“Wow, Timmie thinks he has a lead, and it’s nowhere near where Ian and Tate have been looking,” I told Bones.
He glanced at the text. “Detroit’s east side is one of the most crime-ridden places in America.”
Oddly enough, he sounded approving, and tinges of admiration threaded through my emotions.
“You’re glad a little girl is on her own in that area why?”
“She’s safer there,” Bones replied, arching a brow. “She has her pick of thousands of abandoned buildings in an area where people don’t pry into each other’s business, and where the occasional body of someone who attempts to trifle with her won’t raise a public outcry.”
Such a coldly logical analysis. Bones had had hundreds of years fighting for his life to think that way. Katie was only a decade old, yet she was demonstrating the same mentality if she’d picked Detroit for those reasons instead of ending up there by accident.
“If it was deliberate, it also shows restraint on her part,” Bones went on. Something icy brushed against my emotions this time. “That’s good. Less chance that she’ll need to be killed if she’s amenable to staying hidden.”
For several seconds, I couldn’t speak, my mind rejecting that he’d actually said such a thing.
“Need to be killed?” I finally repeated. “Are you insane?”
The look he gave me was so chilling, I was reminded that Bones had been a hit man for almost two centuries before we met.
“The danger of war hasn’t diminished because of her age. It’s the reason I’m willing to let Katie live if she allows us to hide her for the rest of her life. Otherwise, by our hand or someone else’s, she’ll have to die.”
My expression must have conveyed my flat refusal because he grasped my shoulders and all but shook me.
“It sickens me, but you know I’m right! You turned into a full vampire because the mere possibility that you could add ghoul attributes to your half-vampire nature nearly caused a war. Katie is that addition, and if that ever becomes general knowledge, she’ll start the war we all fear. Or be killed to stop it.”
“But she doesn’t have to stay hidden forever,” I whispered, still reeling over the bleak future Bones had laid out for the child. “When she’s old enough, she could choose to become one species or the other—”
“It’s too late,” Bones said in a far gentler tone. “Katie’s already a combination of vampire and ghoul. Losing her humanity won’t negate that; it will only increase it.”
I had no words to refute that. Too well, I remembered the hundreds that had died when ghouls started taking out Masterless vampires in the early stirrings of a species uprising. Then the hundreds more, on both sides, that died quelling that conflict. Bones was right; only my changing over had stopped those hundreds from turning into millions since ten percent of the world’s population was undead. That, and our uneasy truce with the new ghoul queen, Marie Laveau, who’d already stated that if we didn’t shut down this new threat, she would.
I took in a ragged breath, more for the familiarity of the act than any hope that it would soothe me.
“You’re right.” Damn you, Madigan! “The best Katie can hope for is a life hidden away. Maybe it won’t be too awful. Due to her demonically enhanced blood being a drug for vampires, Denise has to hide, too.”
Bones let me go, only his gaze gripping mine as he spoke.
“And if she proves impossible to hide, we won’t be able to protect her from what will happen next.”
I let out my breath on a bitter sigh. “No. I suppose we won’t.”
Katie was one life against millions. Multiple millions, adding in the fact that humans would be collateral damage if vampires and ghouls ever engaged in an all-out war. We wouldn’t only be fighting our enemies trying to keep her alive. We’d be fighting our allies, too. I’d do everything in my power to prevent a young girl from being sacrificed for the greater good, but as my long list of past regrets proved, sometimes, my best wasn’t good enough.
Please, God, let it be good enough this time.
Mencheres took that moment to enter the room. With his bat ears, he would’ve overheard everything we’d said, but he made no argument, and that was akin to his full agreement.
“We’ve recovered some data,” he stated. “Come and see.”
Twenty-seven
When Mencheres had said his “people” were working on the drives we’d brought back from Madigan’s compound, I’d assumed he meant vampires. When we followed him to the room he’d converted into a tech lover’s paradise, however, the black-haired boy beaming at his computer was human. And he looked about seventeen years old.
“I am the shee-it,” the adolescent said in a singsong voice. Then he swung around, smirking at the nearly five-thousand-year-old Egyptian vampire.
“Who’s your daddy, M?”
Far from being offended, Mencheres went over and flawlessly executed a street-style handshake complete with finger slaps, fist bumps, and a high-low finale.
“You are the shit,” he solemnly agreed.