Bone Hunter

by Thea Atkinson

  And gratitude. Real, honest-to-goodness thankfulness. And for Scottie to list it all out as though the damage done to my body was nothing but an inventory for car parts made me hate him all the more. Of course, he wouldn't know that damage had been done to me. I was whole and hale, and as far as he knew, guilty of inflicting horrific injuries on his employee.

  "Alvin beat me senseless, just so you know," I said, catching his eye. "He beat me so bad I couldn't open my eyes."

  Nothing but a lifted, and disbelieving eyebrow. Of course he wouldn't believe me. All that showed on me was the vampire bite that was bruised and ringed with dried blood.

  "You sent him to hurt me."

  "I sent him to teach you a lesson because I couldn't, being in jail and all."

  "Some lesson," I said. "He nearly killed me. I should have let him so you'd see exactly how loyal he was to you."

  Another quirked eyebrow, this time accompanied by a snort.

  "Alvin wouldn't have beaten anyone that bad unless I asked him to."

  "My point exactly." I glared at him, almost daring him to disagree.

  "You need to understand," he said. "You are mine. Alvin knew that. Near dead I could take, but dead? He would know better. " He sighed. "Your death would have to be by my hand."

  At that he leaned ever so gently toward my feet, holding onto the blade handle with the tips of steepled fingers. He reached for something from beneath the cushion and the movement made the knife tip bite into my navel.

  I sucked back a breath through clenched teeth.

  "Careful," he said. "That knife is sharp."

  One jerking movement from him to the side and cold metal kissed the skin of my ankles, first the left and then the right. Cuffs, I thought. A long chain rattled between them with another set of bracelets, and it was snaking up thigh as his hands moved upward.

  "Give me your hands," he said.

  He was going to hogtie me.

  And then I would be at his mercy.

  I couldn't let that happen.

  "Wait," I said. The knife point was still in my navel and the sudden panic of tense muscles made it bite in, reminding me to lie so very still.

  Scottie sighed.

  "I gave you every chance, Sis," he said, shaking his head. "Every chance. No matter how many times Alvin told me you were no good for me I believed in you. I thought you would come back to me. To us.

  "But he was right. You make me weak. I can't be weak."

  "I'll come with you," I said, the panic rising. I would have promised anything at that point. The thought of being hogtied, unable to run or strike out was as terrifying as watching Alvin swinging from Maddox's grip.

  "Just let me up and I'll come along. Just don't do this."

  He shook his head. "Damn right you're coming with me," he said. "Just in chains this time. "

  He heaved a belabored sigh. "I don't want to do it, Sis, but if I can't remind you why you are mine, why you belong with me, then everyone needs to see that at least I'm not weak. They need to see that what belongs to me always belongs to me. Never someone else."

  Maddox again. Although Scottie didn't know the name of the man he thought of as his usurper, he was returning to the thing that bothered him the most. That someone else had taken his favorite toy.

  "There's no one," I said, hoping I could appeal to his vanity. "No one since you."

  "I wish I could believe that." He jangled the cuffs over my belly. "Now give me your hands."

  CHAPTER 26

  He rattled the chains, fully expecting me to obey. I had no intention of slipping my hands in between those cold cuffs. I needed to do something, anything to buy time.

  "Please don't, Scottie," I said. "I'm sorry. I was wrong."

  He canted his head to the side. He wasn't fooled, but he wanted to be. Deep down, he wanted to be so charismatic that he could persuade anyone of anything.

  He laid the cuffs on my belly. They were frigid the way only hard steel can be. "Tell me who he is."

  Giving him a name would serve only to infuriate him more and I knew that. It wouldn't be giving in to him, it would be admitting to him that someone else had tasted of his forbidden fruit.

  "It wasn't a man," I said. "It was me. I had a weapon and I used it. Let me up and I'll show you where it is. I swear, Scottie. You know me. What kind of man would I expose myself, my truths to? You know I don't trust easily. You know me."

