“And what if I don’t want to be gotten?”
Bones looked at Vlad, at me, and gave a frightening smile.
“Then as his guest, Tepesh will feel honor-bound to defend you. That means he and I will have to fight, and he’s quite brassed off already. I reckon he’ll try to burn me to ashes straightaway. Of course, that’s if I don’t rip his heart open with silver first. So if you refuse to come with me, one of us will be dead in the next few minutes. Or, you can come along and we’ll both live.”
Vlad let out a foul curse even as I sputtered, “Are you serious? You left me, remember? Now you want to fight to the death over me? What kind of game is this?”
“No game, luv,” Bones replied. “Just retrieving what’s mine. You might want to decide soon. Vlad looks as though he’s about to explode.”
I cast a quick glance at Vlad, who did look like he was moments away from detonation.
“You come into my home to blackmail my friend?” Vlad snarled. Those flames climbed higher on his arms. “I’ll—”
“I’m leaving.”
Vlad swung his gaze to me. I reached out, ignoring the licking flames on his arm. “Don’t. I couldn’t…”
I hoped only Vlad heard the rest of that sentence. I couldn’t stand it if something happened to him. I might be pissed at Bones. Hell, I might want to roast him over a few flames myself, but I couldn’t risk his life by stubbornness. From the energy rolling off Vlad, he wouldn’t strike to wound.
Not to mention, I wasn’t about to risk my friend’s life; the glint in Bones’s eyes said he wouldn’t strike to wound, either.
Vlad tugged his beard and gave Bones a chilling glance. “I won’t forget this.”
Bones smiled in open taunt. “I certainly hope you don’t.”
Things would get violent any second. I swept past them. Forget my things; it was time to go.
“Are you coming or not?” I asked Bones as I went outside.
“Of course,” Bones replied. I didn’t wait, but took the arm Mencheres politely offered me and stomped over to what I assumed was their car, Fabian trailing behind me.
“Love your home,” Bones said to Vlad in parting.
The answer he received made me glad I’d chosen to leave. If the two of them fought, there was no doubt that only one would walk away from it.
I waited a full half hour after we pulled away before I spoke. Bones had handed me a pair of headphones as soon as we got into the car. I’d blasted them loud enough to be dangerous. Damned if I knew where we were going with all that noise. But finally, I took them off, keeping my eyes closed.
“What the hell do you think you were doing? Vlad might have burned you into nothing more than a smear on his floor if I hadn’t decided to go with you.”
Bones let out a snort. “I didn’t doubt your actions for a moment. You’ve never been able to turn down playing the hero to rescue me.”
Bastard, I thought, and hoped that got through loud and clear. Whatever Bones’s motivation in coming tonight, it wasn’t for romantic reasons to win me back, that was clear. Was it just vampire territorialism? Even though he didn’t want me, Bones didn’t want someone else to have me? That was probably it. Well, I wasn’t anyone’s property, as he and Gregor would learn.
“You’ll regret this,” I settled on saying.
Another snort. “I don’t doubt that either, Kitten.”
I didn’t reply, just put my headphones back on.
TWENTY-FOUR
YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS.”
I eyed the abandoned building with the blown-out windows, crumpled far wall and dilapidated roof with more than a little dismay. To make matters worse, it was surrounded by a junkyard. A smelly junkyard. Even Fabian looked like he wanted to run.
Bones shrugged. “I don’t see the problem. It’s quite safe.”
You vindictive, manipulative—
“Care to see your room?” he interrupted my mental rundown. The look on his face said he was enjoying this.
“Let me guess—it’s that smashed-up car right over there,” I said, pointing to a flattened old Buick.
“Oh, you’re not staying out here,” Bones replied, walking over to the shell of the building. “Quasimodo!” he shouted.
There was a loud creaking noise, like what a machine would sound like if it could feel pain. Then from out of the ruined side of the building, two vampires appeared as if sprouted from the ground.
“We thought you’d be here an hour ago,” one of them commented. “Her food’s cold.”
