Jeaniene Frost - Up From the Grave

“A little more, amigo, ” Juan’s low voice crooned from the interior room. Then softer and more urgently, “Get ready. Someone’s coming.”

I went in that direction instead of down the hall. “It’s Cat,” I called out, not wanting to get shot again.

“ ¿Querida? ” Juan let out a weary laugh. “Of course. Who else could cause such trouble?”

I glanced at Bones and Denise before I spoke. “Most of it wasn’t me this time.”

Then I stepped over another crumpled form as I entered what looked like an operating room. Medical equipment hung from the ceiling in various spots, while scalpels, bone saws, and other sharp instruments rested on a table next to a large metal slab with restraint straps. That table was empty, but the tubular machine on the far side of the room wasn’t. Tate was inside it, tubes protruding everywhere from him, while Juan and Cooper stood next to a control panel.

Dave came out of the corner, lowering a bloody M-4 carbine.

“Damn glad to see you, Cat,” he said, giving me a brief, fierce hug. Then he held on to my arm when I tried to get to the others.

“Wait. They’re getting the liquid silver out of Tate.”

I looked around with grim understanding. I didn’t remember being here, but this must be the machine Dr. Obvious alluded to when she said the liquid silver had been dissolved with nitric acid and flushed out. That meant the restraint table and multiple instruments were for lesser cases when the silver could be cut out, not that it would make it any less agonizing.

“How did Tate get silvered?”

Dave started to answer, then stared over my shoulder. Denise and Bones were behind me, and it was a toss-up as to which of them had shocked him more.

“Denise can shapeshift, and Bones was playing possum,” I summarized. “He’ll regenerate fully when he drinks more blood.”

“Now I’ve seen everything,” Dave muttered, shaking his head. “Tate’s restraint clamps were still on when they put him back in his cell after you drank from him. When the doors unexpectedly opened, we went for the pricks, but one of them managed to hit the switch that turned on the juice in them.”

Flooding Tate’s body with liquid silver. I shuddered at the memory of how excruciating that felt.

“They’ll have it out soon, it didn’t get too deep,” Dave went on.

“How do they know how to operate the machine?”

He gave me a bleak look. “They picked it up after all the times it’s been used to get silver out of them.”

Tate mumbled something that sounded like my name, but his voice was barely audible above the noise the machine made.

“I’m here,” I called out.

“Not you, querida, ” Juan said, glancing up before he pressed more buttons. “Katie. She ran when the cells opened. Have you seen her?”

“Is she an employee?” If so, I hated to break it to them, but she was probably dead.

“The little girl,” Cooper said impatiently.

I winced. How awful if someone had brought their kid to work today of all days . . . wait.

“The child in the cell?” I asked, memory surfacing of the one I’d glimpsed when the guards wheeled me past.

Dave let out a grunt. “Yeah, that child. Seen her?”

“Footsteps,” a guttural voice stated behind me.

Bones was right. Now we knew who the small ones leading away from this section belonged to.

“I’ll get her,” Denise said at once. “I’d rather do that than what you guys need to do.”

“Good, thanks.”

Denise hated killing, and I couldn’t leave some poor child wandering around, yet we couldn’t take the time to search for her. We’d already spent too much time here as it was.

Dave grabbed Denise before she could leave. “Do not attempt to force her if she doesn’t want to go with you.”

“I won’t scare her,” she said with a scoff.

“That’s not—”

“Madigan.”

Bones’s harsh voice cut off whatever Dave had been about to say. All of us turned except Denise, who left with preternatural speed.

“What? Madigan what?” I prodded.

His mouth stretched into a truly terrifying smile. “Alive.”

I gripped his arm and spoke one word.

“Where?”

Bones redefined the term “fast food” as we ran through the labyrinth of hallways and tunnels in this massive facility. Every hundred feet or so, he’d snatch up a body, squeeze it since no pulse equaled no natural pump of blood, suck hard, and then throw it away for a new one. He had an abundance to choose from given the mind-boggling slaughter he must have engaged in before reaching me.

I kept my eyes peeled since side hallways could contain soldiers waiting to ambush us, but I also couldn’t stop staring at Bones. With each body he drank from, his frame filled out, and new skin grew back to cover him. Soon, all of the awful gaps closed and muscles bulged where there had been dried, sunken tissue. It was like watching a vampire wither in reverse as youthfulness and vitality overcame all vestiges of his wasted appearance. If not for his thick, curly hair still being white, he looked exactly as he had before.

That wasn’t the only remarkable change. As his body regenerated, so did his aura, until the air around him became charged with pulsating waves. Feeling his connection to me again was almost as big a relief as seeing his body restored.

“If you could regenerate this fast, why didn’t you drink blood sooner?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“Didn’t have the time.”

It was his voice again, that English accent smooth as ever though his tone was edged with something I couldn’t name.

“You’ve drained over a dozen bodies while hardly slowing down a step,” I pointed out.

He slanted a look my way, his dark brown gaze conveying both tenderness and frustration.

“I was in a state of hibernation until Denise killed a bloke and dripped his blood into my mouth. Then I drained him and the next two sods I came across, which gave me enough mental strength to go after you. As to why I didn’t drink more along the way, you were being shot at. Any time spent feeding was too long to waste with you in danger.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I was still fuming over his pulling the cruelest deception possible, but underneath that, I was so happy he was alive that I wanted to hug him and never let go. Maybe the urge to throttle him with one hand while cradling him with the other was how I’d made Bones feel all of these years. If so, one could argue that I’d had this coming.

Suddenly, Bones snatched me up, coming to a full stop without a single skid. The abrupt change in velocity snapped my head back hard enough to break my neck, but before the pain even registered, I saw it. Networks of lasers hung like a spiderweb in front of us, the same light blue color of the walls and so close that if I reached out, I’d lose my fingers.

“Motherfucker,” I breathed. Three more steps, and Madigan would have been scooping up our remains with a shovel.

Then Bones flung me to the floor and flattened himself on top of me. Now I had a broken jaw and rib cage, too, but when a hail of bullets sailed over our heads instead of into them, I didn’t mind.

“Bloody sods,” I heard him snarl over the gunfire. “Let’s see how they enjoy their own trap.”

I couldn’t move with a furious Master vampire holding me down, but I could still see as the guards who’d come out of hiding to shoot us abruptly became airborne and hurtled toward the laser net. They screamed, high-pitched and panicked as they tried to fight the unseen force yanking on them. Then their screams were cut off, followed by sickening thumps around and on top of us.