piece that covered all the major organs and looked like a medieval teddy. Of course, if my head got blown off, it wouldn’t do me any good, but the rest of me was protected. Cooper and Juan were also outfitted with the same material. Range of motion was greatly increased with this versus the old bulky vests.