“Vampire custom is adjustable according to the circumstances,” Quinn replied, voice dry. “A fact you’ll learn if you live long enough. Which is a debatable event at the present moment.”
The air filled with sudden murmuring, and the anger of many different minds seemed to lash at my senses.
“Is that a threat, vampire?” Her voice was soft. Deadly.
Quinn merely smiled. “Simply a fact, Vincenta. I am not, however, the one you have to fear in this little trio. Though I can be, if you wish it.”
Her gaze flicked to Rhoan and myself, seemingly dismissing Quinn for the moment. “Why are you here uninvited, wolf? Have you caught the bastard who murdered Ivan yet?”
“No, but we will. Because you’re going to tell us everything you know about him.”
She smiled and leaned back in her chaise lounge. “You know the cost of information.”
I didn’t get a chance to answer. Rhoan simply stepped forward, wrapped a hand around her pale neck, then yanked her off the lounge and into the air.
The toga-clad vamps behind the chair blurred into action, some leaping across the leather lounge at Rhoan, others whipping out weapons.
I didn’t move. I didn’t have to.
Rhoan casually battered away the two that attacked him, then swung the dangling Vinny in their direction. “Shoot, and she dies. Move, and she dies.”
“You can’t—” Vinny’s voice was hoarse and, while vampires didn’t actually need to breathe, her face was going an interesting shade of red.
“Oh, I can,” Rhoan said, voice all calm iciness. The voice of the killer, not my brother. “We guardians have the power to kill pests on sight. The question that has to be answered now is whether you’re a pest or not.”
“I can’t—” She stopped, gasping for air like a fish out of water.
I glanced at Quinn, and opened the link between us. Is she faking it?
His amusement rolled down the psychic lines. Hell, yeah. She could win an Academy Award with this performance.
One of the toga-clad teenagers shifted slightly. Energy whispered down the link, a mere echo of the power that Quinn flung across the room at the kid who had moved.
“Stop,” he said, voice holding the steel of command. The kid froze and his eyes went wide. As wide as his mistress’s suddenly were.
“And drop that weapon,” Quinn continued. “All of you, drop your weapons.”
Weapons clattered to the floor. Every kid had at least two.
“Kick them under the chaise lounge, out of reach.”
They did so. I glanced at Vinny. For the first time, there was fear in her eyes.
“Ready to be a help rather than a hindrance?” Rhoan asked softly.
She nodded. Rhoan lowered her back to the ground and eased his grip on her neck. “Now, be pleasant and answer Riley’s questions.”Vinny licked her lips, then said, “What do you want to know?”
“Why is Aron Young kidnapping and murdering those who were in tenth grade with him?”
“As I told you before, he seeks vengeance for his death.”
“Why now, though? Why not in the years immediately after his death?”
“Because he was unable to get out before now.”
So he had been kept prisoner by his parents. “How did he get out?”
“His mother—she was sick. Her heart or something. She let him out.”
And then she’d died, and he’d buried her rather than let her rot where she lay. I guess even evil bhutas had one soft spot. “Tell me where he is.”
“I gave you an address—”
“One address,” I cut in sharply. “Vampires intent on foul deeds always have more than one hidey-hole.”
I’d learned that the hard way.
Amusement flitted briefly through her eyes. “That is true. I cannot, however, give you that information, because I do not have it.”
Shit. I was so hoping that Vinny would give us the easy answers, but I guess I should have known better. Fate was never one for giving me the quick way out.
“Is there anything else you can tell me about him? Anything that might help us find him?”
She considered me for a moment, then said, “Try his home. I tasted memories of it in his thoughts.”
“We have people in his home. He’s not there.”
“Which home, though? I do not speak of the home after his death, but rather the home when he lived. The place where it all started.”
Beechworth. But how would he get that many people up there, let alone keep them contained? Beechworth was a good three-hour drive from Melbourne. There were eighteen teenagers in that school photo, which meant there could still be fifteen on Aron’s hit list. That was a whole lot of people to hunt down. A whole lot of people to control.
