Another extended silence. Either Madigan was mulling this over or trying to trace the call, but he’d get nowhere with that. Finally, after long enough for me to wonder if he’d hung up, he spoke again.
“This intrigues me, Crawfield, but I don’t think I’ll give you an opportunity to kill me. You want to talk? Come to me here.”
“It’s Russell,” I said at once, “and see if this intrigues you: Don made arrangements for a letter to be mailed to me in the event of his death. I’ve moved around a lot the past several months, so I only just got it. In it, he apologized for the horrible things he allowed to go on while the two of you worked together—”
“What things?” Madigan interrupted.
I smiled. Have your interest now, don’t I?
“That’s what I want to find out, but not enough to give you home-field advantage. The pier on Watauga Lake tonight or forget it. Hell, maybe forget it anyway. Another letter’s probably on its way with more information.”
Frustration practically seethed through the silence on the other end. Not only did Madigan really want to capture me; like all bureaucrats, he was nothing if not paranoid about keeping his secrets. The last thing he’d want was a group of vampires poking around his illicit experiments, and the idea that his former nemesis might spill the beans posthumously must be giving him an ulcer.
“If I thought you had a shred of honesty in you,” he finally gritted out, “I’d make you swear on Bones’s life that you’ll come without him. Or anyone else.”
“I swear it,” I said evenly. “And out of the two of us, I’m not the biggest liar.”
The noise he made was too low for me to determine if it was a scoff or a laugh.
“I guess at midnight, we’ll find out.”
“See you then,” I said crisply, and hung up.
Denise stared at me, her hazel eyes wide with alarm. “You’re not really intending to go alone, are you?”
“Of course.” My lips stretched into a cold, predatory smile. “As I said, between Madigan and me, I’m not the biggest liar.”
The Rat Branch Pier at Watauga Lake was a public place, yet even if I’d chosen high noon instead of midnight for our meeting, it was still very isolated. More than half of the lake’s sixteen-mile shoreline was bordered by the Cherokee National Forest, while a snaking road overshadowed by steep, wooded terrain bordered the other side. Only the moon provided illumination since the single light post next to the pier was broken.
The steady rain plus countless rustling trees and the nearby dam muffled the natural sounds from the forest’s inhabitants. Still, here and there I caught the glow of eyes as nocturnal creatures foraged for food, mates, or both.
I waited at the very end of the pier, my clothes already soaked from the summer rain. Clouds concealed most of the light the moon cast, but with my enhanced vision, I had no difficultly seeing Madigan pull up in a sleek black Cadillac before parking next to the boat launch. Even if I’d suddenly been struck blind, his mind broadcast his arrival. Tonight, he’d chosen to sing the chorus to U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” over and over to block me from his thoughts.
And here I’d thought the prick had no sense of humor.
Madigan parked, but then sat in his car instead of getting out. It was a little before midnight; was he going to wait until exactly 12:00 A.M.? Or did he not see me at the end of the pier? Then I tensed when he began rooting around in the front seat, but all he pulled out was an umbrella.
Candypants.
He got out of the car, holding his umbrella over him with one hand and carrying a small but powerful flashlight in the other. His steps were sure as he walked onto the pier, and when he turned the corner toward the last section, his flashlight briefly blinded me as he shined it onto my face. Guess he knew where I’d been waiting all along.
“Evening,” I said pleasantly.
“Show me your hands,” he replied in a far less cordial manner.
I pulled them out of my coat pockets, not bothering to hide the curl to my lips as I wagged my fingers at him.
“You’re alone in the dark with a vampire and your first concern is whether I’m packing weapons?” Really? my tone implied.
His mouth thinned, emphasizing wrinkles caused by frowns instead of smiles.
“You should know if I don’t return from this meeting, I’ve left instructions to carry out a drone strike on your mother’s location.”
My half smile never slipped. “If you knew where she was, I’d believe that.”
His gaze swept over me, cold and calculating. “You’re careful. She isn’t. Can you believe she returned to your childhood home in Ohio, as if I haven’t had the place watched since you visited it last fall? Sentimentality can be such a curse, can’t it?”
I didn’t know who I wanted to throttle more—Madigan for his threat or my mother for returning to a location she knew had been compromised. Wait, no contest. Madigan, but I couldn’t. Not yet.
“Why tell me your fail-safe? If I was going to kill you, now I know to call my mother afterward and tell her to hightail it outta there.”
His smile didn’t reach his eyes. It never did. “Cell service has been temporarily disabled in her area.”
I let out a short laugh. “You’re clever, I’ll give you that, but I have no intention of killing you tonight.”
Then my eyes blazed green, cutting through the darkness with more intensity than his flashlight. When I spoke again, my voice resonated with nosferatu power.
“I do, however, have some questions.”
Madigan stared right into my bright emerald gaze. And laughed.
“Did you actually think it would be that easy?”
Quick as flipping a switch, I turned the lights off in my eyes. As I’d suspected, he’d inoculated himself against mind control by drinking vampire blood.
“No, I didn’t.” Then I gave him a lopsided smile. “Still, had to try, right?”
He smiled back. “My thoughts exactly.”
