One Grave at a Time nh-6

by Jeaniene Frost

  “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.

  That’s what I’m counting on, fucker.

  Thirty-two

  On October 30, as soon as night’s concealing veil fell, Ian, Bones, and I flew away from the tattered farmhouse. Each of us was carrying a large, tarp-draped object. My mother and Tyler were staying behind, leaving for Spade’s tomorrow afternoon via a more conventional mode of transportation: a taxicab. That way, in case my borrowed abilities had faded to where Kramer couldn’t locate me by concentrating alone, he could follow them to Spade’s house. They’d take plenty of sage with them in case the ghost did more than trail them, but my money was on Kramer’s trying to be sly and staying unseen. After all, they weren’t the targets he’d so carefully picked out. Francine, Lisa, and Sarah were the ones Kramer really wanted, and we wanted to be sure he found his way to them.

  Once we had everything in place, anyway.

  That was why we didn’t fly our large bundles right to Spade’s. We went to a defunct building that had formerly been a combined sewer overflow facility in Ottumwa instead. Underneath the building, a series of storm drains, tunnels, and sewers led to the Des Moines River. It wasn’t as perfect a setting as our cave with its underground river—and it smelled a damn sight worse even though it hadn’t been operational in years—but it would suffice. Bones had had his co-ruler, Mencheres, purchase the building and its surrounding riverside property over the past couple weeks using a dummy corporation. Couldn’t risk someone else tearing this down to put a new business up and disturbing what we hoped would be Heinrich Kramer’s final resting place. Now, we just had to carve a hole in the underground trunk sewer deep enough to reach the river’s water table so that we could ensure the flow of fresh water around where we intended to place the trap.

  It had taken Bones and me plus Chris’s team a week to lay the previous trap in place. We had exactly five hours to set this one up, and we had carving up the trunk sewer to contend with, too. I didn’t want to calculate how long our odds were, trying to focus instead on how powerful Bones, Spade, and Ian were. I’d do my damnedest, too, and either we would finish or we wouldn’t. The only thing that was certain was there was no time for hand-wringing.

  We landed outside the empty facility, and I set my heavy section of the trap down as soon as my feet hit the ground. Flying for an hour while toting that bulk made me appreciate how effortlessly Bones carried me when we flew together. Granted, I weighed less than this hunk of rock, but he’d also flown while carrying me and at least one other person, and he made it look easy even while going faster and farther.

  “Brilliant landing,” Ian commented, giving a pointed look at the long furrow I’d carved in the earth when I touched down. “We’re trying to keep a low profile, and here you’ve gone and made it look like a meteorite hit.”

  I’d been proud of myself for not blasting through the side of the building—staying in the air was far easier than landing!—so I snootily lifted my nose at him.

  “I’m less than two years undead, and I’m already flying. How long did it take you to find your wings, pretty boy?”

  Bones snorted at the indignation on Ian’s face. He was nothing if not competitive. “You had that coming, mate.”

  “Power leech,” Ian replied sulkily.

  He had me there, but Bones laughed. “You’d give both your stones to have that ability, not to mention she flew before turning into a vampire, so that’s hers alone.”

  “If you’re through squabbling,” a smooth voice called out from the building, “perhaps we can set about securing this trap?”

  Spade was already here, good. I looked at my large chunk of rock and the entrance to the building. Then I cracked my knuckles. First things first, and that would be making a new door large enough for all the pieces to fit through. I only hoped the tunnels leading to the trunk sewer were wide enough not to need their own form of remodeling.

  The five-hour countdown had just begun.

  Four hours and twenty-two minutes later, Ian stared at the reassembled trap secured in the bottom of the trunk sewer, water sloshing over it from the adjoining hole we’d torn through to reach the Des Moines River. A breath of laughter escaped him.

  “You’ve made it look like a huge cauldron. That’s spectacularly twisted of you, Reaper.”

  I wiped some of the brackish, cold water away from my face before replying. Everyone else waite
d in the tunnel above, but I wanted to check the bottom of the trap one more time to make sure it was steady. Yes, call me paranoid. If all went well tomorrow, once Kramer was in the trap, we could do a more thorough job of reinforcing the entrance we’d dug into the sewer wall and the base of the trap to make extra sure that time and erosion wouldn’t disturb Kramer’s jail cell; but for now, it looked like it would hold.

