Night Huntress: Up From The Grave Part 10

If he said anything else, I didn't hear it. The sound of machine-gun fire was too loud.

Fourteen.

I vaulted into the air, wincing as bullets pierced me faster than I could fly out of range. Being shot multiple times hurt, but the pain quickly faded, which meant the bullets weren't silver.

That surprised me until I remembered that Madigan wanted me alive. He must think I had something really special in my DNA to risk using non-lethal force to capture me, but the joke was on him. I'd be happy to deliver the punch line once we had him back at the apartment, where Denise would morph into his non-evil twin and we'd- Wait, why was gunfire still going off below? Didn't Madigan's people realize we were long gone? Speaking of which, why hadn't Bones caught up with me yet? He was by far the faster flier.

I stopped and twirled in a circle to search the sky from every direction, but all I saw were storm clouds. There was no telltale charge of supernatural energy in the air, either. Where the h.e.l.l was he?

Then a fresh barrage of gunfire made my stomach clench. He couldn't still be on the pier, could he?

I dove straight down like a hawk streaking after prey. As I cleaved through layer upon layer of opaque storm clouds, the scene below finally became visible. Soldiers converged on the pier from the woods, boats on the lake, and cars that screeched up to the launch ramp. All with automatic weapons that spit bullets at the lone vampire kneeling on the end of the pier.

"Bones!" I screamed. "Fly, dammit!"

But he didn't. He fell forward instead, his body slumping against the rough wooden planks. Then the only movement I saw was his clothes ripping as bullets pitilessly continued to strafe him.

I landed next to him so hard that half my body went through the pier. It only took me a second to scramble up and fling myself over him, glad at the icy-hot needles of pain that meant the bullets were piercing me instead of him. Then, over the sound of gunfire, I heard a shout.

"Hold your fire!"

Madigan's voice, amplified by some sort of device. I lifted my head, a snarl escaping me as I saw him treading water a few dozen feet away from the pier. Somehow, he'd escaped Bones and jumped for it. That was fine. I could carry both of them as I flew- A shock wave knocked me off Bones and sent me sprawling against the other side of the pier. Concussion grenade, I mentally diagnosed. One amped up enough for vampires. Madigan had really upgraded his toys, but before I could scramble back to Bones, I saw something that froze me into immobility. A line appeared in his blood-spattered cheek, dark as pitch and snaking across his skin like a crack in a statue. Then another line appeared, and another one. And another.

No.

It was the only thought my mind was capable of producing as black lines began to appear all over his skin, zigzagging and splintering off into new, merciless paths. I'd seen the same thing happen to countless vampires before, usually after twisting a silver knife in their hearts, but denial made it impossible for me to believe the same was happening to Bones. He couldn't be slowly shriveling before my gaze, true death changing his youthful appearance into something that resembled pottery clay baked too long in an oven.

My immobility vanished, replaced by terror such as I've never felt. I vaulted across the pier, s.n.a.t.c.hing Bones into my arms while my tears joined the rain in soaking his face.

"NO!"

Even as the scream left me, the changes in him grew worse. His muscular frame felt like it deflated, the hard lines of his body becoming rubbery before they began to shrink. I clutched him tighter, sobs turning my tears scarlet, while something started to hammer in my chest. It felt as though I were being pummeled on the inside with hard, steady blows. My heartbeat, a part of me registered. It had been silent for almost a year, but now, it pounded more strongly than it ever had when I was a human.

Another cry tore out of me when Bones's skin cracked beneath my hands before sloughing off onto the wooden planks. Frantic, I tried to put it back on, but more flesh began to peel away faster than I could hold it together. Muscle and bone peeked out from those widening s.p.a.ces, until his face, neck, and arms resembled a gaping slab of meat. But what tore through me like a fire that would never stop burning was his eyes. The dark brown orbs I loved sank into their sockets, dissipating into goo. My scream, high-pitched and agonized, replaced the scrambling sounds of soldiers setting up position around me.

I didn't try to stop them. I sat there, clutching handfuls of what now looked like dried leather, until all I could see underneath Bones's bullet-riddled clothes was a pale, withered husk. Dimly, I heard Madigan yell, "I said no silver ammo! Who the f.u.c.k fired those rounds?" before everything faded except the pain radiating through me. It made the agony I felt when I'd nearly burned to death a blissful memory. That had only destroyed my flesh, but this tore through my soul, taking every emotion and shredding it with knowledge that was too awful to bear.

