This Side of the Grave

  The irony in his voice was familiar, even if his appearance wasn’t. In the months since I’d seen my uncle, he seemed to have aged ten years. The lines around his mouth and eyes were pronounced, his gray hair was nearly white, and his impeccable posture was slightly stooped. I swallowed the lump that worked its way into my throat.

  “You know me,” I managed. “Always a pain in the ass.”

  Don reached out to squeeze my shoulder. “No you’re not. Not even when you’re trying to be.”

  The way he said that, combined with the sadness that flitted across his expression, almost made me lose it. Right then I knew that his condition was terminal. Otherwise, Don would’ve told me with sardonic affection that yes, I was a colossal pain in the ass and always would be. Not held on to my shoulder with a grip that trembled even as he managed to flash me a smile.

  All the things I’d dismissed before came back in sharp focus. Don’s recurring cough the past several times I’d spoken to him, brushed off as “just a cold.” The plans canceled at the last minute, rescheduled just to be canceled again . . .

  I wrapped my arms around him, feeling the weight loss that his clothes concealed, taking in a deep breath that filled my lungs with the scent of antiseptics, sweat, and sickness. More tears burned my eyes that I blinked back. Whatever’s wrong with him, vampire blood will cure it, I reminded myself, trying to get a grip on my emotions. Don was probably just being stubborn and refusing to drink any, even though he of all people knew the amazing healing powers of undead blood.

  Well, I’d get him to rethink that stupid decision.

  “So, I hear you didn’t want me to know you were sick,” I said, managing to sound mildly chiding instead of hysterically worried. Point for me.

  “You’ve had enough to deal with lately,” Don replied.

  I let go of him and swept my gaze around the room. His bed was one of those adjustable ones where the head and foot could be raised, but it lacked the normal hospital rails on either side of it. An open laptop was perched on a rolling tray nearby, alongside several stacked folders, his cell phone, pagers, and an in-house office phone.

  “How typical of you not to stop working even though you looked like death warmed over,” I said in a half-joking, half-censuring way.

  My uncle gave me a baleful look. “I might look like death warmed over, but now you are death warmed over, remember?”

  I would’ve smiled at his quip, but I was too worried by the grayish tone to his skin and the slow, painful way he moved as he took a step away from me. My uncle always had a commanding presence no matter the circumstances, but now, he seemed frail. That scared me more than facing enemy forces while unarmed.

  “What’s wrong that’s got you here?” I asked, again controlling the fear that made my voice higher than normal.

  “I have a bad flu,” Don replied, his words roughened by a cough.

  “Don’t lie to her.”

  Bones’s voice flowed into the room, and a few booted strides later, so did he. His dark brown gaze focused on Don, who visibly stiffened.

  “Your abilities don’t give you the right to—”

  “My bloodline does,” I interrupted Don, clenching my hands into fists. “You’re my family. That means I have a right to know.” And if you don’t tell me, I’ll just green-eye your nurse until she does, I mentally added.

  Don was silent for a long moment, looking between me and Bones. Finally, his shoulder lifted in a faint shrug.

  “I have lung cancer.” His smile was strained, but his trademark dry wit still rose to the occasion. “Appears those warnings on cigarette packages are correct.”

  Everything in me tensed as soon as he said the C word. “But I’ve never seen you smoke,” I blurted, stunned into denial.

  “I quit before we met, but for thirty years before that, I had a pack-a-day habit.”

  Lung cancer. Advanced, too, for him to look this way and allow himself to stay in the compound’s medical facility. To say Don was a workaholic was to put it mildly. In all the time I’d known him, my uncle hadn’t taken time off for vacations, holidays, or birthdays, let alone sick days. Then amidst my stunned absorption of this news, a businesslike mentality swept over me, mercifully blocking out the grief that made me feel like I’d just been shot in the gut.

  “I assume your doctors are going to operate? Or do chemo? Both? What treatment plan have they given you?”

  He sighed. “It’s too advanced for surgery or chemo, Cat. My treatment plan is to make the most of the time I have left.”

