Jeaniene Frost - Up From the Grave

Tate punched the back of Ian’s seat so hard, the headrest snapped off and beamed him in the head.

“She was a prisoner, you prick!”

Ian slammed on the brakes and put the car in park. Bones leaned over me and gripped Ian’s arm when he was about to yank open his door.

“I’ll handle it,” he said in a low, hard voice.

Ian’s eyes blazed green as he glared at Tate in the rearview mirror. “Don’t bother. I’ll forgive his assault on the basis of his being distraught after his recent experience.”

“Thanks ever so,” Bones said, still with that tempered steel in his voice. Then he swiveled around to face Tate.

“Years ago, when you wanted me to change you into a vampire, I told you that one day, you’d be finished with your job but still bound by the rules of my world. Today is that day, mate.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tate asked in a sour voice.

“It means that as my creation, your striking another vampire is the same as my doing it,” Bones responded sharply. “That’s why you won’t do it again without my permission. Quite clear now?”

Tate stared at him, the rugged lines of his face hardening.

“I’d forgotten how much I don’t like you,” he said softly.

I told myself that I wouldn’t interfere, but this was too much.

“Oh, stuff it, Tate. The upside of being Bones’s creation is his risking his life to break you out of prison, so deal with the less-fun fealty part. Like he said, it’s what you signed on for when you became a vampire.”

Then I turned to Ian. “A sleazy comment about a child? Really?”

“I thought he was being sleazy,” Ian responded at once. “And called him twisted for it, as is anyone who’s interested that way in a child.”

He actually managed to sound affronted. Good to know Ian had some sort of a moral center, even if it was covered by piles of pornography and violence.

“Then this was a misunderstanding that went too far,” I summarized while wondering how many wars had been started by the same thing. “Are we good now?”

That last part was directed at Bones. I didn’t know everything about vampire hierarchy, so I wasn’t sure if Tate still had to pay for assaulting his friend even if Ian was willing to overlook it.

“For now,” Bones said, staring at Tate.

The younger vampire looked away. From the way Tate crossed his arms over his chest, this wouldn’t be the last power struggle between them, but his silence confirmed his acquiescence.

Then Bones turned his attention to Ian. “You never said if you saw the little girl.”

“No, I didn’t,” Ian replied as he put the vehicle back into drive. “Why would your troublemaking corpse bother to imprison a child?”

Bones sighed. “That, mate, you’re not going to believe.”

In case we were being followed, we ditched the Suburban once we were away from the prying eyes of populated areas. Then, since half of our group couldn’t fly, the rest of us grabbed a person and played Iron Man’s version of Barrel of Monkeys. Once in the air, the only tails we needed to worry about were planes, helicopters, or drones, but thankfully, we hadn’t seen any of those yet.

We didn’t fly for very long. The skies were too clear to risk traveling over cities, and Madigan could wake up at any moment. Plus, now that the immediate danger had passed, my burst of survival energy was gone, leaving me dangerously tired. Flying while carrying a good-sized male didn’t help. When I found myself eyeing a patch of farmland and fantasizing about crashing onto it so I could sleep, I knew I’d depleted whatever reserves I’d been running on. Thankfully, Ian and Spade began to descend, signaling that we were close to our destination.

That turned out to be a group of grain storage elevators next to a defunct railroad track. The area around the tall silos was deserted, and I didn’t hear any activity inside them, which meant I didn’t have to worry about being covert. I plowed into the soft earth behind the storage silos, landing even harder than my usual barely controlled splat. Dave, my unlucky passenger, let out more “oofs!” during our tumble than he had when Bones had cut his heart out.

“I call shotgun with anyone but her for the next flight,” he said when we finally rolled to a stop.

Then a scream jerked our attention about half a mile up. Tate rushed toward us, arms flailing as if he were trying to flap his way out of his free fall. It didn’t work, of course. He landed with enough force to create an inches-deep outline in the soft ground around him.

“Okay, shotgun with anyone except him, too,” Dave amended, as Ian floated down to land beside the Tate-sized hole. Bones landed next, but unlike Ian, he held on to his passenger the entire time.

“Ass . . . hole,” Tate groaned as he pushed himself upright, to the accompanying sound of multiple bones snapping back into place.

Bones glanced at Tate, then Ian, who didn’t bother to hide his smirk.

“Good to know you stuck by your word to let his assault slide,” Bones said with heavy sarcasm.

That smirk turned into a wolfish grin. “Changed my mind, Crispin.”

Spade’s arrival with Denise and Cooper cut short whatever Bones had been about to reply to that.

“He’s very weak,” Spade announced, still holding on to Cooper despite their now being on solid ground. “I gave him blood, but whatever experiments they’ve run on him is killing him.”

I went over to Cooper, noting the cloying aroma of sickness that overpowered his natural scent of cloves and oak moss. Even with the healing effects of vampire blood, his skin tone still held a grayish tone, and his obsidian gaze appeared slightly unfocused.

“Remember when I used to call you a freak?” he asked, his laugh wheezing a bit at the end. “What they’ve done to me makes you seem normal.”

I swallowed back the lump that rose in my throat. “Madigan tried to duplicate Katie’s tri-species nature with you, didn’t he?”

Another harsh chuckle. “Yep, but it didn’t work. Not on me or the two thousand unlucky bastards before me. Madigan kept hoping for another fluke like Katie, but he must’ve needed more of whatever he took from you years ago to make it work. That, or wait ’til Katie got older.”

I knew what that last part meant—forcible breeding. Madigan had intended to do the same to me, so while it made me sick, it didn’t shock me. The number Cooper relayed did.

“Madigan told you how many people he killed with his experiments?” Was the bastard proud of being America’s biggest serial killer?

“He didn’t need to tell us. We could count.”

This from Tate, who finally got up from the impact hole he’d made when he landed. Cooper nodded in grim assent.

“I was W98. Hard to make a cute nickname out of that.”

“Explain,” Bones said, echoing my own thought.

Tate paused to glower at Ian once before he spoke.

“Madigan labeled his test specimens alphabetically and then numerically, up to one hundred per letter. When he first brought us here, he pitted us against his only success, Specimen A80, in order to sharpen her fighting skills. From her early specimen number, he must’ve had her so long, he had to have grabbed her when she was a baby, so she wouldn’t know her real name. I couldn’t stand to refer to her by a specimen number like he did, so I called her Katie.”

Now there was no swallowing the lump that rocketed up my throat. At the same time, I trembled with rage. I’d been designated a specimen number, too. A1, according to Madigan’s guards, but how could Madigan have kidnapped and experimented on a baby ? Katie never had a chance because of him.