One Grave at a Time

Seventeen

The last of the wounded were carted off by Medevac, leaving behind only the few uninjured and the bodies in the forest. Even the soldiers and occupants from the RVs were clustered around us, Madigan wanting as many people around him as possible until his transport came. Sage burned in pots in the perimeter surrounding us, but that wasn’t the only smell in the air. The scent of blood and death was also heavy, clinging to the clothes of the survivors as well as emanating from the lost.

“How could this happen?” Madigan muttered, looking around at the carnage.

I’d been standing next to my mother, but Madigan’s comment had me leaving her side to march over to where he stood. Even though the fallen men were strangers who’d threatened to shoot me, they didn’t deserve to die the way they had. The fact that their deaths had been preventable only angered me more.

“How could this happen? Because you didn’t listen when someone told you to get your men out of here.”

Madigan’s heart rate hadn’t decreased much since Kramer began slaughtering everyone he could get his noncorporeal hands on. Sadly, that list didn’t include Madigan, which was due in no small part to his being a coward. When Kramer tore through the guards, who fired so wildly at their unseen attacker that I’d taken a few stray bullets just protecting Tyler, Madigan crawled behind the barricade of our crouched bodies. Bones had draped himself over Chris and my mother joined the protective huddle to offer further buffer against the ghost and the bullets. Because of that, Madigan only had a bloody furrow in the side of his leg, more’s the pity.

“This is all your fault,” he stated, pointing a trembling finger at me. “You said ghosts were only faint, residual imprints of leftover energy, no more interactive than a house plant. You compromised my security and the security of—”

“Oh come on,” I interrupted. “I guessed you were too stupid to be trusted with this information, and I was right! You don’t have to be a weatherman to figure out which way the wind blows with you, Madigan. Lying to you was in the best interests of everyone’s security, and I wish there wasn’t a pile of dead bodies around me to prove it.”

His face became mottled, and I could almost hear his blood pressure shooting up.

“How dare you? You’ll be lucky if you’re not both found to be accessories in those men’s deaths!”

Bones ignored him, grasping one of the fallen soldiers by the shoulders and staring directly into his helmet.

“You, on the other side of this video feed. You authorized the replacement of a decently intelligent bloke with quite possibly the world’s biggest arsehole—and in my day, I’ve met more than a few arseholes, so I’m speaking from a point of authority.”

Madigan all but roared, “Get away from him!”

“He’s dead, he no longer cares who’s touching him,” Bones replied shortly. “Pity you were more interested in garnering ammunition against her than in valuing his life while he still had it. You blundered into a situation that was far over your head, then ignored warnings to leave. Today, two vampires did more to protect your men than the human leader who was responsible for them. What will your superiors on the other end of this video think of that, I wonder?”

Madigan opened his mouth, his face reddening even more, when all at once, he stopped. Then I heard his thoughts snaking through the wall of rage and slogans. He’s right. Must fix this.

“This has been a terrible tragedy,” Madigan said, sounding mournful instead of about to blow a gasket like he had before. “Anytime life is lost, responsibility ultimately rests on the person in charge, and that person is me. I’ll request that every aspect of today’s events be evaluated so something like this never happens again, even if I’m reprimanded as a result.”

“You’re only trying to cover your ass seven ways from Sunday,” Don said in disgust. Then he turned to me. “You see why I don’t trust him?”

Oh yeah. I hadn’t heard so much bullshit since the last time I drove past a used car lot and caught snatches of the salesmen’s conversations. Madigan even ambled closer to the dead man as he spoke, dragging his leg far more than the shallow wound merited. He leaned down as if to brush some dirt off the fallen solider. What it did was allow the camera to pick up every nuance of his newly somber expression and the tear that somehow found its way onto his cheek. You coldhearted, manipulating PRICK, I thought in disbelief.

Bones let out a snort. “Right piece of work, you are.”

Madigan’s lips thinned, but he quickly recovered, straightening as much as he could while balancing most of his weight on one leg.

“I understand you’re both still upset. I did allow my anger to color my judgment when I didn’t listen to your warning. That was a mistake.”

“Is that your idea of an apology?” I asked, incredulous.

“I don’t owe you one,” Madigan snapped before assuming that calmer, controlled tone again. “Had you come to me about this ghost first, without any subterfuge, this tragedy would have been prevented.”

“We didn’t need to come to you because we had it under control,” I gritted out. “At least, we did until you had to track me down and interrupt us at gunpoint from trapping this fucker for all eternity, and now you want to blame this on me?”

God, if I stayed here any longer listening to his twisted version of events, I was going to beat him until he bled internally.

Bones must’ve had enough, too, because he took my arm. “Come on, Kitten, let’s go. We’re wasting our time with this sod.”

“You can’t leave yet,” Madigan said, that edge back in his voice.

A slow smile spread across Bones’s face. “Oh?”

