Page 110 of Bent Out of Shade
“Where’s the demon?”
“Dead.”
Ryann nodded in approval. “We have everything except whoever kicked this into motion.” She stretched out her legs, surveying the timeline. “Tatiana told us about Vincenzo’s trail of payback.”
“She did?”
Her lips quirked. “Not me personally since I wasn’t going to get near her after arresting you, but yes.”
I refused to smile. “I believe that Sabrina was changed by one of Zev’s people before being abducted by gang members.”
Ryann drummed the marker against the table. “Zev really didn’t know who did it?”
“Not when I spoke to him.”
We studied the typed murder reports like they’d yield some vital clue to the sire’s identity. Well, Ryann studied them. I was still wrapping my head around the fact that I wasn’t headed to Deadman’s Island.
“What gang did the first victim belong to?” I said.
“Hastings Mill. He was killed Friday night.”
“The night Sabrina was turned. Ryann, what if the first deaths, the ones where their necks were snapped, weren’t because Sabrina, as opposed to the dybbuk, was in control? And her sire was with her teaching her how to hunt and feed?”
“Good thought, but even a human who asks to be turned isn’t in any condition to learn to hunt and feed at first.” Ryann pursed her lips, a thoughtful expression on her face. “It does beg the question of how Sabrina was able to successfully pull off those first murders if she hadn’t been taken care of through the change and taught what to do. Newly turned vamps are like baby birds. Leave them alone and they die.”
That twigged a memory of Sadie’s fascination with this nest of baby chickadees at our local playground when she was little, and how she insisted we go visit them and make sure the mama was feeding them. We had to go every day but one morning they were gone. Sadie was devastated until we saw them flitting in the trees, healthy and able to care for themselves.
“What if her sire knew they’d screwed up by changing Sabrina without consent?” I said. “Even if she was Sapien, she’d been all over the news and was a high-profile figure.”
Ryann nodded. “They couldn’t bring Sabrina to Blood Alley but felt guilty enough to take care of her. They stashed her somewhere.”
“Then the rival gang found her while she was asleep during the day, drugged her, and brought her to the handover.”
“Which is when the dybbuk took charge and Sabrina slaughtered those men. It fits,” Ryann said. “Her sire wasn’t brilliant at evasion, they were scared of getting in trouble with Zev and tried to hide it.” She snorted. “Just like a child.”
I gasped. That was it. Four simple words that finally allowed all of this to make sense. The vamp was like a child, but only because they themselves were newly made.
A Sapien who’d been traumatized before their change and wasn’t handling this transition well.
“I know who turned Sabrina and killed the first four men,” I said.
Excitedly, I explained my hypothesis. Celeste had turned Ian and taken care of him, but when Ian was deemed capable enough to hunt on his own, things went horribly wrong. Terrified of what he’d done on that fateful Friday night—changing Sabrina instead of merely feeding from her—he took care of the lawyer as best he could, until she was captured by BTS’s people and brought to the handover meeting.
Ian hadn’t been the most stable person after his experiences in the Human Race, and it was no great stretch to posit that being changed had unmoored him.
No wonder the original Hastings Mill dude had lost Sabrina—he was Ian’s first casualty. A random thug would be a better target for Ian to hunt than a well-dressed woman, but we might never know who he went after first.
“That’s brilliant, Miriam, except for one thing,” Ryann said grimly. “Zev’s change of heart to kill Vincenzo. If he planned on pinning all the murders on the sire once he learned their identity, why take out your client?”
I scrubbed a hand over my face. “Celeste must have found out.”
“Or she was complicit.”
“No.” I flashed back to Ian’s freak-out. “Ian had an incident at Blood Alley the other night, and Celeste was gobsmacked by his violent outburst. I really doubt she knew, but if she discovered it last night with everything going down, she might have begged Zev to help Ian. She was fond of him.”
Ryann looked off into the distance. “Some days I hate my job.”
“What about Sabrina? Don’t throw her on Deadman’s Island and victimize her even more. She deserves better. Please.”
She nodded. “The world needs more woman fighters.”
“Does that mean you won’t prosecute her?”
“It does. But I wasn’t just talking about Sabrina.” She clapped me on the shoulder. “Go home.”
The compliment would have been absolutely perfect with an apology or her homemade cookies, but I wasn’t about to push my luck. I went.
