Up From the Grave

Thirty-six

Shuffling noises drew my attention to the other side of the boiler room. Ian appeared, covered in dirt, blood, and far less clothes since what he had left had been ripped half-off. He was even missing clumps of his long auburn hair. I’d never seen him look worse—and I’d never been happier to see him.

“You did it,” I breathed.

He glanced at the remains of the demon between us.

“As did you, but this isn’t over. Mencheres is here, and he brought Marie Laveau, Law Guardians, and the vampire council with him.”

I shot to my feet like my blood had been replaced with rocket fuel. All of my worst fears were realized when Tate appeared behind Ian, his expression locked in a mixture of rage and desperation. Not a muscle on him moved, and he floated in, hovering several inches off the ground.

Since Bones’s power had been depleted, Mencheres must be controlling Tate, but I didn’t see him yet. My gaze was all for Katie as she floated in after Tate, alarm creasing her delicate features instead of her trademark stoicism.

I ran to her. Or tried to. After the first two steps, I was enveloped by what felt like a giant, invisible fist. It squeezed me from the chin down, making escape impossible and speech difficult.

“Let me go,” I managed through gritted teeth.

Mencheres did appear then, and he had an entourage. Veritas was the only Law Guardian I knew by name, but I recognized the other three men. Years ago, they’d supervised Bones’s duel with Gregor, which meant we had a history. I’d almost been executed for interfering in that duel, and there were some who still thought I should have been.

Marie was next, her long black skirt and tailored black jacket sending more sparks of fear through me. She looked like she was going to a funeral, and while the three vampires behind her weren’t garbed as somberly, their expressions were darker than pitch.

“What the bloomin’ hell is this?”

Bones’s harsh tone couldn’t hide his slur. Doped as he was, he still managed to get to his feet without stumbling. He didn’t go any farther, though. Mencheres’s power shot out and stopped him.

“I am doing what must be done,” his friend and grandsire replied. Then obsidian eyes met mine, an abundance of pity in their depths. “I am sorry, Cat,” Mencheres added softly.

“No!”

It tore from me with all the agony of hopes raised, then smashed. We couldn’t have come so far to lose everything now! Trove was dead, Marie had sworn to leave us alone, and we’d found Katie. I’d looked into my daughter’s eyes and sworn to protect her. She might not believe me, but over time, I’d prove it to her. She was going to have all the love and acceptance she’d been denied before, and to make my promise come true, all we had to do was leave.

Thanks to the mega-Master vampire and his undead associates, we couldn’t even if Bones and I were back to full strength. Forget Marie; the boiler room sizzled with the power coming off the four Law Guardians and three council members. Any second, it might start raining sparks.

“How could you?”

My words were choked with more than the difficulty of saying them with my chin frozen. Marie and the other vampires hadn’t found us by luck. Only Mencheres knew where we were going.

Veritas stepped forward, her white tunic rustling from all the supernatural energy in the air.

“Mencheres did what he could for you. In exchange for delivering the child to us, your lies will now go unpunished.”

“We didn’t ask for your bloody help!” Bones thundered.

Mencheres let out a heavy sigh.

“You did not, but as co-ruler of our line, I couldn’t permit you to drag our people into war. That is what would have happened, and the result would be the same. Now or later, the child would die. This way, only one life will be lost instead of untold thousands.”

My whole body vibrated from the virulent emotions racking me. If I had any power left, Mencheres’s head would have ripped from his shoulders at those words.

“Please don’t do this.”

My voice broke from the hatred and fear roiling inside me. I wanted to slaughter everyone, not beg them, but with my body immobilized and my abilities exhausted, begging was all I had left.

“Please. We’ll take her away. You’ll never have to see her again, and there will be no war, I promise!”

Urgent grunts came out of Tate, his only way to voice his concurring plea. Mencheres had frozen everything on him, it seemed.

“There is no other way,” a council member who could’ve doubled as Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings said. Then he sniffed as he came farther into the room, bringing him closer to Trove’s body.

“The sulfur stench from that demon is everywhere.”

“You’re about to murder a child and what you find most distasteful is demon stink?” Ian’s tone was scathing. “You call yourselves protectors of our race, but all I see before me are cowards.”

“Silence,” the white-haired vampire ordered. Then he turned to the Law Guardian with the wild black hair and Mediterranean features.

“Thonos.”

The vampire withdrew a curved silver blade that was longer than my forearm. Then he strode over to Katie, grasping her hair. Veritas looked away, her mouth tightening.

“Don’t, please!” I screamed. My teeth tore into my lower lip, drawing blood, but though I willed Remnants to appear with all of my panic, nothing happened. Trove had drained too much from me.

Tears spilled from my eyes, blurring my vision with pink that quickly turned to scarlet.

“Wait,” Marie said.

Hope surged when Thonos paused, that wickedly long blade upraised. The Gandalf look-alike raised a brow but nodded in acquiescence.

Marie came over to me, wiping my eyes with brisk yet gentle swipes.

