Halfway to the Grave

TWENTY-FIVE

T HERE WERE THREE GUARDS OUTSIDE MY hospital room, and I was on the eleventh floor. They’d even cleared this part of the wing-I knew this from the silence in the rooms next to me. Apparently they took killing the governor seriously.

Doctors had been coming in all morning to gasp and gape over me, but it wasn’t because of who I’d killed. It was because of how I’d healed. Within hours, my three bullet holes had disappeared. The knife wound, gone. Hennessey’s fang marks, missing. All of my scratches and bruises, vanished. I didn’t even have an IV in me-the needle kept spontaneously slipping out. Frankly, I wondered why I hadn’t been moved to a regular jail cell yet, but after Isaac, I wasn’t complaining about the lack of police transportation.

At noon, more footsteps approached my room. Someone said, “FBI.” There was a pause, and then my door opened.

A man entered. He was about fifty, of average height, with thinning charcoal hair overrun with gray. His eyes were the same medium gray as his hair, but they weren’t sedate like their shade. They were crackling with intelligence. His companion who closed the door after him was considerably younger, perhaps in his late twenties. He had short brown hair in a buzz cut, and something about the way he carried himself screamed military to me. His eyes were navy blue and fixed on me with steadfast intensity.

“FBI, huh? Well, aren’t I honored?” They didn’t need extrasensory perception to catch my sarcasm. The younger man shot me a dirty look.

Gray Hair smiled instead, and came forward with hand extended.

“You might not be, but I certainly am. My name is Donald Williams and this is Tate Bradley. I’m the head of a unit in the FBI called the Paranormal Behavior Division.”

Grudgingly I shook his hand, years of manners making it impossible to refuse. With a jerk of my head I indicated Tate Bradley.

“What about him? He’s not Bureau…no cellulite or spare tire.”

Williams laughed, showing teeth slightly discolored from too much coffee or cigarettes.

“That’s correct. Tate is a sergeant in the Special Forces, a very select unit of them. He is my bodyguard today.”

“Why would you need a bodyguard, Agent Williams? As you can see, I’m handcuffed to the bed.” For effect, I rattled my cuffs at him.

He smiled benevolently. “Call me Don, and I’m a cautious man. That’s why Tate is carrying a Colt 45.”

The younger man flashed me the handle of his gun strapped in its shoulder harness. I smiled thinly at him and he returned it with an unfriendly baring of teeth.

“Okay, I’m shivering. Properly cowed. Now, what do you want?”

Not that I couldn’t guess. They probably wanted a confession that I’d killed the governor, a motive, etc., but I intended to clam up and then get the hell out of Dodge. Bones would be coming soon, I had no doubt, and along with my mother, we’d go into hiding. There were still two vampires who’d gotten away, and it would be too dangerous for my mother to remain in public in case there was retribution after the bloodbath Bones and I had unleashed. Both vampire and political.

“You’re a college student, getting excellent grades as well, from what we saw. Do you like literary quotes?”

Okay, an intelligence quiz. Not what I’d expected, but I would play along. “Depends.”

Don pulled up a chair without invitation and sat next to my bedside. Bradley remained standing, his hand fingering the butt of his gun pointedly.

“How about this one from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

A warning shiver went through me. These two weren’t giving off dangerous vibes, so I didn’t think they were more of Oliver’s or Hennessey’s goons, but they obviously weren’t to be taken lightly, either.

“What about it?”

“Catherine, I’m head of a division that investigates the unnatural occurrences of homicides. Now, most people think that every homicide is unnatural in nature, but you and I know they can go even deeper than humanity’s wrath against humanity, don’t we?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Don ignored that. “Our division isn’t publicly recognized by the Bureau. In fact, we’re a combination of CIA, FBI, and the armed forces. One of the few times those groups work in harmony. That’s why I selected Mr. Bradley as my backup and not some rookie fresh out of basic. He’s been training to head up a new unit of soldiers to fight a very special kind of battle. One that has been waged under our noses on our own soil for centuries. You know of what I speak, Catherine, and you know it better than anyone else. Let’s quit being coy. I’m talking about vampires.”