I didn’t get a chance to ask what he meant by that because power blasted through the air. I only had a split second to recognize its source when something large dropped out of the sky, landing behind Madigan with a thump that shook the pier.
“Hallo, mate,” Bones said, yanking the older man against him.
Madigan didn’t struggle. He didn’t even look surprised though you could’ve knocked me over with a feather at my husband’s sudden appearance.
“You lied to me, Crawfield,” Madigan hissed.
“Russell,” I corrected him automatically, still staring at Bones in disbelief.
Then my head jerked up as noises crashed through the woods, the sky, and even the waters around the pier.
Madigan managed a smile despite the tight grip Bones had him in.
“That’s all right. I lied, too.”
If he said anything else, I didn’t hear it. The sound of machine-gun fire was too loud.
Fourteen
I vaulted into the air, wincing as bullets pierced me faster than I could fly out of range. Being shot multiple times hurt, but the pain quickly faded, which meant the bullets weren’t silver.
That surprised me until I remembered that Madigan wanted me alive. He must think I had something really special in my DNA to risk using non-lethal force to capture me, but the joke was on him. I’d be happy to deliver the punch line once we had him back at the apartment, where Denise would morph into his non-evil twin and we’d—
Wait, why was gunfire still going off below? Didn’t Madigan’s people realize we were long gone? Speaking of which, why hadn’t Bones caught up with me yet? He was by far the faster flier.
I stopped and twirled in a circle to search the sky from every direction, but all I saw were storm clouds. There was no telltale charge of supernatural energy in the air, either. Where the he
ll was he?
Then a fresh barrage of gunfire made my stomach clench. He couldn’t still be on the pier, could he?
I dove straight down like a hawk streaking after prey. As I cleaved through layer upon layer of opaque storm clouds, the scene below finally became visible. Soldiers converged on the pier from the woods, boats on the lake, and cars that screeched up to the launch ramp. All with automatic weapons that spit bullets at the lone vampire kneeling on the end of the pier.
“Bones!” I screamed. “Fly, dammit!”
But he didn’t. He fell forward instead, his body slumping against the rough wooden planks. Then the only movement I saw was his clothes ripping as bullets pitilessly continued to strafe him.
I landed next to him so hard that half my body went through the pier. It only took me a second to scramble up and fling myself over him, glad at the icy-hot needles of pain that meant the bullets were piercing me instead of him. Then, over the sound of gunfire, I heard a shout.
“Hold your fire!”
Madigan’s voice, amplified by some sort of device. I lifted my head, a snarl escaping me as I saw him treading water a few dozen feet away from the pier. Somehow, he’d escaped Bones and jumped for it. That was fine. I could carry both of them as I flew—
A shock wave knocked me off Bones and sent me sprawling against the other side of the pier. Concussion grenade, I mentally diagnosed. One amped up enough for vampires. Madigan had really upgraded his toys, but before I could scramble back to Bones, I saw something that froze me into immobility. A line appeared in his blood-spattered cheek, dark as pitch and snaking across his skin like a crack in a statue. Then another line appeared, and another one. And another.
No.
It was the only thought my mind was capable of producing as black lines began to appear all over his skin, zigzagging and splintering off into new, merciless paths. I’d seen the same thing happen to countless vampires before, usually after twisting a silver knife in their hearts, but denial made it impossible for me to believe the same was happening to Bones. He couldn’t be slowly shriveling before my gaze, true death changing his youthful appearance into something that resembled pottery clay baked too long in an oven.
My immobility vanished, replaced by terror such as I’ve never felt. I vaulted across the pier, snatching Bones into my arms while my tears joined the rain in soaking his face.
“NO!”
Even as the scream left me, the changes in him grew worse. His muscular frame felt like it deflated, the hard lines of his body becoming rubbery before they began to shrink. I clutched him tighter, sobs turning my tears scarlet, while something started to hammer in my chest. It felt as though I were being pummeled on the inside with hard, steady blows. My heartbeat, a part of me registered. It had been silent for almost a year, but now, it pounded more strongly than it ever had when I was a human.
Another cry tore out of me when Bones’s skin cracked beneath my hands before sloughing off onto the wooden planks. Frantic, I tried to put it back on, but more flesh began to peel away faster than I could hold it together. Muscle and bone peeked out from those widening spaces, until his face, neck, and arms resembled a gaping slab of meat. But what tore through me like a fire that would never stop burning was his eyes. The dark brown orbs I loved sank into their sockets, dissipating into goo. My scream, high-pitched and agonized, replaced the scrambling sounds of soldiers setting up position around me.
I didn’t try to stop them. I sat there, clutching handfuls of what now looked like dried leather, until all I could see underneath Bones’s bullet-riddled clothes was a pale, withered husk. Dimly, I heard Madigan yell, “I said no silver ammo! Who the fuck fired those rounds?” before everything faded except the pain radiating through me. It made the agony I felt when I’d nearly burned to death a blissful memory. That had only destroyed my flesh, but this tore through my soul, taking every emotion and shredding it with knowledge that was too awful to bear.
