Up From the Grave

by Jeaniene Frost

  Then, with the suddenness of a door slamming shut, my connection to the grave was severed. The glorious iciness running through me turned to cold ashes, and the voices echoing in my head silenced. One by one, the Remnants disappeared. As the infinity loop of need inside me cleared, confusion rose.

  What had happened?

  “Release her,” someone snarled.

  That’s when I realized I was held in a tight embrace from behind. Not by Bones, as a glance down showed thicker, hairy arms across my midsection instead of taut, pale ones. By Richard Trove.

  The demon shuddered in way sickly reminiscent of release.

  “That’s by far the best I’ve ever felt,” he murmured into my ear.

  Disgust cleared away the last of the grave thrall. At some point, Trove had grabbed me and begun feeding from my power. Judging from how weak I felt and the last of the Remnants slithering back into the floor, he’d cleaned his plate.

  Once again, three things seemed to happen at once: Bones lunged for Trove, his movements slow and clumsy. I bit my lip to call the Remnants back, but nothing happened except another rapturous shudder behind me. And the ghouls who still had their heads staggered to their feet, picked up their silver knives, and started toward us.

  “Bugger,” Ian said with deep conviction.

  Thirty-five

  Trove sidestepped Bones’s lunge, tripping him as he staggered past. Instead of recovering with his usual grace, Bones landed in a heap near the advancing ghouls. From the ragged feel of his aura, Trove had sucked out all of his power with his punishing embrace. Bones barely had enough left to move, let alone defend himself.

  That alarmed me into struggling with everything I had, which turned out to be terrifyingly fruitless. The more effort I put into freeing myself, the more Trove vibrated while making happy noises. The demon was like an energy Remnant, growing stronger while I weakened under the pitiless assault of his hunger.

  “No!” I screamed when a hulking ghoul easily restrained Bones and then raised his knife for a killing strike.

  A blur barreled into them, snatching Bones up and torpedoing him away from that deadly blow. A second later, that blur returned, accompanied by a flash of silver that turned into an arc of red.

  Ian landed hard enough to crack the ground. He whirled, holding up the head of the ghoul who had tried to kill Bones. Then he flung it at the remaining flesh eaters.

  “Who wants some of me?” he taunted them.

  At least eight ghouls remained, and they all took him up on the offer. Silver knives rushed toward him, but Ian was faster, flying out of their path with stunning aerial acrobatics I hadn’t thought him capable of. Every few seconds, he’d use that incredible speed to rocket into a ghoul, hacking a head off before his companions realized which one of them was under attack. Then he’d spike the head like an NFL receiver celebrating a touchdown.

  To say it enraged the ghouls was an understatement. They kicked through walls in their attempts to use them as springboards to catch Ian during his midair swoops. Plaster, rotted wood, and concrete dust soon thickened the air, making it harder to see. Soon, only Ian’s taunts plus the ghouls’ threats and crashing noises let me know that the fight was continuing. Yet his incendiary antics had led them away from Bones, who was still barely able to move at a crawl.

  No one better say anything bad about Ian around me after today. I officially loved that son of a bitch.

  Since my struggles had done nothing, I gave up, focusing instead on slipping my hands underneath Trove’s steely embrace. I needed to reach my pockets. When the demon tightened his grip, preventing that, I slumped, pretending to faint.

  I didn’t feel too far off from that, actually. My ears were ringing, and a nauseating tingle had taken residence in my limbs. I hadn’t felt this helpless since I was half-human and a vampire was feasting on my neck. Bones had saved me then, but now, it was up to me to save him. He was dragging himself toward us, expression murderous although he clearly lacked the strength to back up his intentions. And Trove might not hesitate to kill him. He’d said he wanted me alive to fuel his war. He hadn’t said the same about Bones.

  I wasn’t about to risk finding out what the demon would do once Bones reached him. My full-body limpness had Trove adjusting his grip, and that allowed me to dart a hand into my pocket. When I felt the hard, slim dagger, I almost smiled except I refused to waste the energy. I’d need all I had left for what I was about to do.

