This Side of the Grave (#5 Night Huntress)

ground them into powder to make certain Joan could never be brought back.”
“And the vampires let her burn,” I said. My voice rose. “She was their sacrificial lamb, her death the price for their truce.”
His gaze was so dark and bottomless that I almost felt swallowed by those brown orbs. “Yes and no. Joan was offered a choice to become a full
vampire instead of facing the stake. She chose to die instead.”
The strangest sort of grief snaked through me. Even though Joan had been dead centuries before I was born, a small part of me still felt like I’d
lost a friend. She was the only other person who’d known what it was like to live as I had—fitting into neither the human world nor the vampire one.
She’d been punished for her unwanted uniqueness like me, too, but even if she’d chosen vampirism over death, Joan’s persecution from Apollyon
might not have ended. Not if all half-breeds who changed over ended up as strange as me. I was as much of a full vampire as I was ever going to
get, but because of my oddities, the ghoul leader was still trying to use me as kindling for the fires of war.
Right then I determined to kill Apollyon. We hadn’t wanted to do that to avoid strengthening his cause by turning him into a martyr, but even if I had
to make it look like an excruciatingly painful accident, that ghoul was going down. It wasn’t enough to stop him or discredit him. He’d only bide his
time until another half-breed popped up in history and then use that person as a poster child to rally fear-bought support in another quest for power. I
would not let that happen.
“No wonder you’re so wigged about Apollyon being behind these recent attacks,” I said quietly. “And you should have told me all this before.”
“That creep is still alive?” Timmie blurted, sounding aghast.
“I was going to tell you, Kitten.” His mouth twisted. “Though I admit to a great abhorrence for the subject, as you can imagine.”
I certainly could. It let me know just how high the stakes were if Apollyon was back to his old tricks—and everything pointed to that being the
case. If we didn’t stop him before things reached a tipping point, the vampire nation might just offer Apollyon the same deal that had prevented war
last time: the life of the half-breed.
Or in my case, the life of the freaky, mostly dead vampire with the occasional heartbeat and really weird diet. I wouldn’t be given another
alternative like Joan, considering I’d already changed over. If the vampire nation made that deal, the world wasn’t big enough for me to hide in. Not
with how ninety-five percent of all vampires would suddenly be screaming for my head to prevent an all-out species clash.
And Bones would die defending me from his kind, no matter if our situation was hopeless. I knew that, because I’d do the same for him. Now his
ruthlessness with Ed, Scratch, and even Dave, whom Bones considered a friend, made a lot more sense. Stopping Apollyon from inciting war
between the species wasn’t good enough. We had to stop him before things even got close to that point. If not, I was toast, and Bones along with
me.
“Well, then.” My voice was very calm. The situation was so serious that it pushed me past my usual nerves. “We’ll just have to work that much
faster, won’t we?”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
Timmie’s voice was a hoarse croak, but I turned to him with a grateful, though somewhat forced, smile.
“I’m so glad you asked.”
City lights blurred by as Bones whizzed down the freeway. I had my arms around his waist more for comfort than fear of falling off the motorcycle.
Even though I wasn’t afraid of riding them anymore—being dead tended to cure a lot of phobias—I still didn’t think I’d ever grow as fond of them as
Bones was. Plus, you wouldn’t catch me riding one without a helmet like he did. Not with all the bugs that congregated in the warm summer air. Ew.
We’d spent the past ten days fruitlessly club hopping, hoping we’d seem so clueless and relaxed that some rabble-rousing ghouls wouldn’t be
able to resist attacking us. No such luck, as it turned out. Ed and Scratch hadn’t seen any of those ghouls recently, either. Timmie, who’d agreed to
help us, also hadn’t come up with any promising leads through his sources yet. Dave, trolling the places Ed and Scratch said the ghouls had
frequented, had likewise struck out while he masqueraded as a ghoul looking for a nice bunch of bigots to hang with. So far, the score was
Apollyon, one; us, zero.
The logical part of me knew this was to be expected. That Apollyon was too smart to be lured in so easily, but I was still frustrated. Every day I
spent chasing that zealot’s minions was one less day I had to convince my uncle and mother not to do the equivalent of riding hell-for-leather into
death, as both of them seemed determined to do. For once, couldn’t the bad guys be a little accommodating?
Obviously not, so it was time to switch tactics. Maybe Bones’s and my presence in Ohio had made Apollyon’s ghouls move on to another city.
Maybe they were waiting to attack us until they had more forces in place. Who knew? All that was apparent was our current strategy wasn’t working,
and we didn’t have the time to wait and see if another ten days of the same activities would net better results.
I’d had an idea for a potential Plan B: trotting out in public several times without Bones. Mencheres could always claim to need his co-ruler for
some fabricated, urgent business so Bones would have an excuse for not being there. Bones had flatly refused to go for it, however. Too
dangerous, he’d stated, and it was either drop the subject, or do what I’d sworn never to do again—go behind his back and take the risk anyway.
That had been my modus operandi several times in the past, but no matter how it seemed like the only way to handle things at the time, it had
always backfired. I was determined to show I’d learned from my mistakes, but the rebellious part of me knew if I wasn’t his wife, Bones would agree
that using me as bait was our best option. Still, we’d promised to fight our battles together instead of one of us—usually me—dashing off into the