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.
If Camil e hadn’t destroyed Vanzir for his actions, then was it my place to finish the job she’d chosen to leave undone?
“There’s more.” He was whispering now, staring at the floor.
“Oh Great Mother, no. What else?” I didn’t know how much more I could take.
“While I was . . . while we were . . . while I was fucking her, her eyes turned color—they flashed from violet to silver. And she said something. I’m not even sure she knows that she did. She said,
‘If you don’t like your nature, demon, then forsake it.’ And that’s when it happened.”
“What happened?” I was almost scared to hear.
“My feelers, my ability to feed on life force. I think it’s gone. When she said that, part of me was stripped away. It was horrible, someone inside me, tearing at me, rooting out an essential part of myself. And now, I can’t feed. I can’t even figure out how I used to. It’s like part of me is dead.” He stared at me, a bitter look in his eye. “Your sister did better than kil me. She destroyed what I am.
Now I real y am just a slave. A strong one, but . . . just a slave.”
As I gazed into his eyes, I knew he was tel ing the truth. There was no way he could lie about it to me. Vanzir was no longer able to feed. Camil e—or someone working through Camil e—had destroyed his most powerful weapon.
There was nothing left to say. I shifted back into gear and pul ed out from the curb, heading toward the FH-CSI building. This night just kept getting worse. For once, the thought of daylight and sleep loomed large like a promise of relief.
Chase was waiting. He glanced at the clock. “Cutting it thin, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, but this night has just made everything twice as hard as it should be. Any word on Morio?”
“Camil e’s sleeping in the bed next to him. Tril ian and Delilah are in the waiting room. So far, he’s holding his own. But they’ve run perilously low on the blood he needs. Delilah’s put out an emergency cal to the Supe Community and we’ve had donors straggling in the past hour or so, so that’s one good thing.”
“What the fuck is this about Wade being the serial kil er?”
“I know, I know. It’s ridiculous, but I can’t just ignore it. I have to check out any and al leads. The person who phoned in was male, that’s al I know. He claimed that Wade knew the women and had access to them. I can’t question him now—but on the last ray of sunset, I’l be at his door. I’d like you to meet me there.”
“Sure.” I frowned. “Sun is setting at around four twenty. Meet you there at four fifty?”
“Sounds good. And Menol y, I know you and Wade are on the outs, but I know you don’t want to see him go down for—”
“Actual y, we’re okay. For now, at least. And yeah, I don’t want to see him go down unless he actual y did something. I’l tel you now, it isn’t him. But I know you have to check things out. I’l see you this evening.”
I turned to Vanzir. “I’m heading home. Go trade off with Delilah. She’s going to need her sleep.
Tel her I’m headed home to bed. Make sure she gets her ass out of here. We need to be rested up, with al that’s going on.”
He nodded, not meeting my eyes.
“Vanzir, listen . . .” I paused, not knowing how to say what I was thinking, so final y I opted for just blurting it out as usual. “Whatever you did, Camil e seems to have decided it wasn’t worthy of death given the circumstances. She seems to have chosen her own form of punishment, and I’l admit, it was a doozy. So I’l leave it up to her. Obviously I’m pissed as hel , but . . .”
“I understand.” He raised one hand, then dropped it quickly and headed to the waiting room.
Al the way home, the events of the past twenty-four hours played through my mind. By the time I walked into the house, with thirty minutes to spare before sunrise, I was feeling more exhausted than I had in a long time. Iris had been dozing by the fire, curled up in an armchair. Maggie was in the playpen next to her side. I reached down and planted a soft kiss on the dewy, fuzzy leather of the gargoyle’s face. And then, without waking Iris, I slipped down to my lair and crashed into oblivious, dreamless sleep.
When I woke, I jumped into clean clothes and raced up the stairs, waiting impatiently for the kitchen to clear. Final y, I was able to slip out of my lair and into the living room.
“Morio? Is he—”
Iris nodded. She looked tired. I had a feeling it had been a long day for her. “He’s stil in critical condition. Sharah said there was something about the ghosts that made it worse. His wounds go deeper than just the stake in the liver. The ghost drained life energy out of him when it attacked.”
“Hungry ghosts. A variant of the hungry ghosts,” I whispered. There were several variations of the creatures. We’d come across one or two before, but these were powerful and angry. The thought of Ivana Krask having control over them was rather frightening, now that I thought about it.
But there was nothing to do about it.
“Yes,” Iris said. “They fed on him as his pain grew.”
Speaking of feeding . . . I looked around for Vanzir, but he was no place in sight. Neither was Delilah, nor Tril ian. “Where is everybody?”
“Nerissa headed out to rent an apartment until the condo sale goes through—she said to tel you she’l cal later. Delilah and Tril ian are back at the hospital with Camil e. Smoky and Roz aren’t home yet. Shamas is at work. Vanzir took off with some vague excuse. Does he seem different to you, Menol y? I wonder if the soul binder ritual is stil working.” Iris frowned.
I wasn’t sure how to deal with the question. What the hel was I going to tel her? But now that Vanzir’s powers were gone, it occurred to me the others would have to know. Next time we went into battle, someone might expect him to be able to feed on the creatures we were facing, and that was no longer possible.
Crap, and that meant Smoky, Tril ian, and Morio would find out, and that meant . . . Vanzir might as wel slit his wrists unless somehow Camil e could keep the three of them in check. Tril ian she could probably deal with—he was polyamorous by nature, too. And possibly Morio. But Smoky . . .
I real y didn’t want to think about what Smoky was likely to do.
“I’d better tel you something, but, Iris, this is a touchy situation. And hel —it wil have to wait. I’ve got to meet Chase at Wade’s. I’m late as it is. Cal down to the bar for me, would you? I’m not sure I’l make it in tonight, either. Ask Chrysandra how Derrick is doing, please. And Erin—tel her I’l see her soon.”
I grabbed a bottle of blood from the fridge and drank it without warming it. Normal y, the taste would have been pretty bad, but Morio had charmed this bottle into a strawberry shake flavor and it went down easy. Blessing his poor, wounded heart, I tossed the bottle in the sink and raced out the door to my Jag.
As I leaped down the steps, I landed on a patch of ice beneath the layer of fresh snow and went skidding, landing on my chin. I managed to hit a rock, which caused a gash, but it began to heal by the time I was on my feet and in the car.
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?”