  After all, Marie hadn’t been the only person we visited before coming to Detroit. We’d stopped by Denise’s, too.

  Trove’s head was above my own, chin resting on my skull, from the feel. He squeezed me as if I were a juice box, all the while complaining about my running out of power. He was right. Aside from gripping that knife, I didn’t exert an ounce of energy. He’d only steal it.

  Bones had almost reached us. I felt rather than saw Trove eye him, perhaps in contemplation of draining the rest of what he had left, or with more sinister intent. Still, I remained limp to the point of lifelessness, suppressing my growing anger.

  “Empty already? Thought you’d have more fight in you,” Trove said, his tone heavy with disappointment.

  With that disparaging comment, he released me, no doubt expecting me to drop to the floor. I didn’t. My knees wobbled but held, and as soon as his energy-sucking embrace was gone, the bone knife Ian had made months ago from Denise’s lower leg flashed in an upward arc.

  Aside from briefly holding my daughter’s hand, feeling the knife ram into Trove’s eye was the highlight of my week.

  The demon screamed, the sound cutting through the air as though all the hounds of hell followed with it. I spun around, trying for that second, fatal strike, but he knocked my hand away. Then his Armani suit split at the seams as his body began to grow at an impossibly rapid pace. Red appeared beneath those rents of fabric. Not blood. Skin, as the demon shed his human appearance and morphed into his true form.

  “I’ll kill you!” he roared, grabbing for the bone knife.

  Part of me was relieved that he hadn’t used his teleporting trick and disappeared. The rest of me let out an internal uh-oh because I was in no condition to fight back. I had to try, though, and I held on to the knife with the grip of the damned as Trove tried to wrestle it away.

  Even with one eye destroyed, his strength was too much. The blade began to slip from my hands, cutting me with how tightly I tried to hold on to it. Just as it was about to be wrenched free entirely, something large fell on Trove.

  Bones.

  He might have lost his physical strength, but his weight and bulk were enough to loosen Trove’s hold. I got a firmer grip on the knife, preventing the demon from snatching it away. Trove let out a vicious curse, trying to throw Bones off and yank the blade back at the same time. He didn’t drain power from either of us, though, and that couldn’t have been an accident. Maybe with one eye destroyed, he couldn’t anymore.

  I tried to wrest the blade away for another strike, but Trove’s grip was too strong. He’d also grown two feet during our struggle, his form now dwarfing the vampire who held on to him with grim determination.

  It wouldn’t be enough. We were both too weakened to hold Trove down long enough to slam the blade through his other eye. We needed to try something else. Anything else to gain an advantage.

  For a brief moment, Bones’s dark brown eyes locked with mine as our faces aligned; him on Trove’s back, me in front engaged in a lethal game of tug-of-war. My gaze must have conveyed my desperation, because Bones did do something else. Something unthinkable.

  His fangs slammed into Trove’s throat and he sucked so hard that the veins in his neck bulged. For a second, I was so horrified I froze. Bones knew demonically altered blood was akin to heroin for vampires! That’s why Denise had to keep her new nature a secret. Demonic blood used to be sold on the undead black market as a drug, and
Law Guardians would execute her on the spot if they knew she was a source of it.

  Trove let out another howl and tried to fling Bones off. He only succeeded in tearing open a larger feeding trough as Bones’s fangs sliced deeper from the jostling. Despite the demon’s frenetic efforts, Bones held on. Before my eyes, his movements became less sluggish and uncoordinated. Soon, he was gripping Trove with such ferocity that the demon had to let me go to keep Bones from chewing through his neck.

  That’s when I understood. Depleted of all his usual power, with no human blood available to replenish it, Bones had turned to the only source available: Demon blood. With its narcotic properties for vampires, it gave Bones the same artificially inflated strength that a human on PCP experienced.

