At Grave's End - Page 7/36

"You'll get your chance," Max snapped. "But I set this up, so I go first."

Calibos smirked at me as he headed out the door. "I'll see you soon, sweetie."

Max got up and sauntered over to my mother next. She was almost on her tiptoes to keep the drape around her neck slack enough to breathe. Underneath her, the chair wobbled ominously on its three legs. Her hands were tied together with another piece of drapery, and Max grinned as he contemplated her fingers.

"Which one will you lose, Justina? Let's see, this little finger went to market," he started to singsong, tapping one of them. "This little finger stayed home. This little finger had roast beef..."

I tried to mentally prepare myself for my chance. Now that one of them was outside, this was my best opportunity. It was hard for me to focus, however. I'd had years of experience getting knocked around, but with all of my injuries, I kept feeling myself wandering closer to unconsciousness.

My mother met my eyes...and then kicked the chair out from under her.

"Goddammit," Max snapped, holding her up with one hand. "Why'd you do that?"

In the second that he was distracted, I yanked against the knives on my wrists with all my strength, feeling my flesh shred. I'd gotten one of my hands free when Max turned around.

"What the hell?"

He let my mother go. She dangled by the neck, her feet well above the floor, while I wrenched my other arm free, ignoring the white-hot burst of pain that caused. I tried to grab one of the knives, but my wrists were too damaged for me to hold anything. I kicked them away and then lunged at Max instead, head-butting him hard enough to knock him over.All I need is a little of your blood, I thought, biting at him savagely,and I'll be healed enough to fight.

A burst of noise jerked my head toward the window. The last thing I saw was glass smashing-and then there was a burning in my neck and my vision went black. I thought I heard screams, but all at once, everything seemed farther away. I couldn't feel anything, either. It was a relief to be free from the pain.

Awareness came back with something wet being poured down my throat. I tried to cough it out but couldn't. The flow wouldn't stop, forcing me to swallow. Again. And again.

"...don't you let her die!" I thought I heard my mother scream, then there was Bones's voice, very close.

"...come on, luv, drink! No, you have to have more..."

I gagged, the liquid overflowing my mouth, when shapes around me formed into clarity. I had my mouth plastered to a blood-slicked neck, and I pushed away even as I coughed and swallowed once more.

"Stop it," I managed to say.

Hands set me back. It was Bones's throat I'd been pressed against. His neck wasn't the only thing smeared red, either. So was the entire front of him.

"Christ Almighty, Kitten," Bones breathed, stroking my throat.

"Catherine," my mother cried. I jerked my head around in time to see her slip in something as she staggered toward me. That drape was still tied around her neck, but the other end was no longer attached to the banister. In the far corner of the room, I heard Max's muttered cursing and a feminine English reply.

"Don't you move, you little shite."

"You've got him?" Bones asked in a truly chilling voice.

Annette sounded as fierce as I'd ever heard her. "I've got him, Crispin."

My mother reached me. She was hugging me and trying to pull me from Bones's arms even as she kept feeling my neck.

"Did he fix it? Are you all right, Catherine?"

That's when I noticed the rest of the blood. It wasn't only splattered on Bones, but all over me, around me, even on the nearby wall.

"What happened?" I asked, torn between dizziness, numbing gratitude that we were alive, and being aghast at all the blood surrounding us.

"Max ripped your throat out," Bones replied. There was the weirdest mixture of relief and rage in his blazing green gaze. "And he's going to dearly wish I'd kill him before I'm through with him."

Chapter Six

DON ARRIVED AT MY MOTHER'S WITH THE full team less than fifteen minutes after I called him. They must have broken every traffic law known to man, not that any local cops could give them speeding tickets.

Bones and Annette strapped Max into the capsule. Don was taking him-for now. Bones curtly said he'd send someone by later to collect Max, and the tone he used made me glad my uncle didn't argue. Of course, I didn't think Don wanted Max on his hands very long. The look the brothers had exchanged while Max was being strapped into that capsule was filled with so much history, Don glanced away even before Max started to curse him.

