Halfway to the Grave (8 page)

I used one of the cave’s small enclosed areas as a changing room to strip out of the harlot’s dress and put on my jogging clothes. Bones always collected on his bets, never mind that there was now a thunderstorm out. We were going for our little tortuous run in the woods. With my hair rolled into a bun to avoid it lashing me in the face, I squeezed out from behind the rocks to find him waiting for me. He gave me a once-over, and that cocky twist returned to his lips.

“There’s the Kitten I know and love. Felt like you’d been
away for a while, with how different you looked. Ready for a romp in the rain?”

“Let’s get this over with. It’s nearly nine o’clock and I’d like to get home. After this evening, I feel like I have to wash.”

“Well, luv”—we had reached the mouth of the cave, and the rain came down in torrents—“I aim to please. One shower, coming right up.”

The run was brutal, as expected. He even had the nerve to laugh behind me the whole way. When I climbed into my truck, I was soaking wet and exhausted. It was an hour-and-a-half round trip every day I went to the cave, and the truck was a gas guzzler. Bones was going to have to start contributing to my travel expenses, because I wasn’t going to use more of my college money on gas.

The lights were out at the house when I pulled in, and the rain had slowed to a drizzle. I took my shoes off and headed straight for the bathroom. Once inside, I removed all of my clothes and ran a hot bath.

As I sank into the water, I closed my eyes. Everything ached from the run. For a few moments I just sat, allowing myself to relax. The steam from the water caused moisture on my upper lip and I wiped it away, startled when the brush of my fingers caused an unexpected tightening in my belly.

I tried it again, never having done this before and imagining my fingers were not my own. Gooseflesh broke out on my body and in a completely surprising reaction, my nipples hardened.

I cupped my breasts next, gasping at the increased sensation. The water felt like it caressed me as well now, in the most intimate of places. I skimmed the outsides of my thighs, amazed at the ripples of enjoyment that followed. Then I ran a hand along the inside of my thigh, stopped guiltily for a moment, and reached lower.

A soft moan escaped. With my eyes closed, open mouth breathing in warm humid air, I let my fingers move a little faster, a little faster….

…feel your tight wet box wrapped around me, pulling me deeper inside you…

Bones’s words stole through my mind and I snatched my hand away as though burned. “Oh,
shit
!”

I jumped out of the tub, slipped on the wet tile, and fell with a crash to the floor.

“Sonofabitch!” I shouted. Great, that was going to leave a mark. There’d be a bruise the size of my stupidity.

“Catherine, what happened?”

My mother was outside the bathroom door. The thump or my shout must have woken her.

“It’s okay, Mom, I just slipped. I’m fine.”

I dried off with a towel while lashing myself under my breath.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid, thinking about a vampire. What is wrong with you? What is wrong with you?”

“Who are you talking to?” Apparently my mother was still outside the door.

“No one.” No one intelligent, that’s for sure. “Go back to bed.”

After changing into a pair of pajamas, I carried my dirty clothes downstairs and put them in the washing machine, reminding myself to start a load in the morning. When I went into the room I shared with my mother, I found her sitting up in her bed.

That was different. She was usually asleep by nine every night.

“Catherine, we have to talk.”

She couldn’t have picked a worse time, but I stifled a yawn and asked her what she wanted to talk about.

“Your future, of course. I know you waited two years to start college so you could help out after Grandpa Joe had
his heart attack, and you’ve been saving for another two years so you can transfer to Ohio State University from the community college here. But soon you’ll be leaving. Living on your own, and I’m worried about you.”

“Mom, don’t worry, I’ll be careful—”

“You can’t forget you have a monster inside you,” she interrupted me.

My mouth tightened. God, she’d picked a
great
time to go into this!
You have a monster inside you, Catherine.
Those were the opening words she’d used when I was sixteen to tell me what I was.

“I’ve been scared for you since I found out I was pregnant,” she went on. The lights were off, but I didn’t need them to see the tension in her face. “From the day you were born, you looked just like your father. Then each day after that, I watched your abnormalities grow as you did. Soon you’ll leave, and I won’t be there to watch over you anymore. You’ll have only yourself to make sure you don’t become like the monster who sired you. You can’t let that happen. Finish school, get your degree. Move out of town, make some friends, it’ll be good for you. Just be careful. Don’t ever forget you’re not like everyone else. They don’t have evil in them trying to break out like you do.”

For the first time in my life, I wanted to argue with her. To tell her that maybe there wasn’t any evil in me. That my father could have been bad
before
he turned into a vampire, and my unusualness made me different, but not half evil.

