Her prim tone made me squeeze my glass so hard to avoid slamming it over her head that it shattered. Gin spilled on the front of me, and my palm started to bleed.
“Motherfucker!” I shouted.
Every head turned. Bones smothered a laugh by faking a sudden cough.
“Are you okay?” Randy looked worriedly at me and wrapped his napkin around my hand. He glanced at Bones, who gave him an innocent shrug.
“I’m all right, Randy,” I yelped, mortified.
Denise poked her head around her new husband. “Do you want us to switch the seats?” she asked quietly.
They thought I was rattled because Bones was a vampire. That was the least of my concerns. His nearness was shredding my control, and the reception had barely started.
“Cristine!” Noah came to the table and took the napkin off my hand. “Is it bad?”
“I’m fine,” I snapped harshly. His hurt face made me cringe with guilt. “Just embarrassed,” I covered. “I’ll be okay. Go back to your seat. Let’s not make it worse.”
Noah looked mollified and he went back to his table. I smiled to mask my treacherous thoughts. “Really,” I added for Denise’s benefit.
I gathered the shards of glass and began to pile them into the bloody napkin. “I’m going to the ladies’ room to wash this off and throw away the glass.”
“I’ll go with you,” Denise offered.
“No!” She looked startled by my abrupt reply. I gave a glance to my right at Bones and then back to her again. Her eyes widened, and she got the picture. Part of it, anyway.
“Cris,” she addressed him. “Would you mind going with Cristine and seeing if they have any bandages? Randy says…” She paused and then continued wickedly, “Randy says you have a great deal of experience with bleeding wounds.”
“Ooh, are you a doctor?” Felicity cooed.
Bones stood and gave Denise an appreciative grin at her choice of words.
“Back in London I was many things,” he answered Felicity evasively.
I made a stop at the bar first. The bartender gave a wide-eyed look at my red-stained napkin.
“Gin. No glass, just the bottle,” I said bluntly.
“Um, miss, maybe you should—”
“Give the lady the bottle, mate,” Bones interjected, his eyes flashing green.
Without delay an unopened gin was thrust in my still-bleeding hand. I twisted the top off, threw away the glass and my bloody napkin, and took a long swallow. Then I led Bones out to the far corner of the parking lot, where there were the fewest cars. He waited patiently while I drank again. I was smearing blood all over the outside of the bottle, but I didn’t care.
“Better?” he asked when I came up for air. His lips twitched with amusement.
“Not hardly,” I countered. “Look, I don’t know how long my mother will keep quiet, but in case you didn’t notice, she hates you. She’ll call in the troops and try to have you skewered over an open flame with a silver stick. You have to leave.”
“No.”
“Dammit, Bones!” My temper exploded. Why did he have to be so gorgeous, why did he have to stand so close, and why did I still love him so much? “Are you trying to get killed? One call to my boss, that’s all it’ll take, and believe me, my mother’s probably caressing her cell phone and fantasizing about it now.”
Bones rolled his eyes.
“Sods like your boss have chased me most of my undead life, yet I’m still here while they’re not. Neither your mum nor your boss scares me, Kitten. Unless you’d like to choose now for us to have our long-overdue talk, I suggest we return to the festivities. But you can forget about me leaving—or you, either, for that matter. I found you days ago. There’s a reason you didn’t know about that until now. You try to vanish into the smoke again and it’ll be a short flight, I assure you. Plus, then we’ll be having our chat under much different conditions. Like with you chained up somewhere so you can’t try to sneak off again. You pick your circumstances, luv, but I have damn well waited long enough to have this out with you.”
Uh oh. I already knew Bones never bluffed, but even if I hadn’t, the look in his eyes said he meant every word.
“It was you I felt outside my house the other night, wasn’t it?” I asked accusingly. Had to be. That was the same night Bones had met Randy at the bar.
A small smile touched his mouth. The breeze ruffled his darker curls, and in his tux with the moonlight caressing the chiseled planes of his face, he looked positively devastating.
