Halfway to the Grave

TWENTY-SIX

T O GIVE CREDIT WHERE IT WAS DUE, DON WAS as good as his word in setting up my transportation. Within an hour, I was dressed and waiting in my mother’s room, sans handcuffs. I’d finally showered to wash off all of the blood, and while in there, I allowed myself to cry, since it mixed with the water and felt camouflaged. Yet looking down at my mother now, my eyes were dry as sand.

“Well?”

I’d just finished speaking to her about the offer and my subsequent acceptance of it. Some of the repugnance had left her face while I talked and at last she took my hand.

“You’re doing the right thing. The only thing to save yourself from a future of evil.”

Bitterness wafted from me and a small, selfish part of me hated her. If not for her, I could just disappear with Bones and live the rest of my life with the man I loved. Yet it was no more her fault for her unyielding hatred of vampires than it was my fault for being born. In this case, we were even.

“I don’t think it’s saving me from a future of evil, but I’m doing it anyway.”

“Don’t be stupid, Catherine. Of course it is. How long could you have continued your relationship with that creature before he turned you into a vampire? If he cared for you as you claim he did, then he wouldn’t want to sit back and watch you age over time, would he? Moving closer to death each year, as all humans do. Why, when he could change you and extend your youth indefinitely? That’s what he’ll do to you if you stay with him, and if you weren’t being blind, you’d already know it.”

Much as I hated to admit it, she had brought up a very obvious point I’d let myself ignore. What would happen to our relationship in ten years? Twenty? More? God, she was right. Bones wouldn’t just sit back and watch me die of old age. He’d want me to change over, and I would never do it. Maybe we’d been doomed from the start, and my mother’s prejudice and Don’s offer were just proof of that. You fight the battles you can win, Bones had repeatedly said. Well, I couldn’t win this battle, but I could keep him safe. I could keep my mother safe, and then use what was in me to keep other people safe. Put in perspective, a broken heart wasn’t such a terrible price to pay. I might be looking at a future without him, but it was still a future. Considering all the girls Hennessey had taken who didn’t have that anymore, it would be an insult for me to squander my life when theirs had been robbed from them.

The door opened and Tate Bradley poked his head in. His arm was in a sling and there was a bandage near his temple.

“Time to go.”

Nodding shortly, I grasped my mother’s wheelchair and followed him down the hospital corridor. The hallway had been cleared and every patient door closed. Behind me were eight heavily armed men. It seemed Don was afraid I’d get cold feet.

There were about two hours left of daylight. We would be driven a short distance away to a helicopter pad and then flown via chopper to where a military plane waited. I piled into the backseat with my mother. Tate took the front passenger seat, being unable to drive with his broken arm. A man who introduced himself as Pete took the wheel. My other guards took flanking positions in three vehicles, one behind us, two on each side. Ironically, it was the same formation the vampires had used last night. We pulled away and I closed my eyes, thinking that I’d have to find a way to tell Bones goodbye. Maybe I’d leave a message with Tara. She’d know how to contact him. I couldn’t just leave with no word to him at all.

Tate broke the silence after several minutes. “Pete here will be one of the members of the unit, Cather-excuse me, Cat,” he corrected himself.

I didn’t open my eyes. “Not unless I say so, or were you asleep during that part? I pick the team. Pete’s in only if he passes my test, and that goes for you, too.”

“What’s the test?” Pete asked condescendingly.

My eyes slit open.

“To see how many times you’ll get back up after I beat you unconscious.”

Pete laughed. Tate didn’t. Maybe he wasn’t as stupid as I’d first thought. The glance he threw me told me he believed every word.

“Look,”-Pete eyed me in the rearview mirror, skepticism etched on his face-“I know you’re supposed to be something special, but…what the fuck?”

Pete’s retort ended in a gasp when he spotted a man in the middle of the highway in our lane. My breath caught as well, and my mother screamed.

“That’s him! That’s-”

Tate had less hesitation. In the seconds before the car struck Bones, he pulled his gun and fired through the windshield at him.

