Jeaniene Frost - Halfway to the Grave

“Winston poltergeisted my panties, that’s what!” I announced with a loud hiccup.

“Why, you scurvy, lecherous spook!” Bones yelled in the direction of the cemetery. “If my pipes still worked, I’d go right back there and piss on your grave!”

I thought I heard laughter. Or maybe it was just the wind.

“Forget it.” I tugged on his jacket, leaning heavily. It was that or I was going to fall. “Who were those girls? You were right, most of them had been killed by vampires.”

“I suspected as much.”

“Do you know who did it?” I slurred. “Winston didn’t. He just knew who they were and how they died.”

“Don’t ask me more about it, because I won’t tell you, and before you even wonder, no, I had nothing to do with it.”

The moonlight shining down made his skin even creamier. He was still staring off in the distance, and with his jaw clenched, he looked both fierce and very beautiful.

“You know what?” Suddenly, very inappropriately, I began to giggle. “You’re pretty. You’re so pretty.”

Bones glanced back at me. “Bloody hell. You’ll hate yourself in the morning for saying that. You must be absolutely pissed.”

Another giggle. He was funny. “Not anymore.”

“Right.” He picked me up. The leaves made small crunching sounds under his feet as he carried me. “If you weren’t half dead, what you just drank would kill you. Come on, pet. Let’s get you home.”

It had been a long time since I’d been in a man’s arms. Sure, Bones might have carried me before when I was unconscious, but that didn’t count. Now I was very aware of his hard chest against me, how effortlessly he held me, and how really good he smelled. It wasn’t cologne-he never wore any. It was a clean scent that was uniquely his and it was…intoxicating.

“Do you think I’m pretty?” I heard myself ask.

Something I couldn’t name flashed across his face.

“No. I don’t think you’re pretty. I think you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”

“Liar,” I breathed. “He wouldn’t have done that if I was. He wouldn’t have been with her.”

“Who?”

I ignored him, caught up in the memory. “Maybe he knew. Maybe on some deep, deep level, he could sense I was evil. I wish I hadn’t been born this way. I wish I hadn’t been born at all.”

“You listen to me, Kitten,” Bones cut me off. In my rant, I’d almost forgotten he was there. “I don’t know who you’re taking about, but you are not evil. Not one single cell of you. There is nothing wrong with you, and sod anyone who can’t see that for themselves.”

My head lolled on his arm. After a minute, my depression lifted, and I began to giggle again.

“Winston liked me. As long as I have moonshine, I’ve always got a date with a ghost!”

“I hate to inform you, luv, but you and Winston don’t have a future together.”

“Says who?” I laughed, noticing that the trees were tilted sideways. That was weird. And they seemed to be spinning as well.

Bones lifted my head up. I blinked. The trees were straight again! Then all I could see was his face as he leaned very close.

“I say.”

He seemed like he was spinning also. Maybe everything was spinning. It felt that way.

“I’m drunk, aren’t I?”

Since I’d never been drunk before, I needed clarification.

His snort tickled my face. “Impressively so.”

“Don’t you dare try to bite me,” I said, noticing his mouth was only a few inches from my neck.

“Don’t fret. That was the furthest thing from my mind.”

The truck came into view. Bones carried me to the passenger side and deposited me on the seat. I slumped, tired all of a sudden.

His door shut, and then the engine vibrated to life. I kept shifting to get comfortable, but my truck didn’t have an extended cab and the interior was cramped.

“Here,” Bones said after several minutes, and pulled my head down to his lap.

“Pig!” I screamed, jerking up so fast, my cheek banged on the steering wheel.

He just laughed. “Isn’t your mind in the gutter? You shouldn’t be so quick to label Winston a drunken pervert. Pot calling the kettle black, if you ask me. I only had the most honorable of intentions, I assure you.”

I eyed his lap and the extremely uncomfortable truck door, weighing my options. Then I flopped back down and put my head on his thigh, closing my eyes.

“Wake me when we get to my house.”

I T WAS WEEK FIVE. I TRUDGED INTO THE CAVE, wishing Bones would just beat me unconscious again instead of what I knew was coming. My makeover, courtesy of a vampire.

He wasn’t perched on his usual boulder. Maybe he was still sleeping. I was about ten minutes early. It didn’t take as long this time to give my mother the latest in a long line of lies about where I was going. The first few weeks, I told her I’d taken a job waitressing, but with always being broke, I knew I had to get more inventive. At last I settled on telling her I’d signed up for an intensive exercise program people took to prepare for boot camp. She’d been aghast at the thought of me being exposed to the military, but I assured her that all I wanted was the training to help with my extracurricular activities. Very extracurricular activities, since killing vampires was on no college course I’d read about.

“Bones?” I called out, traveling further into the cave.

A whoosh of air came from above me. I pivoted on one leg and struck out forcefully with the other, knocking my attacker to the side. Then I ducked in time to avoid the fist that shot toward my skull, and backflipped out of range from the next lightning punch.

“Very good!” The pleased voice belonged to my undead trainer.

I relaxed. “Testing me again, Bones? Where did you come from, anyway?”

“There,” he replied, pointing up.

I followed his gesture and saw a small crevice in the rock about a hundred feet up. How in the world had he gotten up there?

“Like this,” he answered my unspoken question, and propelled himself straight upward as though he’d been yanked on a string.

I was openmouthed. Five weeks and he’d never done anything like that before.

“Wow. Neat trick. Something new?”

“No, luv,” he said as he plummeted down with grace. “Something old, like I am. Remember, just because a vampire isn’t in front of you doesn’t mean he’s not right on top of you.”

“Got it,” I murmured. Five weeks ago I would have blushed like crazy. Now I didn’t even blink at the possible innuendo.

“Now, then, let’s move on to our final phase. Turning you into a seductress. Probably going to be our most difficult yet.”

“Gee, thanks.”

We reached what was the makeshift family room, which was rather normal-looking, if you didn’t count the limestone and stalagmite walls. Bones pirated electricity from a nearby power link and rerouted it cleverly into the cave. Thus he had lamps, a computer, and a television plugged in by the sofa and chairs. He even had a space heater for when he tired of the cave’s natural mid-fifties temperature. Hang a few paintings and add some decorative throw pillows, and it could be a subterranean feature in House Beautiful.

Bones grabbed his denim jacket and led me back toward the entrance of the cave.

“Come on. We’re going to a salon, and I expect this will take a while.”

“You can’t be serious.”

I looked with a mixture of revulsion and disbelief at my reflection in the full-length mirror Bones had propped up against the wall. Five hours at Hot Hair Salon had given me an exact understanding of what it was like to go through the washer and dryer. I’d been washed, waxed, plucked, snipped, blown dry, manicured, pedicured, sloughed, exfoliated, curled, primped, and then covered in shades of makeup. I hadn’t even wanted to look at myself by the time Bones had returned to pick me up, and I’d refused to speak to him on the way back to the cave. Finally seeing the end result made me break my silence.