One Grave at a Time (Night Huntress 6)

"Heed our call, Heinrich Kramer, and come to us. We summon your spirit through the veil into our presence . . ."

The planchette began to jerk around the board in crazy, ragged circles. Tyler sucked in his breath. I strained my senses, but I'd felt chilly, tingling vibrations along my skin this whole time due to Fabian and Elisabeth's close proximity, so that wasn't any help.

Suddenly, Bones plummeted down from his hiding place in one of the ceilings many crevasses. He'd been up there so he could slam the lid down on the trap if Kramer appeared, but nothing hazy or swirly interrupted the Ouija board's smooth surface. Did he see something I didn't? Couldn't be; he set the huge, multimineral cylinder next to the trap instead of over it.

"What?" I asked, gaze darting around.

"Stop the summoning," Bones ordered Tyler. His eyes were sizzling green as he looked at me.

"People are coming, I can hear them. A lot of people."

"Shit," I sighed.

We'd left every one of our silver weapons in the RV, not wanting Kramer to have any means to permanently harm us if the trap didn't work, and he started hurling nearby objects at us. Now, with potential enemies between us and the only weapons we could utilize aside from sticks and stones, what we'd done as a safety measure had turned out to be a huge liability.

Bones cracked his knuckles, that lethal aura increasing until it prickled my skin with its energy. I strained my senses but couldn't pick up on anything aside from Tyler's concern and the sounds in the cave. Bones was older and stronger, so I didn't doubt that he was right. This couldn't be a hiking expedition stumbling across the cave by accident, either-we were in the middle of nowhere. It had to be an ambush, but how the hell had anyone found us?

Then I heard it. The murmur of voices in my head, too low for me to make out specific words, too many to be Chris's thoughts.

"Fabian, Elisabeth," Bones said low. "Find out what's out there."

They disappeared in a flash. Tyler glanced around before mumbling some words, then shutting the Ouija board with a bang.

"I turned it off. No one can come through now."

"See that shadow off to the right?" Bones asked him without turning in that direction. "It leads to a small enclosure. Wait there, and try to stay quiet."

Knew this day would end badly, Tyler thought in resignation as he did what Bones said.

The seconds ticked by as we waited for the ghosts. My hands felt horribly empty without weapons, but I consoled myself with the knowledge that I'd been in fights before against undead baddies without any silver. If we were lucky, and most of the hostiles approaching were human, bare hands would be more than sufficient.

But if someone had gone to all this trouble of finding us, I bet he or she wouldn't be dumb enough to show up with an army of only humans. There might be a lot of them, from the increased volume in my head that indicated the entrance to the cave was being surrounded, but these had to be the pawns. The question was, who was the chess player?

A hazy outline zoomed up so fast; it took me a second to determine whether it was Fabian or Elisabeth.

"Soldiers!" Fabian exclaimed. "But they are all human. Could these be members of your old team, perhaps here because they need your help?"

My instant surge of relief at hearing they were human changed to suspicion. Bones and I exchanged a look, the tension in his aura saying loud and clear that he thought something was still off.

"Well," I said at last. "Let's see who they are and what they want."

The words barely left my lips before Bones muttered, "Bloody hell." For a split second, I was confused. But then above the collage of voices in my mind, I heard a new one, chanting a single line over and over.

Fifteen minutes can save you fifteen percent . . .

Madigan was out there, too.

Chapter Sixteen

I walked out of the cave with Bones at my side. Tyler brought up the rear, holding both pet carriers. The sight that greeted us was over a dozen automatic weapons pointed in our direction, Chris on his knees off to the far right side, a helmeted soldier pressing a gun to his cheek.

And I told him it would be too dangerous to wait in the cave, I thought irreverently.

After that initial glance, I didn't look at the ring of soldiers anymore. My gaze was all for the stony-faced "operations consultant," who had the agitated form of my uncle flying over him.

"Madigan found the cave by reading one of your old reports back when Dave died," Don said. "I tried to warn you that he was coming, but the cave felt like it was blocked, and something burned me whenever I tried to fly near the RV where Justina was!"

I didn't let any of my inner groan escape my lips. Of course. The RVs had sage lit in them, Chris couldn't see Don to pass the message along, and my uncle was too new a ghost to withstand all the combined ingredients from the trap. I'd told him where I was in case of an emergency, but what I was doing prevented him from getting to me.

"What a nice surprise," I said to the group at large, fixing a false smile on my face. "Don't tell me-I forgot someone's birthday, and this is the party police come to correct my oversight, right?"

Madigan came forward, but not close enough to stand in his soldier's line of fire, I noted. Contempt curled around the fury in Bones's emotions, but I fought against a snort. For all his talk about reading extensive reports on the undead, didn't he know that many Master vampires could fly? Bones and I had endless miles of open space above our heads now that we were outside of the cave. Aside from looking showy, the guns pointed at us were as much of a threat as harsh language.

"Crawfield," Madigan began.

"Russell," I interrupted him, smiling sweetly. "I know you're a stickler for facts, so I wanted to remind you of that one before you got it wrong in your future report."

His features darkened with anger, but I didn't care. He was the one who'd arranged to have a barrage of weapons pointed at us for no reason whatsoever, so politeness had already gone out the window. If not for my mother and the two RVs full of people with way too much information on what we'd been doing here, I wouldn't even wait around to hear why Dickhead had come. Bones could carry Chris and Tyler. I could grab my mother, and we could fly out of here. Madigan would never know what we were doing here because it was like a maze in the cave. Even after two weeks, Chris and the others still needed Bones or me to guide them to the trap, or they'd get lost.

But we did have two RVs full of people, and I could tell from the guards' thoughts that they were staring down a line of automatic weapons right now just like we were. Flying away while carrying Chris, Dexter, Tyler, the pet carriers, and two of those? Bones could probably handle it, but that was a bit beyond my skill level.