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

But you don’t have to worry about taking patrol shifts when you should be out there mixing it up with the bad guys. Deal?”
    “Deal,” I said.
    “And speaking of deals, let’s figure out why the hell we’ve got a man-sized bat picking off our city’s fine, uniformed police officers.” His expression changed—from silly-in-love vampire to master tactician. He reached over to the console in the middle of the table and pressed some buttons. The sound of a ringing phone filled the air.
    “Yo?” Jeff answered.
    “Jeffrey, it’s Luc. I’m here with Kelley, Lindsey, Juliet, a very healthy Merit, and the rest of our now fully staffed office. You may refer to them as ‘Probies.’”
    “Hello, everyone and Probies,” Jeff said. “Especially a very healthy Merit.”
    “Hello, my knight in shining armor,” I said, taking a seat. “Or at least my knight with a very shiny reflective blanket.”
    “It was nothing. Just doing my duty. What’s up?”
    Luc leaned over the speakerphone gadget. “We’re just about to get an update from Merit. If you’ve got time, we’d love for you to join us.”
    “God, yes,” Jeff said, a little quieter. “I’ve been fielding calls from nervous sups all day.”
    “I thought they agreed to reveal themselves?” I asked with a frown.
    “Only the big four,” Jeff said. “The rest are now extra-nervous and they apparently want to vent about their concerns. Loudly. And there’s nothing I can do for them right now.”
    “I feel their pain,” Luc said. “Now, Sentinel, tell us about the angel in our midst. What is he, and how can we take him out?”
    “His name is Dominic. He’s a messenger—a fallen angel—from way back in the day, and he split off from Tate when Mallory tried to conjure something and Tate touched the Maleficium . Dominic has black wings, as I’m sure you’ve seen. And he looks exactly like Seth. There’s no physical differences, as far as I could tell.”
    “And he’s a sadist,” Kelley said, taking notes on an electronic tablet.
    I smiled grimly. “I told him the same thing.”
    “I don’t suppose he gave you his master plan while you two were chatting it up à la sunlight?” Luc asked.
    “Not expressly, but his motivation’s pretty easy to figure out. Back in the day, he thought punishment wasn’t severe enough. He’s big on justice and retribution, Hammurabic Code–style. He wanted to take out the four cops because they’d done wrong, and he wanted to take me out because I interrupted his work. That’s the same reason he burned Paige’s house down after he and Seth escaped the silo. As far as he’s concerned, he’s conducting business as usual.”
    “Fallen angel. Sword of justice,” Jeff said.
    “Exactly,” I said. “From that perspective, Paulie’s murder makes sense. Dominic seems to be completely blind to his own flaws—the murder and whatnot. Paulie did wrong for this city—he sold drugs. That’s enough to trigger Dominic’s justice reflex, even though Paulie was actually working for him at the time.”
    “That explains Dominic,” Luc said. “But what about Seth? Any sign of him? Any word at all?”
    “Nothing at all, as far as we know,” Jeff said. “And there’s no sign of him or talk online or among the other sups.”
    “So he’s lying low,” Luc said. “And even if one of them popped up, it’s not like we could tell them apart. But at least we know what they are.”
    “At least,” I agreed. “But that doesn’t solve our larger problem.”
    “Which is?” Luc asked.
    “We don’t know how to stop them.”
    That’s when we got to work.
    There’s at least one common thread linking detective stories and cop shows—the board that shows a victim’s picture, the potential suspects, and the witnesses. We opted for something similar, except instead of victims and suspects, we had a demonic angel and a something or other we weren’t quite sure about.
    Well, we had pictures of Seth Tate and a movie still from Hell-boy Jeff had e-mailed us, red skin and all.
    I glanced over at Luc, who stood beside me, studying the whiteboard.
    “Sometimes, we need a little humor,” Luc said.
    “I guess I can’t argue with that.” I drew a simple image of a book on the board between Seth and Dominic.
    “Seth touched the Maleficium . He split into Seth and Dominic. But why were they linked together in the first place? And if Dominic is a fallen angel, what’s Seth?”
    “And most important,” Luc