This Side of the Grave

Chapter Seventeen

The first thing that registered was the scent of smoke, curling around my nostrils as if begging to be inhaled. The next realization was that my arms felt stiff and my wrists were sore. I opened my eyes, the bland grayness of a concrete ceiling above me, Bones’s pale, naked flesh to my right.

“What?” I began, trying to sit up, only to have something pull on my arms. I tilted my head backward, shocked to see that I was manacled to a wall even as another glance revealed that Bones and I were on a narrow bed. My gaze flew to him once more, noting the cigarette he set down even as he exhaled a long plume of white.

“Why are you lying there smoking while I’m chained to a wall?” I demanded.

The look he gave me was a mixture of relief and cynicism. “Since it seems you don’t remember anything about the past two days, let me assure you, luv—I earned that smoke.”

Two days? The last thing I clearly remembered was Bones carrying me out of that underground room with Marie. That was two days ago? And during that time, it had somehow become necessary to chain me to a wall?

“Oh shit,” I whispered, the memory of my voice sounding like the gateway to hell reverberating across my mind. “Marie’s blood . . . I absorbed some of her powers, didn’t I?”

He grunted even as he pulled a key out from under the bed. “Kitten, that’s quite the understatement.”

I thumped my head against the bed a couple times, more angry than afraid. Goddamn Marie. Why the hell had she insisted on me drinking her blood? Wasn’t it enough that she’d figured out where I got my abilities from? Guess not. She had to add to my problems by forcing me to drink from her. Now in addition to freaking people out once it became known that I could absorb vampire powers through feeding, Marie made sure to have proof that I could do the same thing with ghouls. People would be flocking to Apollyon’s side once these little tidbits were revealed.

“She must want war,” I said, rubbing my wrists when Bones unlocked the manacles. “If she didn’t, she would’ve just killed us. Once news of this hits, nothing but my public execution will calm things down with the ghouls.”

“That’s not going to happen,” he said coolly.

I grunted. “I’m not in favor of dying, either, but when people hear about this, Apollyon’s going to be fighting off converts with a stick—”

“I meant Marie’s not telling anyone, though you’re also right that I won’t let any of that zealot’s sods touch you.”

I sat all the way up, wondering briefly at the dampness beneath me but more focused on what he’d just said.

“Marie won’t tell anyone?” I repeated. “That doesn’t make sense. Why else would she have used such drastic measures to make me drink her blood, if she didn’t think it could benefit her in some way? And what other way could it benefit her except to tell everyone that I can absorb powers from vampires and ghouls? I don’t think she did it just so I can be her new voodoo buddy.”

His mouth twisted. “I don’t think so, either, but the last thing she said to me was if we revealed to anyone that you were able to siphon powers from ghouls, or that you’d drunk her blood, she’d kill the pair of us. Said she’d know it if we told anyone, too. Must mean she already has some ghostly buggers spying on us. Makes me want to hire an expert to banish every filmy-fleshed one of them I come across, and double goes with the Remnants.”

“Don’t say that.” Thank God Fabian was with Dave or the ghost would’ve been inconsolable at hearing Bones speak so coldly about his kind. “They’re not the same as Fabian or other ghosts,” I went on, my voice catching at a fresh surge of memory. “Marie said that, but I could also feel them. They’re not conscious of right, wrong, what they’re doing, any of that. Those Remnants are just . . . like huge gaping holes of need that gravitate toward whatever energy source they’re pointed at. They couldn’t help what they did to you—”

“Sweet bleedin’ Christ,” Bones interrupted. “Try not to let this turn you into a Ghost Whisperer, hmm? Adopting Fabian is one thing, but we’re already turning away spooks by the dozen. If you want another pet, we’ll get you more cats.”

“Speaking of my cat,” I began.

“He’s here,” Bones said, rising from the bed. “Not in this room, for obvious reasons, but Ed dropped him off yesterday.”

I let my gaze travel over his nudity because, one, who wouldn’t? And two, it was almost habit for me to admire him every time he rose from the bed. But something caught my eye when I lingered over his muscled thighs, making disbelief snake through me. A glance at the dampness under me as I scooted aside only confirmed it, not to mention the matching pink smudges on my own thighs.

“Bones, are you serious?” I gasped. “You couldn’t wait to have sex with me until I was conscious?” Sure, he was a very sexual person. Almost insatiable, some might claim, and I’d be tempted to agree, but this was crossing a line—

He began to laugh in a way that was more ironic than amused. “You may not want to have this conversation until you’re a bit less . . . agitated,” he said, seeming to choose his words with care.

I crossed my arms over my chest, not tapping my foot only because it was still on the bed.

“You’re not going to try that whole lame male ‘I had to do it or I’d explode’ excuse, are you? Because it’s bullshit for humans, but even more so for a vampire, especially one as old as you.”

His brow arched in challenge. “Really think I’d shag you if you were out cold? Didn’t we cover this a long time ago, before we even started dating?”

