“I’m injured, and you clowns have already been at me for thirty minutes. Aren’t I supposed to be taken to a hospital?” I asked as Isaac hit the gas.

“Shut up,” he said again, weaving through the maze of police cars around the demolished property.

“Because any good lawyer would totally call this a violation of my rights,” I went on, ignoring that.

He glared at me in the rearview mirror. “Shut the fuck up,” he replied, drawing out each word.

This didn’t feel normal. Of course, this was my first time being arrested, but still. I sniffed the air questioningly. Isaac had a smell about him, but I couldn’t place what it was. I wasn’t used to diagnosing things by scent.

After several minutes, Isaac was clear of all the activity and on the open road. He grunted as if in satisfaction and then met my eyes in the mirror again.

“What a shame, Catherine. A girl like you, her whole life ahead of her, who throws it all away by getting involved in a white slavery ring. Even killed your grandparents to cover up what you were doing. It’s tragic.”

“Officer Dickhead,” I said clearly, “go fuck yourself.”

“Ooh, language,” Isaac clucked. “But I’m not surprised, coming from you. You were even going to sell your mother into that kind of slavery, weren’t you?”

“You have got to be the stupidest-” I began furiously, and then stopped, taking in another deep breath. Isaac knew too much, and now I knew what that smell was.

Just as Isaac whipped his hand around, I catapulted into the front of the car. His gun went off, but the bullet tore into the backseat instead of me. The car swerved dangerously as Isaac tried to aim again.

I slammed his head into the steering wheel. We lurched onto the side of the road, thankfully empty due to the early hour, and I grabbed the wheel to keep us from crashing. When Isaac looked up seconds later, dazed and bleeding, I had his gun trained on him.

“Pull over nice and slow or I’ll splatter your brains all over both of us.”

He tried to snatch the gun, but I whipped it across his jaw before his fingers even grazed it. “Do that again, Renfield. See what it gets you.”

His eyes widened. I gave a nasty laugh. “Yeah, I know what you are. Pick a name-Renfield, vampire’s familiar, bat bitch, whatever. You stink like vampires, and not just the dead ones. When they’re shriveled, they have a different smell, who’d have thought? So whose little errand boy are you? Whose pale cold ass were you kissing in the hopes you’d get turned one day?”

Isaac stopped the car. We were already on the side of the road. “You’re making the biggest mistake of your life.”

I’d jerked the gearshift into park and grabbed his balls before he could even scream. He did, though, as soon as I gave them a hard squeeze.

“Who was it? Who sent you to finish me off?”

“Fuck you.”

I squeezed his nuts like they were stress-relieving orbs. Isaac let out a high-pitched shriek that gave me an instant headache.

“Now, I’m going to ask you again, and don’t make me angrier. Who sent you?”

“Oliver,” came the pained reply. “It was Oliver!”

That wasn’t the mayor’s name. In fact, it wasn’t anyone on our list of human or vampire suspects.

“You’d better make me a believer. Oliver who?”

“Ethan Oliver!”

I froze, stunned. Isaac let out a gasping snicker. “You didn’t know? Hennessey was sure Francesca had told Bones.”

“Ethan Oliver,” I whispered. “Governor Ethan Oliver? He’s a vampire?”

“No, he’s human. He’s just in business with them.”

It clicked into place. “He’s Hennessey’s shadow partner! My God, I voted for him! Why did he do it?”

“Let go of my balls!” Isaac rasped.

I got a firmer grip on them instead. “I’ll let go when you make sense, and the clock’s ticking. Every minute that goes by, I squeeze harder. You won’t have any left inside of five.”

“He wants to run for president, and he’s using Ohio as his podium,” Isaac rushed out in one breath. “Oliver stumbled across Hennessey a few years ago. Think it was when he was buying pussy on the side. Hennessey came up with the idea to harvest people for feedings, like he had in Mexico, and Oliver loved it. Problem is, it’s the pretty young girls who sell most easily, but things get messy when a bunch of them go missing. So they make a deal. Hennessey cleans the streets of the homeless, drug dealers, prostitutes, and degenerates as his end of the bargain, and Oliver makes sure the paperwork disappears on any of the high-end tail Hennessey needs to keep his clients happy. But that got to be a lot of work, so Hennessey began getting the girls’ addresses and stopping the reports before they started. Made my job a lot easier, not having to listen to all those sniveling families. It was perfect. Crime rate goes down, economy goes up, voters are happy, Oliver looks like Ohio’s savior…and Hennessey makes a bundle.”

I was shaking my head in disbelief at the sheer callousness of it all. Frankly, I didn’t know who was worse-Hennessey, for doing it, or Oliver, for making himself out as a hero on the bones of hundreds of victims.

“Oliver sent you to kill me, clearly, but what about my mother and the other girls who were at that house? What were you going to do with them, and I dare you to lie to me.”

My new clench got a squeak from him, but it also made my point. What he told me next was no candy-coated fabrication.

“Oliver freaked when he heard about the police all over that house and how some girls were recovered alive. He wants any traces to him erased, so I was supposed to shoot you, and then plant a bomb at the hospital where they’re taking the girls. Oliver was going to pin it on Muslim extremists. He saw how Bush’s numbers spiked right after 9/11, so he thought it would push him over the top as the next presidential candidate.”

“You fucker,” I growled. “Where’s the bomb?”

“In the trunk.”

I thought rapidly. Oliver would be expecting a ka-boom within the next couple hours, and when it didn’t happen, he’d send someone else to finish the job.

“Isaac,” I said in a pleasant tone, “you’re coming with me. I’m revoking my vote.”

The governor’s residence in Bexley was decorated festively for the holidays. A large evergreen was in the front, complete with lights, garland, and ornaments. More lights were strewn around the exterior, and the gardens were filled with poinsettias in addition to their usual seasonal blossoms. Isaac parked by the wrought-iron fence about a block from the entrance.

“What do you think you’re going to do, ring the bell?” he asked caustically.

I sat behind him in the backseat, his own gun poking him in the side. Otherworldly energy permeated from the property. Oh, here there be monsters, all right.

“How many are there? And you know what I mean.”

He didn’t play dumb. “Three, maybe four vamps, plus the usual guys.”

Judging from the heartbeats, there were about six human guards. Maybe they were just innocent schmucks doing their job. Maybe not. The vampires I suffered no conscience qualms about, and not for my usual reasons. If they were here guarding Oliver, they knew damn well what was going on.

“They know you? The guards? You’ve come here before, right?”

“All the time,” he sneered. “You fucked with the wrong john, bitch. I’m in his pocket nice and tight.”

“Uh-huh.” I took my shirt and bra off one-handed, not taking the gun off Isaac for a second. Then I pulled my hair over the bullet wound in my shoulder, hiding it. As for the rest of the blood on me…well, there was nothing I could do about that.

Isaac’s eyes widened in the rearview mirror.

“Drive right on up and tell them you’ve brought some Yuletide joy,” I said evenly, sitting back. “I’m sure it won’t be the first time. And remember, I’ve got this trained at your head, so if you say anything else, I’ll blow you to hell.”