Bradley gave me a look of thinly veiled disgust. I'd had enough of that.

"Oh, shove it up your a.s.s, if you can fit anything in that tight GI s.h.i.t-shoot!" My mother's judgment I had to take, but I didn't have to put up with his.

His face actually colored with indignation. Don hid a smile behind a cough.

"Be that as it may, I find it notable you didn't bring up your close a.s.sociation with a vampire earlier. Perhaps you lean more towards their side than appearances dictate?"

"Look, Don, who I choose to f.u.c.k is not anyone's business but my own. He and I had similarities in our goals. Did my mother tell you he killed vampires as well? She probably left that out in her haste to see him dispatched. We had a commonality of purpose and it led to some extra attention. It's not like it was serious, he was just pa.s.sing through."

"Just pa.s.sing though?" Skeptically. "This would be the vampire who crushed Danny Milton's hand at a bar in November? The police might think it's impossible to cripple someone with a handshake, but then they've never been aware of a vampire's work before."

"Well, well, aren't you Mr. Smarty Pants? In case you haven't heard it from the horse's mouth, that creep Danny used and abused me when I was sixteen. I asked my friend to teach him a lesson. Now his hand won't be feeling up any underage skirts for a while." Again the lies slid smoothly off my tongue. "And in case you didn't realize, a vampire's idea of just pa.s.sing through is staying a few months. They calculate time a little different than we do."

"Then you'll fill us in on the details of where he is." This from Bradley, still smarting from my earlier comment.

Laughing, I shook my head. "Sure. Great idea. Rat on a vampire who doesn't have a grudge against me, p.i.s.sing him off when I haven't the slightest notion if you could protect me afterwards. I'm half human, but I'm not all stupid."

"Do you know what I think, Catherine? I think you're not stupid at all."

Don spoke quietly, with that same pleasant half smile. "No, I think you're very, very smart. You'd have to be, wouldn't you, to hide what you are all of these years and sneak out at night to kill the living dead. My G.o.d, you're only twenty-two, and you've seen more combat than most of the soldiers in uniform. I think you'll try to run away. Take your mother and leave, with or without your vampire lover. But there's a small problem with that, as you just found out. She won't go. You see, she hasn't accepted you for what you are. After finding out about your unusual s.e.x life, she's even more upset. You'll have to leave her behind in order to disappear, and when you do, how many things will come crawling out of the ground to use her to get to you? How many vampires have you killed? I bet they had friends. Oliver did, too. And all of your cajoling won't change what she sees in you. She sees you now as a vampire, and she will never leave with one of them. You may as well kill her yourself before you go, it would be kinder."

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

I launched out of bed, slamming Bradley in the head when he moved to block me. He dropped like a stone onto the floor. Then I grabbed Don by his shirt collar and hauled him out of his wheelchair, lifting him until his feet dangled in the air.

"You can kill us both now, Catherine," he panted. "We can't stop you. Maybe you'd make it out the window without getting shot.

Maybe you'd make it to her room and fling her over your shoulder and carry her off, kicking and screaming for help. Maybe you'd get a car and a false pa.s.sport, meet up with your lover and try to skip the country. Maybe you would get away with all of that. But how long before she left you? How long before she ran away out of fear of her own daughter? And then how long before someone found her and made her pay for what you've done?"

Don held my eyes as tightly as I gripped his shirt. In his stare I could see the truth. See my mother fighting every moment to escape, probably trying to kill herself out of misery, and then getting stolen away again because of me or Bones. We would try to rescue her, of course, and then what if she died and Bones did as well? It was one thing to risk my relationship with her if she didn't accept me because of the man I loved. But I couldn't demand her life in return for my happiness, and I couldn't risk his for the same reason. We could run all over the world, but we wouldn't be able to escape what was inside us, and eventually it would destroy all of us.

I relinquished my grip on Don. He crumpled to the ground, his shattered knees unable to hold him. There was a way to ensure the safety of both Bones and my mother, and it only required one sacrifice. Mine.

I knew then that I had to take Don's offer. It tore at my heart, but to do any less would be to condemn either Bones or my mother. Her hatred of vampires was so great, she would get herself or him killed if we tried to run away, and we'd have to, with so many different people chasing us. We couldn't run from Hennessey and Oliver's remaining friends, the police, plus a secret U.

S. government agency as well! One of them would catch us. It would only be a matter of time. If I went with Don, I'd be eliminating two out of the three threats against us, so the odds of Bones and my mother being safe more than doubled. How could I refuse, if I claimed to love them? Love wasn't doing only what was best for me, after all. It was doing what was best for them.

