“That was a good prank,” agreed Annabeth Mahoney, who had created a popular video game called “Blood Wars,” which pitted vampires against each other. In Mimi’s opinion, sometimes the Conspiracy played too fast and loose with disseminating untruths that were a little too close to the real thing.
“Gentlemen, ladies,” Mimi interrupted, clearing her throat. “As much as I’m enjoying this trip down memory lane—or rather, manipulated memory lane—this is not just a security breach. Even if we’re able to convince the Red Bloods this is yet another Hollywood fiction, it shows that whoever put this together knows too much about us, which puts us all in danger. That’s hellfire up there. And one of our own is missing.” Mimi turned to the twin Venators seated to her right. She’d pulled Sam and Ted Lennox from their previous assignment to work on this one. “Sam, what do we know so far?”
Sam took the mouse and clicked on an icon on the screen, minimizing the video and pulling up a photograph of a pretty, red-haired girl. It was the same girl from the video. “The Blue Blood in question is Victoria Taylor. Seventeen. Duchesne senior. She was last seen at a party thrown by Jamie Kip at his apartment, where this video was shot. Nothing irregular in her Transformation as far as the Committee can tell. Blue veins at fifteen, the hunger, all that. No deviant behaviors, no aberrant actions in her history. We checked the Rep Files. Family is solid Coven stock.”
He clicked on the mouse again to show another photograph. This one was of a good-looking boy with messy blond hair and dimples. “This is her human familiar, Evan Howe, sixteen, Duchesne junior, also missing since the night of the party. Ted, you want to take it from here?” he asked his brother.
“Sure.” Ted pulled a reporter’s notebook from his coat pocket and began to read from it. “So far, the video has been circulating on the Internet, and to Lane’s suggestion, it’s already happened. The Red Bloods think it’s a movie trailer.”
The members nodded.
“So we’ve been puffing up that idea by spreading rumors that a movie called Suck is coming out. It’s a documentary, handheld, horror type of thing. So far, the public seems to be buying it. Apologies in advance to the more talented members of the group—I wouldn’t presume to know how to do your job. Sam and I had one of the tech people jazz up this footage, and this new trailer is making the rounds on the Web now, too.”
Sam clicked on the mouse and the horrifying video played again. At the end, it displayed a tagline. “Suck,” it read in bloodred letters. “Coming to theaters near you.”
“I’ll get it up on my IMDB profile as soon as possible,” Josephine agreed. “Suck . . . I like it. Good title.”
“So that covers the security risk, at least,” Sam sighed. “But on to the real issue. We believe this is a genuine threat and that Victoria has been taken by hostiles. We haven’t gotten a bead yet on where she is or who’s holding her. Her parents are in Mustique for the season. They’re flying back today, but they haven’t seen her in months, and as far as I could gather, they don’t seem to know very much about her day-to-day life.”
Typical Blue Blood parents, Mimi thought. Since their “children” weren’t their children at all, most vampires had very loose family connections. Mimi was always grateful that Charles and Trinity, no matter that they were only her cycle parents, had been more attentive than indifferent. It could have been much worse, as the Taylors showed.
“And the Red Blood?” she asked.
“His parents were a little more on the ball. They filed a missing persons report last week. The school is keeping it hush-hush and out of the papers, of course. No one wants any more bad publicity. But if he doesn’t turn up soon, those Red Bloods are going to FNN.” Sam smiled an ironic smile. “Usually the Force News Network thrives on this kind of stuff. Missing rich kids. Scandal on the Upper East Side, etcetera. But I take it they’ll sit on this one?” he asked Mimi.
“Of course. They’ll get nothing from us,” Mimi promised.
“We traced the IP address of the computer that posted the video. It went to a ghost. We’re having tech untangle that one,” Sam continued. “The shadow crescent is the first sign of the waning moon. About seven days away. We’re treating this as a countdown situation. This is Day One. Which means we’ve only got six days left.”
“And you’re sure this isn’t the Silver Bloods?” Mimi asked.
“It’s not like them to go public with this kind of stuff. They’re not . . . modern, shall we say,” Sam answered. “No. We’re quite sure this is something else. We think it might be a human threat.”
Annabeth gasped. “Are humans even capable of something like this? That’s insane. It’s like the sheep ambushing the shepherd.”
“Unfortunately, it’s not impossible,” Ted said. “It’s a numbers issue, and there have always been more of them than there are of us.”