“Truce accepted, and while I feel the same way, just like Justina, seems now I’ll never be rid of you, either.”
Tate let out a bark of laughter. “I forgot this truce includes her mother. That’s some ugly karma the two of us are working off.”
Fabian flew onto the roof, stopping Bones from whatever his reply would have been.
“They’ve found her!” the ghost announced.
“That was bloody quick,” Ian muttered.
It was, but then again, no one could hide from the dead. Especially when they had you narrowed down to a small area. That’s why we’d dealt with Marie first instead of rushing here. She hadn’t known Katie was in Detroit, but with a little time, she would’ve found her.
I flashed a tight smile at the four men, feeling the vampire version of adrenaline surging through me.
“All right, boys. Let’s go get our girl.”
We landed on the roof of a large, square building with graffiti covering every inch of the safety ledge. Across the street, a far taller building blocked out the moonlight, its beautiful architecture in stark contrast to the rot I could smell within.
“Where are we?” I whispered.
“The Roosevelt Warehouse,” Bones said, also keeping his voice very low. “More commonly known as the Detroit book depository. Tunnels connect it to the old train station across the street. Perhaps that’s how Katie’s been traveling back and forth between the two.”
Fabian nodded, looking sad as he glanced around.
“I came here before, when it was new. I love books, but it’s so hard for me to read. I have to float behind people as they turn pages—”
“Fabian, where did the ghosts say Katie was?” I interrupted.
He snapped out of his reminiscing. “Follow me.”
Fabian passed through one of the barricaded doors of the hut-like structure on the roof. Impatience made me want to kick it open, but that would be too loud. I waited while Bones telekinetically pulled out the boards, then opened it as quietly as the rusted hinges allowed.
I still flinched at the noise it made, that creaking sounding like two pots banging together with my frazzled nerves. Once inside, it only took a glance at the deteriorated metal staircase to make me mime a “we’re flying” directive.
Bones grabbed Tate, holding him with an ease that belied the other vampire’s heavier build. Soundlessly, we streaked down the stairwell, following Fabian, who weaved in and out of the narrow space until he disappeared through another door.
This one wasn’t boarded up. It was cracked open, letting in a putrid whiff of the smell beyond. I pushed myself through with as little sound as possible, my gaze widening at the room beyond.
The scent of old smoke was almost overpowered by the odor of rotting paper, urine, death, and desperation. Books, magazines, and manuals lined the floor a foot deep in places, the ink almost unreadable from time and exposure to water. Small creatures had made nests in the literary rubble, some of them still there, though in varying states of decomposition.
From the smell, they weren’t the only bodies in this room, but as Fabian beckoned me onward, I didn’t pause at the shoe sticking out from a pile of ruined parchment. That person was long past my ability to help, anyway.
The scent of fresh smoke teased my nose the closer I got to the end of the room. Fabian paused, hovering near the ceiling, and pointed down.
Candlelight cast a faint amber glow amidst a pile of books stacked up like a partial igloo. At my angle, I couldn’t see over it, so I went higher, brushing the decaying ceiling in my eagerness.
I caught a glimpse of a little girl crouched over a half-rotted book when plaster crumbling from my nearness jerked her head up. Our eyes locked, and as I watched, hers began to turn bright, glowing green. My dormant heart began to beat in an erratic, staccato rhythm from the excitement that gripped me.
She was alive, well, and—once we got her out of here—safe.
“Katie,” I breathed, flying faster toward her.
Her hand snapped up as if she were waving at me. Then something burned in my chest. Bones dropped Tate and grabbed me, spinning me around. That made the burning sensation worse, but I still strained to see Katie before the intensity of the pain finally made me look down.
A knife jutted out from between my breasts. The handle was some strange combination of paper and old leather, but from the fire that spread through my body, the blade was silver.