“You can’t cry, Reaper,” she said, voice so low no one but me would hear her. “You carry my power. If you cry, you doom your daughter to the same fate as your uncle. You must be strong now. This is the only thing you can do for her.”

A wild hope coursed through me. That’s right, if I cried, the blood in my tears would bring Katie back as a ghost! For a crazed moment, I relished the thought. If it was the only way we could be together, I’d take it. I’d seen other ghost children, and they didn’t look like they were miserable . . .

“Kitten.”

My gaze jerked past Marie to Bones. He stared at me, his expression conveying an equal measure of sternness and heartbreak.

“Don’t,” he said simply.

Pain erupted then, so all-encompassing it almost felt purifying. Of course I couldn’t do that. I’d be sentencing Katie to a harsher fate than these pitiless bastards had decreed, and worse, for the same reason. Selfishness.

They wanted to end the threat of war the easy way instead of confronting the deeper issue—that after tens of thousands of years, vampires and ghouls still had a deep-seated mistrust of each other because they were different races. Why try to resolve their ugly, underlying prejudice when every few hundred years, they could just murder anyone who reminded them of it?

I wanted my daughter with me, but unlike them, I’d take the hard road. The one that hurt me the most instead of her. If I could only be a mother to her for the next few seconds, I’d be sure not to fail.

Marie was right. It was all I could do for my daughter.

With a harsh sound, I choked back my tears. Then I used all of my willpower to hold the new ones back. When my eyes were finally dry, I nodded as much as I could.

“I’ve got it.”

Marie touched my face. Not to wipe away any stray tears; they were gone. As a benediction.

“You are a worthy adversary,” she said softly.

Then she turned and left, taking a place next to the vampire council and Law Guardians. Bitterly, I noticed that they waited in a single line behind Thonos. They had mandated Katie’s death, but they must not want to look into her eyes as she died. The back of the tall, muscular executioner blocked most of their view.

Nothing blocked mine. I stared at Katie, every cell of my body screaming with grief that I refused to release with tears. The little girl stared at the knife above her as though hypnotized, her features an odd mixture of fear and determination. Then, as if she sensed my gaze, she looked at me.

In my lifetime, I’d been shot, stabbed, staked, burned, bitten, beaten, strangled, hit by a car, and tortured by physical and metaphysical means. Nothing compared to the anguish I felt when our gazes met and I saw the acceptance in hers. She knew nothing could save her, and despite her obvious fear, she’d come to terms with that. Maybe it was because, in her short, captivity-filled existence, she’d never known there was more to life than ugliness and death. So much more, like hope, love, laughing, dancing . . . and now she’d never know.

It would all end here.

Something shattered inside me. I managed to hold back the tears, but I couldn’t stop the sound that escaped me. Agony became breath and broke the silence that had gripped the room.

Then two words slid into my mind, spoken in a whisper that somehow managed to resound through my thoughts.

Trust me.

My eyes bulged. Mencheres was the only person I knew who had the ability to communicate telepathically, yet that hadn’t been his voice.

It was Bones’s.

A sliver of me was awed that he had this ability, but the rest was too destroyed with grief to care. Trust him? He was as helpless as I was to stop this!

Trust me, his inner voice repeated, emphatic enough to drown out my mental railings.

Anger flared through my grief. Trust what, that we’d get through this together? Or that time would heal all wounds? Well, I had no intention of healing. I wanted to feel this pain forever because it was all I’d have left of my daughter—

Trust me!

Thonos’s blade began to descend toward that tiny, vulnerable throat. Katie still stared at me, and for a split second, her eyes changed from the same deep gray as mine to something else.

Red.

Katie’s gaze should have only been able to turn one other color. Bright, vampire green. Red was the sign of another race. The only one the child wasn’t supposed to have in her mixed genetic makeup.

Hope blasted through me with enough force to knock me over if I’d been standing under my own power, but I wasn’t. Mencheres still had me in that invisible vise, and in the gut-wrenching instant before that deadly blade met flesh, I saw the boiler room through new eyes.

Four Law Guardians, three council members, and the queen of the ghouls were all present for the execution of the mixed-species child. Everyone from Bones’s line might be considered unreliable witnesses for personal reasons, but no one would question any of them on whether it had really happened. They’d never acted mercifully before when it came to protecting the power balance between the races, and nothing had changed in the centuries since.

Unless there is a public execution, Marie had said, they will keep hunting for her. She’d believed that so much, she’d been prepared to die for it.

And Bones had said, If we promise you that, will you agree to the rest of our terms? I’d been horrified, but before I could voice my outrage, he’d immobilized me much like Mencheres had.

Kitten, trust me, he’d said then.

Trust me, he’d urged me three times now.

I held on to that with all the hopeful desperation in me as that blade cut all the way through Katie’s neck, coming out drenched in crimson on the other side. Her body fell, and the sight of Thonos holding up her head hit me like a wrecking ball straight to the heart. He set it next to her body, flinging the excess blood off his blade, and my own blood seemed to scream in response.

