One Foot in the Grave (12 page)

T
HE GUARD AT THE ENTRANCE DIDN’T WAVE
me through as usual.

“Sorry, but…um, we have to check your vehicle.”

I hid a smile behind my hand. So Don was feeling edgy. “What’s up, Manny? New rules?”

“Yep, that’s it,” he agreed instantly.

Three more armed men came around my Volvo. They explored my interior, the undercarriage, and even the engine. Finally Manny straightened and nodded.

“Carry on.”

I was stopped at the second gate and the third one as well, the same procedure repeated. It took me over twenty minutes just to pull inside the four-mile stretch that wound around the main building. Not since my first year with Don had I been so thoroughly screened. Little did he know Bones had no need of piggybacking with me. He’d driven himself over on his snazzy new motorcycle, waiting out of sight near the airstrip. Just in case.

Once inside, the interior guards were less diligent. I passed through the normal checkpoints with ease. Apparently they were only concerned with me bringing an unwanted visitor. When I entered Don’s office, I saw that Juan and Tate were there as well. Oh goody, it was an intervention.

“Hello guys,” I addressed them.

Juan nodded, but Tate didn’t even acknowledge me. Don rose from his desk.

“Cat. You’re twenty minutes late.”

“I was tied up.” I couldn’t resist. “Then the guards almost strip-searched me on my way in the compound.”

“Shut the door, Juan,” Don directed coolly. With a gesture, he indicated my usual seat.

I took it, and promptly put my foot on his new desk.

“Nice color,” I commented. “Looks better than the old one. What’s the emergency?”
As if I didn’t know
.

“You are,” Tate snapped.

Don waved him silent and gave him a look. So he was playing Papa Bear, and Tate and Juan were backup support.

“Cat, just the other day, I told you how amazing it was you’d never faltered in your tenure here. It seems I spoke too soon. We know about the vampire. What do you have to say for yourself?”

I gave him a frosty smile. Bones had said not to reveal who he really was, and that was fine by me for now. God knew they were rattled enough already.

“Spying on me? I thought you gave that up a long time ago. You nosy bastard, what business is it of yours who I date as long as I do my job?”

That answer he wasn’t expecting. Don obviously
thought I’d shrink under his withering stare. But if my mother couldn’t cower me, then he had no chance.

“You’re dating a vampire! You just admitted it!” Tate burst out.

I shrugged. “You know the old saying. Once you go dead, no one’s better in bed.”

“
Christos
,” Juan muttered.

“I hadn’t heard that one,” Don stonily replied. “You fail to see the enormity of what you’re admitting to? You are fraternizing with the enemy in the most compromising way possible, jeopardizing the lives of all you command. This creature is no doubt using you to infiltrate our operation.”

That made me snort rudely. “He couldn’t give a rat’s ass about your operation, Don. Believe it or not, he cares more about me than what goes on here.”

“I fail to see how that’s possible,” Don barked, his composure slipping. “Look at the influence he already has over you, making you risk your life for sex. And I seem to remember that personal association with vampires was expressly forbidden in our agreement when you signed on.”

I wasn’t about to correct Don’s misassumption of my relationship, and besides, I’d already decided on changing our celibate status. Plus, clearly Tate hadn’t recognized Bones from before, or this whole thing would be going down far differently. Well, who could blame him? He’d only seen him for a split second—right before Bones demolished his car, drank him, and chucked him through the air. That, and his hair was different.

“Yes, well, a lot of things have changed since then, haven’t they?” I observed mildly. “Take for example
the invention of Brams. Or the caged vampires on the premises. Oh, and don’t forget, the added years to their lives.”

I jerked my head in Juan and Tate’s direction. Don’s expression confirmed that he hadn’t told them. There was nothing like clouding the issue to redirect the heat.

“That’s not relevant now,” Don grated.

I raised a mocking brow. “Let’s ask them, shall we? Tate, Juan, did you both know if you drank vampire blood, it would add at least twenty years to your natural lives?
I
didn’t know that, but old Don here sure did. He knew what went on in Ohio, but didn’t figure on telling you. Guess he thought you wouldn’t be interested.”

“
Madre de Dios
, is that true?” Juan blurted. Tate looked a bit dazed as well, and I pounced on him.