  It was all the things he would want to hear: that he was the only man I'd ever trusted, that he was superior enough for me to be vulnerable with. Him. Only him. Always.

  He appeared to be thinking about that. I could almost see him running through Alvin's injuries and trying to imagine what sort of weapon could do that to a man of his size.

  "I was waiting for him," I said, hurrying along now with the story. "He thought he'd caught me by surprise, but I'd seen him following me. I waited for him inside over by the kitchen counter."

  I jerked my chin toward the trashcan and the counter where there was an angle in the wall that could corner someone.

  "I struck his ribs first," I said. "Knocked him flat onto his face. And then I swung over and over again before he could get up."

  The thought of what I was describing made my stomach sick, but details were important. Especially to someone like Scottie. I tried to pull those details again to my memory, though each strike and blow was one I'd have died to protect from my cell memory.

  "I kicked him in the stomach," I said, remembering how Alvin had driven his steel toed dress shoes into my belly. "And I was so terrified and so angry that I think I must have gone a little mad."

  I let my eye lids shutter down at that. Shame and contrition. That's what he'd want to see, not the sense of vengeance that I knew gleamed in my eye.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "But I couldn't let him hurt me. And then, when I knew you would come for me, I ran. I should have taken my lesson. I know that now."

  He sat back on his heels. "But you came back here."

  It wasn't exactly an accusation, but he needed to know why I'd return when he knew I expected him to find me. He was trying to add it all up in his favor and needed all the variables.

  "Where else was I going to go?" I said. "You're going to find me no matter where I am."

  "Damn straight," he said.

  I had him. I just needed to press it all home.

  "Plus, you were right about the museum," I said, hurrying to a sideline of apology that Scottie could understand well if he couldn't be swayed by the thought that I knew he'd find me. If my terror of him wasn't enough, he'd understand two other things: money and greed.

  "I found something there. Something that might mean an even bigger payoff. I just need your help to get it."

  His face soured dangerously and for a moment I thought I'd miscalculated.

  "So you came back because you want me to help you line your pockets."

  I shrugged as best I could lying on the couch. Nice and casual. Truth looked casual, didn't it?

  "It's as good a place to start as any, isn't it?"

  A slow smile spread across his face. "It's the perfect place to start."

  I could have wept for the relief.

  "Then let me up," I urged.

  He took his time retracting the knife from my belly button, but at least he lifted it out. I could breathe again. I sucked in air like I might never catch a breath again.

  I waited for him to unlock my ankle cuffs, but he merely moved aside, Letting the chains dangle off the side of the sofa. I tested the tightness of them by trying to flex my feet. Just enough give that I could walk, but it would be a shambling, awkward stride. Running would be out of the question.

  "So?" he said. "Show me this weapon you had that could do that kind of damage to my best man."

  "The cuffs?"

  He shook his head. It was too much to hope for and I'd known it. With a sigh I swung my legs and feet to the floor. Sitting up sent a wash of black over my vision. Still dizzy. I had to wait a
moment before my blood pressure equalized. I mentally cursed Ismé for the weakness.

  "Waiting," he said from his spot on the floor.

  I peered at him and nodded, and when he reached out to help me stand, I shook him off. I didn't want him to touch me. Not ever again. A trickle of blood ran from my navel to sop into the waistband of my jeans.

  I knew there was no bat. No heavy piece of wood. It was just me in the apartment without my gun, my pepper spray. I couldn't run with shackles on. In moments he would know the difference and I'd be right back where I started.

  I searched the apartment with a quick and surreptitious scan. There had to be something I could use. Something to gain me even ten seconds.

  The glass winked at me from the countertop. Blue flashes like minute streaks of lightening pulsed in ways that reminded me of the sidhe's eyes.

  "Hold on," I said. "It's in the broom closet."

  I shuffled as best I could toward the kitchenette. Scottie followed along behind me, close enough that I could smell his cologne. Good. Let him get good and close. There were two rather large shards pointing up from the glass bottom, right about eye width, that had his name on it.

