One Foot in the Grave

by Jeaniene Frost

I shivered, instinctively clutching him tighter at those twin stabs of sensation. This felt different from the other two times he’d bitten me. Less erotic and more predatory. Still, my heart raced, my knees went deliciously weak, and that same strange warmth crept over me.

  The elevator doors opened right as Bones lifted his head. There was an ominous sound of a gun cocking as I pulled mine out of my pants at the same time.

  “Back off, Tate! You shoot and I fire back.”

  We must have looked quite the sight, Bones licking the last drops of my blood off his fangs and me with my gun pointed at everyone but the vampire drinking me. Hell, I could understand Tate’s reaction, but that didn’t mean I was letting him shoot Bones. Juan also had his gun drawn but at least it was lowered. Smart man.

  Bones eyed Tate and didn’t bother to sheathe his fangs. “Don’t fret over her safety, mate. I’d never hurt her, but I’ve seen the way you look at her, so you don’t have that same pass.”

  “Tate,” I said warningly. “Drop the gun.”

  Tate stared at me. “Goddamn, Cat. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “It’s all right, Kitten,” Bones said. “He won’t shoot.”

  Tate lowered his gun even as the sudden dizziness from blood loss made me sway. Bones took my gun and casually handed it to Juan, who gaped at him in amazement.

  “You called her Kitten? And she let you? She put me in a coma for three days when I called her that! My balls never recovered from her smashing them into my spine!”

  “And well she should have,” Bones agreed. “She’s my Kitten, and no one else’s.”

  I poked him in the chest. “Do you mind? I’m a little woozy here.”

  “Apologies, luv.”

  He lifted me off my feet as his fangs cut into his tongue with a snap of his jaws. There were so many other ways for me to get blood from him, but I was figuring he’d chosen this one because of his comment to Tate. I kissed him back while swallowing those needed drops. How like Bones to kill two birds with one stone—both staking his claim and replenishing my strength at the same time.

  Don picked that moment to come striding through the throngs of stunned spectators just in time to see me curled inside a vampire’s arms with my feet dangling off the ground.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  Bones set me down and went to my boss in a blink of speed. To Don’s credit, he didn’t try to run.

  “You must be very determined to kill me to go to such lengths,” he flatly commented, squaring his shoulders.

  “I’m not here for you, old chap,” Bones said, looking him up and down thoroughly. “I’m here to find out what rat you’ve got in your garden. But first we’re going to have a chat, the three of us. You’ve kept her in the dark long enough.”

  “Tate, Juan, make sure no one comes through that door and no one tries to get frisky. The place is secured, but someone could pull a weapon. Keep sharp.”

  I inclined my head toward Don’s office. “After you, boss.”

  Don took his seat like it was any other visit and not a hostage situation, and we sat across from him.

  “Don, I’d like to introduce you to Bones. The real Bones, not the impostor on ice in the fridge. You’ll remember him from Ohio, where he gave the highway a whole new look.”

  “All these years, Cat,” Don said with sadness. “You’ve been working the other side this whole time. Bravo, I was totally fooled.”

  My mouth opened in outrage, but Bones beat me to it. “You ungrateful sod, the only reason I’m not picking you out of my teeth now is because of her. She fancies you a decent man, not that I agree, and has in no way betrayed your trust. You can hardly say the same.”

  I rolled my eyes. A death threat, gee, great way to start out a talk.

  “I haven’t played you at all, Don,” I said. “When I left Ohio, I thought I was leaving Bones behind for good. He tracked me down and found me only two weeks ago, and I have never done anything to betray this operation.”

  Don shook his head in self-rebuke. “I should have sensed a trap. No vampire ever surrenders. How did you get your mother to play along?”

  “She didn’t,” I said grimly. “Bones told her he wanted to meet without my knowledge. We knew what she’d do.”

