The power the Remnants emanated ripped across my skin, making me take an instinctive step backward. I barely heard Tyler’s gasp over my uncle’s shouts as those diaphanous forms began slicing through him as though they were steel, and he was liquid.
“There.” Marie’s voice changed, the Southern drawl replaced with an eerie echo that sounded like thousands of people speaking at once. “Ask your questions. He’s not going anywhere with them holding him.”
I spoke through the shock at what she’d done.
“Call them off. This isn’t what we wanted.”
Marie’s brow rose. “How else did you think I’d secure your uncle? Ask him nicely to stay put?”
“We didn’t tell you to torture him!” I burst out, guilt slamming into me at the fresh set of screams from my uncle.
“I made a bargain to ensure that this ghost answered your questions, and I always keep my word. The longer you wait to ask them, Reaper, the longer your uncle suffers.”
Further argument would be useless. Now the only person who could stop this was Don. I gave my uncle a pleading look as I approached.
“Tell us what you know about Madigan. Please.”
His body bowed and shuddered as those forms pitilessly continued to rip through him. Bones glanced away, his mouth tightening. How well he knew what my uncle was going through.
“How could you do this to me, Cat?”
The anguished accusation tore at my heart. I didn’t mean to! was too useless to utter. Besides, though this wasn’t what I’d wanted, Don had admitted to condemning Tate and the others to certain death. If he’d only told us the truth, none of this would be happening.
“That doesn’t matter,” I forced myself to say. “Answer the question, or the Remnants will keep ripping into you until there’s nothing left but ectoplasm.”
That was a lie. You couldn’t kill what was already dead, as I’d often lamented while going after Kramer, but Don didn’t know that.
“Then I’ll die,” he rasped, the words broken from pain. “Better . . . that way.”
Even now, he wouldn’t spill his secret? Frustration made me bite my lip to keep from screaming at him. I hadn’t felt my fangs come out, but from the instant taste of blood, they had.
“Don’t be a fool,” Bones said sharply. “Remnants feed off pain, so as your suffering increases, so does their strength to inflict more.”
“Noooo.”
My uncle drew out the word with such despair that my control snapped. I couldn’t stand to see him like this, and I couldn’t make it stop, as Marie’s flinty expression reminded me.
“Tell me what the fuck Madigan did, Don! Right now!”
“Genetic experimentation!”
My mouth dropped at the reply. Don’s did, too, before another scream contorted it into a maw of agony. Aside from pain, something else flashed across his features. Surprise, as if he couldn’t believe he’d answered me with the truth.
“Genetic experimentation of what? Humans?” Bones pressed.
A groan followed by a stream of curses was his only response. Once more, I found myself biting my lip out of frustration. Damn Don’s stubbornness.
“Answer him,” I snapped.
“Not only humans,” Don said before another What the hell? expression crossed his face.
Marie began to chuckle. “Ah, I see.”
I didn’t. The only time I’d been able to force ghosts to do what I wanted was when I had Marie’s grave power coursing through my veins, but I’d run out of that long ago.
“Care to inform the rest of us?” I asked tightly.
Her glance was equal parts impatience and amusement. “How did so many of my kind fear you when you are so naive?”
Before I could bark out a response, she went on. “He died while you still possessed my powers, didn’t he? And you wept as his spirit left his body?”
I didn’t appreciate her isn’t-this-obvious? tone. “Doesn’t everyone cry when a loved one dies?”
“Mambos don’t,” she said, using the word she’d called me when she realized I absorbed powers after drinking undead blood. “Not unless they want the person to stay.”
“But he didn’t stay,” I said, anger at Don’s pain sharpening my words. “He died.”
“Yet here he is,” Marie replied with a flick of her fingers toward Don. “A ghost. Or more precisely, your ghost.”
Six
What do you mean, her ghost?”
The same question resounded across my mind, but Tyler asked it first. Maybe I was still too shocked to respond.
“It’s the blood,” Marie replied, nodding at my red-smeared lip. The unearthly echo had left her voice, and she spoke with her normal sweet Southern drawl.
“Blood unlocks the power of the grave. With it, a Mambo can raise Remnants and transform the newly departed into a ghost if the Mambo draws her blood when that person dies.”