Up from the Grave (Night Huntress 7)

I half expected him to shake me off and keep at it. Instead, he lowered his fist and dropped Madigan, who crumpled into a pile near his feet.

“Hurts, hurts, hurts,” he sobbed brokenly.

“It’s bloody well supposed to,” Bones snapped, giving him a final kick that curled him into the fetal position. “You’re fortunate that I’m tired. We’ll continue this in the morning, once I’m well refreshed.”

Now I didn’t know if he was faking it, but I said nothing. Bones had been around hundreds of ghoul rebirths. If I was being tricked by a brilliant actor, I didn’t want to let on more than I already had that I’d bought the performance.

“Throw him in the grain dispenser,” Bones said to Spade, who’d watched everything with a stony expression. “Should hold him ’til Mencheres arrives.”

Then Bones walked away. I went after him, as did Dave. Behind us, Madigan made small, whimpering noises.

“Please no hurt,” he begged Spade.

My stomach clenched. I’d heard children sound less terrified and vulnerable.

Bones went into the silo we’d made love in. His clothes were still in pieces on the ground, but he seemed oblivious to them as he began to pace in short strides. If his nudity discomfited Dave, the other man gave no sign when he followed us in and shut the door.

“Something’s not right,” Dave said in a flat tone.

Bones glanced up, frustration stamped all over his features.

“No, it isn’t.”

I blew out a sigh. So I wasn’t just being a sucker. Then, amidst the direness of realizing what that meant, I found myself hoping that Mencheres had had the foresight to bring an extra set of clothes. Preferably two. Bones would attract too much attention na**d, and I was so done wearing this blood-spattered lab coat.

“Has something like this happened before?” I asked, giving myself a mental shake. “And if so, did it go away after a while?”

The glance Bones shot me was grim.

“It’s happened before, usually under similar circumstances where the person wasn’t given enough blood beforehand. They just came back . . . wrong. And no, it doesn’t go away.”

I let that settle over me. The fact that it didn’t incite seething rage let me know how tired I must be. Our enemy had successfully beaten us, leaving no breadcrumbs to follow to mitigate the damage he’d left behind. That was the reality, yet all I felt was a wave of bitterness that the Madigan we’d wanted to bring back was forever gone.

Of course, it also begged the question, what were we going to do with the one we had? I didn’t want to keep Mindless Madigan, but it also seemed cruel to execute him for crimes that he—strictly speaking—hadn’t committed.

Bones ran a hand through his hair. For a brief moment, his shields slipped, and a fog of exhaustion whooshed into my emotions. If I’d still been human, I’d have passed out, it was so strong. Whatever energy reserves he’d had, he’d burned through them delivering that beat down.

“You’re tired,” I said in what was probably the understatement of the week. “If Madigan’s somehow fooling us, we’ll find out before long. If he’s not, nothing will change if all of us get some sleep.”

As soon as I said that, I heard a helicopter closing in on our location. My first reaction was to grab for a gun before remembering we hadn’t brought any, and my second was profound relief when Bones said, “It’s Mencheres.”

I couldn’t sense who was in the chopper, but I trusted Bones. Years ago, Mencheres had shared his astonishing power with him, forging a bond that went even deeper than the connection between a vampire and their sire. Cain’s legacy, it was called, a gift of power that traced all the way back to the first vampire: Cain, whom God cursed to forever drink blood as penance for spilling his brother Abel’s.

The same night Bones received that power legacy, he developed mind-reading skills. Later, he manifested the ability to degenerate and to move things with his mind. Frankly, I hoped nothing new was on the horizon. Some things no one should be able to do.

Besides, if Bones ever manifested the ability to control fire, Vlad would insist on a flame-off between them. He was competitive like that.

The three of us left the silo. Once outside, we saw that Spade hadn’t put Madigan away yet. When the former CIA operative saw Bones, he latched onto Spade’s leg as though it were a lifeline. Spade tried to shake him off, but Madigan held on like a deranged monkey, pressing his face into Spade’s thigh to avoid looking at Bones.