  No. The word resounded in my head as loudly as those unwelcome conversations had earlier. Then I uncurled my hands from the tight fists I had clenched at my sides, trying to make my voice very composed. Weeping and panic wouldn’t help, but calm logic would.

  “Maybe your condition is past what traditional medicine can treat, but you have other options. Vampire blood will heal your lungs from sustaining further damage, maybe even put the cancer into remission—”

  “No,” Don interrupted.

  “Dammit!” I exclaimed. So much for the calm, rational approach. “You’re letting bigotry get in the way of your common sense. Your brother was an asshole before he became a vampire, Don. Changing into one didn’t make me evil, and drinking vampire blood to help your condition won’t make you evil.”

  “I know,” he said, surprising me. “I began drinking vampire blood shortly after I was first diagnosed seven years ago. You made that possible with the captive vampires you brought back from missions when you were working for me. You’re right, it did put the cancer in remission, but time catches up with everyone, and it has, at last, caught up with me.”

  Seven years! My mind reeled. “You hid this the whole time we’ve known each other? Why?”

  Don’s sigh rattled in his throat. “I didn’t trust you when you first joined the team, as you remember. Then, I didn’t want to distract you from your job. After you discovered you were my niece . . . well. Things happened. You’ve had a lot to deal with the past couple years, more than most people have had in their entire lives. I was going to tell you about it, but I wanted to give myself time to sort some things out first.”

  I knew my mouth hung open, but I couldn’t seem to summon the willpower to close it. Bones came to me and took my hand, wordlessly squeezing it.

  “You must have had an important reason for coming here without calling,” Don said. “What’s going on?”

  I couldn’t believe he expected me to just change the subject, as if the topic of his impending death wasn’t worth further discussion.

  “Chemo, surgery, and vampire blood might not be able to help you, but I still can.” The words spilled out recklessly. “I’m a vampire now and I can make you one, too. You won’t owe me any of that normal fealty crap, and changing over will cure everything—”

  “No.”

  The single word was soft but emphatic. My instant, sputtering argument faded as Don was seized with a wracking cough.

  “But you can’t . . . you can’t just die,” I whispered.

  He straightened, controlling his cough. The same fierce will that had ordered Tate to shoot me the day we met was still in his gray eyes.

  “Yes I can. It’s called being human.”

  I swallowed hard. The same argument I’d once used with Bones to rationalize why a relationship between us couldn’t work had just been flung back in my face. Now I knew the frustration Bones must’ve felt at that time, because I had a sudden urge to shake Don until the blind stubbornness rattled right out of his head.

  But since I couldn’t do that, I’d try another tactic. “You’re indispensable to this operation. If you were gone, I wouldn’t be the only one who would suffer. Think of the team—”

  “They have Tate,” Don interrupted me. “He’s taken over this department for the past three months and he’s doing an excellent job.”

  “Tate’s needed out in the field, not for management,” I argued even as I reeled at this new bit of info
rmation. “You only have one other vampire and a ghoul on the team aside from Tate. That’s not enough when going after the undead. Plus, some serious shit is brewing with ghouls right now.”

  A cough made Don pause before replying. “We may have another vampire on the team soon.”

  Must be Cooper. He was the next in line to lose his pulse. Seems a lot of changes had happened. Even if I wasn’t a member of the team anymore, I’d thought being a friend and family meant someone would keep me in the loop. Boy, was I wrong.

  “Christ Almighty,” Bones muttered.

  Don shot him a look. “We’ll talk about that later. Now, tell me what trouble is brewing with the ghouls, Cat.”

  My uncle’s expression said that continuing to discuss the obvious reasons why he should save his life would only be pointless right now. I tried to pull myself together enough to focus on why we’d come, but I felt like the floor had just opened up underneath me.

  “You remember last year that a ghoul leader, Apollyon, was all worked up about me possibly changing into a vampire-ghoul hybrid? Well, he hasn’t calmed down . . .”

