Hard Bitten (Chicagoland Vampires 4)

Tate held up a silencing hand. "Wait your turn, darling. And what about your father?" he asked me. "He isn't crazy, is he?"

I shook my head, confused by the non sequitur. "This isn't about my father."

His eyes wide with surprise, Tate let out a belly-raucous, mirthless laugh. "Not about your father? Merit, everything in your life since you became fanged has been about your father."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

He gave me a look best saved for a nave child. "Why do you think that you, of all people in Chicago, were made a vampire?"

"Not because of my father. Celina tried to kill me. Ethan saved my life." But even as I spoke the words aloud, my stomach knotted with fear.

Confused, I dropped the sword back to my side.

"Yes, you've told me that before. Repeating the lies doesn't make them truth, Merit. Awfully coincidental, wasn't it, that Ethan happened to be on campus when you were?"

"It was a coincidence."

Tate clucked his tongue. "You're smarter than that. I mean, truly - what are the odds? Don't you think it would have been beneficial for your father to have a vampire in his pocket - his daughter - when the riots ended? When humans became used to the concept of the fanged living among them?"

Tate smiled tightly. And then the words slipped from his mouth like poison.

"What if I told you, Merit, that Ethan and your father had a certain, shall we say, business arrangement?"

Blood roared in my ears, my knuckles whitening around the handle of the katana. "Shut up."

"Oh, come now, darling. If the cat's out of the bag, don't you want the details? Don't you want to know how much your father paid him? How much Ethan, your father's partner in crime, took from your father to make you immortal?"

My vision dimmed to blackness, memories overwhelming me: the fact that Ethan and Malik were on the U of C quad at the precise moment I'd been attacked. The fact that Ethan had known my father before we met him together.

The fact that Ethan had given me drugs to ease the biological transition to vampire.

I thought he'd drugged me because he felt guilty I hadn't been able to consent to the Change.

Had he actually felt guilty because he'd changed me at my father's bidding?

No. That couldn't be right.

Like I'd imagined him into being, Ethan suddenly burst into the room, fury in his eyes.

He'd come to back me up.

Tate was still in the room, but he all but disappeared from view. My gaze fell on Ethan, the fear powerful, blinding, deafening as blood roared through my veins.

Ethan moved to me, and scanned my eyes, but I still couldn't find words to speak the question.

"Are you all right?" he asked. "Your eyes are silvered." He looked back to Tate, probably suspected my hunger had been tripped. "What did you do to her?"

I gripped the handle of my sword tighter, the cording biting into the skin of my palm, and forced myself to say the words.

"Tate said you met with my father. That he paid you to make me a vampire."

I wanted him to tell me that it was a lie, just more falsehoods thrown out by a politician grasping at straws.

But the words he said broke my heart into a million pieces.

"Merit, I can explain."

Tears began to slide down my cheeks as I screamed out my pain. "I trusted you."

He stuttered out, "That's not how it went - "

But before he could finish his excuse, his eyes flashed to the side.

Celina was moving again, a sharpened stake in hand. "I need to move," she plaintively said. "I need to finish this now."

"Down, Celina," Tate warned. "The fight isn't yet yours."

But she wouldn't be dissuaded. "She has ruined enough for me," Celina said. "She won't ruin this." Before I could counter the argument, she'd cocked back her arm and the stake was in the air - and headed right for me.

Without a pause, and with the speed of a centuries-old vampire, Ethan threw himself forward, his torso in front of mine, blocking the stake from hitting my body.

He took the hit full on, the stake bursting through his chest.

And through his heart.

For a moment, time stopped, and Ethan looked back at me, his green eyes tight with pain. And then he was gone, the stake clattering to the ground in front of me. Ethan replaced by - transformed to - nothing more than a pile of ash on the floor.

I didn't have time to stop or think.

Celina, now fully feeling the effects of the V, was moving again, a second stake in hand. I grabbed the stake she'd thrown, and praying for aim, I propelled it.

My aim was true.

It struck her heart, and before a long second had passed, she was gone, as well. Just as Ethan had fallen, there was nothing left of her but a pile of ash on the carpet. My instinct for preservation replaced by shock, I glanced down.

Two tidy cones of ash lay on the carpet.

All that was left of them.

She was dead.

He was dead.

The realization hit me. Even as others rushed into the room, I covered my mouth to hold back the scream and fell to my knees, strength gone.

Because he was gone.

Malik, Catcher, my grandfather, and two uniformed officers burst into the room. Luc must have called them. I looked back at Tate, still behind his desk, a peppery bite of magic in the air but no other sign that he was even vaguely worried by what had gone down in his home.

No way was I letting this go unpunished. "Tate was distributing V," I said, still on the floor. "He drugged Celina, let her out of jail. She's gone." I looked down at the ash again. "She killed Ethan - he jumped in front of me. And then I killed her."

The room went silent.

"Merit's grieving," Tate said. "She's confused the facts." He pointed at Paulie, who was now rushing toward a window on the other side of the room. "As I believe you already know, that man was responsible for distributing V. He just confessed as much."

Paulie sputtered as the officers pulled him away from the window. "You son of a bitch. You think you can get away with this? You think you can use me like this?" He pulled away from the uniforms, who just managed to wrestle him to the floor before he jumped on Tate.

"This is his fault," Paulie said, chest-down on the floor, lifting his head just enough to glare at Tate. "All of this was his doing. He arranged the entire thing - found some abandoned city property for the warehouse, found someone to mix the chemicals, and set up the distribution network."

Tate sighed haggardly. "Don't embarrass yourself, Mr. Cermak." He looked over at my grandfather, sympathy in his expression. "He must have been sampling his own wares."