Outtakes from the Grave (Night Huntress #8) Page 8
“I have to drop something off at Ted’s,” he told me once we were back at my apartment complex and I gratefully got off his motorcycle. “Should be back later tonight.”
“I’ll be asleep,” I muttered. “Do we have to—”
“Hi, Cathy!” Timmie opened his apartment door with a wide smile. He must have seen me through his window.
Bones gave Timmie a look that froze the smile on the younger man’s face.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had company.” Timmie apologized, almost tripping to hurry back in his apartment.
I shot Bones an equally hostile glare for rattling my already skittish neighbor. “It’s okay,” I said, smiling at Timmie. “He’s not really ‘company’ anyway.”
“Oh.” Timmie gave Bones a shy peek. “Are you Cathy’s brother?”
“Whatever would give you the idea that I’m her damn brother?” Bones snapped.
Timmie backed up so fast he hit the back of his head against his doorframe. “Sorry!” he gasped, and banged into the door again before managing to scramble back inside.
I marched over to Bones and stuck my finger in his chest. He regarded me with what I would have called sullenness—if he hadn’t been over two hundred.
“You have a choice,” I said, biting off each word. “Either you make a very sincere apology to Timmie, or you leave and slither back to your cave like the festering ball sack you just acted like. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but he’s a nice guy, and you probably just made him pee his pants. Your decision, Bones. One or the other.”
A dark brow arched at me.
I tapped my foot. “One… two…”
He muttered something foul and then climbed the stairs, rapping twice on Timmie’s door.
“Right then, mate, terribly sorry for my unspeakable rudeness and I do beg your pardon,” he said with admirable humbleness when Timmie cracked it open. Only I could pick up the slight edge to his tone as he went on. “I can only say it was caused by my natural affront to the notion of her as my sister. Since I’ll be shagging her tonight, you can imagine how I’d be distressed at the thought of rogering my sibling.”
“You schmuck!” The words burst out of me as Timmie’s jaw dropped. “The only thing you’ll be ‘shagging’ tonight is yourself!”
“You wanted sincerity,” he countered. “Well, luv, I was sincere.”
“You can get right back on your bike, and I’ll see you later. If you’re not being such an ass!”
Timmie’s head swiveled back and forth between the two of us, his jaw still swinging open. Bones gave him a smile that was more just a baring of teeth.
“Nice to meet you, mate, and here’s some advice: don’t even think about it. You try anything with her, and I’ll neuter you with my bare hands.”
“Leave!” I stamped my foot for emphasis.
He swept past me and then swiveled, kissing me hard on the mouth before jumping back to avoid my right hook.
“I’ll see you later, Kitten.”
Timmie waited until Bones had driven out of sight before he dared to speak. “That’s your boyfriend?”
I let out a grunt that I suppose was an affirmative.
“He really doesn’t like me,” he said, almost a whisper.
I gave one last look in the direction Bones disappeared in before shaking my head at his bewildering behavior.
“No, Timmie. I guess he doesn’t.”
Chapter Seven
Sound Medicine
Author’s note: This training scene originally took place at the end of chapter 16 in Halfway to the Grave. It ended up being cut because the book was already running long and my editor said we had to be ruthless about only keeping scenes that were directly related to the main plot. This scene might not have added new or crucial information, but I really liked it because it showed Cat starting to relax in her new relationship with Bones and also showed Bones continuing to work with Cat to hone her skills. Cat’s training wasn’t mentioned much after the first twenty percent of the novel, but it did continue as Bones gave Cat the skills she would later use to survive without him. And as this scene shows, with Cat and Bones’s new relationship, both of them enjoyed it much more than Cat’s early training sessions.
“Is that all you’ve got?” Bones taunted me.
I glared up at him while crouching on the rocky floor of the cave. My lip was split and my ribs ached as if they were being beaten with invisible hammers. You would think that since we were now sleeping together, Bones would be a little gentler on the merchandise. Not hardly.
