“Look who else made it.”
“I see that.” Then a pained cough came over my uncle. Bones took my hand as his heart had several ominous pauses in between beats. “You turned out to be a better man than I expected,” Don rasped once he’d regained control.
Bones stared at my uncle, his gaze steady and serious. “So did you, old chap.”
“Bones and I talked,” I said, trying to smile so I wouldn’t burst into tears at the knowledge that this was their way of saying goodbye. “Remember your offer to give me away as a bride? Well, we’d like to take you up on it.”
Don’s mouth twitched in a wistful smile before his features tightened, his thoughts revealing that more pain flared in his chest. I glanced at the EKG machine even though I knew what it would say. My mother’s blood had brought him back, but it wouldn’t be for long. His heart was failing right in front of my eyes.
“ ’Fraid I won’t be around for your wedding, Cat,” he murmured, eyes fluttering closed.
“Yes you will,” I said, so strongly that Don’s eyes reopened and stayed open. “Because we’re going to renew our vows here and now.”
“Cat.” His face pinched with sadness. “You were planning a big wedding once things were . . . settled down. You don’t have to ruin those plans . . .”
He paused to close his eyes, his breathing and heart rate dipping for a moment. I bit my lip, squeezing Bones’s hand until a cracking noise let me know to loosen my grip.
“These are hardly the right circumstances,” my uncle finished a few moments later, waving vaguely at the machines by his bed.
I thought back to when I was a little girl and how I’d imagined what my wedding day would be like. I’d pictured wearing a white dress, of course. Imagined my grandfather fussing over his tie like he always did when he was forced to wear one, and my grandmother replying that yes, it was straight, with that little roll of her eyes. My mother would be there, smiling because she was so happy for me, and I’d have friends who would be helping me get ready to walk down the aisle. My bouquet would be roses and wildflowers, my hair would be up, and I would look at my husband-to-be through a filmy white veil that would only be lifted once we were pronounced man and wife.
Of course, I’d imagined all that back when I didn’t believe in vampires, let alone realize I was half one. Bones had wanted to give me a close version of that dream, somehow knowing I’d still held on to it, but the lives we led kept interfering with making that white wedding fantasy a reality.
My wedding would never play out like that dream from when I was a child. It wouldn’t be now, either, in the hospital wing of a secret government facility that policed the activities of the undead. My wedding had been on a blood-spattered arena, witnessed not by friends or family, but by hundreds of vampires I’d never met before. My bridegroom hadn’t lifted a white veil from my face at the pronouncement from a minister that we were married. Instead, he’d cut his hand and held it out to me, swearing by his blood that I would forever be his wife, should I choose to accept him as my husband.
That was my wedding day. Pretty much the exact opposite of everything I’d ever dreamed, but I wouldn’t try to substitute it with something else. The image I’d had of myself as a child was someone I’d never be, and it was only recently that I realized it was okay to be who I was. That bride might have worn a slutty black dress instead of a beautiful white one, or had blood in her hands instead of holding a bouquet, but no woman had ever been as lucky as I was the day Bones held out his hand and declared me to be his wife.
“This isn’t about circumstances,” I replied, continuing to fight back tears as I tried to sum up everything I’d only recently learned. “It’s about family.”
Don hadn’t been there on that day. Neither had my mother, and my grandparents had been dead for years by then. But both of them could be here for this. It wasn’t a new ceremony for my sake, but a reenactment of the previous one for theirs.
“Will you do it?” I went on.
Don’s eyes misted. Through his thoughts, I heard how much the request meant to him even though he only spoke a single word in reply. “Yes.”
“Tate.” I turned toward the doorway, knowing he’d lingered in the hall this whole time. “You think you could bend the rules to let that disobedient new recruit back up on the floor for a little while?”
A grunt escaped him; half laugh, half disbelief as he filled the door frame. “Jesus, Cat.”
“Actually this won’t be a religious ceremony,” I replied with a faint smile, “but feel free to offer blessings anyway.”
