Marie rose, another flick of her fingers causing the Remnants to disappear as though sucked away by an invisible vortex. Then she strolled closer, the movement somehow more menacing because of how relaxed she appeared to be.

“When you find this facility, you need to shut it down and eliminate everyone associated with the experiments.”

“Oh, I intend to,” I said, still torn between guilt over what I’d done to Don and anger over what he’d let Madigan do to me.

“Intentions aren’t good enough. You have sixty days.”

“What?” I sputtered. “We are not even sure where this facility is. Plus, Madigan’s worked in covert operations for decades. He could have secret labs and compounds set up all over the nation!”

“Exactly,” Marie said.

Then she pointed at me, and I didn’t think it was an accident that she did it with her Remnant-summoning ring finger.

“I’m not the only one who won’t tolerate humans trying to create supersoldiers by merging our genetic codes together,” Marie went on. “If you haven’t destroyed this entire operation within sixty days, I will assist the Guardian Council in eliminating it through other means.”

“You guys have a council?” Tyler asked, looking intrigued.

I didn’t answer. I was too busy translating what that meant. “Scorched earth” would be a kind description of what would be left if Marie and the ruling body of vampires took this over. They wouldn’t stop at killing Madigan and his mad scientists—they’d wipe out everyone down to the last office worker or groundskeeper. That meant hundreds of employees, not to mention my friends, if they were even still alive.

And such a mass slaughter might cause world leaders in the know to stop turning a blind eye to the existence of ghouls and vampires. Marie knew this, but she and the Law Guardians would risk it to ensure that cross-species-merging never became a reality. After all, vampires and ghouls had almost warred twice before over the possibility that a person could be both part-vampire and part-ghoul at the same time.

The last time, that person had been me, and only my turning into a full vampire had prevented such a war. Madigan, the arrogant fool, had no idea what hornet’s nest he’d stirred up, and if we were very lucky, he’d die without ever knowing.

Of course, we’d need a lot more than luck, as the grim look Bones threw me reminded me. I stared at Marie, not knowing how we’d stop this in the time allotted, only knowing that we had to.

“I guess that means I’ll see you in sixty days.”

Her smile was thin. “I hope so, Reaper, for all our sakes.”

Seven

The RV smelled like an Italian restaurant that had been overrun by stoners. Needless to say, I didn’t want to speak to my uncle at the moment, so if Don had any intentions of traveling to Charlottesville, he was doing it by ley line. We had enough garlic and weed to hold off an ethereal army.