Hard Bitten

by Chloe Neill

Chapter Fifteen

  ALL THAT GLITTERS

  As Ethan had pointed out, one obvious downside of being nocturnal was the fact that the sun exerted more power on me than I cared to admit.

  On the other hand, I didn't need caffeine to wake up. I might have spent a few minutes being groggy, but the haze blew off quickly enough, leaving a wideawake (and usually starving) vampire in its wake.

  I started the evening with a bowl of crunchy cinnamon cereal and as much blood as I could stomach. I'd done a lot of fighting last night, and my stress level had been pretty high. Fighting and stress generally tripped my hunger trigger faster than anything else.

  Well, maybe other than Ethan. I could confirm the bagged stuff didn't compare in taste to the real thing, but that didn't make it any less satisfying. Nutrition was all well and good, but the emotional comfort also paid off.

  I showered and dressed in my Cadogan black.

  I wasn't sure what the night held in store, but I was confident that after last night's escapades Darius would be involved at some point. It was probably best to dress a bit nicer than I had been the last time he'd seen me.

  I brushed my hair until it shone and added my Cadogan medal and Mary Jane shoes. I'd been so busy with vampire drama that I'd forgotten about Mallory's sorcery drama, so before I went downstairs I flipped open my phone. I found a message from my father, probably another entreaty to allow him to help Cadogan House.

  Joshua Merit was nothing if not persistent.

  I sent Mallory a message checking in, and got back a quick response: "BETTER TONIGHT. PRACTICUM ON HEALING MAGIC. FUN!"

  I wasn't sure if her "Fun!" was sarcastic, but "healing magic" sounded a lot better than dark magic.

  My phone buzzed again just as I was shutting my door. This time, it was a text from Lindsey, and not a promising one.

  "WE NEED TO TALK," she'd texted.

  I hated hearing that. My fingers were fast on the keys. "HOUSE TRAUMA?"

  "BOY TRAUMA," she replied, and my shoulders unknotted a bit. "DRAMA OF MY OWN MAKING. "

  I wasn't entirely sure how she'd managed to have boy trauma or drama. She'd been with me last night, and it wasn't yet an hour after sunset. I couldn't resist asking.

  "HOW COULD YOU HAVE BOY DRAMA THIS EARLY IN THE EVENING?"

  "JUST FIND ME LATER," she responded.

  "THE DEVIL'S IN THE DETAILS. "

  Wasn't that always true?

  A potentially distressing conversation with Lindsey on my agenda for later, I made my way downstairs to Ethan's office. I found him alone, the door open, adjusting the knickknacks he'd salvaged from the battle on his new bookshelves.

  "A little interior decorating to start the night?"

  "Trying to make my office feel like my office again. "

  "Procrastination can be very satisfying. " He laughed ruefully. "As you pointed out, it may be a very human emotion, but there's undoubtedly something satisfying about pretending the world is fine and your problems will keep until you're ready to deal with them. "

  "It's a lovely coping mechanism," I agreed.

  "I'm glad you've made it to our side. Where's Darius tonight?"

  "Scott won the lottery this evening; Darius is at Grey House. " He turned and glanced at me.

  "Tell me you learned something last night. Tell me this mess will have some good end. "

  "How much should I tell you? I mean, I don't want to put you into an awkward position with Darius. "

  Ethan made a sarcastic sound. "You clearly haven't seen last night's local news. "

  I hadn't, and by the tone of his voice, I probably wouldn't want to. "That bad?"

  "It's so bad, Darius hasn't called me yet. "

  I grimaced. The only thing worse than being yelled at by a boss was having screwed up so royally, he'd moved right into silent treatment.

  I decided not to sugarcoat it. There were details I didn't need to give - information about the vamps who'd actually bought and used the drugs, for one - but I wasn't going to give him a false sense of the problem.

  "It all comes down to V," I began. "It's a drug for vampires, not humans. It's somehow making them more aggressive. The House bars, at least for Grey and Cadogan, have been used as distribution points. I'm not sure about Navarre. "

  I gave him a moment to process that information; by the look of him, he needed it. He put an elbow on the shelf, then rubbed his temples with a hand.

