Halfway to the Grave

by Jeaniene Frost

  “Tell me again why we aren’t doing your wrist?” That seemed somehow less…icky.

  Bones tightened his arms around me.

  “Because then I couldn’t hold you. Quit stalling. You know what to do.”

  I pressed my mouth to his neck where his jugular would be. Since his heart didn’t beat, there wouldn’t be a rush of arterial spray. No, this would take suction. You know what they say, I thought darkly as I bit down hard enough for my square teeth to pierce his skin. Life sucks and then you die.

  The first warm splash made my stomach recoil, but I forced myself to swallow. A normal person can only drink a pint of blood before the body naturally regurgitated it. My normality had never been an issue before and it wasn’t now. I bit him again when the wound started to close, and Bones held the back of my head and pressed me closer.

  “Harder.” The word was clipped, and he let out a small gasp. Pain or pleasure, I wasn’t sure, and didn’t want to ask.

  “More.”

  This when I attempted to pull away. The harsh copper taste of his blood curled in my mouth. In this volume, it was miles away from the drops I’d taken over the last few months. I drank deeper, ignoring the urge to spit it out.

  Something started to happen inside me. Strength grew, unfurling its tentacles and branching out to slither through me. Everything seemed at once sharper. His skin under me had a scent far stronger than I’d ever noticed. The room was perfumed with the earlier sweat from my body, and the bodies of those before us. Background noise of the people in the units around us increased in volume, as did the sounds from outside. My vision crystallized into a clarity it had never experienced. The darkness lightened shade by shade.

  The feel of his skin splitting beneath my teeth became almost sensual. I bit him harder, suddenly enjoying the spill of his blood into my mouth. I yanked his head back, biting him again, and it felt so good. Like something I’d waited my whole life to do. I started to feel warm. My legs curled around his waist as I pressed against him, yanking his head back farther still, and all at once his blood tasted…delicious.

  “Enough.”

  Bones wrenched my mouth away and I fought him, because I didn’t want to stop. Couldn’t stop. With a snarl, I tried to snap my teeth back onto his throat, but he twisted my arms behind me and threw himself on top of me. The weight of his body and his strength pinned me down.

  “Just relax. Breathe. Ride it out, Kitten, it will pass.”

  At first I struggled, then gradually the craze that gripped me eased until I no longer looked at Bones and wanted to drink him dry. The word bloodlust had a whole new meaning for me now.

  “How do you stand it?” My breath came in shallow pants and he released his iron grip on my arms. He didn’t move off me yet, however.

  “You don’t, not for the first few days. You kill anything near you to fill the need when it hits. After that, you learn to control it. What you had was only a taste. By next week, the effects will be out of your system. You’ll be back to yourself.”

  His complete confidence that I would see next week was unflappable. Who was I to argue?

  “I can smell you.” Wonder etched my voice. “I smell myself on your skin. I smell everything. My God, there are so many scents in this room….”

  Out of all the other senses, which were merely heightened, this one was almost completely new. Bones had often commented that my nose was for decoration only, since it was one of the few parts of me that was almost human. Never before had I any idea what an incredible asset a sense of smell was. I could be blind and deaf and know exactly what was around me by odor alone.

  “I didn’t realize how different things were for you. How can you ever walk by a public bathroom and not pass out?” Funny what the mind thinks of at the most absurd moments.

  Bones smiled and kissed me lightly. “Willpower, pet.”

  “Is this what it feels like to be a real vampire?” That was the question. It felt…good. Superior. That scared the hell out of me.

  “You’ve just had about two pints of aged nosferatu. Fermented for two hundred and forty years. You’re like a hitchhiker on my power, so in a way, yes, it is. Are you telling me you like it?”

  Whoa. That was a thought I couldn’t even allow myself to dwell on, because I liked it so goddamn much, I feared I would get addicted to it.

  He read the emotions in my eyes and knew he wouldn’t get a response. Instead, he kissed me again with more substance, and I groaned in surprise. Even the taste of him was keener.

  When he ended the kiss, he gave me an unblinking stare.