Holy Mary, Mother of God, he’d just said the V-word. Now I was more than wary-I was stricken.

“Aren’t you a little old to believe in vampires, Don?” Perhaps I could brazen it out. Maybe he was just fishing with a very big piece of bait.

Don didn’t smile now. His expression was granite. “I’ve examined many strange bodies over the course of my career. Bodies that were dated to be anywhere from a hundred years old to a thousand, and yet were dressed in modern clothes. Now, that could be explained away, but their pathology can’t. Their DNA contained a mutation never before documented in human or animal history. Every so often, we’d run across one of these unusual corpses, and the mystery behind them deepened. That house last night was littered with those abnormal bodies, and so was the governor’s. It was the largest cache of such bodies we’ve ever come across, but do you know what our greatest find was? You.”

Don’s tone lowered. “I’ve spent the last six hours reading every scrap of material I could find about you. Your mother reported a date rape a little more than twenty-two years ago and told of an implausible attacker who drank her blood. She was considered to be overwrought and the details were ignored. Then you were born five months later. And they never caught the perpetrator of that crime.”

“What of it? My mother was hysterical from the trauma of being raped.”

“I disagree. Your mother told the exact truth, except no one would ever believe her. Certain details she described were too specific. The sudden glowing of eyes to green, fangs protruding, incredible strength and speed, things she never could have heard anywhere else. Where her story differs from all others is that she gave birth to you. You, who according to Pathology have the same strain of mutation in your blood as our mysterious corpses. Less potency but no difference in the genetic structure. You see, Catherine, I’m honored to meet you because I’ve been looking for someone like you my entire career. You’re one of them and yet not one of them, the offspring of a human and a vampire. That makes you the most valuable find in centuries.”

Motherfucker. I should have run for it at the governor’s house, bullets be damned.

“That’s quite a story, but many people have rare blood types and psychotic mothers. I assure you, I am no different than any other girl my age. Furthermore, there is no such thing as vampires.”

Even my voice sounded steady. Bones would be so proud.

“Is that so?” Don stood and nodded to Tate Bradley. “Sergeant, I’m about to give you a direct order. Carry it out at once. Shoot Miss Crawfield in the head, right between the eyes.”

Whoa. I sprang off the bed and tore the metal bed rail from its welded perch, swinging it at the hand that raised the gun at me. There was a crack of broken bones. In the same smooth motion, I kneecapped Don while ripping the gun out of Bradley’s hand and holding it firmly to his head.

“I am so sick of being shot, and someone should tell you guys to have a little more respect for hospitals!”

Don, face first on the floor, pushed slowly over to look up at me. The expression on his face was pure satisfaction.

“You’re just a normal girl and there’s no such thing as vampires, right? That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. You were only a blur. Tate didn’t even have time to aim.”

Tate Bradley’s heart pumped at an accelerated rhythm and the beginnings of fear leaked out of his pores. Somehow I knew being afraid wasn’t a normal condition for him.

“What do you want, Don?” So this was his little test, and I’d passed with flying colors.

“Will you please release Tate? You can keep the gun, not that you need it. Clearly you’re stronger without it than he was with it. Consider it a sign of goodwill.”

“What’s to stop me from making my own sign of goodwill through his brains?” Maliciously. “Or yours?”

“Because I have an offer you’ll want to hear. If I’m dead, it’s harder for me to talk.”

Well, score one for him for keeping calm in a crisis. Abruptly I released Bradley and shoved him across the room. He slipped and slid on the floor next to Don.

There was a knock at the door. “Sir, is everything all right in there?” The guard sounded worried, but he didn’t peer inside.

“Just fine. Keep your post, no visitors. Don’t open that door until you’re told.” Don’s voice was confident and strong, belying the flash of pain in his eyes from his knees.

“What if you’d been wrong? If GI Joe here had plugged a hole in my head? That would’ve been hard to explain.”

Don gave me an appraising look. “It was worth the risk. Ever believe in something enough to kill for it?”

