“What’s your point?” I finally asked. Horrifying as his existence was, it still didn’t help me find the vampires.
“The vampires don’t have that upbringing or that tradition,” Karl said quietly. “They are turned as adults, and all they know is that they must feed. For too many of them, their state is not their fault.
“They have no choice in what they do and never had a choice in what they are.”
“They are monsters,” I reminded him. “Whether murderers by choice or need, they are still murderers, and every day they are in this city, more innocents die.”
“So simple and black-and-white for you, is it?” he demanded, slamming his fist into the desk as he glared at me. “Even though they never chose this, they are just monsters to be killed—pests to be exterminated?”
I returned his glare flatly. I couldn’t really disagree with his point—vampires really didn’t choose their fate.
“As long as they choose to kill to live, yes,” I told him bluntly. “Are you going to help me or not?”
Karl broke the desk. Both of his fists slammed down with enough force that the metal bent and sheared under his fury. The sound of crumpling metal echoed in the tiny office, and his pink eyes were alight with anger.
“Remember yourself, feeder,” I barked at him. “One phone call and you’re done at this hospital,” I reminded him. “We gave you sanctuary, a safe place, helped you meet your dietary need. Now the debt is called.”
Power, both physical and spiritual, rippled along the wendigo’s body, and I realized I was standing, facing him in the tiny room as sparks flashed over his flesh, and his white dreadlocks began to glow and whip around with a life of their own.
“Remember yourself,” I snapped again, facing him head on and meeting his fiery glare. I was unarmed, but I felt the heat of my faerie flame gathering in my fingertips. We held that moment for what seemed like an eternity, and then the power and rage seemed to drain from him, and he collapsed back into his chair.
“You’re right,” he admitted, staring at the damage he’d done to his desk. Power still sparked over him, and he laid his hands on the dents. The remaining energy flowed from him, gently reshaping and repairing the metal.
“I owe a debt,” he said, looking me in the eye, and the fight was gone from him. “But tell Talus this isn’t payment of that. It’s for the innocents. For the ones who will die—and for the ones who were turned and, on at least some level, would rather die than live on as they have.”
I nodded slowly. That was, of course, the other side of his argument that some of the vampires were innocent. Not that it had occurred to me while I was busy trying to strong-arm him.
“I don’t know a lot,” he admitted. “But I do follow the sources of our bodies, and unlike every other morgue tech or coroner in the city, I know what to look for. They were scattered all over—I would guess that they’d spread out to avoid detection.”
That fit with the pattern I’d been told of with the Sigrid REIT properties—small apartments and condos mostly, scattered across the city, mostly in the northwest.
“Where are they happening now?” I asked.
“I’ve seen most of the recent ones that show the signs myself,” he said quietly. “They’re coming from downtown—they’ll have made some kind of den.”
“Any idea where?”
Karl shook his head. “I can’t say for sure.”
“Any guesses?” I asked. Just the way the feeder had said he wasn’t sure sounded like he still knew more.
The wendigo sighed, slowly, and nodded.
“Not so much where,” he said, his voice now very tired. “But they’re pack predators, in the end, so they’ll follow certain patterns once detected—the same patterns any other feeder would.
“They’d spread out first, trying to reduce the risk of detection,” he continued. “Now that has failed, they will concentrate for protection—you’ll find the entire cabal in one or two locations. I can tell you they’re downtown somewhere.
“They’ll have found somewhere people won’t go but that has plenty of space—an abandoned office or hotel. Probably close to a homeless shelter or some other source of easy food,” he concluded, “and with easy access to sewers, though that’s not hard to come by in a modern city.”
“I assume,” he said dryly, “that you have a lot more access to real estate records and on-the-ground knowledge than a morgue tech.”
“We can probably work it out from that,” I agreed. “Thank you for your help,” I told him. “You saved lives tonight.”
He grunted. “Not those of the feeders I just set up for you to kill,” he told me. “You’ve got what you want, fae. Get out.”
I gave him a slight bow of formal thanks and then obeyed the very clear instruction.
ONCE I WAS out of the hospital, I called Shelly.
“I think we’ve got something,” I told her. “He suggested looking for an abandoned building near downtown, close to a homeless shelter or something similar.”
“Won’t they have scattered?” she asked.
“He doesn’t think so—he says they’ll concentrate for protection now they know they’ve been discovered.”
“That may make things messy,” she said quietly. “I can think of a place or two off the top of my head. If I run up a short list, do you think you can scope them out later in the week?”
“Yeah, I guess,” I agreed. My phone beeped at me. “One second.” I checked it, and it told me I had an incoming call, though I didn’t recognize the number. “Excuse me, Shelly, I have another call.”
“I’ll be in touch; good night,” she replied, and I switched over to the new call.
“Kilkenny here,” I answered. “Who is this?”
“Jason, it’s Clementine Tenerim,” the caller told me. I didn’t even know Mary’s brother had my phone number.
“Hi, Clementine, what’s up?” I asked.
“I need a favor,” he answered, his voice slow and drained. He sounded exhausted.
“What’s going on?” I demanded. I’d never heard the shifter doctor sound that tired before.
“I need you to meet me and Mary at the Lodge; I’ll explain there,” he told me. “You know which pub that is?”
“Yeah,” I replied. I wasn’t supposed to talk to Clan Tenerim, but I wasn’t going to refuse Clementine, either. I owed him too much—and at this point, I owed Oberis nothing.
“I was there with Mary on our second date.”
“All right. Please, come quickly,” he asked, and then hung up on me.
24
WONDERING what the hell was going on; I directed my cab to the Lodge when it arrived. The yellow cab pulled into the parking lot of Victor’s Sports Bar about ten minutes later. The cabbie had apparently picked up on my mood, because other than telling me the price at the end of the trip, he barely said a word to me.
I paid him and stepped out into the crowded parking lot. Cars of every size and description filed the lot to capacity, far busier than it should have been on a Tuesday night. As I approached the pub, however, I saw a sign out front proclaiming that the building was closed due to flooding.
The four large, burly men, one of whom I recognized as Barry Tenerim, out front gave the lie to that claim, however, as did the chaos of people coming and going through the front and back entrances.
“I’m sorry,” one of the guards I didn’t know rumbled as I approached. “The bar is closed.”
“Wait, he’s okay,” Barry told the others. “Jason is a Clan-Friend of Tenerim; he’s welcome here tonight.”
“Clementine called me,” I told Barry. “I wasn’t expecting this kind of chaos; what happened?”