  “When it is time, no matter what we find, I want you to unleash everything you have in you. Hold nothing back. You’ve got strength and I want you to use all of it. Give in to the rage and let it feed you. Kill anything, vampire or human, that stands in your way from retrieving your mum. Remember, if they’re there and they’re not in chains, then they’re Hennessey’s and they’re your enemy.”

  “I’m ready.” Mentally I threw my conscience down a dark, deep well I would fish out later. Assuming there was a later.

  Bones sprang off the bed with the grace and speed only the undead could manifest. Except for me now. With his blood coursing in my veins, I almost matched him in fluidity. He cracked his knuckles and rolled his head around his shoulders, and the emerald light pinpointing in his dark brown eyes was echoed by mine.

  “Then let’s go kill them all.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  MY STAKES AND KNIVES WERE IN MY BOOTS and lined along my thighs. Inside my belt were jammed other deadly goodies. We drove to meet Hennessey’s men at the same place where we’d tried to kill him and where he’d left Francesca. That’s what the other part of the little cryptic note meant. From there they would be sure we weren’t being followed by any backup and proceed to where they held my mother. Bones hadn’t been concerned about the obvious packing of weapons on me. Since Hennessey and his men had no idea I could use them, they would probably only be amused at my artillery of silver. Bones carried nothing on him, knowing it would only be taken away. His plan was terrifying in its simplicity—let them take him inside whatever building held my mother, and when they double-crossed us and didn’t release her, I was to come in blazing.

  “But what if they stake you on sight?” My gut twisted at the thought. “God, Bones, you can’t risk it.”

  He threw me a jaded look. “Not Hennessey. He’ll want to drag it out for weeks. I told you, he doesn’t do quick mercy kills. Especially on a chap who’s already caused him a world of trouble. No, he’ll want to hear me beg. There will be time.”

  The casual way he described his own potential torture and death stunned me, since I had rather strong feelings about those issues myself. Then again, he was just being practical. Either our plan would work or not, and if it didn’t, there was no Plan B.

  “Bones.” I gripped his hand and my eyes screamed everything there wasn’t time to say. He squeezed back and gave me a jaunty smile.

  “Hold that thought, Kitten. I intend to collect on it.”

  We were almost there. He leaned in to whisper to me before we got too close. “Let them smell your fear, it will lull them. Don’t be strong until you have to be.”

  Well, that was certainly one thing I could comply with. Even I could scent it coming from me with my new nose. It smelled sickly sweet, like rotten fruit. Give in to the fear for effect? One stink platter, coming right up.

  Four large SUVs waited in the dark along the shoulder of the road, their lights off. Our car came to a halt, and instantly we were surrounded by six vampires. They seemed to materialize from nowhere, but with a sense of relief I realized their movements looked perceptibly slower to me. Viva la Bones blood, I thought wryly. Amen.

  “So, you came after all.”

  One of them stood at the window and Bones lowered the glass and glanced at him.

  “Hallo, Vincent. Fancy seeing you here.”

  There was a bored tone to his voice that made
me blink. I could never fake that kind of cool.

  Vincent smiled. “Call me Switch.”

  Son of a bitch! This was Hennessey’s enforcer? The one who did all the dirty work Hennessey didn’t like to bother with? Switch looked even younger than me, with boyish features and chestnut-colored hair. My God, he even had freckles! Dress him in a Boy Scout uniform and he wouldn’t look out of place.

  “You surprise me, bringing her with you,” Switch continued.

  “She insisted on coming. Wanted to see her mum, couldn’t sway her from it.” Again the blandness in his voice unnerved me.

  Switch looked me over, and obligingly I let anxiety leak from my pores. His smiled widened, revealing fangs protruding from behind his lips.

  “Nice family you have, Catherine. Sorry about your grandparents. I know it’s rude to eat and run, but I was short on time.”

  With extraordinary difficulty I bit back my rage. Couldn’t let them see my eyes glow and give away the surprise. Thank God I’d gotten to be an expert at controlling my gaze. That son of a bitch thought he was going to get away with taunting me about killing my grandparents? Right then and there I made up my mind that if I died, I was taking him with me.

