“I’d really prefer to know what I’m celebrating first, Senator.”
He set the phone back down and perched on the edge of his desk. She was still standing right between the two cushy chairs in front of the desk, on a carpet that was so deep, her sensible two-inch pumps nearly became flats.
He met her eyes. “You’ve been named head of the Committee on U.S.-Vampire Relations.”
She lowered her head, laughing softly. “Fine. Fine, I’ll have coffee. You can tell me all about it as we sip.”
He was stone silent until she had stopped laughing. She weighed the tension in the room and realized that he hadn’t been making a joke. Lifting her head slowly, she met his eyes, tiny blue marbles beneath a head of thick white hair that always looked windblown. “Come on, Senator Polenski, you can’t be serious.”
“I’m completely serious. Word is out that they exist, thanks to that idiot former CIA operative and his tell-all book. Most of them—and a good number of ordinary human beings, as well—have been wiped out by vigilante groups at this point, but our intelligence agencies believe there are a handful remaining. Surely you’ve been following all of this in the news.”
“I...I didn’t think it was...real.” She sank into one of the chairs, the wind knocked out of her. “I thought the official stance on the late Lester Folsom was that he was demented and suffering from delusions.”
“It was. Unfortunately, no one bought it. So now we need to own up. They exist. It’s real. John Q. Public is terrified, and scared citizens are dangerous citizens, MacBride. We need someone to get a handle on this. To calm the public. To see to it that these...creatures are contained, monitored and dealt with.”
She must have given away her gut-level reaction to his words, because he averted his eyes, and added, “As fairly and humanely as is practical, of course.”
“Of course,” she said.
He nodded. “You will act as the conduit between the CIA and the Senate. You’ll gather all the information available and ride herd on the man in charge of this mess, Nash Gravenham-Bail. Freaking mouthful. Rest assured, he isn’t going to accept your involvement easily. You’re going to have to ride him hard, do your own digging, know when he’s holding back and how much and push for more.”
“Get him to tell me everything. I understand.”
Rafe Polenski shook his head. “Gravenham-Bail will never tell you everything. But get as much as you can. Bring the rest of us up to speed, put together your committee members and with them, come up with a plan of action for us to consider.”
She blinked three times, shook her head and looked away.
“Well? What do you have to say?”
She drew a breath, opened her mouth, closed it again and drew another, searching her mind for words as her brain clogged itself up with questions. Clearly no one in their right mind would want to take this on. This was the modern-day equivalent, she thought, of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and God knew that hadn’t gone too well. For the Indians, at least.
Vampires. Good God. Vampires.
They were pushing this assignment onto a junior senator from the Midwest. Someone they thought was too naive to know better. Someone easily manipulated, easily controlled. She was none of those things. But she hadn’t been in office long enough for them to realize it. She knew exactly what was happening here. This wasn’t going to succeed, and someone was going to have to take the fall when the shit hit the fan. She had just been appointed to be the one.
She knew all of that.
And she also knew that she couldn’t turn the post down. One did not turn down Senator Rafe Polenski. The man was a legend.
“Well?” he asked, waiting, already knowing her inevitable answer.
She met his calculating eyes, and knew she was well and truly trapped. But maybe knowing what was going on would give her an advantage. Maybe she could outwit the snowy fox himself and live to tell the tale. Maybe she was a little smarter than this old-school, old-boy network member knew.
“Your decision, Senator MacBride?” he asked pointedly.
“Scratch the coffee,” she said. “I’ll have vodka.”
Mount Bliss, Virginia
Jane Hubbard exited a taxi, and stood looking at the front of a massive and beautiful building. Winged angels made of stone flanked the tall, wrought-iron gate, which had opened to let the taxi enter. It had proceeded along a circular drive with a giant fountain in the center, where a statue of the beautiful St. Dymphna stood, holding a lighted oil lamp—with a real flame, no less—in one hand, like something straight out of Aladdin, and a sword in the other. The sword pointed downward, its tip piercing a writhing dragon at her feet, and water spurted upward from the slain serpent, arching gently back down again into the pool below.
The building had once been known as the St. Dymphna Asylum, as attested by those very words engraved into the white stonework above the entry doors, but was now known as the St. Dymphna Psychiatric Hospital. A more modern sign just beyond the gates said so.
But the place didn’t look modern. It looked a century old. Maybe two. And as comforting as the angels and the saint were, Jane felt a shiver of apprehension when she studied the chain-link fence that enclosed the manicured lawns.
Melinda, at her side, squeezed her hand. “It’ll be like a vacation, right, Mommy?”
“That’s right, honey. That’s right.”
Jane had no reason to mistrust her government. The official who had shown up at her door had been female and kind. She’d known about Melinda’s condition—the rare Belladonna Antigen in her blood. Jane had known, too. She’d known that the condition made her baby bleed like a hemophiliac. She’d known that it made donors extremely hard to find. And she’d known that it meant her daughter, now seven, probably wouldn’t live to see forty.
What she hadn’t known—had never even suspected—was that it made her a favorite target of creatures that were not supposed to exist. Vampires, the federal agent had told Jane, were real. All the hype in the news of late had been true. And while most of the monsters had been killed by the vigilante movement sweeping the nation, there were still some at large. Any human being who possessed the Belladonna Antigen was at very great risk of being victimized by them.
Especially now that humans and vampires were virtually at war.
And so the government had set up a haven for these rare humans, a place where they could go and be protected, cared for and absolutely safe, until this vampire problem was under control.
Jane would do anything to protect her little girl. It was the just the two of them. Had always been. Melinda was special. She was more special than even the government or her own doctors knew. Jane had always protected her.
And that was what she was doing now. Protecting Melinda.
Holding her little girl’s tiny hand, she stepped through the arching, churchlike, wooden double doors of St. Dymphna’s, and wished she could shake the feeling that she was making a terrible mistake.
ISBN: 9781460303313
Copyright © 2013 by Margaret Benson
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