Bones was gone. He'd died right before my eyes because I insisted on taking Madigan down my way. I deserved everything I got from the twisted bureaucrat for leading my beloved husband to his death.

"Take her," Madigan barked.

Rough hands grabbed me, but I didn't care even when something hard and heavy snapped across my neck, shoulders, and ankles. When someone tried to pry Bones out of my grip, however, my fangs ripped into that person's throat without so much as a thought. Hot blood sprayed my face and ran down my mouth while dozens of rifles c.o.c.ked.

"Hold your f.u.c.king fire!"

Madigan's voice again. If anything mattered other than the man I cradled, I'd have torn his throat open next, but I did nothing except tighten my grip on Bones and drop my head next to his.

Rough patches of skull rubbed me where there should have been smooth, sleek skin-another wrecking ball to my emotions I would never recover from.

Sobs shook me so hard that I felt like I was coming apart. That was fine. I wanted to be torn into pieces. It would hurt less than the knowledge of Bones's death. It's why I didn't fight when Madigan said, "Let her keep the body. I'll study it, too" and a heavy net was flung over me. From the burn wherever it touched skin, it was silver, and from the slashes I felt as it was tightened, it was also fitted with silver razors. Struggling would shred me, not that I had any intention of struggling. I knew without a doubt that Madigan would kill me once he was done with me. If I escaped, however, my friends would try to keep me from joining Bones.

Years ago, Bones had made me promise to go on if he were killed. I'd done so, yet now, I was going back on that promise. Death was my only chance to be reunited with him. I wasn't missing that for anything.

"Wait for me," I whispered, my voice breaking on another sob. "I'll be there soon."

I rode in the back of a truck while half a dozen armed guards pointed their weapons at me. Oddly enough, their thoughts were muted behind a static-like white noise that emanated from their helmets. Aside from the thick armor plating, the vehicle could have been the back of a U-Haul, the interior was so plain. It also didn't have windows, but from the length of the drive, our destination wasn't Madigan's compound in Tennessee. I wasn't sure where we were headed, but from the thoughts I caught, we had an armed convoy escorting us the whole way.

The tiny part of me that wasn't writhing with grief wondered why Madigan hadn't flown us to our destination. Maybe he was afraid that if I broke through my restraints, a fight at thirty thousand feet could take down the plane and kill everyone.

He was wise to fear that. The only thing that appealed to me more than the thought of my own death was taking Madigan and his soldiers with me. In fact, now that I'd had several hours to process everything, I was kicking myself for letting Madigan truss me up in multiple restraints plus a silver net complete with razors. I could've gone out on the pier in a hail of gunfire after ripping out his throat, then stomping on his remains.

As they say, hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

The truck began to bounce as we turned off a main road onto one that felt earthen instead of gravelly. I s.h.i.+fted Bones's body more fully onto my lap so that the rough jostling didn't knock anything off him. He'd been nearly invincible in life, but in death, his remains were fragile, aged as they were now to his full two-and-a-half centuries. If not for the triple set of manacles restraining me, I'd have taken off my coat and wrapped him in it, but my upper arms were plastered to my sides, pinning my jacket onto me.

After fifteen minutes or so, the vehicle stopped, and the back hatch opened, letting in a wall of light. I blinked until the brightness transformed into a background of trees shrouded with moss. Then I inhaled, noting that the fresh air was thick with moisture, mold, and the tang of old chemicals. Seeing that the bleakly beautiful landscape had a small, gra.s.s-covered dome in the distance was almost redundant.

Madigan had taken me to the McClintic Wildlife Management area in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Exactly where I wanted to go, except under far different circ.u.mstances.

I considered fighting when the soldiers hauled on the net to drag me out, but then decided against it. For one, that would decimate Bones's remains. For another, if Tate, Juan, Dave, and Cooper were here, then my last act would be to free them. They were my friends. Besides, Bones would want me to free his people. How could I disappoint him?

Once out of the truck, I was hustled onto what looked like a large luggage cart. When thin red lines criss-crossed from pole to pole to encompa.s.s the perimeter around me, however, I understood. Laser beams. This must be how he'd gotten Tate and the others into the facility without ma.s.s casualties. Anything that breached those beams would get sliced off, and while vampire limbs grew back, our heads didn't.

