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Wiping her eyes, Susan pulled back froaped "Best hope for what, Cat" She paused as she considered what she was about to say "Well, rather crappily, to be honest, but at least no one was trying to killaround h road to Shitsville with no off-raht My best friends are dead I&039;ve seen you kill a total of five people in-"

"Four," he said, interrupting her "You took the one out with the bat crack upside his head"

Did he have to re Hank Aaron, huh? Because I stupidly took a stray cat ho you from the shelter, my house is destroyed, hbor God only knohat for the little fence she keeps around her petunia bed Thanks, Puss in Boots Really Thank you"

He looked aghast at her "I can&039;t believe you&039;re thinking about money at a time like this"

"What a, "The fact that the two people who one and I can&039;t even go to their funeral because everyone thinks I killed therief and frustration overwhelot them out of there, they&039;d be alive now I should have never left them alone They&039;re dead and it&039;s all my fault Yeah That&039;s really what I want to dwell on" She fought the tears that stung her eyes and her heart She couldn&039;t afford to think about Angie and Jiht now Not if she wanted to stay functional That pain was too deep, too severe for her to cope

She could see compassion in his eyes as he cupped her cheek in his warm, callused palm "Look, I&039;m really sorry for what happened to them But you&039;re not responsible for it You hear me? They&039;re dead because Jih to think he could run froone far before they found hi, he was dead before you ever got there"

She scowled at hi to "

"I know" And by the look on his face, she could tell he meant that as he stroked her cheek with his thumb "You&039;ve had one hell of a shock today" She saw respect in his eyes and so in there she couldn&039;t identify "You&039;re entitled to a momentary meltdown, but believe me when I say that a momentary one is all you can afford You are in way over your head and you&039;ve got a long road ahead of you"

"And how is that?"

"You&039;re used to dealing with humans who don&039;t have psychic abilities Well, baby, the world you know just got ugly Everything Jimmy told you at the shelter is true You just stumbled into a war that your kind isn&039;t even supposed to know is happening Forget everything you thought you knew about physics and science, and now i but food to a whole race of people ant to subjugate you"

She shook her head in denial "I don&039;t believe in vampires"

He opened his s "If you want to live past tonight, you better learn to start "

Susan wanted to reach out and touch his teeth just to make sure they were real, but she knew the truth She&039;d actually seen them in action "What are you? Really? You said a Dark-Hunter What is that?"

Ravyn hesitated Having spent three hundred years as a Dark-Hunter and taken an oath to never let those outside of their circle know anything about their world were deeply ingrained in him But this wasn&039;t the usual set of circued her into this and if he didn&039;t give her the truth, she was defenseless against them Whether she wanted to be in this or not, she was

"No Dark-Hunters are i down the Daimons who prey on theht about the easiest way to explain it to her "Long ago, in ancient Atlantis-"

"Atlantis is real, too?" she asked, screwing her face up

"Yes"

She shook her head "What next? Unicorns?"

Her spunk aons are"

She narrowed those blue eyes on him "I really hate you," she said in a voice that was laden with venom

He offered her a kind smile while he let the softness of her cheek soothe the heat of his blistered fingers He should be tending his oounds and yet he wanted to soothe her first That didn&039;tthat ca to her a world that she would no doubt consider preposterous

"I don&039;t blame you I&039;d probably hate me too if I were in your shoes But back to Atlantis There was a race of beings there ere called Apollites"

"God, I was really hoping they were soed as a shard of pain went through him "No, they&039;re definitely not that Their naod Apollo It was his plan to have them dominate the humans, but as with all best-laid plans, it blew up in his face The Apollites turned on hi his e twenty-seven Slowly Painfully"

"I bet they loved that"

"Yeah Needless to say, it wasn&039;t to their taste, so a group of them somehow learned that they could kill huate their lives Since that day, whenever Apollites near their twenty-seventh birthday, they have a choice-die or start preying on humans and become Daimons The only problem with that is that the souls they feed on aren&039;t meant for them As a result, the soul starts to die as soon as they pull it into their body If it dies and they haven&039;t taken in another one, they die, too"

She stepped back from him and ran her hands over her face as the horror of that sank in "So they&039;re on a constant quest to keep killing in order to stay alive"

He nodded "And now it appears they&039;ve been able to get some of your people to help them"

"Why?"