And then I remembered the plate number I’d gotten from Ron Cowden. Young owned a van, and that could certainly carry a number of people.
“Let her go, Rhoan.”
He glanced at me. “We got everything we need?”
“I think so.”
He released her and stepped back. Vinny retreated to the safety of her chair, but her toga-clad fledglings didn’t move to comfort or caress her. Quinn was still holding them immobile.
The scary thing was, it didn’t even seem to be much of an effort.
“You are no longer welcome here,” Vinny said, her gaze sweeping us and her eyes dark with anger. “Please leave.”
I turned and followed Rhoan and Quinn toward the door. But as I neared it, Vinny added, “I could have been a powerful ally, Riley. It is a shame you have chosen the other path.”
I turned to face her. “I have shared wine with old ones and dark gods. A young emo vamp is a long way down the ladder of the things I fear.”
She smiled her cold smile. “It is good to know even guardians get things wrong.”
“Oh, I get lots of things wrong, but there’s one thing you should always remember.” I met her cold gaze with one of my own, and saw something flicker through the brown depths. Just what that was, I couldn’t say, though it wasn’t fear. That scent had not been one she could claim through this whole event, even though it had been in her eyes. Which made me wonder if even that had been nothing more than an act. “I always bring down my enemies, Vinny. And you might want to consider whether you really want to be that.”
And with that, I turned and walked out the door.
Chapter 10
That was a threat even Jack would be proud of,” Rhoan commented, as we climbed back into his car. “Looks like he’s going to make a proper guardian of you yet.”
“Bite it, brother.” I didn’t even want to contemplate actually having to back up my words if Vinny decided to make trouble for us all.
“Where to next?” Quinn asked, as he started up the car and drove off.
“Beechworth, obviously,” Rhoan said, then glanced at me. “If you believe what she said was the truth.”
“I do. You want to ring Jack, and see if he can get us an address? And ask if he’s had any luck with those names in Liander’s photograph. I’ll give the cow a call, and see if she can patch me through to the guy who used to be the cop there.”
“You know,” Quinn said conversationally, “for a woman who didn’t want to be a guardian, you’re sure doing a whole lot of guardian-type organizing.”
“You can bite it, too, vampire.”
“Oh, I have, and it tastes divine.”
A smile tugged at my lips. “How about you concentrate on driving, seeing as we’re going so fast?”
“Ah, but I’m old, and with age comes versatility. I can now manage to do two things at once. As I believe I demonstrated earlier this evening.” He raised an eyebrow as he glanced at me. “You enjoy it, don’t you?”
I smiled. “Sex? Vampire bites? Yes to both.”
“You know what I mean.”
I sighed. “Yes. There are still lines I won’t cross, but I can’t not do this job anymore. The thrill of the chase is highly addictive, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, yes,” Quinn said softly. “It can be very addictive.”
The odd note in his lilting tones caught my attention. “You were a cop sometime in the past?”
“I was a cazador.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And that is?”
“Cazadors are vampire enforcers. They were policing the vampire world for the old ones long before the Directorate ever came into existence.”
“I’ve heard tales of them,” Rhoan said, with the phone to his ear. “From what I understood, not all of them were on the side of the angels.”
“Unfortunately, that is true.” Quinn shrugged lightly. “It is very difficult not to become addicted to the kill rather than the hunt if you do it for a long time. Especially if you’re a vampire. That’s why cazadors are now employed for no more than a couple of decades. The risks of addiction are far less that way.”
So they still had them? Meaning there were worse psychos out there than what the Directorate dealt with? That was a scary thought. “Even if they are only doing the job for a few decades, wouldn’t the craving to kill still become a problem?”“Vampires learn very early on in their rebirth to control their darker desires. It generally takes a lot of time—and bloodshed—to break that training.”
I studied him for a moment, seeing the darkness beneath his serene expression. Seeing the sorrow. Once it would have worried me to know what he was feeling, but not now. Maybe I’d grown up. Maybe I was simply more accepting of the gifts and intuitions that were mine. After all, even if they now kept me in this job, they also helped me survive it. “Who did you kill?”