I had to be given several pints of blood to replace what I'd lost. Bones's blood had healed my multiple injuries, but my pulse had been dangerously weak.

"That was close," I said to Bones with a shaky smile after my final transfusion. I was sitting in his car. He'd used a towel to wipe off as much blood from me as possible. We were leaving soon. Bones didn't want to stay longer than necessary here, since we couldn't be sure who else Max and Calibos might have told about their ambush plans.

Bones met my eyes with an unfathomable look. "I'd have brought you back one way or another, Kitten. Either as a vampire or a ghoul, even if you hated me for it afterward."

"Not if Max had his way," I muttered. "He was going to cut me into pieces."

Bones let out a hiss that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Then he seemed to get himself under control.

"I'll remember that," he said, each word bitten off.

So many emotions were surging in me. Relief, delayed panic, anger, exhilaration, and the urge to clutch Bones and babble about how thrilled I was to evensee him again. But there wasn't time for a meltdown, so I stuffed those feelings back.Get it together, Cat. Can't have you turn into a mass of psychological goo, there's too much to do.

My mother was in the backseat. She'd refused to go to the compound, even though she wouldn't have been there long. Don was moving everyone out. Max had found my mother's house, so it was an easy guess to make that he knew where the compound was, too. Don wasn't taking any chances that Max had told other vampires where to find it. Don's operation had killed enough of them that some might decide to pay it a visit.

So my mother was leaving with Bones and me now, and Don would get her set up with another place to live later. Once he finished relocating our entire team.

"I'm sorry, Catherine," she mumbled, not meeting my eyes. "I didn't want to call you. I heard myself saying the words, but I couldn't seem to stop."

I sighed. "It's not your fault. Max used mind control. You couldn't help what you were saying."

"Demon power," she whispered.

"No," Bones said firmly. "Max is the one who told you all vampires were demons, right? You think he's capable of telling the truth, even after this?"

"Whatever Max told you back then," I added, "you would have been compelled to believe, just like you were compelled to call me before. Vampires are another species, Mom, but they're not demons. If they are, why are you still alive? You've tried twice to get Bones killed, but today he saved you instead of letting you hang."

Her face was twisted with emotion. Being confronted with the reality that what she'd fervently believed for twenty-eight years might be wrong was a hard thing for anyone to swallow.

"I lied to you about your father," she said at last, so soft I could barely hear her. "That night, he didn't...but I didn't want to believe Icould have let him, not after I saw he wasn't human..."

My eyes closed for a moment at her admittance. I'd suspected that the night I was conceived wasn't rape, but here was confirmation at last. Then I met her gaze.

"You were eighteen. Max had you believing you were giving birth to a modern-day version of Rosemary's baby, just because he thought it was funny to tell you all vampires were demons. Doesn't make him any less of an asshole. Speaking of that..." I pulled the IV out of my arm, then put on the jacket Cooper had kindly left for me, since my own shirt had been cut open and was sopping with blood. When I was covered, I hopped out of the car. No more horizon-tilting dizziness. It was amazing the difference vampire blood and three bags of plasma could make. I didn't even have a mark on me anymore, whereas by rights, I should be in a body bag.

"What are you doing?" Bones asked, lightly holding my arm.

"Saying goodbye to my father," I replied, walking over to where the capsule sat like a huge silver egg in the driveway.

"Open it," I said to Cooper, who was standing guard until it could be loaded into our specialized van.

Cooper unsealed the outer locks. He didn't look away when the capsule's door slid open and Max was revealed, so I figured he'd swigged some vampire blood on the way here. That was the only thing that could inoculate a human from falling victim to nosferatu mind control, even if it did have other side effects.

