Bad Mouth (7 page)

Chapter Eight

Val couldn’t have been more wrong. Kade didn’t simply nod and walk away. Instead,
he approached Selene, his liquid gait reminiscent of the Ancients.

“You saw…nothing?” His voice grew deceptively soft, and his gaze turned heavy-lidded,
hypnotic.

Distress skated across Selene’s expression. “I saw—I saw…”

“I don’t give a fuck what you said before, Selene. Forget what you said. Tell us what
you saw that night. The truth. You know damn well I know when you’re lying.”

Selene looked from Kade to Val. “I did not see the face of the victim. She was turned
away from me. The vampire was deranged and clearly new. He had the color of one who
still has a heartbeat.” She gestured gracefully toward Val. “Your agents showed me
pictures.”

“He was in one of the photos?” Val’s heart raced. Identifying the deranged would speed
up the investigation considerably because most eventually gravitated to the vicinity
of their pretransformation homes.

She pulled a file folder from her satchel and handed it to Selene. The vampire flipped
through the pages, shaking her head at each one until she paused near the bottom of
the stack.

“This one. No question it was this one.”

Selene handed the picture to her. Val closed her eyes. An ache pounded through her
with each heartbeat and tears burned under her eyelids.
Will
.

“Val?” Kade’s hand at her back grounded her.

“It’s okay. I’m fine.”

But she wasn’t sure she was just yet. Even after she’d discovered Will had illegally
turned, she’d held onto the hope he could be captured and rehabilitated, but now he
had committed at least two known bloodings. There was no going back and no redemption.
When the VLO caught him, they would destroy him. She had failed him again.

“Someone else was there as well.”

“Who?” Val’s attention sharpened on Selene.

“I do not know,” Selene said. “Human, I think. I was quite sure at first, but when
I heard only one body was discovered, I thought I could have been mistaken. I cannot
imagine a human standing safely in the presence of a blooding.”

“Is that everything, Selene?” Kade asked.

“Yes, my lord.”

Val kept her silence as they departed and headed back toward Seattle. The hollow ache
stayed planted in her chest. Kade seemed to sense her need for quiet reverie, or maybe
he wanted to avoid a continuation of their earlier conversation. And she wanted to
avoid thinking about Will.

“She didn’t act like your lover.” Of all the things she could have said. Sometimes
she wished she had a better filter between her brain and her mouth. To her surprise,
he laughed.

“That was a long time ago, when I was just a babe and older women intrigued me. I
thought I could learn a thing or two. Turns out age isn’t all that important. Anyway,
that bitch knows her place.”

She huffed at his word choice. “Do you talk about all your ex-girlfriends that way
or just women in general?”

He only smiled. “You wouldn’t be so cross if you knew what she thought about you,
my sweet.”

“I don’t care. She didn’t say what she was thinking aloud. And despite her lack of
cooperation before, she was never anything but professional.”

“Noted.”

“You’re so very crude.”

“You’ll get used to me. Please forgive my lack of tact.” His mock courtesy was impossible
to miss, but then his gaze softened. “Are you all right?”

Her heart kicked. “I will be.”

“Who was the guy in the photo?”

“William Parrish,” she murmured. “My ex-husband.”

He cursed under his breath. “Deranged?”

She could only nod. Will had wanted the change so badly, she should have guessed he’d
try desperate measures. Maybe by that point in their marriage, she hadn’t cared enough.

“I’m sorry, Val.”

“It—it’s not your fault.” That cost her deeply to say. But his sincerity seemed genuine
and surprising, considering his aggression toward everything human, though she didn’t
comprehend his reasons for that aggression. Then again, she had reasons for her hostility
toward vampires. Maybe she shouldn’t point fingers.

“It’s not your fault either.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “He did this to you,
not the other way around. His choice and his consequences. Not yours, Val. Don’t carry
his burden.”

Her shocked gaze locked on him. How’d he know? Every day over the past two years,
she’d drowned, not in perpetual sorrow, but in guilt. And no one saw it, not even
Graham. To have someone, anyone—a vampire included—attempt to ease her self-recrimination
made her want to buckle to the floor in relief.

“I won’t let the derangements continue.” His expression held conviction. “The rest
of the
Immortalis
might turn a blind eye, but I’m aware. We’ll put an end to it.”