It would be hypocritical for me to say no. “What’s your offer?”

Don sat up, wincing at his bent knees. “We want you, of course. You just ripped off a welded metal bar and disarmed a highly trained soldier while handcuffed to a bed, all in about a second. There’s no one alive who has that kind of speed, but there are many dead things that do. After seeing your work, it seems to me you aren’t averse to killing those things. Lots of them, in fact, but more will be looking for you now. Your anonymity is ruined. I can fix that. Oh, I knew Oliver was dirty, a lot of people did, but we couldn’t prove anything because every agent we sent to check him out never came back. You’re different. We’d be sending these creatures someone their own size to pick on, and all of these charges won’t matter because Catherine Crawfield will die, and you’ll be reborn into your new life. Given backing and troops. You’ll become one of the most prized weapons the U. S. government has to protect its citizens against dangers they can’t even imagine. Isn’t that what you were meant to do? Haven’t you always known it?”

Wow, he was good, and if Timmie were here, he’d feel absolutely vindicated. There really were men in black, and I’d just been offered a chance to join their ranks. I thought of the opportunity and the advantages, the exhilaration of starting a new life without fear of police or burying bodies or hiding my nature from those around me. Just six months ago, I would have tripped over myself to accept it.

“No.”

The single word hung in the room. Don blinked.

“Would you like to see your mother?”

He’d taken my refusal too easy. Something was up. Slowly, I nodded. “She’s here?”

“Yes, but we’ll bring her to you. They’ll never let you walk the hall swinging that bedrail. Tate, instruct the guard to have Ms. Crawfield wheeled down here. And ask for another wheelchair as well. My arthritis seems to be acting up.” With a glance of pained amusement, he looked down at his knees.

A slight twinge of guilt shot through me.

“You deserved it.”

“It was worth it, Catherine, to be proven right. Some things are worth the cost of their consequences.”

Thinking of Bones, I couldn’t agree more.

The look on the guard’s face was priceless when he opened the door and saw Tate Bradley holding his broken arm at an odd angle and Don sprawled on the floor. My bed rail was held in place by my hand and I lay innocently on the bed.

“I tripped and my companion tried to help me up and fell on me,” Don offered when it was obvious something had occurred. The guard gulped and nodded smartly. Don was helped out and soon my mother was wheeled in. For a second, I thought of smashing through the window again and making a run for it with her, but then one look at her face told me it wouldn’t work.

“How could you?” she demanded as soon as the door closed, staring at me with a look of heartrending betrayal.

“Are you all right, Mom? I’m so sorry about Grandpa and Grandma. I loved them both.” Tears trapped inside me burst forth at last and I sat up and reached for her hand.

She jerked back as if I were foul.

“How can you say you’re sorry? How can you say any of that when I saw you with that vampire?”

Her voice rose to a shout and I looked nervously at the door. The guard would probably faint. Suddenly there was pleading in her face.

“Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me they lied to me, those animals that killed my parents and took me with them. Tell me that you are not fucking a vampire!”

She had never used that word with me before, and it fell with ugliness from her lips. All of my worst fears were realized when I saw her expression. Just as I’d dreaded, she despised me for what I’d done.

“Mom, I was going to tell you about him. He’s not like the others. He’s the one that’s really been helping me kill them, not Timmie. He’d been after Hennessey and his group for years.”

“For money?” Her words were whips. “Oh, I heard a good deal about that while they had me. They kept talking about the vampire that killed for money. And they laughed when they talked about you, said it was always women when it came to him. Is that what you’ve become, Catherine, a whore for the undead?”

A sob escaped me. How profane she made my relationship sound.

“You’re wrong about him. He risked his life going to that house to save you!”

“How could he risk his life when he is dead? Dead, and he brought death with him! It’s because of him those murderers came to our home, and it’s your fault for involving yourself with him! If you wouldn’t have been sleeping with a vampire, my parents would still be alive!”

Out of everything she’d said, this hurt the most. I might not be able to defend my part in their deaths, but she wasn’t getting away with blaming Bones.

