This Side of the Grave

Two of them spat curses, the nastiest from the ghoul wearing the fang trophies. I didn't give Vlad a chance to act, but swiped my blade through the ghoul's throat before he could say anything else. Now he had two necklaces; one made of fangs, the other made of the last blood he'd ever shed.

The other ghoul who'd cursed me burst into flames that burned so fiercely, his screams were cut off in seconds. I glanced toward the cinema, hoping none of the moviegoers would decide to check out the sudden blaze of fire, if they saw it. But before I could drop my mental shields to better pick up on any "what's that light over there?" thoughts, the flames on the ghoul vanished, leaving only smoke curling up over his remains.

That's right, no worry of a forest fire with Vlad around. My own control over fire had been far less during the brief time I'd borrowed the ability from him.

My hip vibrated. I jumped, tense from the circumstances, before realizing that it was just my cell phone. I pulled it out, seeing Bones's number, and grimaced as I hit ignore again. Much as I wanted to talk to him, chatting or texting during a fiery interrogation was just not appropriate.

"As your numbers dwindle, so does my patience," Vlad said in a chillingly genial tone.

"Still not going to tell me what I want to know? Eeny, meeny, miny . . ." At "moe," the ghoul Vlad pointed at exploded like a firecracker, pelting flaming bits of things I didn't even want to identify over the two ghouls on either side of him. It took all my willpower not to look away. Gross didn't even begin to cover what that looked like. Instead of doing something completely girly, like saying, "Ewwww," I concentrated on what I'd overhead the ghouls talking about, and on how many lives would be destroyed if Apollyon's plans were allowed to move forth.

"You'll kill us anyway, no matter if we tell you what you want to know," a ghoul with scars on his neck finally said. The other ghoul, who looked to be in his teens, still flapped his mouth in that strange way, like he was miming a fish out of water. What's the deal with that? I wondered.

Vlad shrugged. "If your information proves to be useful, after a period of time, I'll let you go. Before that, you'll be my captive, but you'll be alive, which is more than your friends can say," he finished with a tip of his head toward the other corpses.

The ghoul grunted. "Why should I believe you'll really let me live?" Vlad became very still, but his eyes blazed with a dangerous light. "Call me a liar one more time," he said, each word dripping with challenge.

Even though I wasn't the one being threatened, a shiver still passed through me. This was one of the times I was glad I was on Vlad's good side.

The younger ghoul flapped his lips again, mouth opening and closing even more frantically. I gave him an irritated look. Nobody liked a drama queen in the middle of an interrogation. But then my eyes narrowed, and I had him by the shirt before Vlad could speak.

"Open your mouth again," I said, because he'd shut it in what might have been surprise once I grabbed him.

"Don't do it," the scarred ghoul ordered.

I snapped out a sideways kick, breaking his knee without once taking my eyes off the ghoul I held. Slowly, with a gaze that I now recognized as pleading, the ghoul opened his mouth.

Wide.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," I breathed.

Chapter Twenty-four

I kept staring into the ghoul's mouth. Only a scarred lump of tissue remained where his tongue should have been. This mutilation couldn't have happened after he was undead. Anything cut off him after that would grow back, same as with vampires. The scar tissue proved his lack of a tongue wasn't a congenital condition, either. So someone had cut it off, then turned him into a ghoul shortly thereafter, judging from the permanently raw look to the scar. If it had been healed for a while before he'd become undead, the area would have been much smoother.

And I didn't know many people who'd willingly consent to such a thing. Especially someone as young as this boy had been when all this happened.

But just to be sure . . .

I spun around, grabbing the other ghoul and shoving my knife into his mouth to hold it open.

"Did you have anything to do with that?" I asked, digging the blade in. "Lie to me, and I swear to God I'll make Vlad puke with what I do to you."

"I didn't do that to him," the ghoul said quickly. His gaze flicked behind me. "I'm not lying. He was like that when he was put in our group."

