One Foot in the Grave (Night Huntress 2)

"That's right. Bones just might put your brainwashers out of a job, Don. Noah has no idea what he saw tonight. All he'll remember is that he was in a car wreck and he has to call his insurance company in the morning. You don't have to worry about him."

"You know, that brings up a very good point." Tate gave Bones a hostile glance. "How do we know he hasn't been f**king with our minds this whole time? Your decision to make him part of this team could have been planted, Don!"

Bones answered the accusation for him. "He knows it wasn't. For one, this office is being recorded by a battery-powered camera stuck up in the ceiling. I can hear it, old chap," he supplied at Don's flabbergasted expression. "Of course, I could have just made you think you watched what occurred when you hadn't, but you went on alert as soon as you heard your niece was shagging a vampire. You've been tipping the bottle, as it were. Drinking vampire blood to immune yourself to mind control. I can smell it on you."

Don's face confirmed it all. I shook my head.

"You will just never trust me, will you? Look, I'm tired, so let's make this brief. Ian and Max are still alive, but they won't mess with either of us anymore. It's been settled. Under nosferatu laws, Bones kind of...um, married me."

Don tugged madly at his eyebrow. "What?"

I explained briefly about the laws of binding, and then shrugged.

"Humanly speaking, I'm still single. As far as anyone undead is concerned, however, I'm married to Bones lock, stock, and two smoking barrels. Sorry I couldn't give Max your best, Don, but I'll get him one day. I promise."

Those same steel-gray eyes stared at me. At last, Don smiled faintly.

"I did give Max my best. I sent him you."

A lump rocketed its way up in my throat, and I had to blink.

"There is another matter we need to discuss," Bones said, surprising me.

"Okay, but make it fast. I'm about to fall asleep on my feet."

"Yesterday Tate told me your friend drank vampire blood as he died. That's a rather significant detail."

I frowned wearily. "How so? It couldn't have made him a vampire. He only had a few swallows at most. We buried him three days later, and believe me, he was dead."

"Quite so, as far as being a vampire or a human is concerned. But there is another species, isn't there?"

We all looked blankly at him. Bones made a noise of concession.

"Vampires and ghouls are sister races, as I've told you. You know a vampire is born after a human is bled to the point of death and then drinks deeply of vampire blood. Making a ghoul isn't that dissimilar. You first mortally wound a human, then have him drink vampire blood, but not enough for him to live. After he dies, a ghoul takes the human's heart and switches it with his own. Ghouls can survive having their heart ripped out, which is why the only way to kill them is decapitation. After the hearts are switched, you pour vampire blood over the transplanted heart. It activates it, for lack of a better term, and then you have the birth of a new ghoul."

His meaning penetrated. Rodney's face flashed in my mind last night when he had glanced at Bones and said, "Tricky." He hadn't been referring to Dave's murder. He'd been alluding to his possible rebirth.

"Dave's been dead for months, Bones. Planted in the ground after being pumped full of formaldehyde. You're telling me it's possible? Of course you are; why else would you bring this up? Oh God. Oh God."

"It's possible, but do you want that? He'd still be your friend, with all of his memories and personality traits except one: what he eats. Now, ghouls mainly eat just raw meat, but every so often, they have to vary their diet, and you know what I'm taking about."

"Jesus," Tate muttered. I seconded that. There went my appetite.

"Get past your instinctive aversion for a moment," Bones went on. "Now, normally I wouldn't even consider participating in changing a person without their consent, but as he's unavailable for comment, I'm asking all of you. You were his friends; what do you think he would choose? To remain dead in the ground...or to come out of it?"

The opportunity to have Dave back-walking, talking, cracking jokes, and actually being here, was real. Suddenly I wasn't a bit tired.

"Do we have to decide now?" Don asked.