She wanted to believe him, but could a vampire like him turn against his own? Acknowledging
derangements this rampant reflected on them all, the
Dominorum
most, but especially on the
Rex
.

“Do you have another interview lined up or would you like me to drop you off somewhere?
No sense in taking a cab from the Towers.”

She hadn’t lined another up, in part because she didn’t think they’d get results from
the first one. “I’d like to go to the VLO headquarters. I have a bit of work to do
before heading home,” she said. “Thank you, Kade, for everything.”

He said nothing to the driver, but the human made a U-turn and drove in the direction
of her building. She looked at him in amazement.

“How’d you do that?”

“Compulsion. I’m sure you’ve seen Olen and Evangeline converse without speech.”

She had, but she’d also felt it when they did. He nodded as if he could read her thoughts.

“Between vampires it takes more power to push through their barriers, but humans have
very little. A child could break through them.” He noticed her discomfort and chuckled.
“Don’t worry. You’ll know without a doubt. The sensation is unmistakable.”

When they pulled up in front of her building her legs didn’t want to budge. Leaving
the warm comfort of Kade’s presence didn’t feel like a welcome idea in her current
state of mind. Hell must have frozen over.

He loped around the car, opened the door for her, and helped her from her seat. When
he slowly brought her hand to his lips, she thought he would kiss the back, but he
pressed the kiss into her palm. Her skin tingled the length of her arm and right up
to the top of her head.

“Be well, Val.” The deep rumble of his voice hypnotized her. “Will you call me tomorrow?”

“Yes.” She could fall forever into his eyes. They were magnetic. When he smiled, a
charming crinkle appeared at their corners. She’d never known a little laugh line
could be that incredibly attractive.

She stood on the curb for several minutes after the car pulled away, her fingers stroking
the feel of his lips on her palm. She barely knew Kade, but she wanted to. She wanted
to find a reason to like him. Or maybe it was too late for that; she liked him too
much already.

Chapter Nine

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Kade leaned against the back of the sofa and stared
blindly out the open balcony door. Restlessness prowled inside him, but he didn’t
want to move. His heart had stopped beating again, the blood stilling, moved only
by his minimal muscle movements, and he missed the warmth in his veins.

Over the centuries, he’d never once given his prejudice a second thought, but he’d
never met a human like Valerie Craig. His negligible contact with humans had primarily
been with his childhood house staff and appointed subjugates, who he never bothered
knowing by name. They had done nothing to pull the kind of compassion and confusion
from him Val had. She challenged him when no one else would dare, and her determination,
misguided as it was, had claimed his respect from the start. She was like Ezra in
many ways. They’d get on well. For once, he got what his friend saw in humans. At
least in some humans.

As for Ezra…He reached for the cell in his pocket. It hadn’t finished the first ring
when Ezra’s gruff voice came over the line. “Find anything?”

“Yes, my friend,” Kade answered. “Selene saw a human at the downtown blooding two
weeks ago.”

“She’s sure?”

“She said no, but I believe she was sure. Thrown off maybe because he was at a blooding.”

“So it was a male.”

“Yes, and there were two males at the blooding near Ptolomy’s estate. I’m sending
you a copy of the video. Get the team on the wire. I want the word out and ears on
the streets.” Kade growled with frustration. “Call me the second you find anything,
no matter how small. A description. A name. An address. Even a rumor. I don’t care.”

Ezra’s end went silent a minute. “I thought we’d killed ’em all, brother.”

“Yeah.” Kade dropped his head into his hand. “So did I.”

“Are you going to tell Ms. Craig what you find?”

“Hell no. The VLO won’t understand some bloodings are necessary.
She
won’t understand. She values human life too much to forgive what I’ve done. What I’ve
had to do and what I must continue to do.”

“You care?”

Kade thought hard, the turmoil in his gut nearly intolerable. “Yeah,” he rasped. “I
think I give a shit.”

“Bravo, my prince.” Ezra laughed. “You don’t know how happy this makes me.”

“Fuck you.”

Ezra’s laughter echoed in his mind long after he ended the call. Good to know this
painful, twisting shift in his worldview brought his friend such delight. He snorted.
Someday the man would see the error of his ways.