Tears streamed in an unending flow from Tate’s eyes. Marie bowed her head. The other two Law Guardians were stoic except for Veritas, who stared at Katie’s body with an intensity that angered me. Was she trying to memorize the grisly sight?

The council members didn’t look at their handiwork. They shifted almost awkwardly. Now that the deed was done, they seemed far less enthused by it.

I couldn’t stop staring at Katie’s crumpled form, her head resting several inches from the rest of her. Horror, hope, and terror mingled into a nauseating brew within me.

Was I wrong, and was I staring at my daughter? Or was this my best friend, shapeshifted to look like her? And if so, could she come back from this? Nothing was supposed to kill her except demon bone through the eyes, but dear God, she didn’t have a head anymore!

“Leave the body.”

Mencheres’s voice startled me. It seemed to surprise the council members, too. Gandalf look-alike pursed his lips in disapproval.

“We didn’t agree to that.”

“You will.” Quiet steel edged Mencheres’s words. “And you will leave the sword. As the child’s mother, she is entitled to both.”

The other council members glanced back and forth between themselves, clearly undecided.

Veritas stepped forward, grasping Thonos’s hand before he could put his weapon back in its sheath.

“You ordered the child’s death out of necessity,” she said crisply. “Denying this request would be cruelty. Do not begrudge her so little when we’ve taken everything else.”

Thonos didn’t stop her when she took his blade and laid it at my feet. As she rose, for a second, her piercing gaze met mine.

What I saw made me gasp. Without saying a word, she managed to convey both admiration and a clear warning. Unless she knew more than the others did, why would she do that?

She can’t know! my mind raged. Could she?

Then Veritas turned around. “The child and the sword will remain, but I will have some of the demon’s bones.”

It wasn’t a question. I sucked in a breath out of sheer terror. What if she wanted it to plunge into Katie’s—Denise’s?—eyes?

Mencheres went over to the demon’s body, snapping off one of Trove’s arms as though it were nothing more than a dry twig.

“Sufficient?” he asked, holding it out.

Veritas took it, eyeing it critically. “It will do.”

Then, to my vast, relief, she walked past Katie’s crumpled form without a single glance to join the other Law Guardians.

None of them looked at me. That was fine. I never wanted to see any of them again.

“We are finished,” the white-haired leader stated. “Your cooperation will be remembered, Mencheres.”

“As will his betrayal,” Bones immediately replied, speaking the first words he’d uttered out loud since Thonos had grabbed Katie.

Then he stared at Mencheres.

“I swore by my blood to co-rule our lines. For my people’s sake, I won’t rescind that, but my wife and I are leaving, and you won’t see us for a very long time.”

Mencheres bowed his head. “I understand, and once again, I am truly sorry.”

“Too bloody right you are,” Ian said in disgust.

He went over to Trove, stripping the demon’s jacket off his bony remains. Then Ian took it and wrapped Katie’s body in it, head and all. From how small she was, it covered her entirely.

Marie, the Law Guardians, and the council members left without saying anything else. For several moments, the clatter of their footsteps echoed on the ruined floor of the book depository; and then there was silence. The oppressive power they’d given off dissipated as well, until nothing remained except the energy that radiated from Mencheres.

With a tangible snap, the cocoon I’d been encased in disappeared. So did Bones’s and Tate’s. Both of us rushed to the hump of clothes in front of Ian, but Tate went straight to Mencheres and punched him so hard, I heard the bones in his hand shatter.

“I’ll kill you for this,” he swore in a strangled voice.

The pulse of power I felt was probably Mencheres putting him back in an invisible restraint, but I didn’t move away from the small humps in front of me. My hand stretched out, and then I stopped. I was afraid to pull back the cloth and afraid not to. Would I find everything I’d hoped for, or realize that everything I’d feared had come true?

Mencheres knelt next to us. When he stared at the lumps beneath the coat, resignation flickered across his darkly handsome features.

“Charles will kill me once he hears of this.”

“Only after he’s finished frying my arse,” Bones replied in an equally grim tone.

“Charles?” Ian sounded irate as well as confused. “What does he have to do with any of this?”

“Plenty,” Bones replied, carefully scooping up the coat and clasping the bundle to his chest. “I’ll explain later. Grab Tate and try to keep up. Mencheres?”

“I’ve got you,” his co-ruler replied, flashing me one of his rare smiles. “All of you.”

I didn’t get a chance to respond. Or to ask if the bundle that Bones cradled was Denise, then where was Katie? Mencheres grabbed the bloody sword and the rest of Trove’s skeleton, then all of us were catapulted into the air. Before we reached the roof, a hole blasted open, allowing us to pass through without impact. Then the empty windows on the first floor changed, the metal frames splaying outward like bare limbs reaching up to the sky.

We rushed through them and into the night, leaving nothing behind in the ruined building except blood and the smell of sulfur.