Thirty-three
I’d forgotten how much it hurt to be stabbed in the heart with silver. Most vampires only felt that once; lucky me, this was my third time. As awful as the pain was, it didn’t frighten me as much as the weakness that made every muscle limp with instant paralysis. Then came the blurred vision and blunted hearing that caused everything to seem very far away. Only the pain was near, burying the rest of my senses under a merciless cascade of agony.
That grew with unbearable ferocity as the knife in my chest moved. Someone screamed, a shrill, anguished sound. I would have fled in any direction to escape the terrible pain, except my limbs didn’t work. Worse, a great, oppressive weight bore down on me, crushing me.
Maybe the building had collapsed, a still-functioning part of my mind reasoned. That would explain the crushing sensation and feeling like the knife jerked with brutal, scissoring motions. If so, I should be dead already, so why did it still hurt so much—
Another scream tore out of me, and I convulsed as nerve endings surged with sudden, spastic motion. Then I saw the glint of moonlight on a red-smeared blade before it crumpled as though being smashed by an invisible fist.
“Kitten?”
Pain faded with his voice, leaving me dizzy with relief. Weakness was slower to release its grip, though, so it took me two tries to sit up.
“Where’s Katie?” were my first words.
A muscle flexed in Bones’s jaw.
“Don’t know. She ran after she threw the knives.”
I jumped up and promptly started to fall because my legs refused to hold me. Bones caught me before I landed in the pile of books he’d laid me on.
“Why didn’t you stop her?” I moaned. “You could have frozen her in place with your power!”
His grip tightened, the light from his gaze brightening until it shaded everything around us green.
“That blade landed directly in your heart,” he replied through gritted teeth. “I concentrated all of my power on immobilizing it and the tissues around it so you wouldn’t die right in front of me.”
His aura cracked as he spoke, blasting my emotions with a geyser of rage, relief, and fear. Maybe it was good that he hadn’t used his power on Katie. If he’d touched her with it while he was this upset, he might have accidentally killed her.
I gripped his jacket, both to steady myself and to pull him closer.
“She doesn’t know any better, Bones. It’s up to us to teach her.”
“Not if she keeps trying to kill you,” was his instant reply.
Our first parenting fight. Figures it would be over something life-threatening instead of how late she could stay up to watch TV.
“I should have known better than to zoom up to her when she didn’t know who I was or if I was there to hurt her. It won’t happen again.”
Then I rested my head against his chest, letting out a snort.
“As if we didn’t already know, this proves she’s my daughter. I used to stab vampires first and introduce myself afterward, too.”
A dark sound escaped him, but some of the rage eased from his aura.
“I recall it well, Kitten.”
Crashing noises below had me spinning out of his arms. I only made it a few feet before it felt like I had run right into an invisible wall.
“You just promised to be more careful,” Bones said in an exasperated voice. “Dashing off with a barely healed tear in your heart is the opposite of careful, Kitten!”
Right. It might take days for me to be back to full strength, and Katie was faster a
nd more skilled than I’d realized. If only the logical part of my brain weren’t three steps behind my newly awakened maternal instincts, I’d act with much more prudence.
“You go first,” I said. See? Very cautious.
Bones gave me a short, fierce kiss, then stalked past me, cracking his knuckles as if in anticipation.
“Remember, no punishment for what she did,” I warned him. “She’s just a little girl.”
His predatory smile didn’t ease my concern.
“You only learned the hard way, luv. If she’s demonstrating your tendencies, then there’s only one way to handle her.”
The crashing noise had come from the basement, where one of many rickety spiral staircases led to the building’s dank underbelly. I followed Bones’s lead and jumped down since they didn’t look like they could hold Katie’s weight, let alone an adult’s. This part of the old depository had more dirt than books, and if the commotion ahead didn’t point the way, several sets of new footprints did.
“She’s heading for the tunnels!” I heard Fabian say.
My pace quickened, but my legs still felt wobbly. Damn lingering effects of my heart being punctured with silver. I hadn’t been this weakened after having my whole body pumped full of it.