"And who put him there?" I asked, digging the knife in until it must have been grazing his sinuses, but I didn't care. Mutilation. Forced changing of a teenager. He might not have done it, but he'd been a part of it.

"You know who," the ghoul rasped.

I didn't blink. "Say the name. Convince me that I should believe you." My cell vibrated against my hip again, but I ignored it, not wanting to divert even an ounce of my attention away from the ghoul in front of me.

"Apollyon." The word was almost sighed. "He has several people like Dermot in his line.

He takes kids who are young, not too bright, then mutes them and changes them. They make good muscle. Got nowhere else to go, can't talk, can't write real well, so we know they can't betray us."

I thought I'd been furious before, but that didn't compare to the rage filling me now. My hands trembled, the knife digging even higher into the ghoul's head. He screamed as much as he could with the blade in the way.

"Cat." Vlad's voice was low but resonant. "Stop. We need him alive." I knew the wisdom in that. Knew that if I killed the ghoul, we wouldn't find out if he knew where Apollyon was, and that was vitally important information. But my mind felt frozen with the urge to destroy anyone who'd been a part of such a horrible practice, and my knife kept on its upward path into the ghoul's skull. Dermot couldn't have been more than seventeen when he was tortured, killed, and then forced into this existence. The ghoul in front of me knew that.

Allowed it to continue. He had to pay.

"Cat! "

My hand trembled again . . . and then I yanked the knife out, twisting it in the process, savoring the scream the ghoul made. I moved away from him, taking in a deep, long breath to remind myself that I'd made the right decision. Information was more important than revenge. I chanted it in my mind like a litany until I began to feel stable.

"Aren't you supposed to be burning him to get more details?" I asked Vlad, my voice almost normal despite the anger still swelling in me.

Vlad gave me an unfathomable look, the faintest smile hovering on his lips. "If you live long enough, Reaper, one day you might scare even me."

"Girl's gotta have goals," I replied shortly. "And he's still not spilling where Apollyon is."

"No, he's not, is he?" Then Vlad made a series of odd motions with his hands, but no fire emanated from them.

"Are you having performance issues?" I asked in surprise.

"Bite your tongue," Vlad said, with a snort. "I was seeing if Dermot understood sign language, but from the look on his face, it seems not." I glanced at the young ghoul, who'd been watching Vlad's hands with a sort of morbid fascination. He picks kids who are young, not too bright . . . the other ghoul had said about Apollyon. Did Dermot know that there was an entire language he could learn that required no verbal or written words? How trapped he must feel, forced into this life, and denied any real means to even communicate.

"You're going to be okay," I said to Dermot. "We're not going to hurt you, and you won't have to live with those other people anymore, I promise." A little voice inside told me that Bones wasn't going to like what I intended, but I pushed it back. He might not like it, but he'd understand.

Noise from dozens of cars combined with multiple groans as abruptly, the dialog from the four movies - and the exterior lights - cut off. It didn't take more than a second of dropping my mental shields to catch the internal grumbling from the moviegoers over the sudden power failure at the drive-in.

Even if I hadn't heard that, the loud voice of someone with a bullhorn began apologizing for the inconvenience, promising rain check tickets for the next night. Must be the manager.

From how calm he sounded, I guessed that Mencheres had had a little talk with him using the power in his gaze. Otherwise, I'd expect him to be far more glum about all the money driving out of the theater and the promise of refunds later.

Maybe I'd make an anonymous donation to this theater. The manager shouldn't have to take a financial hit just because warmongering, murderous ghouls had chosen this place to hold their get-together.

"Someone's coming, and it's not Mencheres," Vlad said, jerking his head.

I drew out another knife as I headed in the direction he'd indicated, ducking to use the bushes as camouflage again. But when I was about twenty yards away, I caught familiar scents on the air, and my tenseness eased.

The sight of the vampires, one with gray streaks in his hair, the other so skinny that the bones of his shoulders all but jutted through his shirt, only confirmed who they were.

