Bad Mouth

chapter Nineteen


His team had left for the night and Kade couldn’t wait for sunrise and the irresistible pull of sleep that came with it. Every beat of his heart ached until he willed it to stop its incessant pounding. It didn’t stop the pain, but he needed to put an end to his self-pity. Val would grow old and die in the bat of his eyelash. She was human. He never should have let himself feel anything for her. As if he could have stopped it.

He wondered what she’d do about the fake bloodings and the missing deranged the VLO would never find. Maybe she hadn’t decided. He didn’t think her capable of compromising an investigation, and he’d never ask it of her. She was too damned honest, but he loved that about her. He’d had so little truthfulness in his long, long life.

Last night, Declan had located the Goth Slavers at the old flour mill on Harbor Island and his team had put an end to their branch of the operation. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t put an end to an organization too large for a small team like his. He needed more man power on his side, but he didn’t trust anyone else to bring in. If word reached the Ancients, the world as he knew it would end. If only they could be reasoned with, but they’d lost the ability to be reasonable before he’d been born.

His goal now narrowed to finding William Parrish. Luc and Guns hadn’t made much progress—it was as if the damned deranged had disappeared off the face of the earth, impossible on his own. Someone was hiding him, restraining him, which sounded like the Slavers’ work, but nothing indicated the Goth group had anything to do with Will or his transformation.

He’d made it to his bedroom when his cell rang. “What’s up?”

“Ah, Kade, my never friend. Good to hear your voice.” Ptolomy’s voice cracked over the words, but Kade had enough sense not to laugh at the Ancient’s perpetual pubescence. He could hear one of Ptolomy’s little pretties, as the boy called them, whining in the background.

“Well, this is a first.”

“What? I never call? My bad.”

“To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Only a friendly warning.”

When Ptolomy got that serious tone in his voice, Kade always paid attention. “I’m listening.”

“Good. It’s come to my attention that new legislation to make transformations illegal has entered the House. Completely illegal, no exceptions. We’ve put down such legislation before, but with the recent bloodings the bill has garnered enough support to put it to a vote, possibly enough to pass.”

Kade frowned. A nagging suspicion rose in the back of his mind, but he batted it down. “Are they stupid? Don’t they realize this will only increase the bloodings?”

“They aren’t thinking at all. The human masses are terrified.”

The nagging thought persisted. “It’s knee-jerk.”

“That won’t keep it from passing.”

Kade paced along his bedroom window. He was the worst sort of person to handle this problem. “You know I don’t deal with politics. What can I do?”

Ptolomy remained silent a moment. “Who do you think wrote that little treasure of a bill?”

A chill hit the center of him like a frozen ice pick. He didn’t want to give access to that nagging thought, but Ptolomy had just knocked that door down, and Kade had no other choice than to state the obvious. “Val.” She’d detested vampires, still did for all he knew.

“Of course, but perhaps you could talk her out of supporting it. She seemed to have a pretty big thing for you. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

“I may have f*cked that up.” An understatement of the century.

“Then unf*ck it. She has considerable influence with the Senate, the House, and the governor’s office. Her parents are very influential people as well.”

“I can try.”

“Don’t try. Do. This is about survival. You have no choice. I’m doing what I can, but we need her. To the public, she is the VLO. They’ll listen to her.”

After the phone call, the chill remained. He called Selene, directing her to use her influence with the wealthy humans she knew. He felt her anxiety through the phone line. She would do what she could.

That legislation would back the Immortalis into a wall, and the last thing the humans wanted to deal with was a horde of cornered vampires. It seemed like every wall pushed tenaciously for conflict. If the Ancients learned humans were enslaving vampires, there’d be hell to pay. If the humans ended transformations, the result would be no different. In any case, the Dominorum would release the leash on the Legion, a leash Kade was certain would never be regained.

Val likely hadn’t put any thought to the consequences of that legislation. Humans didn’t need vampires, but vampires certainly needed the cursed humans to survive. A world without transformations would be genocide for his kind. They’d die out, never to exist again.

But perhaps that’s what she’d been after all along.