Jeaniene Frost - This Side of the Grave

Only one reason I could think of—whoever was behind this felt strong enough to come out from behind the curtain. This might as well be a public service announcement that the ghouls would start stepping up their attacks, and I didn’t think it was a coincidence that they’d chosen to start displaying vampire bodies in the same area I grew up in. No, I took this as a statement of “You can’t stop us, Reaper,” and damned if I’d let that stand. Vampires might be disappearing in other areas, too, but here was where the perpetrators were calling us out by leaving the bodies. If we didn’t draw a line in the sand here, then we’d be almost inviting things to get worse elsewhere.

“But there’s not much anyone else is going to do about it, is there?” I asked in a sudden rush of frustration. “My old team won’t get involved because they only step in when the undead attack humans. The vampire community will just shrug because Shayne and Harris were Masterless. Ed and Scratch can’t take on a bunch of ghouls by themselves, and if we go after the killers and their leader is who I think he is . . . we’ll be playing right into that bastard’s hands.”

Bones stared at me without blinking. “You know you’re right about your old team, the vampire community, and how we can’t openly go after those ghouls if Apollyon is involved.”

Apollyon. An image of the centuries-old ghoul with his squat body and almost laughable comb-over flashed across my mind. Appearance-wise, Apollyon might look to be on the ass end of average, but in the past year, he’d managed to incite a hell of a lot of trouble. Bones almost died after ghouls attacked us in Paris several months ago, plus ghouls provided support to another Master vampire in his attempts to force me to return to him. All courtesy of Apollyon’s inflamed rhetoric. Even though I hoped I was wrong, I just knew he was the one behind these attacks, too.

Of course, that meant all these terrible things were happening because of me.

“We can’t let him or the others get away with this,” I growled.

Bones’s mouth curled into a predatory smile. “Kitten . . . I said we can’t openly go after them.”

A large shadow passed across the doorway, blocking out the sun as Tiny entered the apartment. The vampire’s nickname was ironic, because he was massive in a way that would make even the mythical Conan feel insecure.

“Cops are coming,” he said.

I’d heard the wail of sirens growing ever closer over the past couple minutes. Guess one of the neighbors had gotten jittery at the sight of several sinister-looking people milling around the driveway. They obviously hadn’t heard the death struggle taking place several hours before or we wouldn’t have been first on the scene.

“You keep nosing around here, I’ll handle them,” I said to Bones. If we were lucky, Bones might recognize the scent from one of the murderers. In his two hundred and twenty-plus years as a vampire, he’d come across a lot of undead people, and scent was as unique as a fingerprint.

Still, I didn’t hold out much hope that we’d solve these murders that easily. Bones might know a lot of undead people, but vampires and ghouls made up roughly five percent of the world’s population. Even with Bones’s extensive history, there were too many for Bones to know each pulseless one personally.

Bones glanced at Tiny, who followed me outside. I didn’t reach for my cell phone, but that had been my first instinct. Using my government connections to chase cops away from crime scenes was habit to me after the years at my old job. This next part, however, was still relatively new.

“Hey,” I called down when the police officers arrived and got out of their squad car. “Glad you’re here, I was just about to call.”

“Do you live here, ma’am? We received a report about suspicious persons loitering in the area,” the blond cop said, eyeing Tiny in a wary manner. His partner’s hand moved to his gun.

“Skin that piece again and I’ll forget I’m not hungry,” Tiny muttered, so low the cops couldn’t hear him.

I stifled a laugh and addressed the police officers again. “I don’t live here, but my friend’s place was broken into. Can you check it out?”

The cops gave me a once-over as they came up the stairs to the second floor. I smiled in a harmless way and made sure my empty hands were well within eyesight. Of course, a thorough cop would wonder why I was wearing a long jacket during the warm summer afternoon.

When they were within a dozen feet of me, my gray eyes turned glowing green. I lasered that stare at them, letting the entrapping nosferatu power cloud their minds.

“There’s nothing going on here,” I said in a firm, pleasant voice. “Turn around and leave, the call was a false alarm.”

“Nothing going on,” the blond officer intoned.

“False alarm,” his buddy repeated, his hand leaving his gun.

“That’s right. Go on. Serve and protect somewhere else.”

They both turned around and got back into their car without another word, driving off. Before I became a vampire, it would’ve taken twenty minutes and two phone calls to get the same result, unless Bones green-eyed the local cops into leaving. Vampire mind control sure made it easy to cut through the bureaucratic red tape when it came to crime scenes.

Bones appeared in the apartment doorway holding two slender, sheet-draped bundles. To any nosy neighbors, he might have been carrying wrapped horizontal blinds instead of what I knew they were—the remains of Shayne and Harris.

“Tiny, put these in your boot,” Bones said.

Tiny glanced down at his feet in confusion. I snorted. “He means your trunk. British English can be so confusing at times.”

“That’s only because you Yanks keep renaming things,” Bones replied with an arch look, handing off the corpses to Tiny. Then he leapt over the balcony, landing in the parking lot without a hitch in his stride as he walked over to Ed and Scratch. Both vampires regarded Bones gloomily.

“What’re you doing with their bodies?” Ed asked.

“Burying them elsewhere,” Bones replied.

Scratch ran a hand through his gray-streaked hair. “Suppose you’ll be off now that you’ve learned what you wanted to know.”

Scratch sounded resigned. I caught Bones’s slight smile as I came down to the parking lot the normal way by taking the stairs.

“Get in the car, lads. We have some things to discuss.”

I got behind the wheel with Bones riding shotgun as Ed and Scratch warily climbed into our backseat. From my rearview mirror I saw Tiny stuff the remains of the two vampires into his trunk, then he and Band-Aid were ready to go.

“Back to the mall?” I asked, pulling out of the driveway.

“That’s fine, Kitten,” he replied. His arm rested across the back of his seat as he settled himself in a lounging way while staring at Ed and Scratch.

“Would you try to bring your mates’ killers to justice if you had assistance?” Bones asked them.

A scoff came from Ed. “Of course. Shayne didn’t deserve to go out like that. Didn’t know Harris very well, but he probably didn’t, either.”

“Damn straight,” Scratch muttered.

I cast a sideways glance at Bones, wondering where he was going with this and still unable to plug into his emotions to get a hint. He tapped his chin thoughtfully.

“Would be dangerous, even with help.”

Another scoff, this time from Scratch. “Living is dangerous when you’re Masterless, unless you’re one of the lucky strong ones, but I don’t expect you’d know much about that.”

A smile ghosted across Bones’s lips. “I know a thing or two about dangerous living, in fact, but as you seem not to fancy being Masterless, what say you to joining my line?”