  Several minutes later, I’d given Don all the details as we knew them. He tugged on his eyebrow as he listened. When I was finished, he let out a heavy sigh.

  “Those vampires reporting back to you are a good start, but I don’t think it’s enough. If hostilities increase between vampires and ghouls, humans will bear the brunt of the fallout. We need someone to infiltrate Apollyon’s group. Find out everything we’re only guessing at now.”

  I let out a grunt. “That would be great, but there’s a problem. Any ghouls we’d trust enough to spy would be known associates of Bones and would be killed on the spot. Finding someone tough and reliable that Apollyon wouldn’t recognize will be hard . . .”

  My voice trailed off even as Bones raised a brow. Don gave me a short nod.

  “Dave.”

  I closed my eyes, hating the thought of my friend in such a situation, but Don was right. Dave was smart, tough, experienced, and already dead. Bones had raised Dave as a ghoul over two years ago after Dave had been killed on a mission, but few people in the undead world had ever met Dave. He’d been too busy as a member of Don’s team to hang out at many fang or flesh-eater parties.

  “We’ll ask him,” I settled on. “Let him decide if he wants to do it. Going undercover is always dangerous, but going undercover to infiltrate a group of murderous undead zealots is too dicey to make it an order.”

  “Go get him,” Don said. “He’s in the Wreck Room.”

  I met my uncle’s intractable gaze with an equally stubborn one of my own. “I’ll go get him and we’ll deal with the ghoul situation, but I’m not giving up on you. Think about my offer. About all the positive changes you can make in the world if you’re still alive.”

  He gave me a faint smile. “I was always going to die, Cat. Whether in a few months or a few years, it’s inevitable. You should have already accepted that, but you haven’t. You’ve thought with the mind of a vampire since the day we met. Your fangs are new, but that’s the only difference I see since you changed over.”

  I bit my lip, refusing to acknowledge that he might be right. “I’ll go get Dave.”

  Chapter Five

  I walked out of Don’s room with Bones following me, trying to concentrate on anything but my uncle’s sad, stubborn gaze. Click-click-click went my shoes on the tile. Lung cancer. Click-click-click, bringing me closer to the elevator. Past the point of surgery, chemotherapy, or vampire blood. Click-click-click. Known for seven years.

  Once inside the elevator, however, my control cracked and tears blurred my vision. Aside from my mother, Don was the only real family I had left. My grandparents had been murdered several years ago and my father was serving a whole new definition of “hard time” for repeatedly trying to kill me. Even though our relationship was nowhere near normal, over the past few years, Don had become the closest thing to a father I’d ever had.

  And soon he’d be gone. Forever.

  Bones folded me into his arms. With his height, my face was pressed to his collarbone, his leather jacket cool against my cheek while his hand smoothed over my hair. I held on to him, sinking into the oasis of his embrace, feeling his strength not just in the muscled wall of his body, but also in the power that enveloped me like a thick cloud as he dropped the shields from his aura.

  Then I pushed him away, clearing the pink from my vision with several blinks. If I let myself dwell on this now, I wouldn’t be able to handle the very important tasks ahead of us. I wasn’t giving up on Don, but I had to pull myself together and concentrate on what needed to be done. This wasn’t the time for me to fall all to pieces.

  “I’m okay,” I said to Bones, holding out a hand when he would have spoken. “Let’s just get Dave. One crisis at a time, right?”

  The elevator doors opened to reveal a darkly handsome vampire on the other side, black hair in a loose ponytail and normally playful expression subdued.

  “Hey, Juan,” I said, managing a limp smile.

  “Querida,” he murmured, opening his arms. Even though I was upset with him, I went into them, giving him a brief hug.

  “Lo siento,” he whispered when I let him go.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry, too,” I replied bleakly. “You, Tate, Dave—all of you should have told me.”

  “Don made us promise not to. He didn’t want to worry you.”

  I was too upset to laugh at the irony of that. “Too late now.”

