One Grave at a Time

grabbed a handful of the waterlogged sage I’d kept in my pants and lit it, hurrying inside and then up the staircase carrying my smoking bundle. From the sounds and smell, Bones was relighting and refilling the jars in the house, trying to form a protective barrier though it might be too late.

I didn’t need to follow the bloody shoe prints that led to the first room on the right. Spade’s choked voice was a heartbreaking beacon. I burst into the room, anguish ripping through me when the first sight that greeted me was a mass of blood, bone, and things I didn’t even want to name splattered on the wall of the open closet. Ian stood to the side of it, Spade at the bottom of that grisly montage, cradling a blood-soaked form that didn’t move. Dexter was off in the corner, growling and barking while tracking crimson paw prints on the carpet.

“I’m okay,” I heard a feminine voice say beneath the barking and Spade’s ragged repetitions of Denise’s name.

I stuffed back the sob of relief that rocketed up my throat. Ian was more practical, pulling on Spade’s shoulders.

“Let her go, Charles. You’re probably holding her too tightly for her to breathe.”

Spade leaned back, revealing the upper half of my friend that I hadn’t seen before, and I staggered where I stood. Denise had three mangled holes in her sweater that looked like exit wounds from bullets. She’d been shot in the back enough times to kill any normal person from their tight placement near her chest, but not enough to put her down. She must have turned around and gone after her shooter. That was why the assailant aimed for her face next. From the wall, her still-misshapen features, and the cherry pie look under the back of her head, he’d emptied his gun into her.

The accomplice had somehow found this place and attacked when the rest of us were away trying to hammer the final nails into Kramer’s coffin. How had he gotten in? I wondered, still shocked from the sight of Denise. She knew not to let any unfamiliar men in, and she wasn’t very easy to take down, as the carnage in this room proved.

Bones appeared, grimly taking note of the blood-sprayed closet and Denise’s condition. “No one else is in the house,” he stated, confirming what my senses had already suspected. “I don’t see any signs that Kramer’s here now . . . or was here before. None of the sage jars are overturned or disturbed. They merely burned out, but not too long ago from the looks of it.”

Spade brushed a matted clump of Denise’s hair back, and I winced at what stuck to his hand.

“Can you tell us what happened, darling?”

From the way her gaze seemed to roll around the room, she was having trouble focusing. No shocker there; I was amazed she was even conscious. She must have been shot a couple hours ago for her to have healed to this extent, but even with her demon-blooded regenerative abilities, she was still in rough shape. I wasn’t sure a vampire or ghoul could have survived all the damage she’d sustained, yet despite the fact that she looked like she’d dove headfirst into a wood chipper, she managed to mumble out a reply.

“Lisa and Francine . . . asleep. Heard . . . awful noise. Came in here . . . saw Helsing . . .”

My kitty wasn’t in the room at the moment, from the two sole heartbeats I heard now that Dexter had quit barking. Helsing was probably hiding downstairs. All the recent run-ins with Kramer had taught the kitty to seek cover at the first hint of loud noises, so the gunshots would’ve sent him running.

Denise lifted a crimson-painted hand and vaguely pointed at the wall behind her. “Pulled him out . . . of the noose . . . then felt the gunshots.”

Noose? That snapped my attention to the belt dangling from the closet rail, the bottom of it hooked into a circle. All the clothes were pushed to either side, leaving that single item in the middle, but with the bloody remains of Denise’s head all over the wall, I hadn’t focused on it at first glance.

Bones edged around Spade and Denise to pluck out the belt, a muscle in his jaw flexing as he sniffed it.

“How did he get in, Denise?” I asked, kneeling so we’d be more at eye level. “Can you tell us anything that could help us find out who he is?”

Her gaze rolled around again, and she blinked several times, as if she were fighting to stay conscious. It was Bones who spoke, and his voice was dryer than ashes.

“Not he, Kitten. She.”

Denise managed to nod, while her eyes rolled back in her head. “Sarah,” she mumbled right before passing out. “Sarah shot me.”

Thirty-three

I didn’t want to believe it, but even with pieces of her head not fully regenerated yet, I didn’t doubt Denise’s statement. The woman we thought we were protecting from Kramer’s evil intentions must actually have been his accomplice instead.

“I’ll kill the bitch,” Spade snarled, emerald blazing from his eyes and fangs flashing out from his upper teeth.

From the roiling fury leaking out of Bones’s aura, Spade would have to take a number and get in line.

“Get Denise cleaned up, Charles,” Bones said. “She’s been through enough without waking up covered in her own blood and brains again.”

Spade scooped Denise up, carrying her out of the room while still muttering under his breath about all the different ways he was going to kill Sarah. I was too shell-shocked to begin plotting her death, but I knew my own murderous rage would come soon.

“Kramer hates women, why would he partner up with one?” I wondered, trying to sort through this bombshell.

“Easy. He knows what he intends to do with her once she’s fulfilled her usefulness,” Bones replied shortly.

She’d been useful indeed, getting her enemies to lead her right to Lisa and Francine. No wonder Kramer had been so smug the last time I’d seen him. Guilt burned its way over my emotions. We’d promised Lisa and Francine that we’d protect them. Instead, we’d helped the co-conspirator in their murders to orchestrate the worst sort of betrayal right under our noses.

“Where’d she get the gun?” Ian asked.

“We kept three of them here in anticipation of the accomplice’s accompanying Kramer in his attack,” Spade replied from another room in the house. “Showed each of the women where they were, how to use them . . . though Sarah already knew how to shoot, bloody slag.”

She must have forced Lisa and Francine to go with her at gunpoint. After what they would’ve seen her do to Denise, I had no doubt the women would have been too frightened to refuse.

Bones gave me another of those unreadable looks before he spoke. “She didn’t leave with Lisa and Francine on foot. Did you have another car here?”

“Yes.” The bitterness in Spade’s voice was clear despite the sounds of a shower turning on. “I left it for Denise in case of an emergency.”

Sarah used it to cart away Francine and Lisa instead, probably stuffing them in the trunk after binding and gagging them. If she really wanted to ensure a smooth ride, she’d have bashed them in the head and knocked them out for the trip. Just thinking about it made me want to bash my own head in frustration. From the looks of Denise, they’d been gone for hours, long enough to be far away by now. Sarah probably put her plan into action shortly after Spade left to meet us at the facility.

Maybe she left something that would give us a clue as to where she was taking them. I doubted it, but just standing around was making me crazy. I left the ruined bedroom and went downstairs, looking for trash cans. Please let Sarah be stupid enough to have jotted down incriminating information on something, then thrown it away.

“I’m surprised you didn’t hear any of her plans from her thoughts, Crispin,” I heard Ian say.

“They were scattered, unstable, and frequently incoherent. I thought it was because of Kramer’s abuse, not malicious intentions,” was Bones’s measured reply. “Believe me, I wish I’d paid closer attention.”

Me too, but the brief time we’d spent with Sarah had been mostly while we were flying. That made her scream mentally and verbally—not much coherency there. Then while we waited for Spade, she’d only shown a fear