Biting Bad: A Chicagoland Vampires Novel (30 page)

“Right?” I said. “Four hundred years old and he doesn’t know about relief crying.”

“There are worse sins,” she said, looking back at Ethan. “What should I do now?”

“We’ll need to talk to Alan. Where can we find him?”

“The lab. He’ll be in the lab. He’s always in the lab.”

“Are your people safe from Alan? Your employees?”

She nodded. “The irony is, I don’t think he’d really hurt anyone on purpose. He’s a vegetarian, for God’s sake. He doesn’t even want to hurt animals.”

“Greed can make people act very irrationally,” Ethan said. “Try to go about your business as normal, but perhaps keep an extra bit of security on the blood supply. If he tries to offer you money again for the business, perhaps you hear him out because he has so much more to give. Act like you’re seriously considering the offer. That will keep him calm in the meantime, and keep him from making any rash decisions.”

The plan in place, Charla nodded decisively and stood up. “I’ll do that exactly. Thank you again for your understanding.”

“Thank you for yours,” he said. “And let us know if you need anything else.”

She nodded, but she’d gone quiet. I could see her retreating into her head, mulling over what she’d seen, replaying conversations. It was exactly the kind of thing I’d do in the face of such betrayal.

We saw her back to the front door, then paused in the foyer. Ethan looked at me. “You were right about McKetrick.”

“I was guessing about McKetrick. It just seemed his kind of operation. Too smart, too crafty for kids with bad attitudes.”

“I’ll grab the DVDs,” Ethan said. “Go ahead downstairs and advise Luc. I’ll be right down.”

“Roger that,” I said. As Ethan disappeared down the hallway, I made for the stairs, glancing back when the House’s front door opened again.

Jonah appeared in the doorway, coat swirling in the winter wind. “Was that Charla Bryant I just saw leaving?”

“It was. What are you doing here?”

“Scott heard about your grandfather, sends his best wishes. And I think, instead of sending get-well balloons, he sent me to help with the riots.”

I looked at him for a second. “How many balloons would it have been, exactly?”

“Smart-ass,” Jonah said.

“Actually, you’ll be glad you came,” I assured him. “As it turns out, our paranoia has been validated.”

“So I guess I’ll have to respect you now.”

“It would be a good start. Let’s get downstairs.”

—

The Ops Room became our gathering point once again. Luc and Lindsey were at the table, Kelley and Juliet outside.

Luc dialed up Jeff and Catcher as soon as Jonah and I walked through the door, apparently anticipating developments in the investigation, but we waited until Ethan walked through the door, DVD in hand, to get started.

“What’s this?” Luc asked, glancing at it.

“It’s a DVD,” Lindsey said. “It stores videos or information.”

“Hi-larious,” Luc said.

“It’s a video of the Blood4You lab,” Ethan said, taking a seat at the table. I walked over to the whiteboard and erased our prior bad guesses. And as Ethan narrated the DVDs, I filled in the appropriate blanks.

“The video shows John McKetrick exchanging some sort of payoff with Alan Bryant, Charla Bryant’s brother. But they argue, presumably because McKetrick doesn’t get what he wants.”

“That’s something,” Luc said.

“Oh, that’s hardly the preface,” Ethan said. “McKetrick comes back, takes a file, and torches the lab . . . right before the riot starts.”

“Alan tried to erase the tapes,” I said, “and obviously failed.”

“Off-site backup?’ Jeff asked.

“Off-site backup,” I confirmed.

“What was the payoff for?” Luc asked.

“We aren’t certain. Information that’s worth five hundred thousand dollars to McKetrick, at any event.”

“Good God,” Luc said.

“Alan Bryant knows blood and biochemistry,” I said. “So presumably McKetrick wants information to do with that. But what?”

It was a chilling question.

“And so we circle round again to McKetrick,” Ethan said.

“I’m sending Detective Jacobs a message,” Catcher said. “This is Chicago, so getting to McKetrick is going to take a little finessing. But I think we can have the CPD pick Alan up. I’ve only met him the once, but he strikes me as the type to flip easily. Maybe we can get something useful.”

Ethan nodded authoritatively. “Thank you, Catcher. We appreciate it.”

“Why is McKetrick doing this?” Lindsey asked. “Because he hates us?”

“He definitely does,” Ethan said. “But he’s also a public official in this city, and by all accounts, he’s loving the attention and the ego boost.”

