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48
Twelve hours later, Rodney looked around in disbelief. “Look at all this shit!”
Yes, Don had gone overboard. Bones had only asked for a high-quality sword, several willing blood donors, a tray, and a meal suitable for a brand-new ghoul. In addition to that, Don had set up a large tent around Dave’s grave, with Cat’s entire team forming a perimeter around that. Don also had a hundred more soldiers cordoning off the entire cemetery, a full medical team nearby, and military choppers circling over the now-closed-off airspace above the cemetery.
“We’re raising one ghoul, not starting a zombie apocalypse,” Rodney went on.
Bones grunted. “Nearly the same thing to her boss.”
Rodney shook his head, but then an impish grin curled his lips. “Now he’s your in-law, and he’s not even the scary one.”
Bones chuckled at the zing to Justina. “You’re not wrong there, mate.”
A new, cranking sound brought his attention to Dave’s grave. The crane finished lifting Dave’s coffin from the ground and deposited it next to the open hole in front of his headstone. Cat, Don, Tate, Juan, and Cooper drew closer as the seals were broken on the coffin.
“Showtime,” Bones murmured, and held up three fingers.
Three blood donor volunteers from Cat’s team came over. Bones drank two pints from each of them while the last of the coffin seals were broken, and the lid was finally opened.
Cat made a strangled sound as she saw Dave’s face.
The spotlights in the tent made Dave’s funerary makeup gleam like graffiti against his waxen skin. He might have been a handsome man when he was alive, but his features were now slack from decomposition, though the formaldehyde had helped slow that. Without it, Dave might have been too rotted to reanimate.
Bones threw back the lower coffin lid himself. Then, he lifted Dave’s body out of it. When Bones stripped Dave’s suit off, baring his upper body to those unforgiving fluorescent lights, Cat gripped Tate’s hand, and Juan crossed himself while muttering the start of the rosary.
Bones laid Dave’s body on the ground.
Rodney knelt next to it, and then plunged his knife into Dave’s chest, cutting away Dave’s ribcage with brisk skill.
“Jesus,” Tate muttered.
Yes, making a ghoul was messy. That’s why Bones was already shirtless. Rodney took his shirt off, too, after Dave’s heart was exposed to the bright overhead lights.
Then, Rodney gave Bones the knife and braced.
Bones shoved the blade deep into Rodney’s chest, right beneath the ghoul’s ribcage. His other hand went into the bloody wound next, finding and squeezing Rodney’s heart. Several ruthless swipes later, and Bones was drawing that organ free.
Several of Cat’s team vomited. From a hard thud, one of them might have fainted, too.
“Sissies,” Rodney said with a pained laugh.
Bones didn’t reply. The faster this was completed, the faster Rodney could heal. Bones placed Rodney’s extracted heart on the nearby tray. Then, he cut Dave’s heart out of his exposed chest cavity, and handed the organ to Rodney.
The ghoul shoved it into his chest, his arm disappearing up to the elbow. More retching noises sounded from Cat’s team.
Bones ignored that as he placed Rodney’s heart inside Dave’s exposed chest. Rodney’s body would automatically pull his new heart into place, but Bones had to line up all of Dave’s veins and arteries himself. When that was done, Bones held the bloody knife against his own neck and bent over Dave’s new heart.
Time to activate it.
Bones sliced into his neck until the knife grazed his spine.
His blood poured over Dave’s transplanted heart. When it ebbed, Bones willed more of that red flow as well as his power into Dave.
Rise,Bones silently urged Dave.
Nothing. No flare of answering energy, and no signs of healing. Bugger. Both should have been instantaneous.
Bones cut his neck again, willing out more power and blood. Still nothing. He sliced his neck a third time, forcing out more blood while simultaneously filling Dave with enough power to reanimate a dozen ghouls.
