“Next week!” she exclaimed. “Every last human could be dead by next week. We need to burn the fields and bury everything tomato-based now! Spaghetti sauce. Tomato paste. Ketchup.” Her voice went soft as the magnitude of that sank in. “Can’t they charter a plane?”
Mood pensive, Pelhan got up and went to the coffee-stained counter. “It’s not simply an issue of transport,” he said as he dumped the sludgy coffee and threw out the grounds. “He was in Detroit when it was extirpated.”
Trisk took a breath to protest, then caught it back in alarm. They had erased Detroit?
“He has to survive his own inquiry first,” Pelhan said, his back to her as he made new coffee. “A million and a half people, gone.” He gave a rueful scoff. “Inderland and human alike.” He rinsed out the pot and added cool, fresh water to the coffeemaker. “I suppose we were lucky to have an elven representative there at the time to make the vote legal.” Taking the grounds from a cupboard, he looked at her. “I’m curious. Just how many of you are out there, anyway?”
She swallowed. “Ah . . .” She tried to grasp the power needed to end an entire city—and why the powers that be saw the need. It felt wrong to be talking about Inderland matters in public, where anyone could be listening, but she’d seen no humans in the entire building. “Few hundred thousand, mostly in the U.S.,” she said, and he nodded, focused on measuring out the grounds. “It’s easier if we stay on the same continent. What happened in Detroit?”
Concentrating on the new gadget, Pelhan carefully pushed the start button. “Vampires got out of hand,” he said, satisfied when the machine began making gurgling noises. “That’s why we’ve been bringing them in here. Detroit has always had a disproportionately large vampire population. Never many witches or Weres to balance them out. When the plague began to impact their living kin, the undead panicked and began taking the healthy but unwilling from the street.”
“My God,” she whispered, truly appalled.
“As few as they were, the witches began to try to force the undead vampires back into the shadows before something happened that couldn’t be explained. Some fool master vampire began taking witches instead of humans when it was realized they never got sick. That,” he said with a sigh, “was a mistake. Witches fought back and the magic couldn’t be explained away, especially when even more undead masters began to surface in an effort to regain control.”
“They broke the silence?” she said, shocked, and Pelhan nodded.
“I’m sure they tried to get as many out as they could, but everyone caught within the area is dead.” He hesitated. “They’re blaming it on the plague.”
Trisk swallowed hard, trying to wrap her mind around what had happened. They had killed the innocent and guilty alike, human and Inderlander, as an object lesson in self-patrol: keep your neighbor in line, or you yourself might pay the cost.
The rich scent of the coffee began steaming out of the machine, and Trisk put a hand to her middle, feeling ill. Damn morning sickness . . .
“Hence the reason for us trying to relocate all humans to a central place,” Pelhan said as he got two mugs down and wiped them out with a clean towel. “Not just for their safety, but ours in case of an accidental use of magic. We’re taking no chances, jailing the master vampires with their children to prevent a spread of plague to the living vampire population as well as help keep the masters calm. You don’t see many right now, but Chicago’s Weres are out patrolling, especially at night. They can take a lot in wolf skin, and if anyone sees them, the first thought is abandoned dog, not werewolf.”
“I didn’t know you could jail a master vampire,” she said, still not liking the idea of human camps. It was better than having your city razed because the vampires lost control, though.
Pelhan poured coffee into the two mugs and came over to set one down beside her. “It’s more like house arrest within their own domicile. It’s only the nastier vamps, the ones more inclined to ignore the rules, that we have down in the basement lockup with their children.” He took a sip of coffee, visibly relaxing as it slipped down. “We’ve asked them to come in voluntarily, but most are too agitated to think clearly.” He chuckled, feeling his jaw. “I don’t know how many more voluntary vampires I can handle.”
Ormand is a nasty vampire? she thought. But it was said that the nicer they were in the day, the uglier they were in the dark. She slipped her hand around the warm porcelain, drawing it closer to her but not drinking it. It smelled wonderful, but her stomach was in knots.