“That’s a good point,” Jonah said. “He clearly likes the gig, and why risk his job? And even if he wanted something from Bryant Industries, why hit Grey House? Why hit your grandfather’s house?”

“We now know the rioters hit Bryant Industries for a reason,” I said. “So maybe he also hit Grey House and my grandfather for a reason. We just have to figure out what that reason was.”

The room went quiet.

“Okay, then,” I said. “We’ll just mull on that for a little bit. Catcher, do you know anything about the syringe?”

“Nothing yet,” he said. “There’s a backlog in the forensics department. Might not be until tomorrow.”

We all stared quietly at the board for a moment, irritated magic rising as we faced a problem we didn’t have information to solve.

“I’ve got something,” Jeff said, keyboard clacking in the background. He must have found a replacement for the computer that had undoubtedly been torched in the fire. “I know why McKetrick hates you.”

Ethan leaned forward. “We’re listening.”

“It’s in McKetrick’s military history. Turns out, when he was special ops, he was part of an operation in Turkey.”

Luc screwed up his face. “Jeff, buddy, as much as I love you, and you know I do, are you about to tell us something we aren’t supposed to know? I mean, this doesn’t sound like the kind of thing you’d pull off the Department of Defense’s Web site.”

“I didn’t do any digging myself,” Jeff said. “I have a friend, who happens to also play ‘Jakob’s Quest.’ Due to an unfortunate situation involving a winter elf, a pod of orcs, and a very nasty spell of dissolution, he owed me a favor.”

Jakob’s Quest was Jeff’s favorite online role-playing game.

“Let it never be said that I don’t support a man’s God-given right to spawn,” Luc said. “Continue.”

“So, McKetrick was in an operation in Turkey in ’ninety-seven. Small group of special ops guys went in to deal with fallout from a national coup. The special ops team ended up in Turkey’s Cappadocian region—that’s the place where the fairy chimneys are, if you’ve ever seen them. Here, I’ll send a picture.”

Within a couple of seconds, Luc’s computer had registered the message, and Luc was popping it up onto the screen. It was a photograph of an arid and hilly landscape, and sprinkled here and there were enormous rock formations that looked like pointy hats. Or something more lascivious, depending on your perspective.

“And why are we taking this detour through the geography of Turkey?” Luc asked.

“The special ops guys got into trouble there. Seven went in. Only one came out.”

Dread tightened my stomach. “McKetrick was the one who came out?”

“He was,” Jeff said. “The report is pretty heavily redacted, but it looks like the guys were lost over the course of a couple of consecutive nights. He made it out alive and started telling some pretty chilling stories.”

“Oh shit,” Luc muttered, apparently anticipating the same thing I was.

“Vampires?” Jonah guessed.

“Vampires,” Jeff agreed. “They trained for this mission for six weeks, and special ops guys are always close. McKetrick was airlifted out, started telling stories about his friends disappearing, about these feral monsters who’d taken them at night. How they were strong, deadly, and no match for human weapons.”

“No wonder he hates us,” I said. “He thinks we’re the reason his friends were killed.”

“He thinks we
slaughtered
his friends,” Jonah corrected. “And he’s made it his personal mission to fix that.”

“He’s not going to stop,” I said, looking at Ethan. “If that’s his motivation, and he thinks he’s a warrior bound to avenge his friends, he’ll keep going until he’s gotten all of us out of Chicago, dead or alive.”

I walked to the whiteboard, uncapped a marker, and added “Lost colleagues to vampires” beneath the note we’d added about McKetrick’s military experience. That done, I turned back to the group.

“He’s trained, and he’s got motive. We know he’s willing to use his public platform to sway public opinion against us. We know he’s willing to pay an assassin to take us out. We also know he has a facility,” I said, “but we’ve never found any evidence of it.”

“I’m beginning to wonder if that’s just a rumor,” Luc said. “He’s never gone there, at least not in the car we’ve tracked. And we didn’t find any property records.”

Jonah’s phone rang. He pulled it out and checked the screen. “It’s the doc about Brooklyn,” he said, lifting it up. “I’m going to step outside.”

Ethan nodded, granting permission, then gestured back to Luc. “Catcher, you might request Detective Jacobs ask Alan about the location of McKetrick’s facility. Maybe he knows something.”

“On it,” Catcher said.

“That takes care of the ‘where,’” Luc said. “What about the ‘what’?”