We still trained together regularly, and if anything, he pushed me harder now when we sparred. I’d insisted on joining his fight against Hennessey, and Bones was downright paranoid about something happening to me. Thus he intended to make sure I was up to whatever Hennessey and his men might dish out if I got the chance to tangle with them again.
Still, that didn’t excuse what he’d just done. “You jerk, you sucker punched me when I thought I’d hurt you.”
He’d gotten in that painful rib blow when I leaned over to see if the stake I’d thrust into his chest had injured him too badly. Even though it was only wood, I had barely missed his heart.
“How many times have I told you, when someone is down, you kick them, you don’t ask if they’re bloody all right,” he shot back. “They’re not supposed to be all right, are they? No, that’s why it’s called a fight and not a chat. You’ll get yourself killed one day checking to see if someone’s really hurt. When will you learn that someone isn’t really hurt unless they’re dead?”
He circled around me, cracking his knuckles and rolling his head around his shoulders. My eyes narrowed. Take advantage of my concern for him, would he? We’d see about that.
As if reckless from anger at his words, I charged forward, pummeling him with my fists and feet. I took a sound thumping in return. But when he went for his traditional head punch that left me seeing stars, I braced for it, following the motion like I hadn’t seen it coming.
His fist connected and I dropped to the ground, sparing myself nothing in the fall. My face banged against the rocks hard enough to bruise, but I lay sprawled where I was, motionless.
“Down again. Well, I was knackered anyway,” he muttered as he knelt next to me.
When I heard him take out his knife to pierce his palm and give me blood, I struck, snatching the weapon away from him while he was distracted. I shoved it into his abdomen before he could react, then, ignoring his groan of pain, I drove the wooden stake in my other hand straight into his heart. If it had been silver, he would have been dead.
At last I’d won a round between us.
“Good on you, you nasty wench,” Bones said, his words more ragged than usual. “Now pull that out, it hurts like blazes.”
Blood flowed briefly from his chest when I yanked the stake out. No use being delicate with a vampire.
“I think you broke my rib, maybe two,” I replied conversationally when he took the switchblade out himself. That wound also released a flow of blood before closing as if with an invisible zipper. Some things you just never got used to seeing, and instant healing was one of them.
Bones gave me a crooked smile. “Never forget to follow your own advice, hmm? Bloody hell, I’m right proud of you. I’d be staring at my body from a block away now if this was real.”
“Glad you approve,” I said and lay down next to him on the hard cave floor.
He shifted until he put his arm under my head, and I moved even closer to him. What a strange, strange relationship this was. Beating the hell out of each other and then cuddling afterward. I wouldn’t know normal if it shot me in the ass.
We were going out again tonight. Not the traditional dinner-and-a-movie thing, but something far less romantic. Bones had run what he knew about Switch through his contacts, but they’d come up empty. It was the same story with pinpointing Hennessey’s location. No one knew where Hennessey was, or if they did, they weren’t telling. Well,
there was more than one way to skin a cat, and this Cat was in it to win it.
We knew from Charlie that Hennessey and the mysterious Switch needed to restock their human supply, and there had been a string of disappearances around Northeast Ohio. Bones had found that out after hacking into the police’s computer mainframe. The cops weren’t even investigating most of the cases. If no one badgered them to look for the girls, more often than not, they didn’t. The unusual number of missing persons in the same fairly narrow geographic area smacked of Hennessey’s involvement. After getting as much information as we could from the girls’ acquaintances, we managed to get names of the places the women frequented. When we found ones that crossed over, presto. We had a possible location for a feeding ground.