I was about to assure this unknown person that the smell had killed my appetite anyway, when a brunette seemed to levitate from the crumbled concrete next to him.
“Catherine.”
I gave Bones a glare promising terrible revenge. He didn’t look at me, but his mouth twitched.
“Next time,” my mother said, forgoing a hello, “call if you’re going to be late.”
The building was a front. The section that appeared to have collapsed hid an elevator complete with fake concrete blocks on top of it. At least the structure below had its own air-conditioning system, so the stench from the junkyard was greatly lessened in the underground dwelling. My guess was that it was an old bomb shelter. Don used some of those back in the States for his base of operations. Waste not, want not and all that.
“Welcome to Trash Castle,” my mother said as she gave me and Fabian the tour. “They had to drag me in here against my will when I first saw it. I’m sure your scurvy husband chose it just for revenge.”
So was I, but I wasn’t going there. “Bones isn’t my husband, as I’m sure you’ve been told.”
She gave me a shrewd look. “You don’t believe that.”
Six minutes, ten seconds. That’s all it took to make me want to run out of here screaming.
Bones wasn’t here. He’d dropped me off with a comment that he had business elsewhere. It had been all I could do not to yell, “Why did you risk your life taking me from Vlad’s if you still can’t stand to be around me?” But that would let on about how much I cared. So I didn’t say a word. I watched Bones leave without once asking when, or if, he intended to come back. Would I rather rot under a huge trash heap than admit how much it hurt to see him again, let alone see him walk away? You bet.
After three days at Trash Castle, I decided it was the perfect place to be if you wanted to go crazy but had a limited amount of time to do it in. Being fifty feet under a dump locked in the equivalent of a cellar with a listless ghost and an outspoken mother, all while thinking about the man who’d left me, was bound to bring on insanity faster than any circumstance I’d experienced before. Soon the idea of banging my head against a wall seemed like a fun way to spend ten minutes, and I fantasized about near-death experiences like they were a chocolaty dessert. Puberty had been an aromatherapy session compared to this.
Despite the smell, I took to going topside and clearing out sections of the junkyard just to do something. Fabian had his own way of dealing with the situation. He watched endless TV. My mother read or did crossword puzzles, in between comments about how if I would have listened to her, I wouldn’t be here today. Was it any wonder I preferred spending my time around stinky garbage?
I’d been sweeping up the far section of the dump when I heard the thrum of the automobile. Even though I knew it couldn’t be a lost tourist, since it was clear that we were on the ass-end of nowhere, I hadn’t waited to see if it was friend or foe before climbing to the top of the nearest garbage heap. Death? Didn’t scare me. It would be a vacation from Smell Central.
“Who came up with the password Quasimodo?” Spade muttered as he got out of his car.
“Hello, Spade,” I called out, shaking the debris off the rake I’d made from thin strips of metal and a truck axle.
Spade stared up at me, revulsion and disbelief competing on his handsome face.
“Lucifer’s hairy ball sack. You’ve become a Morlock.”
Seeing Spade looking so suave in his w
hite shirt with his shiny black shoes and creased pants reminded me that I was covered head to toe in dirt and probably smelled like a bad case of flatulence.
“I’ve been buried underneath a junkyard for days, what did you expect?”
Spade slammed the door to his car. Just looking at it, I fought an impulse to jump in and drive until I passed out at the wheel.
“I can’t sit back and watch you and Crispin drown in your own stubbornness any longer. Good Christ, Cat, just die already and be done with it.”
I blinked. “Fuck you too, pal.”
“Move back to your vehicle, you’re not expected,” Techno, one of the vampires stationed there, said. He’d come around from the side of the building and had an Uzi that was loaded with silver bullets pointed at Spade.
“I’m on the list, you imbecile,” Spade barked. “Now turn around before I break that toy off in your arse.”
Spade’s back was to me. I grabbed a nearby tire and chucked it at him, smiling to see tread marks ruin the perfection of his white shirt. “Don’t talk to him that way, he’s doing his job.”
