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be fast regardless. Bones always did get straight down to business, and he wouldn’t expect a romantic reunion. Not when he just sent me a bouquet of body parts.
    The helicopter landed twenty miles away. We would drive the next fifteen and I would walk the last five. The three of them argued with me the entire time, but I ignored them. My mind was numb. I’d wanted desperately to see Bones again, but never had I imagined it would be like this. Why? I wondered again. Why would Bones do something so horrible, so extreme, after all this time?
    “Don’t do it, Cat.”
    Tate tried one last time as I wrapped my jacket around me. It was lined with silver weapons, useful for much more than warmth. Winter was slow to release its grip this year. Tate gripped my arm, but I yanked free.
    “If I go down, lead the team. Keep them alive. That’s your job. This is mine.”
    Before he could say anything more, I broke into a run.
     
    The last mile I slowed to a walk, dreading the confrontation. My ears were pricked for the slightest sound, but that was why the cave had been such a great hideout. The depths and heights played tricks with noise.I couldn’t pinpoint any exact sounds. Surprisingly, I thought I heard a heartbeat as I drew nearer, but maybe it was just my own pounding. When I touched the outer entrance of the cave, I felt the energy inside. Vampire power, vibrating the air. Oh God.
    Right before I ducked under the threshold, I pressed a button on my watch. Countdown, thirty minutes exactly, had just begun.
    Both my hands held wicked-looking silver daggers in them, and I was weighted down with my throwing knives. I’d even brought a gun and tucked it inside my pants, the clip filled with silver bullets. Being prepared to kill cost a small fortune.
    My eyes adjusted to the almost nonexistent lighting. From tiny openings in the rock, the cave wasn’t completely black. So far the initial entryway was clear. There were noises deeper inside, and the question I’d refused to consider now loomed in front of me. Could I kill Bones? Would I be able to look in his brown eyes, or his green ones, and wield that blow? I didn’t know, hence my backup plans of the missile. If I faltered, they wouldn’t. They’d be strong should I prove to be weak. Or prove to be dead, whichever came first.
    “ Come closer ,” a voice beckoned.
    It reverberated with echoes. Was that an English accent? I couldn’t be sure. My pulse sped up, and I went farther inside the cave.
    There had been some changes since I’d last seen it. The area that once doubled as a living room was trashed. The sofa was in sections, and it hadn’t been a sectional. Stuffing from the cushions settled like snow on the floor, the television was smashed in, and thelamps had long since seen their last light. The dressing screen that had guarded my short-lived modesty was in pieces throughout the area. Someone had obviously torn the place apart in a fit of rage. Frankly I was afraid to look in the bedroom, but I peeked inside anyway, and my heart constricted.
    The bed was reduced to bits of foam. Wood and springs littered the space and stood inches deep on the ground. Stones in the wall were chipped here and there from a fist or other hard object pummeling them. Anguish welled up in me. This was my doing, as surely as if I’d used my own hands.
    A cool current parted the atmosphere behind me. I whirled around with knives at the ready. Staring at me with glowing green eyes was a vampire. Behind him were six more. Their energy thickened the air in the close space, but they were evenly distributed, if you could call it that. Only one of them crackled with an abundance of power, but his face was entirely foreign to me.
    “Who in the fuck are you guys?”
    “You came. Your old boyfriend wasn’t lying. We weren’t sure whether to believe him.”
    This statement was from the vamp in front, the one with the curling brown hair. He looked to be about twenty-five, in human years.