Drink Deep - Chloe Neill [78]
So I opted to use one of my best talents—stubbornness.
“What exactly do you think taking me out is going to accomplish? You’re only going to piss off vampires and incite humans who don’t want murder in their city.”
McKetrick looked hurt by the accusation. “That’s incredibly naïve. Sure, there may be a few in Chicago who don’t realize the breadth of the vampire problem. But that’s what this is all about. People need something to rally around, Merit. You’re the rallying point.”
“You mean the ashes I’ll become? You know that’s all that will be left, right? A cone of ashes, there on the sidewalk.” I gestured down to the concrete below us. “It’s not as if you’ll be standing over the dead body of a fallen vampire. Believe me—I’ve seen it.”
I said a silent prayer of apology to Ethan’s memory for my callousness, but given the twitch in McKetrick’s jaw, I kept going. “It’ll look more like you emptied a vacuum cleaner than staked a vampire, and that’s not exactly going to make great television. You aren’t even at the front lines.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means there’s a mess of humans outside Cadogan House right now protesting our existence, and the National Guard is on its way. Why aren’t you out there with them? Getting to know them? Recruiting like-minded souls? Oh,” I said, nodding my head. “I get it. You don’t really like people any more than you like vampires. You just like playing the hero. Or what you imagine to be a hero. I personally don’t think genocide is terribly heroic.”
He slapped me across the cheek hard enough to make my head ring, and I immediately tasted blood.
“I will not,” he menacingly said, stepping even closer to me, “let some little fanged bitch turn me from my mission.”
My anger—aided by my knife-edge hunger—began to spread through my limbs in a gloriously warm rush that pushed the chill from my bones.
“Your mission? Your mission is murder, McKetrick, plain and simple. Let’s not forget that. And I’d reckon that what you know about me—or vampires—would fit on the head of a pin.”
“Check the sky,” he said, pushing the barrel of the gun into my chest. “You think that doesn’t have something to do with you?”
“Actually, it has nothing to do with us,” I told him, but spared him the details about the other groups it might have had something to do with. There was no point in putting them on McKetrick’s radar, too.
“How could it not have something to do with you? What else could be responsible for this?”
“Global warming?” I suggested. “Have you recycled today?”
That earned me a punch in the stomach that put me on the wet ground on my knees. I coughed a little, exaggerating the injury. It had definitely hurt—but not that bad. I think he’d pulled his punch a little at the end. Maybe punching a “fanged bitch” was harder than giving her a good slap across the face. His thinking I was more delicate than I actually was only worked to my advantage.
“You’re a sadist,” I spat out.
“No,” he patiently said, “I’m a realist. You make me violent. You make me fight a war I shouldn’t have to fight.”
“Blaming the victim is so last year,” I told him. I braced for a kick, but nothing came. Instead, he crouched down on his knees, his brows furrowed in concern.
“You don’t understand.”
“I do. You’re an egoist, and you think you know more than anyone else in Chicago. But really, McKetrick, you’re an ignorant coward. You’re fighting to take away our rights, and we’re the ones trying to solve the problem. Your ego has blinded you. I feel sorry for you, actually.”
That was apparently the end of his patience. He stood up again, stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Two men in black fatigues ran toward us. One pointed another