Ian laughed. “Wretched timing you have, poppet,” he told Elisabeth, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that a small, selfish part of me also wished she’d poofed up with this good news a few hours later.
Some of her smile faded. “Is something amiss?”
“Nothing,” I told her while flashing Bones a rueful smile as I started back down the stairs. “Where is he?”
“Sioux City, Iowa,” she replied. “I’ve seen him there four times now. Far too many to be mere coincidence. This must be where he’ll select his victims.”
“He picks all of his victims from the same area? I thought you said Kramer made sure never to utilize the same place twice.”
“He chooses a new location every All Hallows’ Eve, very far from any of the places where the previous burnings occurred. Last year, he was in Hong Kong. Often he will hide the bodies to prevent the authorities from realizing the same type of murders occur every year. But the accomplice and the three victims are always chosen from same place.”
He hid the bodies? “Why would he care if the police were onto him? It’s not like they could put him in handcuffs.”
“Because of his accomplices,” Elisabeth replied. “If they learned the pattern of the previous murderers through periodicals or modern news, they would realize that once they’ve concluded their usefulness, Kramer will kill them, too.”
“He eliminates every tie to his crimes, even ones from whoever’s assisting him?” Ian whistled. “Starting to admire this bloke’s resourcefulness.”
“You would,” I countered.
Elisabeth said nothing, but a spasm crossed her face that I picked up on even with her being partially transparent. Fabian floated over to her, resting his hands on her shoulders.
“You must tell them.”
Bones’s brows went up. “Tell us what?” Denise asked, beating him or me to it.
Elisabeth closed her eyes, seeming to gather herself together. If she’d been solid, I’d have asked her to sit down, because she looked downright, well, ghostly.
“Kramer does not kill his accomplices merely to eliminate ties to his crimes,” she said, her voice barely audible. “He always picks those who are fanatical in their belief that they are doing God’s work by assisting him in the elimination of witches. But many of them, when they see what he . . . does when he is flesh, realize it is all a lie.”
Bones’s expression became grim. Even Ian looked like he’d swallowed something distasteful. Denise seemed as clueless as I felt over Elisabeth’s oblique statement, but then her meaning hit me, and my stomach clenched in a way that made me think I was about to spew up my liquid dinner all over the coffee table.
“He rapes them,” I stated, a deep loathing spreading through me.
Elisabeth’s bowed head came up. She looked right at me as she spoke the next words.
“They weren’t the first.”
This time, I knew right away what she meant, and more of that same fury rose in me. It should come as no surprise that this wasn’t a new pattern for Kramer. I’d read enough of the Malleus Maleficarum to know that second only to his hatred of women was Kramer’s deviant obsession with female sexuality. Rape would be yet another tool he’d use in his quest to physically and emotionally destroy women before he had them killed, and in Elisabeth’s time, Inquisitors were given absolute power over the accused—and unsupervised access.
Elisabeth had endured this hellish nightmare, then watched Kramer continue on in the same despicable pattern as a ghost. Yet here she was—unbroken, uncowed, and unwilling to give up her quest for justice no matter which side of eternity she had to fight for it on.
“You’re amazing, you know that?” I said, awed by her strength.
That made her bow her head again. “No, but out of everyone Kramer murdered, I alone still exist. I owe it to the lost not to give up.”
Silence met her statement. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother swipe at her face as if chasing away tears. It brought back an awful memory: her, covered in dirt and blood, begging me to kill her because she couldn’t live with what she’d done during her first few, blood-crazed days as a new vampire. All my arguments of how the vampire who’d thrown those humans in with her—knowing what would happen and doing it just to torment her—was the real murderer had fallen on deaf ears. Only Bones sternly telling my mother she wasn’t allowed to die because it would dishonor the sacrifice Rodney made when he gave his life during her rescue had reached her.
Sometimes, continuing on in honor of the lost was all a person had.
“Sioux City, Iowa.” Bones drew the words out. “We’ll go there tomorrow.”