  My stomach ached from the knots it had tied itself up into. The tiles felt cold on my feet. He'd pulled off my shoes and socks so I couldn't run even if I got free. But he'd forgotten I'd run in my bare feet before. I could steel myself to pain if I knew it was a vehicle to my freedom.

  "One question, Sis," he said from behind me before I got more than five paces away from him.

  I was almost there. I tried to measure from his voice how close he was. Maybe I could reach out for the glass, spin around and stab him with it. That might buy me enough time to get out of the apartment, but run too far with the shackles? Not going to happen. I needed the key to the cuffs. I needed about three minutes from the time I stabbed him to the time I jammed a key in the lock.

  It wasn't possible. I looked over my shoulder at him, afraid that he would have his switchblade pointed at me, ready to lunge and hold the point of it at my throat. For a big man, he was incredibly athletic. He'd managed before to backhand me across the face and still catch me before I fell.

  "Yes?" I said, making sure to infuse the word with all the meekness I could muster.

  "You explained how you killed him," he said. "But I still have one question."

  The glass was just a hair away from my right hand; I could see it in my peripheral vision. The broom closet knob at least a foot. Would he suspect anything if I moved too suddenly?

  "I didn't mean to kill him," I said, thinking he believed the desire to take something away from him was the problem, and trying to explain the accidental nature of it. "I just wanted to stop him from hurting me."

  He clutched the material of my flapping shirt, holding me fast. His expression spoke volumes in what he believed and what he didn't, and it was filled with distrust.

  "Yes, you said that. But how did you drag him all the way to my hotel room and dump him at the door?"

  He scanned me from head to heel. "You're not strong enough, not big enough for that."

  The material of my shirt tore loudly as he yanked me hard back toward him. Whatever I had hoped for in terms of time, my moment was on me. There was no thinking. No rationalization. I just twisted at the same moment, reaching for the glass with straining fingers.

  There was no time to consider where I stabbed, I just stabbed.

  I expected him to scream or strike out in pain.

  But he disintegrated in front of me, turning to ash in the air.

  CHAPTER 27

  The glass melted to nothing.

  An illusion, I thought at first, but only because the shock made me stupid. I knew it couldn't be true. My shirt, the blood on my stomach, the shackles cutting into my ankles all told me it had all been real.

  I didn't dare move. Everything was the same, right down to the way the faucet dripped at regular intervals into the sink. The socks on the floor were the same. The blood spots on the floor, leading a trail to where I stood where the same.

  All except the way my cat was coiling about my legs as though she hadn't seen me in weeks. The sound of her purring throttled through the air.

  That was how I knew I wasn't alone, and I was not in Kansas anymore.

  "The glass," I said, making a guess and aiming the words to the room. He would hear it of course, the sidhe warlord, because the smell of toffee wafted around me.

  "You made it into a portal."

  I was speaking to empty air, but I knew he heard. The cat's constant purring was evidence he was near. I knelt to scoop the cat from around my leg and held her in front of my face, watching where she looked. Her gaze flicked to my shoulder and I dropped her to the floor and spun, awkwardly, with the sound of chains rattling, toward the counter.

  He sat on it, swinging his legs. Boyish.

  "I'm right, aren't I?" I said, trying not to act as though I was surprised even though I didn't expect him to be right there, so close to me. "It was the glass."

  "Smart human," he said. "But it's not a portal. More like a key."

  There were a dozen things I wanted to say to him. A dozen things to accuse him of and rail at him over: the Morrigan, the loss of my glamor. Scottie breaking in. Alvin torturing me.

  All because of him.

  "You lied to me," I said. "You told me a seethe of vampires stole the bones of a god and you needed me to steal them back."

  He shrugged. "Body and bones is what I believe I said. That was no lie."

  "Well, vampires didn't take her. Just one did."