  "I have put up with a lot in this House," he said. "Unfortunately, vampires aren't any more immune to stupidity than humans. " He dropped his hand and looked away, the corners of his eyes wrinkled with disappointment. "I would have hoped that they respected the House - and me - more than this. "

  "I'm sorry, Ethan. "

  He shook his head, and shook it off. "Tell me about the bar. "

  "Colin hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary. I asked Jeff to pull the security footage so we can figure out how it's getting in. It's definitely getting in, although I had everyone hand over their stash so they couldn't bring it back into the House. "

  "And so it wouldn't be found on them if the cops patted them down. "

  "Exactly," I agreed. "But my grandfather had already found it in the bar, so he'd already put two and two together. I gave him the rest of the drugs, and that's when they brought in Detective Jacobs. "

  "Your theory?"

  "Still working it out. In terms of the overall picture, we've now had two instances of extraviolent vamps and drugs in the same place at the same time. As for the why of it . . . " I shrugged.

  "Who's pushing the drugs? Someone who wants us in trouble? Someone who wants vamps bringing down the Houses on their own?

  Someone who wants to take us down one pill at a time?"

  "That doesn't sound like Celina," he pointed out.

  "Not unless she's decided all vamps have to suffer for her crimes," I agreed. "Morgan didn't think that was likely, but I wouldn't put it past her. "

  "Until you have more evidence, I'm not conceding that point. What about McKetrick?

  He's focused on forcing us out of Chicago.

  Perhaps he's pushing V to rile up vampires and pressure Tate into deporting us?"

  "McKetrick was outside the bar last night," I said. "I saw him, then pointed him out to Catcher. He was going to tail McKetrick and get what info he could. " I made a mental note to follow up with him later. "That said, McKetrick may hate us, but making vamps extra-aggressive risks a lot of collateral damage. I don't see it being part of his master plan. "

  "Whoever is behind it, we need to find them and stop the distribution before things get any worse. "

  "Coincidence - those are the first two things on my to-do list. "

  "I have item three for you. Dinner at Grey House this evening with Darius and the Masters.

  Darius also invited Gabriel and Tonya. One o'clock. We'll leave from here. And it's formal, of course. "

  Since Darius seemed like a rules stickler, the formal bit didn't surprise me. But I was curious about his invitation to Gabriel and Tonya, Gabriel's wife. Vampires and shifters had a historically nasty relationship - a lot of distrust and angst by vampires, a lot of eye rolling and denial by shifters.

  "Why invite Gabriel and Tonya?" I asked.

  "If I was being generous, I'd say Darius was interested in improving inter-sup relations. But he's more likely attempting to micromanage our relationship with the Packs. It would be bad for the Chicago Houses to completely alienate the Packs. But in Darius's mind, it would be altogether worse to become too cozy with them.

  There've never been official allegiances with a Pack before. If we pulled it off, it would indicate a definite shift in power in our direction. "

  At his mention of the potential Pack allegiance, I looked away. Ethan's
fear that our relationship - or our future breakup - would endanger our burgeoning friendship with the North American Central was the reason he'd given for the breakup he now regretted.

  "Come on," Ethan suddenly said, walking toward the door.

  I glanced up again, moved from my reverie.

  "Where are we going?"

  "Ops Room. I was supposed to have you downstairs fifteen minutes ago. "

  I followed him obediently to the basement stairs and toward the Ops Room. The door was open; Luc, Juliet, Kelley, Malik, and Lindsey were already assembled around the conference table. Luc, in a faded denim shirt and jeans, was an interesting contrast to the rest of the guards, who were all dressed in black.

  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 were clearly not a receptive crowd for muckraking journalism.

  "Aldermen Pat Jones and Clarence Walker issued statements this morning calling for investigation of Chicago's vampire Houses and their role in this new drug. Mayor Tate responded to events this morning after meeting with his economic council. "

  The newscast cut to a shot of Tate shaking hands with a woman in an unflattering suit.

  Beside a plain-looking bureaucrat, he looked that much more like a romance-novel hero: seductive eyes, dark hair, wicked smile. You had to wonder how many votes he'd gotten because voters just wanted to be near him.

