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SO YOU WANTto tell me why you need to know about this?”
As Vishous, son of the Bloodletter, tossed that query over the proverbial transom, he sat down behind his Four Toys and swiveled his office chair away from the bank of computers. Sitting across the Pit’s shallow living area, like the pair of them were waiting to be called into a doctor’s office—or hell, the school principal’s—Xhex and John Matthew were staring at him like they had no intention of opening their mouths to answer the question anytime soon.
Okay, fine, so maybe it was more a dentist’s.
V shook his head and reached for a hand-rolled. “Yeah, not how this is going to go. I want to know why you’re asking about these murders in Caldwell. You want to stay quiet? Fine. But I’m not finna do shit for you.”
John Matthew looked down at his hands as if he wanted to use them to sign something, but wasdetermined to let his mate do the talking. Which meant whatever this was had to do with Xhex. And if she was asking about corpses without their eyes?
Then Rehv was right. She was out in Caldwell killing civilians.
But you’d think that would be the kind of thing the female would remember…
In the dense quiet, Xhex sat back into the black leather sofa, the cushions creaking in a biker’s-jacket kind of way. As she glanced around, her body was tense, and he wondered if she wasn’t going to spring off the couch and start doing laps around the Foosball table—or head into the galley kitchen and help herself to some of his Grey Goose. The latter wasn’t going to be a tough target. He’d left a fresh bottle on the counter from having poured himself a little wake-up juice.
Which was what you did when you got a chopped-up text in the middle of the day from an otherwise tight-headed female:Cn u talk rt now?
Thebing!had woken both him and Doc Jane, and courtesy of hisshellan’s medical career in level-one trauma, and him having been in the Black Dagger Brotherhood for over three centuries, it was insta-wake time, both of them up and fully functioning. He’d texted back aYupand kissed his mate—who was so used to interrupted sleep thatshe’d been back on the pillow and in dreamland before he’d even pulled on some PJ bottoms.
“Well?” He put the hand-rolled between his front teeth and lit it with a red Bic. “What we got?”
As he spoke through the exhale, the familiar scent of fine Turkish tobacco wafted up around his head, and he brought his ashtray closer. To move things along, he tapped his keyboard, just to remind them of all the data he could be getting for them.
Xhex rubbed her face like she had a vise screwed onto her temples. “I think I might have done… some things at work.”
V cocked an eyebrow because he felt like pretending he was surprised might get her to loosen up. You know, allYou? Getting violent in a club where humans and vampires hell-bent on making bad choices did drugs and drank alcohol until they went off the chain and needed some consequential learning they maybe didn’t wake up from? Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
Yeah, he needed his Larry David face for this news flash.
“Can you be a little more specific?”
“It was in the last, say, six months.” She glanced at John. “And that’s all I know for sure.”
“We talking our kind? Or rats without tails.”
“Our kind. Them. Maybe both.”
“You don’t remember?”
John was the one to answer that with a curt shake of the head.
And then Xhex said, “No eyes. They won’t… have any eyes.”
And the female was known for using thelys.
“Okaaaaaaay, I think we’ll start there,” V murmured, as he swiveled back and fired up his Four Toys. “Let me see what I got on our side first.”
Until recently, like within the last couple of years, the vampire population had been on its own. No objective justice meted out for crimes. No place to vet disputes within bloodlines or with neighbors. No mating or birth certifications. But ever since Wrath had finally taken the throne, a system of public records had been established. V and Saxton had created the census table of names, aliases, birth dates—if known—and dates of deaths along with the cause. There was also a Notes section, and he searched under the word “eyes.” Because he couldn’t remember whether he had used “removed,” “lost,” or “taken out.”
“Lost,” like they’d rolled out of the skull?
“What are you seeing?” Xhex demanded as he started reading through the search results.
V took a drag and glanced over to the sofa. “Two a week or so ago. And one—”
“Last night?” When he nodded, she cursed. “What was… what happened? With that.”
“He was found in an alley off Market.” V tapped his hand-rolled as he scrolled down. “Tohr happened to be patrolling that quadrant and he was able to intercede as the police arrived on scene. Ligature marks around the neck, eyes had been removed. Body was taken to our morgue down in the garage and we’re still looking for next of kin. There was a human world ID on the guy, but the fake name isn’t registered with us.”