  Bones snorted. “When I got to her house, she’d already blacked both her eyes and knocked over every stick of furniture in the place. But back to you, Don. For most of my years, I’ve had a trade. I find people, and I’m right good at it. So imagine my surprise when I had such a devil of a time tracking her, and then also my inability to find much out about her father. Now, failure to locate one I could see, but two? Both hidden so carefully, it was almost as if they were concealed…by the same person.”

  A foreboding sensation crept up my spine. Bones squeezed my hand.

  “Two things always struck me as strange when she disappeared into the smoke. The first was how you found her so quickly. You showed up with all of her facts and figures the day she was arrested. Too pat, that. Such research takes time. You’d have to have been keeping tabs on her for a while, and how would you have known to do that? Only one way. You already knew what she was.”

  “What?” I shot out of my seat with a shout. “Don, what have you been hiding?”

  “Sit down, luv.” Bones gripped me when I would have sprinted across the desk to throttle Don. For his part, Don had turned a fine shade of parchment.

  “The second thing that stumped me was how there were no records of any recent deaths matching her father’s description at the time her mother was raped. Not even any John Does. Ian’s the one who solved that riddle. You know him as Liam Flannery, Don, and you sent her after him, but he wasn’t her usual target, was he?”

  “No,” I answered for Don, whose mouth was sealed in a tight line. “He wasn’t. Get to the point, Bones.”

  “I’d rather hoped Don would step up and finish it for me, but he’s staying quiet. Probably hoping like blazes I’m only fishing, aren’t you?”

  Don didn’t reply. Bones made a regretful noise. “Open that envelope I gave you earlier, Kitten.”

  With trembling fingers I drew the paper out of my shirt, ripping open the seal and unfolding the single page inside. It was an article with a photo, but the caption underneath blurred into nothingness because all I’d needed to do was look at the face.

  The man standing with a grin had red hair, high cheekbones, a straight nose, a jaw that was masculine but eerily similar, and I couldn’t tell, but I’d bet those were gray eyes. Even faded, the likeness was unbelievable. Finally I had a face to put to my hate, and it was a mirror of my own. No wonder my mother had such issues.

  As absorbed as I was in devouring the image of my father, it took me a minute to look at the other person in the photo. The one with an arm around my father’s shoulders. “Family Celebrates Commendation of Federal Officer,” the title read.

  The years hadn’t been kind, but I recognized him at once. A furious chuckle escaped me, and I flung the page at Don.

  “Well, isn’t life just one big joke? One huge cosmic one-liner! I now know just how Luke Skywalker felt when Darth Vader told him who he was, only you’re not my father. But you’re his brother.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I GLARED AT MY BOSS. “SHOULD I CALL YOU Uncle Don? You son of a bitch, you sent me out on how many suicide missions when you knew I was your niece? You and my mother have a lot in common—the two of you should be related!”

  Don finally broke his silence. “Why would I think you’d be any different? Thirty-five years ago my older brother was investigating Liam Flannery, and then he disappeared. Years passed. We thought he was dead, and no one would tell us about the last case he’d been on. I joined the FBI myself to find out what had happened to him. Over time, I also found out what my brother had really been chasing. I vowed I’d continue his hunt and give him justice, but then one day out of the blue, he came to me. He told me to forget about Liam and the underworld I was tracking or
he’d kill me. My own brother. I couldn’t believe it.

  “Six months later, your mother was attacked in the same city in Ohio I’d followed him to. When I read the description of her rapist, I knew it was him, and I knew that he’d finally crossed over. Then five months later, she gave birth to a child. One with a genetic anomaly documented at birth. Yes, I suspected all along, and made it a point to check up on you periodically while I created this department. Years went by, nothing happened, and I began to forget about you. Then your name came up in connection with a series of strange murders and grave robberies. I was already on my way back to Ohio when your grandparents were killed.”

  Don smiled but it wasn’t happy. “I also believe that life is a comic accident. Here God had given me the one thing strong enough to stop my brother and his kind, and it was his own daughter. Yes, I used you while waiting for the day when you’d turn as he did, but that didn’t happen. When I finally believed you were different, I sent you to capture Flannery so I could use him to draw Max out. But as fate would have it, Liam got away. I’m guessing he’s the one who sent the shooter after you last night.”

