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

Paige and Seth could investigate the Dominic-Seth link from here; I’d use my original source. She still may not have been trustworthy, but I doubted anyone else in Chicago had as much knowledge about the Maleficium and the evil stuck into it.
    I zipped up my leather jacket, pulled my hair into a ponytail, and grabbed my sword. I still gave Kelley a heads-up before I left, but Ethan was in time-out as far as I was concerned. If he needed me, he could call. I had work to do.
    I trotted down the sidewalk to the gate, and both mercenary fairies stared at me as I passed them by. I stopped short, glancing back at them in turn.
    “Is everything okay?”
    They looked at each other. Since they were nearly identical, it was like watching one of them look into a mirror. A strange effect in the middle of an already strange city.
    My instincts triggered, I walked back to them. “What is it?”
    They looked at me simultaneously. “Your Dark One,” said the one on the left. “It is possible he will contact her.”
    “Her? You mean Claudia?”
    He nodded. “They are acquaintances, of a sort.”
    So Dominic and Claudia knew each other. She certainly hadn’t confessed that to me. On the other hand, I hadn’t asked her outright, either, and Claudia wasn’t exactly free with information.
    “Did they know each other before his wings turned black?”
    “Before, during, and after,” said the other fairy, not with approval, but earning a narrow-eyed look from his partner. He must have spilled too much.
    I looked back at the apparent team leader and decided to skip the political wrangling. “Why are you telling me this?”
    They both look flummoxed by the question. Since we paid them to stand guard outside our House—and, admittedly, I’d been baited into going for one’s jugular while visiting Claudia—the confusion was understandable.
    “He is dangerous. She is our queen, but she is . . . vulnerable to his suggestion. The sooner he is gone, the better for all of us.”
    Not that I needed the incentive to nab Dominic, but I’d heard Claudia’s threats before. “Nuclear” was her first and only option. Whatever had been between them, love or business, it wasn’t a complication I needed right now.
    I nodded at both of them. “Thank you for the heads-up.”
    I climbed into my orange, boxy Volvo, which was admittedly a downgrade from Ethan’s shiny new Aston Martin. But until I got a promotion or a stiff pay raise, the Volvo would have to do.
    My phone rang nearly as soon as I buckled my seat belt. I propped it on the dashboard and turned on the speakerphone.
    “Merit,” I answered, pulling onto the street.
    “Hey, it’s Jeff.”
    “What’s new?”
    “Absolutely nothing. Catcher went to see Mallory, and it’s dead quiet over here. I mean, I racked a new server, and the cabling was a bitch, but that’s about it. I thought I’d call and see if you had any news.”
    “Well, Seth Tate showed up at Cadogan House, if that counts.”
    “Oh, shiz. That totally counts. How do you know it was him?”
    “Long story short, about twenty linear feet of white, fluffy wingspan.”
    “That’s a pretty good indication.”
    “Yes. It was. We did manage to get a little more background. It’s no coincidence that they look alike. Dominic and Seth are twin angels, although Dominic turned to the dark side after his mythological hissy fit. We think Dominic has somehow been inside Seth for centuries, and they got split apart when the Maleficium was triggered. Seth has the scar to prove it.”
    “And he had no idea?”
    “Not as far as we can tell. Personally, it sounds like Dominic may have been the little red devil that sat on his shoulder and told him to do naughty things, but Seth’s accepting responsibility for now. Which is kind of a nice change.”
    “No kidding. It’s definitely usually the other way around. What did Seth have to say?”
    “He wants to help us deal with Dominic as part of his atonement. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have any idea how to go about doing that. What about you? Might there be anything in your shifter encyclopedia about that?”
    “We don’t have an encyclopedia. We’re more of a storytelling people. But I’m not aware of a fable on bat-winged, parasitic dudes who feed off mayors. Although that would have explained a lot of Chicago’s political history.”
    “Sad but true. I’m heading out to see Mallory. I’ll ask if she has any information. Oh—and another weird one. The