Bones was gone. He’d died right before my eyes because I insisted on taking Madigan down my way. I deserved everything I got from the twisted bureaucrat for leading my beloved husband to his death.
“Take her,” Madigan barked.
Rough hands grabbed me, but I didn’t care even when something hard and heavy snapped across my neck, shoulders, and ankles. When someone tried to pry Bones out of my grip, however, my fangs ripped into that person’s throat without so much as a thought. Hot blood sprayed my face and ran down my mouth while dozens of rifles cocked.
“Hold your fucking fire!”
Madigan’s voice again. If anything mattered other than the man I cradled, I’d have torn his throat open next, but I did nothing except tighten my grip on Bones and drop my head next to his.
Rough patches of skull rubbed me where there should have been smooth, sleek skin—another wrecking ball to my emotions I would never recover from.
Sobs shook me so hard that I felt like I was coming apart. That was fine. I wanted to be torn into pieces. It would hurt less than the knowledge of Bones’s death. It’s why I didn’t fight when Madigan said, “Let her keep the body. I’ll study it, too” and a heavy net was flung over me. From the burn wherever it touched skin, it was silver, and from the slashes I felt as it was tightened, it was also fitted with silver razors. Struggling would shred me, not that I had any intention of struggling. I knew without a doubt that Madigan would kill me once he was done with me. If I escaped, however, my friends would try to keep me from joining Bones.
Years ago, Bones had made me promise to go on if he were killed. I’d done so, yet now, I was going back on that promise. Death was my only chance to be reunited with him. I wasn’t missing that for anything.
“Wait for me,” I whispered, my voice breaking on another sob. “I’ll be there soon.”
I rode in the back of a truck while half a dozen armed guards pointed their weapons at me. Oddly enough, their thoughts were muted behind a static-like white noise that emanated from their helmets. Aside from the thick armor plating, the vehicle could have been the back of a U-Haul, the interior was so plain. It also didn’t have windows, but from the length of the drive, our destination wasn’t Madigan’s compound in Tennessee. I wasn’t sure where we were headed, but from the thoughts I caught, we had an armed convoy escorting us the whole way.
The tiny part of me that wasn’t writhing with grief wondered why Madigan hadn’t flown us to our destination. Maybe he was afraid that if I broke through my restraints, a fight at thirty thousand feet could take down the plane and kill everyone.
He was wise to fear that. The only thing that appealed to me more than the thought of my own death was taking Madigan and his soldiers with me. In fact, now that I’d had several hours to process everything, I was kicking myself for letting Madigan truss me up in multiple restraints plus a silver net complete with razors. I could’ve gone out on the pier in a hail of gunfire after ripping out his throat, then stomping on his remains.
As they say, hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
The truck began to bounce as we turned off a main road onto one that felt earthen instead of gravelly. I shifted Bones’s body more fully onto my lap so that the rough jostling didn’t knock anything off him. He’d been nearly invincible in life, but in death, his remains were fragile, aged as they were now to his full two-and-a-half centuries. If not for the triple set of manacles restraining me, I’d have taken off my coat and wrapped him in it, but my upper arms were plastered to my sides, pinning my jacket onto me.
After fifteen minutes or so, the vehicle stopped, and the back hatch opened, letting in a wall of light. I blinked until the brightness transformed into a background of trees shrouded with moss. Then I inhaled, noting that the fresh air was thick with moisture, mold, and the tang of old chemicals. Seeing that the bleakly beautiful landscape had a small, grass-covered dome in the distance was almost redundant.
Madigan had taken me t
o the McClintic Wildlife Management area in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Exactly where I wanted to go, except under far different circumstances.
I considered fighting when the soldiers hauled on the net to drag me out, but then decided against it. For one, that would decimate Bones’s remains. For another, if Tate, Juan, Dave, and Cooper were here, then my last act would be to free them. They were my friends. Besides, Bones would want me to free his people. How could I disappoint him?
Once out of the truck, I was hustled onto what looked like a large luggage cart. When thin red lines criss-crossed from pole to pole to encompass the perimeter around me, however, I understood. Laser beams. This must be how he’d gotten Tate and the others into the facility without mass casualties. Anything that breached those beams would get sliced off, and while vampire limbs grew back, our heads didn’t.
As I was wheeled toward one of the former munitions igloos, a male voice screamed my name. My head jerked up. Through the netting and red laser beams, I saw Fabian flying in frantic circles above the cart.
“What should I do? Who do I tell?” the ghost wailed.
None of my guards looked up. They couldn’t hear him, so when I said, “Don’t do anything. Go home,” several helmeted heads turned in my direction before looking around warily.
Fabian flew closer, until I could see the determination in his faded blue gaze.
“I won’t abandon you,” he said in a steely tone.
I looked away, fresh tears spilling down my cheeks. “You don’t have a choice, my friend. Now please, go.”
“Cat—!”
His voice was snatched away as I was pushed into the concrete igloo and a hidden door flashed across the entrance. My laser-rigged trolley cart shook as something metallic clamped onto its wheels. Then four short, T-shaped poles rose from the stained concrete floor. The guards grasped them just as the ground began to vibrate, making the old litter stuck to it tremble, before it abruptly dropped beneath us.