“There,” I said, pointing at the closed entrance to the elevation platform.
Bones shut his eyes. Moments later, the steel door swished open, revealing the stained circular pad that, a mile or so up, led to the concrete igloo and freedom.
Thanks to Bones’s power, the platform wasn’t operational at the moment. No human could climb those slick steel walls, either, so I wasn’t surprised to see Madigan pressed as far away from the door as he could manage, trying to hide but unable to escape.
What I didn’t expect was the Desert Eagle handgun he had pressed to his temple.
“Come one step closer, and I’ll shoot,” he warned.
Caught off guard, I laughed. I’d imagined him saying lots of things when we found him, but that hadn’t been anywhere on my list.
“Is that supposed to be a threat? Did you miss the part where we wanted you dead?”
Madigan’s lips stretched in something too ugly to be called a smile. “Yes, but you want information more. Let me go, and you have a chance of getting it one day. Move another inch, and I’ll splatter what I know all over this wall instead.”
For once, he didn’t sing anything in his mind, so I heard him loud and clear when he thought, Try me and see, Crawfield.
He’d never get my last name right.
I stared into his light blue eyes and knew he wasn’t bluffing. If we so much as twitched, he’d pull the trigger, and the power of that handgun would blow his skull to kingdom come. Did he know anything that I couldn’t find out by hacking into the computers here? Maybe, and that wouldn’t do.
“Oh, Bones,” I said sweetly.
Madigan’s eyes bugged as Bones said, “Already done, Kitten.”
Then Bones walked forward with deliberate, taunting slowness. Madigan’s hand lowered from his head even though his thoughts screamed in protest. His frustration was a symphony to listen to as he realized he didn’t have control of his own body. I came forward, too. Smiling.
Without a single advance thought to warn us, his jaw snapped. Bones lunged, digging his fingers inside Madigan’s mouth, but it was too late. Foam bubbled past Madigan’s lips, and his eyes rolled back in his head. Then his whole body began to convulse.
“No!” I gasped, recognizing the signs of cyanide poisoning. Seeing the half-dissolved capsule encased in a fake tooth that Bones swept out of his mouth was almost redundant. It must have contained a massive dose—Madigan’s pulse skyrocketed, then abruptly stopped.
“No you don’t,” Bones snarled.
He slashed his wrist with a fang and held it to Madigan’s mouth, working the other man’s throat to force him to swallow. Then he pounded on Madigan’s chest, trying to manually circulate the healing powers of his blood through him.
It wasn’t enough. Crimson bubbled past Madigan’s lips, and his eyes became fixed and dilated. It happened so fast, he didn’t have time for a final thought. If he had, it would have probably been Fuck You.
And he had fucked us. Frustration and denied rage frothed up in me. After all he’d done, Madigan had managed to escape even when we had him trapped and cornered. Anything about his backers and the results of his twisted experiments that weren’t saved in the computers were now out of reach forever.
“Damn you,” I said in a voice choked from fury.
Bones dropped Madigan and leaned back, giving the dead man a coldly calculated look.
“He thinks he’s escaped us, but perhaps not.”
Twenty
Once they’d gotten the liquid silver out of Tate, he, Juan, and Cooper did a sweep of the facility, making sure more guards weren’t holed up somewhere waiting for their chance to attack. Denise still hadn’t returned with the missing child, but I wasn’t worried. Only demon bone stabbed through her eyes could kill Denise, and Madigan didn’t have any. Almost no one did. Demon bone was harder to come by than astatine.
Dave, however, was with Bones and me. He stared down at Madigan’s corpse, his mouth compressed into a thin, tight line.
“Normally, I’d enjoy carving up the bastard’s chest, but right now, the thought doesn’t appeal.”
Bones tapped the large knife he’d confiscated from the compound’s operating room against his thigh.
“Can’t afford to wait. With each day, the blood loses power.”
Dave’s brow went up. “You raised me after I was in the ground for over three months.”
“She forced a lot of vampire blood into you as you were dying,” Bones said, with an approving glance at me. Then he kicked Madigan’s prone form. “This sod barely drank a drop.”
Dave let out a sigh of concession before pulling off his shirt and handing it to me with a sardonic smile.
“You were there to watch this put into my chest. Guess it’s fitting that you’re here to watch it cut out, too.”
“It was Rodney’s, then yours, so it’s a good heart,” I replied, preparing myself for what was to come. “He doesn’t deserve it.”