One Foot in the Grave (10 page)

But I didn’t have to die. All I had to do was angle that blade and give it one good push to live. Bones wasn’t restraining my arms. They were loosely around his back while one of his hands tangled in my hair and the
other supported me. The gray encompassing my vision became thicker, the noise in my ears was almost deafening. It was him or me, because it was clear he wasn’t going to stop.

My fingers gripped around the knife to thrust…and then relaxed. It slipped from my hand, which I used to press Bones closer instead.
I can’t do it
, was my last thought.
Besides
,
there are far worse ways to die.

A
WARENESS RETURNED A PIECE AT A TIME.
First and foremost, I realized my heart was still beating.
Okay, I’m not dead or changed into a vampire. Always a plus.
Then I discovered I had a pillow under my head. More alertness revealed that I was stretched on my side covered by a blanket. The room was dark, drapes were shut. Arms encircled me from behind, nearly the color of my own.

That’s when I woke all the way up.

“Where are we?”

Who I was with wasn’t in question, even though my head still felt a little cottony.

“In the house I’m renting, in Richmond.”

“How long have I been out?” Silly details seemed important; why I didn’t know.

“Four hours, give or take. Long enough for you to steal all the covers. I’ve been listening to you snore and watching you cocoon into the bedspread, and I real
ized I’ve missed this the most. Holding you while you sleep.”

I sat up, my hand going at once to my throat. As expected, it was smooth. No punctures or bumps left to show what had happened. Bones had closed the holes with a drop of his blood, erasing any marks of what had happened.

“You bit me,” I said accusingly, but with a lot less anger than I intended. It was either the combination of the juice in his fangs or blood loss that made everything seem not as…stressful. And I should be stressed. Even though we were still both dressed, I was in a bed with Bones, and that wasn’t a good idea if I wanted to keep my emotional distance.

“Yes,” was all he said. He didn’t even bother to sit up, but stayed stretched out on the pillows.

“Why?”

“Many reasons. Do you want me to list them all?”

“Yeah.” An edge crept into my tone. He looked too damn unconcerned for my liking.

“Primarily to prove a point,” he said, finally sitting up. “You could have killed me. By rights, you
should
have killed me. You had a vampire sucking the lifeblood out of you and a silver knife in your hand. Only a fool wouldn’t have wielded that blade…or someone who cares far more than she’s admitting to.”

“You bastard, you bit me to
test
me?” I exclaimed, getting out of bed and then staggering at the sudden wave of dizziness. Looked like Bones had cleaned his plate. “Bet you’d have been pretty fucking sorry if I
would
have sliced up your heart. How could you be so stupid; you could have gotten killed!”

“And so could you,” he flared right back. “Frankly after years of wondering how you felt about me, it was worth risking my life to find out. Admit it, Kitten. You haven’t gotten over me any more than I’ve gotten over you, and all your denial, lies, or the moron you’re dating won’t change that.”

I had to look away. Hearing him say he hadn’t gotten over me was like a velvet-covered hammer to my heart. I barely even registered the insult to Noah.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said at last. “It can’t work between us, Bones. Nothing can change what you are, and I
won’t
change what I am.”

“Answer me this, Kitten. When it is just you and me, no one else, does it bother you that I’m not human? I know what the rest of them think—your mother, your work, your friends, but do
you
care that I’m a vampire?”

Actually, I hadn’t thought about it under those terms. There were always other things to consider. Stripped of that, however, there wasn’t any pause in my response.

“No. I don’t care.”

His eyes closed for a second. Then they opened with a blaze of intensity. “I know you left me because you thought you had to protect me, that I couldn’t handle the obstacles before us. So you tried to get on with your life because you believed it would never work between us. But you see, I couldn’t get on with my life because I knew we
could
work. I’ve been looking for you every day since you left me, Kitten, and I’m sick of being without you. You’ve had your shot at things, now let me have mine.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about trusting me, which is what you
should have done over four years ago. I’m strong enough to handle whatever your job or your mum could throw at me. You still care about me, and I certainly haven’t given up on you. We can beat the odds against us, if you’d give us a chance to.”