  When reporters began peppering him with questions about the bar fight, he held up both hands and smiled affectionately. That smile, I thought, walked a thin line between empathy and condescension.

  "I have made Chicago's Houses well aware of their responsibilities, and I'm sure they'll take whatever precautions are necessary to put an immediate stop to the spread of V and the violence. If they don't, of course, steps will have to be taken. My administration is not afraid to take those steps. We've done a lot of work to remake this city into one that Illinois can be proud of, and we will continue to ensure that Chicago remains a place of peace and prosperity. "

  The anchor popped on-screen again. "Mayor Tate's approval rating remains consistently high even in light of the recent violence. "

  With that, Luc reached up with the remote and stopped the video again.

  The room went silent and heavy with concern.

  I guessed I now knew why my father had called.

  He was probably dying to berate me for being a vampire and sullying the family name - despite the fact that I'd had no say in becoming fanged, and I was trying my best to keep the peace in Chicago.

  Unless his tone had changed about that, as well.

  "Well," Ethan finally said. "It does comfort me so to know that Mayor Tate's approval ratings remain strong. "

  "Tate must be feeding the anchors with information," I offered. "We only barely know about the uptick in violence, and my grandfather promised to keep V out of the press. "

  "So Tate's using vamps to make political hay?" Luc offered. "I guess it's not the first time a politician's taken advantage of chaos, but it sure would be nice if it wasn't at our expense. "

  "And if he didn't have an arrest warrant ready," I agreed.

  "Way to put the city first," Lindsey said.

  Luc glanced over at Ethan, concern in his expression. "Anything from Darius?"

  "He's still on radio silence. "

  "It's not going to go over well. "

  "Drugs and violence in my bar? Drugs and violence covered by local paparazzi that will probably spread to national coverage, if it hasn't already? No, I don't imagine he will be pleased, and there's a good chance the House will suffer for it. "

  "Tell him the other part," Kelley said.

  "The other part?" Ethan asked, his gaze shifting from Kelley to Luc.

  "The other part," Luc confirmed, picking up the tablet and tapping its screen. The image on the projector shifted from the newscast to a black-and-white live feed of a dark neighborhood street. During my stint as an on-duty House guard, I'd seen that feed enough times to be familiar with it. <
br />
  "That's outside Cadogan House. "

  "Good eye, Sentinel," Luc complimented.

  "Indeed it is. " He tapped the tablet again and zoomed into the feed, fixing on a boxy sedan that held two passengers. Both wore suits.

  "Kelley went for a run. She noticed the sedan when she left, and she noticed the sedan when she came back. "

  "Twenty-six miles," Kelley put in. "It took me an hour and twenty-four minutes. "

  Not bad for a marathon-length run. Chalk one up for vampire speed.

  "That's a long time for two guys in suits to be sitting in a car outside the House," Ethan said, then looked back at Luc. "It's an unmarked CPD car. "

  "That's our thought. Neither the car nor the suits seemed like McKetrick's crew, so we figured detectives. We called the Ombud's office to confirm, but they had no idea about the car. "

  I muttered a curse. "They had no idea about Mr. Jackson's rave, either. Tate isn't being entirely candid with the office right now. "

  "A lack of trust?" Ethan wondered.

  "Or perhaps a fear that the Ombud's office is tied too closely to Cadogan House," I suggested.

  "Tate's office doesn't give the Ombud's office all the information, which acts like a check and balance on my grandfather. "

  Lindsey grimaced. "That's a slap in the face. "

  "Yes, it is," I agreed. "I guess the cop car signals Tate's lack of trust in us, too?"

  Ethan shuffled in his chair. "Given the fact that he's got a warrant for my arrest ready to go, I'd say so. "

  My cell phone buzzed. I pulled it out and checked the caller ID. "Speak of the devil. It's Jeff. " I flipped it open. "Hey, Jeff. Got anything for me?"

  Jeff chuckled. "Of course, I do. But I'm strictly off-limits now. You know, 'cause of the little lady. "

  "No disrespect meant to you or yours. Hey, I'm in the Ops Room with Ethan and everyone.

  Can I put you on speaker?"