“Don’t you dare, Mom. Don’t you dare! You knew what I’ve been doing since I was sixteen, going out all the time to search for vampires. And you knew how dangerous that was. You of all people knew, because of what happened with my father, and yet you encouraged me to do it, so that’s your fault! And I did it, and kept doing it, refusing to stop even though Bones warned me over and over to, so that’s my fault! If I had never met Bones, if I had never slept with a vampire in my life, Grandma and Grandpa could still have been killed for what both of us participated in without him, even before him. If anyone’s got Grandma and Grandpa’s blood on their hands, it’s you and me. Not him. We both knew one day it could lead back home, and in that regard, we’re more responsible for Grandma and Grandpa’s deaths than he could ever be.”

Her face went white and her voice, when it came, was low but resonating. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am also responsible for my parents being murdered, and I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life. But I don’t have to live with a vampire in it. Catherine, I love you, but if you continue to have a relationship with that creature, I never want to see you again.”

Those words struck me harder than the bullets had. I thought I’d been prepared to hear them, but they hurt more than I ever knew they could.

“Don’t do this to me, Mom. You’re the only family I have left!”

She sat back and straightened in her chair as much as her aching ribs would allow. “I know what’s happened to you. You’ve been corrupted. That creature warped your conscience and brought out the darkness in you, like I’ve always been afraid would happen. I only wish those other animals had killed me before I found out I was a failure as a mother.”

Every word was a knife slicing into me. Being kidnapped and seeing her parents murdered had ruined any chance of reasoning with her about vampires not being automatically evil. She was drowning in her rage, and I had no way to save her.

“I hope those men catch that monster and kill him once and for all,” she went on. “Then you won’t be tormented by his control anymore.”

My head snapped up. “Who? What are you talking about?”

She stared at me with defiance. “I told them the truth, the men who just left here. Told them you’d been led astray by one of those creatures, and that he’d run away from the house last night. The older man knew about vampires. They’re looking for him. I hope they slaughter him. Then you’ll be free.”

“Don! Get in here!”

Now I jumped off the bed and flung open the door. The guard made as if to pull his gun at seeing me unrestrained, but Don quickly blocked him in his straight-legged wheelchair, with Tate following close behind.

“It’s okay, Jones. We have it under control.”

“But she…she…” Jones gaped at the bed rail dangling from my right handcuff, mouth opening and closing.

“Just watch the door,” Bradley snapped, and pushed past him with his good arm.

“Did you ladies have a nice chat?” Don inquired.

“You smug son of a bitch. What game do you think you are playing?”

Don looked as unruffled as if he were sipping tea at a luncheon. “Ms. Crawfield, would you excuse us and let us have a few moments alone with your daughter? The guard will see you back to your room.”

She didn’t say goodbye and neither did I. Both of us were furious and felt deceived. Unlike her, however, I knew I could never stop loving her. She was my mother, no matter what occurred. I could forgive her even this.

“So, your mother told you she informed us about your…relationship with a vampire? She thinks he put some kind of spell on you. Is that true? Are you under his thrall?”

“Only if you count sex,” I countered without batting an eye. Let them think it was merely physical.

Bradley gave me a look of thinly veiled disgust. I’d had enough of that.

“Oh, shove it up your ass, if you can fit anything in that tight GI shit-shoot!” My mother’s judgment I had to take, but I didn’t have to put up with his.

His face actually colored with indignation. Don hid a smile behind a cough.

“Be that as it may, I find it notable you didn’t bring up your close association with a vampire earlier. Perhaps you lean more towards their side than appearances dictate?”

“Look, Don, who I choose to fuck is not anyone’s business but my own. He and I had similarities in our goals. Did my mother tell you he killed vampires as well? She probably left that out in her haste to see him dispatched. We had a commonality of purpose and it led to some extra attention. It’s not like it was serious, he was just passing through.”

“Just passing though?” Skeptically. “This would be the vampire who crushed Danny Milton’s hand at a bar in November? The police might think it’s impossible to cripple someone with a handshake, but then they’ve never been aware of a vampire’s work before.”