Kade rose with a groan. It cut deep, this tearing between his past and his present.
Perhaps he could prove himself right in his bigotry if he could only press his fangs
into the tempting pulse at Val’s throat. Then he’d know all of her transgressions.
Her sins would lie before him like a bloody feast, and the idea sickened him. He didn’t
want to know her sins. For the first time, he wanted to be wrong about humans.

He longed to have anything but this personal adjuvant curse he’d been born with. Ezra’s
talent dealt with the future and possibilities. That skill had potential. Seeing the
unchangeable past was a useless ability. All it did was make him remember. It made
him hate.

Val didn’t make him hateful. She had turned his reality upside down. How he saw her
was nothing like the ones whose pasts were flayed open to him.

But he couldn’t allow such thoughts. If he let her in, she’d find the truth, a truth
that would change everything between them. She might know of his tendencies toward
his subjugates, but she had no idea he’d slain humans. And he had no remorse.

She could never find out.

He had to locate the humans on Ptolomy’s videotape, and that human from the rooftop
and kill them all before the fuckers started talking.

Chapter Ten

The walls vibrated from the force of a slamming door. Val raised her weary head from
her desk, sure she���d have a red spot smack in the center. She glowered at Graham’s
sour expression.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

“You’re the one storming into my office and trying to break down my door. What is
your problem?”

“
My
problem? You ran off alone at night with a crazy, sadistic bloodsucker, and
I
have the problem?” He nodded curtly, his lips tight. “Yeah. I talked to Alice. Thanks
a lot for sharing, V. You know I never would have let you near Rollins if I’d known
about him.”

“Let me? Since when did you start bossing me around? If you’ll remember, we didn’t
exactly have a choice of who we had to work with.”

“Why’d you go alone? What’s going on between you two?”

For a moment, Val was taken aback. This was the most possessive she’d ever seen Graham.
His expression, his stance…it was as though he’d gone off the deep end. He knew damn
well they weren’t a couple. “Nothing’s going on, Graham. Stop acting like a jealous
boyfriend. You’re supposed to be a professional.”

“Excuse me for caring about you, but I’m not gonna let him hurt you.”

“He would never hurt me.” The second the words had left her mouth, she knew they were
wrong. Knew she should never had said them, let alone thought those five words could
be anywhere near the truth.

“Never? How well do you know this guy? You’ve known him all of three days, and you
know what he’s capable of?”

“I—” She sighed. He was right. She didn’t know Kade at all. It only felt like she’d
known him longer. Admitting that made her unusually snippy. “Look, this argument is
going nowhere. I have work for you, so I’d appreciate it if you did your job.” She
tossed a stack of files toward him. “Read the notes and check all these leads. We’re
looking for a human who witnessed the downtown blooding up close and personal.”

His scowl darkened, but he dropped the subject. “Another human actually at the blooding?
Is any of this even possible?”

“Apparently so.”

He picked up the files. “All right.” He hesitated in the doorway, his fingers flicking
the edge of the folders. “I really do care about you, Val.”

She looked up from her paperwork. “I know you’re only trying to protect me. Thank
you, Graham. You’re my best friend.” She was pretty sure that wasn’t what he wanted
to hear, but he seemed satisfied enough.

She checked the clock—two in the afternoon already. Before Graham’s unwelcome interruption,
she’d napped at her desk for a good hour and a half. If only the work could have magically
happened while she slept the afternoon away. She rolled her shoulders and began sifting
through the witness statements, hoping someone else had mentioned the presence of
a third or fourth being. It was a long shot at best. She would have remembered a detail
that important.

A rhythmic knock at the door startled her. When she glanced up, a handsome man grinned
at her from the doorway. He looked Nordic with his shoulder-length, platinum-blond
hair, extraordinary height, and broad shoulders. She half expected to see him pull
out a giant hammer and call thunder and lightning from the heavens. A thin scar crossed
from his right temple and through his eyebrow, stopping at the bridge of his nose.

“Well, well, well. You
are
beautiful.” Harsh—not the words, but his voice grating through his throat. Her eyes
went there, but he wore a thin, muscle-hugging turtleneck. He’d followed her gaze
and guessed at the question. “Terrible accident.”

He pulled up a chair in front of her desk and drew his collar down. A thick scar circled
the base of his neck.

“Nearly lost my head,” he said.

She blinked a few times and realized she’d been staring slack-jawed at the man. “Uh,
who are you?”

