Midnight's Kiss(7)

Still, their deaths would have a hell of an emotional punch. The massacre signified a massive betrayal of the trust Julian had worked so hard to build between the Vampyres and the human population, and Julian was not above twisting the literal truth to his advantage whenever necessary.

Deliberately, he continued. “These terrible crimes must be answered. As King, I am placing the Nightkind demesne under martial law, effective immediately. From sundown today, any Nightkind creature found more than a quarter of a mile away from its domicile of residence will be subject to the severest penalty by law, up to and including death. Martial law is an extreme measure, to be used only in cases of emergency. The Nightkind demesne is presently in just that kind of emergency. People of the Nightkind demesne, the movement restrictions are for your protection, as we search for the criminals who initiated the attacks and we take every necessary step to make sure that another attack doesn’t happen.”

For a brief moment, he hesitated. The temptation to call Justine out in public grew so strong he had to clench his muscles against giving in to it. Publicly identifying her as the person responsible for so many deaths would be even more effective at stopping her movements than implementing martial law, but without acceptable proof to back up his claim, he knew the entire Nightkind council would turn against him.

None of them, not even Dominic, would tolerate an unsubstantiated attack against one of their own. The resulting backlash would end up hurting Julian’s ability to hunt for Justine far more than it would help. He needed to gather proof first, the kind of proof that the council would accept.

His frustration boiled over. For the first time in his speech, he let his fury show in his clenched features and burning gaze. He felt his fangs descend and let them show in an expression of naked aggression. “Rest assured,” he said softly, “we have no higher priority than this. We will hunt down those who are responsible, and they will be brought to justice. I won’t be taking questions today. That will be all.”

The room erupted into noise. Ignoring the shouted questions, he left the room. Yolanthe and the other guards fell into place around him.

This time, he headed into the secure part of the IT area. Gavin left his workstation to meet him.

Without preamble, Julian said, “You saw the statement?”

“Yes, sir.” The younger Vampyre’s eyes were wide and worried.

“I won’t be able to justify keeping the demesne under martial law for long,” he said. “It will help to have the human population outraged, so we might be able to get a few weeks. If Justine is still in the demesne — and even if she isn’t — it will make it harder for her, and anyone else working with her, to maneuver. In the meantime, we need to speed up the search.”

“I’ve frozen her assets,” Gavin told him. “At least those that I could find. You must know she’ll have hidden assets. Cash deposits, offshore accounts.”

Julian looked at him from under lowered eyebrows. “Of course.”

“I’ve programmed some searches to see what I can find.”

“Just do the best you can.” He moved on to the next thing. “What about the computer? Were you able to get any information from that?”

“No. I’m sorry.” Looking frustrated, Gavin rubbed the back of his head. “I’m going to try a few more things, but I don’t think I’ll be able to retrieve anything. Sometimes you can actually recover files after a factory reset, but I think she used another program to make sure the hard drive was wiped clean.”

“Understood.”

If she had gone to the trouble of making sure the hard drive was completely wiped, why hadn’t she simply destroyed the computer? Had she done it to taunt him?

Scowling, Julian turned away and headed back to his suite. He had a million and one things to do before Dominic arrived that evening. After that, he would be free to go after Justine personally.

Even if he had managed to cripple Justine’s movements — at least for now — she had already crippled him by taking Xavier out of commission. He needed to get eyes on each of the council members, especially Darius, but aside from the two held in Evenfall, the others would be scattered all over Northern California.

Again, he got the sense of time slipping away from him. He spent the rest of the afternoon and evening working with Yolanthe to deploy handpicked soldiers to each council member’s home. Twice he talked to Xavier. While the other man was clearly tired, he was more than willing to help. He had a handful of people he could send out on reconnaissance as well.

By the time Dominic arrived late that evening, Julian had a plan in place. Those who were deployed would report their findings to Xavier, who would then contact Julian with anything newsworthy that looked suspicious. Julian would follow up the leads in person. The search would be brutally meticulous, but that was often how wars were won — by gathering painstaking intelligence and winning one battle at a time.