I shook myself out of the sorrows of the past. To stop Kramer, I needed to be focused on the present. That was probably what had kept Elisabeth sane and on track all these years.
“Let’s get back to Kramer’s pattern. If he’s so concerned about covering his tracks, do you know why he picks his victims from the same city?”
Maybe his motive would be something we could use against him. Sticking to the same area was common enough if we were talking human, vampire, or ghoul serial killers, but as a ghost, Kramer could circle the entire globe in hours if he kept hopping on enough ley lines.
“Why would he limit himself that way?” I continued to wonder. “He knows you’ve been after him, Elisabeth, but he’s making himself easier to find by sticking to one area when he hunts for his victims.”
Bleakness tightened her features. “Perhaps it’s because I’ve proven to be no real threat to him over the years.”
“That’s not why,” Bones stated. “Kramer can flit in and out of cities in a blink, but his accomplice is flesh and blood. Much more limiting, so if the intended victims are all located within a small geographic area, they’re easier for the accomplice to collect when the time comes.”
Right, Kramer couldn’t kidnap those women himself unless he waited until he was solid, and that only happened for one night. Must not be enough time for the bastard to do every horrible thing on his wish list before he burned them alive. But while the accomplice was Kramer’s most valuable asset, he was also the Inquisitor’s Achilles’ heel. If we found the accomplice in time, Kramer would spend Halloween evening all fleshed up but with no one to torture or burn. The thought filled me with savage satisfaction.
“We need to kill the accomplice as soon as we find out who he is,” I stated.
“No.”
All heads swung toward Bones, mine included. He tapped his chin, his dark gaze measured and cold.
“If we find out who the accomplice is, we grab him. Mesmerize him into telling us exactly where Kramer intends to hold his nasty bonfire. Then on All Hallows’ Eve, we go there, saving the women while capturing both sods instead of only one. Kramer will be solid then, and he can’t escape as easily when he’s solid, can he?”
I stared at my husband’s profile, noting how his sculpted cheekbones, curving dark brows, and exquisite crystal skin only highlighted the ruthlessness of his expression.
“So we go to Sioux City and find the accomplice,” I said softly.
His mouth curved into a smile that was half predator, half dream lover.
“Indeed.”
Nineteen
I picked up the chocolate cake on my way to the bedroom, but that was more because I didn’t want to leave it on the steps than a continued craving for it. My thoughts were more focused on justifiable homicide than cake eating, kinky or otherwise. I wasn’t the only one in a more somber mood. My mother muttered that she was going for a drive and left the house without any further comment. It could be nothing more than her leaving to find someone to drink from, but I didn’t think hunger was her sole motivator. I probably never wanted to know how much of Elisabeth’s treatment she herself had endured during the time she’d been kidnapped, murdered, and forcibly changed into a vampire, all because another vampire was trying to get back at me. Fabian and Elisabeth also left right after her, not needing a car to get away, of
course.
Contemplating all the sickening things that Kramer and others like him had done made me feel like I was covered in an invisible layer of filth, causing me to go straight into the shower after entering the bedroom. I couldn’t wash away Kramer’s evil from the world—yet—but I could wash myself off before bed, at least.
When I came out of the bathroom twenty minutes later, Bones was seated on the edge of the bed, absently petting my cat. His shoes were off, his shirt in a pile on the floor next to them, but he hadn’t undressed further than that. I paused in the middle of toweling my hair. Normally, Bones didn’t do anything halfway, but he just sat there, as if he’d run out of energy to take off his pants.
“Everything okay?” I asked, coming closer.
He smiled slightly, abandoning his attention to my cat in favor of reaching out to rest his hands on my waist. “I was just remembering when I said if I were any more relaxed about our circumstances, I’d need a smoke. Spoke too soon, as it turned out.”
I took another step until the thick fabric of my robe almost brushed his face. “Yeah, well. Fate has a dark sense of humor sometimes, right?”
“We need to discuss something, Kitten.”
