This Side of the Grave (#5 Night Huntress)

“You got what you wanted. Now get them off him,” I said, feeling stronger by the moment. The draining effect from my contact with the Remnants
must be wearing off. Good. That meant Bones wouldn’t suffer any lingering damage, either. I didn’t know if spectral abuse could somehow screw
with a vampire’s natural ability to heal, but that must not be the case, so Bones should be fine as soon as those energy-munchers got the hell away.
I swung my head around to glare at the shadows still funneling through his body. They’d better pray once I finally bit the dust, I stayed all the way
dead, or I’d come back and kick their asses for this—
Those shadows fell from Bones so abruptly that he dropped to the floor before catching himself, crumpling into a heap. I ran over to him, cradling
him, biting my lip so hard I drew blood from my rage at how slowly he pushed himself upright. Then I lasered a glare at Marie. She watched us with
the oddest look on her face, the Remnants who’d so recently tormented Bones now appearing around her.
“You can send your little friends back to their graves, or you can play with them all night. I don’t care, but we’re leaving,” I told her curtly, noticing
Bones looking between me and Marie with a sort of angry incredulity. The wall of Remnants surged toward Marie, until she was surrounded above,
below, and on all sides by the twisting, diaphanous horde. Still showing off her power, I noted in contempt, as if we hadn’t gotten the message
before.
“I ordered them back to their graves the same time I had them release him,” Marie said, each word holding only the sugary flavors of her accent
instead of the echoing timbres of the grave.
“Bullshit,” I snapped, feeling another wave of anger rip through me, followed by an almost overwhelming hunger. “They’re still here, aren’t they?”
“Kitten, your voice . . .” Bones said with disbelief.
Something slammed into me so hard that my vision went black. I braced for pain, but strangely, it didn’t come. Sounds became muffled,
disorganized. I thought I heard Bones shouting, but couldn’t focus on what he was saying or even where he was anymore. Air rushed by me in ever
greater whooshes, reminding me of how it felt when I’d fallen from the bridge, but I couldn’t be falling. I was still in the room beneath the cemetery,
wasn’t I?
Flashes filled my vision; streaks of silver and white going by so fast, they were almost indistinguishable. I could see through them dimly, but it was
as if I was watching things from a long way off. A groan came out of my mouth, part of me registering that it sounded like it was filled with the voices
of people who’d died decades, centuries, even millennia ago. As if in a dream, I watched Bones gently lower me to the concrete floor and then
punch Marie so hard that she smashed against the far corner of the room.
“I’ll grant you that one strike,” she said, the words seeming to echo in my mind, “but only one. Now, will you listen to what you must do to help her,
or will you make me kill you and leave her at the mercy of the grave?”
I could hear Bones reply and Marie answer, but somehow their words were lost to me amidst the keen of countless others, so much louder than
when I’d picked up on humans’ thoughts. His touch wasn’t lost, though, when he knelt next to me and scooped me up in his arms. The feel of his skin
on mine was an anchor I tried to focus on amidst the whirling chaos that had overtaken me.
I was so cold. So empty. So HUNGRY.
As he carried me out of the room, Marie stopped him, pressing her mouth to my ear. She murmured something, but it was only one voice among
thousands, her words snatched away by the roar in my mind before I could fully register her question. Bones yanked me away, but I could still feel
the burn of her lips against my skin. His long strides took me into the blackness of the tunnel, brushing by Jacques as though the ghoul wasn’t even
there. My fingers dragged along the damp walls as we passed, faintly bemused by the trails of light they seemed to leave. That light increased,
pulling itself from the walls to reach toward me with seeking tentacles, but I wasn’t afraid. I was sad. There were so many of them, poor things, and
they were so hungry . . .
Grinding metal sounded ahead, then a thicker ray of silvery light shone at the end of the tunnel. Bones increased his pace, jumping straight up
into it when we were bathed in its glow, and then everything around me exploded. The voices became deafening, the cold mind-numbing, the
hunger insatiable. Those sensations increased, until it felt like I was struggling in the midst of a huge silken web to get away, but all the while my
efforts only tightened the cage around me.
Chapter Seventeen
The first thing that registered was the scent of smoke, curling around my nostrils as if begging to be inhaled. The next realization was that my
arms felt stiff and my wrists were sore. I opened my eyes, the bland grayness of a concrete ceiling above me, Bones’s pale, naked flesh to my right.
“What?” I began, trying to sit up, only to have something pull on my arms. I tilted my head backward, shocked to see that I was manacled to a wall
even as another glance revealed that Bones and I were on a narrow bed. My gaze flew to him once more, noting the cigarette he set down even as
he exhaled a long plume of white.
“Why are you lying there smoking while I’m chained to a wall?” I demanded.
The look he gave me was a mixture of relief and cynicism. “Since it seems you don’t remember anything about the past two days, let me assure
you, luv—I earned that smoke.”
Two days? The last thing I clearly remembered was Bones carrying me out of that underground room with Marie. That was two days ago? And