Even as the denial sprang to my lips, however, I choked it back. It hadn’t escaped my notice that our relationship had dramatically improved since I started killing vampires. She loved me, I knew, but before that, I’d always felt like a small part of her also resented me for both the circumstances of my birth and the repercussions of it.

“I won’t forget, Mom,” was all I said. “I won’t forget, I swear to you.”

Her features softened. Seeing that made me glad I hadn’t argued. There was no need to upset her. This was a woman who’d raised the child of her rapist, and in this small town, she’d been alienated just for having a baby out of wedlock. No one even knew the horrible truth behind her pregnancy. As rough as that was, to top it off, I had hardly been a normal child. She didn’t need me lecturing her on right and wrong.

“In fact,” I went on, “I’m going out Friday to hunt again. I’ll probably be home late. I—I have a good feeling I’ll find one.”

Yeah. Did I ever
.

She smiled. “You’re doing the right thing, baby.”

I nodded, swallowing back the guilt.
If she found out about Bones, she’d never forgive me. She wouldn’t understand how I could have partnered with a vampire, no matter the reason.

“I know.”

She lay down in her bed. I got in mine as well and tried to fall asleep. But fears of my changing perspective and who was responsible for it kept me awake.

F
RIDAY FINALLY ARRIVED. FOR THE PAST FIVE
days, I experimented with makeup and different hairstyles to turn myself into more appetizing bait. The goody bag from Hot Hair Salon had been filled with cosmetics, gels, hair spray, hair clips, nail polish, you name it. Bones also bought me curling irons and hot rollers. After dolling myself up, I would spar with him in full slut gear, preparing myself to fight in a short dress.

Now Bones waited for me by the entrance of the cave, a rarity. From the looks of him, he was already dressed for the evening. Black long-sleeved shirt, black pants, black boots. With his light skin and hair, he looked like an archangel dipped in coal.

“Now, you’re clear on all the details, right? You won’t see me, but I’ll be watching you. When you leave with him, I’m going to follow you. Anywhere outside is fine, but do not, I repeat,
do not
let him take you inside any buildings or houses. If he tries to force you inside one, what do you do?”

“Bones, for God’s sake, we’ve been over this a thousand times.”

“What do you do?” He wasn’t about to give up.

“Hit the pager in the watch, Mr. Bond, James Bond. You’ll come running. Dinner for two.”

He grinned, squeezing my shoulder. “Kitten, you have me pegged all wrong. If I go for your neck, I have no intention of sharing.”

Although I would never admit it, having a small safety net like that made me feel better. The watch was rigged with a tiny pager that would only send a series of beeps to Bones, but if it went off, it meant my ass was in jeopardy.

“Are you ever going to tell me about who I’m after? Or do I find out later if I’ve staked the wrong guy? You’ve been pretty secretive about the whole identity thing. Afraid I’d rat you out?”

That previous smile was wiped from his face, replaced by an expression of complete seriousness.

“It was better for you not to know beforehand, pet. That way no accidental slips. Word can’t get out if word isn’t spoken, right?”

He followed me to the partially enclosed space where he kept my slutty clothes and accessories. It was amazing how many places a cave held. As near as I could figure, this one was half a mile long. I went inside the makeshift dressing room and put the privacy screen in place with a pointed look. Changing clothes in front of him was not going to happen. The screen didn’t impair conversation, however, so I answered him as my clothes came off.

“It amuses me to think of you worrying about my Freudian slips. Maybe you didn’t hear me the other times I told you, but I don’t have any friends. The only other person I talk to is my mother, and she’s being kept far out of this loop.”

As soon as the words left my mouth, a hollow feeling
grew in my chest. It was true, too true. As twisted as it was, Bones was the closest thing to a friend I’d ever had. He might be using me, but at least he was up front about it. Not sneaky and deceitful like Danny had been.

“All right, luv. His name is Sergio, though he might well give you another one. He’s about six-one, black hair, gray eyes, typical vampire skin. Italian is his first language, but he’s fluent in three others as well, so his English has an accent. He’s not very beefy. In fact, he may even look soft to you, but don’t let it fool you. He’s almost three hundred years old and more powerful than you can imagine. Also, he’s a sadist, likes ’em young, real young. Tell him you’re underage and that you snuck in with a fake ID, it’ll only switch him on more. You also can’t kill him straightaway, because I need some information from him first. That’s everything. Oh, and he’s worth fifty thousand dollars.”

