Halfway to the Grave With Bonus Material: A Night Huntress Novel Read online

  Out of my jacket came the clear bottle with the lightning bolt. I almost laughed when his eyes fastened on it as though they were magically welded. This had to be Winston, all right.

  “Whattt’ssss that you’ve got there, mistress?”

  He drew the first word out in a lustful hiss. I popped the cork, waving it under where his nose appeared to be.

  “Moonshine, my friend.”

  I was still uncertain how Bones thought I was supposed to bribe him with this. Pour some on his grave? Hold the bottle inside his disembodied form? Or splash him with it?

  Winston made another keening noise that would have chilled anyone near enough to hear it.

  “Please, mistress!” Gone was his hostile tone, replaced instead with one of desperation. “Please, drink it. Drink it!”

  “Me?” I gaped. “I don’t want any!”

  “Oh, let me taste it through you, please!” he begged.

  Taste it through me. Now I knew why Bones hadn’t mentioned how to entice Winston before. That’s what I got for trusting a vampire even in the littlest thing! I gave the ghost an irritable look while promising myself revenge on a certain pale-skinned, room-temperature creature of the night.

  “Fine. I’ll drink some, but then you’re going to give me names of young girls who’ve died around here. No car accidents or diseases, either. Murders only.”

  “Read the paper, mistress, why do you need me for that?” he barked. “Now drink the ’shine!”

  I was so not in the mood to be pushed around by another dead person. “Guess I’ve caught you on a bad night,” I said pleasantly. “I’ll just leave you alone and be on my way….”

  “Samantha King, seventeen years old, passed last night after being bled to death!” he trumpeted. “Please!”

  I didn’t even have to ask for him to specify a cause of death. He must want that liquor real bad. I wrote the specifics down on my notepad and then tipped the bottle to my mouth.

  “Mother of God!” I choked moments later, hardly noticing Winston’s entire form diving through my throat like he’d been shot from a gun. “Arghh! That tastes like kerosene!”

  “Oh, the sweetness!” was his enraptured reply as he came out the other side of my neck. “Yessss! Give me more!”

  I was still coughing, and my throat burned. Whether that was from the liquor or the ghost was anyone’s guess.

  “Another name,” I managed to get out. “Then I’ll have more.”

  Winston didn’t need to be told twice any longer. “Violet Perkins, age twenty-two, died last Thursday of strangulation. Cried the whole way up.”

  He didn’t sound particularly sad for her. A hand waved impatiently at me, its edges blurry. “Go on!”

  One deep breath later and more moonshine went down the hatch. I coughed just as much as before, my eyes watering.

  “Why would anyone pay for this swill?” I gasped when I came up for air. My throat was almost throbbing when Winston exited it and he floated back in front of me.

  “Thought you’d taken my ’shine from me forever, didn’t you, Simms?” Winston shouted at the passing hooded phantom. It didn’t react. “Well, look who’s drinking while you’re condemned to eternally wander off that cliff! This nip’s for you, old John! Carmen Johnson, twenty-seven, bled to death ten days ago. Drink, mistress! And this time, swallow like a woman, not like a gurgling babe!”

  I regarded him with amazement. Out of all things, liquor seemed to be what he missed the most. “You’re dead and you’re still an alcoholic. That’s so dysfunctional.”

  “A bargain’s a bargain!” he belted. “Drink!”

  “Prick,” I muttered under my breath as I eyed the bottle unhappily. This stuff made gin taste like sugar water in comparison. You’re going to get Bones back for this, I swore to myself. And not just with a silver stake. That’s too good for him.

  Twenty minutes later, my notepad had thirteen more names on it, the bottle was empty, and I was swaying on my feet. If I wasn’t so dizzy, I’d have been amazed at all the girls who’d been murdered the past couple months. Hadn’t the new governor just been bragging on TV about how the crime rate was way down? The names on my list sure seemed to indicate otherwise. Tell those poor girls the crime rate was down, I’d bet they’d all disagree.

  Winston lay on the ground, his hands over his belly, and when I let out an extended burp, he smiled as though it had relieved his diaphragm also.