  “Where’s my mother?” There was no nonchalant banter for me, only pure hatred. That much he would have expected.

  “We have her.” Another one approached Switch and informed him they hadn’t observed anyone following us, and Switch turned back to Bones.

  “Well, let’s be on our way. I trust you won’t lag behind?”

  “Don’t fret over me,” Bones replied evenly.

  Switch grunted and sauntered off to his vehicle.

  “I’m afraid,” I said as we pulled away, speaking the words we’d rehearsed earlier. Even five car lengths away they could hear us.

  “Just stay in the car and don’t come out. When your mum gets in, you leave straightaway, remember?”

  “Yes. I’ll do it.” When hell snowed. My hands itched to tear them apart. On cue I began to cry, making little whimpering sounds while mentally counting down the moments. Soon, very soon, they would find out what one of their kind had sired. Paybacks were a bitch, and that also happened to be my specialty.

  The drive lasted forty minutes until we pulled up to a ramshackle house ten miles off the interstate. It was nice and secluded, with a long driveway. The perfect place for a massacre. Bones came to a stop and put the car in park, the engine still running. His eyes met mine for only an instant before his door was yanked open.

  “End of the road. Hennessey says we’ll send her out when you come in.” Switch was at the door again, that same malicious smile wreathing his face.

  Bones raised a dark brow at him.

  “Don’t think so, mate. Bring her to the door so I can see her and then I’ll come. If not, you and I dance right now.”

  The mildness left his tone and his eyes bled to green. Even though the car was blocked from behind by the other vehicles and we were surrounded, Switch still looked uneasy.

  “You can hear her heartbeat in there. She’s alive,” he defensively countered.

  Bones gave a short humorless laugh.

  “I hear seven heartbeats in there, and who’s to say any of them are hers? What’s to hide? Is this a bargain or not?”

  Switch glared at him, then, with a jerk of his head, one of the other vamps scurried inside.

  “Look now.”

  I gasped. In the window lit by low lighting, my mother’s face was shoved into view. A hand was wrapped around her throat, holding her against the chest of her captor. Blood seeped from her head and her blouse was red from where more of it had stained.

  “There. Your proof. Satisfied?”

  Bones nodded once and stepped out of the car. Immediately he was encircled by the six vampires. I slid across into the driver’s seat and locked the door.

  Switch smirked at me through the glass.

  “Wait there. We’ll bring her out and then you can leave.”

  By his complete lack of concern over me, either my mother hadn’t disclosed what I was or, as predicted, they didn’t believe her. Thank God for fools.

  The front door closed behind Bones and I was left alone in the car, blocked on three sides by the SUVs. My mother was wrenched away from the window and out of sight, to my relief.

  A voice boomed out from the house, sounding sinister and cheerful. I recognized it at once as Hennessey’s.

  “Well, look who’s come to join the party! Be careful what you wish for, Bones. You’ve wanted to find out who was involved with me for years, so take a good look around. Except for one, here we all are.”

  There they all were. The people who’d wrecked hundreds of lives, not just mine. I thought of all the families these scum had torn apart, and it gave me strength. With hands rock-steady, I picked up the cell phone and dialed the number on the card Detective Mansfield had given me, seemingly another lifetime ago. A woman’s voice answered.

  “Franklin County Sheriff ’s Department, is this an emergency?”

  “Yes,” I breathed. “This is Catherine Crawfield. I’m off of Interstate 71 and 323, just a few miles from Bethel Road in a house at the end of a dead-end street. Earlier I speared Detectives Mansfield and Black with silver knives through the wrists. Come and get me.”

  I hung up as she started to sputter and put the car back in gear. The front door flew open and Switch stalked out, moving with inhuman speed. They’d heard me on the phone, as I knew they would, and were coming to silence me. Somehow in all their plotting they never once thought Bones would have me call the police. Always pride before a fall.

  With a savage grin at Switch, I hit the gas. The SUVs had blocked me in from every side—except the front. Ready or not, boys, here I come!

