Bad Mouth(27)

Her eyes widened. When she’d reviewed Kade’s records, the numbers had been sporadic, two over one month, one the next, and then nothing for several months. The last few years there had been a steady increase to one or two per month, the maximum an adjuvant could produce.

There had to be someone in the VLO monitoring the overall vampire population, but what if there wasn’t? She’d been so focused on the legislation that she’d trusted the VLO staff to work as they always had. She had to talk to Graham as well as Alice, the only two people she trusted.

“Val?” Kade ducked his head to catch her downcast eyes. He had a tender look in his gaze, one that made her tears burn. She blinked them back as best she could. After only a few days, she couldn’t possible feel this wrecked over him—exhaustion had to explain her moodiness.

“I’m not reporting any of this for now. I’m only going to look into some records.” She glanced at the others. “I promise that’s all I’m doing. And I have to figure out what to do about the false bloodings. They won’t disappear just because I want them to.”

“I can try at my end to get the cases turned over,” Luc said.

She sent him a hollow laugh. “You won’t get within a hundred yards of that case. The VLO is like a bulldog when it comes to anything vampire. It’s theirs, and they won’t share with another agency.”

“Well, I’ve got state resources, Luc’s got FBI resources, those two dickheads have Legion Tracker resources, and these other two bastards have the Dominorum,” Gunner said. “You’re not alone. We’re all here helping each other solve the problem before it blows up everywhere. Let us know if you need anything.”

All these men from different societies really were fighting against a catastrophe, and they were willing to bend some rules and break laws to avert it. She was part of this now. She would end up having to do the same, but she wasn’t sure how far she was willing to go. They didn’t stop at murder. She didn’t have it in her to do that and wasn’t entirely sure they’d needed to go to that extreme.

“I have to go, but I’ll call when I find something useful.” She stopped at the door and turned back to Kade. “What is your driver’s name?”

His brow furrowed. “My driver? Hell if I know. Why?”

“I just—never mind. When do you turn him? Is he next?”

“Yes, in a little over a week. I haven’t recovered enough from the last one.”

He wasn’t recovered? If he was physically compromised now, she couldn’t imagine how strong he’d be at full power. He’d been terrifying enough when he’d gone into a rage and into the throes of a change at Dannon’s house.

“Kade?” She hesitated at the doorway and glanced over her shoulder at him. “I don’t hate you.” She slipped out the door before he could respond.

Once she reached the plaza, she couldn’t flag down a cab and get to the VLO fast enough. Her mind raced, and she needed her keyboard under her fingers. First thing after she arrived, she checked a hunch completely unrelated to the bloodings and the deranged transformations.

And that hunch paid off quickly.

Kade’s driver, Jerome Wiley, had been a serial rapist. He’d been there, a few feet away, when she’d made love with Kade in the backseat. Her skin crawled; she hoped Kade had been right and the man hadn’t seen or heard anything with the glass separating them.

She rescinded his application’s approval and then checked the approval signature. Ginger Kowolski. Jerome’s criminal record was blatantly easy to find and the woman should have caught it. Ginger had to have known but disregarded it. Why would she do that?

Val checked Kade’s most recent, the pedophile. His record was easy to find and his application had Ginger’s signature as well. Val checked back further. Ginger had signed all the applications for the past six months. Those before were signed by Jenna Grier, whose signature went back a year prior to Ginger’s. Val stopped at two years. She would need help getting through the records.

Before she left for the night, she viewed the approval numbers. They’d increased at a rate of 300 percent over the last four years. The adjuvants were working overtime. Who had authorized the large number of transformations? Vampires lived practically forever. Soon the world would be overrun by them. Her lungs seized, and goose bumps spread over her arms. This wasn’t an oversight. It was intentional.

Someone was building an army.





Chapter Nineteen


His team had left for the night and Kade couldn’t wait for sunrise and the irresistible pull of sleep that came with it. Every beat of his heart ached until he willed it to stop its incessant pounding. It didn’t stop the pain, but he needed to put an end to his self-pity. Val would grow old and die in the bat of his eyelash. She was human. He never should have let himself feel anything for her. As if he could have stopped it.

He wondered what she’d do about the fake bloodings and the missing deranged the VLO would never find. Maybe she hadn’t decided. He didn’t think her capable of compromising an investigation, and he’d never ask it of her. She was too damned honest, but he loved that about her. He’d had so little truthfulness in his long, long life.

Last night, Declan had located the Goth Slavers at the old flour mill on Harbor Island and his team had put an end to their branch of the operation. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t put an end to an organization too large for a small team like his. He needed more man power on his side, but he didn’t trust anyone else to bring in. If word reached the Ancients, the world as he knew it would end. If only they could be reasoned with, but they’d lost the ability to be reasonable before he’d been born.

His goal now narrowed to finding William Parrish. Luc and Guns hadn’t made much progress—it was as if the damned deranged had disappeared off the face of the earth, impossible on his own. Someone was hiding him, restraining him, which sounded like the Slavers’ work, but nothing indicated the Goth group had anything to do with Will or his transformation.

He’d made it to his bedroom when his cell rang. “What’s up?”

“Ah, Kade, my never friend. Good to hear your voice.” Ptolomy’s voice cracked over the words, but Kade had enough sense not to laugh at the Ancient’s perpetual pubescence. He could hear one of Ptolomy’s little pretties, as the boy called them, whining in the background.

“Well, this is a first.”

“What? I never call? My bad.”

“To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Only a friendly warning.”

When Ptolomy got that serious tone in his voice, Kade always paid attention. “I’m listening.”

“Good. It’s come to my attention that new legislation to make transformations illegal has entered the House. Completely illegal, no exceptions. We’ve put down such legislation before, but with the recent bloodings the bill has garnered enough support to put it to a vote, possibly enough to pass.”

Kade frowned. A nagging suspicion rose in the back of his mind, but he batted it down. “Are they stupid? Don’t they realize this will only increase the bloodings?”

“They aren’t thinking at all. The human masses are terrified.”

The nagging thought persisted. “It’s knee-jerk.”

“That won’t keep it from passing.”

Kade paced along his bedroom window. He was the worst sort of person to handle this problem. “You know I don’t deal with politics. What can I do?”

Ptolomy remained silent a moment. “Who do you think wrote that little treasure of a bill?”

A chill hit the center of him like a frozen ice pick. He didn’t want to give access to that nagging thought, but Ptolomy had just knocked that door down, and Kade had no other choice than to state the obvious. “Val.” She’d detested vampires, still did for all he knew.

“Of course, but perhaps you could talk her out of supporting it. She seemed to have a pretty big thing for you. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

“I may have f*cked that up.” An understatement of the century.

“Then unf*ck it. She has considerable influence with the Senate, the House, and the governor’s office. Her parents are very influential people as well.”

“I can try.”

“Don’t try. Do. This is about survival. You have no choice. I’m doing what I can, but we need her. To the public, she is the VLO. They’ll listen to her.”

After the phone call, the chill remained. He called Selene, directing her to use her influence with the wealthy humans she knew. He felt her anxiety through the phone line. She would do what she could.

That legislation would back the Immortalis into a wall, and the last thing the humans wanted to deal with was a horde of cornered vampires. It seemed like every wall pushed tenaciously for conflict. If the Ancients learned humans were enslaving vampires, there’d be hell to pay. If the humans ended transformations, the result would be no different. In any case, the Dominorum would release the leash on the Legion, a leash Kade was certain would never be regained.