As I was wheeled toward one of the former munitions igloos, a male voice screamed my name. My head jerked up. Through the netting and red laser beams, I saw Fabian flying in frantic circles above the cart.

"What should I do? Who do I tell?" the ghost wailed.

None of my guards looked up. They couldn't hear him, so when I said, "Don't do anything. Go home," several helmeted heads turned in my direction before looking around warily.

Fabian flew closer, until I could see the determination in his faded blue gaze.

"I won't abandon you," he said in a steely tone.

I looked away, fresh tears spilling down my cheeks. "You don't have a choice, my friend. Now please, go."

"Cat-!"

His voice was s.n.a.t.c.hed away as I was pushed into the concrete igloo and a hidden door flashed across the entrance. My laser-rigged trolley cart shook as something metallic clamped onto its wheels. Then four short, T-shaped poles rose from the stained concrete floor. The guards grasped them just as the ground began to vibrate, making the old litter stuck to it tremble, before it abruptly dropped beneath us.

Graffiti-covered walls were replaced with smooth steel as we plummeted straight down at better than twenty miles an hour. My silver net briefly lifted from the velocity, only to crash back down onto me as we came to an abrupt stop a couple minutes later. Then the door swooshed open, revealing a huge room with dozens of employee workstations, 3-D security graphics of the surrounding wildlife area as well as this complex, and helmeted guards patrolling around like Storm Troopers.

Marie Laveau's underground meeting room had nothing on Madigan's top secret testing facility.

"Take Specimen A1 to Cell Eight," Madigan's hated voice barked.

I looked around but didn't see him, and there had been a tinny quality to his voice. Must be giving orders via intercom. Once again, I kicked myself for not killing him when I had the chance, but I'd rectify that at my next opportunity. Then I was wheeled out of what I guessed was the command center and taken down a long hallway. My armed escorts' boots clicked in staccato rhythms on the tile floor as they guided me through two rights and a left before bringing me to the entrance of what looked like a prison hospital wing.

"Stop for scanning," a guard said in a bored tone.

He also wore a full visor helmet, but his didn't emit the thought-scrambling white noise that my captors' gear did. Come to notice, neither did any of the other helmeted guards here. Must be elite technology that only the tactical units had.

Then the lasers surrounding my cart disappeared, and my entourage obediently stayed still as blue lines appeared in grid format over us. The guard looked at his computer screen, and his head snapped up.

"Something's in the cart with her."

"Dead vampire," one of my escorts responded.

The words hurt so much, it took me a second to register the other guard's response.

"No, something with a heartbeat."

Confusion threaded through my pain. My heart had stopped beating hours ago- With a squeak, something small and furry leapt out between the holes in the silver net. Two of my hardened guards actually jumped back while a third tried-and failed-to stomp on the critter, which outran him, then disappeared underneath a nearby door.

"f.u.c.kin' rat," the guard muttered. Then his head swung my way.

"Why didn't you kill it?" he demanded in an accusing tone.

"So it could s.h.i.+t in your soup," I snapped.

Did he think I'd apologize for not being a good exterminator? Even if I hadn't been too overwhelmed with grief to notice, why would I care if a rodent hitched a ride in the back of my kidnap wagon . . .

My eyes narrowed, but I ducked my head before the guards could catch something suspicious in my expression. That rat hadn't just meandered onto the wrong vehicle. It had been inside the silver net, which would only be possible if it had hidden itself in Bones's clothing during the brief interim between his death and our capture. And the odds that an animal would've stuck around after a firefight so intense that it killed a Master vampire were next to nothing.

"Lock the b.i.t.c.h up," the guard snarled.

Those criss-crossing laser beams appeared around my cart again. I said nothing as I was wheeled through the doors of the unit and nothing still when the guard muttered about Maintenance needing to leave rat traps for that floor.

The traps wouldn't work because this was no ordinary animal. In fact, what scurried under the door moments ago wasn't an animal at all.

It was Denise.

Fifteen.

Cells were arranged in a half circle facing the floor's main work area, similar to how hospital rooms faced the nurses' station in an intensive care unit. A thick wall of gla.s.s and a backup layer of lasers kept the occupants inside but left their actions visible to staff members. My cell was at the end of the curved row, which gave me a clear view into the others as I was wheeled past them. The first had an auburn-haired little girl in it, of all things, but then I pa.s.sed a very familiar face.

