Halfway to the Grave

by Jeaniene Frost

  “So, uh, Cathy, are you from Ohio?” he asked, fumbling with his own cup.

  “Born and bred,” I replied. “You?”

  He nodded, spilling some coffee onto the counter and then jumping back with a surreptitious glance at me, as if afraid I’d reprimand him. “Sorry. I’m a klutz. Oh, um, yeah, I’m from here, too. Powell. My mom’s a bank manager there, and I got a kid sister who’s starting high school who still lives with her. It’s been just the three of us since my dad died. Car accident. I don’t even remember him. Not that you wanted to know all that. Sorry. I babble sometimes.”

  He also had a habit of apologizing every other sentence. Hearing about his fatherless state made me feel another bond of kinship with him. Deliberately I took a swig of coffee…and let a little bit dribble out of the side of my mouth.

  “Oops!” I said with feigned embarrassment. “Excuse me. I drool sometimes when I drink.”

  Another lie, but Timmie smiled, handing me a napkin while the nervousness eased off him. There was nothing like having someone be a bigger goof to boost one’s own self-confidence.

  “That’s better than being a klutz. I’m sure a lot of people do that.”

  “Oh yeah, there’s a club of us,” I quipped. “Droolers Anonymous. I’m on Step One in my membership. Admitting that I’m powerless over my slobbering and my life has become unmanageable.”

  Timmie was in the process of taking another sip when he started to laugh. Coffee came out of his nose as a result, and then his eyes bulged, aghast.

  “I’m sorry!” he choked, making it worse by trying to talk. More coffee emerged, spraying me in the face. His eyes bugged in horror, but I laughed so hard at seeing him leak like a thermos with holes that I started to hiccup.

  “It’s contagious!” I managed to get out. “There’s no escape from the drool disease once you catch it!”

  He laughed again, compounding his problem. I hiccuped, Timmie gasped and sputtered, and both of us looked like mental patients to anyone who would have happened by the still-open door. I ended up handing him the same napkin he’d given me, trying to control my giggles while instinctively knowing I’d found a friend.

  I headed over to the cave Monday afternoon after my classes. A couple miles before I made my turn onto the gravel road that ended at the edge of the woods, I passed a Corvette parked to the side with its hazard lights on. No one was inside. I almost huffed to myself in superiority. Whose old Chevy was tooling past a broken-down, sixty-thousand-dollar sports car? So there!

  I was whistling the little tune Darryl Hannah made famous in Kill Bill when I entered the cave. That’s when I felt the change in the air. The disturbance. Someone was lurking about fifty yards ahead, and whoever it was didn’t have a heartbeat. What I also instinctively knew was that it wasn’t Bones.

  I kept whistling, not letting my heart rate accelerate or my cadence falter. I wasn’t armed. My knives and wood-coated stakes were back at the apartment, and my second set was in the dressing area behind this unknown person. Weaponless, I was at a distinct disadvantage, but there was no way I was turning around. Bones must be in trouble, or worse, since I didn’t sense him here. Someone had found his hideout, and empty-handed or not, I wasn’t going anywhere but forward.

  I progressed as casually as possible, my mind racing. What could I use as a weapon? My options were dismal. This was a cave, there was nothing around but dirt and…

  I reached down while ducking under one of the lower slopes in the ceiling of the cave, the action concealing what I scooped up. The person was coming toward me now, moving soundlessly. My fingers tightened around what I held as I rounded the next bend, bringing the intruder into view.

  A tall man with longish spiky black hair was about twenty feet from me. He smiled as he approached, confident in his presumed superiority.

  “You, my beauteous redhead, must be Cat.”

  The name I’d given Hennessey. This must be one of his goons and somehow he’d found Bones. I prayed I wasn’t too late and he hadn’t killed him.

  I smiled back coldly. “Like what you see? How about now?”