“The syringe,” I muttered, glancing at Ethan. “Brooklyn, a vampire, is sick because of some unknown condition. McKetrick’s now interested in the lab work done by a blood distributor. Does that read as a coincidence to you?”

“It does not,” Ethan said, “but I still have no idea what it means.”

“Research means new findings,” Luc said. “So, maybe it’s not about access or facilities. Maybe it’s about the blood itself. New things it can do? New technologies?”

“New means to our destruction?” Ethan suggested. “He invented a gun that shoots aspen—the ultimate weapon against vampires. The perfect way to best them. Figuring out a way to manipulate blood—to use it against us—would be well within his wheelhouse.”

Jonah appeared in the doorway, face wan, his magic chaotic. Ethan and Luc, still debating McKetrick’s murderous intent, were oblivious to the shock in his expression.

Slowly, Jonah walked to the table, but he didn’t sit down.

“Are you all right?” I whispered.

Luc and Ethan, finally realizing something was amiss, looked up at him.

“Jonah?” Ethan said.

“I need to go—to see Brooklyn.”

“Did something happen to her?” I asked.

“They can’t figure out how to make her better,” Jonah said, complete befuddlement in his voice. “I think I should go see her.”

Ethan and I exchanged a glance, and he was out of his seat within a second. “We’ll go with you.”

“With me?”

“She’s not sick,” Ethan said. “This isn’t a random illness. She could be the key. And that means she’s ours to protect.”

They looked at each other for a moment, something passing between them. Some unspoken exchange that had everything and nothing to do with me, and everything and nothing to do with Brooklyn.

After a moment, Jonah nodded. “Let’s go,” he said.

THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE VAMPIRE IN THE NIGHTTIME

W
e drove together in Jonah’s car. I rode shotgun, and Ethan took the backseat. There was nothing symbolic in the seating choices, but it still felt weird to be in a vehicle with Ethan in the backseat.

This time, the hospital was on the north side of town. It was new and shiny, with a two-story lobby and a sculpture of colored glass that hung down from the ceiling like a frozen waterfall. As hospitals went, it was lovely, but it was my second time in a hospital in two days, and I was nearing my saturation point.

Brooklyn’s room was on the third floor. Jonah paused at the threshold, taking a breath and steeling himself to walk inside. He finally walked in, and I followed, Ethan behind us.

The room was as nice as the lobby had been—a private suite with a sitting area and a bank of flower vases along the windowsill. A silver get-well balloon rotated in the draft in front of the window.

Brooklyn lay on the bed, undisturbed by the wires or tubes that I’d assumed—dreaded—would have invaded her frail body. She looked just as pale and thin as she had before; a blue sheet covered her body, but it couldn’t hide the outline of her skeletal form.

“She’s stable.”

We all turned, finding Dr. Gianakous in the doorway behind us. He walked inside and grabbed a chart that hung at the end of Brooklyn’s bed.

The Grey House doctor,
I silently told Ethan. He nodded slightly to acknowledge me.

“That’s an improvement, right?” Jonah asked.

“In a sense, yes,” Gianakous said. “She hasn’t worsened, which is great. But she’s a vampire. She should be healing, at least theoretically. If this was a wound, or even one of the few illnesses to which we’re susceptible, she would be. But that’s not what this is.”

“Do you know what it is?” Ethan asked.

“Mr. Sullivan,” the doctor said with surprise, apparently just realizing a Master vampire had joined the conversation.

Ethan nodded regally.

“Unfortunately, we don’t.” Gianakous walked to Brooklyn’s bed and checked the readings on a monitor beside her. “We tried to provide her with blood, but she wouldn’t accept it.”

“She wouldn’t accept it?” Jonah asked. “What do you mean?”

“She had no interest in drinking.” He pulled a small printout from the monitor and put it in the chart, then flipped it closed. He looked up at us again, concern in his expression. “And we have no idea why.”

“Do you have a theory?” Ethan asked.

Dr. Gianakous crossed his arms. “We’ve ruled out anything bacterial, common parasites. There are no drugs in her system. No toxins. Could be a virus, but it certainly doesn’t match any we’ve seen before.”

“What about a weapon?” I asked.

His brows lifted. “What kind of weapon?”

“I don’t know. Something created specifically to kill vampires. Something involving biochemistry. Something that could be injected.”

“The syringe you found?” Gianakous asked.

I nodded.

“Once upon a time, with many years of medical training behind me, I’d have said magic and monsters and vampires were nonsense. And now I have fangs and a sunlight allergy. Far be it from me to say anything is truly impossible.”

