Up From the Grave

Twenty-four

I’d hoped never to wear the thing again, but left with no other option, I put my blood-soaked lab coat back on. At least it had a belt since Bones had ripped the buttons off. His clothes, however, were hopeless. Being a centuries-old vampire who’d spent his human years as a gigolo, he didn’t care. He strode out of the silo wearing the same suit he’d been born in. If I lamented his lack of modesty, I still had to give it up to Bones for bravery. If I were a guy, I wouldn’t put my dangly parts near a new, malevolent ghoul.

Because I took a few moments to get dressed, I was still inside the silo when I heard someone call out in a singsong voice.

“Hungry . . . hungry . . .”

I paused. Madigan? It had to be, though he sounded almost childlike. Not bellowing with rage like I expected him to be when he woke up and realized he hadn’t given us the slip after all.

I left the silo. In front of the third one down, Bones, Dave, Spade, and Denise formed a circle around what had to be Madigan. As I approached, I noted with distracted amusement that my best friend’s cheeks were pink and she stared straight ahead and nowhere else.

“. . . not trifling with you,” Bones was saying in his sternest tone. “The sooner you realize that, the less painful this will be.”

“Hungry!” was the petulant response he received.

I pushed through the group to see Madigan. When I did, I stared in disbelief.

It wasn’t his disheveled appearance—the phrase “wouldn’t be caught dead” was accurate because no one woke up from the grave looking fabulous. Madigan actually looked better than most since he’d died from poisoning instead of something messier. So it wasn’t his red-stained chest, open shirt, or dirty suit that rocked me where I stood.

It was his gaze. I was used to seeing so many things in his sky blue eyes: contempt, arrogance, ruthlessness, cold satisfaction, blind ambition . . . Now, all I saw was confusion and curiosity, as if he didn’t know who all of us were, but he was mildly interested in finding out.

“Hungry, hungry, hungry,” he chirped while bobbing his head as if listening to an internal sound track.

This was only the second ghoul rebirth I’d witnessed, but from the tense expressions on Bones’s and Spade’s faces, this wasn’t normal. What was wrong with him?

“Bones?” I asked quietly.

He stroked my arm once but didn’t answer. To Madigan, he said, “Well done, mate. Clever of you to fake insanity, but I’ve been doing this for hundreds of years, so I know you’re not crazy. You’re scared shiteless, and you should be, for if you don’t stop pretending, I’m going to hurt you in ways you can’t imagine.”

No spark of acknowledgment lit in Madigan’s gaze, but his thin lips pursed.

“Huuuuunnnnggggrrryyyyyy,” he drew out, as though annoyed that we hadn’t understood him before.

Bones punched him so hard that Madigan’s head left a red smear where it smacked against the silo. Then the gray-haired man lolled in his grip when Bones hauled him up by his tattered jacket.

“Enjoy that?” Bones bit out. “I did. Let me show you how much.”

With that, he began beating the living hell out of Madigan. An hour ago, I would’ve sworn I’d love watching such a thing, but as the blows came thick and heavy, and Madigan still didn’t stop wailing in pained confusion, I began to feel sick. Denise must’ve, too. She walked away, and not in a manner that suggested embarrassment over Bones delivering the thrashing naked. Either Madigan was the most persuasive actor in the world, or he wasn’t faking it. The longer I watched, the more I became convinced that this wasn’t the same icy government operative who’d masterminded a decade-long plan to integrate three separate species into one unstoppable weapon. This was a little boy trapped in an old man’s body, and he had no idea why the bad man hurting him wouldn’t stop.

“Enough,” I said at last, grabbing Bones’s arm when he was about to let fly another jaw-breaking haymaker.

I half expected him to shake me off and keep at it. Instead, he lowered his fist and dropped Madigan, who crumpled into a pile near his feet.

“Hurts, hurts, hurts,” he sobbed brokenly.

“It’s bloody well supposed to,” Bones snapped, giving him a final kick that curled him into the fetal position. “You’re fortunate that I’m tired. We’ll continue this in the morning, once I’m well refreshed.”

Now I didn’t know if he was faking it, but I said nothing. Bones had been around hundreds of ghoul rebirths. If I was being tricked by a brilliant actor, I didn’t want to let on more than I already had that I’d bought the performance.

“Throw him in the grain dispenser,” Bones said to Spade, who’d watched everything with a stony expression. “Should hold him ’til Mencheres arrives.”

Then Bones walked away. I went after him, as did Dave. Behind us, Madigan made small, whimpering noises.

“Please no hurt,” he begged Spade.

My stomach clenched. I’d heard children sound less terrified and vulnerable.

Bones went into the silo we’d made love in. His clothes were still in pieces on the ground, but he seemed oblivious to them as he began to pace in short strides. If his nudity discomfited Dave, the other man gave no sign when he followed us in and shut the door.

“Something’s not right,” Dave said in a flat tone.

Bones glanced up, frustration stamped all over his features.

“No, it isn’t.”

I blew out a sigh. So I wasn’t just being a sucker. Then, amidst the direness of realizing what that meant, I found myself hoping that Mencheres had had the foresight to bring an extra set of clothes. Preferably two. Bones would attract too much attention naked, and I was so done wearing this blood-spattered lab coat.

“Has something like this happened before?” I asked, giving myself a mental shake. “And if so, did it go away after a while?”

The glance Bones shot me was grim.

