Cooper unsealed the outer locks. He didn’t look away when the capsule’s door slid open and Max was revealed, so I figured he’d swigged some vampire blood on the way here. That was the only thing that could inoculate a human from falling victim to nosferatu mind control, even if it did have other side effects.
My father was pronged in several places with silver. The hooked end of those spikes made it impossible for him to pull himself free without shredding his heart, not to mention several other choice pieces of him. Once the door closed, he couldn’t even wiggle, because the inner structure prevented movement while the spikes continued to drain the blood and strength out of him. I knew all this, because I designed it.
Bones’s gaze sizzled into Max. “Go on, mate, say one word, see what it gets you,” he urged him in a voice smooth as silk—and frightening as the grave.
“Right now, Daddy dearest, ‘I told you so’ doesn’t even begin to cover it,” I said grimly to Max. “So I’ll repeat what you said to me earlier: You should have killed me when you had the chance.”
Then I turned to Bones. “Why are we taking him anywhere? I’d just as soon kill him now and not have to worry about him again.”
“You don’t need to fret about him,” Bones said in that same icy, neck-ruffling tone. “Ever. But he doesn’t get off that easily.”
Bones reached out and touched Max’s face. It was a light stroke, but Max flinched as if Bones had sliced his cheek open with a knife.
“I’ll be seeing you soon, mate. I can’t wait.”
Annette came over. Her champagne-colored eyes considered Max from a face lightly lined with age. Annette had been thirty-six when Bones changed her. Times were different in the seventeen hundreds, so she looked around forty-five, but she made it look good. Unlike her normal impeccable appearance, her strawberry-blond hair had half-fallen out of her chignon, and her navy tailored suit looked a lot worse for wear.
“I say, it’s been quite the day already,” she remarked.
I stifled a snort. How like Annette to describe an afternoon of torture as calmly as “quite the day.”
“Seal him back up,” I said to Cooper, not wanting to look at my father anymore. Or ever again.
Cooper complied, and the capsule’s door slid into place with a series of locks clicking back together. Even as it did, a frightening thought occurred to me.
“What happened to Calibos? There was another vampire here besides Max.”
“His head’s over there,” Bones said, nodding by the trees, “but the rest of him’s farther back.”
I felt a cold satisfaction at that. “How’d you know to come here?”
“The airline lost Annette’s luggage.” Bones sounded almost bemused. “I rang you twice to tell you we’d be late, that we were stopping off to fetch her some new togs. You didn’t answer. You always answer, so I drove straight here. About a mile away, I heard you scream. I pulled off, and Annette and I circled round the house on foot. We found the one bloke. Didn’t know how many more might be inside, so we smashed through the windows at the same time.”
A bark of laughter escaped me. My mother and I owed our lives to Annette’s luggage being lost? How ironic.
“Bet you wish you’d carried on,” I couldn’t help but quip to Annette.
A ghost of a smile flitted across her lips. “Not quite, darling. I just rang Ian,” she continued, more to Bones than me now. “He was furious to hear what Max did. He’s formally cutting Max off from his line.”
That was the worst punishment a vampire could inflict on a member of their line. It meant no vampire would challenge whatever happened to Max in the future, and right now, my father’s future looked pretty grim.
“Max said Ian didn’t know about this,” I added, even though I was no fan of Ian’s. “He said he had new friends who wanted me dead as much as he did.”
Bones gave a short nod. “We’re going home, luv. To find out who helped Max orchestrate this, so we can kill every last one of them.”
Our house was a large cabin at the top of a hill, with sweeping views of the Blue Ridge Mountains out of bulletproof-glass windows. It was remote enough that we’d never met our neighbors, so the helicopter pad and hangar on the side of our house hadn’t been cause for any awkward conversations.
Annette went back with Don to help with Tate, as was the original plan, although Bones refused to go with her. He told my uncle his priorities had changed, not that Don had any trouble understanding why. Tate would be okay with two undead people taking care of him. It was my safety that seemed to be in a more tenuous position than Tate’s, according to what Max had said.
When I walked into my house, my cat jumped out to twine around my legs. We hadn’t figured on being back for a week, so I’d set up the automatic feeder and litter-box cleaner. Now my kitty would get some of my leftovers instead of just his dry food. No wonder he was glad to see me.
My mother had never been to Bones’s and my house, but I was too anxious to wash the blood off me to give her a proper tour.