Night Huntress 07 - This Side of the Grave Read Online Free PDF

fed off of and I’d had his blood before, but I didn’t want to make it a habit. Spade was a Master vampire, so that meant he was too strong. Most of Bones’s friends were too strong, in fact.
     
    Dammit. Not drinking from Bones without starving would be more difficult than I’d imagined.
     
    “For now, don’t tell anyone of our association,” Bones said to Ed and Scratch, centering my attention back on the present situation. “Go about your business as if we’d never met. Here’s a number where you can reach me. At the first sight of those ghouls, you ring me straightaway, but do not confront them. Understood?”
     
    “Got it” and “Sure” were the responses. I wondered if they did understand. I did, and wasn’t thrilled.
     
    I dropped the vampires off close to the Easton fountain where we’d met them, waiting until I’d driven a couple miles away before I slanted a glance at Bones.
     
    “You’re using them as bait.”
     
    Bones met my gaze, his dark brown stare concealing nothing. “Yes.”
     
    “God,” I muttered. “You’re not letting them tell anyone that they’ve just been upgraded from being Masterless to belonging to a powerful vampire so those ghouls will still consider them easy meat. That’s deliberately putting them in danger.”
     
    “No more than they were before, as they said themselves. But now if they’re harmed, I’ll have rights under our laws to investigate,” he replied with annoying logic. “Believe me, pet, I’m hoping nothing happens to them and their usefulness comes from pointing me in those ghouls’ direction. But if Apollyon is behind these attacks, we need a way to get to him without looking like we’re being mindlessly antagonistic. Otherwise…”
     
    Bones didn’t have to finish the sentence. Otherwise, Apollyon will have more fuel for the rumors that I’m seeking to be some sort of vampiric Stalin , I mentally finished. Right, because that’s what I put on my To Do list every morning. Brush teeth. Wash hair. Rule undead world with an iron fist.
     
    “I don’t know why ghouls would listen to Apollyon about me being a threat anyway,” I muttered. “I might have a wacky diet as a vampire, but Apollyon can’t tell people that I’ll combine ghoul and vampire powers anymore. Changing over took care of that paranoid rant from him.”
     
    Bones’s stare was sympathetic, but unyielding. “Kitten, you’ve been a vampire for less than a year. During that time, you’ve blown the head off a Master vampire through pyrokinesis and frozen dozens of vampires into a stupor through telekinesis. Your abilities, plus your occasional heartbeat, are bound to frighten some people.”
     
    “But they’re not my abilities!” I burst. “Okay, the intermittent heartbeat is mine, but all the rest were borrowed powers. I don’t even have them anymore, and if I hadn’t drunk from Vlad and Mencheres, I never would have gotten them in the first place.”
     
    “No one knows how you got them, or that you lose them after a while,” Bones noted.
     
    “Maybe we should tell them.” But even as I said it, I knew better.
     
    He let out what might have been a sigh. “If Apollyon knew the source of your abilities, he could argue that you could manifest any power you wanted merely by drinking from a vampire who had it. Better he just thinks you’re extraordinarily gifted based on your own merits.”
     
    In other words, no matter how we tried to dress it up, I still came across as a dangerous freak. I took in a deep breath in the hopes that the familiar gesture would calm me. It didn’t. All it did was bring the scent of blood into my lungs, clenching my stomach in an almost painful way.
     
    “Too bad your co-ruler’s visions still aren’t back to full strength. That would take the guesswork out of whether or not this is Apollyon’s doing.”
     
    Bones gave a shrug in concurrence. “Mencheres has had a few more glimpses into the future, but nothing relating