Tate’s gaze moved over Bones and then down to our clasped hands. “Since when have you two ever cared about my blessing?” he asked dryly.
“I never asked for it and I don’t need it,” I replied in an even tone. “But you’re my friend, Tate, so I do care.”
I watched his face, waiting to see if he’d take the olive branch I’d extended, or throw it back at me like he had so many times in the past. Those dark blue eyes met mine, emotions skipping across his expressive features like waves on a pond. First regret, then resolve, and at last, acceptance.
“I hope you’re very happy,” Tate said, the words quiet but sounding sincere. Then, to my surprise, he walked over and held out his hand, but not to me. To Bones.
Bones accepted Tate’s hand and shook it without letting go of mine; easy enough since I held his left hand with my right one. When they let go, Tate glanced at me, smiled slightly, and said, “Don’t worry. I won’t bother asking to kiss the bride.”
Then he looked over to Don, whose eyes had closed during this exchange even though I could hear from his thoughts that he wasn’t asleep. His chest hurt too much for him to sleep, and he had a new pain radiating down his arm that he recognized from a few hours ago. Still, I knew what his answer would be even before Tate asked, “You up for this?”
My uncle didn’t know I could hear his thoughts. Didn’t know that I picked up on every word of his thinking this was a far better way to die than before, when he’d been alone, hearing only the steady flat line of the EKG machine before everything had gone black, then awoke to Tate screaming at my mother for what she’d done. I heard all of this, and though my throat burned from stuffing back the tears that relentlessly came, I said nothing. Did nothing even though the very blood running through my veins could possibly prevent the next heart attack that I knew was coming.
This was his choice. I hated it—oh, so much!—because it was taking from me the only real father I’d ever known, but Tate was right. I had to respect it.
“Let’s do this,” Don replied. His voice was raspy with pain, but the smile he flashed me was genuine despite that.
Tate picked up the phone by Don’s bed, telling whoever was on the other line to “get Crawfield, now, and bring her up here.”
To distract myself from falling all to pieces as I heard Don’s heartbeat become more erratic and listened to his mind try to shelter him from the increased squeezing in his chest, I began to explain the intricacies of a vampire marriage ceremony.
“So, if a vampire couple wants to get married—which they’d better be damn sure about, because with vampires, it’s till death do you part or nothing—it’s kinda like those old handfasting ceremonies. One of them, usually the guy first, gets a knife, slices it across his palm, and then says . . .”
By the time my mother arrived, I’d repeated all the words and described my prior wedding to Bones, leaving out the more grisly details. She looked at the four of us with slight confusion, but Tate didn’t give her a chance to say anything. He grasped her arm and took her into the hall, telling her in a voice too low for Don to overhear what was about to happen.
I was glad Don’s eyes were closed again, because that meant I didn’t have to fight the tears that burst out of me. Tate liked the idea of witnessing my rededication of vows to Bones even less than my mother would. Yet here he was, sternly telling her to act pleasant, dammit, and not ruin this for Don because
he didn’t have much time left.
That was excruciatingly evident. My uncle’s breathing was increasingly labored and he was thinking that it felt like he had a car pressed on his chest, but he was fierce in his will to last long enough to do this one final thing. The EKG machine began to make warning noises, as if I couldn’t tell from his thoughts and his skipped heartbeats what was happening. More tears coursed down my cheeks in a steady stream that wet my top and stained the floor an ever darkening pink where they fell.
I took my uncle’s hand, hating how much cooler it felt with his rapidly decreasing circulation, and squeezed his fingers gently.
Bones covered my hand with his own, his strength feeling like it overflowed from him to permeate into my flesh. Such a stark contrast to my uncle’s rapidly fading mortality and the approaching chill in Don’s fingers.
“Donald Bartholomew Williams,” Bones said formally. I startled at the “Bartholomew” part. I’d never heard Don’s full name before. Figures Bones knows it, a part of me thought hazily as I tried to suppress my sob over the increased skips in my uncle’s heartbeat. Bones extensively researched Don after finding out he was the man who’d blackmailed me into working for him all those years ago.