He sounded so serious that nervousness wormed its way into my gut. “What?”
“Limits,” he said steadily. “I want to stop Kramer. His sort is the reason why I fell into contract killing in the first place, as I told you a long time ago. But, much as I admire her courage, I don’t want to see you turn into Elisabeth.”
I leaned back to look at him, brushing a dark curl behind his ear. “What do you mean by that?”
“She’ll never stop hunting him. She’s accepted it as her purpose in life, but there is a very real possibility that we won’t be able to trap him. We’ll bloody well try, but”—Bones flicked his fingers, blowing out a breath at the same time—“he’s air all but one night a year, so we’re literally chasing the wind. I’m not saying we’ll give up if we can’t catch him this Halloween, but I am saying that one day, even if Elisabeth doesn’t stop, we may have to.”
“But he can’t just keep getting away with this,” I argued at once. “How can we think about quitting? You heard what he does! And he’ll keep on doing it unless he’s stopped.”
Bones caught my hands, his dark gaze intense. “This is exactly what I meant about your turning into Elisabeth. She’s given every moment of the past five hundred years over to Kramer, in one way or another, and there’s been a price for that, hasn’t there? She shares her life with only her plans for vengeance, and she’s more than earned that vengeance, but I don’t want to see you go down the same path. Sometimes, people who deserve vengeance don’t get it, and people who are due punishment escape their comeuppance.”
He sighed and dropped my hands, a muscle ticking in his jaw before he spoke again.
“I’m not saying we try this Halloween and then stop if we fail. I’m willing to commit years to this because I want this sod locked in a box so he can forever know the helplessness and terror he’s inflicted on others, but I can accept that it might not happen. You need to accept that, too, because know this—I won’t let you sacrifice yourself in a never-ending quest to defeat someone who might not be able to be caught.”
My fists clenched. “You could do that? Turn your back on Elisabeth and all of Kramer’s future victims, knowing what will keep happening? You would let that murdering prick win—”
“This isn’t a game, Kitten,” he interrupted. “It’s life, and there will always be injustice no matter how frustrating that is to accept. We’ll give Kramer our best shot, but if we fail, we fail. And then we move on.”
I sucked in a breath to tell him what I thought of that quitter mentality, but under Bones’s hard, knowing stare, I expelled it not in a rant, but in a long sigh. Kramer was such a clear-cut case of evil prowling on the loose that it felt like a betrayal of everything those women had suffered to admit that Kramer could use his ghostly state to forever evade punishment. My knee-jerk response was to shout, Screw that, I’ll catch you if it’s the last thing I ever do!
And that was how Elisabeth had let the pursuit of him fill her life until there was room for nothing else. Part of me still wanted to call Bones a coldhearted bastard for even considering giving up the hunt on Kramer one day, but that would just be my denial talking. I wouldn’t mean those ugly words, and they wouldn’t be true; nonetheless they’d been frothing close to the surface. The knowledge that I’d been about to attack the man I loved because he pointed out the very obvious fact that we lived in a world where sometimes, good didn’t defeat evil, and the good guys didn’t ride off into the sunset made me realize how far down Elisabeth’s road I’d already traveled.
I still admired her for her strength of will under repeated, devastating circumstances, but now, I also pitied her. Elisabeth lived for defeating Kramer, and nothing else. How much richer would the long years of her life have been if she’d still sought a way to stop Kramer, but chosen to live for something else, like friendship or love?
“You’re not going to lose me to this,” I finally said. “Defeating Kramer is my goal, and I’ll try like hell to accomplish it, but you, Bones . . . you’re my life, and you always will be.”
He stood, catching my hand in his. Slowly, he raised it to his lips, kissing the ring he’d first put on my finger two years ago. Then his mouth moved up my hand, dragging over my wrist before continuing on its path up my arm, his gaze never leaving mine. By the time he reached my shoulder, I was quivering with desire and other, deeper emotions. I wanted to cry for all the years I’d let circumstances keep us apart, and I wanted to tear away his pants so he could be inside me, bringing us as close together as two people could be.