“So you felt me. I wondered if you would.”
I couldn’t keep staring at him. I might be immune to vampire powers, but Bones had always been my kryptonite.
“We have to get back to the reception,” was all I said, looking away.
He held out his hand. “Mind if I have a drop from your bottle first?”
I handed over the gin, careful not to let my fingers graze his. Instead of drinking from it, however, Bones grasped the bottle and stared into my eyes as he licked my blood off the slick glass surface. His tongue curved around every contour of the bottle, and heat flared through me as I watched, mesmerized. When there was not a red drop left on it, he passed it back into my suddenly shaking hand.
Think about work! my brain screamed. Think about anything but what that tongue felt like on your skin!
I went to step by him, but he grabbed my hand. I yanked, but it was like pulling against welded steel.
“Quit that,” Bones said mildly, pulling out a knife. My eyes widened, but he just nicked the side of the same hand gripping mine, and then pressed his blood to my cut. It tingled as it healed on contact.
I drew back my hand. This time, he let me, but the swirling green in his gaze said he’d been just as affected by touching me as I had by feeling his skin on mine.
Yeah, I had to leave. Right. Now.
I turned and walked away quickly, somehow managing not to look back.
The reception was a living hell. Felicity started up a steady stream of suggestive chatter as soon as Bones returned, and he did nothing to discourage it. Grimly I stayed, drinking with the single-mindedness of the condemned as I watched them.
Noah, tonight of all nights, got paged by the animal hospital. He apologized profusely to Denise before he left, but I hardly noticed he was gone.
Denise and Randy were almost the last to leave. They would depart for their honeymoon two days from now, and were going back to her house tonight. I kissed them and wished them every happiness while I was fixated on the fact that it had been five minutes since I’d seen Felicity and Bones. They were still here, to my knowledge.
Unable to help myself, I searched for them, following the trail of invisible energy that wafted off him. When I found them, I stopped short.
They were in the corner of the patio off the main reception room. It was pitch dark, but I saw everything all too easily. Felicity’s back was to me and her arms were around him. The moonlight glowed off his skin, highlighting his face when he leaned down and kissed her.
I have been stabbed, shot, burned, bitten, beaten unconscious too many times to count, and even staked. None of those held a candle to the pain I felt at seeing his mouth on hers. A soft sound escaped me, barely a disturbance of the air, but it was a sound of pure agony.
At that instant, Bones lifted his eyes to stare directly at me. His gaze seemed to be shouting, Don’t like it? What are you going to do about it?
I fled as fast as I could, running to my car and practically slamming it into gear. The territorialism all vampires had was seething inside me. I had to leave or I was going to kill Felicity, and technically she hadn’t done anything wrong. No, I was the one with the problem. She was just kissing the man I loved—and had given away.
THIRTEEN
I WAS IN SUCH TURMOIL THAT I HAD TO DO something. Tomorrow night we were supposed to investigate the GiGi Club, a place where two girls had disappeared. Their bodies hadn’t been found, but something about the way the police
dismissed any connection to the club smacked of vampire influence. Fortunately it was local. Only an hour away. Still in my bridesmaid gown, I strapped knives to my legs and drove straight there. Fuck backup. Tate and the boys could have tomorrow night off. I was going vampire hunting and I was doing it alone.
Fifty minutes later I got out of the car, still stomping pissed, and was halfway across the parking lot when a scream whipped my head around. There was a young man, blood on his neck, waving his arms and yelling for help near the entrance to the club. No one looked up. Everyone went right by him. It was only when someone went right through him that I understood.
“Hey buddy!” I yelled, striding forward. “Over here!”
Several heads turned. The bouncer gave me a very strange glance, no doubt wondering exactly how much booze I’d already consumed. The bloody guy got an immense look of relief on his face and whizzed toward me in a hazy streak.
