was as incandescent as always, and his dark brown eyes bored into mine.
“Are you really here?”
I couldn’t shake the terror that he was a mirage. What if I let myself believe, and then woke up to find itwas a dream? I couldn’t bear it. I’d go insane.
With sudden desperation, I took one of those jagged pieces of glass and jammed it into my leg. Bones snatched it out, aghast.
“What are you doing, Kitten?”
The instant throb of pain was the most wonderful thing I’d ever felt, because it meant I wasn’t dreaming. Somehow, Bones reallywas here. The control I’d had for the past few days evaporated and I burst into tears, launching myself at him even as he tried to push me back to heal my leg.
“You’re alive, you’re alive…!”
I couldn’t stop repeating it even though I was hiccupping with sobs. Feverishly I ran my hands over him, feeling the familiar hard outline of his body under his clothes. Desperate to feel his skin, I ripped his shirt open, fresh sobs coming from me at the reassuring hum of power from his bare flesh.
Bones held me tightly. He was whispering something in my ear, but I couldn’t make it out. The grief and agony from the past few days poured out of me, turning into joy and shaking me with its intensity. All the emotional control I prided myself on having was shattered, but I didn’t care. Everything I thought I’d lost was suddenly right here. I clung to Bones like I’d die if I let him go, which was how I felt.
It might have been several minutes; it felt like only seconds. Bones set me back enough to kiss me again and I slanted my mouth across his, hungry for his taste. He pulled me even closer, letting out a groan when I wrapped my legs around his waist. Now my hands were running over him for a different reason. It wasn’t desire I felt. No, it was a need that went beyond passion or compulsion to feel him inside me.
Bones must have felt it, too, because he didn’t wait. There was more tearing of clothes and then the unbelievable ecstasy of his flesh driving into mine. I was gasping through the remains of my tears, pressing myself against him like I wanted to crush him, and then kissing him until I became light-headed from lack of oxygen.
It was fast and explosive. Bones climaxed moments after I did, with a groan of pleasure that was more than primitive. My heart was thrumming in my chest, which, considering all the chemicals in my system, might have been dangerous. Not that I cared. I could die right now and I’d still count myself as the luckiest person ever.
“You don’t know how much I’ve missed you, Kitten,” Bones murmured.
“Everyone came back,” I breathed with the anguish of remembrance. “Except you. I called your cell. Patra answered. She said…”
I stopped. That brought up the main question that my shock and joy at seeing him had delayed.
“Bones, whathappened?”
For the sake of not repeating it multiple times, Bones called in everyone after he’d gotten some new clothes for both of us. I sat on the couch, drinking old coffee and trying to shake the last of the haziness from my brain. Bones’s blood had overpowered my drug-induced sleep, but to say I still felt out of it was an understatement.
When at last Bones let everyone back in the drawing room, he was swallowed up in a mass embrace. The person who almost cleared a path to him with a gun was Annette. She threw her arms around him, kissing him full on the mouth, before he turned away with an apologetic glance to me.
“Don’t begrudge her,” I said, for once not jealous. “She was as miserable as I was these past couple days.”
When Annette finally released him, Mencheres put his arms around Bones with an expression of amazement, fingering his new white hair.
“I have never been wrong before in my visions,” he stated. “I saw you withering.”
“Don’t fret, you don’t have a black spot on your record,” Bones replied. “But we’ll get to that. Thank you for honoring our accord. I won’t forget it.”
Ian was next, hugging Bones with a chuckle that sounded hoarse from emotion. “Bloody wanker, your wife should roast your arse for this dastardly stunt!”
Bones clapped him on the back. “You’re still here, mate. Careful-you’re in danger of becoming an honorable man.”
The rest of the vampires in the house conveyed their gratitude at seeing him again. Some part of me thought I should be embarrassed, considering everyone would have heard both my emotional breakdown and then the physical part of our reunion, but I didn’t care. My modesty could burn in hell-I wasn’t regret ting a moment of getting another chance to express to Bones how much I loved him, either by my tears or anything else. Life was too damn short to be concerned with the rest of it.
Finally Bones came to sit by me. I took his hand, still needing to touch him to keep reassuring myself that he was real.
“I went back to chase the last vampire, as you are aware,” he started. “He dashed onto the roof of a train that was passing by. I followed, and as we jumped from car to car, I sensed the others. Patra was there, with an entire car filled with Masters. The clever bitch knew we couldn’t feel her until after the train arrived. They swarmed the roof and came for me. It was a brilliant ambush. Trying to fight hand-to-hand on a moving train while dodging silver knives is tricky.”
The nonchalant way Bones described such a deadly scenario made me gape at him.
“Why didn’t you jump off and run for it?”
“Arrogance,” he answered crisply. “Patra was so close. All I had to do was cut down her guard and this war would have ended right then. So I kept after them, and when there were only six Masters left, it happened. One of them threw a blade that went straight into my heart. The pain dropped me to my knees. The bloke went straightaway back inside the car, telling Patra that he’d killed me. I thought he had, too, yet he’d neglected to twist the knife.”
I was stricken at this image, and not until something wet touched my fingers did I realize I’d been digging my nails into his hand so hard, I’d drawn blood.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
“I remember thinking I was finished, and being very brassed off about it. I managed to pull the blade out, but I was in no condition to defend myself. Then I felt the strangest kind of power even as my vision blackened and I couldn’t hear. The last thing I remember, we were over a bridge, and I rolled myself off the train into the water. Then there was nothing. Until the blood.”
Bones gave a soft grunt of remorse.
“I must have been carried downstream. An indigent found me, probably to check if I had anything useful in my pockets, and I woke up with his body in my arms. I’d chewed his throat open and drank him to the last drop, poor fellow. He had a mate nearby as well, and I drank him before my reason returned enough to stop. When I saw my hands…I was horrified.”
Bones paused to stretch out his hand and examine it. I didn’t see anything unusual. His lips twisted.
“My bones were visible. It was as if I were a partial skeleton. I couldn’t concentrate on anything, could barely see, hear or smell, and was weak as a lamb. When the sun broke, I lost consciousness again.”
“What in blazes happened to you?” Ian demanded. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“I have,” Mencheres said quietly. “Let him finish.”
“I awoke past sunset, and my unknown companion awakened around the same time. He tried to run but I grabbed onto his ankle. I could talk, not quite intelligibly, but enough. I told him to drag me to a phone and then I’d let him go. Chap was petrified, of course. Here a murdering half-rotted skeleton wouldn’t let loose of his leg; I’m astounded he didn’t fall over from a heart attack. We waited until well after midnight, so it was less unsightly for a homeless man to be seen kicking a corpse on his way to a pay phone.”
The image struck me very inappropriately and I started to laugh. This had to be the weirdest thing I’d ever heard.
“We arrived at a pay phone, but the bloke didn’t have any quid for the call. My mind still wasn’t functioning properly-that hadn’t occurred to me. All I knew was I needed to get somewhere safe. I had him ring numbers collect, but he told me all the bloody numbers were disconnected or didn’t answer. I only remembered a few of them: yours, Mencheres’s, Charles’s…but all of you were in emergency mode and couldn’t be reached. There was
