One Grave at a Time (20 page)

I tensed every muscle in my body, ignoring the flares of pain that were multiple broken bones trying to knit back together, and heaved up with all of my strength. Agony flashed through me, making me momentarily dizzy, but the weight moved off as far as my arms and legs could stretch. Another blisteringly painful heave, and I slithered out from under it, letting it fall back down with a crash once I was clear.

Several blinks later, and I could see enough to be dismayed at the cluster of people gathered nearby, each of them displaying varying degrees of shock. I didn’t see any phones held up capturing footage, though, so I had to be grateful for that. Then I caught sight of someone else staring at me. Kramer floated in the empty space along the road where the car had been parked, his green gaze locked onto me with unrelenting intensity.

I didn’t know why he wasn’t zooming in for another of those bone-cracking energy shots, but damned if I’d just stand here and pose for him until he got around to it. I whirled, pointing myself in the least-populated direction of the street, and started to run. More bones crunched, and my skin felt like I’d been staked on an anthill before I finished healing, but I didn’t stop running, waiting for the next blast of pain that would signal Kramer’s catching up with me.

I heard a whoosh, then something hard pressed into my gut. My instant defensive reaction stilled when I recognized the power flooding around me, crackling the air with hidden currents. The ground left my feet as I was yanked upward, one strong arm around my midsection, the other locked around someone screaming in a high-pitched, feminine voice.

That scream was the sweetest music I’d heard because it meant Bones had gotten to Kramer’s last intended victim in time to save her.

Thirty-one

O
nce we’d gone high and far enough away that we knew Kramer couldn’t have followed, Bones texted Spade and told him to meet us at War Eagle Park where I-29 was closest to the Missouri River. It had been over an hour since we left Kramer raging on the ground, but we still wouldn’t risk taking the woman directly to Spade’s and giving the ghost even the smallest chance to track her there through me.

Her name was Sarah, and she hadn’t settled down much since Bones took her away from her house, not that I blamed her. If that flight hadn’t been enough to scare her senseless, it only took five minutes talking to her to realize that Kramer had tormented Sarah to the very edge of sanity. With Francine and Lisa out of his reach, he’d clearly made up for lost time with her, just as I’d feared he would. Sarah’s thoughts were a mixture of white noise, terror, and repetitions of the same crap Kramer had spouted to me about not suffering witches to live and his being unstoppable. Bones and I told her she could trust us, making sure our eyes were lit up when we said it, but she seemed past the point of being calmed by our gazes.

Some people, for reasons of genetic anomaly, trauma, or staunch willpower, needed to be bitten before vampire mind control would work, but I couldn’t bring myself to bite her on top of everything else. She didn’t try to run, so maybe some of what we told her was getting through even though the poor woman jumped at every noise, gaze darting about as if expecting Kramer to pop up and continue his abuse. I could only hope that a few days of being around Francine and Lisa would help bring Sarah back from what seemed to be a near mental breakdown.

Of course, what would really help Sarah and the other women would be for us to manage to stuff their tormentor into that stone-and-mineral trap. Then they could take all the time they needed to heal from the emotional damage he’d inflicted on them. Anger burned through me. Most murderers I’d encountered, while still vile to the bone, only sought to destroy people’s bodies, but that wasn’t enough for Kramer. He had to crush their minds, hearts, and spirits, too.

Spade descended from the night’s canvass, and Sarah reared back, the scent of fear exploding out of her pores. Guess seeing another person drop out of the sky was too much for her right now. I held on to her, murmuring that he was a friend, and she’d be safe with him. Only when I told her that he’d take her to Francine and Lisa did she calm down enough to stop trying to pull away. I’d told her about the other two women Kramer had set his sights on, and how they were safe. Words were nice, but seeing them for herself would do more to prove to her badly wounded psyche that Kramer wasn’t the all-powerful punisher he’d made himself out to be than any reassurances I could give her.

Bones walked over to his friend with a last pitying glance her way, taking Spade off to the side to warn him about her fragile mental state, I assumed. After a minute of hushed conversation, they came back. The other vampire held out a bundle to her that I gratefully recognized was a coat. Bones and I left so fast to retrieve her, we hadn’t thought to grab our own coats, let alone bring an extra one for her.

“Sarah, this is my very good mate, Spade,” Bones said, calling him by his chosen name instead of the one he normally used. “He’ll take excellent care of you.”