  And I flung the rocks I’d gathered straight into his eyes. I put all my force behind it, knowing it wouldn’t be lethal but hoping to temporarily incapacitate him. His head snapped back and I sprang at him, seizing my chance while he was blinded. My momentum knocked him off his feet and both of us went down. Immediately I grasped his head, smashing him face-first into the stone ground, wedging the rocks deeper into his eyes. I straddled his back when his thrashing almost threw me off, using my weight and squeezing him with my thighs as hard as I could. All the while I bashed his head, I was cursing at his strength. A Master vampire without a doubt. Well, what did I expect? If he was a weakling, Bones would have greeted me, not him.

  “Stop it! Stop!” he howled.

  I put more effort into it instead. “Where’s Bones? Where is he?”

  “Christ, he said he was on his way!”

  He had an English accent. I hadn’t noticed that before, being so wrapped up in my concern. I stopped banging his head, but kept it ground into the stony floor.

  “You’re one of Hennessey’s men. Why would you let him know you’re waiting for him?”

  “Because I’m Crispin’s bloody best friend, not one of that scoundrel’s dingos!” he said indignantly.

  That answer I wasn’t expecting. He’d also called Bones by his real name, and I didn’t know if that was common knowledge. I had a split second to debate with myself, then I grabbed another rock, using one hand to keep his head where it was. With the pointy end of the stone, I jabbed him in the back.

  “Feel that? It’s silver. You move and I ram it right through your heart. Maybe you’re Bones’s friend and maybe you’re not. Since I’m not the trusting sort, we’ll wait for him. If he’s not here soon like you said, I’ll know you were lying, and then it’ll be curtains for you.”

  I almost held my breath, waiting to see if he called my bluff. Since I hadn’t pierced his skin, he shouldn’t be able to feel that this wasn’t silver. I hoped vampires didn’t have a sixth sense about their kryptonite. My big plan, if he wasn’t a friend, was to jam it through his heart anyway and then run like hell for my silver. If I got to it in time.

  “If you’d refrain from slamming my face any more into this dirty rock floor, I’ll do whatever you like,” was his even reply. “Fancy letting my head go?”

  “Sure,” I said with an unpleasant snicker, not relinquishing an ounce of pressure. “How about I let you floss with my jugular as well? I don’t think so.”

  He made an exasperated noise that sounded very familiar. “Come on, this is ridiculous—”

  “Shut up.” I didn’t want his chatter distracting me from hearing when—or if—Bones arrived. “Lie there and play dead, or you will be.”

  Twenty cramped minutes later, my heart leapt when I heard steady footfalls coming toward the cave. Then a feeling of power I recognized filled up the space as those footsteps came closer.

  Bones rounded the corner and stopped short. A single dark brow arched even as I leaned back, letting go of the vampire’s head at last.

  “Charles,” Bones said distinctly. “You’d better have a splendid explanation for her being on top of you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  THE BLACK-HAIRED VAMPIRE ROSE TO HIS FEET as soon as I jumped off, brushing the dirt off his clothes.

  “Believe me, mate, I’ve never enjoyed a woman astride me less. I came out to say hallo, and this she-devil blinded me by flinging rocks in my eyes. Then she vigorously attempted to split my skull before threatening to impale me with silver if I so much as even twitched! It’s been a few years since I’ve been to America, but I daresay the method of greeting a person has changed dramatically!”

  Bones rolled his eyes and clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m glad you’re still upright, Charles, and the only reason you are is because she didn’t have any silver. She’d have staked you right and proper otherwise.
She has a tendency to shrivel someone first and then introduce herself afterwards.”

  “That’s uncalled for!” I said, insulted at the suggestion that I was homicidal.

  “Right.” Bones let that go. “Kitten, this is my best mate, Charles, but you can call him Spade. Charles, this is Cat, the woman I’ve been telling you about. You can see for yourself that everything I’ve said is…an understatement.”

