One Grave at a Time
Page 28

If left up to Bones, he'd split up the watches between himself and Ian, but that wouldn't be fair. My mother couldn't help her weariness as soon as dawn struck, but I could stay awake as well as the men could. All of us slept in the family room, sharing the four mattresses that we'd brought in from the bedrooms. It might not be comfortable-and it sure as hell wasn't romantic-but it was safer. If by chance the watchperson did fall asleep and Kramer managed to sneak past the sage and get in, he wouldn't be able to single out the most vulnerable of us without waking all the rest. Not with the way we slept, clustered around each other.
Another creak of the boards sounded outside, but this time, it was followed by a whisper I couldn't make out. I frowned. That was unusual for Kramer. He normally liked to bash about while stringing curses together as loud as he could squawk. The ghost knew when we slept, too, so he frequently stopped by at dawn for maximum pain in the ass effect. But whispers? It made me curious enough to get up. It might be Fabian or Elisabeth, unable to venture inside because of the sage and trying to be considerate by not waking everyone with a loud greeting.
I crept toward the door, keeping as quiet as I could. No need for everyone to wake up and investigate the odd whisper. Bones stirred, but his eyes remained closed. My mother was dead to the world, Tyler's snores continued uninterrupted, and Ian didn't even twitch. I couldn't help shaking my head as I looked at him. Ian slept like a baby every morning-well, a baby who continually kept one hand down his pants. Guess his misdeeds didn't bother his conscience enough to cost him a moment of shut-eye.
Carefully, still trying not to wake the others, I opened the front door. To my surprise, it was Kramer floating over the far side of the ruined porch instead of Fabian or Elisabeth. He let go of one of the loose boards when he saw me, beckoning me forward with almost a friendly gesture.
Oh, sure, I'll come right over without getting any sage first, I thought. Did he think slamming that car on me had knocked my brains loose?
I gave him the finger, then picked up two of the nearest jars of sage, deciding to go a few feet away from the door only because I wanted to give everyone else a few more moments of sleep. If Kramer kept to his usual form, he'd be cursing and hurling boards at the house soon enough.
The Inquisitor didn't respond to my fingered opinion. He simply waited without moving or speaking while I walked over without making a sound on the rickety remains of the porch. I kept the door open, and, though I ventured away from it, I made sure to stay within two good lunges.
"Fancy seeing you again," I said, keeping my voice low.
That moss green gaze raked me from head to toe, but not in the sleazy way he'd done on other occasions. This time, it was the gaze of an enemy sizing up his opponent and finding her lacking.
"Do you truly believe that you, a mere woman, can defeat me?"
Aside from the gender insult, this was the most rational I'd ever seen Kramer. He sounded genuinely thoughtful and his voice was as quiet as mine-a huge departure from his normal, trumpeted witches-will-burn rants. I could respond to his question by listing all the other arrogant bastards I'd taken down over the years. Or by pointing out that I'd already defeated his plans for Francine, Sarah, and Lisa by putting them out of his reach for now, but I preferred to remain underestimated. Don't worry about widdle gurly me, big bad monster. I'm harmless.
"Talk is meaningless. We'll know who's defeated whom when it's all over, and there's only one of us left standing," I replied.
From the faint scraping sound, someone in the house had woken up and was headed toward the door. Before he got there, I knew it was Bones from the brushes of his aura. Even whispers had disturbed his light sleep. Kramer didn't seem to notice. His attention didn't waver from me.
"Though you are a woman, you are strong," the ghost said, still in that same musing way. "You pushed the car aside as if it had no effect."
Actually, it had hurt like hell. Under other circumstances, I might have stayed under it saying things like "Ow, ow, oww!" while I waited to heal, but I didn't have the luxury at the time.
"You're not the first person who's tried to kill me with a car," was what I said, shrugging as if either time hadn't been a big deal. I could feel that Bones was in the doorway, but he didn't come out, keeping concealed from the ghost in the shadows of the doorframe.
Kramer smiled, cold and calculating. "I knew it would not kill you."