“It’s not nice when someone knows how long you might live and keeps it to themselves, is it? At least
I
told Don you had to be informed, whereas
you
didn’t give me the same courtesy!”

“Is this some sort of payback?” he asked low.

The pain in his eyes had little to do with this latest revelation and everything to do with my previous admission. Right then I saw what I’d been blind to before. God, Tate was in love with me. It was so clear, even I couldn’t fail to notice.

“No, it has nothing to do with that.” No need to lie there. “It has nothing to do with
any
of you, and that’s the way it stays.”

“There is no way I will allow this behavior to continue,” Don stated flatly. “Too many lives are at risk, and I care about that even if you don’t.”

I stood and loomed over him. “Fuck you,
boss
. I
care about each and every man in my unit, and I’ve proved that countless times. You don’t believe me? Then fire me.”

“
Querida
, don’t be so hasty,” Juan implored. Don hadn’t moved. “We’re concerned for you; what if this vamp finds out what you are—”

“He knows,” I interrupted.

Don cursed freely. That made me blink. He never lost his cool.

“How does he know that, Cat? You told him? Did you draw him a fucking map of our location and numbers as well? I hope he’s amazing in bed, because you’ve just ruined everything we’ve worked for!”

“No, I didn’t tell him.” As I spoke, I improvised. “I met him years ago. He knew what I was from back then, and he left Ohio before all that shit went down. I hadn’t seen him until a month ago when I ran into him around here. He’s only a hundred and I’m stronger than he is, so he knows to keep his trap shut or I’ll kill him. There you have it.”

“How could you do it?” This from Tate, who gave me a faintly disgusted glare. “How could you fuck a corpse? You really went from one extreme to the other. First Noah, then right to necrophilia!”

That pissed me off. “Does everybody forget I’m half vampire? When you say shit about the undead, you’re also talking about me! It’s like skinheads trying to convince Halle Berry to march in their neo-nazi parade! How could I do it? Why don’t you tell me, Tate? Or you, Juan? Both of you have tried to fuck me. Guess that makes you necrophiliacs as well.”

It was a low blow, but one that was deliberate. They
had to stop seeing all vampires as evil, and God knew that was a tough habit to break. After all, it had taken me years to be less narrow-minded, and I’d been in love with one.

Don coughed, not liking the direction of the conversation. “No one forgets what you are. However, it doesn’t change what your mission is. You kill the undead. All of you do. This is a momentous task with great responsibility. What’s to stop your lover from doing his kind a favor by informing them where the elusive Red Reaper lives? After all, if you’re dead, then you can hardly threaten him.”

“Juan, how many different women have you slept with in the past four years?” I abruptly asked.

He scratched his chin. “
Yo no se
,
querida
, perhaps…about one a week?” he answered before Don gave him a censuring glare.

“That’s not necessary!”

“I think it is,” I said sharply. “One a week, give or take. That’s over two hundred different women in the past four years he’s worked here, and on a side note: Juan, you’re a
slut
. But how many of them were carefully screened to ensure they weren’t a Renfield, or some ghoul’s underling? You sexist bastards, I’m the only one called on the carpet for who I date! Well, I’ve had enough of this little chastity session. Don, it comes down to this. You either trust me or you don’t. I’ve never let you down, and I won’t walk away unless you make me. Period. Now, unless you have a
real
emergency, I’d like to get back to my vacation. And my corpse, thanks.”

I marched to the door, but Tate didn’t move from in front of it.

“Get out of my way,” I said with an undertone of menace.

“Cat.” Don got up and lightly took my elbow. “If we have nothing to fear from your association with this vampire, then you won’t mind stopping by the lab for a blood sample. You haven’t been indiscriminately drinking blood, have you?”

I snorted. “Not my beverage of choice, sorry. But if it’ll make you feel better to check my lab work, fine. Lead the way.”

“I’ll be frank with you,” Don said as we walked to the second level, Tate and Juan following. “I don’t know what I’m going to do about this. I have the team to consider. I’m not comfortable risking their lives on only your word that this creature isn’t dangerous.”