  From his tone, that didn’t sound altogether complimentary, but I felt a tad bit guilty about what I’d done to the lanky vampire eying me, so I didn’t comment and just held out my hand.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Spade repeated, and then threw back his head and roared with laughter. “Well, hallo to you, too, darling! I’m very pleased to meet you now that you’re not flogging me unmercifully.”

  He had tiger-colored eyes, and they gave me a thorough once-over while he shook my hand. I did the same to him. Fair was fair. Next to Bones, Spade looked two inches taller, which made him about six-four. He had lean attractive features, a straight nose, and inky hair that spiked up from his crown before hanging past his shoulders.

  “Spade. You’re white. Isn’t that kind of…politically incorrect?”

  He laughed again, but this time it was with less humor. “Oh, I didn’t choose that as a racial slur. It was how the overseer in South Wales used to address me. A spade is a shovel, and I was a digger. He never called anyone by their names, only their assigned tool. He didn’t feel the convicts were worthy of more.”

  Oh, so he was that Charles. Now I remembered the name from when Bones had told me about his past imprisonment. There were three men I became mates with—Timothy, Charles, and Ian.

  “Sounds pretty demeaning. Why’d you keep it?”

  Spade’s smile didn’t slip, but those striking features hardened. “So I’d never forget.”

  Okay. A change of subject was in order. Bones beat me to it.

  “Charles has some information on a flunky of Hennessey’s who might prove useful.”

  “Great,” I said. “Should I grab my slut clothes and pile on the makeup?”

  “You should stay out of it,” Spade replied in a serious tone.

  That made me want to fling more rocks at him. “My God, is it a vampire thing to be a chauvinist? Or just an eighteenth century one? Keep the girl in the kitchen where she won’t get hurt, right? Wake up and smell the twenty-first century, Spade! Women are good for more than cringing and waiting for men to rescue them!”

  “And if Crispin felt differently for you, I’d bid you good luck and tell you to have at it,” Spade responded at once. “Yet I happen to know firsthand how devastating it is when someone you love is murdered. There’s nothing worse, and I don’t want him going through that.”

  A part of me was inwardly pleased that Bones had told his friend he had feelings for me. I still didn’t believe he loved me, but it was nice to know I wasn’t just another warm body to him.

  “Look, I’m sorry vampires killed someone close to you, truly I am. But—”

  “Vampires didn’t kill her,” he interrupted me. “A group of French deserters cut her throat.”

  I opened my mouth, paused, and shut it. That told me a few things right there, aside from the fact that I’d been wrong about what race killed her. She’d been human, whoever she was.

  “I’m not like everyone else,” was what I ended up saying, giving Bones a questioning look to see if he’d told him that as well.

  “So I’ve heard,” Spade said. “And you certainly caught me off guard earlier, but whatever your extraordinary abilities…you’re easy to kill. That beating pulse in your neck is your greatest weakness, and if I’d had a mind to before, I could have flipped you over and torn it out.”

  I smiled. “You’re pretty cocky. So am I, when it comes to certain things. We’ll get along just fine. Wait right here.”

  “Kitten…” Bones called after me, no doubt guessing where I was headed.

  “Oh, this’ll be fun!”

  “Where’s she off to?” I heard Spade ask.

  Bones made a noise that was almost pitying. “To hand you your arse, and for the record, if I thought I had a chance of keeping her out of this, I would. Woman’s stubborn beyond reason.”

  “Stubbornness won’t keep her alive. I’m astounded you’d allow her to—”

  Spade stopped talking when he saw me, probably because of what was in my hands.

  “Okay, you’re a big bad vampire who’s gonna rip my throat out, right? You see I’m armed—with steel, by the way, since this is a demonstration and I don’t want you to end up smelly—and you don’t care because you’re all that and I’m just an artery in a dress. If you get a mouth on my throat, you win, but if I plug your heart first, I do.”

  Spade’s eyes slid to Bones. “Is she joking?”

  Bones cracked his knuckles and stepped aside. “Not at all.”

  “Dinner’s getting cold,” I taunted him. “Come and get me, bloodsucker.”