  My mind reeled with this latest bombshell. Ian had made my father? The same man who’d turned Bones had also been the one who sired Max? That made Ian partly responsible for my half-dead existence. Unbelievable.

  “It’s not Flannery who hired that gunman,” Bones stated. “He wants her alive. No, it has to be someone else who’s trying to kill her. Someone affiliated here.”

  Don made a derisive noise. “How are you going to find out who this mythical traitor is? Torture all the staff?”

  Bones glowered at him. “For someone who’s studied vampires for years, you certainly don’t give them much credit. Forgetting these?”

  He flashed green into his eyes, and their light hit Don’s face. He looked away.

  “The spellbinding eyes of the nosferatu. Many days I’d wished I had the ability to glare the truth out of people, but without all the other consequences.”

  “Yes, well, there’s a price for power and it always gets paid. Shall I let you go, Kitten, so you can bash his head in?”

  Bones didn’t sound troubled at the notion. I stared at Don. We had the same eyes, I realized. How had I never noticed that before?

  “I should kill you for what you did to me, but I won’t. I happen to understand wanting vengeance better than most people. It can make you do rash things, like sending your niece out to get killed so one day you can try to trap your brother. Besides”—a shrug—“aside from my mother, you’re the only real family I have left. You can come with us or stay, I don’t care, but if you come, don’t interfere. Think you can handle that?”

  Don rose. “I can handle it.”

  Tate and Juan still stood outside the door.

  “Are we good, Cat?” Tate inquired. He glanced at Bones, who was appraising the openmouthed employees with a practiced eye.

  “For now. Tate, you and Don can help. Let’s start with the obvious. Where’s the team? They know both what I am and where I live. After this room, they’re our first stop.”

  “We called in all thirty of them, they’re in the training room, but they’re armed in there, Cat. We’ll have to bring them out in groups so they don’t stake Mr. Pointy Teeth on sight.” Tate threw a disparaging look at Bones, who had vamped out to the horror of the staff and was sniffing each of them.

  “Think I’d fret over a room full of humans?” Bones retorted. “Let them keep their toys; it’ll teach them a valuable lesson. No matter how well she’s trained them, they’re not her.”

  Juan blinked. “He can take on all of them when they have silver?”

  As much as I wanted to dispute it, since I’d worked hard on training them, the simple truth was, they’d never come across a vampire as strong as Bones before. Especially one in a closed space, football-sized or no.

  “Yeah. Is that necessary, though, Bones? Time-wise? And you don’t get to kill any of them; they’re my men.”

  “Time-wise it’s more efficient. All in one place is faster than group by group. Your culprit will be the one trying hardest to kill me. Or wetting himself, whichever. This room is clear—none of these people are your turncoat. Don’t fret about your merry men, Robin Hood; they’ll live to die another day.”

  “I want to be there.” Don looked professionally intrigued. “I don’t get to see a Master vampire in action. I only see their messy end results.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong again,” Bones stated. “You’ve seen her fight for years, so you’ve seen a Master vampire in action. She just also has a heartbeat.”

  Our training room was more than a gym. It was an extravaganza of an obstacle course complete with swinging ropes, falling debris, shifting ground, water hazards, and lots of room to run. The dim emergency lights in there served to Bones’s advantage, providing only subtle illumination. Bones had insisted we wait in Don’s box overlooking the area. He didn’t want me to get stabbed or shot in the melee.

  It was something to watch, all right. There were shouts when his pale face became visible in the intermittent lights, and then a frenzy of motion even I couldn’t fully follow.

  “Christos,” Juan breathed in awe. “Look at him fly.”

  Bones was surging around in gravity-defying bounds as he picked apart the careful formation I’d taught the men, bowling into them with his body and scattering them like pins. Tate shook his head in disgust.

  “Years of work, right down the fucking drain. Makes me want to beat them myself.”