Oh, if only. God, if
only
it were that simple!

“Even if you take out my job and my mother, we’re still doomed, Bones. You’re a vampire. I meant it when I said I didn’t care, but you will! What are you going to do when I grow old, just hand me some Ben-Gay for my arthritis? You’ll want me to change. You’ll resent me when I refuse, and it will destroy us.”

He stared at me without blinking.

“For the record: I will never force you to become a vampire. I won’t pressure you, coerce you, trick you, or guilt you. Is that clear enough?”

“So you’re fine with me getting wrinkled, gray, decrepit, and then dead?” I asked harshly. “Is that what you’re saying?”

Something that might have been pity flashed across his face.

“Kitten, sit down.”

“No.” A chill ran up my spine. Whatever it was, for him to look so compassionate all of a sudden, it must be bad. I’d take it on my feet. “You tell me. What don’t I know? Am I dying or something?” That would explain his lack of apprehension over my growing old.

Bones got up and stood in front of me. “Haven’t you ever wondered how long you would live? Ever truly pondered it?”

“No.” I laughed bitterly. “I thought I would get killed pretty quick with my job.”

“Think past that,” he went on. My heart began to pound. “You’re half vampire. You’ve never been sick, your body heals at an inhuman rate, and you can’t catch any of the diseases that afflict the living population. Even poisons or drugs need to be administered in massive doses before they affect you, so
what makes you think you would only live to an average age?
”

My mouth opened to argue, but then hung loosely. In a way, it felt similar to the night my mother told me what I was, because denial was my first response.

“You’re trying to trick me. I have a heartbeat, I breathe, get my period, shave my legs…I’m
alive.
I had a childhood!”

“You told me once your differences emerged most notably in puberty. Probably it was the hormonal surge, the same thing which can trigger congenital defects in humans that increased your nosferatu traits, and they’ve grown ever since. Your pulse and breathing only make you easier to kill, but you’re not human. You never have been. You just mimic them better than vampires do.”

“Liar!” I shouted.

He didn’t flinch. “Your skin hasn’t aged a day since you left me. Not one line, not one furrow. Granted, you’re only twenty-seven and wouldn’t be showing most signs of it until later, but still. There should be some difference in the pores, the texture…” He traced a finger down my cheek for emphasis. “But there’s not. Then there’s the blood.”

My mind reeled. “What blood?”

“Mine. Didn’t have a chance to tell you this before, because you left two days later. Probably doesn’t make
a difference in the big picture, but here it is. The night we rescued your mum, you drank my blood. Not just a few drops for healing, but a good two pints. That alone would add fifty years to a normal human’s lifespan. To yours, who knows? Double, easily.”

I reared my hand back, but he grabbed it before I could slap him. “You bastard! You didn’t tell me that. You didn’t
warn
me!”

“Would it have changed your decision? You thought we were both going to die that night, if you recall, not to mention you would have done anything to save your mum. And truthfully, you could live to be as old as I am without it. Don’t take my word for it. Go see your boss. Look him in the eye and ask what he already knows. All the pathology they must have done on you over the years, I’m
damn
sure he knows. That’s why I don’t have to pressure you into becoming a vampire. With your mixed heritage and the occasional consumption of my blood, you’ll live as long as you want to, just as you are.”

This couldn’t be happening. The walls felt like they were collapsing on top of me. All I wanted to do was run from the truth and be alone, even from Bones. Especially from Bones.

Numbly I walked toward the door, but he blocked me. “Where do you think you’re going?”

I shoved him. “Out. I can’t look at you right now.”

He didn’t budge. “You’re in no condition to drive.”

I let out a bitter laugh. “Why don’t you just open a vein for me, then? What’s another fifty years, right?”

Bones reached out, but I jerked back.

“Don’t touch me.”

I knew some of what I was feeling was irrational backlash anger. The proverbial shooting of the messenger and all that. But I couldn’t help it.

Bones dropped his hand. “Fine. Where do you want to go? I’ll drive you.”

“Take me home.”

He held open the door. “After you.”

Bones dropped me off at my house with a parting comment that he’d see me the following night. I didn’t reply to that. It caused too many mixed emotions, and I had enough to think about already.