“Do you give your niece, Catherine, to be my wife?” Bones went on, brushing his fingers over Don’s.
My uncle’s eyes opened, lingering on me, Bones, and then Tate, who still stood in the doorway. Even though I knew how much pain he was in and the effort that it took was palpable, Don managed to smile.
Then his hand clenched around mine, agony blasting through him that I heard in the sudden scream of his thoughts. His whole body stiffened and his mouth opened in a short, harsh gasp—the last one he’d make. Don’s eyes, the same gray color as mine, rolled back in his head as the EKG machine’s beeps became one horrible, continuous sound.
Tate crossed the room in a blink, gripping the bed rail so hard that it crushed under his hands. That was the last thing I saw before everything blurred into reddish pink as the sobs I’d held back broke free to overwhelm me.
Yet even in the throes of the fatal heart attack, my uncle’s will proved stronger than the frailty of his body. He’d sworn to himself that he would live long enough to give me away, and he would not be denied, even if Bones and I were the only ones who knew it.
Don’s dying thought was one single, protracted word.
Yesssss.
Chapter Thirty-two
Bones held open the door and I stepped inside what was technically our home, even though we hadn’t stayed here much in the past year. My cat didn’t share my lack of enthusiasm at our arrival. As soon as I opened the door to his crate, Helsing sprang from the carrier onto the back of the couch, looking around with an expression that could only be called wide-eyed relief.
To be fair, he’d lived here longer than we had, what with how we’d had to leave him with a house sitter for months last year. Or maybe he was just glad to be out of that cage. I couldn’t blame him. Denise had been stuck in a pet carrier for hours after she’d shapeshifted into a feline, and she didn’t recall the experience with fondness.
I looked around at our living room, thinking I should start taking the furniture coverings off the sofas and reclining chairs. Or get some dusting spray and several cloths, because, wow, I could write my name in the mantel over the fireplace or on any of the end tables. But I did none of those things. I simply stood there, looking around, mentally calculating which place would be the best to put Don.
Not on the end tables or the mantel; my cat occasionally leapt onto all the above and I didn’t want to be sweeping up my uncle’s remains if Helsing accidentally knocked Don over. Not the kitchen table; that would be inappropriate. Not the closet; that was rude. Not upstairs in my bedroom; I didn’t think Don needed a bird’s-eye view of what Bones and I did in there. I wasn’t about to put Don in any of the bathrooms, either. What if the steam from the showers got him all wet?
“None of this will work,” I said to Bones.
Hands closed gently over my shoulders as he turned me around to face him.
“Give it to me, Kitten.”
My grip tightened on the brass urn that I’d held all the way from Don’s memorial service in Tennessee to our home in the Blue Ridge. Leave it to my uncle to insist on being cremated. Guess he didn’t trust that one of us wouldn’t yank him out of the grave if he just allowed himself to be planted in one piece. No chance of that now, with ashes being all that was left of him.
“Not until I find the right place for him,” I insisted. “He’s not a plant that I can just stick on a ledge near the sunshine, Bones!”
He tilted my chin up until I either had to look at him, or grind my jaw against his hand in a show of stubborn refusal. I chose the former even if the latter was more of what I felt like doing.
“You know what you’re holding isn’t Don,” Bones said, his dark gaze compassionate. “You wanted to bring his remains here so that nothing happened to them while we were traveling, but that is no more your uncle than this coat is me, Kitten.”
I looked at the long leather jacket Bones had on, its edges slightly frayed from extended wear. I’d gotten it for Bones for Christmas when we were first dating, but hadn’t given it to him personally. I’d been gone by then.
“No, that jacket isn’t you,” I replied, feeling an all too familiar stinging in my eyes. “But you pulled it out from under a cabinet anyway because at the time, it was all you had left of me. Well, this is all I have left of Don.”
His thumb caressed my jaw while his other hand slid down until it rested over the urn.