Fifty thousand dollars. The words echoed through my mind. And to think I’d been prepared to argue with Bones over pocket change! The words kept resounding, and with them an important detail that had never been revealed before.

“Money. So
that’s
why you hunt vampires. You’re a hit man!”

I was so amazed by this new information, I opened the screen while only wearing my bra and panties.

He cast a leisurely look down the length of me before meeting my eyes.

“Yeah, that’s right. It’s what I do. But don’t fret. You could also say I’m a bounty hunter. Sometimes my clients want ’em back alive.”

“Wow. I just thought we were going after people who had pissed you off.”

“And that was enough for you to kill for, someone who might have looked at me cross-eyed? Blimey, but you’re not particular. What if I were chasing some nice sweet
thing that’d never hurt a fly? Still be all right with it then?”

I snapped the screen shut and found my mother’s words coming out of my mouth.

“None of you are nice sweet things. You’re all murderers. That’s why it didn’t matter. Point me at a vampire and I’ll try to kill it, because at one time they’ve done something to deserve it.”

It was so silent outside the screen, I wondered if he’d left. When I peeked, he was still standing where he’d been before. A flicker of emotion passed over his face before it became blank again. Suddenly uncomfortable, I retreated back inside to don my revealing costume.

“Not every vampire is like the ones who killed those girls Winston told you about. It’s just your bad luck to be living in Ohio at this particular time. There are things going on you don’t know about.”

“Winston was wrong, by the way,” I said smugly. “I looked up those girls’ names the next day, and none of them were dead. They weren’t even missing. One of them, Suzy Klinger, lived in the town next to mine, but her parents said she moved away to study acting. What I don’t know is why Winston would make that up, but far be it for me to understand the mental workings of a ghost.”

“Bloody hell!” Bones almost shouted. “Who did you talk to, aside from Suzy Klinger’s parents? The police? Other families?”

I didn’t know why he was so worked up. It’s not like there
had
been multiple homicides, after all. “No one. I entered their names online at the library’s computer and when nothing came up, I looked in a few local papers and then called Suzy’s parents saying I was a telemarketer. That was it.”

Some of the tension drained out of him. At least he wasn’t clenching his fists anymore.

“Don’t go against what I tell you to do again,” he said in a very calm tone.

“What did you expect? For me to forget about over a dozen girls being murdered by vampires because you
told
me to? See, this is just what I’m talking about! A human wouldn’t act like that. Only a vampire could be that cold.”

Bones folded his arms. “Vampires have existed for millennia, and though we have our villains among us, the majority of us just have a sip here and there, but everybody walks away. Besides, it’s not like your kind hasn’t made its mark for ill on the world. Hitler wasn’t a vampire, was he? Too bloody right. Humans can be just as nasty as we are, and don’t you forget it.”

“Oh, come on, Bones!” Dressed now, I pulled back the screen and started fixing hot rollers into my hair. “Don’t give me that crap. Are you telling me you’ve never murdered someone innocent? Never drank the life out of someone when you were hungry? Never forced a woman who said no? Hell, the only reason you didn’t kill
me
the night we met was because you saw my eyes glow, so sell that smack to someone who’s buying!”

His hand flashed out. I braced myself, but all he did was catch a falling curler. Without blinking, he rolled it back into my hair.

“Think I’d strike you? You really don’t know as much as you claim to. Aside from teaching you how to fight, I’d never lay a harsh hand on you. As for the night we met, you did your level best to kill me. I thought you were sent by someone, so I smacked you and threatened you, but I wasn’t going to kill you. No, I would have sipped from your neck and green-eyed you until you told me who they were. Then I would have sent you back to the shit with your limbs broken as a warning, but I promise you this—at no point would I have forced myself on you. Sorry, Kitten. Every woman I’ve been with has wanted me to be there. Have I killed any
innocents in my time? Yeah, I have. When you’ve lived as long as I have, you make mistakes. You try to learn from them. And you shouldn’t be so quick to judge me on that. No doubt you’ve killed innocents as well.”

“The only people I’ve killed were vampires who tried to kill me first,” I said, rattled by his nearness.

“Oh?” Softly. “Don’t be so sure. Those blokes you killed, did you wait for them to try to bite you first? Or did you just assume because they were vampires and they’d gotten you alone, they intended to murder you? Ignoring the very real likelihood that they were there because they’d thought a beautiful girl was hot to shag them. Tell me—how many of them did you kill before they’d even shown you their fangs?”

My mouth dropped even as immediate denial echoed in my brain.
No. No. They’d all been trying to kill me. They had. Hadn’t they…?