  Spade laughed—and then feinted right before leaping at me with blurring speed. He was a breath away when he looked down in surprise.

  “Well, strike me pink!” he said, pulling himself up in midtackle.

  “I don’t know what that means, but okay.”

  Two steel blades were in his chest. He stared at them before ripping them out and turning to Bones in amazement.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “That’s just what I said, mate,” Bones replied dryly. “She has a real talent with knives. It’s a damn good thing she hadn’t practiced throwing them before we met, or I might not be here.”

  “Indeed.” Spade was still shaking his head when he looked my way next. “All right, Cat. You’ve made an excellent point that you’re far deadlier than you look. I see I can’t sway you to leave this business with Hennessey alone, and Crispin clearly has confidence in you, so I bow in defeat.”

  He actually did give me a bow, his long dark hair brushing the cave floor with the graceful motion of it. It was such a courtly, refined gesture that I laughed.

  “What were you before they sent you to prison, a duke?”

  Spade straightened and smiled. “Baron Charles DeMortimer. At your service.”

  The streetlight above me was broken. Farther down the alley, a cat snarled at some unknown threat. On the opposite corner, the sandy-haired vampire bounced on the balls of his feet, almost hopping in place. He was clearly excited.

  I wasn’t. It was two a.m. and most people were in bed, which sounded good to me. Thanks to the hyper vampire I was walking toward, however, that wasn’t in the cards.

  “Hey, man.”

  I twitched as I approached, flicking my gaze in several directions and hunching my shoulders. With my fresh bruises, scratches, and dingy clothes, I looked like the poster child for drug addiction. It wasn’t hard to pull off. I’d just refrained from taking blood after Bones roughed me up for authenticity.

  “You got some horse, man?” I continued, rubbing my arms as if fantasizing about a needle.

  He let out a high-pitched giggle. “Not here, chickie. But I can get some. Come with me.”

  “You’re not a cop, are you?” I backed up as if wary.

  Another giggle. “Not that.”

  Had a sense of humor, did he? Well, wait until he heard my punch line. “I don’t have time for you to call someone, I’m hurtin’ here—”

  “It’s in my car,” he cut me off. “Right down this way.”

  He almost skipped down the alley. At the other end of it was an even more derelict street.

  “This way,” he sang out as I followed more slowly, looking around to see if there were any more dead men walking near him. “Right here, chickie.”

  The vampire held open his car door and beamed at me. Obligingly, I crouched down to look inside.

  The blow was expected, but it still hurt. I fell forward into the passenger seat as a normal person would, letting my limbs go limp. The vampire giggled and sw
ung my legs inside, slamming the door. Another tee-hee-hee later and we were off.

  I was slumped next to him. He didn’t pay any attention to me, but kept snickering as he drove. It was annoying. I had PMS and a test this morning. Boy, had he picked the wrong girl.

  Without warning, his car was rammed from behind. The sharp impact provided the perfect distraction for me to pull my silver out of my boot. He let out a loud squeal as I plunged it into his chest, missing his heart deliberately, but close enough to get his attention.

  “Shut up, chirpy!” I snapped. “Pull over, or you’ll get rear-ended again. And if that happens, you can guess where this blade will end up.”

  The shock on his face was almost comical. Then his eyes flared.

  “Take your hands off me!”

  “Don’t waste that glow on me, buddy, it won’t work. You’ve got about three more seconds to pull over, or it’s nighty-night for you.”

  Behind us, Bones revved his engine for emphasis. Another collision would send the silver straight through his heart, and he knew it.

  I didn’t glance away as we came to a stop and Bones opened the driver’s door.

  “Well, Tony, how goes it?”

  The vampire wasn’t laughing anymore. “I don’t know where Hennessey is!” he shouted.

  “Right, mate, and I believe you. Kitten, if you’ll drive? He and I are going to have a talk.”

  Bones maneuvered Tony into the backseat. I got behind the wheel and adjusted the mirror so I could see them.