Hard Bitten - Chloe Neill [81]
Ethan closed the door. I took an empty seat at the table, and he took the chair beside me.
I glanced between Luc and Lindsey, who sat on opposite ends of the table, trying to read the tea leaves regarding her message earlier. But she wore her usual expression of mildly amused boredom; Luc was scanning the paper on the Ops Room table, a steaming mug in his hand. If they were at odds, I couldn’t tell, and there wasn’t any obviously negative magic in the air.
“Finally, they join us,” Luc said, sipping his drink. Normally, that kind of comment would have been a tease coming from him. This time, it sounded like a rebuke, and Luc didn’t normally err toward grouchiness. Maybe he and Lindsey had gotten into something.
“We were on our best behavior,” Ethan advised him. “Merit was filling me in on last night’s investigation.”
“Do tell,” Luc said.
“Long story short, it’s the V that’s been causing the violence.”
Luc frowned, sat up, and put his mug on the tabletop, hands wrapped around it like it was providing necessary warmth. I’d been cold as a newbie vampire, and it had taken some time to ward off that chill. But it was August and probably ninety degrees outside. I didn’t understand people who drank coffee in the heat of summer.
“Why would some lowlife sell drugs to vamps and get them together for parties? What’s he trying to accomplish?”
“Merit thinks McKetrick might be involved,” Ethan said, “that maybe it’s a ploy to get vamps out of the city.”
I put up a hand. “That was actually Ethan’s idea,” I said, giving credit where credit was due . . . or distributing the blame accordingly.
Luc tilted his head back and forth while he considered it. “Whoever came up with it, it’s not a bad idea, although manufacturing the drug, distributing it, organizing the parties, and everything else in the chain means a lot of work just to get rid of a population. There are easier ways.”
“Agreed,” Malik said. “And at the risk of jumping on one of our favorite bandwagons, the first witness saw a woman named Marie. Any votes for Celina?”
“But we haven’t heard anything about her since then,” I pointed out. “So if she is involved, she’s staying under the radar. I’m having Jeff Christopher check the bar’s security tapes, so if there’s any sign of her—or any more details about the seller—we’ll find them.”
Luc nodded, then picked up a remote that sat beside his mug. “In that case, a little more good news to brighten your evening.” He held up the remote and mashed buttons until the clip on the screen began to play.
It was a recorded news program. We caught the end of a story about international warfare before the headline switched to read, “Vamp Violence in Wrigleyville.” The female anchor—polished in her jewel-toned suit, her stiff hair a helmet above her head—offered up the rest.
“In this morning’s top local news,” she said, “an uptick in violence in the city is deemed the result of a drug called ‘V’ that’s circulating among the city’s vampire community.”
They cut to an image of a white V tablet in someone’s hand, and then to a shot of Temple Bar.
“One such event was last night’s disturbance at a Wrigleyville bar with ties to Cadogan House. We were live on scene last night, and here’s what one local resident had to say.”
They cut to video of the two frat boys from Temple Bar.
“Oh, those traitorous little shits,” Lindsey muttered. “Those are the humans Christine talked to.”
“It was awful in there,” said the taller of the two boys. “All those vamps just wailing on each other. It was like they just went crazy.”
“Did you fear for your life?” asked an offscreen reporter.
“Oh, absolutely,” he said. “How could you not? I mean, they’re vampires. We’re just humans.”
“The atom bomb was invented by ‘just humans,’” Malik muttered. “World War II and the Spanish Inquisition were perpetrated by ‘just humans.’”
We