“Whether they showed their fangs or not doesn’t change the fact that vampires are evil, and that’s enough for me.”

“Bloody mule-headed woman,” he muttered. “Then if all vampires are the filth you claim them to be, why wouldn’t I just pry your legs open now and take out some of my evil on you?”

He was too strong for me to stop him, if he decided on that course of action. I glanced at my stakes, but they were too far away on the floor.

Bones saw me looking and a sardonic snort escaped him.

“You never have to fret about it. Told you, I don’t come in unless invited. Now hurry up. You have another murderous fiend to kill.”

He was gone in a whoosh of air that left me trembling.
Great, I’d offended my backup. Smart. Real smart.

We drove separately to avoid being seen together. In fact, I didn’t see him at all after our little spat at the dressing ta
ble. He’d left me a note telling me he’d be watching and to proceed with the plan. On my way to the club, I was inexplicably upset by what had happened. After all, what I’d said was right, wasn’t it? Okay, maybe every vampire I’d killed hadn’t been going for my throat, true. Some of them had been pretty focused on my cleavage, in fact. But they would have tried to kill me, wouldn’t they? Bones might act different, but
all
vampires were bad.

Weren’t they?

The music greeted me with its loud pumping beat. Same vibrations, different songs. According to Bones, Sergio would probably put in an appearance in about an hour. I seated myself at the bar, making sure I had a clear view of the doorway, and ordered a gin and tonic. Aside from that half gallon of moonshine, alcohol seemed to make me calmer instead of inebriated. Bones said it was due to my bloodline. He should know—he could knock back bottles of whiskey without even a twitch. On the plus side, it added to the helpless female image to look drunk.

It had been a while since my last gin and tonic, so I promptly had it refilled by the attentive bartender when I was done. His eyes had been undressing what little clothing I was wearing since I’d walked in. Good to know Bones knew what he was about when it came to picking bait apparel. We’d see if it worked as well with the monsters.

As the hour dragged on, it became apparent that the bartender wasn’t alone in his admiration of my new look. After refusing offer after offer of drinks or dancing, I had passed the flattered stage and gone into the irritated one. My God, I must look easy. No less than a baker’s dozen had made a go at me.

The vampire came through the door with the gliding stealth only the undead could manifest. Judging from his height and black hair, it had to be Sergio. Even though he wasn’t well muscled or overly handsome, his grace and aura
of confidence had more than a few feminine eyes following him as he made his way through the throngs of people. In a nonchalant manner, I sipped my drink and stretched my legs, crossing them while rubbing one calf against the other. The bar I was at was elevated and in direct sight of the entrance, so he had a good view of me over the heads of the other patrons. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him pause, stare, and change direction. Headed now straight toward me.

The seat next to me was occupied by an older man staring fixedly down my dress, but the vampire never hesitated. With a flick of his hand, Sergio dislodged him from his chair. “Go,” he commanded.

The other man walked away with his eyes glazed over. Mind control. Bones had warned me about that.

“Thank you,” I remarked. “If he’d have drooled any more, the bartender would’ve had to mop the floor.”

“Who can blame him?” The smooth accented voice flowed over my ears. “I can’t take my eyes off you, either.”

I smiled and took a deep sip of my drink, letting the liquid roll around inside my mouth before swallowing. He didn’t miss a motion of it.

“I seem to have finished my drink.”

I looked at him expectantly. He gestured to the bartender and a fresh one was poured.

“What’s your name, my young beauty?”

“Cat,” I replied, this time letting my tongue linger on the edge of my glass before swallowing another long draught.

“Cat. What a coincidence. I love pussies.”

The double-entendre was so bald, I was glad Bones had put me through that dirty-talk test or I’d have blushed right then. Instead, I raised a brow in perfect imitation of his trademark.

“And you are, my pussy-loving new friend?” Kudos to me, not a hint of a flush.

“Roberto. Cat, I must say, you look far too young to be gracing such a place.”

I leaned forward conspiratorially, opening my dress to spectacular proportions. “Can you keep a secret? I’m not really twenty-one. Actually, I’m nineteen. My friend loaned me her ID, we look kind of alike. You won’t tell, will you?”

From his expression, he was downright delighted. “But of course I will keep your secret, sweet one. Is your friend with you night?”

The question sounded innocent, but I knew what it meant.
Will anyone miss you if you leave?

“No. She was supposed to meet me, but she hasn’t shown up yet. Maybe she met someone, you know how it is. You just forget everything else around you.”