This Side of the Grave

"Sloppy, Crawfield!" Cooper barked at her from his position overseeing the obstacle course.

"Catherine’s here," she replied, pointing.

He swung around, a guilty look crossing his mocha features. My shock dissolved enough for me to march inside, barely noticing Bones mutter under his breath that they were bloody lucky my temper no longer manifested itself in fire.

He was right. If it had been just six months before, fire would be shooting from my hands from this new shock to my already volatile emotions. Three months before and I would’ve ground all the activity in the Wreck Room to a halt with a furious squeeze of my mind. But with those borrowed abilities now gone, all I could do was lash out with my voice.

"You have got to be kidding me," I snapped to the room at large. "I thought it was crappy no one told me about Don’s condition, but who knew you guys had even more secrets up your sleeve!"

"Everyone, take ten," Dave called out. The dozens of team members stopped whatever grueling activity they’d been involved in to file out of the room – taking the door opposite the one I was closest to, I noticed.

In minutes, the training room was empty of everyone but Cooper, Dave, Tate, Bones, Juan, and my mother, who was the only one aside from Bones who didn’t have a shamefaced expression.

"Catherine, stop overreacting," she said in a chiding way as she walked over to me.

"After all, I’m not doing anything you haven’t done for over a decade."

"And I’ve almost gotten killed more times than I can count," I shot back, resisting the urge to shake her.

Her blue stare hardened. "I did get killed," she replied flatly. "Hiding from the evil in this world did nothing to protect me. Not then and not the other times before it, either." Guilt stabbed through me at her words, taking the edge off my anger. Aside from the night she met my father, every other time she’d been abused by vampires or ghouls had been because of me. Monsters didn’t fight fair, and when they came after me, they’d also come after those closest to me. The last vampire I’d tangled with thought forcibly changing my mother over would be just the thing to teach me a lesson. I was only sorry I couldn’t kill him more than once.

"Quite a difference between hiding from danger and dashing headlong into its arms," Bones noted in a more reasonable tone than I’d used. "Can’t undo the wrong that was done to you by getting in over your head, Justina."

"You’re right, I’m beyond fixing," she said, bleakness flashing across features that looked like she was in her thirties instead of forty-six. "But other people aren’t," she went on. "I can’t change what I am, but killing that vampire months ago showed me I can at least use it to make sure others don’t end up this way."

It’s like listening to me when I was younger, I thought in disbelief. For so long, I’d hated what I was and took out my ignorance and loathing on other vampires, thinking it would balance the scales against my father. If not for Bones showing me that evil was a decision, not a species, I might still be trapped in that vicious cycle of self-destruction.

And this was twice in one day that I’d been on the receiving end of the same stubborn arguments I’d once used myself. I cast a quick, pleading glance upward. Any time you want to lay off the paybacks, God, that’d be great.

"You could kill hundreds of rogue vampires and ghouls, but it still won’t make the pain go away," I finally said, my sense of deja vu growing as I repeated some of the same things Bones told me back then. "Believe me, I know. Only accepting yourself will make the hurt diminish, and that means accepting even the parts you don’t like or didn’t choose." My mother looked away, blinking back a sudden pink shine in her eyes. "Really? Rodney accepted me. Look where that got him."

"Rodney didn’t just accept you, he loved you," Bones said quietly. "Else he wouldn’t have died trying to save you."

She whirled until her back was to us, but even though her spine was straight, I saw her shoulders tremble. I wanted to hug her, but I knew sympathy would only be salt in the wound. A hug wouldn’t bring back the only man she’d had a real relationship with.

"I’m going after every filthy bloodsucker I can," she said after a long moment, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she’d insulted herself by the "filthy bloodsucker" comment. When she turned around, her gaze was devoid of pink and lit up with vampiric green instead. "You have no control over that. The only thing you can control is whether I do it with the support of your old team, if I make it through their version of basic training, or on my own."

"Even with their support, you’ll still probably get killed. You don’t know how dangerous it is." I let out a sigh of sheer frustration. "Please, don’t do this." Her jaw tightened until it creaked. "I’m doing it."

"God, you’re just as stubborn as Don!" I said, fed up.

"Just as stubborn as someone else I know, too," Tate muttered under his breath.

"Stuff it, Tate," I snapped.

"Kitten." Bones placed a hand on my arm. Waves of calm seemed to wash over my subconscious, soothing my twisted emotions like salve applied to a burn. "Some things can’t be taught, only learned. But there is a matter we can change; stopping these ghoul radicals. If their numbers grow, every vampire will be in danger, including your mum." Right. That problem wouldn’t wait for me to try to talk sense into my senselessly obstinate family. I had to focus on priorities. First: Stop the lethal, fascist propaganda in the ghoul community that had already left a trail of Masterless vampire bodies. Then I could move on to trying to talk my mother and uncle out of their newfound death wishes.

Something cynical in me wondered if the ghoul zealots might turn out to be easier.

I stared at my former team members. "You guys are so on my shit list, both for hiding this and for concealing Don’s condition from me, but we’ve got bigger problems. Come with me so I can bring you up to speed. Mom." I shook my head. "We’ll talk later." She redid her dark hair into a tighter ponytail as she walked away. "Much later. I have training for the next several hours."

Chapter Six

Don sat on the bed, an oxygen masklying on the table next to him. From the faint lines around his face, he’d had it on before we came in. I would’ve told him to keep using it, but of course, that logic would only fall on deaf ears. I shut the door behind the six of us and then proceeded to outline the situation with the ghouls as we knew it.

"As I told Cat, we need a person on the inside," Don stated once I was finished. "It’s important enough that I’m asking you, Dave, to take an extended leave from the team to infiltrate these zealots. Our country has enough problems as it is with human terrorists. We can’t afford to let undead ones grow in power. The results could be catastrophic." Dave ran a hand through his hair. "Fuckin’ right. I’ll do it." I knew that would be his answer. Dave had never backed down from a dangerous assignment. Not even after he’d been killed on one.