"We have a deal," I said to Don, steeling myself. "If you meet my conditions."

"Name them. I'll tell you straight out if they're impossible."

He struggled to climb back into the wheelchair, but I watched him without pity.

"One, I command any teams that hunt vampires. There's no way I'm going to listen to any bra.s.s-striped and -b.u.t.toned fool when it comes to battle. I'm superior to any of your men and I don't care that I'm younger. We do things my way and I train and pick my own team. If they don't meet my standards, then they stay at home."

My voice was granite and I didn't blink. He nodded briskly, all business.

"Two, we leave right away, and we don't come back here. You forget about my undead friend. I'm not backstabbing someone who helped rescue my mother and has done me no harm. If you can't handle that, then we quit speaking, because if I ever hear differently, you'll wish more than my mother does now that I'd never been born. Believe me, you'll have plenty of other dead vampires to play with by the time I'm through."

Don hesitated for only a moment and then shrugged. "I want to win the war, not just one battle. I'll agree to that. Provided, of course, you have no further contact with him or any other nonhuman friends you may have acquired. I won't endanger my people needlessly or open my division to infiltration because you like how something is in the sack."

His emphasis on thing was deliberate. So he had prejudice issues as well.

"Three, there is a length-of-service agreement. Even soldiers get to quit after a period of time. I don't want to be enslaved to you for the rest of my natural life, however short that may turn out to be. Ten years, and not a minute more."

He frowned and pulled at his eyebrow. "What if after that time special circ.u.mstances come up? Monsters don't send us notice in advance to warn us of the trouble they plan. How about ten years' full duty, and then after that, three missions a year of our choice for another three years? That seems fair, doesn't it?"

"Three missions a year, not to exceed one month in total time length combined. Done."

Thirteen years. That was way too long to expect Bones to wait for me, even if he didn't age. "Four, you set me and my mother up in separate residences but in one place. I am not going to be traveling like a gypsy from barrack to barrack or whatever you call them. I want a house, nothing fancy but mine, and a salary. Give my mother a home as well, just not too close to mine. Same state, different cities ought to do it. This arrangement with her will continue even if I die on the job. She gets my salary if I'm killed, understood? And you're also going to take care of those girls who were rescued last night. Get them the best counseling money can buy, and make sure they're set up with a good job and a place to stay also. They were chosen because they don't have that. You're going to give it to them."

Don gave the faintest smile. "We would have done that anyway. You'll find if you cooperate, we can have a mutually beneficial a.s.sociation for everyone involved."

"I doubt it," I said wearily. "But it's a deal nonetheless. Last but absolutely not least, I refuse to go after vampires who aren't killing people. This may sound like an oxymoron to you, but in my experience, I've met vampires who drank only enough to live and didn't kill unnecessarily. They can feed off someone without their knowledge afterwards. I'll kill killers, not sippers. Find someone else to hunt those for you, and good luck."

Tate Bradley stirred, moaning softly and sitting up while pressing a hand to his bleeding head. Guess I'd cracked his skull a bit. He stood, but swayed and gave me a very unpleasant look.

"You hit me again and I'll-"

"What? Bleed more? Thanks, but I only drink gin and tonic. That's one vampire attribute I'm without. No fangs, see?"

With a wide smile I bared my teeth at him and returned his nasty stare. If he hated me now, wait until I started to train him. Then he'd know hatred.

Don coughed. "I'm sure we'll be able to find enough unsavory types to keep you sufficiently busy so we won't have to hunt the ones you feel are harmless." The edge to his words told me he thought nothing undead was harmless. But the potential for harm wasn't limited to vampires. I knew that from experience now. "Then we are finished. I'll arrange to have you and your mother transported out of here immediately. Tate will accompany you to the airport, and you two should get to know one another. Tate, meet your new team leader, Catherine."

"My name is Cat."

It flew out of my mouth. Everything in my life was about to change, but some things I was keeping.

Bradley held open the door and Don once again wheeled out. Bradley paused for a moment and shook his head at me.

"Can't say it's been a pleasure meeting you, but I'll see you soon. Try to let me stay conscious next time."

My brow arched at him, shades of the vampire I loved. "We'll see."

TWENTY-SIX.