  He lifted his eyebrow. "Indeed."

  "You said it wasn't a goose chase at all. You said it was my life or death."

  "Another truth," he said.

  "It's an impossible task," I said. "I call that a goose chase, one I can't win. I could never get the glamor back and you knew it."

  "It wasn't glamor," he said. "I was clear about that. If it was glamor you'd still be fighting off your lover."

  He'd watched us, I realized, and past the fury that he still called Scottie my lover, I was incensed that he'd let it all happen without a single intervention. He'd seen every torturous second of Scottie staking his claim. I swallowed down the frustration in favor of getting to the bottom of the issue.

  "So I'm here in the fourth world with you? And Scottie is in the ninth world, and your relic, your goddess of bone and body is in Hell."

  I threw the last at him spitefully. He couldn't retrieve her. No one could. I nearly sobbed on the knowledge that it was Kassie, poor thing, who was stuck in that world and she couldn't be reached.

  "Yes," he said. "I do know that. You'd have known too if you weren't so myopic."

  "Well I can't very well lift her out of the pits of Hades," I said. "So it wouldn't have mattered."

  "And why is that?" he said with an almost comical slant of his head.

  "Because I'd need to be dead, is why," I said.

  He grinned, showing me those crystalline teeth again.

  He pulled a velveteen pouch from his pocket. Elegant fingers that held the hint of a callous or two ferreted their way within to extract a piece of jewelry with a very large setting.

  He tossed it at me.

  I caught it without thinking and peeked at it as it sat in my palm. An amulet of some sort, sans the chain. An ivory snake swallowed its own tail as it curled around a teardrop made of burgundy amber. It would have been a magnificent enough artifact alone, but what made it even more intriguing was the symbol trapped inside that looked itself to be traced out in blood.

  "It's gorgeous," I said, and I had time to look back up at him before I felt my chest squeeze tight.

  My lungs felt like they were on fire. My eyes stung like someone had dropped acid in them.

  "You said you needed to go to Hell," he said amicably as I gaped at him through a wash of tears. "No problem."

  And then the squeezing in my chest turned to pain, and I couldn't breathe.

>   I fell to my knees, the shackles around my ankles striking into my calves and then twisting my ankle as I fell to my side.

  I might have felt relief that the shackles broke free of my legs and fell to the floor with a noisy clatter, except everything started to tunnel down to one small prick of light that made me realize he hadn't been kidding at all.

  I was dying.

  CHAPTER 28

  Death was wet and warm. Very much like what I imagined a womb might feel like.

  I floated in death, liquid heat ebbing about me and lifting my limbs. I'd gone to the Mediterranean once with Scottie and tried to submerge myself in the salty water but instead bobbed in it like a cork. This was a lot like that. I could remember the way I'd tried to open my eyes under water and the sting of salt that bit into my tear ducts until I'd had to squeeze them closed.

  The thought of being submerged, of opening my eyes, made me realize my eyes were closed. I gained some sense of proximity of my limbs right then.

  I understood that a crushing sense of pressure had gathered in my lungs.

  And that was the moment when the serenity of death ended.

  I was not breathing.

  And I needed to breathe.

  My lungs burned with it. I'd gone too long without sucking in oxygen and every tissue in my body demanded it.

  Surely my lungs would constrict at any moment. Surely my chest muscles would expand, my mouth would open, and I'd suck in deliriously brilliant air.

  And when they finally did, I fought the inhalation because some baser instinct past my befuddled brain and aching lungs told me breathing was the absolute wrong thing to do even though it was the thing my body most craved.

  Not that it mattered.

  My lungs contracted on their own as though to spite me. They sent a pulsing tremor through my tissues that forced my mouth open, the thirst for air so great, I gasped.

  Of course I pulled in water. Hot, lung-drowning water that tasted of soap.

  I struggled against the sudden onslaught of liquid. In the blink of a synapse I remembered that death should not be hot and soapy like old dishwater.