Blood Bound

"Did you learn anything?" he asked.

"Hunting serial killers is easier on TV," I said sourly.

"Is that what we're dealing with?"

I shrugged, then remembered Littleton 's face when he killed the woman at the motel. "I think so. Of a sort. The incidental violence is really bad, Tony, but this monster likes to kill. If he decides he doesn't need to hide anymore, it would be very bad. What can you tell me about serial killers?"

"I haven't seen one here," he said. "Doesn't mean we don't have one we don't know about-but there are things we watch for."

"Like what?"

"Most of them start with easy victims for practice."

Easy like Daniel? I thought.

"I have a friend in the Seattle PD who tells me his whole department is waiting for someone to get killed. For three years they've had neighborhood pets turn up dead. They're patrolling extra heavily near their at risk populations: the homeless, runaways, and prostitutes."

I shivered. Had Littleton been a killer before he became a sorcerer and a vampire? Had he been a vampire first or a sorcerer? Had he been evil, or had he been made evil? Not that it mattered.

Someone knocked on the door. Tony reached past me to open it.

"Come on in, Sergeant," he said. "We're finished here. Sergeant, this is Mercedes Thompson. Mercy this is Sergeant Owens, our watch commander. This is his office."

Sergeant Owens was lean and fit, an older, more cynical version of the smiling young man in the wedding photo. He held out his hand and I shook it. He kept mine a moment, examining the traces of grease I could never quite get out from under my nails.

"Mercedes Thompson," he said. "I hear that you had trouble last night. I hope there is no recurrence."

I nodded. "I expect they got it out of their systems," I told him with a faint smile.

He didn't smile back. "Tony tells me that you have ties to the werewolf and fae communities and you've agreed to help us out."

"If I can," I agreed. "Though I'm probably more qualified to tune up your cars than to give you advice."

"You'd better be a very good mechanic," he said. "My people put their lives on the lines. I don't need bad advice."

"She fixed Sylvia's car," Tony said. In addition to being Gabriel's mother, Sylvia was a police dispatcher. "She's a very good mechanic, her advice will stand up."

In point of fact, Zee had fixed Sylvia's car, but that was beside the point.

The Sergeant relaxed. "All right. All right. We'll see how it goes."

We were back in the hall, when I stopped.

"What?" Tony asked.

"Take off the pins for the incidents at night. We need the daytime violence," I told him. His very presence would cause violence. "This thing moves around at night, but I don't think he can move during the day."

"All right," he said. "It'll take a while. I'll get a rookie on it. Do you want to wait?"

I shook my head. "I can't afford to. Would you call me?"

"Yes."

I thought he'd drop me back at the waiting room, but he escorted me all the way out. This time the little entryway was empty of students.

"Thank you," I said as I got in my car.

He held my door opened and saw what Stefan had done to my dash.

"Somebody hit that," he said.

"Yep. I have that effect on people."

"Mercy," he said somberly. "Make sure he doesn't hit you like that."

I touched the broken vinyl where Stefan had put his fist. "He won't," I told him.

"You're sure I can't help you?"

I nodded. "I promise that if that changes, I'll call you right away."

I stopped at a fast food restaurant and ordered lunch. I ate a couple of cheeseburgers and a double order of fries, though I wasn't particularly hungry. I hadn't had any sleep, so staying alert meant fueling up-the large, caffeinated soda would help, too.

When I was through eating, I got in my car and drove around, thinking myself in circles. I just didn't have enough information to find the sorcerer, and I needed to find him before dark. Before he killed Samuel and Adam-I refused to believe they might already be dead. He hadn't had time to play with them yet.

Why had Marsilia sent me after Littleton knowing I was too stupid to find him?

I jerked my car over to the side of the road and parked it abruptly, too busy thinking to be safe driving.

Never trust a vampire. It was the first thing I'd ever learned about vampires.

Despite her performance at Stefan's trial, Marsilia claimed she had believed Stefan when he told her there was a vampire who was a sorcerer loose in the Tri-Cities. She could have sent the whole seethe after him-instead she'd sent Stefan and Daniel. No, Stefan had chosen Daniel. She'd expected Stefan to pick Andre. As had Andre, for that matter.

Even after she believed Stefan dead, she still didn't send the seethe after Littleton. Instead she sent me with Andre. Me. I was suppose to find Littleton, or so she said. Andre was to keep me alive while I did so-or follow me around so Marsilia knew what I was doing.

Andre thought that Marsilia meant to see if she could take control of Littleton rather than kill him. Was that what Marsilia wanted him to do? Was that what he'd been supposed to do if he'd gone hunting with Stefan?

If Marsilia told him not to kill Littleton, he wouldn't. She was his maker and he couldn't disobey her-though apparently Stefan could.

I rubbed my face and tried to clear my thoughts. Knowing what Marsilia was up to might be important in the long run, but it wasn't going to help me find Littleton.

Littleton wasn't leaving any traces for me to follow.

"So what do you do when you're out hunting and you can't find any tracks or scent?" I asked aloud. It was a basic question, one that Samuel used on new werewolves who were ready to go for their first hunt.

"You go to places that will attract your prey," I answered. "Come on Samuel, that's not going to help. I don't know what attracted the sorcerer here in the first place."

To know how to find them, you have to understand your prey.

Some little thought nudged at me. Littleton was not from the Tri-Cities. He'd been traveling though when he ran into Daniel. He'd come back, and Stefan and I had found him. He'd been waiting for Stefan. Why?

Then it hit me.

I'd read the Faust story in several versions, from Benet's ‘The Devil and Daniel Webster' to Marlowe and Goethe. Sorcerers sell themselves to demons for knowledge and power. There was nothing in Littleton 's actions that I could see as a search for knowledge or power.

Demons crave chaos, violence, and death. Littleton brought that in abundance, but if the demon were directing his actions wholly, there would be more bodies. Demons are not patient creatures. The demon would not have let Warren go, would not have let Stefan and me go that first night.

But Littleton was a new vampire, and new vampires do what their makers tell them to do.

So what would a vampire get from Littleton 's actions?

Littleton had almost certainly killed Stefan and Ben, and nearly killed Warren — but I was pretty sure that the wolves were collateral damage. No one would have predicted that the werewolves would get involved at all.

So, what could Daniel's disgrace and Stefan's death gain a vampire? Stefan had been Marsilia's favorite. Was the sorcerer an indirect attack on Marsilia?

I drummed on the steering wheel. If the seethe had been a wolf pack, I'd have been able to interpret her actions better. Still… she sent Stefan out and pretended it was punishment. Pretended for whose benefit? If all of the seethe were her get, obedient to her will as Andre told me vampires had to be, she wouldn't have had to pretend at all. So maybe she was having trouble controlling her people.

Maybe someone sent Littleton here to destroy her, to take over the seethe. How did a vampire become the leader of a seethe? Could Littleton 's maker be in the Tri-Cities? If he was, could he hide from the other vampires? I needed more information. More information about Marsilia and her seethe. More information about how vampires worked. And I knew only one place I might get it.