I gave a pointed glance down at the pink stains on the bed, evidence of his climax due to the blood-to-water ratio in vampire bodies. “So you made those . . . by yourself?” And rubbed some on me for good measure? I mentally added, but didn’t say out loud.

“No, luv, you were most definitely part of those, but you weren’t unconscious,” he replied evenly. “You were crazed with hunger from the effects of Marie’s blood, and I don’t mean hunger in the nutritional sense.”

Oh. My cheeks actually tingled with the urge to blush. That hadn’t occurred to me, even though one of the last things I remembered with clarity was a feeling of incredible hunger. Guess I’d misjudged what kind of hunger.

I strained my mind more, trying to think past that moment in the graveyard. After a short wait, a scattershot of images danced across my memory. Bones’s pale body rising over mine, his mouth open in a moan . . . crimson drops of blood on his skin that I licked away before biting him again . . . his hair, so dark against my thighs when he lowered his head between them . . . the restraints digging into my wrists while waves of pleasure and need crested within me . . .

Yeah, I’d been involved, all right. And bitey, too, it seemed. “Well, um . . . sorry for accusing you of, ah . . .”

“Taking advantage of my own wife while she was out cold?” he supplied.

I winced. “I’m starting to get little glimpses of what happened—though why’d you chain me to a wall? Don’t tell me that Marie’s blood temporarily turned me into a bondage junkie, too.”

If so, that begged the question of what exactly the voodoo queen was into for kicks, if I’d absorbed that from her, too . . .

Bones actually took in a breath before he spoke. “Kitten, let it alone for now. It’ll only upset you, and it wasn’t your fault.”

“What?” I burst out, dread replacing the lingering warmth those sensual images had evoked.

He sat down, taking my hand, his fingers stroking over my knuckles. The fact that he was being comforting made me even more nervous about what he was about to say.

“In the rituals Marie was famous for back in the eighteen hundreds, she’d take her followers into the woods off Lake Pontchartrain,” he said, still sounding like he was cherry-picking his words. “There they’d chant, watch Marie do tricks with a pet snake, and drink from a vat of wine sprinkled with her blood. Due to Marie’s position as priestess of the voodoo god Zombi, her blood was supposed to give the participants some of Zombi’s power over the dead, a side effect being uncontrollable lust, if you consider all the orgies that took place.”

Relief surged in me. “But that’s great news! Then I don’t have the ability to siphon ghoul powers like I do vampire ones, because Marie’s blood could affect anyone that way—”

“Those rituals were a sham,” he cut me off. “They gave people the excuse to pretend any depravities they indulged in weren’t their own doing, but none of them ever really received Zombi’s power over the dead from her blood. What happened with you was the real thing, however. Marie said she’d never seen it before, except very rarely with other voodoo priestesses.”

“Mambos,” I supplied glumly, my relief turning to ashes as I remembered Marie’s earlier words. I am black magic, she’d said about turning from a Mambo into a ghoul, so it stood to reason that her blood was potent magic, too. “So is that why you had to chain me up? Because absorbing Marie’s powers turned me into a violent tramp? No wonder you said you’d earned that smoke.”

It made even the powers I’d absorbed from Vlad and Mencheres seem like a mild inconvenience by comparison. Shoot a little fire from my hands when I was upset? No big deal, and hey, came in handy at times. Accidentally smash several pieces of furniture in our house through telekinesis? Well, we’d needed a new couch and TV anyway, and that also had helped out against the bad guys at a critical time. But this? Not useful at all, unless Bones had a deep sadomasochist streak.

“The good news is, she said this sort of blind hunger shouldn’t happen to you again,” Bones responded. “That it was just the initial, overwhelming response to the gate opening between you and the dead. Similar to the blood craze new vampires experience, but that you’d be able to control future twinges once you were yourself, as you clearly are.”

That was good news, but he’d avoided answering my question, I noticed. “Chains?” I prodded, my voice hardening so he’d know I wasn’t about to drop the subject.

“All right, luv, if you won’t let it go,” he drew out. “As I said, you were crazed with hunger, and a lot bloody stronger than you normally are. Didn’t seem to recognize anyone, either, which meant you weren’t being particular about who you sought to assuage that hunger with. Had to chain you up because otherwise, you tried to find someone else to ease your needs if I wasn’t servicing you, and I did have to pause to feed a few times.”

My jaw dropped at “weren’t being particular” and hung lower at each subsequent word, until I was vaguely surprised it wasn’t resting in my lap by the time he finished. I grabbed the sheet, pulling it around myself in a sudden rush of scalding shame.

“Oh. My. God. Please tell me I didn’t—”

“You didn’t,” Bones said, with a trace of a grim smile. “Though you did give a lucky bloke in the Quarter quite a thorough fondling by the time I caught up with you after you broke free from me in the cemetery. Still wasn’t a hundred percent at that point, and I hadn’t expected you to be so strong. I was able to fly us back to Tepesh’s after I’d fed, but by then, you were well and truly lost to the hunger. Marie warned me you’d be that way, and I must admit, she didn’t exaggerate.”

