Up From the Grave: A Night Huntress Novel (12 page)

Twenty-one

K
atie wasn’t in the underground facility anymore. Tate followed her scent and discovered a secret shaft between the walls that led straight up to the surface. The thick metal plug over it had been kicked off. It was too narrow for an adult to fit through, so it might have been a ventilation shaft, once upon a time when this facility was a bomb shelter. But to a slender child with a double dose of inhuman genetics, it would have been a relatively easy climb to freedom.

Once topside, the ponds, lakes, and surrounding wetlands dissipated her scent enough to make it untraceable. Then the only footprints Katie left ended in a shallow canal, so we couldn’t find her that way. It was still daylight, too, which meant we couldn’t risk doing an aerial sweep. Something man-sized flying above the McClintic Wildlife area would fuel Mothman rumors for decades, and we couldn’t risk hanging around until after dark to do it then.

We’d have to come back another time to search for her. Superhuman or not, Katie was still only a child. She shouldn’t be too hard to find.

Once back in the compound, we determined that the surviving employees weren’t directly involved in Madigan’s cross-species experiments and replaced their memories of the day’s events with a new version. Then we left them topside in a concrete igloo with instructions not to leave it until dawn. If a distress signal hadn’t been sent, we wanted the extra time to get away.

Then we went back underground and torched the rest of the facility. My DNA was on file with these people, and I didn’t want to leave more of it as proof that I’d been involved in the destruction even though I’d be the first, second, and third guess for Madigan’s shadowy backers. That’s why I was calling my mother as soon as I had a working cell phone. Madigan might have been bluffing about her being at our old house in Ohio, but if he wasn’t, I wasn’t about to test his drone strike threat. If we were
ridiculously
lucky, Madigan’s backers would believe the cover story we implanted in the survivors’ minds: an internal malfunction triggered the Dante machine’s explosion, which ignited other flammable gases in the compound and resulted in a fiery chain reaction.

It was a plausible theory unless someone bothered to autopsy all the bodies.

Madigan still hadn’t woken up yet. The delay wasn’t unheard of, Bones told me, but it didn’t bode well for his chances of rising as a ghoul. Most did within minutes, as Dave had. Maybe Madigan had managed to escape us after all. If so, I could only console myself that he wouldn’t escape God.

So, blood-spattered and weary, the seven of us emerged from the igloo that contained the secret elevation shaft. Spade was waiting nearby since Fabian gave him the all clear to enter the wildlife area. The ghost had been overjoyed to see we were all alive and well since, like me, he hadn’t known that my arrival with my husband’s corpse had been a setup.

That was something I intended to address as soon as I was alone with Bones. Right now, we had to walk out of here without getting stopped by reinforcements, then we had to search for a pint-sized, multi-species pre-tween who might be the deadliest thing on two legs.

What we didn’t need was to encounter a group of young, wannabe cryptozoologists who were wandering around the preserve swapping Mothman stories.

“I’m tellin’ ya, right there I saw something,” a freckled boy wearing an “I want to believe” tee shirt was saying as he pointed at a sealed igloo.

He stopped talking when he saw us. The three girls and two boys he was with at first stared, then giggled nervously.

What happened to them? Is that blood?
raced through their thoughts.

I was about to start mesmerizing the group when Denise spoke.

“You’ve got to try zombie larping,” she said to them. “It’s the only way to live-action role-play.”

“Ah.”

The freckled boy nodded approvingly as he took in my blood-soaked lab coat, Bones’s ripped, bullet-riddled clothes, Denise’s bloody medical scrubs, and the guys’ equally red-smeared outfits. The fact that Tate had Madigan’s body flung over his shoulder probably added to his air of authenticity. Then the boy frowned when he saw Spade’s immaculate white shirt and pressed, tailored pants.

“His costume sucks.”

“He’s new,” I said, covering the sound of Spade’s warning growl.

“Well . . . have fun,” the blonde with the ponytail replied.
Nerds,
she thought. Then,
Oh, he’s
hot
followed as she stared at the gaps in Bones’s pants when we walked past them.

If I hadn’t had the day from hell, I would’ve told her to stop checking out my husband’s ass. Instead, I took Bones’s arm and kept walking. If it wasn’t trying to kill us, it wasn’t worthy of my attention at the moment.