“That’s where the trust part comes in. Besides, if he wanted to hurt the team, he could have done that last weekend at the GiGi Club. Don’t fuck up a good thing because of blind prejudice, Don. We both know you need me.”

He regarded me as I stepped into the lab. “I want to believe you can’t be turned against us. But I don’t know if I can.”

Later, after a spot processing proved I wasn’t hyped full of nosferatu juice, Tate walked me to my car. He hadn’t said a word since Don’s office, and I didn’t speak, either. They were letting me go, but I knew nothing had really been settled. That was okay—I had nothing to hide now. Well, almost nothing.

Tate opened my door out of polite habit. I slid inside but didn’t shut it. His fingers tapped on my roof.

“I bet you thought that was poetic justice, me not knowing about how much longer I could live. I told Don to tell you about your aging three years ago, when they were sure. He disagreed, and he’s the boss. Sometimes you just have to follow orders, even if you don’t want to.”

“Sometimes.” I stared at him without blinking. “Not always. Not when it affects your friends, but we have different opinions about that.”

“Yeah, well, we have different opinions about a lot of things.” Dark blue eyes met mine. “You really handed me my ass in there. First you casually admit to having a vampire boyfriend, then you tell everyone I tried to fuck you. What’s next? You going to whip out a dick and say you’re really a man?”

His sour tone didn’t lend to humor, but I smiled slightly. “Back me into a corner and I come out clawing. You know that. I wish all of you would just have a little faith. I care about my team and the job I do. If I didn’t, why would I put up with this shit?”

His mouth twisted. “You might have Don fooled, Cat, but not me. I saw your face tonight. You’ve never smiled at anyone the way you smiled at that vampire. That’s why I don’t trust you not to get in over your head. You already are.”

B
ONES SHOWED UP PROMPTLY AT SEVEN THE
next night. We had plans to have an early dinner and then escape—until the following morning, anyway. As soon as I’d left the compound the previous evening, Don put round-the-clock surveillance on me. That had been a mood kill, to say the least. They probably had microphones pointed at my house, too, for maximum spying potential.

It pissed me off no end. What did Don think, that if left unsupervised, I’d hold undead rallies to give every pulseless person within a hundred miles a blueprint of his compound? If Don didn’t have such a strong “greater good” agenda, I might have quit my job right then and there.

I was still scowling over it all when I opened the door to let Bones in…and then I stopped and gawked at him.

He wore tailored black pants and a dark blue shirt, his skin radiating against the deep-colored fabric. A black leather jacket was slung loosely over his shoulders and complemented his ensemble. It was the jacket itself that held my attention. It was long, trailing almost down to his calves.

“Holy shit, is that what I think it is?” I blurted.

Bones grinned and did a circle. “You like? After all, you kept
your
Christmas present”—he nodded to the Volvo in my driveway—“so it only seemed fair to retrieve mine, especially since you took my other jacket.”

The jacket I’d bought him for Christmas years ago fit him perfectly. I’d never had the chance to give it to him, since Don had swooped me up before the holidays. Bones must have pried it out from its hiding place under the loose board of the kitchen cabinet in my old apartment. I’d told him where it was the day before I left him. The thought of Bones going back to get it made me almost burst into tears.

Some of that must have shown on my face, because his expression softened.

“Sorry, luv,” he said, pulling me into his arms. I could almost hear cameras snapping as Don’s spies zoomed in on us. “Didn’t think it would make you sad.”

I put a rein on my emotions. “I’m fine,” I said briskly, giving the leather a light rub. “You look great in it. Just like I pictured you would—except your hair’s different, of course.”

Bones shook his head, making his honey-brown curls sway. “This is my natural color. Didn’t really care about coloring it much lately, and the platinum
did stand out more, don’t you agree? Why, which do you prefer?”

I considered it. “Since I met you as a blond, that’s just what feels right to me. But don’t worry. I won’t break out the peroxide later.”

He chuckled low. “Whatever turns you on.”

His eyes roamed over me as he said it, making me feel warm everywhere he looked. I had on a simple, short black sheath that was sleeveless, with a front and back V-neck. Light makeup, no jewelry,
definitely
no perfume. Every vampire I knew hated that. With their sense of smell, it was always too heavy, no matter how sparingly applied.

