Jeaniene Frost - Up From the Grave

After all, this wasn’t located in a city like Madigan’s lab in Charlottesville. There, it wouldn’t be unusual for vampires to frequent the vicinity. Hunters and wannabe cryptids might be able to stroll around the McClintic Wildlife Management area without arousing suspicion, but no self-respecting vampire would shoot animals for sport. Neither would one chase after a supernatural creature that didn’t exist.

“If this place has security like the Tennessee compound,” I continued in frustration, “infrared alarms will go off if anyone with a body temperature lower than ninety-six degrees enters the preserve. And if those alarms triggered an instant explosion, well . . . they don’t call it the TNT area for nothing.”

No one would find that unusual, only unfortunate. Madigan had the perfect cover with this facility.

“Send Fabian to scout it,” Ian suggested, referring to the ghost I was friends with.

I gave him a sour look. “It’s worth a shot, but I doubt the most important place in Madigan’s scheme to create partly undead supersoldiers is also the only place he didn’t ghostproof.”

Bones tapped his chin, his silence acknowledging his agreement. Then, with a twisted smile, he tossed me my purse.

“You’re friends with the only vampire in the world who can beat infrared sensors, and he’s explosion-proof to boot.”

I thought he muttered, “More’s the pity” after that statement, but I was too excited to chide him.

Vlad! With his pyrokinesis, he was warmer than most humans, and that same ability also rendered him fireproof. I dug my phone out of my purse and dialed Vlad’s cell.

Daca nu este ceva important, nu lasati mesaj si nu sunati din nou, a recorded male voice answered, followed by the English translation of “If this isn’t important, don’t leave a message and don’t call back.”

No one ever accused Vlad the Impaler of being too charming. I left an urgent message with both mine and Bones’s cell number before I hung up.

“Okay, that’s done. Now, let’s find Fabian and get him to check out the McClintic Wildlife preserve, just in case.”

Fabian du Brac had been forty-five when he died, and his longish brown hair was still drawn back in a style that went out of fashion over a century ago. His sideburns and clothes also marked him as from another era, but it was his somber blue eyes that I focused on now. Before he even spoke, they told me that he didn’t have good news.

“There is indeed a large, active facility deep beneath a section of the McClintic Wildlife Management area, but I don’t know where the entrance is. The entire facility is covered by a barrier I cannot penetrate and no one has left it the entire time I’ve been there.”

I ground my teeth. Madigan’s staff lived on-site, so no one could glean information from their comings and goings. Or kidnap one of them after they left, which had been my other plan to get more details.

I hated the bureaucratic bastard, but if I’d been designing security for the place, I would have done the same thing.

My breath blew out in a sigh of resignation.

“Then we have to wait eleven more days until the next scheduled labs pickup. Someone will have to come out of that compound to give the briefcase to Barbara.”

Fabian nodded. “Elisabeth and I won’t leave until we discover the entrance. She remains there now in case someone emerges while I’m gone.”

I gave him a watery smile. “Thanks, and thank your girlfriend for us, please.”

Resolve flashed over his face. “You owe me no thanks. You gave me a home when no one wanted me, and Elisabeth wouldn’t be my ladylove now if you hadn’t helped her in her time of need, too.”

He was, as always, too kind. For the thousandth time, I wished I could hug Fabian, but instead, I did the only thing I could do: held up my hand and smiled as his transparent fingers curled next to—and through—my own.

“Now all you need is to make a V with your hand and say in a death rattle that you have been, and always shall be, his friend,” Ian noted with heavy irony.

“Why would I . . .” I began. Then understanding dawned.

“Holy crap, you’re a closet Trekkie!”

I would have delved deeper into this surprising revelation about Ian, but my cell phone rang. I glanced at the number before snatching it up with impatient relief. After leaving multiple voice mails for three straight days, Vlad had finally called back.

“Where have you been?” I answered in lieu of a hello.

“Busy,” was his clipped reply, his cultured accent more pronounced.

“Aren’t we all? Listen, I need your particular brand of help, which is why I called—”

“Count me out this time, Cat.”

I was too upset by his reply to make a quip about the real Dracula using the word “count.”

“It’s serious,” I said, in case he thought I was looking for a teammate for competitive nail filing.

“Whatever it is, I can’t help. Furthermore, you need to be in Romania tonight.”

I was well versed in Vlad’s arrogance, yet this was going too far. “You refuse to help me with a life-and-death scenario, but you want me to hop a plane and leave immediately for your house?”

“He’s lost his wits,” Bones muttered from the next room.

Vlad replied with four words that briefly cleared my mind of all thought. I asked him to repeat them to be sure I hadn’t misheard, and when he did, I began to grin.

“Then I guess I’ll see you tonight,” I said, and hung up.

Bones came into the room, his chiseled features marred by an expression of disbelief.

“We can’t rush off to Romania, Kitten. Whatever Vlad thinks is so important can wait—”

“No, it can’t,” I interrupted, still grinning. “He’s getting married tonight.”

We hitched a ride on Mencheres’s private plane since he and Kira were invited, too. In fact, Mencheres was Vlad’s best man. Ian, however, didn’t come since he and Vlad weren’t close. Hell, neither were Bones and Vlad. If not for me, Bones would never have been invited, and if Bones didn’t know that Vlad had made my short list of true friends, he would rather pound sand than attend Vlad’s wedding.

While on the plane, Bones and I filled Mencheres and Kira in on what we’d discovered about Madigan. Aside from being his vampiric version of a grandsire, Mencheres was also co-ruler of their combined lines, so he could be trusted. His wife, Kira, might be in training to be an Enforcer, which was the vampire version of a cop, but she’d keep her mouth shut, too. Then I spent the rest of our flight trying to think up a way to discover the compound’s entrance that didn’t involve eleven days of waiting until Barbara showed up to claim another briefcase.

Our current inability to move on the compound frustrated me to no end, but in this instance, patience wasn’t a virtue. It was a necessity. We couldn’t outsmart the security system, and with Vlad seriously unavailable because he was getting married, I had yet to come up with a way around it that didn’t end up becoming a suicide mission. Part of me hated flying thousands of miles away while our friends were in danger, but the rest resignedly noted that either here or there, we were still stuck in waiting mode.

Unless . . .

“You could use your telekinetic powers to freeze everyone underground while we searched the place for the entrance,” I suggested to Mencheres despite it sounding naive to my own ears.

A winged brow rose. “And if this facility isn’t the command center of Madigan’s operations?”

I sighed. “Then we’re screwed.”

Someone high up in the government had to have been backing Madigan all these years after Don fired him. How else could he have at least two clandestine underground facilities at his disposal, not to mention the astronomical funding all his experimental research would have cost? So the shadowy figure—or figures—behind Madigan would go into deep hiding once they knew we had the power to immobilize an entire base. No, we had to save our best weapon for the final battle when we took out Madigan and the people behind him, not waste the surprise on the skirmishes before it.