  “Bones, mi amigo, cómo es usted?” Juan said next. Bones answered in the same language, but I was too distracted to bother translating their Spanish as I headed for the Wreck Room. Despite my vow not to think about Don’s condition, a part of me was still busy plotting ways to save him. Maybe the vampire blood Don used to treat his cancer just wasn’t strong enough. If he started ingesting a Master vampire’s blood—like Bones’s or Mencheres’s—maybe his results would be different.

  Farther down the hall, the double doors to the training area opened and Tate walked out. He headed straight for me, but I didn’t even look at him as I strode down the hall toward the same room he’d just left.

  Tate caught my arm when we drew level with each other. “Cat, there’s something I need to—”

  “Save it,” I replied, shoving his hand off. “You couldn’t run fast enough to tell me when you thought Bones was cheating on me last year, but when it came to Don and something that was actually true, then you’re all about respectful silence.”

  “That’s not—” he began, reaching out once more.

  Bones grabbed Tate before his hand could brush my skin, appearing faster than if he’d materialized from the air around us.

  “If you fancy keeping this,” he said in a growl while his fingers tightened on Tate’s arm, “don’t try touching her again.”

  Any other time I would’ve objected, knowing Bones never bluffed and he would rip Tate’s arm off, but today I didn’t care. Out of everyone’s silence about my uncle’s health, Tate’s hurt the most. Yes, things had been strained between us ever since Bones came back into my life, but for a long time before that, Tate had been my closest friend. Facing death together on countless missions had forged strong bonds between us, but this was the last straw for me.

  “Better yet, try touching me again and I’ll rip your arm off,” I snapped, stepping around him to continue down the hall. “I’ve put up with a lot from you despite your animosity to Bones and refusal to accept that you and I will never be more than friends. But after this, we’re done, so stay away from me.”

  Behind me, Juan cleared his throat. “Ah, querida . . .”

  “Don’t bother defending him,” I replied, yanking open the heavy doors of the area we’d dubbed the Wreck Room due to how intense training got. “I’m not—”

  My voice trailed off while my eyes bugged. There, in the middle of the room, was a brunette vampire running through what looked to be a new obstacle course, easily dodging the cemen
t blocks that swung at her.

  “What?” I gasped.

  The vampire didn’t hear me. Tate muttered something that sounded like “I tried to warn you,” but I didn’t turn around. She’s wearing a uniform, my mind hazily noted, immediately followed by Why the HELL is she wearing a uniform?

  “Mom!” I shouted at her. “What are you doing here?”

  Her head whipped around—and then she was knocked off her feet by the next swinging cement boulder. Even from the distance, I caught the aggravated look my mother threw me as she jumped back up.

  “Sloppy, Crawfield!” Cooper barked at her from his position overseeing the obstacle course.

  “Catherine’s here,” she replied, pointing.

  He swung around, a guilty look crossing his mocha features. My shock dissolved enough for me to march inside, barely noticing Bones mutter under his breath that they were bloody lucky my temper no longer manifested itself in fire.

  He was right. If it had been just six months before, fire would be shooting from my hands from this new shock to my already volatile emotions. Three months before and I would’ve ground all the activity in the Wreck Room to a halt with a furious squeeze of my mind. But with those borrowed abilities now gone, all I could do was lash out with my voice.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I snapped to the room at large. “I thought it was crappy no one told me about Don’s condition, but who knew you guys had even more secrets up your sleeve!”

  “Everyone, take ten,” Dave called out. The dozens of team members stopped whatever grueling activity they’d been involved in to file out of the room—taking the door opposite the one I was closest to, I noticed.

  In minutes, the training room was empty of everyone but Cooper, Dave, Tate, Bones, Juan, and my mother, who was the only one aside from Bones who didn’t have a shamefaced expression.

  “Catherine, stop overreacting,” she said in a chiding way as she walked over to me. “After all, I’m not doing anything you haven’t done for over a decade.”

  “And I’ve almost gotten killed more times than I can count,” I shot back, resisting the urge to shake her.