Spade recovered from the tire beaning him in the back and was in front of me with nosferatu swiftness.
“For God’s sake, Cat, take the leap, what are you waiting for?”
For a second, I wondered if I’d really lost it. It sounded like Spade was trying to taunt me into killing myself.
“Did I do something to piss you off?”
Spade spun around, balling his fists. Techno looked at me in confusion, as if questioning whether I was in danger.
“Want me to shoot him?” he inquired.
“Do you want to incite things? You’re barely human now; why do you persist in clinging to your last useless, mortal shred?”
“Don’t shoot,” I said to Techno, who’d raised the Uzi with purpose. “In fact, go away.”
“He’s not—” Techno began to sputter.
“Not what?” Spade asked. “Not supposed to tell her about it, I’ll wager? That’s why she’s looking at me like I’m barmy, right? Because she doesn’t have a clue what I’m talking about.”
My jaw clenched. Techno’s face confirmed it all. Son of a bitch.
“Is it the ghouls again?” I asked, inwardly cursing that I’d been so wrapped up in my own problems, I hadn’t been suspicious about the lack of word on that front.
Spade gave Techno one last threatening look before folding his arms.
“Yes, it’s the ghouls. Their rhetoric is growing bolder. In certain areas, Masterless vampires have begun to disappear. It could be they’re stupid and got shriveled by one of our own kind, but there’s reason to believe it might be something more.”
I stared at him. Spade’s tiger-colored gaze was uncompromising. Gregor is behind this, I realized. The more paranoia about me becoming a vampire/ghoul hybrid, the more support he garnered for his cause to get me back so he could control me.
“Why wasn’t I told?”
Spade rolled his eyes. “Can’t you guess? Crispin doesn’t want this to influence your decision whether to turn into a vampire.”
“He doesn’t care about me,” I muttered before I could stop myself.
“You’re an idiot.”
I could feel my eyes turning angry green. “Excuse me?”
“Idiot,” Spade repeated, drawing the word out for emphasis. “Why do you think he fetched you from Vlad’s? Crispin knew if it came to a choice between you or Vlad’s people, you’d lose. Tepesh might be fond of you, but he’s beastly protective of his people.”
I had to glance away for a moment. Then I shook my head. “If Bones cared about me, fucking his way up and down New Orleans was a funny way to show it.”
Spade regarded me with cynicism. “If you thought Crispin was yours, and you didn’t care for his actions, why weren’t you waiting for him after New Orleans instead of jetting off with Tepesh?”
My jaw dropped. “Do you hear yourself?”
“You’re not thinking like a vampire,” Spade muttered. “The sooner you’re done with your human perceptions, the better. Look, can we discuss your reasoning inadequacies later? If I have to smell this rancid air a moment longer, I’ll dry heave.”
“Inadequacies? Screw you!”
Spade gave me an arch smile. “You should be less concerned with what I’m saying and more focused on what you’ll say to Crispin when you try to convince him to change you into a vampire.”
That made my heart skip a beat. Spade heard it and snorted. “Got your attention now, don’t I? Crispin’s the one who has to do it. I certainly wouldn’t dare. He’d kill anyone who changed you, make no mistake.”
“How do you know I’ve decided to cross over, anyway?”
The sarcasm and flippancy were wiped from Spade, and he gave me the most serious look he’d bestowed on me.
“Come now, Reaper. We both know you’ve been hanging on to your humanity too long. You just needed a push, didn’t you?”
So many different things ran through my mind. I remembered all the years of my childhood, hiding my growing inhuman abilities so I didn’t upset my mother. Later in school, how out of place I’d felt pretending to be “normal” when nothing about me was normal. And later still, in my teens and early twenties hunting vampires, hadn’t my humanity been more of a disguise than how I felt inside? Then there was now, how frustrated I was that I was too weak to take Gregor on myself. With no element of surprise about my dual nature, I’d always be too weak to battle the really old, mega-Master vampires—as long as I stayed part human, that was.
