Alarm flashed across his face and he got up from the couch.
“Kitten.” There was deadly intensity in his voice. “Get on the phone and ring your mum. Right now. Tell her to get your grandparents and leave. Bring them here, all of them.”
“Are you insane?” Now I stood also, eyes wide with incomprehension. “My mother would run shrieking out of this cave to begin with, she’s afraid of the dark, and I can just see my grandparents bunkering down here. The police aren’t worth—”
“I don’t give a rot about the police.” His words sliced through the air. “Hennessey’s looking for anything he can find on me or, failing that, on someone close to me. You know he’s got connections with the police, so if they have your name now as a suspect in a murder where there’s a strange shriveled corpse, then he would also. You’re not anonymous anymore. You’ve been linked to a dead vampire, and all he needs to do is take one look at a photo of you to know you’re the same girl who almost got him killed, so get on the phone and get your family out of that house.”
Sweet Jesus, I hadn’t considered that! With trembling hands I took the phone he handed me and dialed. It rang, one time…two…three…four…five…six…Tears sprang to my eyes. They never let it ring that long. Oh no, no, please…ten…eleven…twelve…
“There’s no answer. I spoke to her this morning, before the detectives came. She said someone was at the door….”
We sped off through the trees on his motorcycle. For once I was glad he had the damned unsafe thing. It was the only type of vehicle that could navigate through this territory at such speeds. If anyone tried to pull us over, I would look guilty as all hell of anything they accused me of. Over my tight black spandex from before, I now had on crisscrossed boots with stakes inside, silver throwing knives lashed to my upper arms and thighs, and two guns tucked in my belt filled with silver bullets. Not that we would have stopped for anyone. Somebody could just try to catch us.
I kept trying my family on the cell, cursing and praying when there was still no answer. If anything happened to them, it would be all my fault. If only I hadn’t drunk that spiked gin and been unable to kill Hennessey…if only I’d never met Danny…. A thousand different ways to scourge myself seared through my mind. Normally it took an hour and a half to get to the house from the cave. Bones made it there in less than thirty minutes.
We pulled right up to the front and I was the first one off, running up the steps of the porch and through the open door. Once there, my brain refused to translate what my eyes saw. The red liquid smeared on the ground caused me to slide forward and then fall to the floor with the momentum of my panicked strides. Bones stepped inside with more caution but just as swiftly, and he dragged me to my feet.
“Hennessey and his men could still be nearby. You’re no use to anyone if you break now!”
His voice was harsh, but it penetrated through the paralyzed part of my mind, which went blank upon the sight of all that blood. The early shades of dusk darkened the sky. Pale amber beams of remaining light illuminated the sightless eyes of my grandfather sprawled on the kitchen floor. His throat had been torn out. It was his blood I’d slipped in.
Shaking Bones off, I unsheathed my knives and gripped them, ready to fling them at any undead thing that moved. There was a trail of blood leading up the steps, and crimson handprints left grisly signs for us to follow. Bones took a deep whiff of the air and pushed me back against the landing.
“Listen to me. I only smell them faintly, so I think Hennessey and whoever was with him aren’t close. But you keep those knives ready, and you unleash them at anything that flinches. Stay here.”
“No.” I spoke through clenched teeth. “I’m going up there.”
“Kitten, don’t. Let me go instead. You keep watch.”
Pity creased his face, but I ignored it. My grief I forced into a tiny hard lump inside me that I would unravel later. Much later, when every vampire or person with them who had done this was dead.
“Get out of my way.”
My tone had never been more menacing and he stepped back but followed closely behind me. The door to my bedroom was kicked in. It hung by only a hinge. My grandmother was face down on the floor, her hands frozen into claws as if in death she still tried to escape what had chased her. There were two wounds on her neck, one shallow, one gaping. It looked as though she’d dragged herself while dying, up the steps to get to my room. Bones knelt beside her and did a strange thing. He inhaled near the gouges around her neck, and then picked up a bloody pillow from my bed and held it to his face.
“What are you doing?” God, he wasn’t hungry, was he? The thought sent a vile tremor through me.