“Forgive my poor manners.” He reached forward to shake her hand. “My name is Ezra.”

Ezra. So this was Kade’s best friend, a
Dominus
as well. His eyes were a very light red and radiated more friendliness than a department
store Santa. She’d encountered satisfied vampires, composed vampires, excited ones,
wild partying ones, but a happy vampire? She’d never seen one with such a wide-open
welcome in his smile.

“Have I caught you at a bad time?” He cocked his head.

“Oh, I’m sorry. No. I’m just surprised to see you here. You don’t look like an Ezra.”

He laughed. “I get that a lot. Long ago, I was adopted by a traveling missionary and
renamed. Too young to remember what name I was born to.”

“Hopefully a good adoption,” she said. He gave her a solemn nod. When he remained
silent, she cleared her throat. “Well, what brings you to the VLO?” She took a sip
of her coffee that had grown cold while she’d napped.

“Personal business.” He winked. “My lordship tells me you gave him a heartbeat.”

She sputtered and choked on the bitter liquid, dissolving into a coughing fit. “Did
he?” she asked when she could speak again.

“He did.” His smile disappeared, leaving his features as cold and hard as Kade’s when
she’d first met him. “Ms. Craig, I know your reputation, and I know the history behind
it. I can see you’re upset about that, but hear me out.” He waited for her acknowledgement.

“Go on,” she said.

“I’m asking you to think before you judge Kade.”

She absorbed his words carefully. Having never met him, she had no idea where he’d
get the idea that she judged Kade. Though he wasn’t exactly wrong in that idea. “What
did he tell you?”

“He tells me very little, but I know him well, and I’ve deduced that he cares for
you.”

She did her best to ignore the warmth spreading in her chest. “It’s only been—”

He held up a gloved hand. “Please let me finish. He’s not what he appears, Ms. Craig.
He’s a good man in spite of his atrocious speech. All I ask is that you dig a little
before you decide anything about him.”

“What are you talking about? Dig for what?” An ominous sensation grew in the back
of her mind. She had a feeling she wouldn’t like what he wanted her to find.

“I’m…limited with what I can tell you.” He sighed, his gaze rolling upward as if for
inspiration. Then he gave her a very direct look. “The VLO receives copies of transformation
applications?”

“Yes, we do.”

“And completed transformation records? The assignments?”

Where in the hell was he going with this? “Yes to both.”

He stood and made a short bow. “May you have a good day, Ms. Craig.” He strolled toward
the door.

She couldn’t believe it. That was all he was leaving her with? “Wait!”

He stopped just shy of the exit, his grin back in place. More of a Cheshire grin this
time.

“Is that it? What am I supposed to do with that?” she asked.

“Lim-i-ted, Ms. Craig.” He winked again. “I have faith that you’ll get it.” With that,
he left her as speechless as when he’d come in.

What did the transformation records have to do with anything? Their investigation
concerned
illegal
ones. Her mind replayed the conversation while she paced the short length of her office.
Dig, he’d said. In the records. Applications and approvals and assignments. And Kade.

With an exhausted resignation, she pulled her chair to the keyboard and searched for
all the records for all transformations assigned to Kade. The earliest records were
from 1975, nearly forty years earlier. That would be like yesterday to Kade, but she
hadn’t been born yet. With such disparity between them, he had no reason to be attracted
to her, but maybe it didn’t matter when the attraction was all about sex. Val swiped
her hands over her face. Her cheeks were hot. She had to stop distracting herself
with such thoughts. With a shake of her head, she read through the first four sets
of records before she flounced back into her chair. Nothing was out of the ordinary.

She picked up the phone and dialed Graham’s extension. “Any luck so far? Please give
me something to be happy about.”

His warm chuckle at her ear eased some of her tension. “Well, I have one bit of promising
news. Two of the blooding victims were connected. They were business partners in a
roundabout way. Nothing you’d notice at first. A shipping company and, believe it
or not, a towing company.”

“That’s weird. No go on the others?”

“Still checking.”

“Well, it’s something. More than I got. Thank you,” she said, rubbing at her temple
with her free hand. “I needed this.”

“Anytime, V. I’ll let you know when I find anything more.”

