Home for the Holidays: A Night Huntress Novella by Jeaniene Frost

pushing him away to save myself, I used the last of my strength to tighten my arms around him.
    “I love you,” I managed to get out amidst the overwhelming pain. As last words went, there weren’t any I’d rather say.
    Something flickered in his gaze. That blazing emerald glare became flecked with dark brown and his aura fragmented, like an invisible force had struck it with enough force to shatter it. Instead of twisting the knife and ending my life, he pulled it out of my chest—and rammed it into his own.
    “No!” I screamed, grabbing for the blade while clutching him with my other arm. Our descent slowed as my power flooded back now that the knife was out of my heart. His failed, the silver sapping his strength like supernatural kryptonite. Only my frantic grip on the hilt kept him from turning the blade and shredding his heart, ensuring true death.
    “Kitten.” The word was rasped so low I almost didn’t hear it above the whoosh of wind. “You have to let me die. Now, while I still have her contained!”
    I didn’t know what he meant and I didn’t care. I pulled the knife free, flinging it aside in revulsion. Bones made a ragged noise and his face twisted, as though he were somehow in more pain without the silver in his heart than with it.
    “You’re not going to die,” I swore, then pressed my mouth to his for a kiss filled with all the love, pain, fear, and frustration of the past several days.
    I was still kissing him when I pulled out my other gun and shot him through the head.

 
    Fourteen
    T HE J IFFY L UBE station had closed months ago, judging from the layer of dust on the concrete and metal fixtures. But after a few modifications, its underground work area with reinforced walls and thick beams was the perfect place to restrain a vampire. I’d had to shoot Bones in the head again after he healed from the first wound and woke up in another murderous mood, but now he was safely tucked away in what used to be the oil-change undercarriage of the facility, enough weighty chains wound around him to force an average vampire to his knees.
    Bones wasn’t close to average, though. He stood ramrod-straight and glared at me, his bright green gaze vowing revenge. Whatever flicker of emotion had led him to stop before twisting that knife in me was long gone, much to my regret. But as soon as Ian—who’d survived the fight in one piece, to my relief—was done drawing those bloody symbols on the ground, we’d know what sort of demon we had to chase to reverse the spell Bones was under.
    “You were gone less than thirty minutes. How’d you get a couple pints of that type of blood so fast?” I wondered. Then my gaze narrowed. “You didn’t kill anyone, did you?”
    He sat back on his haunches to give me a sardonic look. “I’d never let a perfectly good virgin go to waste that way. Swung by a middle school and collected from a few students. They’ll never remember it. Neither will their teacher.”
    I hated the idea of stealing blood from preadolescents, but we were too pressed for time.
    “There,” Ian said, drawing the last of the symbols.
    “What do you think you’re doing?” Bones asked, speaking his first words since he told me to let him die.
    Ian didn’t reply. He stepped outside the circle and glanced at me.
    “Let’s hope none of the students I picked were the experimental type.” Then he said “Balchezek” three times.
    “Stop!” Bones snapped, straining against his chains. The metal creaked but they held. That was why Ian and I had spent most of the night setting up this place.
    Nothing stirred in the circle with the bloody symbols, but a brunet man stepped out from behind one of the support beams as casually as if he’d been there all along.
    “You called?” Balchezek said.
    I let out a sigh of relief. Part of me had wondered if the demon made up the whole summoning ritual and we’d be wasting our time attempting it. Good to know that avarice still meant something to