Biting Cold: A Chicagoland Vampires Novel (CHICAGOLAND VAMPIRES SERIES)

justice system has no backbone.”
    “You don’t get to make that decision. Isn’t that what got you in trouble millennia ago?”
    My hands began to shake with exhaustion, my body rebelling against the fact that I was awake. I squeezed them into fists and forced myself to concentrate.
    “You are weak creatures with no stomach for justice.”
    “What you call justice, we call war. Destruction. Havoc.” I swallowed down a scream of pain. Ethan was probably frantic, but Jonah would have seen me disappear. They’d have to work to find me, but they would. God willing, they would.
    “Why did you bring me here?” I asked.
    “To make an example of you.”
    “For what?”
    “You stopped me from completing my work, just as the scarlet witch tried to do. You asked for this, remember?”
    Paige must have been the scarlet witch. “You burned her house down because she tried to stop you?”
    “Justice does not veer for cowards.”
    “And killing people doesn’t make you brave. It just makes you a killer.”
    “I can see that you’re regretting your decision to stand in for the corrupt cops. You’ll have a little while yet to regret that decision, won’t you?”
    He pointed at the line of sunlight, which had shifted a few more degrees. Soon my bit of shadow would shrink to nothing, and I would be completely exposed to sunlight.
    “I’ll admit,” he said, surveying the room, “this is my first time using this particular mechanism. A single slice with a sword wouldn’t quite have the same effect on you, would it? You’d too easily survive that.”
    For the first time, I actually regretted having fast healing powers. But I wasn’t going to let Tate get the emotional upper hand.
    “You’ve already lost once today,” I said. “We stopped you. They’ll find me, and you’ll lose again.”
    But with each second that passed, it seemed more and more unlikely that they’d find me in time. The press conference had taken place in the early evening. An entire night had come and gone, and the sun had risen again. No one had found me yet. And now the sun was up, and neither Jonah nor Ethan could look for me.
    Soon I’d be out of time.
    Tate pulled something from his pocket, then held it up. It was shiny and reflected the light, and I looked away again, blinking back the glare.
    “You still have my Cadogan medal,” I said. “That’s not news.”
    “It is, actually.” I heard the clink of the chain and assumed he’d tucked it away again. No point in waving it in my face if I wasn’t going to look.
    “I find it interestingly symbolic. A girl, a graduate student, changed into a vampire one night against her will. Reborn into a vampire House right here in Chicago. She fashions herself a savior of lost souls and decides to battle me for supremacy. She loses, and here she dies.”
    “So you won’t be needing that anymore.”
    “Au contraire,” he said. “It is a prize. A remembrance.”
    He meant when the sun finished its journey, I’d be gone. Reduced to ash, but he’d still have a trophy of having beaten me. (Either he didn’t notice I was wearing a replacement medal, or he wasn’t going to let a bit of inconvenient fact get in the way of the victory he was already imagining.)
    I knew I couldn’t hear Ethan anymore, but I still imagined his voice in my head, giving me a speech similar to the one I’d given him on the field in Nebraska. Reminding me I was a Cadogan vampire, that I was stronger than Tate believed, that I would survive until he found me.
    And he would find me. He would . I only had to hang on until he arrived. I only had to survive.
    Move! I told myself. I shifted a centimeter to the right, and I forced myself to keep talking. I might as well use the time alone with Tate for a good purpose.
    “There are two of you now.”
    “In a fashion,” he enigmatically said.
    I frowned at him. “I saw you. You touched the Maleficium and you split in half.”
    He clucked his tongue. “I am not split in half, Ballerina. I am whole. My name is Dominic.”
    He was one of the three Dark Ones the librarian had identified—Uriel, Azrael, and Dominic. “You destroyed Carthage?”
    He laughed heartily. “I did not. That was not my particular handiwork. It belonged to my brothers in arms. But at least you better appreciate what we’re about.”
    “Destruction and revenge?”
    “Only if deserved,” he said, clearly having no qualms about appointing himself the man to decide what someone did or