T O GIVE CREDIT WHERE IT WAS DUE, DON WAS as good as his word in setting up my transportation. Within an hour, I was dressed and waiting in my mother's room, sans handcuffs. I'd finally showered to wash off all of the blood, and while in there, I allowed myself to cry, since it mixed with the water and felt camouflaged. Yet looking down at my mother now, my eyes were dry as sand.

"Well?"

I'd just finished speaking to her about the offer and my subsequent acceptance of it. Some of the repugnance had left her face while I talked and at last she took my hand.

"You're doing the right thing. The only thing to save yourself from a future of evil." Bitterness wafted from me and a small, selfish part of me hated her. If not for her, I could just disappear with Bones and live the rest of my life with the man I loved. Yet it was no more her fault for her unyielding hatred of vampires than it was my fault for being born. In this case, we were even.

"I don't think it's saving me from a future of evil, but I'm doing it anyway."

"Don't be stupid, Catherine. Of course it is. How long could you have continued your relationship with that creature before he turned you into a vampire? If he cared for you as you claim he did, then he wouldn't want to sit back and watch you age over time, would he? Moving closer to death each year, as all humans do. Why, when he could change you and extend your youth indefinitely? That's what he'll do to you if you stay with him, and if you weren't being blind, you'd already know it."

Much as I hated to admit it, she had brought up a very obvious point I'd let myself ignore. What would happen to our relationship in ten years? Twenty? More? G.o.d, she was right. Bones wouldn't just sit back and watch me die of old age. He'd want me to change over, and I would never do it. Maybe we'd been doomed from the start, and my mother's prejudice and Don's offer were just proof of that. You fight the battles you can win, Bones had repeatedly said. Well, I couldn't win this battle, but I could keep him safe. I could keep my mother safe, and then use what was in me to keep other people safe. Put in perspective, a broken heart wasn't such a terrible price to pay. I might be looking at a future without him, but it was still a future. Considering all the girls Hennessey had taken who didn't have that anymore, it would be an insult for me to squander my life when theirs had been robbed from them.

The door opened and Tate Bradley poked his head in. His arm was in a sling and there was a bandage near his temple.

"Time to go."

Nodding shortly, I grasped my mother's wheelchair and followed him down the hospital corridor. The hallway had been cleared and every patient door closed. Behind me were eight heavily armed men. It seemed Don was afraid I'd get cold feet.

There were about two hours left of daylight. We would be driven a short distance away to a helicopter pad and then flown via chopper to where a military plane waited. I piled into the backseat with my mother. Tate took the front pa.s.senger seat, being unable to drive with his broken arm. A man who introduced himself as Pete took the wheel. My other guards took flanking positions in three vehicles, one behind us, two on each side. Ironically, it was the same formation the vampires had used last night.

We pulled away and I closed my eyes, thinking that I'd have to find a way to tell Bones goodbye. Maybe I'd leave a message with Tara. She'd know how to contact him. I couldn't just leave with no word to him at all.

Tate broke the silence after several minutes. "Pete here will be one of the members of the unit, Cather-excuse me, Cat," he corrected himself.

I didn't open my eyes. "Not unless I say so, or were you asleep during that part? I pick the team. Pete's in only if he pa.s.ses my test, and that goes for you, too."

"What's the test?" Pete asked condescendingly.

My eyes slit open.

"To see how many times you'll get back up after I beat you unconscious."

Pete laughed. Tate didn't. Maybe he wasn't as stupid as I'd first thought. The glance he threw me told me he believed every word.

"Look,"-Pete eyed me in the rearview mirror, skepticism etched on his face-"I know you're supposed to be something special, but...what the f.u.c.k?"

Pete's retort ended in a gasp when he spotted a man in the middle of the highway in our lane. My breath caught as well, and my mother screamed."That's him! That's-"

Tate had less hesitation. In the seconds before the car struck Bones, he pulled his gun and fired through the windshield at him.

It was like hitting a brick wall. The collision crushed the front of the car. Gla.s.s exploded out of the windows and the front and rear air bags deployed instantly. Jerked forward violently, I heard brakes screech behind us as our escort swerved to avoid slamming into our rear. The two cars on either side of us sailed past and then applied their brakes to try to rotate around. Traffic still came from behind us. Vehicles that had banked sharply to the left and right of us crashed into the turning agents' cars. The sound of twisting steel on metal as the vehicles piled up in a ghastly domino effect was deafening.

