the implication of that.
The howling from the broken box had finally ceased and though my hearing was still a bit dulled, I could make out Inman’s chattering. I pivoted to look at the rest of the group, turning my back on the wretched gurney and the workbench.
Carlos had placed one hand on Inman’s chest, but he was looking at Purlis, who was giving back a poisonous glare.
“You seem to have some difficulty with the rights of others,” Carlos said, unfazed.
“Your kind don’t have any rights,” Purlis hissed back. “You’re not humans. You’re monsters.”
“I was thinking more in terms of property rights. Inman is mine. You took something of mine from me. What should I take from you . . . ?” His gaze roved over the general vicinity, but settled back on Purlis in a moment. “Ah,” he murmured, poking Purlis in the chest and then crooking his finger.
Purlis made a choking sound and rose up on his toes as Carlos pulled his hand slowly back. I could see a thin yellow filament of energy drawing out of the man’s chest.
“Carlos, no,” I said.
He snarled, then rolled his eyes and looked back at me. Our gazes met and for a moment I felt the pressure of his anger and his desire for revenge burning like acid. I didn’t back down, but kept my stare on him, disapproving and adamant. He uncrooked his hand.
Inman made a sudden lunge at Purlis while Carlos and I were distracted. Purlis dodged and ducked, snatching something off the floor and ramming it into Inman’s chest. The dhampir fell backward, making a gagging, gurgling sound, his hands scrabbling at the steel rod protruding front and back from his ribs.
Carlos dropped to Inman’s side while Quinton and I both spun and jumped to pursue Purlis. Purlis, crouched, was running for the door. I went for my gun. Quinton grabbed the bundle of cables and hauled back on it.
The cables sprang off the floor and snapped taut across Purlis’s shins. He went down hard on his face and I heard his skull hit the concrete. His energy corona dimmed and he slumped against the floor, stunned or unconscious—I wasn’t quite sure which—but certainly not dead. Quinton picked up his father’s gun from the workbench and went to check on him while I moved toward Carlos and Inman.
I could hear Inman’s wet, gargling cough even though I couldn’t see him through Carlos. Demi-vampires aren’t as dead as the real thing, so he still needed to breathe, but the rod through his chest wasn’t making that easy. I stepped around to where I could see and—if needed—lend a hand. Carlos brushed me aside and put both his hands flat on Inman’s damaged rib cage, muttering. The slow blood that welled up around the steel rod crawled across Inman’s skin and disappeared under Carlos’s hands, but the dhampir didn’t seem to be recovering.
“The box . . . box,” Inman gurgled. “Feeding . . . Limos.”
Carlos seemed shaken and he stopped short in what he was doing, shooting me a glance. Inman’s energy corona began fading faster the moment Carlos’s attention wavered. The vampire pressed his hands back to the dhampir’s chest.
Inman coughed red foam. “The
Carlos was stricken, a pain-filled expression flitting across his face and then vanishing again. “He’s been wasted. I can’t—I need more blood.” He looked at me and the glance had none of the arrogance or command I expected of him.
It startled me, but I had to shake my head. “I can’t. You know I can’t.”
His gaze darted toward Quinton and his father.
“No,” I said, softly but without equivocation.
“Purlis,” he suggested in desperation.
I shook my head firmly. “No. If you do that he’ll always have a blood tie to Inman. You and Cameron can’t risk it.”
It was a moot point anyway: Inman was dead. Forever.
Carlos let his shoulders fall. He closed his eyes, head down over Inman’s body. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought he was praying, but I suspected it was something else. I could barely see a thin stream of energy rising from Inman and wafting toward Carlos’s downturned face like smoke that the surviving vampire breathed in. It almost seemed he was somehow absorbing Inman’s spirit—if a dhampir has a spirit.
Whatever thing, whatever knowledge it was that he received as Inman passed out of the world, it made Carlos furious. He came back up to his feet in a rage, roaring and rushing across the room toward Quinton and Purlis.
Quinton spun on the balls of his feet, still crouching, braced, and raised the gun. “No! If anyone’s going to kill this stupid bastard, it’ll be me. You back the hell off, Carlos.” I had never seen him look so cold-blooded.
“You don’t understand, boy!” Carlos shouted, but he didn’t advance any farther. “This paltry man brought the hunger that threatens your home—Limos will devour whatever comes into her path and he placed thousands in her reach, which will only expand to hundreds of thousands, to millions. To bring her here, he planted seeds among the dead places of Europe and what he planted is bearing fruit. He brought starvation, disease, and death!”
“I know that!” Quinton spat back. “You think this little experiment tonight was the first one I’ve seen? My father believes that what he’s doing is right—no matter the cost. He believes the United States ought to rule the world—he believes in a global hegemony with America on top and everyone else under our heel. And he thinks he can make it happen by letting the monsters loose—his carefully tailored monsters, first here, then in Europe. He does not care who gets killed or what gets destroyed along the way because he
I felt like I was watching a play and had missed part of the first act. I wasn’t quite sure where Carlos had picked up the information he’d thrown out so angrily—from Inman somehow?—because he hadn’t seemed to know it when we were wrestling with Limos and Hazzard in the CalAska Pub’s back room. And I had known that Purlis believed the end justifies the means, but I hadn’t imagined his end to be quite so grandiose. I didn’t like being out of this loop.
Quinton and Carlos glared at each other for a moment until Carlos calmed down, but his calm was more frightening than his ire. “No. There is much more to it. What he has unwittingly set in motion will start in Europe, but it will spread. Fanatics who worship the bones . . . I have no time to teach you history!” he snapped. “He brought Limos here and he intended to take her back to Europe well fed after he had caused enough havoc. No doubt he thought a sudden plague of starvation and disease would make a case for whatever expansion of his project he’s proposed to whoever holds his purse strings—call it some kind of bioterrorism out of the unstable parts of Eastern Europe and the Middle East and your government leaps to throw money on the fire. But your father can’t have known who he was dealing with—he no doubt thought this cabal who told him of the shrine was nothing more than a pack of mad old men who guarded relics of power they didn’t understand or dare to use. But they are far from toothless and their age is not infirmity. With power handed to them by Purlis himself, they would starve and burn Europe to scorched earth.”
“Who are these men and how do you know this?” I asked.
“The
I shook my head slightly. “I meant, how do you know what’s happening, what Purlis is planning?”
Carlos pressed his hand to his forehead as if he were in pain. “Inman. He showed me what he had plucked from Purlis’s mind. What he knew, I know. That is why I wished him back in my hands. Inman’s talent remained intact as he moved toward death—it is exceedingly rare. But it was also his weakness through which Purlis took him from me. Only when passing did he return to my mind. Now he is truly dead. And a fire that should have been ashes in Europe long ago is smoldering back to life. Because of him,” he said, pointing at Quinton’s father.
Carlos lunged toward Purlis again and it took both Quinton and me together to push him back. He wasn’t trying too hard or we wouldn’t have succeeded; I wasn’t sure why he’d made such a feeble attempt when he could have easily bowled us over.
The commotion had roused Quinton’s father and he struggled to his knees while we were busy shoving