  He probably didn’t feel it when Trove slammed them backward, crushing Bones against the floor with his new, larger frame. The concrete dented around them, and still Bones kept ripping at Trove’s neck, swallowing that crimson flow as fast as it appeared. Then his arms and legs wrapped around the demon, not releasing him even when Trove began smashing into everything in an attempt to get free.

  This was my chance.

  I leapt onto Trove, and for a few, mad moments, I was smashed and slammed right along with them. It felt like being stuck on the bottom of a concrete boulder that was rolling down a mountainside, but I couldn’t dwell on the pain as ribs snapped and bones crushed with the demon’s punishing movements. All I concentrated on was holding on to that knife, and when Trove propelled us into a corner, briefly wedging us between two intersecting networks of pipes, I struck.

  The knife rammed into his cheek, a miss. I kept going, blood slicking the sharp edges as I shoved it harder, deeper, trying to dig through his cheekbone.

  Trove’s new claws ripped along my back, shredding leather, then skin and tissue. My whole body throbbed with pain, and the light-headedness that gripped me was either from using the last of my strength in my efforts to kill him or skull damage from Trove’s brutal attempts to free us from the piping web.

  None of it mattered. All I focused on was his one, glaring red eye. I kept scissoring the knife into his head, but it was soon clear that I lacked the strength to drive it past the defense of his cheekbone.

  Then Trove wrenched us out of the pipe labyrinth that had briefly trapped us. For a moment, we were airborne, Bones clinging to the back of the demon, me still on top of him with a knife jutting under the demon’s eye. As if in slow motion, I saw the basement floor draw nearer, and I was seized with an idea.

  With a cry that was equal parts fury and frustration, I balanced the hilt of the knife against my chest and flung myself forward. We hit the ground in the next instant.

  My weight plus the momentum from our three bodies plowing into the concrete accomplished what my lagging strength couldn’t. The bone blade drove home, sinking all the way through Trove’s eye. Blood spurted to coat my hands, and a new sharp pain was the hilt either cracking my sternum or puncturing it.

  I refused to let go. Instead, I gave what I could feel of the blade a vicious shove, not stopping until it hit the back of Trove’s skull. Only when that tremendous form began to shrink, crumpling in on itself like a balloon slowly deflating, did my grip loosen on the bone knife. Finally, when nothing but a skeleton, a suit, and the scent of sulfur remained between me and Bones, I let go.

  For a few, blissful seconds, I closed my eyes, every muscle in my body sagging with relief so profound, I thought I might have actually passed out. Then Bones’s familiar voice threaded through my exhaustion.

  “Get off, luv, I’m high as a bloody kite. No telling what I’ll do.”

  A breath of laughter escaped me. If Bones being high was our biggest danger, this had turned out to be the best day ever.

  Thirty-six

  Shuffling noises drew my attention to the other side of the boiler room. Ian appeared, covered in dirt, blood, and far less clothes since what he had left had been ripped half-off. He was even missing clumps of his long auburn hair. I’d never seen him look worse—and I’d never been happier to see him.

  “You did it,” I breathed.

  He glanced at the remains of the demon between us.

  “As did you, but this isn’t over. Mencheres is here, and he brought Marie Laveau, Law Guardians, and the vampire council with him.”

  I shot to my feet like my blood had been replaced with rocket fuel. All of my worst fears were realized when Tate appeared behind Ian, his expression locked in a mixture of rage and desperation. Not a muscle on him moved, and he floated in, hovering several inches off the ground.

  Since Bones’s power had been depleted, Mencheres must be controlling Tate, but I didn’t see him yet. My gaze was all for Katie as she floated in after Tate, alarm creasing her delicate features instead of her trademark stoicism.

  I ran to her. Or tried to. After the first two steps, I was enveloped by what felt like a giant, invisible fist. It squeezed me from the chin down, making escape impossible and speech difficult.

  “Let me go,” I managed through gritted teeth.

