She’d only had her first bite—the scar was still livid on her throat over the scooped collar of her new shirt—and there was no sign that it had taken yet. It didn’t matter. Lawrence was VINE born and bred. Her father had died in the line of duty during the Humans Only terror attack in Savannah, her first taste of blood had been as she nursed at her freshly turned mother’s breast as Director Lawrence gave a press conference condemning the violence, and she’d just married into one of the oldest vampire families in Philadelphia.
It would be “us” even if she never grew fangs.
She was a good agent, but that wasn’t why Madoc had requested her as his partner. Sometimes he needed a reminder that not every human reached for the pitchforks at the first opportunity. There were many reasons to remember other things about them.
“Why has this incident been such a flashpoint for the community?” he asked.
Lawrence pursed her lips at him. They both knew he was well aware of the answer, but he leaned back against the leather seats and waited.
“Peanuts,” Lawrence said, with a flash of sharp humor. “This used to be a dry county, officially human only, but then the local peanut farm went belly-up. There was a mining company interested in opening a pit here, but that fell under the Sojourner rule.”
Madoc nodded as the Jeep pulled up outside the sheriff’s office. “If you don’t want to associate with vampires, don’t associate with vampires,” he said. “So the town ceded their dry status?”
“Technically,” Lawrence said. She unbuckled herself from the seat belt and scooted forward as she reached for the door handle. “It’s still a predominantly breathing area, the only blood bank is in the hospital, and even before the recent increase in Hunter activity in this area, the neighborhood’s been good recruiting territory for the Hunters for years.”
As she opened the door, the muffled sound of voices outside resolved into the thundered cadence of fire-and-brimstone prayer. The group of faithful were clustered on the small patch of green outside the sheriff’s office, small candles and photocopies of the not-quite-dead deputy’s staff photo clutched in their hands.
Madoc tilted his head as he tried to identify the scripture the preacher had picked apart so he could shove his own anger between the words.
“They walk among so, sit with us, sup with us,” the preacher ranted. “But they have the fangs of a wolf, not the teeth of a sheep, and their meat is carved from the flank of a child, a teacher, a—”
Proverbs, then. A bit on the nose for Madoc’s taste, but he’d grown up with the compass and fury of the Welsh Methodist church at its most impassioned. It was a lot to expect for Appleberg’s resident rabble-rouser to live up to that.
Lawrence reached up to her throat. “Should I—”
“No need,” Madoc said as he pulled his sunglasses out of his breast pocket and slid them on. He could have done without it. The purple-toned dusk light was low enough that evenhiseyes could tolerate it, but why not give them a show. That was what they were here for. He gave Lawrence a sly, sharp smile. “They’ll have other things on their minds.”
He didn’t bother to look at the prayer group as he got out of the car and stalked toward the main doors of the sheriff’s office. There was no need. The silence that fell over the prayer group, the rote amens strangled in people’s throats told him his appearance had the expected impact. People rarely mistook Madoc for human in his civilian clothes. In the midnight black of his VINE tactical uniform, stark against his pallid coloring, it was obvious what he was.
To anyone with the slightest interest in vampire politics, it was obviouswhohe was as well. There still weren’t that many dhampirs in the US, and even fewer of Madoc’s… vintage. His peers had died out decades ago—frequently at his hands—and most of the next generation had barely cut their fangs. He was memorable.
A low, shocked whisper came from the crowd. “Biter.” Someone laughed, a nervous titter of sound, and then fell quiet again. When VINE’s elite response team had first hit the papers—in Boston, Madoc thought, ninety years ago—they had been the Bloodcrimes Tactical Response. BTR. Some Hunter-friendly local affiliate out West had coined “Biters” as a mockery for the then all-vampire team.
Madoc had taken it as their own. Legends needed a name, not an acronym. These days no one found the old joke funny for long.
The priest, a short bull of a man with close-cropped, cotton-white hair and small, mean eyes, stepped in front of Madoc.
“God bless you,” the priest said as he marked the cross over his breast with heavy, scar-knuckled hands. His lips were wet with the expectation of God’s intercession. “And keep you from bringing harm to the innocent.”
Madoc could feel the tension in the air as twenty people bated their breath to see what happened next. He reached up to his collar and hooked the medal from under his shirt, the silver faintly warm from his skin when he pressed his lips to it. It stung. It always did. He accepted that.
“From your lips to His ears, Father,” he said as he let the chain slide through his fingers. It hung bright against his chest, the bas-relief of Michael worn down nearly smooth after years of being worried at. “Now get out of my way, or do you want to see if you’re innocent enough to warrant God’s protection?”
For a second, the priest held his ground. Then he stepped back out of Madoc’s path. The sound of released breath from the prayer group sounded a lot like a disappointed sigh. The priest stole a quick, nervous glance over his shoulder and then puffed himself up with bluster.
“A God-fearing man doesn’t test God,” he said, his voice pitched to carry. “God tests him.”
Madoc smirked and walked away. As he approached, the heavy glass doors of the sheriff’s office were pushed open by a nervous young deputy, his throat flushed raw with razor burn.
“Cardinal Madoc,” the young man said, his voice half-strangled in his throat. “We didn’t realize that VINE would send—”
“Agent,” Madoc corrected him. “Or SES Madoc. Either is appropriate.”
The deputy’s brain caught up with his mouth, and he blanched. He looked like he wanted to swallow his own tongue and reel the words back in.
“Agent. Of course. That’s what I—”
Madoc left him to babble and stepped to the side to let Lawrence in through the door. The deputy glanced at her with a flash of obvious relief at her blood-pinked skin and lack of history.
