Don finally broke his silence. “Why would I think you’d be any different? Thirty-five years ago my older brother was investigating Liam Flannery, and then he disappeared. Years passed. We thought he was dead, and no one would tell us about the last case he’d been on. I joined the FBI myself to find out what had happened to him. Over time, I also found out what my brother had really been chasing. I vowed I’d continue his hunt and give him justice, but then one day out of the blue, he came to me. He told me to forget about Liam and the underworld I was tracking or he’d kill me. My own brother. I couldn’t believe it.
“Six months later, your mother was attacked in the same city in Ohio I’d followed him to. When I read the description of her rapist, I knew it was him, and I knew that he’d finally crossed over. Then five months later, she gave birth to a child. One with a genetic anomaly documented at birth. Yes, I suspected all along, and made it a point to check up on you periodically while I created this department. Years went by, nothing happened, and I began to forget about you. Then your name came up in connection with a series of strange murders and grave robberies. I was already on my way back to Ohio when your grandparents were killed.”
Don smiled but it wasn’t happy. “I also believe that life is a comic accident. Here God had given me the one thing strong enough to stop my brother and his kind, and it was his own daughter. Yes, I used you while waiting for the day when you’d turn as he did, but that didn’t happen. When I finally believed you were different, I sent you to capture Flannery so I could use him to draw Max out. But as fate would have it, Liam got away. I’m guessing he’s the one who sent the shooter after you last night.”
My mind reeled with this latest bombshell.
“It’s not Flannery who hired that gunman,” Bones stated. “He wants her alive. No, it has to be someone else who’s trying to kill her. Someone affiliated here.”
Don made a derisive noise. “How are you going to find out who this mythical traitor is? Torture all the staff?”
Bones glowered at him. “For someone who’s studied vampires for years, you certainly don’t give them much credit. Forgetting these?”
He flashed green into his eyes, and their light hit Don’s face. He looked away.
“The spellbinding eyes of the nosferatu. Many days I’d wished I had the ability to glare the truth out of people, but without all the other consequences.”
“Yes, well, there’s a price for power and it always gets paid. Shall I let you go, Kitten, so you can bash his head in?”
Bones didn’t sound troubled at the notion. I stared at Don. We had the same eyes, I realized. How had I never noticed that before?
“I should kill you for what you did to me, but I won’t. I happen to understand wanting vengeance better than most people. It can make you do rash things, like sending your niece out to get killed so one day you can try to trap your brother. Besides”-a shrug-“aside from my mother, you’re the only real family I have left. You can come with us or stay, I don’t care, but if you come, don’t interfere. Think you can handle that?”
Don rose. “I can handle it.”
Tate and Juan still stood outside the door.
“Are we good, Cat?” Tate inquired. He glanced at Bones, who was appraising the openmouthed employees with a practiced eye.
“For now. Tate, you and Don can help. Let’s start with the obvious. Where’s the team? They know both what I am and where I live. After this room, they’re our first stop.”
“We called in all thirty of them, they’re in the training room, but they’re armed in there, Cat. We’ll have to bring them out in groups so they don’t stake Mr. Pointy Teeth on sight.” Tate threw a disparaging look at Bones, who had vamped out to the horror of the staff and was sniffing each of them.
“Think I’d fret over a room full of humans?” Bones retorted. “Let them keep their toys; it’ll teach them a valuable lesson. No matter how well she’s trained them, they’re not her.”
Juan blinked. “He can take on all of them when they have silver?”
As much as I wanted to dispute it, since I’d worked hard on training them, the simple truth was, they’d never come across a vampire as strong as Bones before. Especially one in a closed space, football-sized or no.
“Yeah. Is that necessary, though, Bones? Time-wise? And you don’t get to kill any of them; they’re my men.”
“Time-wise it’s more efficient. All in one place is faster than group by group. Your culprit will be the one trying hardest to kill me. Or wetting himself, whichever. This room is clear-none of these people are your turncoat. Don’t fret about your merry men, Robin Hood; they’ll live to die another day.”
“I want to be there.” Don looked professionally intrigued. “I don’t get to see a Master vampire in action. I only see their messy end results.”
“That’s where you’re wrong again,” Bones stated. “You’ve seen her fight for years, so you’ve seen a Master vampire in action. She just also has a heartbeat.”
Our training room was more than a gym. It was an extravaganza of an obstacle course complete with swinging ropes, falling debris, shifting ground, water hazards, and lots of room to run. The dim emergency lights in there served to Bones’s advantage, providing only subtle illumination. Bones had insisted we wait in Don’s box overlooking the area. He didn’t want me to get stabbed or shot in the melee.
It was something to watch, all right. There were shouts when his pale face became visible in the intermittent lights, and then a frenzy of motion even I couldn’t fully follow.
“
Bones was surging around in gravity-defying bounds as he picked apart the careful formation I’d taught the men, bowling into them with his body and scattering them like pins. Tate shook his head in disgust.
“Years of work, right down the fucking drain. Makes me want to beat them myself.”
“Cooper’s trying to rally them,” I observed. “Oops, down he goes. Goddamn, Bones can really hit like a sonofabitch. I’ll need a pint of his blood after this to heal them all.”
“What makes you think he’ll do that?” Don asked skeptically.
“Because I’ll
My boss-or should I say
“All right, Kitten,” Bones called out. “They’re clean. Not a bad bunch of blokes.”
Almost offhandedly, he kicked one of the fallen forms, eliciting a groan in return. I shook my head at Tate’s expression.
“I told you he taught me everything I know. Kick ’em when they’re down. That was his favorite rule. You’re familiar with the rest of them.”
“Goddammit, Cat, he’s been in there less than ten minutes. How can he tell that none of them are involved? Most of them aren’t even conscious now!”
“I trust him,” I answered simply. “Bones wouldn’t say it unless he was sure, and that’s enough for me.”
Juan had a dazed look on his face as he studied the remains of our team. Then a smile tugged his lips.
“That,” he said emphatically, “was cool!”
It wasn’t until we approached the pathology floor that Bones quickened his step. His eyes went green as soon as the elevator doors opened, and he gave me a quick, hard kiss before shoving me back inside it.
“Stay here,” he said briskly. “I smell something.”
Bones walked away with Juan and Don following. Tate hung back with me.
“This is a wild fucking goose chase,” he muttered. “Smells something? What can he smell-”
“Shh!” I said, honing my ears to pick up every nuance of sound in the next room. There was a scrambling noise that was very short-lived, a squawk, and then a mocking deadly sneer.
“Well, now, what do we have here? No, you’re not turning away, look right here at me…”
“He’s got someone,” I said for Tate’s benefit, and brushed by him.
In the lab, Bones had our pathologist’s assistant, Brad Parker, pinned to the wall by one pale hand. The glow from his gaze lit the room with an eerie green luminance.