  Mencheres did appear then, and he had an entourage. Veritas was the only Law Guardian I knew by name, but I recognized the other three men. Years ago, they’d supervised Bones’s duel with Gregor, which meant we had a history. I’d almost been executed for interfering in that duel, and there were some who still thought I should have been.

  Marie was next, her long black skirt and tailored black jacket sending more sparks of fear through me. She looked like she was going to a funeral, and while the three vampires behind her weren’t garbed as somberly, their expressions were darker than pitch.

  “What the bloomin’ hell is this?”

  Bones’s harsh tone couldn’t hide his slur. Doped as he was, he still managed to get to his feet without stumbling. He didn’t go any farther, though. Mencheres’s power shot out and stopped him.

  “I am doing what must be done,” his friend and grandsire replied. Then obsidian eyes met mine, an abundance of pity in their depths. “I am sorry, Cat,” Mencheres added softly.

  “No!”

  It tore from me with all the agony of hopes raised, then smashed. We couldn’t have come so far to lose everything now! Trove was dead, Marie had sworn to leave us alone, and we’d found Katie. I’d looked into my daughter’s eyes and sworn to protect her. She might not believe me, but over time, I’d prove it to her. She was going to have all the love and acceptance she’d been denied before, and to make my promise come true, all we had to do was leave.

  Thanks to the mega-Master vampire and his undead associates, we couldn’t even if Bones and I were back to full strength. Forget Marie; the boiler room sizzled with the power coming off the four Law Guardians and three council members. Any second, it might start raining sparks.

  “How could you?”

  My words were choked with more than the difficulty of saying them with my chin frozen. Marie and the other vampires hadn’t found us by luck. Only Mencheres knew where we were going.

  Veritas stepped forward, her white tunic rustling from all the supernatural energy in the air.

  “Mencheres did what he could for you. In exchange for delivering the child to us, your lies will now go unpunished.”

  “We didn’t ask for your bloody help!” Bones thundered.

  Mencheres let out a heavy sigh.

  “You did not, but as co-ruler of our line, I couldn’t permit you to drag our people into war. That is what would have happened, and the result would be the same. Now or later, the child would die. This way, only one life will be lost instead of untold thousands.”

  My whole body vibrated from the virulent emotions racking me. If I had any power left, Mencheres’s head would have ripped from his shoulders at those words.

  “Please don’t do this.”

  My voice broke from the hatred and fear roiling inside me. I wanted to slaughter
everyone, not beg them, but with my body immobilized and my abilities exhausted, begging was all I had left.

  “Please. We’ll take her away. You’ll never have to see her again, and there will be no war, I promise!”

  Urgent grunts came out of Tate, his only way to voice his concurring plea. Mencheres had frozen everything on him, it seemed.

  “There is no other way,” a council member who could’ve doubled as Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings said. Then he sniffed as he came farther into the room, bringing him closer to Trove’s body.

  “The sulfur stench from that demon is everywhere.”

  “You’re about to murder a child and what you find most distasteful is demon stink?” Ian’s tone was scathing. “You call yourselves protectors of our race, but all I see before me are cowards.”

  “Silence,” the white-haired vampire ordered. Then he turned to the Law Guardian with the wild black hair and Mediterranean features.

  “Thonos.”

  The vampire withdrew a curved silver blade that was longer than my forearm. Then he strode over to Katie, grasping her hair. Veritas looked away, her mouth tightening.

  “Don’t, please!” I screamed. My teeth tore into my lower lip, drawing blood, but though I willed Remnants to appear with all of my panic, nothing happened. Trove had drained too much from me.

  Tears spilled from my eyes, blurring my vision with pink that quickly turned to scarlet.

  “Wait,” Marie said.

  Hope surged when Thonos paused, that wickedly long blade upraised. The Gandalf look-alike raised a brow but nodded in acquiescence.

  Marie came over to me, wiping my eyes with brisk yet gentle swipes.