  “Kramer’s obsessed with witchcraft, so I wanted him to be in familiar surroundings. Never let it be said that I’m not sentimental.”

  Despite the flip words and feeling more exhausted than I could remember, I also wanted to whoop for joy. We’d done it! The trap was secured, river water washing over its bottom half, with time to spare. Not much time, true, but I wasn’t going to quibble. I could even give Ian a big sloppy kiss for how hard and fast he’d worked. Arrogant, obnoxious pervert he might be, but damn, could he accomplish an objective when he set his mind to it. I’d never doubted Bones’s or Spade’s power and dedication, but Ian had surprised me.

  “Let’s leave before your spectre finds this place,” Spade said, disappearing out of sight into the tunnel. His voice floated behind him. “Denise will be so relieved to hear we’re finished.”

  I climbed up the sewer wall, accepting the hand Bones gave me to lift me the last few feet of the way. “You brought a car, right?” I called after Spade, hoping the answer was yes.

  “Of course,” his reply drifted back. “Knew none of us would fancy burning more energy to fly back, and tomorrow, we’ll need everything we can muster against Kramer.”

  How true. Then I cast a glance at how muddied and wet we were and gave Bones a rueful look. “We’re going to trash Spade’s stuff again.”

  He grinned. “No worries, I’m sure it’s a rental.”

  Spade drove, Ian rode shotgun, and Bones and I took the backseat. I was so glad to lean against him and just shut my eyes that I didn’t even mind being wet, cold, and filthy. Spade turned the heater on, so it wasn’t long before I began to feel toasty warm, too. After spending a couple weeks in a house with no electricity and the frigid night air blowing in from countless slits in the boarded-up windows, the heat felt like heaven to me. In fact, I was so relaxed I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew, the car jerked to a stop, and the landscape around us had completely changed.

  We were on a narrow gravel road leading to what looked like a pretty, two-story white-and-blue house at the end of it. Hay fields stretched out for acres behind the property, and a horse barn stood empty off to the far right side of the house. It was wonderfully quiet, no neighbors visible in the immediate vicinity and thus no noisy intrusions from their thoughts to crowd my psyche.

  “Christ, no,” Spade whispered at the same time I realized that a complete lack of other people’s thoughts was a very, very bad sign. I should be picking up on four minds in the house ahead. Instead, there was only ominous silence.

  Spade didn’t open his car door—he pushed it aside so violently that it sailed away from the vehicle with a metallic ripping sound. Then he was nothing more than a blur headed toward the house. The rest of us got out, but not as fast, Ian shoving the car into park to keep it from rolling. Dread made me feel like the blood in my veins had just been replaced with ice water. I ran toward the house, a string of denials resounding in my mind. Not Denise. Please, no. She was my best friend. It would be horrible enough if something happened to Lisa, Sarah, and Francine, but I couldn’t stand it if Denise was . . . was . . .

  Spade ripped the front door off as well, disappearing into the house. The three of us were close behind him. Sharp barks coming from upstairs made it impossible to detect any heartbeats, and the sound made Bones pause before entering, dragging me to a halt with him. Maybe Dexter was barking because of the crash the door made when Spade tore it from its hinges.

  Or maybe it was because Kramer was still in the house. Had he managed to manifest flesh a day early? Bloody shoe prints showed that someone had come down the staircase and gone out the door, and I didn’t smell any sage burning. Denise was immune to most kinds of death, but Spade always kept some demon bone on hand in case any hellish buddies of the one who had branded her showed up looking for vengeance. Had the bone knife that was made of the only substance that could kill Denise been used against her? Oh God, what had Kramer done to them?

  Ian didn’t wait, but went into the house with a brusque, “Get some sage lit before you follow.” Upstairs, Spade cried out, a harsh sound of grief that made my knees almost give out. Tears making my gaze blurry, I grabbed a handful of the waterlogged sage I’d kept in my pants and lit it, hurrying inside and then up the staircase carrying my smoking bundle. From the sounds and smell, Bones was relighting and refilling the jars in the house, trying to form a protective barrier though it might be too late.

  I didn’t need to follow the bloody shoe prints that led to the first room on the right. Spade’s choked voice was a heartbreaking beacon. I burst into the room, anguish ripping through me when the first sight that greeted me was a mass of blood, bone, and things I didn’t even want to name splattered on the wall of the open closet. Ian stood to the side of it, Spade at the bottom of that grisly montage, cradling a blood-soaked form that didn’t move. Dexter was off in the corner, growling and barking while tracking crimson paw prints on the carpet.

