Marie let out a gasp and chased it. I lunged, landing on her back before she got halfway down the staircase. Then I twisted until I wasn’t facing her feet any longer. That gave her the chance to land a backward punch that felt like it rattled my brains loose. Instead of defending myself against her next blow, I wrapped one arm around her neck and shoved the other into her open mouth.
She chomped down hard enough to crush bone, yet I kept it wedged between her teeth with grim determination. Better she bloody my flesh than hers. Then I whipped my head down and sank my fangs into her neck, sucking her blood for everything I was worth.
Marie began bucking as though she’d morphed into a prizewinning bronco. I held on, sealing my mouth over the punctures and swallowing her earthy-tasting blood as fast as I could. Her struggles became more frenzied, and instead of trying to throw me off, she smashed us into the wall. We went through, and while I succeeded in keeping my mouth clamped onto her neck, she raked her arm across the ragged side of an exposed beam before I could stop her.
The small cut it made was enough.
As soon as her blood was exposed, an ear-splitting howl sounded, originating from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Then pain crashed into me with agonizing waves. For a few moments, I couldn’t think past the anguish as dozens of Remnants tore into me with the ferocity of sharks during a feeding frenzy. Marie took advantage, shoving me back and dislodging my hold on her neck.
Then I remembered how to make it stop. Marie must’ve realized my intention. She grabbed me, trying to shove her hands into my mouth as I had done to her. My need to escape the pain made me stronger, though, and I wrenched my head away.
“Back off,” I rasped, ripping my fangs into my wrist.
Blood dripped in a scarlet trail down my arm, but the Remnants continued to tear into me. Marie seized her chance, wedging her arm between my teeth to keep me from drawing more blood. I tore at it with the same viciousness she’d shown me, but all she did was drag us out of the hole she’d made in the wall. Once back on the staircase, she shoved me onto the steps, leaping on my back to hold me there. With her strength and the Remnants’ assault, I couldn’t free myself.
“I warned you, Reaper,” she growled over the shrieks her creatures made. “You should have left when you had the chance.”
If I had any doubt that she intended to kill me, that erased it. Despair raked me as Bones’s face flashed in my mind. We’d gambled that I’d be able to call the Remnants off if I drank Marie’s blood in order to absorb her power. I’d manifested her abilities immediately last time, but if I had them now, her control over them was too strong.
The Remnants increased their assault, growing stronger as they fed from my pain. Katie’s face streaked across my mind next, her features hazy because the only time I’d seen her face-to-face I hadn’t been interested enough to memorize them. A fresh wave of agony coursed through me, but this had nothing to do with the Remnants’ ripping me apart from the inside out.
Now I’d never be able to tell her how sorry I was that I’d missed the first seven years of her life. Or let her know that Madigan couldn’t hurt her anymore, and that there was more—so much more!—to this world than the ugliness she’d been shown. Or tell her that while she might be alone now, she had not been abandoned, and though she was different from everybody else, in my eyes, she was perfect in every way . . .
That all-encompassing pain stopped. Its absence cleared my mind enough to see shattered glass at the bottom of the staircase. For a second, I was confused. I’d broken in through the door, not the window—
Bones.
I felt his pain before I saw him rolling on the floor covered by the same Remnants that had been tearing into me. With a snarl, I tried to fling Marie off, but a new batch of Remnants appeared, ravaging me with a fresh assault.
“No!” I tried to scream, though with Marie’s arm still wedged in my mouth, only a gurgle came out.
Suddenly, Marie’s movements became sluggish, as though she’d been encased in cement and was trying to break through. Realization dawned, and with it, hope. Bones was using his power on her. Despite the pain that threatened to break my mind as well as my body, I seized the opportunity, flinging myself away from the ghoul queen.
Marie’s arm ripped from my mouth, leaving hunks between my fangs that I spat out. Before I could bite down on my own flesh, however, she shoved her other arm between my teeth, moving so fast that she must have shaken off Bones’s power.
“Kill him,” she roared, her free arm still bleeding from my fangs.
The Remnants began tearing into Bones with greater fervor, increasing in number until I couldn’t see him anymore. I couldn’t hear him, either. The howls they emitted were too loud.
Determination rose so forcefully that it numbed me to the pain. I would not fail my daughter, and I would not—would not!—watch Bones die again.
I didn’t try to throw Marie off this time. Instead, I grabbed the arm she’d shoved between my fangs and pulled with all of my strength.
It tore free, hitting the staircase with enough force to coat it in red. I didn’t pause to savor her scream, but bit my lip hard enough to tear it open.
“Back off!” I snarled through the instant spurt of blood.
Ice shot through my veins as though I’d been flash-frozen. At the same time, an unearthly roar filled my ears, drowning out the shrieks from the Remnants and Marie’s furious howl. It swelled as though trying to explode my mind with voices too numerous to count, but in spite of that, I smiled.
I knew what this was. When I spoke again, my voice echoed with countless others that had been consigned to the grave.
“Back. Off.”