“Well, well, aren’t you Mr. Smarty Pants? In case you haven’t heard it from the horse’s mouth, that creep Danny used and abused me when I was sixteen. I asked my friend to teach him a lesson. Now his hand won’t be feeling up any underage skirts for a while.” Again the lies slid smoothly off my tongue. “And in case you didn’t realize, a vampire’s idea of just passing through is staying a few months. They calculate time a little different than we do.”

“Then you’ll fill us in on the details of where he is.” This from Bradley, still smarting from my earlier comment.

Laughing, I shook my head. “Sure. Great idea. Rat on a vampire who doesn’t have a grudge against me, pissing him off when I haven’t the slightest notion if you could protect me afterwards. I’m half human, but I’m not all stupid.”

“Do you know what I think, Catherine? I think you’re not stupid at all.”

Don spoke quietly, with that same pleasant half smile. “No, I think you’re very, very smart. You’d have to be, wouldn’t you, to hide what you are all of these years and sneak out at night to kill the living dead. My God, you’re only twenty-two, and you’ve seen more combat than most of the soldiers in uniform. I think you’ll try to run away. Take your mother and leave, with or without your vampire lover. But there’s a small problem with that, as you just found out. She won’t go. You see, she hasn’t accepted you for what you are. After finding out about your unusual sex life, she’s even more upset. You’ll have to leave her behind in order to disappear, and when you do, how many things will come crawling out of the ground to use her to get to you? How many vampires have you killed? I bet they had friends. Oliver did, too. And all of your cajoling won’t change what she sees in you. She sees you now as a vampire, and she will never leave with one of them. You may as well kill her yourself before you go, it would be kinder.”

“You bastard!”

I launched out of bed, slamming Bradley in the head when he moved to block me. He dropped like a stone onto the floor. Then I grabbed Don by his shirt collar and hauled him out of his wheelchair, lifting him until his feet dangled in the air.

“You can kill us both now, Catherine,” he panted. “We can’t stop you. Maybe you’d make it out the window without getting shot. Maybe you’d make it to her room and fling her over your shoulder and carry her off, kicking and screaming for help. Maybe you’d get a car and a false passport, meet up with your lover and try to skip the country. Maybe you would get away with all of that. But how long before she left you? How long before she ran away out of fear of her own daughter? And then how long before someone found her and made her pay for what you’ve done?”

Don held my eyes as tightly as I gripped his shirt. In his stare I could see the truth. See my mother fighting every moment to escape, probably trying to kill herself out of misery, and then getting stolen away again because of me or Bones. We would try to rescue her, of course, and then what if she died and Bones did as well? It was one thing to risk my relationship with her if she didn’t accept me because of the man I loved. But I couldn’t demand her life in return for my happiness, and I couldn’t risk his for the same reason. We could run all over the world, but we wouldn’t be able to escape what was inside us, and eventually it would destroy all of us.

I relinquished my grip on Don. He crumpled to the ground, his shattered knees unable to hold him. There was a way to ensure the safety of both Bones and my mother, and it only required one sacrifice. Mine.

I knew then that I had to take Don’s offer. It tore at my heart, but to do any less would be to condemn either Bones or my mother. Her hatred of vampires was so great, she would get herself or him killed if we tried to run away, and we’d have to, with so many different people chasing us. We couldn’t run from Hennessey and Oliver’s remaining friends, the police, plus a secret U. S. government agency as well! One of them would catch us. It would only be a matter of time. If I went with Don, I’d be eliminating two out of the three threats against us, so the odds of Bones and my mother being safe more than doubled. How could I refuse, if I claimed to love them? Love wasn’t doing only what was best for me, after all. It was doing what was best for them.

“We have a deal,” I said to Don, steeling myself. “If you meet my conditions.”

“Name them. I’ll tell you straight out if they’re impossible.”

He struggled to climb back into the wheelchair, but I watched him without pity.