We made it out of the wildlife area without further incident, then we piled into a black Suburban that had Ian waiting at the wheel.

“Who’s the stiff?” was his only comment as he drove away.

“The sod that’s been after Cat,” Bones replied shortly.

“I’m looking for a little girl with auburn hair who might have passed by here an hour ago. Did you see her?” Tate asked Ian.

He shrugged. “Little as in short or young?”

“Very young. Around ten years old.”

At that, Ian’s brows went up. “Captivity’s made you right twisted, hasn’t it?”

Tate punched the back of Ian’s seat so hard, the headrest snapped off and beamed him in the head.

“She was a prisoner, you prick!”

Ian slammed on the brakes and put the car in park. Bones leaned over me and gripped Ian’s arm when he was about to yank open his door.

“I’ll handle it,” he said in a low, hard voice.

Ian’s eyes blazed green as he glared at Tate in the rearview mirror. “Don’t bother. I’ll forgive his assault on the basis of his being distraught after his recent experience.”

“Thanks ever so,” Bones said, still with that tempered steel in his voice. Then he swiveled around to face Tate.

“Years ago, when you wanted me to change you into a vampire, I told you that one day, you’d be finished with your job but still bound by the rules of my world. Today is that day, mate.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tate asked in a sour voice.

“It means that as my creation, your striking another vampire is the same as my doing it,” Bones responded sharply. “That’s why you won’t do it again without my permission. Quite clear now?”

Tate stared at him, the rugged lines of his face hardening.

“I’d forgotten how much I don’t like you,” he said softly.

I told myself that I wouldn’t interfere, but this was too much.

“Oh, stuff it, Tate. The upside of being Bones’s creation is his risking his life to break you out of prison, so deal with the less-fun fealty part. Like he said, it’s what you signed on for when you became a vampire.”

Then I turned to Ian. “A sleazy comment about a child? Really?”

“I thought
he
was being sleazy,” Ian responded at once. “And called him twisted for it, as is anyone who’s interested that way in a child.”

He actually managed to sound affronted. Good to know Ian had some sort of a moral center, even if it was covered by piles of pornography and violence.

“Then this was a misunderstanding that went too far,” I summarized while wondering how many wars had been started by the same thing. “Are we good now?”

That last part was directed at Bones. I didn’t know everything about vampire hierarchy, so I wasn’t sure if Tate still had to pay for assaulting his friend even if Ian was willing to overlook it.

“For now,” Bones said, staring at Tate.

The younger vampire looked away. From the way Tate crossed his arms over his chest, this wouldn’t be the last power struggle between them, but his silence confirmed his acquiescence.

Then Bones turned his attention to Ian. “You never said if you saw the little girl.”

“No, I didn’t,” Ian replied as he put the vehicle back into drive. “Why would your troublemaking corpse bother to imprison a child?”

Bones sighed. “That, mate, you’re not going to believe.”

Twenty-two

I
n case we were being followed, we ditched the Suburban once we were away from the prying eyes of populated areas. Then, since half of our group couldn’t fly, the rest of us grabbed a person and played Iron Man’s version of Barrel of Monkeys. Once in the air, the only tails we needed to worry about were planes, helicopters, or drones, but thankfully, we hadn’t seen any of those yet.

We didn’t fly for very long. The skies were too clear to risk traveling over cities, and Madigan could wake up at any moment. Plus, now that the immediate danger had passed, my burst of survival energy was gone, leaving me dangerously tired. Flying while carrying a good-sized male didn’t help. When I found myself eyeing a patch of farmland and fantasizing about crashing onto it so I could sleep, I knew I’d depleted whatever reserves I’d been running on. Thankfully, Ian and Spade began to descend, signaling that we were close to our destination.

That turned out to be a group of grain storage elevators next to a defunct railroad track. The area around the tall silos was deserted, and I didn’t hear any activity inside them, which meant I didn’t have to worry about being covert. I plowed into the soft earth behind the storage silos, landing even harder than my usual barely controlled splat. Dave, my unlucky passenger, let out more “oofs!” during our tumble than he had when Bones had cut his heart out.

“I call shotgun with
anyone but her
for the next flight,” he said when we finally rolled to a stop.