The Remnants flung themselves away as though Bones and I had become poisonous. Then they slithered along the walls like sinuous, silvery shadows. Marie lunged, either to grab me or to run, but she didn’t make it an inch before she stopped with the suddenness of hitting a brick wall.
Slowly, painfully, I pushed her off, then threw her detached arm down the staircase. It bounced at the final step, landing with a thud a few feet from Bones.
“As I said before, Marie,” I ground out, “we need to talk.”
Thirty-one
Our conversation was put on hold because the cops showed up. One of Marie’s neighbors must have called the police about all the noise. No surprise, the officers who came to investigate were ghouls. Her address being flagged for a disturbance would have concerned more than the regular authorities.
Marie kicked her severed limb under the nearest chair and hid its growing replacement beneath a quilt before she went to the door. Sure, Bones had threatened to kill her unless she played it cool, but I think she did it for another reason. Signaling for help or showing how she’d been injured would have been tantamount to admitting that two vampires had gotten the drop on her in her own home—something the ghoul queen would never admit to. Still, Bones kept his power wrapped around her neck as she spoke to the officers. After a few minutes, she sent them away, then covered the entrance with the broken door.
“What do you want with me?” she demanded when she faced us again.
Bones arched a brow. “Before I answer, is anyone else here?”
The glance she shot him was filled with hostility. “No. When I’m home, I value my privacy.”
We hadn’t expected her to be a gracious loser, so I didn’t comment on the look. Or her venomous tone.
“We want you to leave the child be,” I said, shivering from my new connection to the grave. Death was cold, and as the Remnants evidenced, always hungry.
“That means no sending ghosts, ghouls, or minions to look for her. And, of course, your promise never to kill her. Same goes with us.”
Marie began to laugh, a low, mocking sound that still managed to contain shades of real amusement.
“If that is your demand, you came
in vain. I’ve already given the order. My people search for her as we speak.”
“Let’s get one thing straight, Majestic.”
Bones walked over to her, his aura crackling with barely controlled rage.
“When you sicced your ghostly little fiends on me the first time, I wanted to rip your head off. Doing it again tonight makes me really want to, but being forced to watch as they tore into my wife?”
He reached out, caressing her neck with a deceptively gentle touch.
“That makes me want to kill you so much, I can scarcely think of anything else,” he finished in a lethal whisper.
Then his hand closed around her throat, tightening until cracking noises were the only sound in the room. Marie’s hazelnut eyes began to fill with red, and the Remnants started to shift restlessly.
“Bones,” I said sharply. “Don’t.”
If we wanted to save Katie, we needed Marie. If we killed her, we were hastening a potential war with ghouls, and while we might manage to evade the Law Guardians, with Marie’s network of ghosts, anyone she wanted to find, she would, and sooner rather than later.
“We came to make you an offer,” I went on. “One that will be mutually beneficial.”
With Bones’s fist tightened so much that his fingers touched, she couldn’t laugh, but her mouth stretched in a pained smile.
“She can’t talk unless you let her go,” I said in a sterner voice.
He released her with obvious reluctance though his power remained coiled around her neck. Not tight; loose, like a snake deciding whether or not it was hungry.
Marie waited until her neck healed back to its normal shape before she spoke.
“What is your offer?”
“We’ll give you the people responsible for creating a cross-species child: Richard Trove and Jason Madigan. You can execute them to solidify your position as queen of the ghouls. In return, we want you to swear by your blood that you will call off your people and meet all our previous demands about the little girl and ourselves.”
Some of the hostility drained from her expression.
“I know she is your child, Reaper, but you must understand that nothing except her death will stop our races from warring.”
The words weren’t a surprise; the emotions they stirred were. Fangs that had receded jumped out as I fought a strong urge to rip her throat open for daring to say such a thing.
“That’s why you’re going to tell everyone that you already killed her,” I responded in a voice far calmer than I felt.
Disbelief creased her smooth, café latte skin.
“If the truth were discovered, my people would tear me apart!”
Bones’s smile was a mixture of ice and steel.
“Hence your motivation to keep your word should your honor prove vulnerable.”
Marie glowered at him for a moment. Then she let out a deep sigh.
“Even if I wished to, what you ask is impossible.”
Her neck dented as Bones’s power flexed in an instant vise. “If that’s true, then you’re no use to us.”
I gripped his arm, urging him not to increase that punishing hold. That’s when I noticed how warm he felt. He must have fed right before crashing through her window.
“Give it another chance,” I said, so low she wouldn’t be able to hear me. Then I stared at Marie.
“Your people spent hundreds of years in captivity because of their race. Even after all this time, the memory of it must still burn.”
Marie’s head jerked as Bones released her to answer. The connection we now shared let me feel her anger as it pulsated through the air.
“Don’t,” she snapped. “You have no right, white girl.”
“I don’t, but Katie does. Until she ran away, captivity was all she knew, too, and now she’s been marked for death because of her race.” My voice roughened. “Either you believe that’s wrong, or you don’t.”