  “Ah, mistress, you’re an angel. Sure there’s not a drop left? I might have remembered one more person….”

  “Up yours,” I said rudely with another belch. “It’s empty. You should tell me the name anyway, after making me drink all that sewage.”

  Winston gave me a devious smile. “Come back with a full bottle and I will.”

  “Selfish spook,” I mumbled, and staggered away.

  I’d made it a few feet when I felt that distinct pins-and-needles sensation again, only this time it wasn’t in my throat.

  “Hey!”

  I looked down in time to see Winston’s grinning, transparent form fly out of my pants. He was chuckling even as I smacked at myself and hopped up and down furiously.

  “Drunken filthy pig!” I spat. “Bastard!”

  “And a good eve’in’ to you, too, mistress!” he called out, his edges starting to blur and fade. “Come back soon!”

  “I hope worms shit on your corpse!” was my reply. A ghost had just gotten to third base with me. Could I sink any lower?

  Bones came out from behind the bushes about fifty yards away. “What happened, Kitten?”

  “You! You tricked me! I never want to see you or that bottle of liquid arsenic again!”

  And I chucked the empty moonshine jug at him. Or tried to. It missed him by a dozen feet.

  He picked it up in astonishment. “You drank the whole bloody thing? You were only supposed to have a few sips!”

  “Did you say that? Did you?” He reached me just as I felt the ground tip. “Didn’t say anything. I’ve got those names, so that’s all that matters, but you men…you’re all alike. Alive, dead, undead—all perverts! I had a drunken pervert in my pants! Do you know how unsanitary that is?”

  Bones held me upright. I would have protested, but I couldn’t remember how to. “What are you saying?”

  “Winston poltergeisted my panties, that’s what!” I announced with a loud hiccup.

  “Why, you scurvy, lecherous spook!” Bones yelled in the direction of the cemetery. “If my pipes still worked, I’d go right back there and piss on your grave!”

  I thought I heard laughter. Or maybe it was just the wind.

  “Forget it.” I tugged on his jacket, leaning heavily. It was that or I was going to fall. “Who were those girls? You were right, most of them had been killed by vampires.”

  “I suspected as much.”

  “Do you know who did it?” I slurred. “Winston didn’t. He just knew who they were and how they died.”

  “Don’t ask me more about it, because I won’t tell you, and before you even wonder, no, I had nothing to do with it.”

  The moonlight shining down made his skin even creamier. He was still staring off in the distance, and with his jaw clenched, he looked both fierce and very beautiful.

  “You know what?” Suddenly, very inappropriately, I began to giggle. “You’re pretty. You’re so pretty.”

  Bones glanced back at me. “Bloody hell. You’ll hate yourself in the morning for saying that. You must be absolutely pissed.”

  Another giggle. He was funny. “Not anymore.”

  “Right.” He picked me up. The leaves made small crunching sounds under his feet as he carried me. “If you weren’t half dead, what you just drank would kill you. Come on, pet. Let’s get you home.”

  It had been a long time since I’d been in a man’s arms. Sure, Bones might have carried me before when I was unconscious, but that didn’t count. Now I was very aware of his hard chest against me, how effortlessly he held me, and how rea
lly good he smelled. It wasn’t cologne—he never wore any. It was a clean scent that was uniquely his and it was…intoxicating.

  “Do you think I’m pretty?” I heard myself ask.

  Something I couldn’t name flashed across his face.

  “No. I don’t think you’re pretty. I think you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”

  “Liar,” I breathed. “He wouldn’t have done that if I was. He wouldn’t have been with her.”

  “Who?”

  I ignored him, caught up in the memory. “Maybe he knew. Maybe on some deep, deep level, he could sense I was evil. I wish I hadn’t been born this way. I wish I hadn’t been born at all.”

  “You listen to me, Kitten,” Bones cut me off. In my rant, I’d almost forgotten he was there. “I don’t know who you’re taking about, but you are not evil. Not one single cell of you. There is nothing wrong with you, and sod anyone who can’t see that for themselves.”

