Halfway to the Grave

by Jeaniene Frost

  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.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  TO GIVE CREDIT WHERE IT WAS DUE, DON WAS as good as his word in setting up my transportation. Within an hour, I was dressed and waiting in my mother’s room, sans handcuffs. I’d finally showered to wash off all of the blood, and while in there, I allowed myself to cry, since it mixed with the water and felt camouflaged. Yet looking down at my mother now, my eyes were dry as sand.

  “Well?”

  I’d just finished speaking to her about the offer and my subsequent acceptance of it. Some of the repugnance had left her face while I talked and at last she took my hand.

  “You’re doing the right thing. The only thing to save yourself from a future of evil.”

  Bitterness wafted from me and a small, selfish part of me hated her. If not for her, I could just disappear with Bones and live the rest of my life with the man I loved. Yet it was no more her fault for her unyielding hatred of vampires than it was my fault for being born. In this case, we were even.

  “I don’t think it’s saving me from a future of evil, but I’m doing it anyway.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Catherine. Of course it is. How long could you have continued your relationship with that creature before he turned you into a vampire? If he cared for you as you claim he did, then he wouldn’t want to sit back and watch you age over time, would he? Moving closer to death each year, as all humans do. Why, when he could change you and extend your youth indefinitely? That’s what he’ll do to you if you stay with him, and if you weren’t being blind, you’d already know it.”

  Much as I hated to admit it, she had brought up a very obvious point I’d let myself ignore. What would happen to our relationship in ten years? Twenty? More? God, she was right. Bones wouldn’t just sit back and watch me die of old age. He’d want me to change over, and I would never
do it. Maybe we’d been doomed from the start, and my mother’s prejudice and Don’s offer were just proof of that. You fight the battles you can win, Bones had repeatedly said. Well, I couldn’t win this battle, but I could keep him safe. I could keep my mother safe, and then use what was in me to keep other people safe. Put in perspective, a broken heart wasn’t such a terrible price to pay. I might be looking at a future without him, but it was still a future. Considering all the girls Hennessey had taken who didn’t have that anymore, it would be an insult for me to squander my life when theirs had been robbed from them.

  The door opened and Tate Bradley poked his head in. His arm was in a sling and there was a bandage near his temple.

  “Time to go.”

  Nodding shortly, I grasped my mother’s wheelchair and followed him down the hospital corridor. The hallway had been cleared and every patient door closed. Behind me were eight heavily armed men. It seemed Don was afraid I’d get cold feet.

  There were about two hours left of daylight. We would be driven a short distance away to a helicopter pad and then flown via chopper to where a military plane waited. I piled into the backseat with my mother. Tate took the front passenger seat, being unable to drive with his broken arm. A man who introduced himself as Pete took the wheel. My other guards took flanking positions in three vehicles, one behind us, two on each side. Ironically, it was the same formation the vampires had used last night. We pulled away and I closed my eyes, thinking that I’d have to find a way to tell Bones goodbye. Maybe I’d leave a message with Tara. She’d know how to contact him. I couldn’t just leave with no word to him at all.

  Tate broke the silence after several minutes. “Pete here will be one of the members of the unit, Cather—excuse me, Cat,” he corrected himself.

  I didn’t open my eyes. “Not unless I say so, or were you asleep during that part? I pick the team. Pete’s in only if he passes my test, and that goes for you, too.”