“It’s happened before, usually under similar circumstances where the person wasn’t given enough blood beforehand. They just came back . . . wrong. And no, it doesn’t go away.”

I let that settle over me. The fact that it didn’t incite seething rage let me know how tired I must be. Our enemy had successfully beaten us, leaving no breadcrumbs to follow to mitigate the damage he’d left behind. That was the reality, yet all I felt was a wave of bitterness that the Madigan we’d wanted to bring back was forever gone.

Of course, it also begged the question, what were we going to do with the one we had? I didn’t want to keep Mindless Madigan, but it also seemed cruel to execute him for crimes that he—strictly speaking—hadn’t committed.

Bones ran a hand through his hair. For a brief moment, his shields slipped, and a fog of exhaustion whooshed into my emotions. If I’d still been human, I’d have passed out, it was so strong. Whatever energy reserves he’d had, he’d burned through them delivering that beat down.

“You’re tired,” I said in what was probably the understatement of the week. “If Madigan’s somehow fooling us, we’ll find out before long. If he’s not, nothing will change if all of us get some sleep.”

As soon as I said that, I heard a helicopter closing in on our location. My first reaction was to grab for a gun before remembering we hadn’t brought any, and my second was profound relief when Bones said, “It’s Mencheres.”

I couldn’t sense who was in the chopper, but I trusted Bones. Years ago, Mencheres had shared his astonishing power with him, forging a bond that went even deeper than the connection between a vampire and their sire. Cain’s legacy, it was called, a gift of power that traced all the way back to the first vampire: Cain, whom God cursed to forever drink blood as penance for spilling his brother Abel’s.

The same night Bones received that power legacy, he developed mind-reading skills. Later, he manifested the ability to degenerate and to move things with his mind. Frankly, I hoped nothing new was on the horizon. Some things no one should be able to do.

Besides, if Bones ever manifested the ability to control fire, Vlad would insist on a flame-off between them. He was competitive like that.

The three of us left the silo. Once outside, we saw that Spade hadn’t put Madigan away yet. When the former CIA operative saw Bones, he latched onto Spade’s leg as though it were a lifeline. Spade tried to shake him off, but Madigan held on like a deranged monkey, pressing his face into Spade’s thigh to avoid looking at Bones.

“No, please, no, please,” he began to chant in a ragged voice.

I didn’t need more time to make up my mind about his condition. The Madigan I knew would rather be flayed alive than abase himself this way, especially with a vampire audience. No, he’d died when he chomped on that cyanide pill, and all we’d raised was a broken shell.

Maybe the kinder thing was to kill him. In his state, Madigan couldn’t survive in the undead world, and as a ghoul, the human one couldn’t handle him, either. With his new, supernatural hunger, it wouldn’t be too long before he tried to eat the nearest person he saw.

The helicopter landed, distracting me from that depressing line of thought. Mencheres sat in front, with Kira at the controls. He must have taught her how to fly his snazzy new Eurocopter.

“Told you the extra clothes would come in handy,” I heard her say above the churn of rotors.

That made me smile. Kira was like me—still human enough in her thinking to be concerned about things like that.

Spade climbed in first, a bit awkwardly since Madigan was still glued to his leg. Denise followed after him, shaking her head at the sight. Dave went in next, popping back out to hand me a pile of folded clothes. Gratefully, I pulled on a pair of pants under my lab coat, then took that off for an oversized tee shirt. I didn’t leave the bloodied coat on the ground, however. It had too much DNA evidence. So did Bones’s ruined clothes, which is why I went back into the silo and grabbed them, too. Then I took the whole pile into the helicopter, stuffing them into the farthest corner.

Bones, carrying Cooper’s prone form, was last to board. He rolled his eyes at the pants I deliberately left dangling on the chopper door, but set Cooper down and donned them.

“Where is Ian?” Mencheres asked.

“Searching for someone with Tate,” Bones stated.

Mencheres looked about to question that, but as soon as Bones took a seat in the helicopter, Madigan’s whimpers turned into outright sobs.

“No, he stay away!” he cried, scrabbling up Spade’s leg and onto his lap.

“Get off me,” Spade snapped.

Madigan ignored that, clinging to him with all of his new strength. Denise moved to the seats on the other side to avoid being hit as Spade shoved Madigan back, only to have the gray-haired ghoul return faster than static cling. Spade gave a frustrated look around the tight interior, no doubt realizing that if he flung Madigan away hard enough to be effective, he’d damage the aircraft. Finally, his gaze settled on Bones.

“A little help?” he ground out.

Power crackled through the air, lifting Madigan off Spade to sit in the seat next to him with his hands folded primly in his lap. But it didn’t come from Bones. It came from the former Egyptian pharaoh.

“He’s depleted too much of his strength,” Mencheres said, with a concerned glance at Bones. “Using more could be dangerous.”

From the brief flash I’d caught of Bones’s exhaustion, I agreed. Thankfully, Mencheres was strong enough to handle Madigan and Cooper, if he awoke during the flight. Hell, the engine could cut out, and Mencheres could still fly all of us safely to wherever we were going. So much still lay ahead, but for now, I’d allow myself to relax.

After Bones buckled Cooper into the seat opposite him, I leaned my head against his shoulder. His arm went around me, and it felt like he sagged back in his chair. By the time the helicopter left the grain silos behind, he was asleep.