Edged Blade by J.C. Daniels Read Free Book Online

numbers are anchors. Icarus was an anchor. When he disappeared, the youngest in his line lost stability.” Padraig tapped what I assumed was a younger vamp—he was at the far end of the spectrum from old Jedidiah himself—the father of the local Allerton house.
    “This boy.” A sneer curled his lips. “He decided he wanted to be called Spike.”
    Slowly, I looked up. “Spike.”
    “Yeah.” He shrugged. “You have to admit, it’s better than Vlad.”
    “Is he at least blond and hot?”
    “As you’re my version of blonde and hot, love, I’m not a good judge.” Paddy grinned.
    Justin chuckled.
    Paddy ignored my dark look and went back to his explanation. “Now, our boy Spike won’t be watching Buffy or anything else for a good long while, assuming that’s where he picked out his name, assuming he survives. Assuming anything. Back to Spike and Icarus—Icarus was pretty choosy about who he brought over, but his offspring, less so and it devolved from there. It’s not uncommon.”
    He looked up at me. “During the war, vampires were hit hard—they won’t give up numbers, but some estimate they lost hundreds of thousands at the minimum. Population estimates are hard to pinpoint. Roughly, we figure the world population of vampires, before the war was about two million. The war wiped out a quarter of that, at least. Vampires hunt alone, but they rarely travel or live alone. So as things settled down, they went about rebuilding their numbers fast.”
    It made sense. In a way. “So they were looking for quantity over quality?”
    “In a sense.” Paddy looked back at his sketch. “Spike had only been dead about thirty years, would have been among the first to be brought over. He’s quiet, low key. A drone, basically. Then he loses it. Was driving through Orlando and apparently the hunger hit him. He went after a woman—mortal—and the only reason the she’s alive and Spike doesn’t have an EOS on his ass is because there was a shifter in the same area. The wolf—one of Dair’s—grabbed him before Spike could lock his teeth on the girl and he threw him through a plate glass window. Then he gave chase and ran him back across the boundary into East Orlando.”
    I rubbed my brow, wondering when all of this had gone down. Well, since the EOS—execute on sight—hadn’t gone out, Allerton House had probably been able to keep it contained.
    Justin cut in. “For his trouble, the wolf had to spend a day in custody and he was fined for destroying the window. The girl intervened on his behalf, though. She’s with that activist group, TAP2. I think the cops let him out just to shut her up.”
    TAP2—I wanted to groan. The group was a pain in the ass—granted more for human authorities and the anti-NH groups out there than for us, but sometimes they just got in the way . TAP2 was short for They Are People, Too —and guess who the they is?
    I don’t guess anybody bothered to explain to them how insulting that was, but what can you do?
    “Okay. Dair’s wolf got let out, Spike is on the run, Abraham went after him, and…?”
    “Spike is under lock and key.” Padraig’s voice was grim. “From what I’m hearing, nobody can reach him. If they can’t find Icarus, it could be years before he’s stable enough on his own.”
    “Years?” I hissed out a breath, my gut twisting as a wave of nausea hit me. Years ? Held as a prisoner? Memories tried to assault me, but I shoved them back. Spike’s confinement was for different reasons—and he hadn’t been brought in solely for some psychotic asshole’s amusement. Still…
    Softly, I said,“He’d be better off dead.”
    “He chose to get bitten. He had inoperable brain cancer—one thing humans still can’t fix. He had a fifteen percent chance of surviving the bite and according the information I read up on him, the drugs were making him sicker every day.” Justin shrugged. “Death isn’t an option for some people. Now…”
    The word trailed off and