Bones had argued until he needed to breathe just to get oxygen to argue more, but I hadn’t budged from my insistence on going with him. The bottom line was, when you were looking to catch something that didn’t want to be caught, you needed bait. Someone had to place themselves out temptingly for the unknown Switch or Hennessey to attempt to snatch up. Hennessey, of course, would go straight for me on sight. After all, I was the one who got away, though he only knew about that single instance and not how I’d nearly been nabbed by Stephanie the very next weekend. He wouldn’t expect me to put up a fight either, since all I’d been able to do before was dazzle him with my vomiting skills.
If it was Switch I ended up stumbling across, well, that was just as good. Then Bones would find out his real identity, get the names of who else was in their illicit crime ring, and find out where Hennessey was hiding. Both possibilities were well worth me putting on my sleazy clothes and trolling around bars and clubs angling for a fang bang, regardless if Bones thought it was too unsafe. He’d be close by, and those guys had a lot of paybacks coming to them.
“Let’s go somewhere softer, pet,” he said, urging me up. “You need patching up and I need you.”
Even with me poking three different holes in him, he was still in the mood. In a sick way, it was admirable.
“Can’t you just fake impotence and take a nap? You really bashed my ribs earlier. I hope your chest still hurts. You deserved it.”
He grinned. “Here, this is what I was trying to do when you tricked me with that fake faint. Looked brilliant, by the way. Never saw it coming.”
With the same knife that had recently resided in his stomach, he slit a neat gouge in his palm and placed it against my lips. Although I still found it repugnant, I swallowed his blood without complaint. I’d need my strength tonight. And my rib cage.
Almost immediately I felt better. I never ceased to be amazed at the incredible healing power of vampire blood. Bones had told me matter-of-factly that the older and stronger a vamp was, the more potent their blood. Apparently it was similar to wine in that regard, and Bones was a vintage brew. I still preferred gin and tonic for taste.
He picked me up and carried me, still protesting but with little force behind my words, into his bedroom. Bones was a firm believer in kissing something to make it feel better. And better and better. Who was I to argue with sound medicine?
Chapter Eight
The Other Renfield
Author’s note: This is an alternate version of the first half of chapter 24, where the police “Renfield” was someone other than Lieutenant Isaac. Lieutenant Isaac kind of showed up out of nowhere in the published version, but in my original draft, it was Detective Mansfield’s sidekick, Detective Black. This version ended up being changed because of pacing concerns since the climax of the novel was already very long and my editor wanted to get Cat to the governor’s house faster. I’ve included a little bit of the published version for context, and some of the dialog in parts is the same, but the person Cat is speaking to has changed. Oh, and the part where the nurse tries to kill Cat by injecting poison into her IV was totally inspired by the scene in Kill Bill. I loved that movie, and Daryl Hannah’s character merrily whistling as she dons a nurse outfit and attempts to kill Uma Thurman’s character was so chillingly comical I wrote it into this version as an homage.
They handcuffed me to the stretcher and drove me straight to the hospital in an ambulance. In no time the area was turned into a law enforcement and crime scene circus. None of it mattered to me because I’d seen two things which filled me with inexpressible gratitude. One was my mother, IV bag attached, being hoisted into another waiting ambulance. The other had been Bones, running unharmed after Switch. The bullet wounds would heal and he would catch him. Everything inside me believed it. What was a little multiple murder count compared to that?
A white-faced officer read me my rights and then burst into tears. Guess the sight of the living dead absorbing bullets like bubbles and still tearing throats out unnerved him. Not to mention the other vamps turning into shriveled mummies before his eyes. In my quick assessment, two had gotten away in addition to Switch, but I didn’t worry about them. We’d get them later. It shouldn’t be too hard since Bones now knew who they were. Switch was our first priority, and Bones wouldn’t let him get away. After all, he had promised me vengeance, and I knew he’d deliver.
The rescue workers treating me were also perplexed by my condition. I was covered in multiple slashes, stab wounds, bite marks, bruises, bashed ribs, scrapes, and oh yeah, a bullet hole. Yet when the young attendant took my vital signs, he blanched in confusion.
“Heart rate… normal. Blood pressure… normal. Pulse… normal. That can’t be right.”
