Page 87 of Damian’s Conquest

“But first, we’ve gotta talk. Take a seat.” Damian turned around to look at the assembled, and the quiet murmurs died down. “Okay, first the good news: Tracy, Mick’s human girlfriend, is in the medical center downstairs. She’ll be fine. And we have the perpetrator in custody.” He looked at Grayson. “Grayson, did you guys recover the stolen bottles of blood?”

“Yes, they were all in the abandoned garage where we found Mick. We brought them all back, including the empty bottles, as well as the blood Cynthia drained from Mick.”

“Thanks, Grayson, great job,” Damian praised. Grayson was both reliable and surprisingly thorough. Maybe he hadn’t given the guy enough credit in the past, just because he could be arrogant and a hothead. But Grayson was capable when it counted.

“Here’s the bad news: the case isn’t quite as clear-cut as we’d expected at first.”

“Elaborate, please,” Samson demanded.

“We’ll have to do a lot of damage control,” Damian explained. “And the villain isn’t your usual bad guy. And not just because the villain is a woman: Cynthia Lassiter. Her twin brother had no idea what she was doing. Being a twin myself, I understand why she did what she did. If I had to choose between committing a crime to save the life of my twin brother or letting him die, I might have chosen the former too.” He met Benjamin’s gaze, and knew his brother felt the same.

“Are you saying her brother will die?” Samson asked.

“Pancreatic cancer, stage four. According to him, he’s already outlived his doctor’s prediction by a week, most likely because Cynthia was giving him Mick’s blood.”

Samson raised his eyebrows, and several of the other vampires and hybrids let out surprised gasps. Samson motioned to Mick. “Tell us what happened. And start at the beginning. Damian and Naomi found the empty vials in your flat, so Mick, do us a favor, and don’t lie to us. You got this mess started, now own it.”

Damian sat down next to Naomi and took her hand in his.

Mick nodded, a guilty look on his face now. “I’m sorry, you’re right, it was my fault that all this happened. But when I met Tracy, I just lost my head. I… uhm, I couldn’t think straight anymore.” He sighed. “She was being assaulted by a couple of guys one night, and I rescued her. We fell in love, but her family didn’t want her to date me… I guess a bartender wasn’t good enough for them. Her grandmother and her uncle made life hell for her. She wanted to leave San Francisco.”

It was consistent with what Wei Guo had revealed during his interrogation, and what Cynthia had told Naomi.

“I told her that we could leave together, but we didn’t have any money, so I decided to sell my blood.” Mick dropped his lids in shame.

“Who to?” Damian asked.

Mick shrugged. “Just some ordinary people. We were discreet. Tracy knew that my blood could heal a human, because the night I rescued her, I gave her some to heal her.” He looked up. “Those two assholes had beaten her and broken her wrist.”

“Go on,” Damian demanded. “Who did you sell it to?”

“Tracy knew a lot of people who were sick, you know, people who didn’t have health insurance. She told them she could get them something that would help with their ailments. She never told them what it actually was. And when it worked, I guess those people told others, and we were able to sell more, and save some money.”

Damian shook his head, and he saw Samson and some of the others do the same. “How much did you charge per vial?”

“We weren’t greedy. I charged a hundred dollars a pop,” Mick said quickly. “We just needed enough to make a new start somewhere else, away from Tracy’s family. We wanted to leave the day after Halloween, and Tracy was saying goodbye to the few friends she has. I guess she got a little tipsy when she went out with her colleague, Cynthia. I didn’t know at the time that Cynthia had bought a vial of my blood a couple of days earlier.”

Damian immediately realized where this story was heading.

“Somehow Tracy must have let it slip that what she was selling Cynthia was vampire blood, and she put two and two together, and figured out that I’m the vampire it came from. She’d already given her brother one of the vials, and she must have seen an improvement in his condition, so when she heard that Tracy and I were leaving, and there wouldn’t be any more vampire blood for her to buy, she got desperate.”

“She couldn’t let you leave, because she wanted to save her twin’s life,” Damian guessed.

Mick nodded. “I got a call from Tracy’s cell phone, but it wasn’t Tracy. Cynthia said that she had Tracy, and she would hurt her if I didn’t meet with her. I had no choice. I figured I could easily overpower her, but I guess Cynthia knew more about vampires than I thought. She probably threatened Tracy so she would tell her more about my vulnerabilities. And she was smart. She said if I didn’t do as she said, and if I even tried to escape, I would never find Tracy, and she would die, because she was drugged and tied up somewhere.”

“You believed her?” Damian asked.

“She showed me a video of Tracy, tied-up, gagged, and unconscious. I couldn’t risk her life. I couldn’t even use mind control on Cynthia.”

When Samson furrowed his brow, Grayson interjected, “The bitch wore sunglasses and headphones with loud music.”

Mick nodded. “I guess it drowned out my efforts to use mind control on her. Besides, I was weak, because the first thirty-six hours she didn’t give me any blood. I begged her to go to the Mezzanine to steal the bottled blood, and told her that I would die if she drained me of more blood and didn’t feed me human blood right away. She believed it, and I gave her my keys for the storage room. I knew that she’d be caught on camera.” Mick looked directly at Damian. “I knew that either you or Patrick would realize that something was off. I was counting on you trying to find the thief. I knew sooner or later you’d figure out that the blood was for me, and that I was locked up.”

“Good thinking,” Damian said. “Unfortunately, it took us a while, because Cynthia used the Halloween party as cover, and was wearing a costume with a facemask.”

Mick nodded. “She brought the blood, but she only gave me half of what I would normally drink in one night. That’s why she locked up the blood and chained me to a radiator, and I remained weak.”

“No silver?” Samson asked.