One Foot in the Grave

SIXTEEN

DON REGARDED ME WITH TEMPERED CURIOSITY when I walked into his office later that day. It changed to suspicion when I shut the door and locked it behind me. Normally I had to be reminded to even close it.

“What’s going on, Cat? You said it was urgent.”

Yeah, I had. I’d thought about Bones saying Don knew the secret of my longevity, and it had gotten me good and mad. Time to rock the boat.

“See, Don, I have this question, and I hope you’ll be honest with me.”

He pulled at the end of his eyebrow. “I think you know you can count on my honesty.”

“Can I?” I asked with an edge. “All right, then tell me: How long have you been fucking me?”

That caused him to stop tugging his brow. “I don’t know what you’re saying-”

“Because if I was going to fuck you,” I interrupted, “I’d get a bottle of gin, some Frank Sinatra music…and a crash cart for the heart attack you’d have. But you, Don, you’ve been fucking me for years now, and I haven’t gotten any liquor, music, flowers, candy, or anything!”

“Cat…” He sounded wary. “If you have a point, then get to it. This analogy is wearing thin.”

“How old am I?”

“You just had a birthday; you know how old you are. You’re twenty-seven-”

His desk crashed to the far side of the room, splintering in shards of mahogany. Papers flew, and his computer thumped to the carpet. It happened in less time than his shocked blink.

“How old am I?”

Don glanced at his demolished furniture before straightening and regarding me across the now-empty space between us.

“Nineteen or twenty, if you judge from your bone density and pathology reports. Your teeth match up to that as well.”

The end of puberty, when my body apparently decided it was done aging. I gave a harsh chuckle.

“Guess I won’t need to stock up on any Oil of Olay, will I? You ruthless motherfucker, were you ever going to tell me? Or were you just waiting to see if I lived long enough to notice?”

The pretense was gone from him, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say he looked relieved.

“Eventually I was going to inform you, of course. When the time was right.”

“Yeah, and you knew you had lots of it, didn’t you? Who else knows?” I paced, keeping an eye on him as he sat calmly amid the ruins of his office.

“Tate, and the head pathologist here, Dr. Lang. His assistant, Brad Parker, probably.”

“Did you tell Tate about the added decades to his own life? Or were you waiting for an ‘opportune time’ for that as well?”

Don changed from composed to uncomfortable in the space of those sentences. When he hesitated, I pounced.

“Don’t even try to say you don’t know what I’m talking about! You tested all of us that night in Ohio, and every fucking week after that as always. You didn’t tell them?”

“I wasn’t sure,” he hedged.

“Well, let me assure you then! They had about a pint each of decently aged vampire blood. That’ll give them, what? Another twenty years at least? You know, I always thought you forbade us from drinking straight blood because you worried we’d grow a taste for it, me especially, but you were concerned with more than that, weren’t you? You already knew what it would do! How did you find that out?”

His tone was cold. “Someone I knew many years ago started out fighting on the right side like I did, then ended up liking the enemy more. He didn’t age in decades. That’s when I knew what vampire blood could do, and it’s why the Brams is so minutely screened and filtered. It carries none of that dangerous poison in it.”

“That poison you’re referring to runs in half my DNA,” I snapped. “Is that why you don’t give a shit every time I go on an assignment that could get me killed? Because it’s just one less snake to worry about?”

“At first it was,” he brusquely rejoined, standing now also. He spread his arms in an encompassing gesture. “Look at you. You’re like a time bomb covered in skin. All that power, all that inhuman ability…I used to believe you’d get bored with your limitations and shirk them off. Cross over completely. That’s why I told Tate when you signed on to be prepared to kill you. But you never faltered, and you didn’t succumb to the urge for more power. Frankly…it was inspirational.”

Don smiled in a self-deprecating way. “Five years ago, I was quite disillusioned about the human character when exposed to supernatural influence. When I discovered you, I thought you’d crumble all the faster for what was in your blood. Yes, I sent you out on the riskiest missions first, in order to maximize your usefulness until you turned and had to be put down. That didn’t happen, however. You, who carry in your genetic makeup the same corruption which has stumbled so many before you, proved to be the finest of us all. In short, and not to overdramatize, you made me hope again.”

I stared at him. He didn’t drop his eyes from my hard gaze. Finally I shrugged.

“I believe in what I’m doing, whether you believe in me or not. I’m taking a week off to contemplate this and figure out my next step. When I come back, we’re having another talk, and this one will include Tate, Juan, and Cooper. You’re going to tell them about the consequences of the blood they drank. And you’re wrong about something, Don. It’s not vampire blood that corrupts-it’s whether the person who drinks it is corrupted to begin with. Hey, don’t take my word for it, look at the guys. They felt that same power, felt how different it could make them…and yet they didn’t turn evil. It doesn’t twist who you are, it only increases it, for better or worse. Remember that, but I have a feeling I’ll have to remind you.”

“Cat.”

Don stopped me as I kicked back the rubble to open the door.

“You are coming back, aren’t you?”

I paused with a hand on the frame. “Oh, I’ll be back. Whether you like it or not.”

It didn’t surprise me to feel the change of energy in my house later that night. I was in the kitchen, heating up a frozen dinner in the microwave, when suddenly I knew I wasn’t alone.

“It’s polite to knock,” I said without turning around. “My front door’s not broken, you know.”

That feeling of power intensified as Bones walked in the kitchen.

“Yes, but this is more dramatic, don’t you agree?”

My dinner beeped. I took it out of the microwave, grabbed a fork, and sat down at the dinette table. Bones took the seat opposite me, watching me with tempered wariness.

“I’m not bothering to offer you any,” I said flippantly. “My neck and I both know you already ate.”

A hint of a frown touched his mouth. “I told you that wasn’t about feeding.”

“No, it was about you making your point.” I skewered a bite and chewed. “Next time, maybe use something other than my jugular as your Exhibit A?”

“It wasn’t your jugular. That would have made you pass out too quickly, and I wanted you to have time to make your decision to kill me or not,” Bones replied, holding my stare. “So I bit around your jugular. That’s why it took longer…and why I could enjoy drawing your blood into me instead of just swallowing a gushing arterial flow.”

That made me hesitate on my own swallow. Bones’s eyes were swirling with green from the memory, like mint in chocolate, and if I were honest, I’d admit to an internal ripple of pleasure as well at the recollection. His bite could have passed for foreplay, it had felt that good.

But there were more important things to get down to, even though my libido certainly didn’t agree.

“So,” I said after I’d finished chewing. “You’re hell-bent on not going away until this danger with Ian has passed and you’ve neutralized whoever’s waving a check around for my corpse, right?”

Bones nodded. “That’s right.”

“And you probably followed me earlier when I went into work, just waiting to see if I’d try to fly the coop?”