“I understand,” he said quietly. “And if you like, we’ll build an entire new room just to have a space exactly as you want it for this. But in the meantime, luv, you need to let it go.”
Very lightly, he tugged on the urn, making it easy for me not to let him pull it from my grip, if I didn’t want to. I looked down at the small brass container and the pale hands—mine and Bones’s—that encircled it.
It. Not Don. I knew that logically, but the part of me that was having the hardest time saying goodbye to my uncle didn’t want to acknowledge that what I held was nothing more than ash surrounded by metal. It had been four days since his death, yet I still felt like I was moving around in a dream. Even attending his memorial service and giving the eulogy felt more surreal than rooted in reality, because Don couldn’t really be gone. Hell, I could swear I’d glimpsed him a few times in my peripheral vision, looking as mildly exasperated with me as ever.
Bones tugged again and I let the urn slip from my hands into his, blinking back the tears from the relinquishment that was more symbolic than the transferring of an item. He leaned down, brushing his lips across my forehead, and then disappeared up the stairs. Maybe it was a good thing that Bones was putting Don’s remains away instead of me. With my current emotional state, I’d probably think the only safe place for his ashes was tucked inside my clothes next to the garlic and weed.
I rubbed my hands together, bleakly noting how empty they felt without the surrogate for my uncle that I’d clutched the past several hours. Then I rolled up the sleeves of my memorial-appropriate black blouse. I might not have control over much else in my life, but I could get the goddamn dust off the furniture, for starters.
My ferocious scrubbing of the house in an effort to distract myself from grieving over Don turned out to be beneficial in more ways than one. Mencheres called, saying he was on his way over because he had important information to relay. From the way Bones said he sounded, it wasn’t wonderful important information, like Apollyon being found dead with a “Happy early birthday, Cat!” note pinned to his corpse. Frankly I didn’t think I was up for any more bad news, but since life had no pause button that I knew of, I was about to be dealing with Mencheres’s news, up for it or not.
At least the house was sparkling and the musty scent was gone from the air. Of course, that could also be from the new plants Bones went out to procure
while I was doing my imitation of Martha Stewart. Now I was the dubious owner of several fragrant garlic bulbs and a few fluffy pot plants. I didn’t even want to ask where Bones had gotten the latter from. Sniffed it out and dug it up from a local illegal field? Or bought it from a friendly neighborhood drug dealer?
God, I couldn’t wait until the effect from Marie’s blood was out of my system. If I never smelled garlic or weed again, it would be too soon. The only upside of our new decor was that it meant I could take the packets off, and not having dozens of little porous baggies under my clothes was a welcome relief.
“They’re here, Kitten,” Bones called out from downstairs.
I didn’t hear anything yet, but I knew his connection to Mencheres was unusually acute because of their shared power, so I took him at his word. I wouldn’t have time to put on makeup, but I didn’t think anyone would notice. Or care. I was showered, in clean clothes, and my home was neat. Those were the three most important things when having visitors over.
Unless those visitors were hungry, of course.
“We don’t have any blood,” I said to Bones as I came down the stairs.
His gaze swept over me, pausing at certain points with appreciation. My dress was hardly sexy, being a plain black cotton number that hung to my feet and had three-quarter sleeves, but either it hugged the right places or Bones was showing the effects of a week of celibacy. To say I hadn’t been in the mood since Don died was to put it mildly.
“I rather doubt they’d expect us to,” he replied. “They know we just arrived.”
Right. Plus, this wasn’t a social call. “He’s probably coming over to tell me we need to put Plan Dave into action,” I muttered. “We were supposed to think up another way to swipe a few of Apollyon’s higher-ups without having Dave reveal that he was a plant, but that got pushed by the wayside.”
Bones raised a brow in a way that said, Perhaps. He’d heard about that. Dave told Bones shortly after Don died, fueled by grief into wanting even more to strike a blow against Apollyon, but Bones talked him out of it. Still, I knew he thought the idea had merit.