Once I got inside, I called Don to tell him I was okay. As expected, there had been numerous messages on my machine from both him and Tate. I could understand their concern—my last call had been hours ago to say I was chasing after a vampire. Then there’d been no trace of me.

I fabricated a story about an hours-long chase that had ended at the construction site, coincidentally not that far from the GiGi Club. Here’s hoping Bones had left the vamp’s body there, because if not, I’d have to come up with an alternate web of lies. Then I told Don that I was beat from chasing down the vamp and wouldn’t be in to work until tomorrow. He didn’t question my recounting of the events. Why would he? I’d never lied to him before.

On the plus side, Don informed me that the two victims were at a hospital and were expected to make a full recovery. Little did he know it had taken a vampire’s intervention to save them from a vampire’s attack. Far be it from me to explain that irony to my boss.

Then I took a hot shower, washing all the remaining blood off me. If only it were so easy to get the mistakes from my life cleaned off. Bones’s voice kept echoing in my head.
I’ve been looking for you every day since you left me…You’ll live as long as you want to, just as you are…You’ve had your shot at things, now let me have mine…

Yesterday, everything had made sense to me. I knew what I had to do, didn’t question my decisions—though some had hurt me unbearably—and I knew the direction my life was headed in. Today, all that had changed. I had far more questions than convictions, didn’t know what the hell I was doing, and had found out I might have far longer to fuck up my life than I’d previously imagined.

I wished I could talk to Denise. She had a way of cutting through the bullshit to find wisdom in chaos. But last night had been her wedding. Yeah, to say she was unavailable was to put it mildly.

I’d only call my mother if I wanted last-minute motivation to jump off a bridge. She was full of blind prejudice, not wisdom, and a call to her might make me seriously tempted to end it all. Though I had to admit, I was rather shocked that Don’s first words to me earlier hadn’t been “So where’s the vampire from the wedding?” My mother hadn’t tattled about Bones…yet. For her, that was showing remarkable restraint.

There was no one from my team I could discuss my personal upheaval with. Even those I counted as friends, Tate, Juan, and Cooper, couldn’t be trusted with this.

Noah, well…I had to talk to him, all right, but it
wouldn’t be to confide my deepest secrets. It would be to tell him it was over between us. I’d let things go on too long, and that wasn’t right. Already I was a shit; letting more time drag by just made me a bigger one.

I paced around the house for another hour, tired but knowing I’d never sleep. My cat got bored of chasing my ankles as I attempted to wear holes in the carpet, and went upstairs. Still I paced, Bones’s words haunting me.
I’ve been looking for you every day since you left me
…
You’ll live as long as you want to, just as you are…You’ve had your shot at things, now let me have mine…

“Who am I kidding?” I finally asked out loud in frustration. I was less concerned about Ian’s intentions to track me down, the contract on my life, or anything else, than about this: Did Bones and I actually have a chance together? With finding out about my longevity, the single biggest obstacle to our relationship had been removed. Sure, I worked for the government version of Graveslayers Inc. and my mother would rather poke needles in her eyes than see me date a vampire…but what if Bones was right? What if the two of us
weren’t
hopeless together? God, after all these years, I could hardly believe I had a chance to ponder that again.

Now the question was,
What was I willing to risk to find out?

D
ON REGARDED ME WITH TEMPERED CURIOSITY
when I walked into his office later that day. It changed to suspicion when I shut the door and locked it behind me. Normally I had to be reminded to even close it.

“What’s going on, Cat? You said it was urgent.”

Yeah, I had. I’d thought about Bones saying Don knew the secret of my longevity, and it had gotten me good and mad. Time to rock the boat.

“See, Don, I have this question, and I hope you’ll be honest with me.”

He pulled at the end of his eyebrow. “I think you know you can count on my honesty.”

“Can I?” I asked with an edge. “All right, then tell me: How long have you been fucking me?”

That caused him to stop tugging his brow. “I don’t know what you’re saying—”

“Because if I was going to fuck
you
,” I interrupted,
“I’d get a bottle of gin, some Frank Sinatra music…and a crash cart for the heart attack you’d have. But you, Don, you’ve been fucking me for years now, and I haven’t gotten any liquor, music, flowers, candy, or anything!”

