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By car,the cave was over an hour and a half away. At a dead run, Bones made it there in forty minutes. Flying would have been faster, but it was still bloody bright out, and getting caught on cell phone video displaying supernatural abilities was a sure way to get killed by the Law Guardians.
Winter had transformed the dried leaves into crackling perimeter alerts, so the last five miles, Bones glided above the ground. A pang hit him as he realized that the last time he’d been here, it had also been winter.
Three miles out from the cave, Cat’s scent reached him, and from the trampled earth and bent twigs, she hadn’t worried about being stealthy. She’d run right toward the cave knowing full well that any vampire inside could hear her coming.
Dammit, Kitten!You had to know this was a trap!
And she’d ignored that with her usual mixture of brashness and bravery. Her courage was one of the reasons Bones had fallen in love with her…and her recklessness was why he’d never known a night’s peace since.
A mile away, the ground became so trampled that a herd of cattle couldn’t have done more damage, and more scents flooded the area. Cat’s human backup must have come, some driving all-terrain vehicles. From the ruckus they would have made, either things had gone very well, or they’d gone very wrong.
But where was everyone now? The woods were eerily silent.
Bones dropped low, flying just above the flattened brush and darting between the trees with the sinuousness of a shadow. It might be quiet, but that didn’t mean he was alone.
He was a quarter mile from the cave when the scent of blood drenched the air, so strong that Bones wasn’t surprised to see flecks of it on the leaves and ground. The only surprise was that it wasvampireblood, and vampires healed too fast to usually leave this much behind. Worse, Cat’s scent forked, some of it heading deeper into the forest while stronger waves led toward the cave.
Bones hesitated a moment before following the scent leading into the cave. With how quiet the woods were, Cat could only be in the cave, if she was still here at all.
Be here, Kitten! Don’t let me be too late again!
Bones slowed when he reached the mouth of the cave. It was covered in bloody footprints going in both directions, with so many people’s intermingled scents that parsing through them was impossible, especially since blood overpowered them all. Spent shell casings also caught the remaining light, and newly blasted holes in the rocks further confirmed there had been a shootout.
Bones followed the red footprints leading inward. Almost immediately, they led to two sets of scarlet-soaked stones. The smaller one probably came from a human’s serious yet survivable injury, but the larger one was a lethal arterial bleed-out. Bones had seen enough of those to know.
He knelt beside it. The blood was still wet, and it smelled human. A deeper sniff revealed the scent of vampire blood, too, and Cat’s scent, sharper from rage and grief.
Bones rose while his hands curled into fists. She’d held the dying person so closely that her scent had imprinted onto their spilled blood. A fallen friend? Or a fallen lover?
Jealousy was pointless, so he continued into the cave. In moments, the temperature increased, taking the bite out of the icy day. The cave’s internal temperature stayed around fifty-five degrees year-round. Comfortable enough for a vampire, but chilly for Cat, which is why he’d gotten space heaters for her. Not that those stopped her from stealing all the covers…
Anguish ripped into him when he arrived at his former living quarters and found them empty. Once again, he’d been too late. She’d been here, though. Blood spattered what remained of his former sofa, tv, tables, and Cat’s dressing area. Some was hers, and some belonged to others. Bones inhaled, allowing the scents to trigger memories like recognizing faces among a crowd. One of these splatters belonged to a bounty hunter named Lazarus, and was that Nicolai’s scent, too? If so, Cat had faced two vampire mercenaries plus several more vampires that Bones didn’t know.
Who’d sent them? Bones hadn’t seen another contract on the Red Reaper, but Lazarus and Nicolai wouldn’t be here unless someone had put out a bounty on Cat, and a big one, judging from the backup they’d brought.
Bones inhaled again. Some of the humans who’d been at Cat’s former house had been here, too, but what was this other scent? It was human, but it hadn’t been back at her old house. Ithadbeen at the entrance to the cave, though, in the smaller, survivable puddle of blood, and it was…familiar.
Frustration filled him when no name came to mind. Then again, he’d met thousands of humans in the past decade alone, so he could hardly recall every one. This person must be connected to Cat somehow, and they might also still be alive.
Bones couldn’t say the same for the vampires Cat had faced. From the dried bits of flesh and bone concealed beneath the foam from his destroyed furniture, several of them had died, though at least one must have gotten away. Cat’s scent had led back into the forest. She’d run after someone.
Bones gave the destroyed area a final glance before striding away. His answers would be found in either the trail Cat had left in the woods, or in the familiar-smelling human who might have survived the attack.
4
Five days later, Bones stared at the large hospital from his vantage point of a roof across the street. Cat hadn’t left anything useful in the woods, but a humanhadbeen medically evacuated from the cave, and unlike the black-ops helicopters that transported Cat and her team, med-vac choppers were required to file flight plans.
Cat’s boss had tried to hide the information, of course. He’d also had the human flown to three different hospitals in two different states before transporting him by ambulance to this facility in Chicago, Illinois. That’s why it took Bones nearly a week to find him, but he had, and when Bones’s binoculars showed who it was through the hospital window, Bones let out a laugh that made the ghoul next to him jump.
“Whoa,” Rodney said with a sideways glance at Bones. “Hell just called, and it wants its ringtone back.”
“Don’t bloody believe it,” Bones said, still chuckling. “That’show I knew the worthless sod’s scent!”
“Guess you recognize the survivor,” Rodney noted.
He did, indeed. Before, snatching him up was a simple means to an end. Now, Bones was going to enjoy this.
* * *