  My head lolled on his arm. After a minute, my depression lifted, and I began to giggle again.

  “Winston liked me. As long as I have moonshine, I’ve always got a date with a ghost!”

  “I hate to inform you, luv, but you and Winston don’t have a future together.”

  “Says who?” I laughed, noticing that the trees were tilted sideways. That was weird. And they seemed to be spinning as well.

  Bones lifted my head up. I blinked. The trees were straight again! Then all I could see was his face as he leaned very close.

  “I say.”

  He seemed like he was spinning also. Maybe everything was spinning. It felt that way.

  “I’m drunk, aren’t I?”

  Since I’d never been drunk before, I needed clarification.

  His snort tickled my face. “Impressively so.”

  “Don’t you dare try to bite me,” I said, noticing his mouth was only a few inches from my neck.

  “Don’t fret. That was the furthest thing from my mind.”

  The truck came into view. Bones carried me to the passenger side and deposited me on the seat. I slumped, tired all of a sudden.

  His door shut, and then the engine vibrated to life. I kept shifting to get comfortable, but my truck didn’t have an extended cab and the interior was cramped.

  “Here,” Bones said after several minutes, and pulled my head down to his lap.

  “Pig!” I screamed, jerking up so fast, my cheek banged on the steering wheel.

  He just laughed. “Isn’t your mind in the gutter? You shouldn’t be so quick to label Winston a drunken pervert. Pot calling the kettle black, if you ask me. I only had the most honorable of intentions, I assure you.”

  I eyed his lap and the extremely uncomfortable truck door, weighing my options. Then I flopped back down and put my head on his thigh, closing my eyes.

  “Wake me when we get to my house.”

  Chapter Five

  IT WAS WEEK FIVE. I TRUDGED INTO THE CAVE, wishing Bones would just beat me unconscious again instead of what I knew was coming. My makeover, courtesy of a vampire.

  He wasn’t perched on his usual boulder. Maybe he was still sleeping. I was about ten minutes early. It didn’t take as long this time to give my mother the latest in a long line of lies about where I was going. The first few weeks, I told her I’d taken a job waitressing, but with always being broke, I knew I had to get more inventive. At last I settled on telling her I’d signed up for an intensive exercise program people took to prepare for boot camp. She’d been aghast at the thought of me being exposed to the military, but I assured her that all I wanted was the training to help with my extracurricular activities. Very extracurricular activities, since killing vampires was on no college course I’d read about.

  “Bones?” I called out, traveling further into the cave.

  A whoosh of air came from above me. I pivoted on one leg and struck out forcefully with the other, knocking my attacker to the side. Then I ducked in time to avoid the fist that shot toward my skull, and backflipped out of range from the next lightning punch.

  “Very good!” The pleased voice belonged to my undead trainer.

  I relaxed. “Testing me again, Bones? Where did you come from, anyway?”

  “There,” he replied, pointing up.

  I followed his gesture and saw a small crevice in the rock about a hundred feet up. How in the world had he gotten up there?

  “Like this,” he answered my unspoken question, and propelled himself straight upward as though he’d been yanked on a string.

  I was openmouthed. Five weeks and he’d never done anything like that before.

  “Wow. Neat trick. Something new?”

  “No, luv,” he said as he plummeted down with grace. “Something old, like I am. Remember, just because a vampire isn’t in front of you doesn’t mean he’s not right on top of you.”

  “Got it,” I murmured. Five weeks ago I would have blushed like crazy. Now I didn’t even blink at the possible innuendo.

  “Now, then, let’s move on to our final phase. Turning you into a seductress. Probably going to be our most difficult yet.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  We reached what was the makeshift family room, which was rather normal-looking, if you didn’t count the limestone and stalagmite walls. Bones pirated electricity from a nearby power link and rerouted it cleverly into the cave. Thus he had lamps, a computer, and a television plugged in by the sofa and chairs. He even had a space heater for when he tired of the cave’s natural mid-fifties temperature. Hang a few paintings and add some decorative throw pillows, and it could be a subterranean feature in House Beautiful.