  “Cooper’s trying to rally them,” I observed. “Oops, down he goes. Goddamn, Bones can really hit like a sonofabitch. I’ll need a pint of his blood after this to heal them all.”

  “What makes you think he’ll do that?” Don asked skeptically.

  “Because I’ll ask him to, that’s why. You really are thick. He climbed into our hell capsule for me earlier, yet you think he’ll refuse to donate a little blood to make me happy? Dumb ass.”

  My boss—or should I say uncle—didn’t respond.

  “All right, Kitten,” Bones called out. “They’re clean. Not a bad bunch of blokes.”

  Almost offhandedly, he kicked one of the fallen forms, eliciting a groan in return. I shook my head at Tate’s expression.

  “I told you he taught me everything I know. Kick ’em when they’re down. That was his favorite rule. You’re familiar with the rest of them.”

  “Goddammit, Cat, he’s been in there less than ten minutes. How can he tell that none of them are involved? Most of them aren’t even conscious now!”

  “I trust him,” I answered simply. “Bones wouldn’t say it unless he was sure, and that’s enough for me.”

  Juan had a dazed look on his face as he studied the remains of our team. Then a smile tugged his lips.

  “That,” he said emphatically, “was cool!”

  It wasn’t until we approached the pathology floor that Bones quickened his step. His eyes went green as soon as the elevator doors opened, and he gave me a quick, hard kiss before shoving me back inside it.

  “Stay here,” he said briskly. “I smell something.”

  Bones walked away with Juan and Don following. Tate hung back with me.

  “This is a wild fucking goose chase,” he muttered. “Smells something? What can he smell—”

  “Shh!” I said, honing my ears to pick up every nuance of sound in the next room. There was a scrambling noise that was very short-lived, a squawk, and then a mocking deadly sneer.

  “Well, now, what do we have here? No, you’re not turning away, look right here at me…”

  “He’s got someone,” I said for Tate’s benefit, and brushed by him.

  In the lab, Bones had our pathologist’s assistant, Brad Parker, pinned to the wall by one pale hand. The glow from his gaze lit the room with an eerie green luminance.

  “Right then, where were we? Tell me all about what you’ve been up to, and be specific. You can start with any partners
.”

  “One,” Brad mumbled. “He looks just like her.”

  I froze. Don’s gaze met mine as a chill went through me. There was no doubt who Brad had to be referring to.

  Bones glanced at me once and then turned his attention back to the man in front of him.

  “Indeed? Now, tell me everything else…”

  This time, Juan and Tate took dictation and I merely listened for the second time in as many days as a plot to kill me was outlined. Brad called him by a different name, but the perpetrator was clearly my father. Apparently after Ian pieced together the family resemblance between the Red Reaper he’d tangled with and his own lackey Max, my father had decided he didn’t want to be a dad. He traced me by tracking Don, knowing he had to be the one backing me. Find one and the other wasn’t far, he’d assumed correctly. With his inside knowledge of both the Bureau and his brother, Max had progressed with remarkable swiftness. Then he found what he was looking for in Brad Parker, a man whose loyalty could be bought and who knew enough to make it worth the payment.

  It had almost worked. If not for my being on a date with a vampire, my head would have been blown off.

  When Bones was finished, he arched a brow at Don. “You have any more questions for him?”

  Don looked stunned. “No, I can safely say you covered it. Tate? Juan? Anything else?”

  Mutely they shook their heads. Tate was more grudging in his silent response, his lips thinned to a straight line, but Juan looked at Bones with a flash of admiration. A start.

  “Fancy locking him up?”

  The question was again addressed to Don. I appreciated the gesture behind it. Bones was deferring Brad’s fate. To my surprise, Don waved a hand.

  “You know we’re not letting him live, not with what he knows. Just don’t make a mess.”

  Tate was incensed. “For Christ’s sake, we can take him below and shoot him!”

  “Don’t be childish, Tate,” Don snapped. “Bullet or bite, the end’s the same, and it’s his right. He found him; we didn’t. Cat would be dead soon if he hadn’t, and despite what she thinks of me, I don’t want that to happen.”