  "Knock yourself out. Probably helpful for all to hear. "

  I put the phone down in the middle of the table, then pressed the speaker button. "Okay. You're live. What do you have?"

  "Aw, if only I'd prepared a monologue. "

  We heard Catcher's voice in the background.

  "Focus, kid. "

  "Well," Jeff said, and I heard the clacking of keys, "it turns out the security cameras are live, and Colin and Sean do record the video. It's stored in the bar on a dedicated server, and there are also external backups just in case some bad stuff goes down. I was actually pretty impressed.

  You don't expect bars to have that kind of security protocol. "

  From the looks of the crusty back room, Temple Bar definitely did not seem like the kind of establishment with a "dedicated server," not that I could differentiate a dedicated server from an undedicated server.

  "So, anyway, I grabbed the video and uploaded it. "

  I leaned forward, linking my hands together on the table. "Tell me you found something, Jeff. "

  "It took some spooling," he said. "Trucks use the alley quite a bit to make deliveries. There's also the occasional catering-truck pickup, garbage trucks, taxis, bar drop-offs, et cetera, et cetera. But beginning two months ago, every couple of days, usually in the wee hours, a vintage Shelby Mustang - wicked car - pulls into the alley. Sometimes the car sits there for a few minutes, nothing happens, the car drives away.

  Sometimes a driver gets out. "

  My heart began to beat in anticipation. We were getting closer, I knew it. "What did the driver look like?"

  "Well, although the backups are impressive, the video is for shit. Very grainy. But I did manage to pull a still for you. I'm going to send you a pic. "

  "Use this e-mail," Luc said, reading off an address to Jeff and picking up one of the tablets from the desktop. "That way we can project the image. "

  "Done and done. " Jeff had barely gotten out the words before Luc's tablet dinged, signaling a new message. His fingers danced across the tablet, and an image popped onto the screen.

  The guy was short - maybe five feet in shoes - older with slick, dark hair and bulbous features. There was nothing especially remarkable about his face, but I would have sworn I'd seen him before.

  "Does he look familiar to anyone?" I asked, but got muttered "no's" around the room.

  The others might not have recognized him, but I had a sense Sarah would have.

  "He matches the description of the guy Sarah - the human at the Streeterville party - met," I said. "Make my night and tell me you got a license plate on the car, Jeff. "

  "Because I am, in fact, awesome, I was able to zero into the video. I got the license of the car, then ran it through the DMV system. The car is registered to one Paulie Cermak. " Jeff read out an address. "The interwebs say his address is near the Garfield Park Conservatory. "

  I made plans to pay Mr. Cermak a visit. I also opened my eyes again and smiled at the phone.

  "Jeff, you are a paragon of man. "

  "The funny thing is," Jeff continued, "the car's title shows a recent sale - only a few months ago to our Mr. Cermak. But there's no information about the prior owner or who he purchased the car from. "

  I frowned at the phone. "That seems weird. "

  "Definitely weird," Jeff agreed. "When we're looking at records, too much data usually signals a plant. Not enough data signals a scrub. Vehicle sales are almost always in the system; there's no reason not for them to be. This file had scrub all over it. Oh, and that's not all. "

  "We're listening. "

  "Because I am, in fact, not just supremely awesome, but also all that and a bag of chips - preferably kettle-cooked jalape?o of some kind - I checked Mr. Cermak's criminal record in the Cook County DB. I mean, probably not supposed to go into their system without permission, but what else is a boy to do when his favorite vamp makes a call?"

  "Indeed. What did you learn?"

  "Factually, not much. There's one sealed criminal record in the file, and that's it. "

  "Do you think that file was scrubbed, too?"

  "Eh, not necessarily. You can seal criminal files for all sorts of legitimate reasons. To protect the victim, because the perp's underage, because the perp's a brains-eating mind-dead zombie with no mens rea whatsoever - "

  "Sealed record?" Ethan prompted.

  "Yeah. So, the file is sealed, and I can't access any data. They're actually rocking some pretty good encryption on the sealed records. I'd need the access key or password, or you'd have to get a court order to pull the file. "

  "So a dead end there?"

  "Ha! You made a joke. But yes. Very dead.