She hung up and sipped her barely tolerable coffee. This case had gone from cut and
dry to outright confusing. They’d assumed the bloodings were random acts committed
by crazed vampires. There shouldn’t be anything common between them. There shouldn’t
be rhyme or reason to the choice of victims, nor should any humans at the scene have
survived the encounter.

She drummed her fingers on her desktop and then turned back to her computer screen.
She pulled up Kade’s very first record. July 1975. Samuel Lewis. Caucasian male, thirty
years old. The second record: September 1975. Jed Grayson. African American male,
twenty-six years old. The third record: December 1975. Robert McCray, Caucasian male,
thirty-eight years old.

This was getting nowhere.

As she continued through the list, the theme was all male. Not one female. But that
didn’t tell her anything that could unravel Ezra’s puzzle. To top everything, Kade
had been one busy adjuvant over the last several years with a transformation every
month. It would take days to get through his records to date.

All right. She gave herself one more shot before heading home for the evening. She
plugged the name
Samuel Lewis 1975
into the Internet search box. Running a quick look starting at the top, she saw nothing
until she reached midpage, and there it was. The man’s face staring out from an old,
fuzzy mug shot. Rape, murder, and armed robbery. That couldn’t be right. She read
it again and then one more time.

Her heart racing, she checked Jed Grayson. On the second page of links, she found
his story. Something about drug charges and a violent shootout with cops. Before the
cops had busted into his place, he had murdered his family.

Her hands swept over her face. These men shouldn’t have gotten approved for transformation.
On a hunch, she plugged the names into her criminal records database. Every single
one. After the first fifteen records, she skipped every ten and then twenty until
her fingers ached from typing. The pattern never broke over the entire forty years.
Every one of Kade’s subjugates were the worst dregs of human society.

How long had this gone on and who drove it? The authorizations were signed mostly
by different members of the Human Transformation Authority, an early predecessor of
the VLO. All this time and no one noticed criminals getting through the cracks. Unbelievable.
And these were the humans Kade had contact with most.

She remembered her reaction to the pictures of his newest transformation. With a wealth
of foreboding, she checked the record, and it made her sick to her stomach. Jerry
Finch, serial pedophile, three counts. The last victim was hospitalized for months
following the assault, with burn wounds on the boy’s face. In a burst of clarity,
she saw a glimmer of the real Kade. He hadn’t mutilated innocent subjugates at all.
There was nothing innocent about any one of these humans.

He had to have known somehow that these were bad men, that they shouldn’t have been
turned. It made no sense for him to proceed with the transformations. A hundred questions
crowded her thoughts, and she needed answers only he could provide.

With a sudden burst of energy, she jumped up from her seat. A glance out the window
revealed the setting sun. She snapped up her jacket, rushed out of her office, and
caught the elevator down. He could have tried to defend his actions if he’d only told
her about this. Unless he knew no different. Those criminals were what he knew of
humans. Brutal, he’d said, and now she knew why he thought so. Maybe he believed he
was doing the right thing by punishing those men. She needed to know his reasoning,
but regardless of it, he had to stop. What he was doing was as wrong as his assignments
to transform those men.

She couldn’t get to his penthouse fast enough. When she reached his door, she pounded
on the worn, symbol-scarred wood. He opened the door himself, thankfully, but he tensed
in surprise when he saw her. His brows rose expectantly as the silence drew tight
between them.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally. “I’m so sorry, Kade.”

“What do you have to be sorry about?”

Ignoring the question, she clutched his biceps, her gaze darting around the room.
“Where’s your newest?”

“I sent him to my home in Glacier.” He rested his hands at her waist.

Her relief felt like the aftereffect of a deep-tissue massage. “A thousand thank-yous.”

“What’s going on, Val?”

“Oh, Kade.” How was she supposed to explain what had been done to him, how he’d been
deceived? “None of your subjugates were eligible for transformation. Not one.”

He frowned, his eyes narrowing. “They were all approved, all legal.”

“They were approved all right, but they weren’t supposed to be. They had criminal
records. They were felons, all violent, all evil.”

“You think I don’t know that? After I taste their blood, I see their sins.” At her
questioning look, he elaborated. “My adjuvant ability is to see past events of those
I feed from.”

She gasped. “Do you realize how valuable that is? You’re like cop, lawyer, judge,
and jury all in one.” She waved her hand. “Never mind. Kade, if you knew what these
men were, why did you transform them? You could have refused them.”