“No, please, no, please,” he began to chant in a ragged voice.

I didn’t need more time to make up my mind about his condition. The Madigan I knew would rather be flayed alive than abase himself this way, especially with a vampire audience. No, he’d died when he chomped on that cyanide pill, and all we’d raised was a broken shell.

Maybe the kinder thing was to kill him. In his state, Madigan couldn’t survive in the undead world, and as a ghoul, the human one couldn’t handle him, either. With his new, supernatural hunger, it wouldn’t be too long before he tried to eat the nearest person he saw.

The helicopter landed, distracting me from that depressing line of thought. Mencheres sat in front, with Kira at the controls. He must have taught her how to fly his snazzy new Eurocopter.

“Told you the extra clothes would come in handy,” I heard her say above the churn of rotors.

That made me smile. Kira was like me—still human enough in her thinking to be concerned about things like that.

Spade climbed in first, a bit awkwardly since Madigan was still glued to his leg. Denise followed after him, shaking her head at the sight. Dave went in next, popping back out to hand me a pile of folded clothes. Gratefully, I pulled on a pair of pants under my lab coat, then took that off for an oversized tee shirt. I didn’t leave the bloodied coat on the ground, however. It had too much DNA evidence. So did Bones’s ruined clothes, which is why I went back into the silo and grabbed them, too. Then I took the whole pile into the helicopter, stuffing them into the farthest corner.

Bones, carrying Cooper’s prone form, was last to board. He rolled his eyes at the pants I deliberately left dangling on the chopper door, but set Cooper down and donned them.

“Where is Ian?” Mencheres asked.

“Searching for someone with Tate,” Bones stated.

Mencheres looked about to question that, but as soon as Bones took a seat in the helicopter, Madigan’s whimpers turned into outright sobs.

“No, he stay away!” he cried, scrabbling up Spade’s leg and onto his lap.

“Get off me,” Spade snapped.

Madigan ignored that, clinging to him with all of his new strength. Denise moved to the seats on the other side to avoid being hit as Spade shoved Madigan back, only to have the gray-haired ghoul return faster than static cling. Spade gave a frustrated look around the tight interior, no doubt realizing that if he flung Madigan away hard enough to be effective, he’d damage the aircraft. Finally, his gaze settled on Bones.

“A little help?” he ground out.

Power crackled through the air, lifting Madigan off Spade to sit in the seat next to him with his hands folded primly in his lap. But it didn’t come from Bones. It came from the former Egyptian pharaoh.

“He’s depleted too much of his strength,” Mencheres said, with a concerned glance at Bones. “Using more could be dangerous.”

From the brief flash I’d caught of Bones’s exhaustion, I agreed. Thankfully, Mencheres was strong enough to handle Madigan and Cooper, if he awoke during the flight. Hell, the engine could cut out, and Mencheres could still fly all of us safely to wherever we were going. So much still lay ahead, but for now, I’d allow myself to relax.

After Bones buckled Cooper into the seat opposite him, I leaned my head against his shoulder. His arm went around me, and it felt like he sagged back in his chair. By the time the helicopter left the grain silos behind, he was asleep.

Twenty-five

Hot breath puffed in my face before my cheek was coated in a long, wet lick. That startled me into a sitting position, which was when I realized that (a) I’d been lying in a bed, and (b) that bed must be in Mencheres’s house. Only he had two-hundred-pound English mastiffs roaming around as though they owned the place.

“I don’t want another lick,” I told my fawn-colored visitor, patting his huge head. He ignored that, tail wagging as he cleaned my hand next. I looked around, recognizing the amber-and-crème room from the last time Bones and I had stayed here. He was gone, but from the indentation next to where I’d been lying, he hadn’t been gone long.

Since I was still bloodied and dirty beneath my borrowed clothes, my first order of business was to take a shower. If I could’ve stayed under that blissful hot spray for hours, I would have, but after I scrubbed myself, I got out and rummaged for something else to wear. Mencheres always kept his guest rooms stocked. Once dressed, I left the bedroom, surprised to see moonlight streaming in through one of the many windows on this floor. I’d slept a lot longer than I realized.