  Dead as a doornail. Dead as a doorknob even, although I'm not sure I know what the difference is between those two things. "

  "We got it. "

  "Oh, one final thing. " I heard more key tapping, the sound overlaid by Jeff's humming. It sounded like "White Christmas. "

  "Little early for Christmas carols, isn't it, Jeff?"

  "Never hurts to get into the holiday spirit, Merit. Okay, so the video isn't great, and the alley by the bar door isn't very well lit. But occasionally, on a full moon, the light shines just right. . . . " As he trailed off, I heard more tapping. "Okay," he said again. "I'm going to send you another image. "

  This one was a fuzzy black-and-white shot of a car in the alley. Jeff was right - the image was grainy, but the vehicle it showed was undeniably a classic Mustang, complete with racing stripes and side vents. And that wasn't all.

  I squinted at the picture, trying in vain to bring it into focus. "Is that a woman in the passenger's seat?"

  "It appears to be so," Jeff said. "It's more of a shadow, but it does appear to be a woman.

  Curves, ya know?"

  "We know," Ethan sa
id dryly.

  "Anyway, I was checking out the shadow of the lady in the video, right? I'm running the film at like half speed, and I find something else. I've got a close-up, and I'm going to send it to you. "

  Again, the tablet beeped, and a new blackand-white image replaced the previous one on our screen.

  I squinted at it, but predatory eyesight or not, I still couldn't get a good read on the woman in the car. In fact, I couldn't get a good read on anything other than pixels.

  "What are we supposed to be looking at?" I wondered aloud.

  "Check the middle of the image," Jeff said, "approximately where her collar would be. "

  I'd just opened my mouth to protest that I couldn't see anything - and that was when I saw it - around her neck, an undeniable glint of light.

  "Jeff, that looks like a House medal. " Not unlike the one I'd seen Celina wearing the night she returned to Cadogan House.

  "That's what I thought, too. "

  "Can you zoom in any closer?" Ethan asked.

  "Unfortunately, I can't give you any more details. The camera's sensor just didn't record any more data. But that's something, isn't it? It kind of suggests you've got a House vamp involved in this drug business. "

  Malik and Ethan exchanged a heavy glance.

  "It does suggest that," Ethan agreed. "But for now, let's keep this between us, shall we?"

  "You're the boss," Jeff pleasantly said.

  "Thanks, Jeff. We appreciate it. "

  "Unfortunately, I've got bad news to go along with the good news. "

  "What's that?" I asked.

  "Paulie Cermak's the only suspect we've got for distributing V. I narrowed down the video late last night, and had to turn it over to the CPD this morning. "

  "Of course," I said. "Detective Jacobs would have been interested in the video. "

  "Is and was. They sent detectives to Cermak's house this morning. "

  Ethan frowned at the phone. "Did they find anything?"

  "Not a thing. The house was clean. The car was clean. They're still processing some of the stuff they lifted for trace evidence, but there's nothing that ties him to the drugs or the raves. As far as we know, he's just a guy in a public alley.

  He had every right to be there. "

  Be that as it may, my gut said Paulie Cermak was more than a passerby, and I'd bet that if we called up every Cadogan vampire who'd been in Temple Bar in the last month, they could pin him as the guy who'd been loitering outside and pushing V. Of course, that would require calling out each Cadogan vamp. I wasn't willing, at least at this point, to drag the individual vampires into it.

  "Thanks, Jeff. Any objections if I pay Mr. Cermak a visit on my own?" At my suggestion, Ethan's head shot up, but he didn't voice an objection.

  "Not from us. And CPD doesn't have to know.

  Hey, Chuck's paging me, so I've gotta go. We've got a couple of fairies who want him to mediate a property dispute, and I need to upload some docs. We'll be in touch. "

  "Thanks, Jeff," I said, then tapped off the phone.

  The Ops Room was quiet for a moment.

  I looked up and around at the vamps in the room. "Any thoughts before I visit our apparent drug pusher?"

  "How opposed are you to capital punishment?" Luc growled out.

  "I'd prefer not to play judge, jury, and executioner," I said. "But if you have any strategic or diplomatic suggestions, I'm all for them. "

  Ethan patted my back good-naturedly. "Good Sentinel. "