Bones nodded. "Normally rejuvenation is done at the time of death, for obvious reasons. Each day he lingers in the ground, the chance of rousing him diminishes. As it stands, it will take a great deal of power to accomplish it. Rodney has offered to sire him, Kitten, but he wants to leave town because of this business with Ian. He's of his own line, therefore not under my protection, and he reckons Ian might try to take retribution on those he can get away with. He leaves tomorrow, so if it's to be done, it would have to be tonight."

"If your friend is leaving, what would happen with Dave, if we do this?" Don asked practically. "Would he leave with him?"

Bones waved away the concern. "Not necessary. I could handle him. Vampires have been foster parents to ghouls for millennia and vice versa. As I said, sister races. After a few weeks of adjustment, you could get him back better than new, as it were."

"What if we say yes, you do this, and Dave decides he'd rather be dead than undead? What then?" Tate looked tormented by the thought. The same one had occurred to me.

"Then he gets his wish," Bones said softly. "He's dead as it is, and if he chooses to return to that, he would. That's why we'll have a sword at the grave. It would be quick, and he would be as he was."

I wanted to throw up at the mental image. The feeling looked mutual on everyone there. Bones tightened his hand over mine.

"If none of you can accept him as a ghoul, then don't expect him to accept himself. He would have to have your unprejudiced support or this conversation ends now. Being a ghoul wouldn't change him as a person; it would only change his abilities. He would be stronger, faster, and with new senses, but still be the same man. Is that man worth more to all of you than your squeamishness over what he'd eat?"

"Yes."

It was Juan who spoke. His eyes were bright with unshed tears. "We wake him up and let him choose. I miss my friend. I don't care what he eats."

That lump was back, with reinforcements. Nearby Cooper shrugged. "I didn't know him very well, so my opinion should count the least. However, if Cat can handle being half of a freak, couldn't Dave handle being a whole one? It would seem easier to me."

Tate stared at Bones in a measured, calculating way. "You don't give a shit what the rest of us think. You're only offering to do this for her."

"Absolutely," Bones said at once. "Better for the rest of you as well? That's just your luck."

"Yeah, well, I say go for it, but I think you're full of shit and you can't pull him out from under that headstone. But I'll be sure to apologize if I'm wrong."

Don and I were the only ones not to ante up, and it was betting time. There was almost no hair left at the end of my uncle's eyebrow as he stared at Bones.

"We have a saying in the military: Leave no man behind. We haven't done that on any of our missions yet, and I'm not about to start. Bring him up."

That only left me. I thought of Dave, and the fear of trying to get him back and failing. Or even worse, him coming back and then being repelled into suicide by what he was. Finally I thought of Dave's last garbled comment as he bled to death in my arms: 'on't...let me...'ie...

That made the decision for me. "Do it."

Chapter Thirty-Nine

THE CEMETERY WAS COMPLETELY QUARANTINED off. Even the airspace above it was closed. My entire team was in place around the perimeter. Farther back, there were more guards. Don wasn't taking any chances on interruption. He was even filming, and one of the dozen men in the immediate vicinity of the grave held a portable camera.

Rodney glanced at all the pomp and shook his head.

"You've got to be kidding me. Look at all this shit."

"All this shit" encompassed the hundred-plus military presence. Rodney was camera-shy. He didn't trust the government as far as he could throw them, which, in his case, was actually pretty far, but suffice it to say he didn't like the audience of brass.

Bones didn't care about the onlookers. When it was finally time, he held up three fingers. From the dozen volunteers in our unit, that number stepped forward. We could have used plasma bags, but according to Bones, fresh blood had more kick to it. My three captains and I weren't on the menu tonight, because he wanted us strong in case things went south. Like Dave's head, for example. A sword was at my feet just in case. I'd insisted on being the one to wield it, if it came to that. Dave was my friend. If he wanted to die a second time, it would be from the hand of someone who loved him, although what comfort that might give was questionable.

A medical team stood by, discreetly out of direct eyesight. After Bones drained them to the point of dizziness, the three men staggered over to the med unit. They would get transfusions on the spot with the handiness of modern science.