Marie continued to glare at me, but she didn’t say anything.
All at once, it felt like the temperature dropped sixty degrees. At the same time, hunger rose with an ache that reminded me of waking up as a brand-new vampire. The Remnants began to sway as though listening to music no one else could hear. They were being reactivated.
“Stop it,” I said curtly. “If you try using them on us again, Bones will take your head off.”
Marie gave me an irritated look.
“I’m not the one channeling them. You are.”
“Kitten.” Bones’s voice was soft but urgent. “Look at me.”
He grasped my shoulders, and I almost jerked away. His fingers felt like they were scalding. It was only when his grip tightened, holding me steady, that I realized I’d been swaying like the Remnants.
Marie was right. Although I wasn’t having the same crazed response as the first time I drank her blood, I was being pulled into the icy, ravenous embrace of the grave. I forced it back, trying to forget about how good the cold was starting to feel. Then I shook my head to clear the whispers that didn’t come from the nearby neighbors’ thoughts. If I lost myself to this, it might take me days to recover, and we didn’t have that kind of time.
Snap out of it! I ordered myself. Focus on Bones. He’s what’s real, not that cold, hungry power, and—
“Why are you here?” I suddenly blurted. “We agreed that you’d come only after I called and gave you the all clear. That way, if things went south, you’d still be alive to help Katie.”
A sardonic smile curled his lips.
“I smelled your fear when Veritas asked if we wanted to change our statements. You’re never afraid for yourself, so I knew it was fear for me.”
Then he drew me close, his lips brushing my forehead while his hands ran down my back in a way that was both soothing and possessive.
“That’s why I didn’t stick to our agreement, Kitten. If you couldn’t best Marie to save yourself, I knew you wouldn’t let me die.”
What a reckless, arrogant assumption, and how humbling that he’d been right. What he didn’t know was the other reason I’d fought harder than I knew I could in order to live.
Katie. I couldn’t let her die, either.
Thinking of her, out there all alone, gave me the strength to smother the siren call of the grave. Ready or not, I was a mother now, and my daughter needed me. I couldn’t let her down. Too many other people already had. I wasn’t about to add my name to that list.
Buoyed by that knowledge, I grasped Bones’s hands, glad they no longer felt like they were burning me. The voices were gone, too, and while I was still hungry, the bottomless hole inside me had eased. Satisfied I wasn’t about to lose it, I turned my attention to Marie.
“If you don’t want to do this for the right reasons, do it for selfish ones. We need you to have as much of a stake in this as we do, so either you call your people off and tell everyone that you killed Katie, or we’ll kill you.”
She let out a sigh that seemed to hold the weariness of the world, and when her dark gaze met mine, it was with resignation.
“I do remember my people’s captivity, Reaper, which is why if it were as simple as saying the child was dead, I would do it. Not merely to save my own life, but because I’m better than those who once enslaved my race.”
Then her voice became brittle with bitterness.
“But unless there is a public execution, they will keep hunting for her. Even if I swore that I killed her, they would not be satisfied, and our races would eventually war. I cannot allow that, so do what you must.”
At that, I expected Bones to tear her head off. A big part of me wanted him to. What she outlined was a future with nothing but death for Katie, and I couldn’t accept that.
From the grim look on Marie’s face, she expected that Bones would kill her, too. That’s why both of us were shocked when all he did was tap
his chin in a thoughtful way.
“Public execution, hmm? If we promise you that, will you agree to the rest of our terms?”
“Are you out of your mind?” I asked, horrified.
“Will you or no?” he pressed, ignoring that.
Suspicion creased Marie’s brows into a single dark line.
“You came here to bargain for the child’s life. Now you’re willing to execute her?”
Bones’s teeth flashed in a feral grin. “Publicly.”
“The hell we are,” I snarled, hitting him hard enough to rock him backward.
His power flashed out, encompassing me in the equivalent of a supernatural straitjacket.
“Kitten,” he said very low. “Trust me.”
Marie stared at us with the same degree of wariness, but curiosity tinged her gaze, too.
“Agreed,” she said. Then she accepted the knife Bones extended, cutting her hand with a single hard slice. “I swear it by my blood.”
His invisible grip dropped from her neck.
“Then call your people off,” Bones stated, giving my hand a slight squeeze. “We’ll do the rest.”
Thirty-two
This section of Detroit’s east side reminded me of photos I’d seen of Germany after the Allied invasion. Abandoned buildings loomed like battered, concrete giants over streets that appeared empty until the humps of clothing alongside them moved. Most of the streetlights were out, which could explain the burning trash cans since the summer evening wasn’t chilly. Every so often, a faraway siren broke through the other sounds, but although fights, glass shattering, and the occasional gunshot seemed commonplace, I hadn’t seen a single police car.
Good for us. Bad for whoever called this derelict place that America forgot home.
“Cat!”
Fabian zoomed toward me, his face lit by a beautiful smile. Then movement on the roof of one of the lower buildings caught my eye. I tensed until I recognized the vampire striding toward the edge.