Hard Bitten - Chloe Neill [14]
Ethan’s voice was diamond-cold, but the magical tingle was seismic in magnitude. “I have done no such thing.”
“Oh?” Tate placed the paper on his desk again. “I have it on good authority that you changed a human into a vampire without her consent.” He lifted his gaze to me, and I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. “I also have it on good authority that while you and your vampire council promised to keep Celina Desaulniers contained in Europe, she’s been in Chicago. Are those actions such a far stretch from murder?”
“Who suggested Celina was in Chicago?” Ethan asked. The question was carefully put. We knew full well that Celina—the former head of Navarre House and my would-have-been killer—had been released by the Greenwich Presidium, the organizing body for European and North American vampires. We also knew that once the GP let her go, she’d made her way to Chicago. But we hadn’t thought she was still here. The last few months had been too drama free for that. Or so they’d seemed.
Tate arched his eyebrows. “I notice you don’t deny it. As for the information, I have my sources, just as I’m sure you do.”
“Sources or not, I don’t take kindly to blackmail.”
With shocking speed, Tate switched back from Capone to front-page orator, smiling magnanimously at us. “ ‘Blackmail’ is such a harsh word, Ethan.”
“Then what, precisely, do you want?”
“I want for you, for us, to do the right thing for the city of Chicago. I want for you and yours to have the chance to take control within your own community.” Tate linked his hands on the desk and looked us over. “I want this problem solved. I want an end to these gatherings, these raves, and a personal guarantee that you have this problem under control. If it’s not done, the warrant for your arrest will be executed. I assume we understand each other?”
There was silence until Ethan finally bit out, “Yes, Mr. Mayor.”
Like a practiced politico, Tate instantly softened his expression. “Excellent. If you have anything to report, or if you need access to any of the city’s resources, you need only contact me.”
“Of course.”
With a final nod, Tate turned back to his papers, just as Ethan might have done if I’d been called into his office for a friendly chat.
But this time, it was Ethan who’d been called out, and it was Ethan who rose and walked back to the door. I followed, ever the dutiful Sentinel.
Ethan kept the fear or concern or vitriol or whatever emotion was driving him to himself even as we reached the Mercedes.
And I meant “driving” literally. He expressed that pent-up frustration with eighty thousand dollars of German engineering and a 300-horsepower engine. He managed not to clip the gate as he pulled out of the drive, but he treated the stop signs between Creeley Creek and Lake Shore Drive like meek suggestions. Ethan floored the Mercedes, zooming in and around traffic like the silver-eyed devil was on our tail.
Problem was, we were the silver-eyed devils.
We were both immortal, and Ethan probably had a century of driving experience under his belt, but that didn’t make the turns any less harrowing. He raced through a light and onto Lake Shore Drive, turned south, and gunned it. . . . And he kept driving until the city skyline glowed behind us.
I was almost afraid to ask where he was taking us—did I really want to know where predatory vampires blew off political steam?—but he saved me the trouble when we reached Washington Park. He pulled off Lake Shore Drive, and a few squealing turns later we were coasting onto Promontory Point, a small peninsula that jutted into the lake. Ethan drove around the towertopped building and stopped the car in front of the rock ledge that separated grass from lake.
Without a word, he climbed out of the car and slammed it shut again. When he hopped the rock ledge that ringed the peninsula and disappeared from sight, I unfastened my seat belt. It was time to go to work.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE SAVAGE BEAST