The casket had been raised from the dirt. It hurt just to see it. All the clamps and seals were broken, and the spotlights illuminated Dave's face when the lid was flipped back. We were under a tent even though it was well after dark. Don's paranoia that someone would witness this attempt mandated the tent, on top of everything else. A little corpse reanimation made him downright jittery.

Rodney had a special curved knife for the next part. The five of us gathered closer as Dave was lifted from his casket and laid on the ground.

"Jesus," Tate mumbled as he saw Dave fully under the lights.

I gripped his hand and found that it was shaking. So was mine. Even Juan trembled next to me, and I clasped his hand as well. My grip increased when they cut the clothes off him from the waist up.

I smothered a gasp when that wickedly curved blade drove into Dave's breastplate as easily as a knife through cake. Rodney carved out a sizable piece of his rib cage, exposing the heart and surrounding organs. Bones casually placed that piece aside on a waiting tray that now resembled nothing short of a platter.

Who ordered the ribs? the macabre thought raced through my mind.

Rodney doffed his shirt and folded it neatly before placing it well outside the circle. He already had a spare pair of pants there. Then he squatted beside Bones, who was dressed only in a pair of dark shorts. His skin gleamed under the fluorescent lights, but my usual admiration was absent. Must have been the sight of him plunging that same dagger under Rodney's rib cage, wiggling it around, and then drawing out the ghoul's heart.

Two of the waiting blood donors vomited. The rest looked like they wanted to join in. I couldn't blame them, but thankfully, my throat stayed clear. Rodney was amazingly quiet throughout, only grunting a few times and making a comment about paybacks. Bones snorted with grim amusement at that. Rodney's heart was then placed on another waiting tray before they turned their attention back to Dave.

This part was much simpler with his breastplate off. Swish, swish, swish, and out came Dave's heart. Rodney unceremoniously shoved it inside his chest cavity while Bones arranged Rodney's former ticker in Dave. Finally satisfied with the placement, he leaned over Dave's torso and dragged the knife deeply across his own throat.

The soft outcry came from me, not him, at the sight of his neck hacked open. Bones had warned me that this would be graphic, but hearing and seeing were two different things. With his power, he forced the blood from his body. It came in crimson streams. He had to cut his neck three more times after it healed, and there were more sounds of indigestion from the troops. When that red flow finally slowed, Bones set the knife down and waved at the remaining donors.

"Move it," I hissed when there was hesitation.

One by one the seven men knelt down, Bones drinking from their necks before they stumbled away. When the last one headed for the medic unit, Bones reopened his artery and the faucet was turned back on.

Something began to happen. I could feel it before seeing anything. The air became charged with energy. My skin crawled as it slipped over me. Blood continued to gush into Dave's chest, overflowing the cavity, and then my own heart stopped for a second when I saw his finger twitch.

"Holy f**king Christ," Tate breathed.

Dave's hand lazily curled, flexing. Next came his feet, toes flinching sporadically even as the torrent of blood from Bones ebbed again.

"He needs more. Get another six men," Rodney barked, since with his throat open, Bones could hardly speak.

I shouted out the order, unable to tear my eyes away. There was scrambling as more donors were rounded up. Rodney helpfully held them in front of Bones long enough for the refills to take place, and then each man was dragged away to the medics. Distantly I hoped they'd brought enough plasma, because this was taking much more blood than we had anticipated.

When Dave's head tilted to the side and his eyes opened, I fell to my knees. Rodney placed his severed rib cage back over Dave's chest like fitting a piece into a puzzle. Bones rubbed the area with the blood pooling around him, and I had to try twice before I could speak.

"Dave?"

His mouth opened and closed before a scratchy reply sent tears coursing down my cheeks.

"Cat? Did...the vampire...get away?"

God, he thought he was still in the cave in Ohio! That made sense, since it was his last memory. Bones and Rodney moved away. Juan wept, mumbling in Spanish. Tate knelt, shell-shocked, before he touched Dave's hand and broke into tears at the answering squeeze.

"I don't believe it. I do not f**king believe it!"