  The car shot forward, and Switch avoided being run over only by leaping onto the hood. Immediately he punched through the windshield and tried to grab me, but my hand was ready with a blade. I plunged it into his neck and twisted. It tore his throat open as I ducked down under the steering wheel while the car crashed into the house.

  There was a spectacular explosion of wood and brick as the vehicle smashed through the front window. The screech of metal and shattering glass was deafening. Without hesitation I leapt through the shattered windshield and rolled off the hood, flinging silver knives at anything that moved toward me. Bones knew to duck, and shouts of pain accompanied the hiss of the steaming engine, which coughed and wheezed in its death throes.

  Hennessey was in the remains of the front room along with approximately twenty-five other vampires. Mother of God, there were more of them than we’d anticipated. My mother was shoved into a corner, hands and feet tied together. Her wide, disbelieving eyes were fixed on me. The red haze of fury I’d carefully controlled since first seeing my grandparents’ lifeless forms erupted inside me and I let it consume me. A snarl of vengeance tore from my throat and my eyes blazed with emerald fire.

  Bones took advantage of the distraction. Someone had been in the process of chaining him when I’d made a garage out of the house. The dangling irons from his wrists whipped out and wrapped around the neck of the nearest vampire. With a merciless jerk of the links the vampire’s head snapped off and Bones whirled in a blur of speed to the next one.

  Three vampires jumped me. Their teeth were murderously extended, but so were my knives. I darted away from their fangs while landing punishing blows with my legs, tripping one of them. At once I was on him, gouging his heart and shredding it in one slash before rolling over and repeating the process with the next two.

  A black-haired vampire had the presence of mind to go for my mother. Launching myself airborne, I practically flew across the room to land on his back. Silver swished and buried into his heart just as his hands almost touched her. One cruel twirl of the knife finished him, and then I was knocked off my feet by a punishing blow and pitched forward. Instead of fighting it, I let my body curl under, and the attacker arced over my head instead of stumbling me
. None of them were prepared for my speed. He was skewered to the wall behind him before he had time to pounce again, staring stupidly at the silver handle jutting from his chest.

  With one of my throwing knives I slit the rope that bound my mother.

  “Get outside now, go!”

  I shoved her out of the way of another series of assaults and sprang straight up into the air to come down behind two charging vampires. Unleashing my expanded strength, I slammed their heads together hard enough to splinter apart their skulls, and then stabbed both of them through the back with a blade in each fist. The force of my blows sent my hands all the way through them. With a cruel growl, I turned and used their shriveling bodies as shields. Fangs that were meant for my neck tore into dead flesh instead. I smashed my bloody knife into the next fiend until my forearm was past the rib cage of the vampire still dangling from it. Before the next bunch of nosferatu descended, I threw the body on my other arm at them, slowing them enough to wrench free of the corpse and hurl more silver blades with hellish accuracy. One stuck straight into the eye of an advancing vampire, and terrible shrieks came from his mouth before another landed between his fangs.

  It seemed I was jerking silver out of bodies just to throw more again in a morbid juggling act. Failing that, even though it was more dangerous, full-body combat was in order. I experienced the furious ecstasy of twisting someone’s head around so roughly it snapped off. Then I threw it like a bowling ball across the room to beam the back of a vamp closing in on Bones. There was still iron clamped around one wrist and he swung it so rapidly it was only a blur of gray.

  A man tried to climb past the wreckage of the car to circle me, and without pause I threw a knife into his skull. Something about the sudden scream and then silence let me know I’d just killed a human. Vampires didn’t go down that easy. Curiously I felt not the slightest twinge of guilt. If they were after me then they were evil, heartbeat or no heartbeat.

  Sirens blared in the distance, coming closer. Obviously Mansfield had gotten the message. Through the crumbling wall of the home’s exterior I saw the flash of red and blue lights, many of them. A small army was descending. The vampires left standing saw them also and began to scatter. This was what we’d hoped for. They were so much more convenient to kill when they faced away from us. More silver found flesh when they sprang through the remnants of the house.