“That’s the question. Who stands to gain from a move like that?”
“River believes that someone’s trying to overthrow the Council,” I shot a look at August, who nodded.
West frowned. “Maybe. But by helping the fang-heads? I don’t see how that angle gets them anywhere. And how does this tie back to the vamp activity we’ve seen the past few weeks? First attack was lower caste vamps, their regular ground soldiers, then they send coven leaders the other night? Something about this has smelled off from the start.”
I thought back to what the first vampire Lacey and I encountered had said. The prisoner isn’t who you think he is. At the time I’d taken it as typical trash talk. A leech screwing with my head in the middle of a fight. But what if we’d all been wrong? About everything.
Frowning, I pulled up a search on my phone.
#DashCamVlad
Dozens of images popped up. I clicked on a profile shot. In it, his hair was blond and spiked, unlike the vampire I’d fought just before Thanksgiving, who’d had black hair. The photo showed no evidence of any piercings or the gauges he’d had in both ears. Even their eye color was different. But there was no mistaking it, and now I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t seen it earlier.
The vampire Lacey and I had fought had been the most wanted undead in the world.
“What if their intent was to warn us?” Sliding my phone onto the table, I brought my brothers up to speed.
West cursed. August stared down at the screen. Brody said nothing, left eye twitching the way it always did when he got in cop mode.
“Lot of rumors floating around about Vlad,” August said finally. “He’s an outcast in the vampire nation now, obviously, after what he did, exposing them to the world.”
“Some say he’s joined up with the lower caste insurgency, that the moment he outed vampires had never been an accident at all, but a calculated move,” West reminded us.
“I keep thinking back to the moment he dematerialized with Lacey. He had her for probably five, maybe ten minutes before I could get to them. He could have easily killed her. Snapped her neck. She was unconscious, couldn’t fight back. He ghosted out as soon as I got there. If he’d wanted to, he could have taken her with him.”
Brody leveled me with a hard look. “How sure are you that this was actually him? We don’t have any good film on Vlad.”
“You didn’t hear him, didn’t see him move. Could I be wrong? Sure. But I saw that tape again tonight, and something just… clicked.”
“And what if we have stumbled onto the beginnings of an undead uprising?” August said after a beat, unable to keep the skepticism out of his tone. “Add in a plot to overthrow the Council. What’s our next move?”
Brody stared out at the moon rising over the backyard. “For now, we keep this to ourselves.”
I thought of Lacey and our unborn child. Of my friends and family. My pack and home in Blood Moon. We would all fight to keep them safe.
“One thing’s for sure. Things are about to get real interesting.”