Bad Mouth

chapter Nine


Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Kade leaned against the back of the sofa and stared blindly out the open balcony door. Restlessness prowled inside him, but he didn’t want to move. His heart had stopped beating again, the blood stilling, moved only by his minimal muscle movements, and he missed the warmth in his veins.

Over the centuries, he’d never once given his prejudice a second thought, but he’d never met a human like Valerie Craig. His negligible contact with humans had primarily been with his childhood house staff and appointed subjugates, who he never bothered knowing by name. They had done nothing to pull the kind of compassion and confusion from him Val had. She challenged him when no one else would dare, and her determination, misguided as it was, had claimed his respect from the start. She was like Ezra in many ways. They’d get on well. For once, he got what his friend saw in humans. At least in some humans.

As for Ezra…He reached for the cell in his pocket. It hadn’t finished the first ring when Ezra’s gruff voice came over the line. “Find anything?”

“Yes, my friend,” Kade answered. “Selene saw a human at the downtown blooding two weeks ago.”

“She’s sure?”

“She said no, but I believe she was sure. Thrown off maybe because he was at a blooding.”

“So it was a male.”

“Yes, and there were two males at the blooding near Ptolomy’s estate. I’m sending you a copy of the video. Get the team on the wire. I want the word out and ears on the streets.” Kade growled with frustration. “Call me the second you find anything, no matter how small. A description. A name. An address. Even a rumor. I don’t care.”

Ezra’s end went silent a minute. “I thought we’d killed ’em all, brother.”

“Yeah.” Kade dropped his head into his hand. “So did I.”

“Are you going to tell Ms. Craig what you find?”

“Hell no. The VLO won’t understand some bloodings are necessary. She won’t understand. She values human life too much to forgive what I’ve done. What I’ve had to do and what I must continue to do.”

“You care?”

Kade thought hard, the turmoil in his gut nearly intolerable. “Yeah,” he rasped. “I think I give a shit.”

“Bravo, my prince.” Ezra laughed. “You don’t know how happy this makes me.”

“F*ck you.”

Ezra’s laughter echoed in his mind long after he ended the call. Good to know this painful, twisting shift in his worldview brought his friend such delight. He snorted. Someday the man would see the error of his ways.

Kade rose with a groan. It cut deep, this tearing between his past and his present. Perhaps he could prove himself right in his bigotry if he could only press his fangs into the tempting pulse at Val’s throat. Then he’d know all of her transgressions. Her sins would lie before him like a bloody feast, and the idea sickened him. He didn’t want to know her sins. For the first time, he wanted to be wrong about humans.

He longed to have anything but this personal adjuvant curse he’d been born with. Ezra’s talent dealt with the future and possibilities. That skill had potential. Seeing the unchangeable past was a useless ability. All it did was make him remember. It made him hate.

Val didn’t make him hateful. She had turned his reality upside down. How he saw her was nothing like the ones whose pasts were flayed open to him.

But he couldn’t allow such thoughts. If he let her in, she’d find the truth, a truth that would change everything between them. She might know of his tendencies toward his subjugates, but she had no idea he’d slain humans. And he had no remorse.

She could never find out.

He had to locate the humans on Ptolomy’s videotape, and that human from the rooftop and kill them all before the f*ckers started talking.