“Cat…” He sounded wary. “If you have a point, then get to it. This analogy is wearing thin.”

“How old am I?”

“You just had a birthday; you know how old you are. You’re twenty-seven—”

His desk crashed to the far side of the room, splintering in shards of mahogany. Papers flew, and his computer thumped to the carpet. It happened in less time than his shocked blink.

“
How old am I?
”

Don glanced at his demolished furniture before straightening and regarding me across the now-empty space between us.

“Nineteen or twenty, if you judge from your bone density and pathology reports. Your teeth match up to that as well.”

The end of puberty, when my body apparently decided it was done aging. I gave a harsh chuckle.

“Guess I won’t need to stock up on any Oil of Olay, will I? You ruthless motherfucker, were you ever going to tell me? Or were you just waiting to see if I lived long enough to notice?”

The pretense was gone from him, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say he looked relieved.

“Eventually I was going to inform you, of course. When the time was right.”

“Yeah, and you knew you had lots of it, didn’t you?
Who else knows?” I paced, keeping an eye on him as he sat calmly amid the ruins of his office.

“Tate, and the head pathologist here, Dr. Lang. His assistant, Brad Parker, probably.”

“Did you tell Tate about the added decades to his own life? Or were you waiting for an ‘opportune time’ for that as well?”

Don changed from composed to uncomfortable in the space of those sentences. When he hesitated, I pounced.

“Don’t even try to say you don’t know what I’m talking about! You tested all of us that night in Ohio, and every fucking week after that as always. You didn’t tell them?”

“I wasn’t sure,” he hedged.

“Well, let me assure you then! They had about a pint each of decently aged vampire blood. That’ll give them, what? Another twenty years at least? You know, I always thought you forbade us from drinking straight blood because you worried we’d grow a taste for it, me especially, but you were concerned with more than that, weren’t you? You already knew what it would do! How did you find that out?”

His tone was cold. “Someone I knew many years ago started out fighting on the right side like I did, then ended up liking the enemy more. He didn’t age in decades. That’s when I knew what vampire blood could do, and it’s why the Brams is so minutely screened and filtered. It carries none of that dangerous poison in it.”

“That poison you’re referring to runs in half my DNA,” I snapped. “Is that why you don’t give a shit ev
ery time I go on an assignment that could get me killed? Because it’s just one less snake to worry about?”

“At first it was,” he brusquely rejoined, standing now also. He spread his arms in an encompassing gesture. “Look at you. You’re like a time bomb covered in skin. All that power, all that inhuman ability…I used to believe you’d get bored with your limitations and shirk them off. Cross over completely. That’s why I told Tate when you signed on to be prepared to kill you. But you never faltered, and you didn’t succumb to the urge for more power. Frankly…it was inspirational.”

Don smiled in a self-deprecating way. “Five years ago, I was quite disillusioned about the human character when exposed to supernatural influence. When I discovered you, I thought you’d crumble all the faster for what was in your blood. Yes, I sent you out on the riskiest missions first, in order to maximize your usefulness until you turned and had to be put down. That didn’t happen, however. You, who carry in your genetic makeup the same corruption which has stumbled so many before you, proved to be the finest of us all. In short, and not to overdramatize, you made me hope again.”

I stared at him. He didn’t drop his eyes from my hard gaze. Finally I shrugged.

“I believe in what I’m doing, whether you believe in me or not. I’m taking a week off to contemplate this and figure out my next step. When I come back, we’re having another talk, and this one will include Tate, Juan, and Cooper. You’re going to tell them about the consequences of the blood they drank. And you’re
wrong about something, Don. It’s not vampire blood that corrupts—it’s whether the person who drinks it is corrupted to begin with. Hey, don’t take my word for it, look at the guys. They felt that same power, felt how different it could make them…and yet they didn’t turn evil. It doesn’t twist who you are, it only increases it, for better or worse. Remember that, but I have a feeling I’ll have to remind you.”

“Cat.”