“You said this building connects to the train station beneath the street?”
Bones nodded, slowing down to drape a hard arm around me, supporting me. He must have caught my slight wobble.
“The train station will have even more tunnels,” I said in growing concern. “We could lose her in the underground labyrinth, which must be why she’s running there.”
Smart girl, I thought, and felt a surge of pride even as I shook Bones’s arm off.
“You’re faster. Leave me and get her. I’ll be right behind you.”
“Katie!” Tate yelled, his voice starting to echo. “Stop!”
Bones raked me with a gaze, as if judging my capabilities, then turned and flew, streaking into the darkness ahead. I tried to fly as well—and promptly face-planted into the ground.
“Ugh,” I groaned before spitting out what I hoped was dirt. Then, with a slight stagger, I got up and began to run in the direction Bones had disappeared.
“If you’d listen to reason, poppet . . .”
Ian’s voice bounced off the walls before I heard a hard, thwacking sound, then an indignant, “Why, you little guttersnipe!”
His voice had held distinct undertones of pain and surprise. Despite feeling like death warmed over, I smiled. Looks like I wasn’t the only one Katie had gotten the drop on.
“Enough.”
Bones’s voice, accompanied by a crack of power I felt though I was a couple hundred yards behind him. I ran faster, almost tripping over garbage and debris in my haste. When I rounded a corner that opened up into a boiler room, I stopped at the sight that greeted me.
Ian’s shirt had a wide gash, revealing a crimson slash on his pale abdomen that was still healing. By comparison, Tate had fared much better. He only had a red-stained slice in his shoulder and more fresh blood coating his forehead.
Bones didn’t have a mark on his all-black ensemble. He stood in the corner of the room, his hand held out as though hailing a cab.
Katie was suspended in midair about fifty feet from him, her legs kicking at nothing since the ground was nowhere near her feet.
I came closer, savoring my first full view of her that didn’t involve a grainy video. Her auburn hair was now almost black from dirt, old soot, or both. She’d tied it into a ponytail with a strip of plaid material she must have cut from the bottom of her too-big shirt. An equally large pair of pants were rolled up at the ankles and belted onto her thin frame with more plaid material. Her shoes also looked several sizes too big, but she’d wrapped string tightly around her feet to keep them from falling off.
If she’d gotten creative with her borrowed clothes, that was nothing compared to the knives she clutched in those small, pale hands. The blades consisted of broken glass filed down to precision points, with leather book covers and tape making up the handles. Silver glinted along the edge of blades, causing another swell of twisted parental pride. She’d almost killed me with one of her homemade knives, but damned if she didn’t have skill. It would have taken her hours to melt enough silver to coat those blades, and despite their weight being off with the handles, she’d still managed to throw one right into my bull’s-eye zone.
I came closer, wishing I knew what color her eyes were. At the moment, they were lit up with vampire green, their glow landing on my face as I approached.
So many emotions surged as I stared up at her. Protectiveness and concern I expected; she’d been through so much at an age where her biggest concern should have been losing her baby teeth. Fear and shyness I’d predicted; I so wanted her to like me, and, of course, I had no idea how to start building our relationship. Hi, I’m your mom was too much, too soon, and if I tried to hug her, she’d probably stab me again.
What I hadn’t counted on was the love that walloped me right in the heart. She might as well have hit me with Cupid’s arrow before, it was so sudden and strong. Me, who had trust issues a mile long and had refused to admit that I loved Bones until several months into our relationship, now knew with absolute certainty that I loved the homicidal little hellion staring down at me. With that knowledge, a big, stupid grin broke out over my face.
We were together now. We’d work out the rest later.
Wariness replaced her oddly stoic expression, reminding me to rein in the signs of my newfound joy. Grinning at her while she was trussed up in a telekinetic net probably made me look like a crazed villain.