“Ready to go?” he asked softly.

“Um hmm.” Somehow I couldn’t come up with a more articulate response. God, I’d wanted nothing more than to spend the night in his arms for literally years now, and very soon I’d get my wish. So why was I so nervous all of a sudden? You’d think I’d somehow morphed into a teenager on prom night.

Bones climbed onto his bike, a snazzy new Ducati. He’d always liked motorcycles, even though they weren’t my favorite method of transportation. Still, the bike was the obvious choice for our plans to lose Don’s tail on us later. For one, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Don had ordered my car bugged while I met with him yesterday, and for another,
nobody
could catch a vampire on a motorcycle.

Bones gave me an amused look as I put my helmet on and climbed onto the back of the bike.

“I can hear them; they’re scurrying like rats now.
Let’s see how well they can keep up. I’ll take it easy on them to start.”

And he gunned the bike, shooting down the street with no regard for the speed limit.

I tightened my arms around his waist. Yeah, this definitely reminded me of old times.

The restaurant Bones took me to was called Skylines. It sat at the top of a twenty-story building overlooking the city. Glass made up the exterior walls for an unobstructed view, and our table was right up against the window. The red and white lights of the cars crawling along the street below us held my gaze, and idly I wondered which contained Don’s men. With all the noise of surrounding traffic and the building’s occupants, it was hard to tell. They were out there, though, I knew it. It was all I could do not to wave at them from my window perch.

“Showing them we haven’t tried to escape?” I commented after the waiter took our wine and appetizer order.

He gave me a smile. “Didn’t want them to come barreling up here and ruin our dinner. Come now, you haven’t even looked at the menu.”

I scanned the food options in front of me, but kept returning my gaze to Bones. I wasn’t alone in admiring him. Bones’s perfectly etched features, matched with that prowling grace, had turned every female head when he walked in. His darker hair contrasted against the smooth brilliance of his skin, and I wondered how its longer length would feel in my hands. The top button was open on his shirt, giving me the faintest peek of his chest, which I knew was as hard as the table we
were sitting at. I remembered how erotic it felt to slide my nails down his back and pull him closer. How his power pulsed against my skin when our flesh merged. How green his eyes were when he was inside me. And how his vampiric ability to control where the blood went in his body meant he could make love to me until I was beyond sated.

No wonder I couldn’t concentrate on the menu. Food? Who needed it? All of a sudden, I wasn’t the least bit nervous about later. In fact, I wanted later to be a damn sight sooner.

Bones must have picked up on that, because his eyes began to glint with green flecks.

“Stop it, luv. You’re making it very difficult for me to behave.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said as I recrossed my legs, letting him hear the rub of skin on skin since I was sans hose.

Our wine came. I sipped it while shifting in my seat and casually stroking my cleavage. After years of practice, one thing I’d honed to precision was how to make a vampire hot. It was practically my livelihood, only in this case, there would be no silver stake at the end. How refreshing.

Bones leaned forward. “Do you know how beautiful you are?” There was a gravelly edge to his voice. “Absolutely ravishing. I’m going to spend hours reacquainting my mouth with every inch of your body, and I can barely wait to see if you taste as good as I remember.”

The wine lingered in my mouth a moment before I swallowed. This was the part that wasn’t normal for me.
My previous targets had never evoked such a heated response.

“Do we really have to stay for the whole meal?” My eyes locked with his, and I stroked his hand with one finger. “Let’s just take it to go, hmm?”

He opened his mouth to reply—and suddenly I was rolling underneath the neighboring tables with him on top of me. There was the sound of glass shattering and shrill screams. Tables crumpled and people were knocked from their chairs while I wondered what the hell had happened and why my forehead was burning.

I must have instinctively shut my eyes, because when they snapped open, I cried out. Bones’s face was right next to mine, and a blood-smeared hole was staining his hair red before it began to close on itself.

“You’ve been shot!” I gasped. “Someone tried to kill you!”

It took a moment for the facts to register. We were on the floor. He’d rolled me away from our table, but I could still see where we’d been. Three holes punctured the glass, and none of them were by his seat.

Bones pulled me to my feet with his back to the window, and the truth hit me even as he answered.

“Not me, Kitten. You.”