It was like hitting a brick wall. The collision crushed the front of the car. Glass exploded out of the windows and the front and rear air bags deployed instantly. Jerked forward violently, I heard brakes screech behind us as our escort swerved to avoid slamming into our rear. The two cars on either side of us sailed past and then applied their brakes to try to rotate around. Traffic still came from behind us. Vehicles that had banked sharply to the left and right of us crashed into the turning agents’ cars. The sound of twisting steel on metal as the vehicles piled up in a ghastly domino effect was deafening.

Tate and Pete lolled in their seat belts, blood from the glass and contact with the dashboard streaming down their faces. There was a wrenching sound as Tate’s door was ripped off its frame. Through the smoke from the destroyed engine, I saw Bones grin as he chucked the piece of the car like a giant Frisbee at the car behind us. Back there, the other guards vainly tried to get a clear shot at him. They scattered as the door burst through their windshield. In a flash the other door followed suit, and my mother wailed in mortal fear when he next tore open mine.

“Hallo, Kitten!”

Despite my earlier resolution, I was thrilled to see him. He unclasped my seat belt and grabbed my mother when she tried to scoot out her side.

“Not so fast, Mum. We’re in a bit of a hurry.”

A moan from the front seat made him casually swat Tate in the head.

“Don’t kill him, Bones! They weren’t going to hurt me!”

“Oh-right, then. Let’s just send them on their way nicely.”

In a blur he yanked Tate clear from his seat. For a moment his mouth pressed against his neck, and then he tossed him fifty feet in the air. Tate landed in the grass by the shoulder of the road. Pete attempted to crawl away, but Bones grasped him and gave him the same flight with similar onboard beverage service.

“Get out of the car, luv,” Bones directed, and I sprang from the ruined remains of the vehicle. He still had my mother by the arm. She was crying and cursing him at the same time.

“They’re going to kill you, they know what you are! Catherine’s-”

My mother’s words were cut off when I punched her right in the jaw. She collapsed without another word. In her railing threats, she would have revealed too much, and if Bones knew about the deal I’d made, he would talk me out of it. I’d believe whatever impossible assurances he gave me, because my heart had no common sense.

A bullet whizzed by. I dropped to the ground, not wanting to get shot again. Bones gave an irritated glance in its direction and then grasped the floorboards of the car. My eyes widened in growing comprehension. God, he couldn’t do that, could he?

The agents from the cars in front of us had taken cover behind one of their overturned vehicles, and they were firing at us. Apparently they’d been told to ensure my safe arrival or, failing that, guarantee I didn’t escape. Plan A had failed, so they were going with Plan B. Bones gave a wolfish grin as he lifted the car off the ground. He spun in a semicircle for maximum velocity, and then the twisted hunk of machinery went sailing through the air, landing point-blank on the makeshift barricade of the agents’ vehicle.

There was a thunderous boom as the car exploded on contact. Thick acrid smoke billowed into the air. In the midst of this maelstrom, with his legs apart and eyes flashing green, Bones looked absolutely, terrifyingly magnificent.

Pandemonium seized the highway. Traffic on the opposite side of the road piled up as disbelieving onlookers stopped driving and gaped at the carnage to their left. Every second brought a fresh squealing of brakes and new accidents. Bones didn’t pause to admire his work. He took my hand and threw my mother over his shoulder as we raced into the trees out of sight.

He had a car waiting about five miles ahead where the lanes were free of the wreckage behind us. Bones deposited my mother in the back, pausing only to clap a piece of duct tape over her mouth before we sped off.

“Glad you were the one that socked her, luv. It saved me the trouble. You don’t get your meanness from your father-you get it from her. She bit me.”

For someone who had just been hit by a car going sixty, he looked remarkably chipper.

“How did you do that? How did you stop the car? If a vampire can do that, why didn’t Switch prevent me from bashing into the house last night?”

