In the meantime, if those sirens were in fact for the girl in the broken heels, I didn’t have much time to play games with Henry. Human police officers didn’t handle supernatural stuff all that well.

The word denial comes to mind. They were always so willing to ignore the most obvious explanation in lieu of overly contrived answers which shut out the option of the irregular. Occam’s razor did not appear to apply in the case of humans, especially human police.

“Henry, we don’t have time for this. I need you to tell me who made you, or I let that girl identify you to the police and you spend the night downtown in a cell.” This particular threat held more weight with new vampires. I didn’t think Henry would really get it, but it was worth a shot.

“I’m not afraid of the police,” he said with a snort. In this instance he was justified in his dismissal of law enforcement, and he and I both knew it.

Henry had a lot of cocky swagger for a new vamp, and it was beginning to narrow down the options in my mind for his sire, but I needed a name if I was going to get a warrant. Killing rogues was an awful lot like bringing down drug kingpins. It was one thing to get the lowest level thugs, but quite another to get the master sire. It’s almost impossible to find a master’s master’s master. The council and I were both looking to find the names of the old ones, the ones we suspected but dare not accuse without evidence.

“You might want to consider the fact that all police-station cells now have windows.”

“So?”

“So, you’re not immune to sunlight anymore. And telling me what I want to know is going to be a hell of a lot better than waking up as nothing more than a pile of ashes.”

Henry was starting to get bored with our conversation. His eyes were wandering and he was licking his lips. Then a dark shadow of a thought crossed over his face, stirring the inky depths of his black eyes, making them glimmer in an unpleasant way. His brows narrowed, and he turned his attention back to me, smirking.

Henry chuckled. “He told me about you. Secret McQueen, big bad vampire hunter. He told me I shouldn’t cross you. He said that you were dangerous.” He was laughing with unrestrained scorn now, amused by his own joke. But he was also giving me clues. His direct sire was a rogue who knew me. Probably one I’d crossed before.

“You have a wise sire, Henry, now tell me his name.”

“No.”

In a flash Henry went from aloof to attack, and he had my free wrist in his hand, his gaping mouth going for my throat.

Idiot, the throat was such a clichéd move. Had he bitten into my wrist while he had the option, I might have been in trouble. The intensity of his attack did, however, manage to topple us, and his weight landed on me with hefty force once again. Henry, with his solid mass of vampire hunger, outweighed me by about a hundred pounds. I used a considerable amount more strength than he probably anticipated I had to bring the arm he was holding across my chest to block his attack on my neck. He was so certain of himself he bit his own arm by accident while gnashing for my skin.

He howled in sudden shock.

“Hurts doesn’t it? Being bitten by a vampire when you’re not in the thrall.”

“You will know soon, girl,” he snarled, spit flying from his mouth, his eyes deep black with rage.

He dove in to bite me again, but I dodged faster than he was prepared for. As he lunged to bite, I jammed my gun into his open mouth, a bullet loaded in the chamber and my finger trembling on the trigger.

“I already know what it feels like, asshole. Now tell me the name or I pull this trigger.” I knew I was going to do it whether he told me or not.

His lips moved around the barrel. I pulled out the gun and pressed it in one swift motion under his chin. Henry licked around his mouth, tasting where my gun had been. He touched his fangs with the tip of his tongue, as if savoring the memory of something delicious, and choked out a laugh.

“My master will be thrilled to know that one of his own was responsible for the death of the great Secret McQueen. And he will be even more impressed to know that you died without ever knowing who he was. Because I will never tell you, not even when I eat your still-beating heart right out of your chest.”

And then he spit in my face.

Chapter Four

The one benefit to having someone else’s saliva on your face, if it’s possible to find one, is that it makes it a lot harder for the blood to stick.

When the back of Henry’s head came off and rained its contents over us, I was able to wipe the worst of it out of my eyes. I shoved his now literally dead weight off me and knelt next to the corpse.

If his sire was who I thought it was, there would be another way to tell. I only knew of one master sire who would be exceptionally thrilled to see me dead. I tugged down the neck of Henry’s shirt, and sure enough, though scabbed over from healing, there was my proof.

A set of bite marks, ragged and painful looking, but with an unmistakable gap where one of the fang punctures should be. A gap which would match to a missing tooth. One that I had knocked out six years earlier while fighting for my life against the first master vampire I’d ever tried to kill.

“Son of a bitch.” I sucked in a breath of cold air and cast a look behind me, a paranoid but somehow necessary gesture to confirm he wasn’t there.

