And now she was gone. He turned off the TV and went to bed, feeling more alone than he had in a long, long time.
HE AWOKE LATER than usual the following evening. Deborah is dead was his first thought, and he wondered how many nights would pass before his waking thought would be anything else. Perhaps he was just tired, or maybe he was just reluctant to face the reality of wakefulness, but he was loath to climb out of bed. There were things that had to be done, though, disagreeable as they were. He showered, dressed in a suit of butter yellow with a tie the color of milk chocolate, and called Rat on his cell phone. He arranged to meet the detective at the police station in a half hour.
“Thor!”
Without a word, his tyro met him at the foot of the stairs.
“Anything new?” asked Cade, adjusting his tie.
“With the murder, no, not yet. You’ve got a shitload of voice messages and emails.”
Cade had no desire to wade through them. “Did you check them?”
Thor nodded.
“Anything that can’t wait a few hours?”
Thor lowered his brows and twisted his mouth, as if he didn’t like the idea of having to decide what was important and what wasn’t. Cade wondered where yesterday’s zeal to get involved had gone, but he let it go. Maybe Thor was simply as tired as he was.
“I suppose not.”
“Good. Drive me down to the police station. I have to sign my statement.”
The ride downtown was made in silence. Cade couldn’t organize his thoughts. He should have been making plans last night instead of reminiscing like some mortal fool, and tonight he was paying the price. He tried to kick his mind into gear and think about how Deborah’s death would impact the vampire community. He had no idea who would be chosen as interim mayor. He knew only that Deborah had named no successor.
“It creates too much temptation,” she’d once said. “I want to live to see the end of my term.”
She hadn’t laughed then, and he didn’t laugh now. It hadn’t been a joke. It didn’t matter who was chosen anyway. A special election would be held soon to elect a new mayor. None of the possible candidates who came to Cade’s mind were vamp-friendly.
Was that just what someone wanted—to turn the clock back to the post-Hell days of poverty, discrimination and open hatred? To what end? A similar incident had happened last year in Chi-No, and it had been the work of a vampire, Chi-No’s own doyen. Nestor was dead, but could one of Cade’s brethren in Chicago be trying to do the same thing? Cade couldn’t see it. He had promised Chicago’s undead the good life, and he had delivered.
No, it had to be a mortal and a political move—someone who wanted the power that Deborah had so coveted.
As Thor drove down Clybourn, Cade gazed out the window. It was another warm night, and the street lights shimmered in the unseasonable heat. They were just blocks from where Deborah had lived and died. Anger rose inside him, making his insides clench, as if he’d gorged himself on bad blood. The anger wasn’t so much for Deborah herself, but for his city and his people. An image of the days after Hell blurred his vision—the sight of a lone suckling, helpless in a new world, scavenging an alley for cans, going through the garbage of mortals like a stray animal, looking for the precious aluminum that would bring a few pennies.
No. His people wouldn’t suffer such degradation again. Nor could they return to the pre-war days of killing and crime, for no matter what happened next, anonymity would forever be a thing of the past. They had to survive in the new world, like it or not, and if he had to play Rasputin instead of lover to a new mayor, he’d do it.
Twenty minutes later they pulled in front of the First District police station, and Cade got out. “Wait for me,” he instructed Thor. “This won’t take long.”
Rat was waiting for him and led him into an interview room. He closed the door and handed Cade the written statement without a word. Cade read it quickly. It was what he had said, nothing added, nothing deleted. He signed it.
“Okay, Rat, I did my part, now you do yours. What can you tell me?”
“Not a lot. Definitely a pro job all around. The few witnesses we found say it was a dark late model sedan, tinted windows, no plates. The car apparently drove past just as Dayton got out of her car. Nobody saw the shooter.”
That was it? After nearly twenty-four hours and countless man-hours? “What about your informants? Somebody has to know something.”
Rat’s eyes were as flat as stagnant water. “Everybody’s putting time in on this one. When we have something, you’ll hear. You think you can do better, you go beat the bushes.”
There was that metal pin again, that tin badge that tended to open Ivan Ratkovich’s mouth too much. It was nothing new. Over the decades, King Rat, as he was known by his brethren, had often had an inflated sense of self. Cade was in no mood to hear it tonight.
“Careful, brother. I’m not one of your snitches to be bullied.”
“Then let me do my job. I’m busy.”
Cade pulled him close, not willing to give up the final word. “Then do your job,” he whispered.
Cade left, striding out of station. Despite the fact that Noctule occupied an old brick building originally designed to be a police station, it was not one of Cade’s favorite places to be. He managed to control his anger as he got into the car, closing the door with a snick instead of a slam.
Thor turned to throw him a quick look. “That was fast. What happened?”
“Either they don’t know anything, or they’re keeping everything close to the chest. All King Rat told me was that it was a dark sedan, no plates, tinted windows.”
Thor shook his head. “Hell, that could be a lot of cars. Could even be this car.”
Cade gave him a look that said he wasn’t amused, but Thor had already swung his gaze forward. “You want the club?” added Thor, with all the aplomb of Noctule’s bar jockeys as they took drink orders night after night from the young mortals who cared more about getting noticed than what was in their glass.