“Jonah?”

We all looked up. Brooklyn’s eyes fluttered open; Jonah rushed to her side.

“Brooklyn? Are you all right?”

“I’m really sorry,” she quietly said. Her lips were dry, and her words were rough.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for. You’re in the hospital because you’re sick. Do you know what’s happened to you? How we can fix it?”

I didn’t expect she’d be able to identify the reason she was sick, or who might have caused it . . . but nor did I expect the guilty expression on her face.

“Brooklyn?” There was an edge of sadness in Jonah’s voice that scoured my heart.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to go back.”

“To go back?” Jonah asked, obviously flustered. “Go back to what?”

“To being—to being human.”

The room went silent.

“What do you mean, ‘to being human’? You aren’t human, Brooklyn. You’re a vampire.”

“My father died,” she said, looking back at Jonah again. “Three days ago. My father died, and my mother is gone. I don’t want to be here alone forever. I’m not strong enough for that.” She swallowed thickly. “I don’t want to be a vampire anymore. I don’t want to be an orphan, here when my entire family is gone. I made a mistake. And I thought I could fix it.”

If the magic in the room was any indication, we all goggled at her confession. But Jonah was the only one who moved. He took a step back from the bed, eyes wide like he couldn’t believe what she’d said, like it hurt him to his core.

As a vampire—and a vampire who’d been interested in dating her—maybe it did.

“I don’t want to be alone,” she said again.

Jonah didn’t respond, but Ethan did. He stepped closer to the bed.

“Brooklyn, how did you mean to become human again?”

She shook her head.

“Was it the syringe, Brooklyn?” he asked. “Was there something in the syringe?”

For a moment, she didn’t answer.

“Yes,” she finally said, the word so soft it was barely more than an exhalation.

I looked at Dr. Gianakous, who was blinking back surprise. “Is that possible? And wouldn’t you already know?”

He shook his head. “We didn’t look at anything genetic, or even do a blood type. We just assumed she was a vampire. I’ll have blood drawn. And tested. But as to your larger question—why wouldn’t it be possible? If you can turn a human into a vampire, why couldn’t you turn a vampire into a human?”

Why indeed?
I thought. And while you were at it, perhaps you could invent an injectable serum that changed vampires into humans regardless of whether they consented to it. You could, quite literally, rid yourself of every vampire in the world.

I guessed that explained why Brooklyn hadn’t wanted to drink blood.

“Where did you get it?” Ethan asked. “Where did you get the syringe to make you human again?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and began to cough violently. Dr. Gianakous moved to her, helping her sit up to ease the spell.

“Brooklyn, it’s important we know where you got it,” Jonah said. “It’s made you sick.”

She looked up at us, her eyes watery, but gleaming. “No. It’s made me real again.”

—

We walked back to the car in silence, through elevators and hallways and across parking garages. Ethan and I shared looks, but neither of us interrupted the considerable internal dialogue Jonah was obviously engaged in.

We climbed into the car, Jonah slamming the door shut as he got into the driver’s seat and started the car.

Anger and grief and driving weren’t going to mix well, so I interjected.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He shook his head. “It just came out of left field. I hardly knew her—but it stung. I’m not sure how not to feel like it’s a betrayal.”

“I hear how it could feel that way,” I said. “But it sounds like she had lots of issues to work out, and none of them were related to you.”

“I’m not sure that helps,” he said. “But I’ll deal regardless. In the meantime,” he said, glancing up at the mirror to meet Ethan’s eyes, “I assume we’re thinking this serum was McKetrick’s idea?”

“It’s his,” Ethan concluded. “What better way to eliminate vampires in your fair city than to turn them all back into humans?”

“Although it doesn’t seem to be working very well,” I said, shifting to glance back at Ethan. “Brooklyn seems worse for wear.”

“So he’s not good at transforming vampires back into humans,” Ethan said. “That perfectly explains why he talked to Alan Bryant.”

“The experiment wasn’t working,” I said. “He needed more work on the biochemistry, which I guess Alan was more than willing to give him.”

“I’m not sure I should bash this guy’s hatred of vampires or applaud his creativity,” Jonah said. “I’d bet my ass there’s a demand for this, although not the way he’s thinking. Who hasn’t imagined being human again, if for no other reason than so we wouldn’t have to deal with this bullshit all the time?”

Discomfited by the question—and the questions it raised—I settled back into my seat, and I wondered . . . did I want to be human again?

