Syre crossed his arms and looked at Vashti, his second-in-command. “Remind me: how long did Grimm evade our attention?”
“Too fucking long. He was in our faces, but I didn’t look deep enough. On the surface, his theory had merit. Still does. Or maybe it’s wishful thinking. With the number of minions we lose to madness during the Change from fledgling to vampire, I’d like to think there’s some way to cut the waste. He wrapped his dogma up with pseudoscience and I bought it.”
“He was the one pairing fledglings into couples to ease the transition? I remember discussing it with you. He had enough success in the beginning to justify allowing him to proceed, if I recall.”
Raze shot her a chastising glance for being hard on herself. “If you were looking for a ball and chain, and vampirism was one of your requirements in a perfect mate, Grimm was the man to see. He had personality profiles, compatibility charts, etc. All of which he used to weed out the whack jobs so he could pair them with nutcases. I knew his doctrine was dangerous, so when I took him out I hunted down all his disciples, too. Whoever is responsible for this, Grimm didn’t document them the way he did the others.”
“Disciples,” Syre murmured. “Interesting word choice.”
“It’s the right word, trust me. What else would you call the followers of an idiot playacting as a messiah preaching revolt against you?”
Syre ran a hand through his thick black hair, the only sign he gave of any disquiet. “Whoever is responsible, they came directly to you. This is personal.”
“You’re goddamned right it’s personal.” He looked at the body again, knowing it wasn’t merely a taunt but a message. “Help me turn this guy over.”
Syre stepped forward, waving Vash back.
It was a gruesome task. The smell emanating from the open body cavity would torture a human; for a vampire, it was pure hell. They got as far as getting the corpse onto its side. Then the loosened entrails slid out with a soft sucking sound, and they both leaped back and away. Raze had eviscerated his own share of enemies, but this man was a victim, and that made all the difference.
“Do you guys need a hand?” Vash asked, stepping up to them.
“No.” Raze had seen the tattoo on the corpse’s shoulder blade. Unlike Grimm’s brand, the ink was a mark the man had voluntarily applied as a show of loyalty, affection, and team spirit.
“The Cubs,” he muttered. “Guess I’m heading to Chicago.”
CHAPTER 2
Raze hit the ground running in the Windy City. Within an hour of his plane landing, he’d swept through the building that had once housed Grimm’s operation (presently a printing shop) and checked his way through a quarter of the list of Grimm’s known haunts. Then, impatient, he took a chance and headed to Wrigley Field.
Although the ballpark was dark and quiet for the night, Raze knew wrong when he came across it and he damn well felt it as he drove by. Parking a few streets away, he slid out from behind the wheel and opened the back door of his rental to grab his blades. He strapped them on with the efficiency of long practice: daggers on each thigh and two katanas crisscrossing his back. Then he darted over on foot, moving so quickly the mortal eye couldn’t catch him.
As he approached, he picked up the faint sound of a melodious male voice coming from the field, followed by a chorus of murmurs in reply-sounds too slight for anything but a vampire’s hearing to catch. Grimm had been big on staging, too, which made Raze wonder just how closely this protégé had been to Grimm and how long he or she had been working in the shadows.
He rounded the back of the ballpark and climbed up the rear of the bleachers. Pulling his head up over the top, he looked down at the darkened field below. A lone man stood before a group of approximately two hundred robed and kneeling minions. Segmented into pairs with the men in black and the women in red, they formed a perfect pattern of stripes in the center of the field.
Raze listened to a couple lines of bullshit about the supremacy of the vampire nation, then he tuned it out and focused on the leader. The man was tall and lean, dark-haired and dressed in a three-piece suit. He had a mesmerizing cadence to his speech, a lulling sonorousness that was evident even though Raze had stopped picking out the words.
He debated his next step, knowing this was an elaborate trap for him, one that would be designed with the expectation that he wouldn’t come alone. Which was why he’d done exactly that.
But he could still take them by surprise.
Pulling out his phone, he jumped the hoops necessary to reach Adrian.
“Mitchell,” the Sentinel leader answered.
“It’s Raze. I’ve got a situation you’ll be interested in.”
“Where are you?”
“Chicago.”
“Yes, that is interesting. So am I.”
Raze stilled, his hackles rising at the softness of Adrian’s tone. “That’s not a coincidence.”
“No, it’s not. Location?”
He wasn’t surprised that the angel was so far from his home base in Anaheim, California. That was Adrian’s way. While Syre was cerebral in his leadership, using Raze and Salem to investigate and Vashti as his iron fist, Adrian was the opposite. The Sentinel leader left the administrative duties to others so he could remain a hands-on hunter in the field. A vampire hunter and goaler-those roles being the sole purpose of his existence.
Raze gave his location, then pointed out, “I wouldn’t have called you if I just needed a hand or two. If you’re going to send a couple lycans and call it a night, don’t bother.”
“Don’t tell me how to respond to a request for a favor.” The lack of inflection in the angel’s voice was more disconcerting than an outright threat would have been.
“If you’d let us establish some cabals and covens in the major cities, I wouldn’t need to call you at all.” The Sentinels used their lycans to keep vampires contained in rural, lower population areas. They said the policy was to protect mortals, but the side effect was the hindering of the Fallen’s ability to police their own minions. And every transgression was another mark against them, another smudge barring them from any possibility of redemption.
“How many more rogue minions would there be if vampires were allowed access to such a smorgasbord of food? The spread would become uncontainable. It’s already out of control as it is or you wouldn’t be calling me.”
The line died, leaving Raze cursing at his cell phone. One of these days, he and the angel were going to have it out. But not tonight.
As the couples swayed like hypnotized king cobras, Raze leaped over onto the uppermost bench, then started taking the stairs down, applauding as he went. “Man, you’ve really got your delivery down. I mean, I could almost buy it… if I was a whacked out moron.”
The man lifted his head and looked at Raze, his eyes glowing in the darkness. “Raze, how nice of you to join us. We’ve been expecting you. You are, after all, the guest of honor.”
Although the distance between them was great, neither of them needed to raise their voices to be heard. “I’d say I was more of a bouncer. One who’s going to bounce all your nutty asses into Hell.”
“Where are your friends? Surely you didn’t come to such an occasion alone?”
“Yeah, it’s just me. I tried to round up more of a party, but everyone said it’d be a dud. They were right.” Although he kept his descent easy and casual, Raze was hyperaware of new participants to the game as black-clad minions crawled toward him like ants. “Who are you?”
“Don’t you remember me?”
“Nope. You don’t ring any bells.” He could tell being forgotten really chafed and that made him smile. In the back of his mind, he considered the possibility that Adrian might leave him hanging in the wind-the Sentinel hadn’t actually agreed to show up. But Raze had no choice but to proceed as if reinforcements were on the way. “Why don’t you enlighten me?”