At Grave's End

Bones tapped his chin and gave Don a calculating look. "Smart of you to realize how destructive Brams could be, but you don't need it. What's got the politicians in a twist today? Terrorism. Scares ' em sackless. What can you offer that no one else can? An interrogator guaranteed to get all the facts, names, places, and plots quicker than they can say full-scale retaliation."

Bones paused to let his words sink in. I was still shocked that Don had held back something as important as closing from the rest of us.

"You're offering to do that?" Don asked, openly skeptical.

Bones chuckled without humor. "Not me. Tate. Ship him to wherever their most stubborn hostage is, have him green-eye information out of the bloke, then sit back and sell him out to the highest bidder. You'll be flush inside of two months while providing an invaluable service to your country to boot. Best of all, the Geneva Convention can kiss your arse, because the hostage-and his holders-won't even remember how it happened."

"You bastard!" Tate burst, advancing on Bones in a fury.

"Sit down, soldier!" Don shouted in a tone I'd never heard him use.

Tate halted in his tracks, staring at me. "He's only doing this to get me away from Cat. He doesn't give a shit about our operation, this country, or anything else but her!"

"That's not the question, is it?" Bones asked icily. "Doyou care about your operation, this country, or anything else but her? I seem to remember you saying your love for her wouldn't interfere with your job. Prove it."

I knew then that Bones had planned this ever since he'd ripped the roof off that limousine.Don't get mad, get even didn't begin to cover it.

Don stood up. "Well, Tate? What's your answer?"

Tate gave Bones a look of pure hatred. "You order me to go, Don, and I'll go."

Don sighed. "You're the finest man I know. You'll prove that everything I believed about integrity being corrupted after turning into a vampire was wrong." Don's gaze flicked to Bones. "I'll need someone to replace him. Cat's gone too much now, and Dave isn't enough."

Bones didn't flinch. "Let me have Tate 'round another week, then you can ship him off and I'll provide you with a replacement."

Don turned back to me. "Go on, Cat. I'll handle things from here."

Even though this was for the best, I felt anguished for Tate. I knew what it was like to be forced to walk away from the person you loved. I just wished that with this absence, Tate would fall in love with someone else. Maybe being away from me would wake him up to the fact that there were plenty of great women out there, instead of always having the person he thought he wanted dangled just out of his reach.

"Damn you," Tate growled to Bones.

"I hope..." The proper words failed me, so I just mumbled, "Take care of yourself, Tate," and walked out the door with Bones beside me.

Chapter Nineteen

WE DIDN'T LEAVE RIGHT AWAY, WHICH WAS Bones's idea, not mine. I went to my office while Bones went off to talk to Juan. When the two of them came back fifteen minutes later, Juan looked paler, but he also seemed to be excited.

"What's up, buddy?" I asked him.

Juan glanced around my office. "Bones,aqui? Ahora? "

Bones gave him an impassive look and shut the door. "Si. Listos?"

Juan's eyes met mine, and then he nodded. "Si."

I was still translating when Bones grabbed Juan and buried his fangs deeply into his neck. What thehell? Then what they'd been saying penetrated.Bones, here? Now? Yes. Ready? Yes. Oh God. Juan must be the vampire replacement Bones had just promised Don. Talk about not wasting any time.

Juan's legs buckled and his eyes fluttered closed. He lost consciousness, his body rapidly going into shock from the mass amounts of blood leaving it. Bones held him, sucking harder at his neck. Juan's face drained of color even as Bones's became pinker, almost flushed. If I touched him now, I knew he'd be warm, though his new temperature would only last as long as it took for Juan to suck his blood back out of him.

Juan's heartbeat slowed. What had been a fast, nervous beating when Bones first bit him turned into lazy, lethargic buh-booms with growing spaces in between. After a minute, Bones raised his head.

"Kitten, hand me that letter opener."

It took me a second to shake myself from seeing my friend dying in front of me, but then I passed the requested item over. Bones took it and plunged it into his own neck, blood spilling out from the unusual fullness of his jugular. He put Juan's head there, forcing his blood into Juan's mouth.

