attracted to a total no-go from another planet where people wore clothes worth more than cars. Perfect.
If she kept it up she might win the Nobel Prize for stupidity, a life goal she was simply panting to accomplish.
Her eyes drifted around as she pep-talked herself back to reality…until they locked on the wastepaper basket. On top of a Coke can, in an unfurled wad, was a cream-colored business card.
REHVENGE, SON OF REMPOON
There was only a number underneath, no address.
She bent down and picked the thing up, smoothing it flat on the desk. As she ran her palm down the face a couple of times, there was no raised pattern marring the surface, just a slight indent. Engraved. Of course.
Ah, Rempoon. She knew that name, and now Rehvenge’s next of kin made sense. Madalina, who was listed, was a fallen Chosen who had taken to spiritually counseling others, a well-loved female of worth whom Ehlena had heard of though never met personally. The female had been mated of Rempoon, a male from one of the oldest and most prominent bloodlines. Mother. Father.
So those sable coats were not just flash cash laid down by a nouveau riche climber. Rehvenge was from where Ehlena and her family used to belong, the glymera-the highest level of vampire civilian society, the arbiters of taste, the bastion of civility…and the cruelest enclave of know-it-alls on the planet, capable of making Manhattan muggers look like people you’d rather have in for dinner.
She wished him well among that bunch. God knew she and her family hadn’t had a good time with them: Her father had been double-crossed and kicked to the curb, sacrificed so a more powerful branch of the bloodline could survive financially and socially. And that had been just the start of the ruinations.
As she left the exam room, she tossed the card back into the trash and picked the medical chart out of the holder. After checking in with Catya, Ehlena went to registration to fill in for the nurse on break and to enter Havers’s brief notes on Rehvenge and the prescriptions given into the system.
No mention of the underlying disease. But maybe it had been treated for so long it had been in only the earlier records.
Havers didn’t trust computers and did all his work on paper, but fortunately, Catya had insisted three years ago that they keep an electronic copy of everything-as well as have a team of doggen transfer the medical files of every single current patient into the server in their entirety. And thank the Virgin Scribe. When they’d moved to this new facility after the raids, all they’d had were the e-files on patients.
On impulse, she scrolled up through the most recent part of Rehvenge’s record. The dosage for the dopamine had been increasing over the last couple of years. And the antivenin.
She logged out and settled back in the office chair, crossing her arms over her chest and staring hard at the monitor. When the screen saver kicked in, it went all Millennium Falcon light speed, a sprinkle of stars shooting out from deep inside the monitor.
She was going on that damn date, she decided.
“Ehlena?”
She looked up at Catya. “Yes?”
“We have a patient coming in by ambulance. ETA, two minutes. Drug overdose, unknown substance. Patient intubated and bagged. You and I are assisting.”
As another staff member appeared to handle check-ins, Ehlena sprang out of the chair and jogged behind Catya down the corridor to the emergency bays. Havers was already there, quickly finishing what looked like a ham sandwich on rye.
Just as he gave his clean plate over to a doggen, the patient came in through the underground tunnel that ran from the ambulance garages. The EMTs were two male vampires who were dressed the same as their human counterparts were, because blending in was mission critical.
The patient was out cold, being kept alive only by the medic near his head who was fisting a bag in a slow, steady rhythm.
“We were called in by his friend,” the male said, “who promptly left him passed out in the cold in the alley next to ZeroSum. Pupils nonresponsive. Blood pressure sixty-two over thirty-eight. Heart rate thirty-two.”
What a waste, Ehlena thought as she went to work.
Street drugs were such an unconscionable evil.
Across town, in the part of Caldwell known as Minimall Sprawlopolis, Wrath found the dead lesser’s apartment easily enough. The development it was in was called Hunterbred Farms, and the setup of two-story buildings carried an equine theme that was about as authentic as the plastic tablecloths in a cheap Italian restaurant.
No such thing as a hunter-bred horse. And the word farm was not usually associated with one hundred one- bedroom units sandwiched in between a Ford/ Mercury dealership and a supermarket shopping center. Agrarian? Yeah, right. Grass patches were losing the ground battle against the asphalt by a four-to-one margin and the one pond there was had clearly been man-made.
Damn thing had cement edges like a pool, and its thin ice cover was the color of piss, like there was a chemical treatment going on.
Considering how many humans lived in the units, it was a surprise that the Lessening Society would put troops in such a conspicuous place, but maybe this was just temporary. Or maybe the whole fucking thing was filled with slayers.
Each building had four apartments clustered around a communal stairwell, and the numbers mounted on the outside wall were spotlit from the ground. He solved the visual challenge using the tried and true touch-and- decipher method. When he found a row of upraised digits that felt like Eight Twelve in cursive letters, he willed off the security lights and dematerialized to the staircase’s top landing.
The lock on unit eight twelve was flimsy and easily manipulated with his mind, but he wasn’t taking anything for granted. Standing flat against the wall, he turned the horseshoe-shaped knob and opened the door only a crack.
He closed his useless eyes and listened. No movement, just the hum of a refrigerator. Considering his hearing was acute enough to hear a mouse breathe through its nose, he figured it was clear and palmed a throwing star, then slipped inside.
Chances were good there was a security system blinking somewhere in the place, but he didn’t plan on being here long enough to tango with the enemy. Besides, even if a slayer showed up there could be no fighting. Place was crawling with humans.
Bottom line, he was looking for jars and that was it. After all, the feeling of wetness down his leg wasn’t because he’d hit a slush puddle on the way in. He was bleeding into his boot from the fighting back in that alley, so, yeah, if anyone who smelled like a coconut-cream pie laced with cheap shampoo appeared, he was outtie.
At least…that was what he told himself.
Shutting the door, Wrath inhaled, long and slow…and wished he could power-wash the inside of his nose and the back of his throat. Still, although his gag reflex started churning, the news was good: There were three distinct sweet smells interwoven in the stale air, which meant three lessers stayed here.
As he headed for the back, where the cloying stenches were concentrated, he wondered what the hell was going on. Lessers rarely lived in groups because they fought with one another-which was what happened when you recruited only homicidal maniacs. Hell, the men the Omega picked couldn’t shut off their inner Michael Myers just because the Society felt like saving a little on rent overhead.
Maybe they had a strong Fore-lesser in place, though.
After the raids of the summer, it was hard to believe the lessers were tight on cash, but why else consolidate troops? Then again, the Brothers, and Wrath on the QT, had been seeing less sophisticated shit in those holsters. It used to be when you fought the slayers you had to be prepared for any special modification out on the market for any kind of weapon. Lately? They had been going up against old-school switchblades, brass knuckles, and even- gasp-a frickin’ billy club last week-all cheap weapons that didn’t require bullets or upkeep. And now they were playing The Waltons here at Hunter-poser Farms? What the fuck?
The first bedroom he came up to was marked by a pair of perfumes, and he found two jars next to the sheetless, blanketless twin beds.
The next crip likewise smelled of a variant of old lady…that and something else. A quick sniff told Wrath it was…Christ, Old Spice.