I’d been made a vampire without consenting to it. Sure, I’d accepted the decision was necessary, but that was an easy choice when it was truly the only option.

But now, there was another option. There was, apparently, an out. A way to leave this life behind and enter my old life. Graduate school. Old friendships. Mortality. No more GP. No more McKetrick.

No more ignoring my first real Valentine’s Day because I’d been pulled into other people’s wars.

My phone rang, interrupting the meditation. I pulled it out and glanced at the screen. “It’s Catcher,” I announced to the car, putting it on speakerphone. “This is Merit.”

“I’ve got something.”

“So do I. You go first.”

“Detective Jacobs just called. McKetrick’s trying to make a serum that turns vampires back into humans.”

“We know,” I said. “We just met one of his victims. The transition isn’t quite as smooth as he might have imagined. Did you get any other specifics?”

“Lots of biochemistry I can’t follow. Alan was helping him with the details and his apparent initial failures. At first, McKetrick was talking about giving a choice to humans who’d been changed without their consent or as the result of an attack. But then the motive changed—or he drew back the veil. The rhetoric became stronger, more anti-vampire. And McKetrick’s real motivation became obvious—creating a mass weapon that could turn vampires back into humans en masse. Denying them the choice by making it for them. Apparently, Alan got nervous about the anti-vampire rhetoric and decided he was done.”

“Bryant Industries’ livelihood is built on vampires,” Jonah said. “They disappear, so does Alan’s business.”

“Exactly. But McKetrick kept pushing, and when Alan didn’t help, he stole the information he thought he needed and torched the building.”

“And found some haters to firebomb it and cover his tracks,” I said.

“Indeed. Alan broke contact with McKetrick, so he doesn’t know anything about his actions after the Bryant Industries riot. But he did say he’s helped McKetrick order materials that were shipped to an industrial building near Midway. Former warehouse called Hornet Freight.”

“That feels right,” I said. “Can you ask Jeff to check on it?”

“He’s already on it,” Catcher assured. “I’ll ask him to send the search results to you.”

“Don’t send,” Ethan said. “Deliver. Can you meet us at the House?”

“To quote Jeff, is it secret-mission time?”

“It is,” Ethan said. “And you might bring Mallory as well. I suspect we’ll need all the allies we can get.”

“What’s on the agenda?”

“I intend to disabuse McKetrick of certain notions concerning vampires.”

“That you’re pretentious?” Catcher asked.

“That we’re afraid of him,” Ethan said. “We aren’t. And by the end of the evening, I expect he’ll know it.”

—

Jonah drove us back to the House, and Ethan rewarded the effort—and his crappy night—with a parking spot in the basement.

We took a few moments to regroup. Jonah found a spot from which to call Scott and advise him what we’d learned and planned to do. Ethan and I went upstairs. He went to update Malik; I went to the kitchen for a bottle of blood I suddenly craved.

When I’d finished a pint and a piece of fruit for good measure, I met Ethan at the stairway.

“You’re all right?” he asked, pushing a lock of hair behind my ear.

I nodded. “Just thinking.”

“About McKetrick?”

“About the serum. If we’re right, and it works, it could change a lot of lives. Would you consider it? Becoming human again? Giving up the drama?”

He gestured toward the House. “And giving up all this? No, Sentinel.” He took my hand, and we walked toward the basement stairs. “I gave up my humanity many, many moons ago. I’ve no interest in revisiting it.”

We took the stairs to the basement but stopped at the bottom. Ethan looked at me, amusement in his expression. “What are you thinking, Sentinel? That being human again would solve all our problems?”

I’d been thinking about my problems, but I didn’t let on. “Just that things would be simpler.”

Ethan snorted. “Never underestimate the capacity of any living thing for drama, Sentinel. Human, vampire, shifter, or otherwise. We all have our fair share.”

Having said his part, we made our way to the Ops Room. Jonah and the guards were already assembled, minus Juliet, who Luc decided wasn’t quite ready for a field trip. Catcher, Jeff, and Mallory followed behind us.

Lindsey, Mallory, and I exchanged hugs. This was too nerve-racking not to prepare ourselves and take comfort where we could find it.

“Cool hair,” Lindsey said.

Mallory had braided her ombré hair into Princess Leia–style side buns. She was one of the few people I knew—perhaps the only one—who could actually pull off the look.

“Thanks,” she said, touching a bun. “Although I feel like I have cinnamon rolls attached to my head.”