Jeaniene Frost - One Grave at a Time

I had to let you go out alone when you were challenged to a duel , I wrote, staring at him once I was finished. It was harder than hell, but I did it.

He muttered a curse while running his hand through his hair. “That’s not the same.”

My pen flashed across the page. Yes it is, and just like Gregor wouldn’t have stopped if you refused his challenge, Kramer won’t stop either. He never wavers once he picks a target, and no one can hide from the dead forever! What if he attacks me while I’m in a fight with another vampire? I’m in more danger if I DON’T go.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve faced death, and I don’t intend for it to be the last,” I said, repeating the same words he’d told me before fighting in that fateful duel. “I’ve chosen to live a dangerous life, but it’s who I am, and that wouldn’t change even if we’d never met.”

The barest smile touched his mouth though his aura spiked with dangerous pulses of emotion-driven energy.

“Low blow, Kitten.”

I held his gaze with a faint smile of my own. “Someone once taught me to take every cheap shot and every low blow in a fight.”

His stare was so intense that I half wondered if he could somehow see into my mind. That would be helpful. Then he’d know this wasn’t my pride talking. It was my experience. I wasn’t like all the other women Kramer had singled out over the centuries. No archaic system of law was against me, I wasn’t abandoned by friends and family, and I might be flesh and blood, but I wasn’t human. Just like the Inquisitor hadn’t been human for a long, long time. With me, Kramer would finally be picking on someone his own size.

Kramer had only seen me run before. He’d never seen me stand my ground and fight. Tonight, I’d show him why the undead world referred to me as the Red Reaper.

Bones suddenly grabbed me, his mouth slamming over mine in a kiss so fierce I tasted blood when he lifted his head. But that didn’t bother me. I licked the blood off my lips with a hunger that matched the fire in his gaze, wanting to throw him to the floor and take him with enough roughness to leave cracks in the wood. I love you, I mouthed, pulling his head down for another blisteringly violent kiss.

He pushed my mouth down to his neck, almost forcing my fangs into his skin with the way he ground against me. I took him up on the silent demand and bit, drinking deeply when his blood came, not moaning out of bliss because I didn’t know how closely Kramer might be listening. His hands ran over me in a forceful, possessive caress while I drank, absorbing strength as well as nourishment from that heady liquid. When the crimson flow slowed to a trickle despite my suction and Bones willing it out to me, I stopped, licking his neck free of any lingering traces. I felt heavy and full, my senses buzzing from the excess of my feast. I normally drank about half that much when I fed from him, but I knew why he wanted me to drain him. He could refill, but once he was gone, I couldn’t.

He cupped my face when I drew back, staring into my eyes while he dropped his shields and let his aura flood over me, twining into my emotions until I couldn’t tell where my feelings ended and his began. From the frustration, love, lust, and worry pouring off him, I guessed that he wanted to make love to me until neither of us could think . . . and then tie me up and pile heavy boulders on me until after the sun rose. The intensity in all those feelings told me that the absolute last thing he wanted to do was what he did next.

“I won’t stand here and listen to any more of your ridiculous notions,” he said, nothing but coldness in his tone. “You want to throw your life away? Fine, but you’ll do it without me. I’m finished with you.”

If I wasn’t tied so deeply into his emotions, hearing it would have crushed me. But I smiled, squeezing his hands and feeling my heart overflow. He squeezed back before bringing them to his lips and brushing a soundless, fervent kiss onto them.

Then he let go, turned around, and walked out, slamming the back door behind him.

Ian came into the house right after Bones stormed out. Kramer must not have been the only one outside listening. He looked at me, raised a brow, then picked up one of the pages with my hastily scribbled words and read it.

“Since you and Crispin are now finished and I have a few hours to kill, how about that shag?” he asked with heavy irony.

“Bite me,” I sighed, gathering up the pages.

He winked. “Of course. My second-favorite thing to do in bed.”

I didn’t reply to that because I knew Ian wasn’t serious. He’d read enough to realize our breakup was staged, but trust Ian not to miss a chance to be a jackass. Spade came down the staircase next. His wary expression as he looked at me said he wasn’t aware that what he’d overheard was faked. He’d witnessed a real breakup between me and Bones before and had to talk sense into both of us later, so he was probably thinking, Bugger, not this again.

I handed him the pages and gave him a thumbs-up sign. After a few brief moments, his frown cleared, replaced by lethal intentness as he looked up at me. Then he took the pen and wrote three words in the space left on the page.

I’m going, too.

I didn’t say anything. After what Sarah had done to Denise, not a single argument I made, verbally or otherwise, would talk him out of that.

The cab driver stopped along the street, and I glanced in the distance at the white outdoor theater shaped like a huge half shell.

“Here we are,” he said cheerfully.

I checked the meter and pulled the appropriate amount of money out of my pocket. “Thanks, and keep the change.”

“All right. Happy Halloween.”

That was what I was hoping for, too. I got out, watching his taillights fade away as he drove off. Then I tightened my leather jacket around me and leaned against the welcome sign, waiting.

Fifteen minutes later, when the sky had changed from indigo to obsidian and stars replaced the last dying rays of the sun, a sleek Mercedes E class sedan pulled up, the make and model car Spade had left for Denise. Sure enough, the tinted window rolled down to reveal Sarah at the wheel, her black hair pulled back into the same sort of severe bun Elisabeth normally wore. On Elisabeth, that style highlighted features that were lovely without the slightest hint of makeup. On Sarah, it only served to make her look harsher, drawing attention to thick eyebrows that could really use a good tweezing and a mouth that was compressed into a thin, tight line.

“If you kill me, you will never find the other women,” were her first words when I opened the passenger door.

Her thoughts were that same blend of fear and hatred against a larger white noise backdrop that I now recognized as a mark of the insane. When we met, I’d thought Kramer had been the one to drive her nuts. Now I realized it was probably Sarah’s unstableness that had drawn the Inquisitor to her in the first place.

“Oh, I’m not going to kill you now,” I told her, sliding into the seat. “You’ll die tonight, make no mistake, but you’d better hope it’s by someone else’s hand rather than from Kramer’s.”

Her topaz gaze flitted to mine before she quickly glanced away. “He told me you would lie to me, but I already knew that witches were incapable of telling the truth.”

My snort was grim. “I don’t know what warped you, Sarah. Maybe it was a shitty upbringing, maybe it was a guy you loved ditching you for another woman, but remember, ‘For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you’? You’re going to find out what that means, and wow, will you wish you hadn’t.”