Interesting. Now that he mentioned it, he hadn't been running around trying to ignite the fuel tank while I was briefly trapped under it. Didn't it occur to him to try to blow the car up? Or was he lying about knowing the car wouldn't kill me?
Far be it for me to understand the mental workings of a maniac.
"What's with quiet chatting instead of your usual blustering?" I asked, changing the subject. "You lonely because Francine, Lisa, and Sarah are out of your reach, so you have no one to talk to?"
Please get pissed and tell me who your accomplice is, I silently urged him. Go on, impress me with how much time you spend with whoever that prick is!
But he didn't. He gave me another of those contemplative looks instead. "Why do you risk so much for them? They are nothing to you."
"No, they're nothing to you," I corrected at once, "but they mean something to me because they're in trouble and I can help. If I only put my ass on the line for people I loved, I'd be no better than half the monsters I've hunted. Even evil people risk themselves for loved ones. Just because you picked women I don't know doesn't mean I'm going to sit on the sidelines and let them die."
His smile grew, showing those brownish molars in between gaps of gums. I couldn't help but think it was poetic justice that he would keep that nasty mouth all through eternity, hopefully while locked in a homemade jail.
"You still believe you can stop me, Hexe, but you can't. You don't fear me, but soon, you will."
"No, I won't," I replied sharply. "You won't draw any strength from me because I've got your number, Inquisitor. You might be harder to kill with your whole lack of a physical body, but you're no scarier than all the other assholes that are now dead while I'm still standing."
"Until Samhain," was all he said, then vanished from sight.
I stared at the spot where he'd been, a smile of my own twisting my mouth.
That's what I'm counting on, fucker.
Chapter Thirty-Two
On October 30, as soon as night's concealing veil fell, Ian, Bones, and I flew away from the tattered farmhouse. Each of us was carrying a large, tarp-draped object. My mother and Tyler were staying behind, leaving for Spade's tomorrow afternoon via a more conventional mode of transportation: a taxicab. That way, in case my borrowed abilities had faded to where Kramer couldn't locate me by concentrating alone, he could follow them to Spade's house. They'd take plenty of sage with them in case the ghost did more than trail them, but my money was on Kramer's trying to be sly and staying unseen. After all, they weren't the targets he'd so carefully picked out. Francine, Lisa, and Sarah were the ones Kramer really wanted, and we wanted to be sure he found his way to them.
Once we had everything in place, anyway.
That was why we didn't fly our large bundles right to Spade's. We went to a defunct building that had formerly been a combined sewer overflow facility in Ottumwa instead. Underneath the building, a series of storm drains, tunnels, and sewers led to the Des Moines River. It wasn't as perfect a setting as our cave with its underground river-and it smelled a damn sight worse even though it hadn't been operational in years-but it would suffice. Bones had had his co-ruler, Mencheres, purchase the building and its surrounding riverside property over the past couple weeks using a dummy corporation. Couldn't risk someone else tearing this down to put a new business up and disturbing what we hoped would be Heinrich Kramer's final resting place. Now, we just had to carve a hole in the underground trunk sewer deep enough to reach the river's water table so that we could ensure the flow of fresh water around where we intended to place the trap.
It had taken Bones and me plus Chris's team a week to lay the previous trap in place. We had exactly five hours to set this one up, and we had carving up the trunk sewer to contend with, too. I didn't want to calculate how long our odds were, trying to focus instead on how powerful Bones, Spade, and Ian were. I'd do my damnedest, too, and either we would finish or we wouldn't. The only thing that was certain was there was no time for hand-wringing.
We landed outside the empty facility, and I set my heavy section of the trap down as soon as my feet hit the ground. Flying for an hour while toting that bulk made me appreciate how effortlessly Bones carried me when we flew together. Granted, I weighed less than this hunk of rock, but he'd also flown while carrying me and at least one other person, and he made it look easy even while going faster and farther.
"Brilliant landing," Ian commented, giving a pointed look at the long furrow I'd carved in the earth when I touched down. "We're trying to keep a low profile, and here you've gone and made it look like a meteorite hit."