Don stopped me as I kicked back the rubble to open the door.

“You
are
coming back, aren’t you?”

I paused with a hand on the frame. “Oh, I’ll be back. Whether you like it or not.”

It didn’t surprise me to feel the change of energy in my house later that night. I was in the kitchen, heating up a frozen dinner in the microwave, when suddenly I knew I wasn’t alone.

“It’s polite to knock,” I said without turning around. “My front door’s not broken, you know.”

That feeling of power intensified as Bones walked in the kitchen.

“Yes, but this is more dramatic, don’t you agree?”

My dinner beeped. I took it out of the microwave, grabbed a fork, and sat down at the dinette table. Bones took the seat opposite me, watching me with tempered wariness.

“I’m not bothering to offer you any,” I said flippantly. “My neck and I both know you already ate.”

A hint of a frown touched his mouth. “I told you that wasn’t about feeding.”

“No, it was about you making your point.” I skewered a bite and chewed. “Next time, maybe use something
other
than my jugular as your Exhibit A?”

“It wasn’t your jugular. That would have made you pass out too quickly, and I wanted you to have time to make your decision to kill me or not,” Bones replied, holding my stare. “So I bit around your jugular. That’s why it took longer…and why I could enjoy drawing your blood into me instead of just swallowing a gushing arterial flow.”

That made me hesitate on my own swallow. Bones’s eyes were swirling with green from the memory, like mint in chocolate, and if I were honest, I’d admit to an internal ripple of pleasure as well at the recollection. His bite could have passed for foreplay, it had felt that good.

But there were more important things to get down to, even though my libido certainly didn’t agree.

“So,” I said after I’d finished chewing. “You’re hell-bent on not going away until this danger with Ian has passed
and
you’ve neutralized whoever’s waving a check around for my corpse, right?”

Bones nodded. “That’s right.”

“And you probably followed me earlier when I went into work, just waiting to see if I’d try to fly the coop?”

A shrug. “Let’s just say no plane would have made it off the ground there today.”

My gaze hardened. “Then I suppose you followed me to Noah’s afterward, and eavesdropped on that as well?”

Bones leaned forward with complete coldness on his face. “I normally would never harm someone in
nocent, but I admit to a certain lack of rationality when it comes to you. You saved that man’s life by breaking up with him today, because if I’d have listened to anything else going on at his house, I would have snapped him in half.”

“You would have tried,” I ground out. “Noah doesn’t believe in vampires, ghouls, or anything more supernatural than Santa Claus. You’d better not hurt him.”

“Kitten, if I intended to kill Noah, I’d have done it before you even knew I was in town. But you could hardly expect me to twiddle my thumbs and listen to you shag him. Remember your response last night when I kissed Felicity?”

Yes, there had been that whole urge to rip her limb from limb. Vampire territorialism. It really didn’t care who was innocent or not.

“Fine,” I acknowledged. “We both still have feelings for each other. You think it can work despite my job and my mother’s virulent hatred of vampires. Since you’re refusing to leave anyway because of Ian and the contract out on me…”

He started to smile. “Are you waving the white flag?”

“Not so fast. I’m saying we can take things slow. See if it blows up in our faces. I’m
not
saying declare eternal love for each other while I fall back with my legs open.”

His smile deepened. “There are alternate positions.”

Those words—and the look in his eyes—rubbed me like a physical caress. I drew in a deep breath. That’s why I’d decided on a celibacy mandate. No way could I keep a leash on my emotions if I threw sex into the
mix. I’d be screaming out my undying love for Bones in five seconds flat.

“Take it or leave it.”

“Done.”

I blinked, part of me not believing what was happening. Was this real? Or just another crazy dream, one of thousands I’d had about Bones?

“Okay.”

I didn’t know what to say. Or do. Shake hands? Seal it with a kiss? Shout “Celibacy sucks!” and rip his clothes off? There should be an undead dating manual—I was lost here.

Bones cocked his head to the side, and then he let out a resigned noise.

“Kitten…your resolve is about to be put to the test sooner than you expected.”

Huh?
“What are you talking about?”

He stood up. “Your mum’s here.”