Jeaniene Frost - Up From the Grave

A wild hope coursed through me. That’s right, if I cried, the blood in my tears would bring Katie back as a ghost! For a crazed moment, I relished the thought. If it was the only way we could be together, I’d take it. I’d seen other ghost children, and they didn’t look like they were miserable . . .

“Kitten.”

My gaze jerked past Marie to Bones. He stared at me, his expression conveying an equal measure of sternness and heartbreak.

“Don’t,” he said simply.

Pain erupted then, so all-encompassing it almost felt purifying. Of course I couldn’t do that. I’d be sentencing Katie to a harsher fate than these pitiless bastards had decreed, and worse, for the same reason. Selfishness.

They wanted to end the threat of war the easy way instead of confronting the deeper issue—that after tens of thousands of years, vampires and ghouls still had a deep-seated mistrust of each other because they were different races. Why try to resolve their ugly, underlying prejudice when every few hundred years, they could just murder anyone who reminded them of it?

I wanted my daughter with me, but unlike them, I’d take the hard road. The one that hurt me the most instead of her. If I could only be a mother to her for the next few seconds, I’d be sure not to fail.

Marie was right. It was all I could do for my daughter.

With a harsh sound, I choked back my tears. Then I used all of my willpower to hold the new ones back. When my eyes were finally dry, I nodded as much as I could.

“I’ve got it.”

Marie touched my face. Not to wipe away any stray tears; they were gone. As a benediction.

“You are a worthy adversary,” she said softly.

Then she turned and left, taking a place next to the vampire council and Law Guardians. Bitterly, I noticed that they waited in a single line behind Thonos. They had mandated Katie’s death, but they must not want to look into her eyes as she died. The back of the tall, muscular executioner blocked most of their view.

Nothing blocked mine. I stared at Katie, every cell of my body screaming with grief that I refused to release with tears. The little girl stared at the knife above her as though hypnotized, her features an odd mixture of fear and determination. Then, as if she sensed my gaze, she looked at me.

In my lifetime, I’d been shot, stabbed, staked, burned, bitten, beaten, strangled, hit by a car, and tortured by physical and metaphysical means. Nothing compared to the anguish I felt when our gazes met and I saw the acceptance in hers. She knew nothing could save her, and despite her obvious fear, she’d come to terms with that. Maybe it was because, in her short, captivity-filled existence, she’d never known there was more to life than ugliness and death. So much more, like hope, love, laughing, dancing . . . and now she’d never know.

It would all end here.

Something shattered inside me. I managed to hold back the tears, but I couldn’t stop the sound that escaped me. Agony became breath and broke the silence that had gripped the room.

Then two words slid into my mind, spoken in a whisper that somehow managed to resound through my thoughts.

Trust me.

My eyes bulged. Mencheres was the only person I knew who had the ability to communicate telepathically, yet that hadn’t been his voice.

It was Bones’s.

A sliver of me was awed that he had this ability, but the rest was too destroyed with grief to care. Trust him? He was as helpless as I was to stop this!

Trust me, his inner voice repeated, emphatic enough to drown out my mental railings.

Anger flared through my grief. Trust what, that we’d get through this together? Or that time would heal all wounds? Well, I had no intention of healing. I wanted to feel this pain forever because it was all I’d have left of my daughter—

Trust me!

Thonos’s blade began to descend toward that tiny, vulnerable throat. Katie still stared at me, and for a split second, her eyes changed from the same deep gray as mine to something else.

Red.

Katie’s gaze should have only been able to turn one other color. Bright, vampire green. Red was the sign of another race. The only one the child wasn’t supposed to have in her mixed genetic makeup.

Hope blasted through me with enough force to knock me over if I’d been standing under my own power, but I wasn’t. Mencheres still had me in that invisible vise, and in the gut-wrenching instant before that deadly blade met flesh, I saw the boiler room through new eyes.

Four Law Guardians, three council members, and the queen of the ghouls were all present for the execution of the mixed-species child. Everyone from Bones’s line might be considered unreliable witnesses for personal reasons, but no one would question any of them on whether it had really happened. They’d never acted mercifully before when it came to protecting the power balance between the races, and nothing had changed in the centuries since.

Unless there is a public execution, Marie had said, they will keep hunting for her. She’d believed that so much, she’d been prepared to die for it.

And Bones had said, If we promise you that, will you agree to the rest of our terms? I’d been horrified, but before I could voice my outrage, he’d immobilized me much like Mencheres had.

Kitten, trust me, he’d said then.

Trust me, he’d urged me three times now.

I held on to that with all the hopeful desperation in me as that blade cut all the way through Katie’s neck, coming out drenched in crimson on the other side. Her body fell, and the sight of Thonos holding up her head hit me like a wrecking ball straight to the heart. He set it next to her body, flinging the excess blood off his blade, and my own blood seemed to scream in response.

Tears streamed in an unending flow from Tate’s eyes. Marie bowed her head. The other two Law Guardians were stoic except for Veritas, who stared at Katie’s body with an intensity that angered me. Was she trying to memorize the grisly sight?

The council members didn’t look at their handiwork. They shifted almost awkwardly. Now that the deed was done, they seemed far less enthused by it.

I couldn’t stop staring at Katie’s crumpled form, her head resting several inches from the rest of her. Horror, hope, and terror mingled into a nauseating brew within me.

Was I wrong, and was I staring at my daughter? Or was this my best friend, shapeshifted to look like her? And if so, could she come back from this? Nothing was supposed to kill her except demon bone through the eyes, but dear God, she didn’t have a head anymore!

“Leave the body.”

Mencheres’s voice startled me. It seemed to surprise the council members, too. Gandalf look-alike pursed his lips in disapproval.

“We didn’t agree to that.”

“You will.” Quiet steel edged Mencheres’s words. “And you will leave the sword. As the child’s mother, she is entitled to both.”

The other council members glanced back and forth between themselves, clearly undecided.

Veritas stepped forward, grasping Thonos’s hand before he could put his weapon back in its sheath.

“You ordered the child’s death out of necessity,” she said crisply. “Denying this request would be cruelty. Do not begrudge her so little when we’ve taken everything else.”

Thonos didn’t stop her when she took his blade and laid it at my feet. As she rose, for a second, her piercing gaze met mine.

What I saw made me gasp. Without saying a word, she managed to convey both admiration and a clear warning. Unless she knew more than the others did, why would she do that?

She can’t know! my mind raged. Could she?