Bones snorted derisively. “That pup? He couldn’t stop a toddler on a tricycle. He was only ’round sixty, luv, in undead years. You have to be an old Master vamp like me to pull such a trick without regretting it dearly afterwards. Believe me, it hurt like blazes. That’s why I took a nip from your two blokes before chucking them off. Who were they, anyhow? They weren’t police.”

This had to be handled very carefully. “Um, they were from some branch of government, they didn’t say which. Weren’t real chatty, you know? I think they were taking me to a special jail or something because of Oliver.”

He gave me a look. “You should have waited for me. You could have gotten killed.”

“I couldn’t wait! One of Oliver’s dirty cops tried to shoot me, and he was supposed to plant a bomb in the hospital where they were taking my mother! Oliver was the one, Bones. He admitted it, practically bragged about how Hennessey was ‘cleaning up’ his state for him. Like all those people were nothing but garbage. God, if I’d killed him ten times, it still wouldn’t be enough.”

“What makes you think those blokes who were taking you away weren’t more of his men?”

“They weren’t. Besides, you hardly treated them like you were giving them the benefit of the doubt. You dropped a car on four of them.”

“Oh, don’t fret.” Unconcernedly. “They jumped free before the explosion. And if they were too thick not to, then they deserved to die for their stupidity.”

“Whose car is this?” We were riding in a black Volvo SUV, fully loaded with that new car smell.

Bones cast a sideways glance at me. “Yours. Do you like it?”

I shook my head. “Not whose it is now, but won’t it be reported stolen soon?”

“No,” he replied. “This was your Christmas present. It’s registered under the name on your false license, so there’s no way for them to track it. Hope you don’t mind missing out on the surprise, but under the circumstances, it was our best option.”

My mouth hung open, because he was clearly serious. “I can’t accept this. It’s way too expensive!” In the midst of everything, here I was arguing over the lavishness of a Christmas gift. Normal and I would never meet.

He gave an exasperated sigh. “Kitten, for once could you just say thank you? Really, luv, aren’t we past this?”

A sharp stab of misery poked me when I remembered we were way past this, just not like he thought.

“Thank you. It’s beautiful. All I got you was a new jacket.” Christmas was only two weeks away, but it might as well have been a thousand years.

“What kind of jacket?”

God help me, how would I have the strength to walk away from him? His dark brown eyes were lovelier than anything money could buy. I swallowed hard and described it, because talking kept the tears at bay.

“Well, it was long, like a trenchcoat. Black leather, so you’d look spooky and mysterious. The police probably ransacked whatever was left of my apartment the vampires didn’t destroy. It was wrapped and hidden under the loose board in the kitchen cabinet.”

Bones took my hand and squeezed it gently. Now there was no halting the moisture from my eyes.

“Switch?” Better asking late than never. The fact that Bones was here made the question almost rhetorical.

“Shriveled in Indiana. That bugger ran at full speed for hours. Sorry I couldn’t have taken my time with him, Kitten, but I wanted to head straight back to you. When I caught him, I staked him and left him to rot in the woods by Cedar Lake. With all the bodies left back at the house, one more isn’t going to rock the boat. In fact, Indiana’s where we’re headed now.”

“Why Indiana?” Dimly I was glad Switch was dead. Maybe now my grandparents could rest in peace.

“Got a mate there, Rodney, who will set you and your mum up with new identification. We’ll bunk at his place tonight and leave tomorrow afternoon. Just have to run a few errands in the morning to be set. From there, we’ll proceed to Ontario for a few months. We will track down those last two sods, mark my words, but we’ll do it quietly once this heat over Oliver cools down. When your lads can’t find a trace of you after a bit, they’ll look for other fish to fry.”

Oh, if only it were that simple. “How did you know when they were moving us?”

He gave an amused grunt. “By watching. When they cleared a path from a floor to the back exit and had armed guards waiting by a bunch of vehicles, it was obvious. I just stayed ahead of them until the timing was right.”

A solid thumping noise drew my attention to the backseat. Bones grinned.

“Looks like your mum woke up.”