“Hi,” I said in what I hoped was a neutral voice. “My name is Cat. Don’t worry, no one’s going to hurt you.”
She glanced at her suspended body, then back at me. Liar, her look plainly stated.
“Let her down,” I ordered Bones.
He stepped out from the corner, and her heart sped up. With his black clothes, long coat, dark hair, and gaze back to its natural brown, he must have almost blended into the shadows to her.
“I’m Bones,” he stated in a crisp tone. “It’s my power that’s holding you up there, and I could do far worse if I chose to.”
“Bones,” I hissed. “Stop scaring her!”
“I’m not scaring her,” he replied evenly. “I’m speaking to her in terms she understands.”
His cool gaze never wavered from Katie as he slowly lowered her with each step that he took.
“I know a bit about growing up under harsh circumstances,” he told her. “Makes you understand two things straightaway—who’s got the power and who doesn’t. I do, and you feel it as well as see it, don’t you?”
She nodded, her expression still giving nothing away. I’d seen people centuries old that didn’t have as good a poker face. That she could suppress displays of emotion at such a staggeringly young age was further proof of the warped way she’d been raised. Most children wore their feelings on their sleeve, but whatever Katie’s were, she’d locked them behind that mask of detachment.
That’s when it occurred to me that I couldn’t hear her thoughts. Maybe it was because I was still under the weather from the recent silver-staking she’d given me. I concentrated harder, but got nothing except a solid wall of blankness. Amazing.
Aside from her glowing eyes, she looked totally human. Her skin was too dirty to see if it had the same luminescence mine had when I was a half-breed, but her breathing, heartbeat, and scent all screamed mortal. No wonder it was so easy to forget that she wasn’t.
“Since I have this power,” Bones continued, “you can trust that we won’t hurt you for the simple reason that if we wanted you dead, you already would be.”
“Bones!” I snapped.
“Way to win stepfather of the year,” Tate muttered.
Katie, however, pursed her lips in the first display of emotion I’d seen: contemplation. Then her feet touched the ground as Bones finished lower
ing her. Once she tested her weight and found that she was standing under her own power, her eyes lost their preternatural glow and began to darken. When they turned to gunmetal gray, I almost let out a sob.
She had my eyes. My nose, too, and here’s hoping that edge to her chin was dirt instead of signs of the trademark Crawfield stubbornness. Without realizing it, I sank down until we were eye level.
And then she spoke.
“You heal like them, but you’re not one of them because your heart still beats sometimes. Why?”
I let her voice flow over me, storing it in parts I hadn’t known existed until now. Her vocabulary was years above her age, much like the rest of her traits, but her voice held the high, youthful tenor of a child’s.
“Because once,” I said huskily, “I was like you: part human and part something else. Special.”
“Katie.”
Tate crouched next to me, smiling at her with a sheen in his eyes that he didn’t attempt to blink away.
“I know I look different since I shaved and cut my hair, but you remember me, don’t you? You crushed my neck five seconds after we met.”
“Six,” she corrected with a solemn little blink.
He grinned. “All right, six. The only other girl to kick my butt that fast is Cat. She trained me to fight, you know.”
Dark gray eyes met mine, causing me to draw in a breath. Would I ever get used to seeing my own eyes look back at me from that tiny face?
“I remember you from the base,” she stated. “You tried to make me come with you. You are very hard to neutralize.”
From her tone, that last part was a compliment, though I wasn’t sure how to respond. The person she remembered trying to “neutralize” back then had been Denise, shapeshifted to look like me. In actuality, Katie had only tried to kill me once, and she’d damn near succeeded.
“Thank you,” I settled on, adding, “you’re very tough, too, but you don’t have to be anymore. We’re going to take care of you.”
Then I couldn’t help it; I took her hand. She flinched, her fingers tightening on her knife. After a glance at Bones, her grip loosened.
Up From the Grave: A Night Huntress Novel Page 21