We were in the air before Madigan could sputter out a demand for us to stay put. I could fly well enough to propel myself in the general direction I wanted to go, but I lacked the finesse Bones had while flying. So while I took off under my own power, I let him direct us to where Tyler, my mother, and the pet carriers were located. One quick snatch-and-grab later, and they were soaring far above the ground as well. Fabian and Elisabeth didn’t need to be told to follow; they whooshed after us, their forms streamlining into mere blurs.

Don stayed behind with Chris and his crew, who were unharmed thanks to the sage burning in the RVs. Even if Madigan questioned them again, they couldn’t tell any more damaging information about us than they already had. Plus, Madigan would make sure they didn’t repeat anything they’d seen to outside sources. Vampires weren’t the only ones who were experts at concealing incriminating information. The government had extensive practice when it came to that, too.

We went straight from Ohio to our best friends Spade and Denise’s home in St. Louis. No, we didn’t fly everyone the whole way. Since merging lines with a vampire several millennia old, Bones now had people accountable to him spread out all over the world. All it took was one call to his co-ruler, Mencheres, saying we needed a pickup for us to be whisked away within the hour. Good thing, too, since we couldn’t have rented a car. We’d left our credit cards and IDs back in one of the RVs. Silly us hadn’t figured on Madigan’s commandeering the RVs and greeting us at gunpoint outside the cave. If Madigan thought to trace us through those aliases or billing card addresses, he was mistaken. Bones had everything routed through so many false channels, Madigan would only end up chasing his tail. I hoped he tried it because the thought of frustrating him pleased me in a petty, vindictive way.

When we arrived at their house, I didn’t even have to get out of the car to see that we weren’t the only visitors. If the flashy Maserati wasn’t enough to clue me in as to who else was here, the custom GR8BITR license plate was confirmation.

“Ah, Ian’s here,” Bones said with none of my dismay at the prospect.

“I see that,” I replied, not airing any of my opinion because Ian could hear me, and it would only amuse him. Some people took exception to being considered a pain in the ass. Ian didn’t only take it as a compliment, he reveled in it. If he wasn’t Bones’s sire, I might have “accidentally” staked Ian by now.

“Cat!” Denise exclaimed, flinging open the door. She almost ran to give me a hug, whispering, “Thank God you’re here. He’s driving me crazy!” during her welcoming squeeze.

I smothered a laugh, knowing she wasn’t talking about Spade. Good to see I wasn’t the only one who found Ian irritating. How Bones and Spade had put up with him these past centuries, I’d never know.

“Cat. Justina. Crispin,” Spade said from behind Denise, calling Bones by his human name. “How goes it?”

“Not as well as we’d hoped, Charles,” Bones replied, also addressing him by the name he’d been born with instead of the moniker of the tool Spade had been assigned as a New South Wales prisoner.

Tyler carried Dexter out of the car and set him down. The dog took one look at the open front door of the house and ran inside. My mother followed suit after exchanging a brief hello with Denise and Spade and getting directions to the nearest guest bedroom. It was almost dawn, and as a normal newer vampire, my mother was wilting on her feet. I wasn’t worried about Spade’s having enough room for all of us. He was a former eighteenth-century nobleman, and the spacious opulence of the several houses he owned reflected that.

Tyler sidled up next to me, eyeing Spade with open appreciation.

“Who’s Mr. Tall, Dark, and Delicious?”

“Her husband,” I replied, my lips twitching. “Tyler, this is Denise, and that’s Spade.”

Tyler let out a dramatic sigh as he shook Denise’s hand. “All the good ones are either straight or married, but I won’t hold it against you that he’s both.”

Denise laughed. “Great to meet you. Cat’s told me all about you.”

“And some of it’s probably true,” he teased.

Then his attention became fixed on someone behind Denise, his mouth dropping before his expression turned into an open, lascivious stare. Thoughts started to race through his mind that were so explicit, I wished I could take a bat to my head to block out my telekinetic abilities.

“Tyler, meet Ian,” I said without bothering to turn around.

“Daddy like,” Tyler breathed.

He straightened his shoulders, fixing his most winning smile on his face as he all but pushed me out of the way. The jostling turned me enough to get a view of the other vampire. Ian leaned against the doorframe, his auburn hair rustling in the breeze and turquoise eyes watching everything with his usual devilishness.

“I thought Bones looked like a little slice of heaven, but you’re the whole cake, aren’t you, sugar?” Tyler said, holding out his hand.

Ian took the praise as his due, flashing Tyler a smile that had the medium almost tripping in his approach. When he shook Tyler’s hand, Tyler let out a sigh that would’ve done a wistful teenager proud.

That face, that body . . . and you know he’s packing, look at the angle of that dangle! I heard before screaming la-la-la over and over in my mind.

“The killer ghost is still on the loose,” I announced to try to distract myself from Tyler’s enraptured musings over Ian.

“The trap didn’t work?” Spade asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Killer ghost?” Ian perked up, gently batting Tyler aside with a “Yes, yes, I’m truly stunning, but this interests me,” remark.

“Let’s go inside, and I’ll tell you all about it.” I nodded at Fabian and Elisabeth, who hung back almost shyly by our car. “You too, guys. We’re all in this together.”