Cade looked out the side window through his own tinted glass. The lights on State Street were muted, mirroring his feelings. “No. Take me back to the townhouse. I need to make phone calls, and I don’t want any distractions.”
Thor put the car into gear but said nothing.
Cade needed to return some of the messages left for him, and he needed to dig for information, both at City Hall and the police department. Rat was his oldest master on the force, but there were several hundred vampires in the department. If King Rat was reluctant to share, others would be happy to trade information for Cade’s favor. Harder would be prying answers out of City Hall. There were no undead among the elected officials. Deborah had had a staff of support personnel, including clerks, a top aide, various lesser aides, and a press secretary, but Cade knew few of them. Besides, they were most likely already on the outs, and as soon as an interim mayor was chosen, they’d be all the way out. Every new mayor appointed his or her own team, and Deborah’s team was like a headless chicken, twitching, but already dead.
He picked up his phone, and it rang in his hand. The number on the display was blocked, meaning it was probably a cop. Rat maybe, with some useful information.
“Cade.”
“It’s Rat.”
“What news, brother?”
Sour laughter filled Cade’s ear. “News? Maybe you have some for me?”
Cade gripped the phone like it was someone’s neck. “What are you talking about?”
“I just thought perhaps you had some additional information you wanted to add to your statement.”
Damn King Rat and his pompous, patronizing cop games. “Just say it, Rat.”
“The preliminary report from the M.E. came in right after you left.”
Rat paused, and Cade’s mind started rifling
through the possibilities. “You have the ballistics evidence?”
“Oh, we have a lot more than that. It seems Her Honor had sex not long before she died. The evidentiary semen has no sperm and a high concentration of blood cells. You know what that means?”
Shit. He’d completely forgotten that a post-mortem would reveal the sex he’d had with the mayor. The lack of sperm could have meant a partner with a vasectomy, but the blood in the semen narrowed it to the undead. “Of course. Vampire semen.”
“Jesus, Cade. Sex with the mayor? At City Hall?”
There was little point in denying it, but he was damned if he was going to give King Rat a play-by-play. “I won’t deny it, but it’s none of your business. It doesn’t have anything to do with her death.”
“Wrong. It is my business. There’s no privacy with death, you know that. And it could have a great deal to do with her death. The M.E. says it was hard sex, the kind consistent with sexual assault. I quote from his report. ‘Examination of the vaginal walls and cervix show evidence of abrasions, ecchymosis and lacerations. Extragenital injuries include bruising to breasts and thighs. Fingernail scrapings show blood and skin under all ten nails. All scraping samples are consistent with vampire tissue.’”
When she scratched his back, of course. But the report made it sound like she was fighting him. “I didn’t rape her. It was consensual. And you know as well as I do that when the undead have sex, it’s what mortals consider ‘hard sex.’”
Rat sighed in his ear, a small concession to the truth of that statement. “Even if I believed you—and I’m not saying I do or I don’t—the lieutenant won’t. You’re going to have to come down here and answer more questions.”
“Define ‘have to.’” Those words weren’t in his dictionary. “Am I under arrest?”
“No, you’re not under arrest. The Department is extending you a courtesy by allowing me to make this call. I’m asking for your cooperation to come down and make a voluntary statement.”
“And if I refuse? What next?”
There was a pause on the other end, as if Rat wasn’t used to his directives being challenged. “If you refuse, it won’t look good. Surely you realize that.”
“That’s not what I asked. What happens next?”
“I’ll have to discuss it with my superiors. Is ‘no’ your answer then?”
“‘No’ is my answer.”
“You’ll be hearing from us.” Rat disconnected the call before Cade could reply.
He sat down slowly and pondered the possibilities. They couldn’t force him to make a statement. And they couldn’t arrest him because there was no evidence he’d killed Deborah. No, the cops wouldn’t like it, but there was nothing they could do. Eventually they’d turn up evidence—real evidence—and the hounds would chase after new prey.
He had to remain focused on what he had to do. He made his calls, but after two hours threw the phone at his king-size bed. It skipped like a stone across water and landed with a silent plunk on the carpet. He’d learned next to nothing. Vampire cops who in the past had had open mouths and ready tongues were silent tonight. At best they merely rattled the old skeleton of information Rat had already dispensed. Cade sensed apprehension behind all the words he heard, as though the vamps he spoke to feared for their very world. He’d tried to throw each a lifeline—a reassurance that nothing would change, that peace would prevail—but they seemed not to hear him, clinging instead to the secure haven of their orders, which apparently were not to talk to anyone outside the Department.
He felt their apprehension even now, and he couldn’t shake the feeling. His own platitudes of peace sounded hollow to his ears, and in the silence of the townhouse, he heard the house of cards tumble with a whisper as devastating as a scream.
Chapter Seven
Near La Vantum
Along the Illinois River
1718
HE WAS NO LONGER Chenango. He was no longer Inoca. He was a victim of just one of the many ills the white man had brought from the land across the ocean to this land. But unlike a sickness that simply killed, his had given him new life as le vampire. No, he was no longer Inoca. Neither was he white. Yet he was both, and more.