Tate and Pete lolled in their seat belts, blood from the gla.s.s and contact with the dashboard streaming down their faces. There was a wrenching sound as Tate's door was ripped off its frame. Through the smoke from the destroyed engine, I saw Bones grin as he chucked the piece of the car like a giant Frisbee at the car behind us. Back there, the other guards vainly tried to get a clear shot at him. They scattered as the door burst through their windshield. In a flash the other door followed suit, and my mother wailed in mortal fear when he next tore open mine.

"Hallo, Kitten!"

Despite my earlier resolution, I was thrilled to see him. He unclasped my seat belt and grabbed my mother when she tried to scoot out her side.

"Not so fast, Mum. We're in a bit of a hurry."

A moan from the front seat made him casually swat Tate in the head.

"Don't kill him, Bones! They weren't going to hurt me!"

"Oh-right, then. Let's just send them on their way nicely."

In a blur he yanked Tate clear from his seat. For a moment his mouth pressed against his neck, and then he tossed him fifty feet in the air. Tate landed in the gra.s.s by the shoulder of the road. Pete attempted to crawl away, but Bones grasped him and gave him the same flight with similar onboard beverage service.

"Get out of the car, luv," Bones directed, and I sprang from the ruined remains of the vehicle. He still had my mother by the arm.

She was crying and cursing him at the same time.

"They're going to kill you, they know what you are! Catherine's-"

My mother's words were cut off when I punched her right in the jaw. She collapsed without another word. In her railing threats, she would have revealed too much, and if Bones knew about the deal I'd made, he would talk me out of it. I'd believe whatever impossible a.s.surances he gave me, because my heart had no common sense.

A bullet whizzed by. I dropped to the ground, not wanting to get shot again. Bones gave an irritated glance in its direction and then grasped the floorboards of the car. My eyes widened in growing comprehension. G.o.d, he couldn't do that, could he?

The agents from the cars in front of us had taken cover behind one of their overturned vehicles, and they were firing at us.

Apparently they'd been told to ensure my safe arrival or, failing that, guarantee I didn't escape. Plan A had failed, so they were going with Plan B. Bones gave a wolfish grin as he lifted the car off the ground. He spun in a semicircle for maximum velocity, and then the twisted hunk of machinery went sailing through the air, landing point-blank on the makeshift barricade of the agents'

vehicle.

There was a thunderous boom as the car exploded on contact. Thick acrid smoke billowed into the air. In the midst of this maelstrom, with his legs apart and eyes flashing green, Bones looked absolutely, terrifyingly magnificent.

Pandemonium seized the highway. Traffic on the opposite side of the road piled up as disbelieving onlookers stopped driving and gaped at the carnage to their left. Every second brought a fresh squealing of brakes and new accidents. Bones didn't pause to admire his work. He took my hand and threw my mother over his shoulder as we raced into the trees out of sight.

He had a car waiting about five miles ahead where the lanes were free of the wreckage behind us. Bones deposited my mother in the back, pausing only to clap a piece of duct tape over her mouth before we sped off.

"Glad you were the one that socked her, luv. It saved me the trouble. You don't get your meanness from your father-you get it from her. She bit me."

For someone who had just been hit by a car going sixty, he looked remarkably chipper.

"How did you do that? How did you stop the car? If a vampire can do that, why didn't Switch prevent me from bashing into the house last night?"

Bones snorted derisively. "That pup? He couldn't stop a toddler on a tricycle. He was only 'round sixty, luv, in undead years.

You have to be an old Master vamp like me to pull such a trick without regretting it dearly afterwards. Believe me, it hurt like blazes. That's why I took a nip from your two blokes before chucking them off. Who were they, anyhow? They weren't police."

This had to be handled very carefully. "Um, they were from some branch of government, they didn't say which. Weren't real chatty, you know? I think they were taking me to a special jail or something because of Oliver."

He gave me a look. "You should have waited for me. You could have gotten killed."

"I couldn't wait! One of Oliver's dirty cops tried to shoot me, and he was supposed to plant a bomb in the hospital where they were taking my mother! Oliver was the one, Bones. He admitted it, practically bragged about how Hennessey was 'cleaning up'

his state for him. Like all those people were nothing but garbage. G.o.d, if I'd killed him ten times, it still wouldn't be enough."

"What makes you think those blokes who were taking you away weren't more of his men?"

"They weren't. Besides, you hardly treated them like you were giving them the benefit of the doubt. You dropped a car on four of them."

"Oh, don't fret." Unconcernedly. "They jumped free before the explosion. And if they were too thick not to, then they deserved to die for their stupidity."