She took the coat but then edged closer to me. “He? Aren’t you coming, too?”

Her dark topaz gaze was pleading, fragmented thoughts revealing that she didn’t want to go without me. It might be because I was another woman, and that made me feel safer to her, or because Spade looked rather imposing with his great height and black coat surrounding him. Our proximity to the river even had his shoulder-length hair blowing dramatically around his face, adding to the effect, but in addition to being trustworthy, Spade also had a deep chivalrous streak.

“I can’t come now, but I’ll see you soon,” I promised her, exchanging a glance with Bones. Real soon, considering we’d deliver the trap to Spade’s in the next couple days, then wait for my inner signal to lead Kramer right to us.

Wait until Sarah found that out. Then she’d be extra, extra nervous.

Or maybe we’d be lucky, and she’d know who the accomplice was. Two out of three women had fit the same pattern before Kramer started attacking them, and I was betting Sarah wouldn’t be the exception.

“Sarah, you had a cat recently, didn’t you?” I asked her. “One who died? Do you happen to know how it happened, or who did it?”

Her thoughts seized with that question, making it hard to pick out the coherent ones from their less stable, scattered counterparts. I caught words like “hung” and “break in,” though, confirming my belief. Francine’s and Lisa’s cats had been hung, too, their little bodies left on display. Step one in the beginning of Kramer’s reign of torment.

“Do you know who did it?” I pressed.

She shook her head, getting so visibly upset that Bones nudged me. “Let her get settled first, Kitten,” he murmured. “She’ll be better able to answer questions with Denise and the others.”

He was right. This was too soon, and it was a long shot that she’d know who killed her cat, anyway. I gave Sarah a quick hug goodbye, telling her again that this would all be over soon, and she’d be safe.

God, let that be true,
I prayed.

Spade held out his arm to Sarah as if he were offering to escort her to a ball. “Please come with me,” he said.

She looked at me. I nodded, forcing a smile. “He’ll take you to the others, and I’ll see you soon.”

With obvious reluctance, she took Spade’s arm. Spade gave a last nod to me and Bones, then swooped Sarah up and winged her away with all the flair of those old Dracula movies that the real Vlad Tepesh hated. A scream trailed after them, growing fainter, until Sarah’s voice was lost to the darkness.

I turned to Bones with a slight smile. “Beam me up, Scotty.”

His snort was soft with amusement. “You don’t need me for that. You can beam yourself now.”

“I know,” I said, sliding my arms around him. “But I’d rather fly like this.”

His arms circled me, strong, hard, and infinitely blissful. “So would I, Kitten.”

M
uch later, I heard the distinct rustle of boards on the porch that said someone was out there. Had to be Kramer. I stayed seated on the family room floor with my back propped against the wall and debated ignoring him. If I moved, Bones might wake up, and he’d just fallen asleep. It was my turn to make sure all the sage stayed lit while everyone else slept. Kramer had been known to chuck branches or boards at sage jars to knock them over, trying either to burn us out or extinguish the repelling smoke. Neither was an option we wanted to explore, hence the shifts.

If left up to Bones, he’d split up the watches between himself and Ian, but that wouldn’t be fair. My mother couldn’t help her weariness as soon as dawn struck, but I could stay awake as well as the men could. All of us slept in the family room, sharing the four mattresses that we’d brought in from the bedrooms. It might not be comfortable—and it sure as hell wasn’t romantic—but it was safer. If by chance the watchperson
did
fall asleep and Kramer managed to sneak past the sage and get in, he wouldn’t be able to single out the most vulnerable of us without waking all the rest. Not with the way we slept, clustered around each other.

Another creak of the boards sounded outside, but this time, it was followed by a whisper I couldn’t make out. I frowned. That was unusual for Kramer. He normally liked to bash about while stringing curses together as loud as he could squawk. The ghost knew when we slept, too, so he frequently stopped by at dawn for maximum pain in the ass effect. But whispers? It made me curious enough to get up. It might be Fabian or Elisabeth, unable to venture inside because of the sage and trying to be considerate by not waking everyone with a loud greeting.

I crept toward the door, keeping as quiet as I could. No need for everyone to wake up and investigate the odd whisper. Bones stirred, but his eyes remained closed. My mother was dead to the world, Tyler’s snores continued uninterrupted, and Ian didn’t even twitch. I couldn’t help shaking my head as I looked at him. Ian slept like a baby every morning—well, a baby who continually kept one hand down his pants. Guess his misdeeds didn’t bother his conscience enough to cost him a moment of shut-eye.