I'd been proud of myself for not blasting through the side of the building-staying in the air was far easier than landing!-so I snootily lifted my nose at him.
"I'm less than two years undead, and I'm already flying. How long did it take you to find your wings, pretty boy?"
Bones snorted at the indignation on Ian's face. He was nothing if not competitive. "You had that coming, mate."
"Power leech," Ian replied sulkily.
He had me there, but Bones laughed. "You'd give both your stones to have that ability, not to mention she flew before turning into a vampire, so that's hers alone."
"If you're through squabbling," a smooth voice called out from the building, "perhaps we can set about securing this trap?"
Spade was already here, good. I looked at my large chunk of rock and the entrance to the building. Then I cracked my knuckles. First things first, and that would be making a new door large enough for all the pieces to fit through. I only hoped the tunnels leading to the trunk sewer were wide enough not to need their own form of remodeling.
The five-hour countdown had just begun.
Four hours and twenty-two minutes later, Ian stared at the reassembled trap secured in the bottom of the trunk sewer, water sloshing over it from the adjoining hole we'd torn through to reach the Des Moines River. A breath of laughter escaped him.
"You've made it look like a huge cauldron. That's spectacularly twisted of you, Reaper."
I wiped some of the brackish, cold water away from my face before replying. Everyone else waited in the tunnel above, but I wanted to check the bottom of the trap one more time to make sure it was steady. Yes, call me paranoid. If all went well tomorrow, once Kramer was in the trap, we could do a more thorough job of reinforcing the entrance we'd dug into the sewer wall and the base of the trap to make extra sure that time and erosion wouldn't disturb Kramer's jail cell; but for now, it looked like it would hold.
"Kramer's obsessed with witchcraft, so I wanted him to be in familiar surroundings. Never let it be said that I'm not sentimental."
Despite the flip words and feeling more exhausted than I could remember, I also wanted to whoop for joy. We'd done it! The trap was secured, river water washing over its bottom half, with time to spare. Not much time, true, but I wasn't going to quibble. I could even give Ian a big sloppy kiss for how hard and fast he'd worked. Arrogant, obnoxious pervert he might be, but damn, could he accomplish an objective when he set his mind to it. I'd never doubted Bones's or Spade's power and dedication, but Ian had surprised me.
"Let's leave before your spectre finds this place," Spade said, disappearing out of sight into the tunnel. His voice floated behind him. "Denise will be so relieved to hear we're finished."
I climbed up the sewer wall, accepting the hand Bones gave me to lift me the last few feet of the way. "You brought a car, right?" I called after Spade, hoping the answer was yes.
"Of course," his reply drifted back. "Knew none of us would fancy burning more energy to fly back, and tomorrow, we'll need everything we can muster against Kramer."
How true. Then I cast a glance at how muddied and wet we were and gave Bones a rueful look. "We're going to trash Spade's stuff again."
He grinned. "No worries, I'm sure it's a rental."
Spade drove, Ian rode shotgun, and Bones and I took the backseat. I was so glad to lean against him and just shut my eyes that I didn't even mind being wet, cold, and filthy. Spade turned the heater on, so it wasn't long before I began to feel toasty warm, too. After spending a couple weeks in a house with no electricity and the frigid night air blowing in from countless slits in the boarded-up windows, the heat felt like heaven to me. In fact, I was so relaxed I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew, the car jerked to a stop, and the landscape around us had completely changed.
We were on a narrow gravel road leading to what looked like a pretty, two-story white-and-blue house at the end of it. Hay fields stretched out for acres behind the property, and a horse barn stood empty off to the far right side of the house. It was wonderfully quiet, no neighbors visible in the immediate vicinity and thus no noisy intrusions from their thoughts to crowd my psyche.
"Christ, no," Spade whispered at the same time I realized that a complete lack of other people's thoughts was a very, very bad sign. I should be picking up on four minds in the house ahead. Instead, there was only ominous silence.