Jeaniene Frost - This Side of the Grave

My gaze flew to Bones before flicking to the rearview mirror. Both Ed and Scratch looked stunned. So was I. What Bones was offering was akin to adopting them.

“Think before you answer,” Bones went on. “Once sworn, you can’t change your mind and get your freedom back unless you formally ask for it and I decide to grant that request.”

Ed let out a soft whistle. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“As death,” Bones lightly replied.

“I heard you’re a mean bastard,” Scratch said after a long pause. “But I’ve also heard you’re a fair one. I can deal with mean and fair. Beats being on my own trying to fight off every asshole who thinks killing Masterless vampires is an easy way to make a name for himself.”

My brows went up at this blunt analysis, but Bones didn’t look the least bit offended. “What about you, Ed?”

“Why are you offering this?” Ed wondered, looking at Bones with narrowed eyes. “You know from our power levels that we’ll never be Masters. You can’t be hard up for our measly ten percent tithe, either, so what’s in it for you?”

Bones matched Ed’s stare. “For starters, I want to catch these ghouls, and you’d help me with that. You also must have heard that recent wars killed several members of my line. You were loyal to your mates even after your Master died and you had no obligation to them. Then you were smart enough not to walk into a potential trap without backup. I could use more smart blokes whose loyalty to me, my wife, and my co-ruler would be without exception.”

Ed met my gaze briefly in the rearview mirror before looking back at Bones. “All right,” he said, each word measured. “I’m in.”

Bones pulled out a silver knife. I snapped my attention back to the road before I caused a wreck with my frequent glances around the car. Besides, I knew Bones wasn’t about to start stabbing Ed and Scratch. He was just making this official.

“By my blood,” Bones said, scoring a line in his palm, “I declare you, Ed, and you, Scratch, to be members of my line. If I betray this oath, let my blood be my penalty.”

Then Bones passed the knife to Ed, his cut healing before the first drops of blood splashed against his dark pants. I didn’t need to look back to know that Ed made a slice into his palm; the tantalizing new scent of blood told me that.

“By my blood, I acknowledge you, Bones, as my Master,” Ed rasped. “If I betray this oath, let my blood be my penalty.”

Scratch repeated the words to the accompaniment of another mouthwatering scent filling the car. Aside from my discomfort with the whole “master” aspect that came with vampire lineage, I now had the tightening in my stomach to think about. I hadn’t fed since last night and my next meal might be tricky to get since I had to find someone aside from Bones to drink from. Normal vampires had plenty of options when it came to feeding. The power in their gaze meant they could snack off humans without their donors remembering it had happened, or vampires exchanged room and board with specially selected humans in return for blood.

I didn’t have those conveniences. Mind control didn’t work on other vampires, and no undead households I knew of had a stable of vampires available to feed from. Plus, we were still trying to keep my strange diet—and its side effects—from becoming common knowledge. So I couldn’t just ask the next vampire I saw if I could take a bite out of him or her.

Scratch passed the blood-smeared knife back to Bones once he was finished swearing his fealty. I resisted a sudden urge to lick the blade and concentrated on the road, making a mental rundown of ways I could get blood. Juan, a member of my old team, was undead just a year, so he was a possibility. Maybe I could get him to ship some of his blood to me, though Juan would wonder why I wanted it. None of them knew about my odd diet yet.

Bones’s best friend, Spade, knew what I fed off of and I’d had his blood before, but I didn’t want to make it a habit. Spade was a Master vampire, so that meant he was too strong. Most of Bones’s friends were too strong, in fact.

Dammit. Not drinking from Bones without starving would be more difficult than I’d imagined.

“For now, don’t tell anyone of our association,” Bones said to Ed and Scratch, centering my attention back on the present situation. “Go about your business as if we’d never met. Here’s a number where you can reach me. At the first sight of those ghouls, you ring me straightaway, but do not confront them. Understood?”

“Got it” and “Sure” were the responses. I wondered if they did understand. I did, and wasn’t thrilled.

I dropped the vampires off close to the Easton fountain where we’d met them, waiting until I’d driven a couple miles away before I slanted a glance at Bones.

“You’re using them as bait.”

Bones met my gaze, his dark brown stare concealing nothing. “Yes.”

“God,” I muttered. “You’re not letting them tell anyone that they’ve just been upgraded from being Masterless to belonging to a powerful vampire so those ghouls will still consider them easy meat. That’s deliberately putting them in danger.”

“No more than they were before, as they said themselves. But now if they’re harmed, I’ll have rights under our laws to investigate,” he replied with annoying logic. “Believe me, pet, I’m hoping nothing happens to them and their usefulness comes from pointing me in those ghouls’ direction. But if Apollyon is behind these attacks, we need a way to get to him without looking like we’re being mindlessly antagonistic. Otherwise . . .”

Bones didn’t have to finish the sentence. Otherwise, Apollyon will have more fuel for the rumors that I’m seeking to be some sort of vampiric Stalin , I mentally finished. Right, because that’s what I put on my To Do list every morning. Brush teeth. Wash hair. Rule undead world with an iron fist.

“I don’t know why ghouls would listen to Apollyon about me being a threat anyway,” I muttered. “I might have a wacky diet as a vampire, but Apollyon can’t tell people that I’ll combine ghoul and vampire powers anymore. Changing over took care of that paranoid rant from him.”

Bones’s stare was sympathetic, but unyielding. “Kitten, you’ve been a vampire for less than a year. During that time, you’ve blown the head off a Master vampire through pyrokinesis and frozen dozens of vampires into a stupor through telekinesis. Your abilities, plus your occasional heartbeat, are bound to frighten some people.”

“But they’re not my abilities!” I burst. “Okay, the intermittent heartbeat is mine, but all the rest were borrowed powers. I don’t even have them anymore, and if I hadn’t drunk from Vlad and Mencheres, I never would have gotten them in the first place.”

“No one knows how you got them, or that you lose them after a while,” Bones noted.

“Maybe we should tell them.” But even as I said it, I knew better.

He let out what might have been a sigh. “If Apollyon knew the source of your abilities, he could argue that you could manifest any power you wanted merely by drinking from a vampire who had it. Better he just thinks you’re extraordinarily gifted based on your own merits.”

In other words, no matter how we tried to dress it up, I still came across as a dangerous freak. I took in a deep breath in the hopes that the familiar gesture would calm me. It didn’t. All it did was bring the scent of blood into my lungs, clenching my stomach in an almost painful way.

“Too bad your co-ruler’s visions still aren’t back to full strength. That would take the guesswork out of whether or not this is Apollyon’s doing.”