Carefully, still trying not to wake the others, I opened the front door. To my surprise, it was Kramer floating over the far side of the ruined porch instead of Fabian or Elisabeth. He let go of one of the loose boards when he saw me, beckoning me forward with almost a friendly gesture.

Oh, sure, I’ll come right over without getting any sage first
, I thought. Did he think slamming that car on me had knocked my brains loose?

I gave him the finger, then picked up two of the nearest jars of sage, deciding to go a few feet away from the door only because I wanted to give everyone else a few more moments of sleep. If Kramer kept to his usual form, he’d be cursing and hurling boards at the house soon enough.

The Inquisitor didn’t respond to my fingered opinion. He simply waited without moving or speaking while I walked over without making a sound on the rickety remains of the porch. I kept the door open, and, though I ventured away from it, I made sure to stay within two good lunges.

“Fancy seeing you again,” I said, keeping my voice low.

That moss green gaze raked me from head to toe, but not in the sleazy way he’d done on other occasions. This time, it was the gaze of an enemy sizing up his opponent and finding her lacking.

“Do you truly believe that you, a mere woman, can defeat me?”

Aside from the gender insult, this was the most rational I’d ever seen Kramer. He sounded genuinely thoughtful and his voice was as quiet as mine—a huge departure from his normal, trumpeted witches-will-burn rants. I could respond to his question by listing all the other arrogant bastards I’d taken down over the years. Or by pointing out that I’d already defeated his plans for Francine, Sarah, and Lisa by putting them out of his reach for now, but I preferred to remain underestimated.
Don’t worry about widdle gurly me, big bad monster. I’m harmless.

“Talk is meaningless. We’ll know who’s defeated whom when it’s all over, and there’s only one of us left standing,” I replied.

From the faint scraping sound, someone in the house had woken up and was headed toward the door. Before he got there, I knew it was Bones from the brushes of his aura. Even whispers had disturbed his light sleep. Kramer didn’t seem to notice. His attention didn’t waver from me.

“Though you are a woman, you are strong,” the ghost said, still in that same musing way. “You pushed the car aside as if it had no effect.”

Actually, it had hurt like hell. Under other circumstances, I might have stayed under it saying things like “Ow, ow, oww!” while I waited to heal, but I didn’t have the luxury at the time.

“You’re not the first person who’s tried to kill me with a car,” was what I said, shrugging as if either time hadn’t been a big deal. I could feel that Bones was in the doorway, but he didn’t come out, keeping concealed from the ghost in the shadows of the doorframe.

Kramer smiled, cold and calculating. “I knew it would not kill you.”

Interesting. Now that he mentioned it, he hadn’t been running around trying to ignite the fuel tank while I was briefly trapped under it. Didn’t it occur to him to try to blow the car up? Or was he lying about knowing the car wouldn’t kill me?

Far be it for me to understand the mental workings of a maniac.

“What’s with quiet chatting instead of your usual blustering?” I asked, changing the subject. “You lonely because Francine, Lisa, and Sarah are out of your reach, so you have no one to talk to?”

Please get pissed and tell me who your accomplice is,
I silently urged him.
Go on, impress me with how much time you spend with whoever that prick is!

But he didn’t. He gave me another of those contemplative looks instead. “Why do you risk so much for them? They are nothing to you.”

“No, they’re nothing to
you
,” I corrected at once, “but they mean something to me because they’re in trouble and I can help. If I only put my ass on the line for people I loved, I’d be no better than half the monsters I’ve hunted. Even evil people risk themselves for loved ones. Just because you picked women I don’t know doesn’t mean I’m going to sit on the sidelines and let them die.”

His smile grew, showing those brownish molars in between gaps of gums. I couldn’t help but think it was poetic justice that he would keep that nasty mouth all through eternity, hopefully while locked in a homemade jail.

“You still believe you can stop me,
Hexe
, but you can’t. You don’t fear me, but soon, you will.”

“No, I won’t,” I replied sharply. “You won’t draw any strength from me because I’ve got your number, Inquisitor. You might be harder to kill with your whole lack of a physical body, but you’re no scarier than all the other assholes that are now dead while I’m still standing.”

“Until Samhain,” was all he said, then vanished from sight.

I stared at the spot where he’d been, a smile of my own twisting my mouth.