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Yeah, call me sentimental.
“Liam, or Ian, if you prefer, listen to me very carefully. You and I are going to stand up. I’m going to pull this knife out, and then you’re going to run away. Your heart’s been punctured, but you’ll heal. I owed someone a life and I’m making it yours.”
He stared at me. The glowing lights of our eyes merged.
“Crispin.” Bones’s real name hung between us, but I didn’t react. Ian let out a pained laugh. “It could only be Crispin. Should have known from the way you fought, not to mention your tattoo that’s identical to his. Nasty trick, faking to be unconscious. He would have never fallen for it. He’d have kicked you until you quit pretending.”
“You’re right,” I agreed mildly. “That’s the first thing Bones taught me. Always kick someone when they’re down. I paid attention. You didn’t.”
“Well, well, little Red Reaper. So you’re the reason he’s been in such a foul mood the past few years.”
At once my heart constricted with joy. Ian had just confirmed what I hadn’t allowed myself to wonder. Bones was alive. Even if he hated me for leaving him, he was alive.
Ian pressed his advantage. “You and Crispin, hmm? I haven’t spoken to him in a few months, but I can find him. I could take you to him, if you’d like.”
The thought of seeing Bones again caused a shattering of emotions in me. To cover them, I laughed derisively.
“Not for gold. Bones found me and turned me out as bait for the marks he was paid to kill. Even talked me into that tattoo. Speaking of gold, when you see Bones again, you can tell him he still owes me money. He never paid me my share of the jobs like he promised. The only reason it’s your lucky day is he helped rescue my mother once, so I owe him for that, and you’re my payment. But if I ever see Bones again, it’ll be at the end of my knife.”
Each word hurt, but they were necessary. I wouldn’t hang a target around Bones’s neck by admitting I still loved him. If Ian repeated what I said, Bones would know it wasn’t true. He hadn’t refused to pay me on the jobs I’d done with him-I’d refused to take the money. Nor had he talked me into my tattoo. I’d gotten the crossbones matching his out of useless longing after I left him.
“You’re part vampire. You have to be with those glowing eyes. Tell me-how?”
I almost didn’t, but figured, what the hell. Ian already knew my secret. The how was anticlimactic.
“Some newly dead vampire raped my mother, and unluckily for her, his sperm still swam. I don’t know who he is, but one day I’ll find him and kill him. Until then, I’ll settle for deadbeats just like him.”
Somewhere on the far side of the room, my cell phone rang. I didn’t move to answer it, but spoke hurriedly.
“That’s my backup. When I don’t answer, they come in with force. More force than you can take on right now. Move slowly; stand up. When I take this knife out, you run like hell and don’t stop. You’ll get your life, but you’re leaving this house and you’re not coming back. Do we have a deal? Think before you answer, because I don’t bluff.”
Ian smiled tightly. “Oh, I believe you. You’ve got a knife in my heart. That gives you little reason to lie.”
I didn’t blink. “Then let’s do this.”
Without another comment, Ian began to pull himself to his knees. Each movement was agony for him, I could tell, but he thi
“Goodbye, Ian. Get lost.”
He crashed through a window to my left in a blur of speed that was slower than before, but still impressive. Out in front, I heard my men rushing up to the door. There was one last thing I had to do.
I plunged the same dagger into my belly, deep enough to make me drop to my knees, but high enough to avoid mortal injury. When my second officer, Tate, came ru
“Jesus, Cat!” he exclaimed. “Someone get the Brams!”
My other two captains, Dave and Juan, fa
“One got away but don’t chase him. He’s too strong. No one else is in the house, but do a quick check and then pull back. We have to leave in case he comes back with reinforcements. They’d slaughter us.”
“One sweep and then fall back, fall back!” Dave ordered, shutting the doors of the van I’d been taken to. Tate pulled the knife out and pressed bandages to the wound, giving me several pills to swallow that no regular pharmacy carried.
After four years and a team of brilliant scientists, my boss, Don, had managed to filter through the components in undead blood to come up with a wonder drug. On regular humans, it repaired injuries such as broken bones and internal bleeding like magic. We’d named it Brams, in honor of the writer who’d made vampires famous.
“You shouldn’t have gone in alone,” Tate berated me. “Goddammit, Cat, next time listen to me!”
I gave a faint chuckle. “Whatever you say. I’m not in the mood to argue.”
Then I passed out.
TWO
MY HOUSE WAS A SMALL TWO-STORY STRUCTURE at the end of a cul-de-sac. The interior was almost spartan in its bareness. A single couch downstairs, bookshelves, some lamps, and a minibar loaded with gin and tonic. If my liver wasn’t half vampire, I’d have expired from cirrhosis already. Certainly Tate, Juan, and Dave never complained about all my booze. A steady supply of liquor and a deck of cards was enough to keep them coming back. Too bad none of them were great poker players, even when sober. Get them drunk and it was fu
So, how does one sign on for this life of luxury? My boss, Don, found me at twenty-two when I got into a little trouble with the law. You know, the usual youthful stuff. Killed the governor of Ohio and several of his staff, but they’d been modern-day slavers who sold women to the undead for food and fun. Yeah, they deserved to die, especially since I was one of the women they’d tried to sell. Me and my vampire boyfriend, Bones, had delivered our own brand of justice to them, which left a lot of bodies.
After I was arrested, my funky pathology reports tattled on me for not being totally human. Don snapped me up to lead his secret “Homeland Security” unit by giving me the quintessential offer I couldn’t refuse. Or death threat, to be more accurate. I’d taken the job. What choice did I have?
But despite his many flaws, Don truly cared about defending those the normal law could never protect. I cared about that as well. It was why I risked my life, because I felt this was the reason I’d been born half dead but looking all human. I could be both bait and hook to what prowled in the night. It wasn’t a happily-ever-after, true, but at least I’d made a positive difference for some people.
My phone rang as I changed into my pajamas. Since it was almost midnight, it had to be either one of the guys or Denise, because my mother was never up this late.
“Hey, Cat. Just get in?”
Denise knew what I did, and she knew what I was. One night while minding my own business, I’d come across a vamp trying to turn her neck into a Big Gulp. By the time I killed him, she’d already seen enough to know he wasn’t human. To her credit, she hadn’t screamed, fainted, or done any of the things a normal person would. She’d simply blinked and said, “Wow. I owe you a beer, at least.”
“Yeah,” I answered. “Just got in now.”
“Uh, bad day?” she asked.
But she didn’t know I’d spent most of the day healing from a self-inflicted stab wound with the help of Brams and the dubious benefit of having gutted myself with a knife coated in vampire blood. That in itself had probably done more to heal me than Don’s magic pills. Nothing but nothing healed like vampire blood.