Biting Bad (Chicagoland Vampires 8)

"That's actually why we're here," I said, feigning discomfort. I gestured at Catcher. "We heard about your grievance, and, well, we kind of agree with you."

"Oh?" she asked. "About what, exactly?"

Catcher and I exchanged a glance and a nod.

"Vampires," he said. "We think they're getting special treatment, ahead of working-class folks like us, and we don't think that's fair."

"We saw your grievance online," I said, "and we thought, well, maybe she's someone we could talk to, you know?"

She looked at us for a moment, probably evaluating whether we were telling her the truth. Whether we were like her, or leading her on for some endgame she couldn't yet see.

"And you're who, exactly?"

Well, I should have prepared for that. "I'm Mary," I said, tossing out the first name that came to mind. "And this is my brother . . . Boudreau."

"Mary and Boudreau," she repeated, obviously dubious, so I laid it on a bit thicker.

"I was hurt by vampires before. Attacked by one of them one night, with no warning." That was the absolute truth. "I was hoping to find someone to talk to, someone who would understand. I ran across your case, and I thought - there's someone who knows."

She looked at us again. A door opened and closed a few apartments away, and her eyes flicked nervously to the sound. She peeked into the hallway and seemed satisfied when footsteps disappeared down the hall.

"Maybe we shouldn't talk about this in the hallway. You never know who's listening. I have to be somewhere soon, but you can come in for a minute."

It wasn't much of an invitation, but it would work well enough for vampiric purposes. I walked into the condo, keeping my eyes peeled for inflammatory propaganda or anti-vampire ninjas. Instead, there were tasteful Danish furnishings and decor. A lot of brass and wood and sparse lines.

Catcher followed me inside, and as Robin turned around to lock the door behind us, he mouthed, Be careful. They were words I intended to obey.

When she turned back to us, her expression had changed completely. Now, behind closed doors, there was a glimmer of obvious excitement in her eyes.

"I am definitely someone you can talk to," she said.

"Good," I said, only partly feigning relief. It would have been a relief to find the perpetrator of an anti-vampire riot on the first take. Opportunities like that didn't arise very often.

"It's all about special interest groups," she said. "It's about the money. The vampires have it; the humans want it. Having the money means they get to run roughshod over the rest of us, because all the human politicians want to get their greedy little sausage fingers around it."

The factual errors aside, and there were a number of them, Robin got through her entire spiel without taking a breath. Both made me downgrade my initial impression of her stability.

"Huh," Catcher said, crossing his arms and looking extremely interested in what she had to say. "And that's what was going on at Bryant Industries?"

"You think a place that supplies vampire blood could have been open for so long without being part of a conspiracy? Without the manager sleeping with the mayor, or significant payoffs?"

"Payoffs?" Catcher asked, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "You have records of that?"

"Somewhere," she said, gesturing flippantly to another part of the room. "They thought I'd play ball, and when I didn't, they thought they could throw me out like trash. But I'm not about to cave to pressure. I know what's right, and I know what's legal. My sister is a lawyer."

"Is that why they pressured you to leave?" I asked, choosing my words carefully. I wasn't sure how much of her diatribe I believed, but she was clearly convinced.

"They fired me," she said, "because I found out who they were and what they were doing."

"And you confronted them," I said, "like any good citizen would do."

"Exactly," she said, pointing a finger at me. "That's exactly what I did. They think they can skirt the rules, while the rest of us have to follow them? Is that fair?"

"It's not fair," Catcher said. "I don't know if you heard, but there was an attack on Bryant Industries last night."

She stilled and looked at both of us again. "Who did you say you are again?"

"Mary and Boudreau," Catcher said. "We're just looking for folks who think like us, I guess you could say."

As far as I knew, we hadn't slipped up, and we hadn't given her any reason to doubt us.

She reached a different conclusion. She bolted, running for the front door.

"Merit!" Catcher prompted.

"On it," I said, racing after her. But Robin Pope wasn't unprepared for a vampire engagement. She reached a ceramic umbrella stand beside the door and pulled out a wooden stake as long as a baseball bat. Aspen through the heart was the only wood that could kill us, and I had a sinking feeling Robin Pope knew that quite well.

She thrust out the stake like a fencer trying to win a point. I dodged her first shot, but not the return slap, which slammed into my shin with enough force to bring tears to my eyes. I doubled over in pain, and Robin used my distraction to her advantage, flipping the deadbolt and opening the door. She ran into the hallway, the stake still in hand.

"Little help," I said to Catcher.

"Vampire fail," he muttered, running into the hallway after Robin. I limped after them, an electric tingle in Catcher's wake as he gathered his magic in preparation for an assault.

By the time I made it into the hallway, Robin had reached the bank of elevators and moved behind the pedestal table, plucking up the vase of flowers.

"Robin - Ms. Pope," Catcher called out, cautiously moving forward. "We just wanted to talk to you."

But Catcher's attempt at a detente didn't dissuade him from continuing to power up. My hair lifted in the cloud of magic he brought to bear, spinning it together in the palm of his hand into an orb of glowing blue light.

"Get thee behind me, Satan!" she yelled out, throwing the vase at us. It hit the floor hallway between Pope and Catcher, shattering across the floor.

He didn't wait for another attack but launched the magic at her.

Paranoid or not, Robin Pope wasn't helpless, and she wasn't about to go down swinging. She wrenched a round mirror from the wall near the table, then dropped to one knee, using the mirror like a shield.

Magic and mirrors didn't mix, a fact I knew all too well. I'd actually used the trick on Mallory during her Unfortunate Crazy Times, although Catcher hadn't been there to see the trick, and apparently didn't know about it.