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I rol ed my eyes as I felt the scab on my chin. Here I was, jian-tu, spy and acrobat extraordinaire, but once again my half-human heritage had knocked me off my feet and into a snowbank.
Speaking of snow—how the hel was Seattle getting so much snow? The city could go for years without it, but the past couple of winters had been overactive in the white-flake department. Of course, last year’s deluge had been the result of Loki moving into the area when Dredge came to town. But this year . . . maybe it was El Niño or La Niña or whatever child of the storm was bearing down on us now.
Wet from the fal , I slammed the door on my Jag shut and took off down the driveway. In the growing dusk, I saw two of the elven guards that Queen Asteria had assigned to our land and felt a surge of relief. I’d worry myself sick if Iris and Maggie didn’t have any other protection. Shade might be there, but extra hands never hurt.
Chase was impatiently waiting in his car outside Wade’s apartment. A couple of landlords in the city had gotten wise and realized how much money they could make by providing security apartments to rent to vampires. The landlords were Supe Community members, mostly Fae and vampire themselves, but there were now two dedicated apartment complexes where vamps could be guaranteed an apartment with at least two windowless rooms and a security system down on the front door to keep vampire hunters at bay.
As I pul ed in, I noticed a smal group of picketers marching in a circle on the sidewalk in front of the Shrouded Grove Suites. I hurried over to Chase’s vehicle.
“What the fuck do they want?”
“The heart of every vampire in there. Now that I see this, I’m not sure how safe it is for you to go in there with me. I can yel and wave my gun around, but somebody there may have a stake and decide that it’s better off used on you.” He looked concerned, and for Chase to be worried about a group of humans was—in itself—worrisome.
“I can take them on, you know that.”
“Al it takes is one misplaced stake. We saw that with Morio.” He turned to me, his expression somber. “Seriously, Menol y. I’m not sure what to do anymore. Thanks to Gambit’s paranoia, every religious freak—and I mean freak, not good upstanding people who live and let live—is running around trying to play Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And this latest mess with the vamp serial kil er is just making it worse. It’s up to me to keep law and order in the city, and I’m not doing a very good job of it.”
I patted him on the shoulder, not used to comforting people. “Johnson, you’re doing a damned fine job. You can’t keep everything under your control. I’m rejoining the VA, and we’l hammer out some way to help. But to do that, we need Wade. So I need you to help me prove Wade didn’t do this.”
“I hope it won’t be too hard,” he said, chewing on his lip.
Smacking him lightly with two fingers, I said, “Stop that. You’l give yourself a canker sore. Now come on. I’m sure Wade can come up with some alibi. His mother hangs around his neck like a leech. She’s bound to have been with him on at least one of the nights when the victims were murdered. By the way, no more bodies so far?”>Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him cringe.
“You’d better tel me. Camil e’s in no shape to, and somehow, as much as I dread hearing whatever it is you have to say, I’m getting the feeling that I’d better know about it.”
Vanzir stared at his hands. “I was feeding on whatever that ghost was . . . you remember that?”
I nodded. “Yeah, so what?”
“Do you remember earlier, when I warned her to get out of the way? Her life force is so bril iant when she’s running her magic that it’s like . . . to be honest, it’s like a hard-core turn-on. Why do you think I avoid her more than I do you or Delilah? She runs energy and I’m . . . addicted to feeding on energy.”
“Holy crap. You fed on her?” I swerved, barely missing a parked BMW.
“No. Not much.” His voice lowered. “Oh, this is al wrong. Why can’t I just not give a fuck like the rest of my kind?”
“Because you’re not like the rest of them. Just tel me what happened. I’l take responsibility if she finds out. I order you to tel me. You can’t refuse a direct order.” I wanted everything out in the open. Now.
He shuddered. “Crap. You fucking bitch. You would, wouldn’t you?” But his voice held no animosity, only resignation. “Fine. There are two ways my addiction comes out. One is to feed, but when I can’t feed, and the impetus is stil there, then I . . .”
As he paused, I had a flash of memory: what he’d said to her just shortly before that. If I didn’t snag you in with my feeders, I’d end up tearing your clothes off and fucking you raw.
Oh crap. Was I going to have to kil him myself? “You didn’t!”
Head in his hands, he shook it violently. “I didn’t mean to. She gave off one last blast at the ghost and I . . . I was so wired and so poised to feed. I broke.”
“Oh for the love of . . .” I swerved over to park against the curb and, hands on the wheel, forced myself to stare at the maple tree in the nearest yard. “Go on.”
“I started to feed on her and she screamed for me to get the hel out of her head. I was trying to pul back the entire time, trying to stop myself but I couldn’t—it was like a feeding frenzy. I think she knew because she grabbed my hands and put them on her waist, then pul ed up her skirts.”
I didn’t want to hear. Didn’t want to imagine my sister, desperate to stop the assault on her mind, offering herself up to put an end to it.
Vanzir continued, relentless, his voice cracking. “She was screaming for me to stop feeding on her. I tried to disengage, but the only way I could stop was to . . . was to fuck her. I slammed her up against the wal and . . . she didn’t fight. She let me. She was crying and saying that she knew that I couldn’t control it. I’d fed too deep on the ghost and was out of control. I know it’s no excuse, but I was so caught up in the frenzy that . . .”
Holy Mother Hel. I counted to ten, then twenty, then thirty before speaking. “Camil e gave herself to you in order to stop you from feeding on her life force?”
He nodded, tears streaking down his cheeks. “I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t want to feed on her, but with al the energy flying through the air, with al the fighting, I was so hyped up that . . .”
“That your nature took over, even though you knew she could kil you for it. But she didn’t kil you, did she?” As much as I wanted to strike him down right there, I forced myself back from the edge.