“Thank God! No one’s listening to me, and my girlfriend is dying! I don’t know why everyone’s ignoring me…”
Damn. The only other sentient ghost I’d met had been very aware that he was dead. Most ghosts were just fragments of an image, replaying themselves over and over in a mindless repetition of some long-past event. Not scared and confused and having no idea why suddenly no one paid attention to them.
“Where is she?”
Maybe this was useless. His girlfriend could have died years ago, but he was dressed in contemporary clothes, complete with an eyebrow ring and a pierced tongue. Imagine taking that with you to eternity.
“In here!” He sped right through the door while I settled for pushing my way past the people in line.
“Looking for my boyfriend,” I said by way of explanation to several hostile glances. “I know he’s in here with that tramp I work with.”
That got the women on my side. They hustled me forward with a few “Go get him, honeys!” The bouncer didn’t even card me when I stepped through the doors. Guess I looked over twenty-one.
The dead guy led me to a door on the far side of the club by the bathrooms. It was locked, but I gave it a good yank and it broke open. It revealed a narrow unlit hall that I followed to another locked door. Ah, a private room complete with soundproofing. The pumping noise from the music was almost inaudible in here.
I didn’t see the ghost anymore. There was only a girl in a leather chair facing the doorway, and she clearly wasn’t in mortal danger, unless you count painting her toenails. Her eyes widened when she saw me.
“How did you get in here? This is a members-only area!”
I smiled and extended my badge, one of the many I carried. “Police, sugar. That makes me a member everywhere,” I responded, heading for the only other door behind her.
She shook her head and resumed painting her nails.
“You don’t want to go in there, but hey. Your funeral.”
With that questionable display of concern, she applied another pink coat to the toe in front of her while I opened the door.
The ghost of the young man was inside, and he gestured to an unconscious girl in a vampire’s arms. “Help her, please!”
There were about half a dozen vampires inside. None felt older than I was in undead years. On the floor were two bodies. One of them was my ghost’s, who hovered frantically near the equally young girl being snacked on. She was still alive, but not for long judging from her pulse. The vampire hadn’t even paused to look at the ghost, even though I knew the undead schmuck could see him. Me, I’d have felt awkward when the specter of someone I’d just killed was whizzing by me while I ate, but this creep seemed blasé about it. The other body was also of a young woman, and there was a third girl clinging to life on another vampire’s lap. Her eyes fluttered and then closed when I flicked my gaze to her.
“You should have listened to Brandy,” one of the vampires purred at me in a bad imitation of a sinister voice.
“Miss Pink Toenails?” I asked as I hitched up my dress.
They watched with interest as my hem climbed higher up my legs. My hiking it up wasn’t for distraction, although that was a secondary benefit. It was to access the knives I’d strapped to my legs. When they were revealed, the mood in the room shifted from hungry and lustful to wary.
“Now, you fuckers,” I said as I rolled my head around my shoulders and palmed some knives. “Let me introduce myself.”
“You forgot one.”
I was just about to fling more knives when his voice stopped me. Bones came in and cast a thorough look around at the carnage. Most of the vampires I’d dispatched with my blades, but the ones who’d killed the kids I’d torn apart with my bare hands. It was the least I could do.
“Who?”
His smile was pleasant. “The little bitch who was sneaking around for a gun, but she’s not doing that any longer.”
Must have been Brandy with the pink toenails. His benign expression didn’t fool me. Knowing him, she’d be wearing that shade in hell.
“Two of these girls are still alive. Give them blood. Yours will work faster than what I have to offer.”
Bones took the knife I handed him and sliced his palm, going to each girl and making them swallow his blood.
“Will she be okay?” the ghost asked, hovering over his girlfriend.
Gradually I heard her pulse return to a slow but steady rhythm as Bones’s blood went to work in her, offsetting her injuries. After a moment, I smiled. “Yeah. She will be now.”
He smiled back, showing that in life, he’d had dimples. God, he was so young! Then he frowned.
“They’re not all here. There were three more of those creatures. They said they’d be back.”
