“Killer vampire?” She paused. “Okay, you can’t answer but seriously, what else could it be?”
Elena slumped again.
“Remember that one that went rogue?”
“There’s been more than one,” she said lightly, even as her blood ran cold.
“About twenty years ago. We studied him in our Guild classes.”
Not twenty, Elena thought, eighteen. “Slater Patalis.” The name fell from her lips like a piece of nightmare, one she’d never shared with anyone, not even the best friend she trusted with everything else. “How many did he end up killing?” she asked—forced herself to ask—before Sara’s antennae could start to twang.
“Official body count was fifty-two in the space of a month,” came the grim response. “Unofficially, we think there were more.” Something creaked and Elena could almost see Sara leaning back in that big leather executive chair she adored like a second child. “Now that I’m director, I have access to all sorts of supersecret stuff.”
“Want to share?” She held on to the here and now, ignoring the screaming echoes of a past nothing could change.
“Hmmm, why not—you are my second in command in all but name.”
“Ech.” Elena stuck out her tongue. “No desk job for me, thank you.”
Sara laughed softly. “You’ll learn. Anyway, the official line on Slater was that he’d had a psych illness before he was Made, an illness he somehow managed to hide.”
“Some kind of severe antisocial personality disorder.” Until Sara’s comment, Elena had thought she knew every disturbing detail of the life and crimes of the most infamous killer vampire in recent history. “Evidence of childhood abuse and mistreatment of animals. Classic serial killer profile.”
“Too classic,” Sara pointed out. “It’s a load of crock. The Guild made it up after pressure from the Cadre of Ten.”
For a second, Elena had the horrifying suspicion that Slater Patalis wasn’t really dead, that the Cadre had saved him for some perverse reason of their own. But an instant later, sanity reasserted itself—not only had she seen the autopsy video, she’d snuck into the storage room and picked up the vial of Slater’s preserved blood. Her senses had reacted.
Vampire, the blood had whispered, vampire. And when she’d uncorked the bottle, it had murmured to her in Slater’s distinctive, hypnotic voice.
Come here, little hunter. Taste.
She bit down hard on her lower lip, drawing her own blood and banishing the memory of his. At least until the hour of nightmares. “You going to tell me the truth?” she asked Sara.
“Slater was normal when he went in as a Candidate,” Sara said. “You know how fanatical the angels are about checking the short-listed applicants. He was scanned, analyzed, damn near split open with all the tests they did. The man was squeaky clean and healthy, in body and in mind.”
“The rumors,” Elena whispered, eyes wide, “we always thought they were urban legends but if what you’re saying is true—”
“—it means there’s one very bad side effect to being Made. A tiny, tiny, tiny minority of the Candidates have their brains scrambled beyond recovery. What comes out of the mess isn’t always human.”
It should’ve felt odd to call vampires human in any sense but Elena knew what Sara was talking about. Humanity, as a whole, included vampires. As Elena knew from her own family, vampires could mate with, and even reproduce with, humans. Conception was very difficult but not impossible, and though the children—all mortal—sometimes suffered from anemia and related disorders, they were otherwise normal. First rule of biology—if it can mate, it’s probably the same species.
That rule couldn’t be applied to those of Raphael’s kind. Angels attracted groupies by the truckload—mostly vampires, though the occasional stunning human was allowed into the mix. But debauchery aside, Elena had never heard of a child coming from a mating between human and angel, or even vampire and angel. Perhaps, she thought, angels simply didn’t sire children. Maybe they considered the vampires their children.
Blood instead of milk, immortality instead of love.
A mockery of a childhood. But then again, what did Elena know of childhood? “Sara—I’m going to need full access to the Guild’s computers and files.”
“No one but the director has full access.” Sara’s tone held a thread of the famous Haziz steel. “You promise me you’ll think about the assistant director position and I’ll give you access.”
“That would be lying,” Elena said. “I’d go crazy behind a desk.”
“I thought that once upon a time, and I’m as happy as a clam.”
“What do clams have to do with anything?” Elena muttered.
“Beats me. Say you’ll consider it.”
“There’s a crucial difference between me and you, Ms. Director.” She let her tone speak for her. “Choose an A.D. out of one of the other married hunters. Don’t waste it on me.”
A sigh. “The fact that you’re single doesn’t mean I want you out there in the line of fire. You’re my best friend, my sister in all but blood.”
Tears pricked at her eyes. “Ditto.” After Elena’s own family had disowned her, it had been Sara who’d picked up the pieces. Their bond was close to unbreakable. “You know as well as I do that I’m not made for safety. I was born to be what I am.” A hunter. A tracker. A loner.
“Why do I bother arguing with you?” A shake of her head that Elena could almost see. “I’m coding you in now.”
That was what Elena loved about the Guild. There was no messy paperwork—hunters chose their director, then trusted her to make the decisions. No meetings, no board. No fucking around.
“Thanks.”
“Uh-huh.” The sound of rapid typing. “A hint of warning—I have a feeling certain high-security files are discreetly monitored for access.”
“By who?” But she knew the answer. “On what authority?”
“The same one that lets them hire out my people without telling me what the hell is going on,” Sara spat out. “I became director so I could help keep hunters safe. Raphael is going to learn that—”
“Don’t!” Elena cried. “Please, Sara, don’t approach him. The only reason, the only reason I’m still alive is that he needs me to do a job. Otherwise, you’d probably have spent a lovely afternoon identifying my body”—or what remained of it—“at the morgue.”
“Jesus, Ellie. I took an oath to protect my hunters and I’m not going to back off just because Raphael’s one scary m—”
“Then do it for Zoe,” Elena interrupted. “Do you want her to grow up without a mom?”
“Bitch.” Sara’s tone was close to a growl. “If I didn’t love you so much, I’d have to come beat you up. Damn emotional blackmail.”
“Promise me, Sara.” Her hand tightened painfully on the receiver. “This hunt is going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done—don’t make me worry about you, too. Promise.”