“One, I command any teams that hunt vampires. There’s no way I’m going to listen to any brass-striped and -buttoned fool when it comes to battle. I’m superior to any of your men and I don’t care that I’m younger. We do things my way and I train and pick my own team. If they don’t meet my standards, then they stay at home.”

My voice was granite and I didn’t blink. He nodded briskly, all business.

“Two, we leave right away, and we don’t come back here. You forget about my undead friend. I’m not backstabbing someone who helped rescue my mother and has done me no harm. If you can’t handle that, then we quit speaking, because if I ever hear differently, you’ll wish more than my mother does now that I’d never been born. Believe me, you’ll have plenty of other dead vampires to play with by the time I’m through.”

Don hesitated for only a moment and then shrugged. “I want to win the war, not just one battle. I’ll agree to that. Provided, of course, you have no further contact with him or any other nonhuman friends you may have acquired. I won’t endanger my people needlessly or open my division to infiltration because you like how something is in the sack.”

His emphasis on thing was deliberate. So he had prejudice issues as well.

“Three, there is a length-of-service agreement. Even soldiers get to quit after a period of time. I don’t want to be enslaved to you for the rest of my natural life, however short that may turn out to be. Ten years, and not a minute more.”

He frowned and pulled at his eyebrow. “What if after that time special circumstances come up? Monsters don’t send us notice in advance to warn us of the trouble they plan. How about ten years’ full duty, and then after that, three missions a year of our choice for another three years? That seems fair, doesn’t it?”

“Three missions a year, not to exceed one month in total time length combined. Done.”

Thirteen years. That was way too long to expect Bones to wait for me, even if he didn’t age.

“Four, you set me and my mother up in separate residences but in one place. I am not going to be traveling like a gypsy from barrack to barrack or whatever you call them. I want a house, nothing fancy but mine, and a salary. Give my mother a home as well, just not too close to mine. Same state, different cities ought to do it. This arrangement with her will continue even if I die on the job. She gets my salary if I’m killed, understood? And you’re also going to take care of those girls who were rescued last night. Get them the best counseling money can buy, and make sure they’re set up with a good job and a place to stay also. They were chosen because they don’t have that. You’re going to give it to them.”

Don gave the faintest smile. “We would have done that anyway. You’ll find if you cooperate, we can have a mutually beneficial association for everyone involved.”

“I doubt it,” I said wearily. “But it’s a deal nonetheless. Last but absolutely not least, I refuse to go after vampires who aren’t killing people. This may sound like an oxymoron to you, but in my experience, I’ve met vampires who drank only enough to live and didn’t kill unnecessarily. They can feed off someone without their knowledge afterwards. I’ll kill killers, not sippers. Find someone else to hunt those for you, and good luck.”

Tate Bradley stirred, moaning softly and sitting up while pressing a hand to his bleeding head. Guess I’d cracked his skull a bit. He stood, but swayed and gave me a very unpleasant look.

“You hit me again and I’ll-”

“What? Bleed more? Thanks, but I only drink gin and tonic. That’s one vampire attribute I’m without. No fangs, see?”

With a wide smile I bared my teeth at him and returned his nasty stare. If he hated me now, wait until I started to train him. Then he’d know hatred.

Don coughed. “I’m sure we’ll be able to find enough unsavory types to keep you sufficiently busy so we won’t have to hunt the ones you feel are harmless.” The edge to his words told me he thought nothing undead was harmless. But the potential for harm wasn’t limited to vampires. I knew that from experience now. “Then we are finished. I’ll arrange to have you and your mother transported out of here immediately. Tate will accompany you to the airport, and you two should get to know one another. Tate, meet your new team leader, Catherine.”

“My name is Cat.”

It flew out of my mouth. Everything in my life was about to change, but some things I was keeping.

Bradley held open the door and Don once again wheeled out. Bradley paused for a moment and shook his head at me.

“Can’t say it’s been a pleasure meeting you, but I’ll see you soon. Try to let me stay conscious next time.”

My brow arched at him, shades of the vampire I loved. “We’ll see.”