Jeaniene Frost - Up From the Grave

I glanced around, gripping a silver knife. Nothing rushed toward us, and my senses hadn’t picked up any supernatural energy, so what was it?

Ian also glanced around before shrugging as if to say, Beats me.

I looked back at Bones. A frown stitched his brows, and his head was cocked to the side.

“You hear that?” he asked softly.

I sent my senses outward. Noise from nearby traffic competed with sounds from the restaurants and other businesses across the street, but none of it sounded threatening.

“I hear nothing out of the ordinary,” Ian murmured.

“Not you,” Bones said with a hint of apology. “You, Kitten.”

Me? What could I hear that Ian couldn’t . . . oh, right. I pushed back the audible sounds to concentrate on the lower hum of thoughts beneath. After a moment, snatches of sentences crept into my mind. Most came from the populated areas across the street, but a few seemed to be transmitting from somewhere else.

Under neath the derelict building we’d been scouting.

Bones began to smile.

“They didn’t close Madigan’s old facility. They moved it lower.”

My friend Vlad once told me that soundproof didn’t mean mindproof because telepathy travels through even the thickest walls. Case in point: Whatever government official that had secretly backed Madigan after Don fired him had been careful. Even with a vampire’s supernaturally sharp senses, nothing visible or audible gave a hint that the former laboratory was still in operation, albeit four stories beneath its original location. Only my and Bones’s ability to read minds clued us in; though if not for him, I might have missed it anyway.

We followed the thoughts of an employee to the entrance of the facility, concealed inside the elevator of a parking garage two blocks away. Push one of the four buttons available, and you got the parking level indicated, but hold the first and third buttons down at the same time, then enter a code, and you went several stories below to a secret tunnel connecting the two locations.

Someone who’d put that much effort into concealment wouldn’t skimp on surveillance, so we didn’t attempt to apprehend the employee there. Instead, Bones waited across the street before following the blond, bespectacled young man after he climbed into his vehicle and drove off. Ian and I were on foot, stationed at opposite ends of the street. No matter which way the man turned, he’d pass one of us.

I got the lucky drive-by and made the most of it by breaking my heel and pretending to stumble into the street. The young man’s car screeched to a stop only inches from where I crouched.

“What the hell, lady?” he snapped, rolling down his window.

I kept my head lowered so that my hair concealed my face. Who knew if Madigan had circulated my picture to his employees?

“My ankle,” I said in a shaking voice. “I-I think it’s broken.”

A car horn blared behind him, and he made an exasperated noise.

“Broken or not, you gotta get out of the street.”

I rose, still keeping my hair in my face, and then crumpled with a fake cry when I put weight on my ankle.

“I can’t,” I wailed.

A few people watched from the sidewalk, but none of them offered to help me. God bless society’s indifference. If I hadn’t been blocking the road, Madigan’s employee would’ve been equally unconcerned, as his thoughts revealed, but I was an obstacle that needed to be removed. With a huff of irritation, he got out of his car and came toward me.

“Give me your hand, I’ll—”

That’s all he said before I hit him with my gaze, noting with relief that his eyes glazed over immediately. I’d been half afraid that Madigan had indoctrinated his employees against mind control by giving them vampire blood.

“Don’t speak. Get in the car, passenger side,” I said in a low, resonant voice as I climbed into the driver’s seat. The blond employee complied, sliding into the seat next to mine without a word.

A few gasps sounded from the people watching this turn of events, but then Ian sidled up to the group.

“Mine, mine, mine,” he said as he collected cell phones from the onlookers, flashing his own mesmerizing gaze to still the instant protests. Now, at least, we wouldn’t have to worry about video of this ending up online.

I sped away without waiting for Ian. He knew where we were going. Then I drove long enough to ditch the car in a dark, deserted area before yanking the blond employee close and vaulting upward into the night.

Too late, I realized my mistake. I’d ordered the man not to speak; I hadn’t ordered him not to be afraid. When we were about a mile up, something warm soaked through my jeans. A glance down confirmed my suspicions.

“Eww, you peed on me?”

Squirty didn’t reply, of course. I shoved him back as far as I could without dropping him, belatedly commanding him not to fear. He stopped hyperventilating, but the stain in front of his pants kept growing. Appears once the faucet was turned on, it would keep running until it was empty. To make matters worse, no matter which way I turned him, a wet spot kept brushing up against me.

Ian would laugh himself silly when he saw this.

I gritted my teeth and focused on where I was going, glad the wind kept the smell from hitting me. Navigating by bird’s-eye view was difficult since street signs were unreadable from this height, but after a couple adjustments, I landed in the grass next to our RV, only tearing up a small clump of earth with the impact.

“You’re getting better, Reaper,” an English voice noted behind me. “Though it took you long enough.”

Damn, Ian was already here. I braced myself as he came out from behind the RV. He sniffed, his nose wrinkling. Then he looked over me and my blond captive, grinning.

“Managed to squeeze in a golden shower along the way? How lecherous. I’m impressed.”

“Save it,” I said crisply, releasing Squirty after commanding him not to run. Since I’d also ordered him to be silent and unafraid, he stood there, his thoughts transmitting only mild curiosity at being trapped in the woods with two glowing-eyed creatures.

I gave him the full weight of my hypnotic stare before I spoke again.

“When I ask you a question, you will answer with nothing but the truth, do you understand?”

A firm nod while the word “Yes” echoed across his mind.

“What’s your name?” was my first question. I couldn’t keep calling him Squirty though my pants were proof of the moniker’s accurateness.

“James Franco.”

“Like the actor?” I couldn’t help but ask.

His expression eased into a smile. “Yes, but poorer and uglier.”

I didn’t want to find James funny. With his job, this likely wouldn’t end well.

“Don’t speak beyond answering my questions,” I said in a stiff voice. “Do you know what we are?”

“Yes.”

A wooden reply this time. I gave a brisk nod. “Good, that saves time explaining. Now, do you know who we are?”

“No.”

Guess I hadn’t needed to conceal my face earlier. “Ever heard the name Cat Crawfield?”

“No.”

Ian and I exchanged a surprised glance. James’s thoughts were cottony beneath the mind control I’d whammied him with, but they agreed with his answer, not that I thought he was faking being mesmerized.

“What do you do at your job?” Just our luck to have captured a clueless pencil pusher . . .

James began to detail a complicated description of DNA analysis, gene splicing, and cross-species genetics. I didn’t understand half of what he said, but the gist was clear: He was right in the thick of Madigan’s experimentations.