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“We have a problem.” Rozurial pushed the evening newspaper over to me. I opened it up to find a picture of two zombies splashed across the front, along with a lurid headline: ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE BEGINS?
“Oh, fuck.” I took the paper and skimmed the article. It reminded me of a bland version of Andy Gambit’s sleaze rag.
“It was bound to happen sometime,” Morio said.
“I guess there was no way to keep the existence of zombies and ghouls secret forever. After all, vampires are out of the closet now.”
While most of the FBHs knew of the existence of Fae by now, and the vampires had come out of the closet, and Weres were talking about their two-faced nature openly, we’d somehow managed to keep the lid on zombie attacks and other nasty night creatures. Ghost stories had always abounded, but now, with this picture, it looked like the corpse was out of the coffin. Somebody in one of the graveyards had managed to snap the photo early this morning.
“Was another graveyard ransacked?”
“Yeah. Just like the others. And by the way, I took a look out there, at the one that was hit yesterday, and all the spirits are gone.” Vanzir shrugged. “Epidemic.”
Roz nodded. “Chase is fielding calls right and left. The 911 operators are swamped by people convinced there are zombies lurking outside their doors. And for once, the Fae aren’t being blamed.”
“No, but the vampires are.” Delilah looked grim.
“Vampires? What the hell do they have to do with it?” I frowned. “Vampires don’t raise zombies.”
“Of course they don’t, but since they’re undead, like the zombies, once again the Church of the Earthborn Brethren is making waves. They quieted down after the mess with Andy Gambit, but they’re back in the news today. They’ve been picketing outside the Shrouded Grove Suites all morning.”
“Not again. That’s where Wade lives.” The founder of Vampires Anonymous and a former psychologist, Wade Stevens was a vampire dedicated to help new vamps adjust to the “life.” Even though VA was now under control of the Seattle Vampire Nexus, run by Roman, Wade had been granted relative autonomy over the group.
“Yeah. Management has been dealing with this sort of crap since day one.”
When building started on the protected, vampire-friendly apartments, the picketers had come out of the woodwork. And they’d shown up almost every day since then until Andy Gambit’s death. The resulting scandal over the sleazy yellow-tabloid reporter/rapist had quieted them down for a while.
After the story had broken about what he’d done—a final count of ten confirmed rapes on Fae women, eleven on human women—the hate groups fell silent, not wanting to be associated with the vitriol aimed in his direction.
The resulting glee over his death had left them even more silent. But a few months had passed, and people quickly forgot the flavor of the month, be it bad or good.
“So how do we enact damage control? I’ll bet Chase is freaking out right now.” Chase’s department would be the first to face the fire.
“That’s putting it mildly.” Delilah rested her elbows on the table and stared at her food. “He asked us to come down to headquarters when you woke up. Menolly doesn’t know what’s going on—she had to go to bed before this all broke loose, but you can bet, tonight when the vamps wake up, a lot of bloodsuckers are going to be mightily pissed at being lumped together with zombies, let alone being accused of causing the problem. Roman’s going to have something to say about this, too.”
I let out a long sigh. This did not bode well. “Heaven help the reporter who started the rumor. With Roman and Blood Wyne so prominent now, I don’t know what the hell they’ll do. The Crimson Veil works behind the scenes. The idiot journalist may just end up vanishing off the face of the planet. And no one will ever know what happened.”
Roman scared me. He scared Delilah, too—I knew because we’d talked it over out of Menolly’s earshot. Granted, she had no choice, and now he was considered her reborn sire, another twist in the whole mess, but that made the son of the Vampire Queen far too close for comfort to our lives.
“We don’t have any control over Blood Wyne. And neither does the FH-CSI, regardless of what we’d like to think. If she wanted to, she could reach out and take control of this country. I kind of wish she’d stayed in seclusion.” Delilah absently bit into a cookie. “So we head to headquarters in a few minutes?”
“I suppose—” The phone interrupted me. I was sitting nearest, so I grabbed it. And sure enough, it was Chase on the line.
“Camille? You’re awake? Good.”
“We’re getting ready to come down to headquarters now,” I started to say, but he interrupted.
“No. I need you elsewhere. We have an emergency.”
The four little words I dreaded hearing but lately heard all too often. Life seemed to be made up of one emergency after another these days.
“What’s up?”
“You saw the paper, right?” He sounded harried.
I groaned. “Yeah.”
“That’s the tip of the iceberg. I need you guys out here, in full fighting armor. You know the house Fritz and Abby had? That burned to the ground?”
