“Yeah, she was.”
“What? What do you know? Where was the car? Who was driving? Do you have a lead on who was driving?”
“He’s dead. The driver is dead. He was a vampire who left Ordinary twenty years ago, or that’s what Rossi told me. The car was down by Cape Foulweather. Smashed into a tree on the side of the cliff. Engine still running. Rossi found him before any tourists could stumble on him.”
“And Rossi killed him?”
“No. He was already dead.”
“I don’t understand. The driver killed himself?”
“No. The crash didn’t kill him. He was already dead.”
“Vampire dead, or dead dead?”
“Dead dead. Had been for days, maybe months. But he was controlled like a puppet. Covered in blood and symbols.”
“Are you kidding me? Lavius remote-controlled a vampire in a Corvette and ran over my sister? I am going to kick his ugly old ass.”
“No. We’re going to kill him. There is no negotiating. No trying to trade some book for Ben. We go in direct and we take Lavius out. Fast. Hard. Done.”
“Do we know where he is? Where he will be?”
“Not yet.”
“Then until we do, we keep all avenues open. Even negotiating on the full moon, if that’s what it takes. We can’t kill Lavius without knowing where Ben is. So we get hands on Ben first and then go after the bastard. Understand?”
Myra clenched her jaw but nodded.
“Where is the dead guy?”
“Rossi has him out at his place. He’d doing something to ‘neutralize’ the body. So it’s not some kind of bomb, or spy, or zombie stowaway in town that can be reanimated and used by Lavius again.”
“Well, shit. Reanimated vampire zombie. Is that a thing?”
“Rossi says that’s what it might have been.”
Might. That wasn’t a definite.
I rubbed at the back of my neck, my hand sliding to the bite I couldn’t feel on the outside. It felt cold on the inside though, as if a sliver of ice was lodged beneath my skin, that cold sliver pushing in deeper and deeper, aiming for my lungs, my heart.
“Okay, so Rossi has the body. We have the car?”
“Ryder’s dealing with the car. Hatter and Shoe are here.”
“That was quick”
“They were on leave.”
“Do I want to know what for?”
“I didn’t ask. They assured me it was just a formality. I’ll run the record on it when I have time.”
“Okay. So they’re covering the car. Maybe we’ll get some clue as to where Lavius and Ben might be.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be that easy. Do you?”
“No.”