  Bones grabbed his denim jacket and led me back toward the entrance of the cave.

  “Come on. We’re going to a salon, and I expect this will take a while.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  I looked with a mixture of revulsion and disbelief at my reflection in the full-length mirror Bones had propped up against the wall. Five hours at Hot Hair Salon had given me an exact understanding of what it was like to go through the washer and dryer. I’d been washed, waxed, plucked, snipped, blown dry, manicured, pedicured, sloughed, exfoliated, curled, primped, and then covered in shades of makeup. I hadn’t even wanted to look at myself by the time Bones had returned to pick me up, and I’d refused to speak to him on the way back to the cave. Finally seeing the end result made me break my silence.

  “There is no way I’m going out in public like this!”

  It seemed while I was being tormented at the salon, Bones had been out shopping. I didn’t ask where he got the money from, images of old folks with their necks bleeding and their wallets missing dancing in my head. There were boots, earrings, push-up bras, skirts, and something he swore to me were dresses but only looked like pieces of dresses. I was wearing one of those now, a bright green and silver number cut about four inches above my knees and way too low in the front. That, combined with my new leather boots, curled hair, and makeup, made me feel like a twenty-dollar whore.

  “You look smashing.” He grinned. “Can’t hardly stop myself from ripping your clothes off.”

  “You think this is funny, don’t you? This is all a big…bloody chuckle-fest to you!”

  He sprang forward. “This isn’t a joke, but it is a game. Winner takes all. You need every advantage you can get. If some poor undead fellow is busy looking at these”—he flipped the material of my dress outward to get a peek before I slapped his hand away—“then he won’t be looking for this.”

  Something hard was pressed against my belly. I wrapped my hands around it and squared my shoulders.

  “Is that a stake, Bones, or are you just happy with my new dress?”

  He gave me a grin that was filled with more innuendo than an hour’s worth of conversation.

  “In this case, it’s a stake. You could always feel around for something more, though. See what comes up.”

  “This better be part of that dirty-talk training, or we’re going to give this new s
take a go.”

  “Now, pet, that’s hardly a romantic rejoinder. Concentrate! You do look great, by the way. That bra does wonders for your cleavage.”

  “Slime,” I spat, resisting the urge to glance down and see for myself. Later, when he wasn’t looking, I’d check it out.

  “Moving on, Kitten. Put the stake in your boot. You’ll find there’s a loop for it.”

  I reached down and found a leather circle inside each boot. The stake fit snugly inside, concealed yet within easy reach. I’d wondered where I was supposed to hide a weapon in this skin-tight dress.

  “Put your other one away as well,” he instructed me. Complying, I was now outfitted as Cat, the Vampire-Killing Slut.

  “That loop was a great idea, Bones.”

  The compliment flowed off my tongue, and I regretted it at once. He didn’t need praise. This wasn’t a friendship, it was a business arrangement.

  “Done it myself a time or two. Hmmm, still something not right, something missing….”

  He walked in a circle around me. I held still as he scrutinized my every angle. It was nerve-wracking, to say the least.

  “I’ve got it!” he declared suddenly, snapping his fingers in triumph. “Take your knickers off.”

  “What?” Did that mean what I think it did?

  “Your knickers. You know—panties, underwear, muff-huggers, nasty nets—”

  “Are you out of your mind?” I interrupted. “This is where I draw the line! What does my underwear have to do with anything? I am not flashing my…my crotch at someone, no matter what you say!”

  He spread his hands toward me in a conciliatory way. “Look, you don’t have to flash anyone anything. Believe me, a vampire will know right off without you showing him that your box is unwrapped.”

  Pushing the crude imagery out of my mind before I exploded, I jumped right in with both feet. “And just how’s he supposed to know that? No panty lines?”

  “The scent, pet,” he replied instantly. That did it. My face must have been every shade of crimson. “No vamp in the world could mistake that. Like dangling bloomin’ catnip in front of a kitty. Bloke gets a good whiff of—”