I’d had to be dragged away from sexually assaulting a tourist? Why oh why hadn’t I listened when Bones told me not to pursue this subject? But now that I knew this much, I had to know the rest.

“So, I attempted to rape a tourist and turned you into a sex slave for two days.” My voice was neutral because the embarrassment was so deep, it transcended reaction. “Anything else I should get a heads-up about? Like, who else to expect a restraining order from? Are we still at Vlad’s? Don’t tell me you had to drag me off of him, too?”

Bones made a sound like a delicate cough. “No, and we’re not at Tepesh’s anymore. It was a temporary residence, so it didn’t have the means to restrain a vampire in it. Marie offered to take us in, but as you can imagine, I wanted far away from her. Mencheres had a place with a vampire holding cell in West Virginia. He chartered a plane to Louisiana and helped contain you while we traveled here.”

His voice changed ever so slightly when he said “contain,” making me almost screech as I demanded, “What exactly did Mencheres do?”

“Held you immobile with his power while I shagged you in the back of the plane,” he replied bluntly, a half shrug seeming to say, You wanted to know. “Couldn’t risk you breaking free and crashing the aircraft, and attempting to drive to West Virginia with you in that condition wouldn’t have been wise.”

Mencheres. Bones’s co-ruler, grandsire, Master vampire of incredible power, and the ally who unnerved me the most, had telekinetically held me down so Bones could boink me into submission en route to a vampire holding cell? Sweet holy Jesus, let me have hallucinated hearing that!

“Get me some silver,” I managed to croak. “I’m going to kill myself.”

“Don’t fret, he faced the other way the whole time,” Bones said unperturbedly. “Aside from knowing it would’ve bothered you to have him watch, Kira also wouldn’t have fancied that.”

“Kira was there, too?” Good God, I barely knew her! And she’d been just a row or two away while all this was going on? If I still had the ability, I would’ve passed out from humiliation.

“Told you you’d feel better if you didn’t know the details,” Bones replied with a pointed look.

“I’ll never doubt your word again.” Or set foot out of this room, if Mencheres and Kira were still here.

He dragged me into his arms even though I was stiff from mortification.

“You needn’t be so ashamed. All you did was shag your husband; who’s to be shocked by that? Can’t say it’s an experience I’d care to repeat, but that’s only because you weren’t really yourself.” His lips brushed my ear. “Otherwise, chaining you up for over a day and a half of uninhibited rogering sounds terribly appealing.”

I knew he was trying to cheer me up, but I was still staggered over hearing I’d assaulted a tourist, gotten crazy every time Bones wasn’t plowing away at me, and as the coup de grâce, Mencheres had—in a manner of speaking—participated in Bones and me having sex. And here I swore I’d never have a threesome, the thought occurred to me amidst my lingering incredulity.

“Thought you said it was two days,” I muttered, finally registering the last part of what he’d said.

“You’ve been asleep for round nine hours now. Wasn’t sure if you’d still be caught up in the same hunger when you woke, so I didn’t take your restraints off.”

I didn’t blame him. God, I wouldn’t have blamed Bones if he’d duct-taped a vibrator to me and just took care of the whole sordid nightmare that way.

“You know what they say about being careful what you wish for? I used to wish there was something we could do, you know, intimately together that you hadn’t already done before, but I didn’t think it would ever happen.” I gave him a limp smile. “Though I doubt you’ve ever been forced to nonstop bang a woman hyped up on the undead voodoo version of Spanish fly, have you?”

His chuckle was soft. “Can’t say that I have, Kitten.”

“Yeah, well, consider me an original.”

This time, when his lips brushed across my skin, it lasted more than a moment.

“I always have.”

How he could be affectionate with me right after this latest cluster fuck—literally!—was beyond my comprehension. I should thank my lucky stars that while this scenario was an eleven out of ten on my perversity scale, Bones’s former human life as a gigolo combined with his promiscuous past as a vampire meant this probably only rated a three for him. Thank God he’d been there, too. I would have been horrified to cheat on Bones if I’d been hit with Marie’s blood-induced slut whammy when he wasn’t around.

The idea made me shudder. I was already fuming at Marie over letting those Remnants loose on Bones; if she’d have damaged our marriage as well—and though Bones would understand given the circumstances, it wouldn’t be something he’d ever forget—then I’d truly despise her.

The question that overshadowed even my searing embarrassment over my actions the past two days was why Marie had forced me to drink her blood. If not to use it as fuel for Apollyon’s warmongering, why would she want to see if I could absorb her powers? Marie was too calculating to have forced me into doing that just to satisfy her curiosity over whether ghoul blood would affect me the same way vampire blood did. She could have made me drink from another ghoul aside from herself to get the same proof.

What was she up to? And should that be of greater concern than what Apollyon was doing?

“If you’ve, ah, been occupied dealing with me for most of the past two days, there might have been some developments,” I said, swinging my legs off the bed. “Let’s hope there has been, and that it’s good news.”