Then a scream jerked our attention about half a mile up. Tate rushed toward us, arms flailing as if he were trying to flap his way out of his free fall. It didn’t work, of course. He landed with enough force to create an inches-deep outline in the soft ground around him.

“Okay, shotgun with anyone except him, too,” Dave amended, as Ian floated down to land beside the Tate-sized hole. Bones landed next, but unlike Ian, he held on to his passenger the entire time.

“Ass . . . hole,” Tate groaned as he pushed himself upright, to the accompanying sound of multiple bones snapping back into place.

Bones glanced at Tate, then Ian, who didn’t bother to hide his smirk.

“Good to know you stuck by your word to let his assault slide,” Bones said with heavy sarcasm.

That smirk turned into a wolfish grin. “Changed my mind, Crispin.”

Spade’s arrival with Denise and Cooper cut short whatever Bones had been about to reply to that.

“He’s very weak,” Spade announced, still holding on to Cooper despite their now being on solid ground. “I gave him blood, but whatever experiments they’ve run on him is killing him.”

I went over to Cooper, noting the cloying aroma of sickness that overpowered his natural scent of cloves and oak moss. Even with the healing effects of vampire blood, his skin tone still held a grayish tone, and his obsidian gaze appeared slightly unfocused.

“Remember when I used to call you a freak?” he asked, his laugh wheezing a bit at the end. “What they’ve done to me makes you seem normal.”

I swallowed back the lump that rose in my throat. “Madigan tried to duplicate Katie’s tri-species nature with you, didn’t he?”

Another harsh chuckle. “Yep, but it didn’t work. Not on me or the two thousand unlucky bastards before me. Madigan kept hoping for another fluke like Katie, but he must’ve needed more of whatever he took from you years ago to make it work. That, or wait ’til Katie got older.”

I knew what that last part meant—forcible breeding. Madigan had intended to do the same to me, so while it made me sick, it didn’t shock me. The number Cooper relayed did.

“Madigan
told
you how many people he killed with his experiments?” Was the bastard proud of being America’s biggest serial killer?

“He didn’t need to tell us. We could count.”

This from Tate, who finally got up from the impact hole he’d made when he landed. Cooper nodded in grim assent.

“I was W98. Hard to make a cute nickname out of that.”

“Explain,” Bones said, echoing my own thought.

Tate paused to glower at Ian once before he spoke.

“Madigan labeled his test specimens alphabetically and then numerically, up to one hundred per letter. When he first brought us here, he pitted us against his only success, Specimen A80, in order to sharpen her fighting skills. From her early specimen number, he must’ve had her so long, he had to have grabbed her when she was a baby, so she wouldn’t know her real name. I couldn’t stand to refer to her by a specimen number like he did, so I called her Katie.”

Now there was no swallowing the lump that rocketed up my throat. At the same time, I trembled with rage. I’d been designated a specimen number, too. A1, according to Madigan’s guards, but how could Madigan have kidnapped and experimented on a
baby
? Katie never had a chance because of him.

It was senseless, yet I spun around and kicked Madigan’s corpse hard enough that it ricocheted off the nearby silo.

“Wake up!” I yelled at it. “You can’t stay dead, you have
so
much to answer for!”

“Kitten, stop.”

Bones grabbed me when I would have punted Madigan’s body into the grain silo again.

“You might dislodge his heart and prevent him from rising.”

I stopped, sagging into the strong arms that gripped me.

“Who are we kidding? It’s been three hours. He’s not coming back.”

Bones glanced at the fading sunlight that painted the silos in various shades of orange, pink, and mauve before he spoke.

“Perhaps not, but we’ll stay with him tonight to be sure. Tate.”

His head snapped up, indigo gaze filled with barely restrained aversion. “What?”

“You established a rapport with Katie?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. With her abilities and glowing eyes, I knew right away what she was, but Madigan didn’t let us socialize. The only time we had together was when she was instructed to kill me. At first, she was merciless about it. Then I started calling her Katie and talking to her while we fought. She never said so, but she liked that.”

“How could you tell?”

Tate met his stare without resentment this time. “Because in the past two weeks, she got good enough to take my head off, yet she didn’t, and she hid that from Madigan.”