He had parted ways with his maker years ago and now lived in the woods, sleeping during the day in a cave dug from a mound in the heart of a burial ground, to keep travelers and hunters at bay. It was the Inoca way to wrap the bodies of the dead in skins and suspend them on scaffolds or tree branches, then to bury the bones after the flesh had decayed. The bodies hanging above him had not yet fully rotted, so no one would be coming for the bones for many nights. The smell of death did not bother him.
By night he hunted and killed. He had no great love for the French. Tonti and the Black Robe who had taught him years ago were long gone, and the men in the fort on Le Rocher were evil, coarse creatures who swam in deceit and gorged themselves on drink and the eager flesh of young maidens. He retaliated in his own way, taking the blood and life of any Frenchman foolish enough to venture at night alone from the fort.
But he had grown weary of watching the Inoca suffer in silence while the white man did as he pleased. He began visiting La Vantum at night, dressed in a black buffalo robe with his face and body painted red, black, and green. The black was for death and the green for triumph over death, for he was both of these—death and its victor—the undead. The red was for vengeance and blood, and he was these things, too. He also wore a headdress of deer antlers and buffalo hair that hung past his chin like a beard, and the people in the village called him Stormbird, destroyer of men. Many feared him. Others looked upon him as an ordinary medicine man. But he was no charlatan to dance and chant and juggle bones and animal teeth to summon the support of the good spirits. Some, like the chief and the braver of the warriors, looked on him as a great spirit and sought his counsel.
“You must put an end to the French,” he told them one night. “The Father Tonti was a good man. But this La Motte is no Great Father. The young ones call me the destroyer of men, but La Motte is the destroyer of women. How long will you allow him and his men to defile our maidens? The eyes of the women glitter with lust for the trinkets they are promised, and they see not the evil. Have you not heard them? They boast that a child not carrying French blood is not worth bearing. You must take action.”
The braves nodded their agreement, but said nothing. It was the chief, Jero, that Stormbird looked to.
“What must I do?” asked Jero, later, when it was just the two of them.
“Go to La Motte. Tell him the French must leave. Burn the fort.”
Jero stared at him, his eyes wide enough to catch the moonlight.
Stormbird repeated himself, this time wrapping his words in the power he’d found could bend a mortal’s mind. “Burn Fort St. Louis.”
Two nights later Stormbird stood atop Eagle’s Nest, a narrow, towering rock along the river that was an arrow’s flight from Le Rocher. Above him, a fat moon rose, cresting like a woman’s breast above a thin cloud. Below him, the river rippled like beaten metal, black, gray, and silver. Nearby, Le Rocher, the Great Rock, protruded over the river like a giant beast that had overfilled its belly too many times. The bulbous rock he had remembered as yellow and brown under the sun was now like dead skin, gray and lined. He watched as a war party three times the size of the garrison crossed the river to Le Rocher. He waited, and soon flames sprouted from the top of the Great Rock. Smoke flowed black like blood in the night, thick and heavy and hot, as if the fat beast had been slain. The wind carried the smoke to him, and he flared his nostrils to draw it deep into his lungs. To him it was not acrid, but sweet, for it meant victory—not so much for the Inoca, but for him. He had made this happen. His power. He opened his mouth and ran his tongue over his eyeteeth, as if he could taste his enemy’s defeat.
He despaired a little at seeing his p
rey flee Le Rocher, but not much. He knew he’d see the white man again.
Chapter Eight
CADE SIGHED AND picked up the phone. It did him no good collecting dust on the floor. He made more calls, finally getting through to Rose Washington, one of Deborah’s aides.
“I’m out of a job, Mr. Kincade. Not just now, but from now on. City Hall doesn’t want anything to do with me or any of the rest of Deborah’s staff. This place is like skin healing over a wound. A couple more days, and you won’t know any of us were ever here.”
Maybe he’d woken her from a sound sleep. Then again, maybe not. Rose had never been any more sunny than Deborah’d been. “I’m sorry, Rose. If I can . . .”
“Don’t be offering me charity, Mr. Kincade. I don’t want anything from you. Deborah liked you. I’m not sure whether it was because she owed you . . .”
“Deborah would never admit to owing anyone.”
“ . . . or whether you turned her with that exotic face of yours, but she’s dead, and that’s that.”
He couldn’t let her end the call. “Hate me all you want, Rose, but answer one question for me. For Deborah. Who’s going to be in the running for mayor?”
She snorted. “Is there a limit to how many vultures go after a scrap of meat?”
“Give me some names.”
She sighed. “Well, there’s Kurt Koslik—he’s a councilman. Then there’s Benno Stammler, the Chairman of the Finance Committee. He wields a lot of power. Oh, and then there’s the biggest vulture of them all—Ian Doyle. He’s the Chairman of the Police Committee. There’re a lot of others, of course . . .”
He smiled. “Thank you, Rose. You’re a gem.”
“Your charm doesn’t do anything for me. If I’m rid of you, it’s worth it.”
“You’re rid of me, I promise.”
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