Page 57 of Beauty At Stake
“No. We would bring them to Anita's employee, and he would take them to her.”
“Who is this employee?”
“His name is Louie.”
“Louie?” I looked over at Killian.
“Gotta be Losuc, right?” Kill asked.
“Is Louie special in any way?” I asked Cliff.
“Louie is an Angel.”
Killian burst out laughing.
Star shot him a sardonic look. “May I remind you that all humans believe all supernatural people are Angels?”
“It's still funny.”
“What it is, is smart. She shows them a Demon, calls him an Angel, and they're even more certain that they're fighting for the side of good.”
“God's soldiers,” Kill muttered.
“Precisely.”
I ignored them and asked Cliff, “What does Anita do with the vampires once she has them?”
“She imprisons them.”
“Why are you only imprisoning them?”
“Because Anita is studying them. She wants to discover their weaknesses. She says you must know your enemy before you can truly defeat them.”
I looked at the men again. “Do we believe she's studying them?”
“It's possible,” Star said. “Even likely. But I don't believe she's studying them to learn their weaknesses.”
“What I don't understand is why she's involving humans in this,” I said. “She's got a Demon. Why not send him after her targets? A Demon could lalek up to a Witch, grab them, and lalekdirectly into a cell with them. Instead, she's got him in middle management like a chump.”
“One moment.” Star left the room.
I could have kept questioning Cliff, but I wanted Star's input. So, I waited for him to return, using the time to ponder who Anita Summers really was and why she wanted Bite Witches.
A few minutes later, Star appeared in the doorway. He waved me outside. Killian and I went into the hallway with him, not bothering to close the door behind us. Yes, Cliff would probably remember what he saw and heard while he was star-crossed, but we'd wipe those memories from his mind before sending him off to Anita Summers.
“Losuc said that Anita sent him after the Bite Witches at first,” Star said. “But they sensed he was a Demon and stayed away from him. After the third try, she started hiring humans.”
“And Biters target humans anyway. They make the perfect hunters because they're also bait,” Killian concluded. “Yeah, that tracks.”
“All right. Let's finish with Cliff so I can question the others,” I said. “Kill, can you do a partial memory erase?”
“Sure. We want to erase the interrogation?”
“Yeah, and the capture. I don't want this woman to know how many people we have or what we look like.”
“She already has the other three who Losuc took.”
“Yeah, but they didn't see everyone. Let's keep their knowledge to a minimum.”