“Down here, Kitten.”

I followed Bones’s voice to the second floor. He was in a navy-and-wood-paneled study/parlor—whatever rich people call extra rooms they seldom use. He’d showered and changed into a new set of clothes, too. His color looked better, indicating that he’d fed, but I was most relieved by his aura. It wasn’t fractured with exhaustion like it had been before. Bones might not be up to full strength yet, but at least he didn’t feel like he was about to keel over.

Mencheres was with him, his long raven hair pulled back into a single plait. No surprise, another mastiff was curled by his feet. Obviously, no one had told him that Egyptians from his era were supposed to be partial to cats.

“How’s Cooper?” was my first question. Please let nothing have gone wrong with his transformation . . .

“He’s fine, luv. Safely secured in a room below.”

One worry assuaged. I took a seat next to him on the couch, absently noting that the leather was butter soft.

“Any news about Katie?”

“Ian rang a few hours ago, said they hadn’t found her yet.” Bones stroked my arm, looking thoughtful. “Tate wasn’t surprised. Said she’d avoid people and hide until she’d fully assessed her situation.”

He sounded like he was quoting Tate. Once again, anger flared when I thought of everything that had been done to her. Katie shouldn’t be alone and operating with military-like caution. At her age, her biggest concerns should’ve been playing with dolls versus action figures.

I almost didn’t want to ask, but I had to. “Madigan?”

At that, Bones’s features tightened. “The same.”

Strike two. I took in a hopeful breath. “Any luck pulling some info off the hard drives we brought back?”

Mencheres answered that one. “I have my people working on them, but as of yet, they’ve been unable to recover any data.”

Strike three. Frustrated, I let out my breath. “So we’re nowhere closer to finding out who’s been backing Madigan all these years.”

And that person was probably on red alert now after hearing what happened at the McClintic compound. In short, we were back to square one. Maybe even a few squares behind since we had no idea if more Katies existed at other secret facilities.

Some days, it didn’t pay to get out of bed.

“Mencheres has a theory about that.”

If the edginess in his voice wasn’t clue enough, those soothing strokes on my arm stopped. Clearly, Bones wasn’t a fan of this idea.

“What?” I asked, staring into Mencheres’s fathomless obsidian gaze.

“Vampires and ghouls in Madigan’s condition often remember nothing of their human lives. Some, however, remember pieces of their past, if presented with the proper stimuli.”

“Bones stimulated the hell out of him with the beat down he delivered,” I responded flatly. “It didn’t work.”

An elegant shrug. “Not that sort of stimulus. The most successful is interaction with a longtime personal associate.”

“Do you mean have Madigan hang out with an old friend?” I couldn’t contain my bark of laughter. “That’s impossible. His only friend was his sick, twisted job—”

I stopped speaking as understanding dawned. Now I knew why Bones hated this idea.

“Don.”

Bones spit out my uncle’s name as though it tasted foul. “Though they weren’t friends, Mencheres believes their association was both long enough and notably significant to perhaps trigger memories.”

I didn’t know if I’d be mad at my uncle forever, but I sure hadn’t been ready to see him this soon. Then again, when had “ready” ever factored into anything?

“It’s worth a shot,” I said at last.

Now we had to see if Don would agree to do it.

Mencheres lent us his helicopter since it would take too long to drive all the way to D.C. We had to stop once to refuel and then once more outside the city because that was an air-defense identification zone. We weren’t about to announce our arrival to any interested government officials. So, five hours after we decided to involve my uncle, we parked around the back of Tyler’s building on Macarthur Boulevard.

It was the middle of the night, but the lights in his apartment were on. This time, we’d called first. Tyler hadn’t been thrilled about summoning a ghost at this hour, but introducing him to Marie Laveau seemed to have boosted our favor points. He opened the door on our first knock though he didn’t bother to conceal his yawn.