Jeaniene Frost - At Grave’s End

Spade and Rodney were in the drawing room with Ian. Mencheres wasn’t, and it didn’t disappoint me. Seeing Patra had upset him, it was clear. Some part of me felt sorry for him. When he’d married Patra, he’d loved her. Not a wise judge of character on his part, but then no one was perfect. Even thousands of years later, that mistake was still haunting him.

“You did well tonight, Cat,” Ian said. “Though you look like shit.”

Normally I would have responded with something sarcastic, but it took too much effort. Instead I settled myself on the couch, tucking the box on the floor next to me. “Whatever.”

“You need to sleep,” Spade said for the hundredth time.

“If I could fall asleep, then I wouldn’t be sitting here listening to you guys bitch at me. Has Anubus divulged anything interesting yet?”

Ian had been the one spending most of the time with him. Well, Ian and a few sadistic friends. Anubus no doubt wished they’d just kill him. They wouldn’t, of course. No matter how much he might ask for that.

“Blasted little, as it were.” Ian grunted in exasperation. “The sod doesn’t even know how Crispin was taken or who else was at that train station besides the vampires we saw. It doesn’t make sense why he wouldn’t know more, but he’s maintaining that he doesn’t.”

“We’ll just have to try harder,” Rodney grimly said. “Be more inventive.”

“Even so,” Spade agreed.

My fingers rubbed my temples to try and stem the migraine that had grown worse.

“Ian’s right, you know,” Spade said briskly. “You’re in terrible shape, and you won’t last much longer without rest. Shall I-?”

“You can’t help her. I can.”

Spade glowered at Tate as he entered the room. Ian and Rodney followed suit. If it bothered him, he gave no sign of it, and sat on the couch next to me.

“Tate,” I sighed. “Maybe you should leave. They’re all mentally playing catch with your skull.”

He ignored that and handed me a prescription bottle. “I called Don. This is measured for your bloodline, Cat, and it’ll make you sleep. That’s why I’ve been gone for hours-I walked to the pharmacy so no one could trace a car or get plates if someone was watching.”

The three other men in the room were as astonished as I was. I took the bottle.

“Thank you.” The anticipation of the brief nothingness sleep would bring me made it even more sincere. For a few hours, maybe, I’d be released from grief.

He held out a glass of water. “You’re welcome.”

I swallowed the required dose and then lay back into the couch. The wooden box was still beside me, those words locked away inside it the closest substitute I had for Bones. After a few minutes, I felt the tension lessen in my body. The pills were strong and I had a fast metabolism.

“Well done, lad,” Spade said as I started to drift off. “Perhaps you’ll be of use after all.”

“Bones and I agreed that we wanted what was best for her,” was Tate’s hushed response. “We just differed in what we thought that was.”

Bones…

His name echoed in my mind as I slipped into the waiting unconsciousness.

Maybe I’ll dream of you.

Noise woke me. Somewhere in the house, there was a scream. Then the running of footsteps. Those sounds intruded inside the restless sleep the narcotics held me in.

“What the hell-?” I heard Spade say, his voice rising in pitch.

“Bugger me dead!”

Was that Ian? Couldn’t they keep it down?

There was a shriek that sounded like Annette, and in such a high octave, I pulled the pillow over my head. Even that small effort exhausted me. If I could have, I would have bitched about the commotion. They wanted me to sleep, but then they made this kind of racket? Hypocrites.

There were the unmistakable bawls of Annette in loud, unintelligible bursts. Nearby, I heard something crash to the floor. My hazy mind thought it might have been Tate. He’d been balanced on the back of his chair legs when I passed out. Maybe he’d nodded off as well and lost his equilibrium. Still, that didn’t explain his mumbled sentence.

“You have got to be fuckingkid ding me…”

There was now an unrestrained chorus of voices, numerous doors bashing, and so much uproar I opened one eye with difficulty. Above every other word a name finally penetrated, causing me to stumble from the couch in a heap.

“Crispin!”

“…need to see my wife,” was all I heard before I started to scream, staggering over the coffee table in a blind frenzy to run toward that voice. My eyes were open but unfocused, everything in a hazy double outline that made the figure striding toward me look more like a wraith than a man.

Arms seized me, pressing me against a body that collided so forcefully with mine, we fell onto the floor. My face was stuffed next to a throat vibrating with that familiar accented voice.

“…missed you so much, Kitten, I love you…”

This is a dream, it occurred to me.A dream, and I will thank Don from the bottom of my heart for this fake chance to hold Bones again. God bless modern science and tons of codeine mixed with sedatives!

“You’re dead,” I slurred. “I wish you were really here…”

“Leave me alone with her. All of you, please, give us a moment. Charles.”

Something was whispered too low for me to hear even though Spade’s dark head bent until it grazed my chin. He nodded once and kissed the pale face still blinking out of clarity to me.

“Anything, my friend.”

“Please don’t wake me up,” I begged, terrified someone would shake me out of my dream. I clutched the figure that seemed so real, squeezing my eyes shut. “Just a little longer.”

“You’re not dreaming, Kitten.” Oh God, his mouth covered mine in a kiss that made my heart break. “I’m here.”

“They saw you dead, a-and shr-shriveled, and you’re not r-r-real…” Reality and confusion mixed, increased by the pills and doubled with shock.

He carried me to the couch. “This first, talk after,” he said, breaking my water glass and slashing his palm with it. I didn’t have much choice, since he clapped it over my mouth in the next moment.

With each drop I swallowed, my drugged-out haze began to lift, until I could clearly see Bones kneeling in front of me. My fingers shook as I reached out to touch him, half afraid this was another of Patra’s dream spells. One that would end with his body cruelly disintegrating before my gaze.

Bones caught my hand and squeezed it.

I devoured him with my gaze. Aside from his hair, which was shockingly white, he looked the same. His skin was as incandescent as always, and his dark brown eyes bored into mine.

“Are you really here?”

I couldn’t shake the terror that he was a mirage. What if I let myself believe, and then woke up to find itwas a dream? I couldn’t bear it. I’d go insane.

With sudden desperation, I took one of those jagged pieces of glass and jammed it into my leg. Bones snatched it out, aghast.

“What are you doing, Kitten?”

The instant throb of pain was the most wonderful thing I’d ever felt, because it meant I wasn’t dreaming. Somehow, Bones reallywas here. The control I’d had for the past few days evaporated and I burst into tears, launching myself at him even as he tried to push me back to heal my leg.

“You’re alive, you’re alive…!”

I couldn’t stop repeating it even though I was hiccupping with sobs. Feverishly I ran my hands over him, feeling the familiar hard outline of his body under his clothes. Desperate to feel his skin, I ripped his shirt open, fresh sobs coming from me at the reassuring hum of power from his bare flesh.

Bones held me tightly. He was whispering something in my ear, but I couldn’t make it out. The grief and agony from the past few days poured out of me, turning into joy and shaking me with its intensity. All the emotional control I prided myself on having was shattered, but I didn’t care. Everything I thought I’d lost was suddenly right here. I clung to Bones like I’d die if I let him go, which was how I felt.