It all made sense now. The attitude and the smug certainty. The cocksure way he had gone right after that girl. He truly was his father’s son.

“Fuck me. Shit.” I was hissing now, forcing words through gritted teeth. If I could have been more intelligible, I’m sure something a bit more eloquent might be said, but right then all I could think of were curses, and I strung them together with blasphemous intensity. From inside my jacket I pulled out my cell phone and a small flashlight. I hit number two on the speed dial and flicked on the flashlight with my teeth.

“This is a late check in, McQueen.”

“I need a pick up outside Columbus Circle. As soon as you can be there. Don’t bring the nice upholstery. I’m messy.”

A pause. “Who?”

“It wasn’t sanctioned. I’m going to call Holden, have him alert the fucking Tribunal. But it doesn’t matter, Keaty. You have no idea whose seed this guy was.”

A longer pause. Francis Keats would not guess, but I suspected from the tone in my voice that he knew all too well who I was talking about.

I was looking through the grass with my flashlight, waiting for it to… There it was, a glint of metal. I picked up the bullet and put it in my pocket with the casing I’d already collected. There was no time for me to hide the body, so I had to hope the girl was too shaken to be specific about our location. Even if they did find him, the body would be nothing more than dust by sunrise. Bullets, however, did not simply disintegrate.

“It’s Peyton. He’s back.”

“I’ll be there in four minutes.”

Keaty was waiting when I reached the street corner. The sidewalks were almost empty, with pedestrian traffic dwindling in the hours after all the bars had closed but before reasonable citizens would be awake again. It used to be known as the witching hour, and in some circles it still was.

I slipped unnoticed into the black car, its tinted windows blocking out all questions and suspicion. After all, what would people think if they saw a blood-splattered blonde being driven around by a serious-looking man in glasses?

Keaty must have left in one hell of a rush if he was still wearing his silver-rimmed bifocals. I wasn’t sure if he thought they made him look weak, or if he knew they would sully his badass reputation, but Keaty never let anyone see him with them on.

Anyone but me.

The seat squeaked beneath me, and I realized he’d put a plastic slipcover over the leather. How pragmatic, he decided to save the car rather than put in contacts. At least I knew where his priorities were.

We drove in silence for awhile, my breath returning to normal after I had blitzed across Central Park to meet his car, and my sense of panic reducing. I felt safer now being this close to him.

Francis Keats, best known to me as Keaty and to everyone else as Mr. Keats, was the closest thing I had to a certainty in my life. He was my partner, as in business partner only, thank you. I’d met Keaty six years earlier, when I was sixteen and had come to the big city to chase my demons, both figurative and literal.

Keaty had been the one to save my ass when I got in way over my head with a vampire I hadn’t known was a rogue. Back then, I didn’t work for anyone and was foolishly hunting any vampire I could find. Sixteen years old and I’d almost gotten myself killed on one of my first outings. The vampire had seemed young, and I thought he would be an easy kill. I had been so very wrong, and now it was coming back to haunt me.

No one had feared the name of Secret McQueen then, I can tell you that much for certain.

But Keaty, who was a solitary man by trade, must have seen something in me, because after I refused to go back home, he took me under his wing. Keaty was one of five people who knew what I really was, and I was one of only two who ever called him Francis and lived to tell the tale.

“Is any of that yours?” he asked, indicating the blood on me. His voice was calm, showing no concern if he had any.

“No.” The scratches on my face and clavicle were already healing. One of the benefits of my dubious bloodline.

“Going to tell me what happened?” Keaty passed me a towel and a few wet-naps.

I recapped the story of the girl in the woods and an almost-feral Henry Davies. Then I told him, without sparing any details, of what Henry had said to me and of the healing bite marks I’d found on his neck.

“You’re absolutely certain?” Even he sounded certain, but I knew he had to ask.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Well.” He parked the car in front of an old brownstone with one light burning on the main floor and a painted name in the frosted glass that read Keats and McQueen Private Pest Control. “We always knew he’d be back. It was never a question.”

“But why wait this long? Why now?” We got out of the car and hiked up the steps. An old woman passing by with a small pug gave us a second glance and frowned with disapproval. A twenty-two-year-old girl with a forty-year-old man at this time of night? I knew what she was thinking, even before she shook her head and hurried along. At moments like this I had to fight the urge to put my hand in Keaty’s pocket and lick his cheek, or something equally silly. That had never and would never be the relationship I had with him, so it bothered me when that was what people assumed of us. Of him.