Dave came in the door, an odd expression on his face. Thin crimson lines streamed into Juan's slack mouth. The air became charged, like there was an electric storm nearby. Bones held Juan to his throat, the letter opener still piercing his skin. Juan's lips twitched. His mouth began to fasten of its own volition onto Bones's neck. The letter opener fell unneeded to the floor, because Juan was biting at him now. With single purpose, he clutched Bones, chewing into the pale neck.

Juan sucked on Bones's throat, tearing his flesh and swallowing in ravenous gulps. Bones held him, his lips in a tight line as Juan's blood was given back to him irrevocably altered. Finally he grasped Juan and tore his mouth away, wrestling him to the ground and pinning him. Juan struggled, his teeth snapping and starting to curve with the first hints of fang.

"No you don't, mate," Bones said.

Dave moved toward me, standing in the way of the now-insensible man who would kill anyone out of sheer, blind hunger.

Juan continued to thrash for another minute before he shuddered violently. Then his whole body went limp and his last few heartbeats went forever silent.

Bones grunted in weariness and rolled off him. Changing a vampire weakened him of power. Not to mention he'd just been sucked dry.

"You need a refill," I stated, and went to pass by Dave to get some plasma from our in-house blood bank.

"Don't."

Bones was on his feet before I could blink.

"Just...stay right here, Kitten."

Understanding dawned. The last time he'd changed someone over, I'd gone away for "just a minute" and ended up being tortured and nearly killed.

"I'll get it."

The offer came from Dave, who seemed to remember.

"No, you won't," Bones said. "You'll stay right here on the very slim chance our friend wakes up and makes a go for her throat. That way I wouldn't have to kill him. Call Ian, have him bring the blood up."

Jeez, he was being cautious. The odds of Juan rising so soon and overcoming Bones were near absolute zero, but I didn't argue. Dave made the call. The fact he also didn't argue meant he must be equally paranoid.

"Why aren't we just putting him downstairs in the secured cell? That's what it's there for."

"Because, Kitten..." Bones put Juan's lifeless body on the couch and stayed close to him. "We're leaving, and we're taking him with us."

It was several hours and a dizzying free-flying jaunt from the compound back to our cars later that we rounded the last curves on our driveway in the Blue Ridge.

"Where will we put Juan?"

Three cars behind I could hear him howling, cut off the next moment by the slurping sound of him feeding from the plasma bags I'd packed. He'd just risen. Five vampires were in the car with him, and three of them were Masters. No, he wasn't going anywhere.

"The cellar," was Bones's reply. "It's reinforced, and we'll have Tick Tock, Dave, and Rattler take turns staying with him. Within a week, he'll be himself."

Until then, Juan was a danger to anyone with a pulse.

"We're not going to have enough room if everyone stays."

"Three of the couches have pull-outs and the rest will make do with blankets and the floor. Each one of them has endured worse, believe me."

"We're the ones with the urgent problems and it's our house they're staying at, we should take the floor," I noted. "It's only polite."

Bones snorted. "Right. In my own home on Christmas? I think not."

Yes, it was after two a.m. and therefore officially Christmas Day. This wasn't the romantic, private evening I had planned, but oh well. We were together.

I leaned over and kissed his neck, letting my breath tickle his ear. "Merry Christmas," I whispered.

Bones put the car in park and stopped me when I began to draw back. His hand curled around my neck as he dipped my head back with a slow, deep kiss that made mereally wish we were alone.

It was interrupted when Ian rapped on our side window.

"If we're supposed to wait outside in the cold while you two snog in the car, I'd just as soon have flown home."

My mouth opened in outrage when my mother trotted by and muttered, "Thank God somebody said it."

The humor of that struck me and I laughed. My mother, agreeing with the vampire who'd sired Max? Now that was a Christmas miracle if I'd ever heard one.

