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"Let me make some phone calls," Benicio said. "Before we jump to any conclusions."
"So now you think the Nasts will tell you the truth?"
"No, but with this much detail to prompt their memories, I know people who will."
A half-hour later Benicio confirmed our suspicions. The Nast Cabal had learned of Edward and Natasha's murderous hobby, and decided they wouldn't make good neighbors. According to Benicio's sources, the original plan had been to kill both, but the vampires had outwitted several assassins and fled the country. Unwilling to accept failure so easily, the Cabal sent out one last hit man, who'd managed to behead Natasha. The Nasts then made a mistake. They decided not to spend any more money chasing Edward around the globe. By killing his mate, they'd taught him a lesson he'd not soon forget. And he hadn't.
"They killed Natasha, and he wants revenge," I said. "Understandable...when it comes to attacking the Nasts. But what do the other Cabals have to do with it?"
Lucas looked at his father. "A vampire asked for a private meeting with you in July. The Nasts executed Natasha at the end of August. Presumably, if several assassination attempts had been made, the Nasts had been chasing the pair for at least a month. I would say that the timing of that request wasn't coincidental."
"Edward wanted to speak to the Cortez CEO?" I said. "But why?"
"Presumably to request sanctuary," Lucas said. "That's not uncommon. If you are pursued by one Cabal, the best place to go for help is to another Cabal. If the Boyds and St. Clouds were being honest with us, I suspect they'd admit to similar requests."
"In other words, he went to each of the Cabals for help, and they each turned him down, wouldn't even find out what he wanted. And that pissed him off enough to start killing their kids? This doesn't make sense."
"No," Cassandra said, her first words since we'd begun. "It wouldn't. Not to you."
She moved to the window and opened the blind. For a moment, she just stared outside. Then she turned back toward us.
"You have to see this from a vampire's point of view. Do I think such a slight is grounds for killing someone's children? Of course not. But I can understand why Edward might. What is the life of those children to him? No more than those bodies in his field. A means to an end. Is he killing them because he wants them to die? No. He's killing them because he wants to cause pain, to hurt those who hurt him. They killed his life partner. I don't think you really understand what that means."
"They'd been together a long time," I said. "Obviously, they--"
"Obviously nothing. What do you consider a long marriage in your world? Twenty-five years is a cause for great celebration, isn't it? Edward became a vampire when Queen Victoria took the throne. He'd been one for less than a decade when he went to Russia and met Natasha, who had just become one herself. They have never been apart since. One hundred and fifty years together, with no one else: no parents, no siblings, no children, no friends. Nothing but each other."
"Now she's gone, and he wants revenge. He'll keep killing until he's repaid every Cabal for her death, by killing children from each."
"No, he'll keep killing until he's dead," Cassandra said. "Nothing else will stop him. I have no idea what his plan is, and he may very well have one, but he won't stop when he reaches the end, because he won't feel avenged. How could he? No hurt he inflicts on the Cabals will match his own."
"Okay," said a sleepy voice from the other seat. Jaime opened one eye. "I get the whole 'eternal love' thing and, as weird as it sounds, I think you're right that my spook is this Natasha chick, but that leaves one big question. Why the hell would s
he want to help us catch her man?"
"Does she?" Lucas said. "I'm not certain that would be a correct interpretation of her actions to date. The only clue she's given us is the vampire lead, which was undoubtedly meant not to tell us that our killer is a vampire, but that she is."
I nodded. "Maybe figuring that if Jaime knew she was a vampire, she'd know the right way to make contact."
"So what does she want?" Jaime asked.
We all looked at Cassandra.
"I don't know her well enough to answer that," Cassandra said. "The only thing I can say, with some certainty, is that she wasn't a passive or unwilling partner in anything Edward did."
"In other words," I said, "she's not suffering a sudden attack of conscience and wants to help us stop Edward before more kids die."
"Definitely not," Cassandra said. "She may be seeking the same thing they sought before her death: protection from a rival Cabal, offering to help you find Edward on the condition that the Cortezes protect him from the Nasts. Or she may be hoping to feed you false information and lead you away from him."
"Doesn't matter either way," Jaime said. "Unless she learns how to carve words in my flesh, she's not telling us anything. Wherever she is, it's out of necro calling range. She's trying her damnedest to change that, but it's not working."
"And where exactly is she?" I said. "Stuck in limbo? Or a demon dimension? Or some separate vampire afterlife? Maybe if we knew..."
"We can look into that," Lucas said. "But we may never find the answer. The important question right now is not where is she, but where is he?"
We knew Edward was almost certainly in Miami. Why go elsewhere when all the Cabals were right here? But where to find him? At this point, we might as well grab a map of Miami, start tossing darts into it, and conduct our search that way.
Benicio left shortly after that to start working the Edward angle with the Cabals--or the Cabals that weren't already working it. Presumably, the moment the Nasts heard the words "vampire suspect" they'd known exactly who was killing their kids and had started searching for him. Of course, it would have been nice if they'd shared that information, but that would also mean sharing the glory when he was caught--and accepting full blame for letting him slide from their grasp in the first place.