“Sorry, buddy,” I murmured, enjoying the painkillers they’d injected into my IV. While the medication didn’t affect me as profoundly as it should have, it still took the edge off the sting.
“Look at your arm. The bullet is extruding toward the point of entry. Holy shit, Tom, come see this!” Forgetting his professionalism, the tech pointed excitedly at my shoulder.
Another face peered at the wound. “Not possible,” Tom stated flatly.
A strangled laugh escaped me. “That’s what I’ve been saying my whole life, fellas.”
“I can see the goddamn bullet crowning! Give me some Steri-Pads…”
Even in the midst of their awe, they still worked. Admirable quality. The bullet was pulled free from my flesh. When they unloaded me at the hospital under guard, I could hear them still mumbling to themselves dazedly.
“Did you see that? The tissue’s already coapted at the edges. The goddamn tissue’s coapted at the edges, Tom!”
Daylight lightened the sky with mauve and amber streaks. Sunrise. In the brief moments before the emergency room’s automatic doors excluded it from my view, I looked over at the horizon and smiled. We had lived through the night after all, all of us. It was the most beautiful sunrise I’d ever seen.
***
I now knew how a celebrity felt when they had something wrong with them which required hospitalization. There were multiple guards posted at my room, and doctors came in droves to gape and gasp over me. Aside from being handcuffed to the bed, it would have been flattering.
The dawn brought weariness, with reinforcements. I slept through most of the poking, prodding, and futile attempts at stitches that were promptly removed when my skin closed over the sutures at my accelerated healing rates. None of this concerned me. Bones would come for me. Let them gawk at me and scratch their heads while they had the chance.
As it turned out, by noon I had my first visitor, and it wasn’t my undead lover.
Detective Black entered the room with a nurse at his side. He smiled when he saw me. “Hello again, Catherine.”
Both of his wrists were bandaged from where my knives had punched through them. Frankly, I was surprised to see him at all, let alone in a good mood.
“Well, hiya,” I said, cursorily noticing the nurse fill a syringe from a tiny bottle on her tray. “Didn’t know you could speak, Detective Black. You didn’t say a word yesterday. Sorry about your wrists, but I didn’t feel like getting shot. Happened anyway though, as you can see. How’s my mother?”
“No hard feelings, Catherine,” he said genially, holding up his thickly bandaged wrists. His eyes were peat colored and not nearly as friendly as his tone. “I’m getting promoted because of you. My career’s on the fast track, but Mansfield already mentioned that. Damn, is that old man annoying or what? I couldn’t wait for him to retire, and thanks to you, he finally has.”
“My mother?” I prodded, unnerved all of a sudden by how he smelled. There was something familiar about it. I wasn’t used to diagnosing things by scent, however, so I couldn’t quite place it.
“She’s our next stop,” was his reply.
The nurse motioned him out of the way of my IV. Irritably I wondered what they were injecting me with now. I’d even been given a tetanus shot.
He stared at me. “She and the other five girls they pulled out of that house are on the floor below you since none of them have been arrested like you have. Tragic, isn’t it? How a young girl like you ran a human trafficking ring and even killed your grandparents to cover it up.”
That pissed me off. “You shouldn’t even be given the title detective since obviously you’re a moron. My grandparents were killed right about the time you and Mansfield were chatting me up, as the medical examiner will soon confirm, and…”
His fingers were tapping impatiently on his leg as the nurse carefully stuck the needle into my catheter port. I watched his fingers, my gaze narrowing, and suddenly it all clicked into place. There was no way he could have such dexterity less than a day after being impaled through the tendons, and I knew what that smell was now. Vampire.
I ripped the IV out of my arm even as that bright pink liquid was snaking toward my vein. With all of my new speed, I catapulted out of bed, landing behind the two of them and throttling Black with one hand while I jammed the half-empty syringe into the nurse with the other.