"I'm sorry, Ian, did I forget to ask your permission before I kissed my wife?" Bones countered. "Wanker."

"Guttersnipe."

Ian said the insult with a trace of a smile. Far from being offended, Bones chuckled, giving me a last kiss before he got out of the car and grasped Ian by the shoulders.

"I'm glad you're here, mate."

Ian had a self-deprecating smile. "Do you know why I am? Because for once, you asked for my assistance. You've never done that in all the centuries I've known you. That's why I threw in my lot with you, bloody usurping sod though you are."

Ever since I first met Ian, I hadn't understood why Bones tolerated him, but seeing the two of them like this explained a lot.

"You could have walked away, Ian. Just as you could have over two hundred and twenty years ago when I was imprisoned at the colony. I didn't thank you then and I haven't since, yet it is long overdue. Thank you, Ian, for changing me into a vampire. I am forever in your debt."

Ian's eyes flashed with emotion. Then he arched a jaded brow, recovering.

"About bleedin' time. I expect it to take another two centuries before you'll apologize for threatening to kill me over Cat?"

Bones laughed. "You'll shrivel waiting for that apology, mate."

"Let's hatch a dastardly plan, then," Ian said with amused grimness. "Or Patra will ensure that we'llall shrivel."

Vlad showed up at our house, remarking that he'd been in the neighborhood. I doubted that, but I wasn't about to call him a liar, especially since he'd proved to be a useful source of information. Still, part of me wondered if he'd shown up just because it irritated Bones. Vlad seemed to have a devilish sense of humor that way.

"Whatever happened to Anthony?" he asked after hearing that Hykso and Kratas were being held hostage. Unfortunately, according to Spade, so far they hadn't proved to know a wealth of information.

"I'll be shipping pieces of him back to Patra," Bones replied. "Along with pieces of the other blokes. It'll give her people something to think about."

The sick part of me wondered if Bones would cover those boxes with Christmas wrapping paper. Talk about getting an unwanted present. Here's hoping Patra didn't have something similar in the works for us. Nothing said "home for the holidays" like opening a present full of body parts.

"That's it!" I shot straight out of my seat, struck with an idea like a proverbial light bulb had gone off.

Bones arched a brow at me, not knowing what it was. My thoughts must have been whirling too fast for him to catch.

"It's Christmas. Most people are with their loved ones today," I said. "Rather than ship bits of Anthony and the other guys from flunky to flunky, hoping they got to someone high enough to pass them onto Patra, how would you like to deliver them in person?"

Ian leaned forward with interest. Bones stared at me, tapping his chin.

"You know the answer. Go on."

"We know that Patra's been on the lookout for anyone who'd give her information on us. Hell, we're doing the same thing. So what if an informant contacted Patra through one of the numbers Kratas had, offering to sell information on where she can find us? But this person wants cash up front, in person, and right away."

"Patra would assume it could be a trap," Mencheres pointed out. "So she'd expect you and Bones to be waiting for her."

I smiled. "I'm counting on that."

Bones finally caught the plan in my head. "Kitten,no."

"It's an acceptable risk," I argued.

Vlad must have picked the idea from my mind, too, because he started to laugh.

"Oh, Bones, maybe you should have married a docile girl who didn't stray too far from the kitchen."

"Get stuffed, don't you have more publicity stunts to pull?" Bones shot back. "How about chatting with another writer who can smear your name into greater popularity?"

"What, did Anne Rice not return your calls,mate?" Vlad asked scathingly. "Jealousy is such an ugly trait."

A noise escaped me before I could choke it off. Ian had no such discretion, and his laugh was clear and hearty.

"Don't glare at her, Crispin. It was funny, and that's not even counting the look on your face."

Which was far from amused, but after a beat, Bones relaxed and his lips twitched.

"Indeed it was. Right. Let us sort out this plan of yours, Kitten. It may be our best opportunity."

Bones selected the members of the vampire entourage who were going with me. When he directed Tate to be one of the five, I was speechless. Then he confounded me even more by choosing Vlad as another.