A moan escaped me when his mouth caressed my neck, his lips and fangs teasing the sensitive skin. He caught my wrists when I tried to slide my hands over his back, holding them gently at my sides. Now my moan was one of mild frustration. Even though he was so close that his aura brushed over me like a warm, invisible cloud, our bodies weren’t touching. The only contact we had was his mouth on my neck and his hands clasped around my wrists, and that wasn’t enough. Yet when I moved forward, he took a step back, his soft chuckle muffled by my throat.
“Not yet.”
Yes, yet. I edged closer again, but Bones sidestepped me once more. I couldn’t even slide my robe off to tempt him with bare flesh because he still held my wrists in a gentle yet unyielding grip.
“Bones,” I whispered. “I want to touch you.”
His low growl rumbled against my throat. “And I want to touch you, Kitten. So hold still and let me try.”
What did he mean, try? I was right here, attempting to bring our bodies together, and he was the one thwarting me. All he had to do was let go of my wrists, and we’d be touching every inch of each other in about two seconds flat—
I gasped, surprise and ecstasy flaring in me at the sudden tug along the sensitive tips of my nipples. They hardened in expectation of another touch, and it came, leaving them aching with the need for more. But Bones’s hands hadn’t left my wrists, and his mouth was still pressed to my neck, tongue and fangs grazing over the areas that made me weakest with desire.
“How?” I managed, the question ending on a groan as both tips felt like they were being slowly, sensually pinched.
His hands tightened on my wrists. “Because I want to touch you so badly, yet I’m not allowing myself. So my mind is doing it for me. Feel where I want to be touching you right now . . .”
I didn’t have time to be amazed at this exercise of his new power before a long, intimate caress had me shuddering with rapture. My loins clenched, greedily demanding more. The thought that he must’ve been practicing his telekinetic ability on the sly in order to wield it so skillfully now flitted through my mind before another tantalizing stroke cleared out any more musings under a tide of need. Bones continued to kiss my neck, his tongue flicking out to lave away the scant drops of blood he drew wh
en his fangs broke my skin. A sharper, rougher moan left my lips, my eyelids lowering with the erotic sensations, until my vision was narrowed to two heavy-lidded slits.
That was why it took me a second to notice the small object right behind him, but my instincts took over before my mind roused from its state of sensual bliss. I kicked Bones’s legs out from under him the instant before Helsing let out loud hiss, throwing myself forward to shield Bones from the arcing path of the knife.
Fire sliced a path from my cheek down the back of my neck. Bones spun in midair, knocking away the blade that continued to rip down my body. Through the veil of red hair that swung into my face, I saw a dark, diaphanous form start to take shape in the room.
“Kramer!” I shouted.
Twenty
Bones lunged for the sage and lighters on our nightstand, but the ghost crashed it over before he could get to it. The lighter went flying across the room, the sage getting buried under the remains of the table. That knife surged toward me again, but before it landed, Bones had me in a bear hug, rolling us out of the way. Pain cresting through my subconscious told me he hadn’t rolled fast enough, but I couldn’t see where he’d been stabbed. I pushed at his chest, but he didn’t let me go, grimly keeping his body between me and the silver knife that kept slashing at us no matter how fast we moved.
Our door crashed open. Denise’s brown hair flew around her as she charged in holding a wad of sage and a lighter. Before she could connect the two, however, the bed launched across the room and slammed into her. She held on to the sage, but lighter was jolted from her hand at the impact of the frame crushing against her fingers. It skidded across the room not far from where Helsing huddled, his hair standing on end and yowling sounds coming from him.
Another crash of footsteps coming down the hall was met with the bed and all the other furniture in the room slamming over the doorway, effective blocking it. Over the booming at the blockaded door, I heard an even more chilling sound—the metallic clang of our weapons’ bag being ripped open. Before I could even shout out a warning, a slew of silver came torpedoing at us.