Ever since I'd first met him, Tate had kept his brown hair in a buzz cut, a nod to his former days as a Special Forces sergeant. Now it was inches long, and the lower half of his face was shadowed by thick stubble, emphasizing his haunted expression. In the cell next to his was Juan, his ma.s.s of black hair now hanging past his shoulders while his skin looked pale even for a vampire. Dave was in the cell after his, looking equally unkempt and wan, but it was Cooper's change in the second-to-last cell that made me gasp.

He'd lost thirty pounds at least, transforming his muscular frame into something gaunt. His normally tight haircut now resembled a seventies Afro, and his mocha skin held a sickly tinge of blue. It took me a second to realize it came from extensive bruising, with particular emphasis on his wrists, hands, and the crease inside his arms.

Needle sticks, I realized with a surge of fury. There was only one reason Madigan would bother with repeated blood draws or injections on a human. He was experimenting on Cooper.

My hands tightened on the edges of Bones's bullet-riddled jacket. Wait for me, I silently repeated, feeling my anger grow. I have something to do before I see you again.

And with Denise here, now I had a better chance at succeeding.

Since none of my friends looked up when I pa.s.sed, they must not be able to see out of their gla.s.s cells. My suspicion proved correct when one of my guards said, "Open Cell Eight" then my cart was unceremoniously pushed inside. When the gla.s.s door closed, all I saw was my own reflection underneath a pile of silver-and-razor netting.

"Didn't you forget something?" I called out, knowing the employees had these rooms monitored for sound, too.

No response aside from the lasers on my cart disappearing. I sighed and leaned back against one of the poles, new tears slipping out as I glanced down at my husband's body. From bones I rose and Bones I became, he'd said when he told me the story of how he chose his name after waking up as a vampire in a graveyard. That's all he was now-bones-and the knowledge made my tears flow fast and red.

Then shock followed on the heels of pain as a click sounded in my triple sets of manacles and multiple knives stabbed me at once. When that pain began to slide through my entire body, searing my nerve endings as it went, I realized they weren't knives.

They were needles injecting me with liquid silver.

I didn't want to give the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds monitoring me the satisfaction of hearing me scream, but after a few minutes, I did. Then I really didn't want to give them the satisfaction of listening to me plead for it to stop, but after several agonizing hours of being burned from the inside out, I did that, too. No mercy came, however. Only mindlessness that led to darkness.

I woke up strapped to a table in a different room. Halogen lights dotted the ceiling with sunlike brightness, and I was so tightly restrained that my movements were limited to wiggling my toes, but to my relief, the horrific pain was gone.

"Ah, you're awake," a pleasant voice stated. "No doubt feeling better, too. We pulled the silver out of you by dissolving it with nitric acid, then flus.h.i.+ng it out. It's the only sure method when it penetrates that deeply."

I tried to crane my head, but it was strapped down tight, too. Then I reached out with my mind. Most thoughts came through with the randomness of listening to the radio while scrolling through channels, but one person's rang out clearly, and she was in this room.

Then a forty-something woman appeared in my limited line of sight, all but a few wisps of her ash blonde hair concealed by a medical cap. Her features were schooled into a polite mask, and her pale green gaze held the clinical detachment physicians everywhere had perfected.

Don't bother trying mind control, she thought at me. I'm inoculated.

I tried it anyway. What did I have to lose? "Release me," I said, putting all of my lagging power into my voice and gaze.

She didn't even blink. "You only learn the hard way, don't you?" she said out loud.

"Always," I replied tightly. "Where's my husband?"

A diffident shrug that landed her right after Madigan on my hit list. "The dead vampire? In the freezer." With the rest of them, her thoughts finished.

I closed my eyes, a wave of grief crus.h.i.+ng me beneath its weight. When I opened them, the female doctor had disappeared. I tested my restraints by applying pressure one limb at a time. Nothing. Then I tried heaving against them with everything I had, all at once.

Not even a budge. Madigan had spared no expense setting up a vampire-proof examination table.

"Now that you've gotten that out of your system," the doctor's voice said dryly, "how about some food?"

She returned to my line of sight, dangling a plasma bag with a long tube above me. I gave her fingers a brief, calculated look. Too far away to bite off. Clearly, I wasn't her first captive.