Jeaniene Frost - At Grave’s End

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 whathe 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.

MENCHERES MADE NO COMMENT WHEN I appeared later with Vlad at my side. If he’d guessed at any of the drama, he kept it to himself. My mother and Denise had arrived. I’d seen their plane circling overhead while I climbed off the cliff down to solid ground.

A scream picked my head up as we approached the house. Mencheres closed his eyes and gave a shake of his head. He’d been standing outside awaiting my return.

“They’ve just been informed of his death,” he said by way of explanation.

“You needed to speak with me?”

Mencheres blinked at my controlled tone. “I thought you wanted to see your mother first?”

“No, let’s talk now.”

Vlad gave a polite bow. “I’ll leave you to speak privately,” he said, and went inside.

Mencheres considered me with the same evaluat ing stare I gave him. Neither of us moved. Finally he broke the silence.

“I’ve used my power to try and locate Bones’s body. For an instant, I saw him, shrinking into the state of true death, with a knife pierced through his chest.”

The image slammed into me with more force than a cannonball. It was all I could do not to succumb to hysterical shrieks, like I could hear Annette doing. My fingernails punctured my palms as I ruthlessly squelched down my grief.

“Do you know where he is?” At least then I could bring him home. If nothing else, I could do that.

“No. I lost the image right afterward. I think Patra’s using a blocking spell. She’s used them before to keep me from locating her. I will try again, of course.”

“Thank you.”

It was the first sincere, appreciative thing I’d said to him. Mencheres didn’t smile, but some of the tightness left his face.