Probably went out to rustle up more dinner. Bastards. “I’ll get them,” I promised. “Don’t worry. It’s my job.”
He smiled again…and then started to fade at the edges, growing fainter, until there was nothing left of him.
I stared in silence. Then, “Is he gone?”
Bones knew what I meant. “I expect so. He accomplished what he wanted to, so he’s moved on. Sometimes a few stubborn people hang on long enough to do one last thing.”
And he’d trusted me to take care of that last thing for him. There might not be much I could say I was good for, but avenging people who’d had their lives stolen from them was definitely my specialty.
I headed for the door.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Bones asked.
“Grabbing Miss Pink Toenails and piling her in here with the rest of them,” I threw over my shoulder. “Then I’m going to wait until their friends come back, and kill the hell out of them.”
Bones came after me. “Sounds like fun.”
We were on the dance floor nearest to the bathrooms. Anyone looking to access that grisly private room would have to pass by us first. I’d objected to dancing with him, even though it was our best cover option, but Bones just dragged me onto the floor in much the same way he had on our first date.
“You are a professional killer, aren’t you?” he asked. “You can’t hover around that hallway with blood spattered on you and expect to look inconspicuous.”
My lavender dress did have red streaks on it. I’d washed the blood off my hands in the bathroom, but there was no fixing that. Bones was right—I’d stick out like a sore thumb loitering in the hallway, or even at the bar. Pressed against him on the dance floor, however, no one would see it.
Except that being pressed against Bones on the dance floor was playing hell on my self-control. The last time I’d held him this way had been the morning I left him. I remembered it like yesterday: me fighting back tears and reminding myself that leaving him was the only option.
Yeah, some things hadn’t changed.
I sought around for a distraction. Anything other than focusing on how much I’d missed being in his arms.
“Why are you here anyway? I thought you’d be busy with Felicity, what with how the two of you looked.”
His brow rose. “Did s
eeing me kiss her bother you? I can’t imagine why. Didn’t you tell me in your note to move on with my life?”
A low blow. I started to pull away, but he just tightened his grip. It was either stay put or cause a scene and possibly miss catching the killers.
Grimly I began to dance again, hating that I still cared so much when it seemed Bones only had anger left in him.
“They knew what I was, Bones. The men who came to the hospital that day, they knew everything from my pathology reports. And they knew about vampires. The one in charge—”
“Don?” he supplied.
Oh, so he’d done his homework. “Yes, Don. He said he’d been looking his whole life for someone strong enough to fight vampires who wasn’t one of them. He offered me a deal. He’d relocate us, and I’d lead his team. In return he promised to leave you alone. We couldn’t have all survived any other way. We would have been hunted like animals, and you know my mother would have rather died than gone with you. She’d also rather see me killed than changed into a vampire, and let’s face it, that’s what you would have eventually wanted me to do!”
Bones let out a bitter snort, twirling me a little too hard.
“Is that what this whole bleedin’ thing was about? You believing I’d turn you into a vampire? Bloody hell, Kitten, did it ever occur to you to talk to me instead of just running off?”
“It wouldn’t have mattered. You would have insisted on it eventually,” I replied stubbornly.
“You should have trusted me,” he muttered. “When did I ever lie to you?”
“When have you lied to me?” I pounced. “How about when you kidnapped and murdered Danny Milton? You swore to me you’d never touch Danny, but I don’t suppose he’s off in Mexico sipping margaritas, is he?”
“You made me swear not to kill, cripple, maim, dismember, blind, torture, bleed, or inflict any injury on Danny Milton. Or stand by while someone else did. You should save your concern for someone worthy; Danny gave you up like a bad habit straightaway. You know that brainwashing rot doesn’t hold up under a Master vampire’s eyes. At least the bugger was finally useful. He told me where you lived. Virginia. I had you narrowed down to three states, and Danny saved me some time. That’s why I told Rodney to kill him fast and painless—and I didn’t stay to watch.”