  “I’m okay,” I heard a feminine voice say beneath the barking and Spade’s ragged repetitions of Denise’s name.

  I stuffed back the sob of relief that rocketed up my throat. Ian was more practical, pulling on Spade’s shoulders.

  “Let her go, Charles. You’re probably holding her too tightly for her to breathe.”

  Spade leaned back, revealing the upper half of my friend that I hadn’t seen before, and I staggered where I stood. Denise had three mangled holes in her sweater that looked like exit wounds from bullets. She’d been shot in the back enough times to kill any normal person from their tight placement near her chest, but not enough to put her down. She must have turned around and gone after her shooter. That was why the assailant aimed for her face next. From the wall, her still-misshapen features, and the cherry pie look under the back of her head, he’d emptied his gun into her.

  The accomplice had somehow found this place and attacked when the rest of us were away trying to hammer the final nails into Kramer’s coffin. How had he gotten in? I wondered, still shocked from the sight of Denise. She knew not to let any unfamiliar men in, and she wasn’t very easy to take down, as the carnage in this room proved.

  Bones appeared, grimly taking note of the blood-sprayed closet and Denise’s condition. “No one else is in the house,” he stated, confirming what my senses had already suspected. “I don’t see any signs that Kramer’s here now . . . or was here before. None of the sage jars are overturned or disturbed. They merely burned out, but not too long ago from the looks of it.”

  Spade brushed a matted clump of Denise’s hair back, and I winced at what stuck to his hand.

  “Can you tell us what happened, darling?”

  From the way her gaze seemed to roll around the room, she was having trouble focusing. No shocker there; I was amazed she was even conscious. She must have been shot a couple hours ago for her to have healed to this extent, but even with her demon-blooded regenerative abilities, she was still in rough shape. I wasn’t sure a vampire or ghoul could have survived all the damage she’d sustained, yet despite the fact that she looked like she’d dove headfirst into a wood chipper, she managed to mumble out a reply.

  “Lisa and Francine . . . asleep. Heard . . . awful noise. Came in here . . . saw Helsing . . .”

  My kitty wasn’t in the room at the moment, from the two sole heartbeats I heard now that Dexter had quit barking. Helsing was probably hiding downstairs. All the recent run-ins with Kramer had taught the kitty to seek cover at the first hint of loud noises, so the gunshots would’ve sent him running.

  Denise lifted a crimson-painted hand and vaguely pointed at the wall beh
ind her. “Pulled him out . . . of the noose . . . then felt the gunshots.”

  Noose? That snapped my attention to the belt dangling from the closet rail, the bottom of it hooked into a circle. All the clothes were pushed to either side, leaving that single item in the middle, but with the bloody remains of Denise’s head all over the wall, I hadn’t focused on it at first glance.

  Bones edged around Spade and Denise to pluck out the belt, a muscle in his jaw flexing as he sniffed it.

  “How did he get in, Denise?” I asked, kneeling so we’d be more at eye level. “Can you tell us anything that could help us find out who he is?”

  Her gaze rolled around again, and she blinked several times, as if she were fighting to stay conscious. It was Bones who spoke, and his voice was dryer than ashes.

  “Not he, Kitten. She.”

  Denise managed to nod, while her eyes rolled back in her head. “Sarah,” she mumbled right before passing out. “Sarah shot me.”

  Thirty-three

  I didn’t want to believe it, but even with pieces of her head not fully regenerated yet, I didn’t doubt Denise’s statement. The woman we thought we were protecting from Kramer’s evil intentions must actually have been his accomplice instead.

  “I’ll kill the bitch,” Spade snarled, emerald blazing from his eyes and fangs flashing out from his upper teeth.

  From the roiling fury leaking out of Bones’s aura, Spade would have to take a number and get in line.

  “Get Denise cleaned up, Charles,” Bones said. “She’s been through enough without waking up covered in her own blood and brains again.”

  Spade scooped Denise up, carrying her out of the room while still muttering under his breath about all the different ways he was going to kill Sarah. I was too shell-shocked to begin plotting her death, but I knew my own murderous rage would come soon.

  “Kramer hates women, why would he partner up with one?” I wondered, trying to sort through this bombshell.