My father was pronged in several places with silver. The hooked end of those spikes made it impossible for him to pull himself free without shredding his heart, not to mention several other choice pieces of him. Once the door closed, he couldn't even wiggle, because the inner structure prevented movement while the spikes continued to drain the blood and strength out of him. I knew all this, because I designed it.

Bones's gaze sizzled into Max. "Go on, mate, say one word, see what it gets you," he urged him in a voice smooth as silk-and frightening as the grave.

"Right now, Daddy dearest, 'I told you so' doesn't even begin to cover it," I said grimly to Max. "So I'll repeat what you said to me earlier: You should have killed me when you had the chance."

Then I turned to Bones. "Why are we taking him anywhere? I'd just as soon kill him now and not have to worry about him again."

"Youdon't need to fret about him," Bones said in that same icy, neck-ruffling tone. "Ever. But he doesn't get off that easily."

Bones reached out and touched Max's face. It was a light stroke, but Max flinched as if Bones had sliced his cheek open with a knife.

"I'll be seeing you soon, mate. I can't wait."

Annette came over. Her champagne-colored eyes considered Max from a face lightly lined with age. Annette had been thirty-six when Bones changed her. Times were different in the seventeen hundreds, so she looked around forty-five, but she made it look good. Unlike her normal impeccable appearance, her strawberry-blond hair had half-fallen out of her chignon, and her navy tailored suit looked a lot worse for wear.

"I say, it's been quite the day already," she remarked.

I stifled a snort. How like Annette to describe an afternoon of torture as calmly as "quite the day."

"Seal him back up," I said to Cooper, not wanting to look at my father anymore. Or ever again.

Cooper complied, and the capsule's door slid into place with a series of locks clicking back together. Even as it did, a frightening thought occurred to me.

"What happened to Calibos? There was another vampire here besides Max."

"His head's over there," Bones said, nodding by the trees, "but the rest of him's farther back."

I felt a cold satisfaction at that. "How'd you know to come here?"

"The airline lost Annette's luggage." Bones sounded almost bemused. "I rang you twice to tell you we'd be late, that we were stopping off to fetch her some new togs. You didn't answer. You always answer, so I drove straight here. About a mile away, I heard you scream. I pulled off, and Annette and I circled round the house on foot. We found the one bloke. Didn't know how many more might be inside, so we smashed through the windows at the same time."

A bark of laughter escaped me. My mother and I owed our lives to Annette'sluggage being lost? How ironic.

"Bet you wish you'd carried on," I couldn't help but quip to Annette.

A ghost of a smile flitted across her lips. "Not quite, darling. I just rang Ian," she continued, more to Bones than me now. "He was furious to hear what Max did. He's formally cutting Max off from his line."

That was the worst punishment a vampire could inflict on a member of their line. It meant no vampire would challenge whatever happened to Max in the future, and right now, my father's future looked pretty grim.

"Max said Ian didn't know about this," I added, even though I was no fan of Ian's. "He said he had new friends who wanted me dead as much as he did."

Bones gave a short nod. "We're going home, luv. To find out who helped Max orchestrate this, so we can kill every last one of them."

Our house was a large cabin at the top of a hill, with sweeping views of the Blue Ridge Mountains out of bulletproof-glass windows. It was remote enough that we'd never met our neighbors, so the helicopter pad and hangar on the side of our house hadn't been cause for any awkward conversations.

Annette went back with Don to help with Tate, as was the original plan, although Bones refused to go with her. He told my uncle his priorities had changed, not that Don had any trouble understanding why. Tate would be okay with two undead people taking care of him. It was my safety that seemed to be in a more tenuous position than Tate's, according to what Max had said.

When I walked into my house, my cat jumped out to twine around my legs. We hadn't figured on being back for a week, so I'd set up the automatic feeder and litter-box cleaner. Now my kitty would get some of my leftovers instead of just his dry food. No wonder he was glad to see me.

My mother had never been to Bones's and my house, but I was too anxious to wash the blood off me to give her a proper tour.