My eyes burned from more unshed tears. The poor girl had been in the most heartless form of captivity since she was an infant. Tate must have been the closest thing she’d ever had to a friend.

“So if she saw you,” Bones went on, “she might not run. Or try to murder you as she did Denise.”

Spade tensed at that. Denise looked away guiltily. Guess she hadn’t told him who’d bloodied her up the most.

Tate’s smile was wry. “Depends. I told her to kill
anyone
who came after her. That might include me, with how methodical her mind works.”

“Are you willing to take that risk?” Bones asked bluntly.

Tate snorted. “Do I look like a pussy to you?”

“No,” Bones replied with a ghost of a smile. “You look like the same stubborn, reckless, devoted sod I’ve almost killed a hundred times over, which is why you’re perfect for the job.”

“And you’re the same overbearing asshole you’ve always been,” Tate replied, eyes glinting green. “But you’re right. For this, I’m your man.”

Somehow, after that insult-laden discourse, they exchanged a look of complete understanding. I shook my head. Maybe they’d always dislike each other, but perhaps mutual respect could still exist between them.

“Then get to it,” Bones stated. “Ian? Take him back to Point Pleasant. Fabian stayed behind to help. Perhaps he’ll have good news.”

Ian
really
didn’t like Tate, so I expected anything except his jubilant, “Let’s be off, then!” before he snatched Tate up and blasted off like a rocket. Why would he . . . ? Oh, right.

“Stop him; he’s happy about this because he intends to kill Tate!”

Bones gave me a jaded look. “That’s not why, luv. Ian collects the rare and unusual, and that child is the rarest, most unusual person in the world right now. He’ll scour the globe with Tate and Fabian looking for her.”

That notion was almost as unsettling as my first. Then I consoled myself with the knowledge that Ian was many things, yet a pedophile wasn’t one of them. He might want to “collect” Katie, but he wouldn’t lay a lustful—or harmful—finger on her. The same couldn’t be said for others who might also be hunting for Madigan’s missing experiment.

“Since all urgent business has been attended to, I need a private moment with my wife,” Spade said, interrupting my line of thought.

Denise threw me a rueful look before she walked off with Spade. The two of them disappeared into the farthest silo away from us. With the thick concrete and metal walls going a hundred feet up, I could barely hear them once they were inside.

My jaw clenched. I had a few things to discuss with my spouse, too, but before I could, Cooper’s condition still needed to be addressed.

“After what Madigan’s done to you, we can’t risk taking you to a hospital,” I said, mentally switching gears. “But Bones knows a few off-the-grid doctors—”

“No more doctors.”

Cooper shuddered when he said it, memories of brutal experiments flitting through his mind. After all he’d been through, I sympathized, but Spade was correct. Cooper was fading right before our eyes. I wasn’t even sure more vampire blood could heal all the cellular damage. He didn’t just need one doctor. He needed several.

“Cooper, you’ll die,” I said as gently as I could.

White teeth flashed in a brief smile. “That’s my plan, and I’d prefer it sooner rather than later since I hurt everywhere. Bones?”

“You don’t need to ask,” my husband replied evenly. “You’ve been one of mine for years. It’s time you receive the full benefits of that.”

Oh, he meant
that
sort of death. My tenseness eased. Madigan might be worm food, but it appeared we were bringing someone back from the grave tonight after all.

“Kitten, have Charles ring Mencheres and tell him we need a secured vehicle for new vampire transport,” Bones stated since neither of us had a cell phone.

Then he pulled Cooper to him, bending his head back almost casually before slamming his fangs into the other man’s throat.

Looked like Spade needed to place that call to Mencheres
right now.

By the time I got back from informing Spade and Denise of what was going on and waiting while Spade made the call, Bones was already done. Cooper lay on the ground, his pulse silent, only a small smear of red on his mouth indicating the enormity of the change taking place in him. Sometime in the next few to several hours, he’d rise as a vampire, permanently free from all the damage Madigan had inflicted on him and vulnerable only to decapitation and silver through the heart.

Well, and to passing out at sunrise for the first few months, but Bones’s people would protect him through that temporary stage.

And since we finally didn’t have any life-and-death situations to resolve, I could turn my attention to other pressing matters.

“Bones.” My voice was soft yet steely. “We need to talk.”