But more than that, even if Bones and I were through, the situation with Gregor magically disappeared, and there were no ghoul rumblings, could I ever go back to living among humans, pretending to be just like them?
No. I couldn’t pretend anymore that all the things inside me weren’t there. Even if I walked away from the undead world for good, I’d still be more vampire than human. And if I wasn’t going to walk away or try to pretend to be human again, then why was I still hanging on to my heartbeat? God, was Bones right? Had it really been just my deep-seated prejudice that held me back from taking this step before? There were a lot of reasons to change over. Did I have even one to stay the way I was?
“I’ll ask Bones to do it,” I heard myself say. “But he’ll probably say no.”
Spade didn’t have headphones to keep me from hearing where we were going. No, instead he whacked me a good one to make sure I stayed asleep for the majority of the trip. Spade was a Master vampire, so when I came to, damn, my head hurt.
“You should shower straightaway before you see him,” was Spade’s comment once I was awake. “You still smell dreadful. Crispin might refuse to sire you just because he won’t be able to stand getting close enough.”
I mentally cursed Spade up one side and down the other. Something cool brushed over my hand. Without opening my eyes, I knew it was Fabian, giving me his version of a sympathetic pat. He’d tagged along on this trip. Guess even a ghost couldn’t stand life at Trash Castle. At least Fabian never commented on my smell, one of the perks of not having a real nose.
“Ah, there it is,” Spade said. “No peeking; can’t have Gregor seeing a mailbox number in your sleep.”
I was so sick of being blinded wherever I went. If Bones refused to sire me, I knew where I was going next—straight to Vlad’s. I’d already called him and asked if he’d be willing to do the honors. His response had been an instant yes. I didn’t know what about me had inspired Vlad’s friendship, but I was grateful for it.
After another minute of driving, the car came to a stop. “Stay here,” Spade said. “I’ll announce us, then come get you.”
“You mean you’ll find out if he’s even going to let me step foot out of this car,” I replied with my eyes still closed.
“No worries about that. You’re getting out to wash even if I have to wrestle Crispin to the ground long enough for you to do it.”
“Thanks,” I said. Spade just shut the
door, laughing. As Bones’s best friend, all his loyalty was to him, so Spade didn’t care about how hard this was for me, even without all his Smelly Cat comments.
Outside the car, I heard many voices, presumably from those in the house. I strained to pick up one in particular. It was hard to filter over the din, however. There were a lot of people here, wherever here was.
“…Crispin…” Spade’s voice, raised for a second.
“…brings you…?” Bones, the rest of it snatched away.
“…outside…” Spade was saying. “…see you…”
Why can’t everyone shut up for a minute so I can hear? I thought.
“…by all means…” From Bones.
That settled it. I sighed. “Looks like we’re going in after all, Fabian.”
“Good,” he said at once, then paused. “If that’s what you were hoping for, of course.”
In fact, a part of me had hoped Bones would refuse to even let me get out of the car. No such luck for my emotional well-being, though.
Moments later Spade opened my door. “Straight into the showers with you, he’ll see you afterward. I told him it would be in his best interests to wait.”
“Another comment about how I smell, and I’ll stab you through the heart,” I said, meaning it.
He clucked his tongue. “Vicious girl. Come along, take my arm—not so hard!”
I’d squeezed for all I was worth. Hearing Spade’s yelp made me smile. “You’ll have to get my clothes out of the trunk so I have something else to wear afterward, or showering will be a waste.”
“We’re inside,” Spade commented. “You can open your eyes.”
I did. Fabian floated in front of us as we walked along a very lovely foyer. Not a hint of crushed cars or garbage in sight. So this was where Bones was staying, while I’d been stuck under a trash mountain? You’re so wrong, Spade, I thought. Bones could obviously care less about me.
We walked farther down the hallway. An unknown vampire gave the three of us a curious look as he passed by.