"Ed. Scratch," I called out, not raising my voice. "Over here." I turned back around without waiting for them, not wanting to leave Vlad alone for long with the ghouls. Granted, the odds of Vlad being overcome were about nil, but the odds that he might decide to torch one - or both - of them in my absence were much higher.

To my relief, both Dermot and the other ghoul were still alive when I jogged back to Vlad, though in the few minutes that I'd been gone, the scarred ghoul looked like he'd passed through a volcano. Mencheres must have dropped his power from him, because he was on the ground, Vlad's booted foot over his mouth. Must be why I hadn't heard any yelling even though he'd obviously been burned.

"He doesn't appear to know where Apollyon is," Vlad stated. "I'm not surprised.

Apollyon would have to be an idiot to tell where he was to anyone in a group such as this. They report in and receive instructions by e-mail. I have the address and passwords." Ed and Scratch appeared behind me in the next moment, one of them letting out a slow whistle as they took in the slain bodies that were still held upright, plus the still-alive, burnt ghoul under Vlad's foot.

"Looks like we missed the party," Ed observed.

Vlad's smile was arch. "But you're just in time for the cleanup."

"How come I'm not surprised to hear that?" Scratch muttered, shaking his head. "What a mess, but better them than us."

"Wise outlook," Vlad commented.

The ghoul tapped on Vlad's foot, blinking repeatedly at him. Vlad moved it aside an inch, which was apparently enough for him to talk.

"There are more of us here. In this city, I mean. We're supposed to recruit, add to our numbers, kill some vamps, and then spread out to another city. We're also supposed to leave if we see the Reaper or Bones. That's good information. Good enough for my life, like you agreed," he finished.

Vlad removed his foot all the way, but fire began to dance down his hands. "We already know most of that, so the information's not good at all."

"Vlad," I said, and his brows rose at the sharpness to my voice. "He's done his best to tell you all he knows, so you need to let him go.

He opened his mouth, about to argue . . . and then smiled. "Of course." The ghoul got up, looking in quick darts between Vlad and the promise of freedom behind him, before he began to back away one step at a time.

"Not. So. Fast," I said, drawing out each word with venom.

"He promised to let me live!" the ghoul sputtered.

"Vlad promised. I didn't," I said, leaping onto his back when he tried to run. Mencheres's power didn't attempt to restrain him, so he flipped over and fought me with furious blows, but I was glad. I wanted to beat him into submission. To show him what it was like to be helpless no matter how hard he fought. That was the least I could do for Dermot and all the others like him.

"A vampire made that same mistake once, forgetting I was there and only getting Bones's promise not to kill him," I went on several moments later. Multiple places on my body still stung from the ghoul's blows, but they were healing with every second. I didn't pause to talk more, but swiped my knife through the ghoul's neck with a clean, savage cut, feeling the coldest form of satisfaction as his head rolled to the side.

"He didn't like how it turned out, either," I finished, wiping the blade on the ghoul's shirt. "You know what they say. The devil's in the details."

Chapter Twenty-five

We stayed a couple more hours atthe drive-in just to make sure no other, tardier ghouls showed up, and that all evidence of what happened was erased from the scene. It wasn't just out of concern for the police. We didn't want any ghouls to figure out what happened, if more of them used this as a meet-up spot aside from this departed group.

Mencheres insisted that Dermot not go back with us to the town house. His point that no matter how he'd been abused by Apollyon and the other ghouls, Dermot still might be a threat, was too logical to ignore. Stockholm syndrome was a definite possibility, and it wouldn't be right to just assume Mencheres would put the power whammy on Dermot if he wigged out and tried to kill one of us. Plus, we couldn't take him with us on our stakeouts. So, with assurances I wasn't even sure Dermot believed, I sent him off with Ed and Scratch, who swore on pain of death to treat him well and take him to a safe place. Once this thing with Apollyon was over, I now had a new item on my To Do list: Find an undead therapist for the traumatized ghoul, and have someone teach Dermot sign language.