"I don&039;t know You have Hollywood to thank for that Most huuided belief that the Dai their necks and converting them They can&039;t You&039;re either born an Apollite or you&039;re not There&039;s no way for the their lives to a human"

She shook her head as if she couldn&039;t believe what he was telling her "Have you any idea how hard this is to believe?"

"Yeah, well, you ht not believe in Santa Claus either, but that doesn&039;tpresents for the kids on Christmas Eve"

She frowned at him "What&039;s that supposed to mean?"

"It ree of truth"

Startled by the new voice, Susan turned to find Leo standing in the doorway behind her She couldn&039;t believe it, but she was actually happy to see hi

Ravyn inclined his head to hiet the lead out of Ravyn before he heals over it Why don&039;t you come out here with me while she works on him?"

His blase tone amazed her Oh sure Why not? After all, the man or Dark-Hunter or whatever the hell he was had

It was just such a nor herself not to roll her eyes, Susan followed Leo out of the room and passed the older woman in the hallho didn&039;t speak to either one of them It was obvious that Patricia wasn&039;t any happier about all this than Susan was

While Patricia entered the storeroom they&039;d just vacated, Leo led Susan up a back e conference roohts and held the door open for her The white walls and black ceiling gave the roolass conference table and black leather chairs It had all the appeal of an e about the roo called into the principal&039;s office

"Have a seat," Leo said before he shut the door

It wasn&039;t in Susan&039;s nature to follow anyone&039;s orders, but she was too tired and upset at the ue She just wanted five minutes of peace so that she could lick her wounds and pull herself together

"Are you okay?"

"Oh, I don&039;t know," she said as she sat down The leather creaked under her weight, which really just made her feel so much better about herself and her situation "I woke up this , had my cornflakes and coffee as usual Went to work for my sleazeball paper and saw my prized story had been butchered and turned to crap Had my boss crawl all over my butt because I can&039;t leave reality behind n about a cat the total absurdity that is my life, my best friend calls and tells et my reputation back Only that story turns out to be one about the cops helping vaic to because irlfriend is paranoid I take hi I&039;d been told to find byI know, uy in front of me, and my two best friends on the planet are now dead"

She paused to pin an angry stare on that stone look of his "Gee, I&039;ht now, Leo If you have a clue could you please let me know? This isn&039;t exactly within my scope of past experience I&039;o to bed and have all of this be so that when I do wake up toave her a syentle hand on her shoulder "I&039;m really sorry, Susan But I wanted you-"

The door opened to show her a group of twothem The first to enter was a tall, dark-haired ood-looking and dressed in an expensive gray sweater and black pleated pants The erous, but his hair was a medium brohile the woh, the wohtened up and an air of authority literally settled onto his shoulders No longer the quirky little boss she kneell, he now struck her as a no-nonsense predator

"Susan," he said, indicating each of the three in turn "Meet Otto Carvalletti, Kyl Poitiers, and Jessica Addahed "Hi"

They didn&039;t respond in kind Instead, they took up stations around her in a aze, she noticed so that they had in common with Leo all of them had the sa went through her But she wasn&039;t about to let theh today without that Rising to her feet, she gave the on, Leo?"

He ignored her to address the other three "Knock off the Big Bad Scary, guys, and have a seat We have a lot to go over and only a few more hours before the sun sets"

To Susan&039;s complete shock, they actually obeyed him It was extre down a pack of Dobermans

"What about her?" Otto jerked his chin in Susan&039;s direction "Is she secured?"

Leo sighed as he sat down beside her "I&039;ed into this, Susan I never meant for you to find out about any of it That&039;s what I was trying to tell you when they walked in I just wanted you to trace Dark Angel You were supposed to keep living in your blissful ignorance, never learning that va better and better "So all the crap rite about in the paper is real?"

"No," Leo said, to her surprise "It&039;s all, as you say, crap I only run the paper to ets out I mean, let&039;s face it, the &039;I adopted a cat and he turned into ayou call the New York Times about You call papers like ours For the last sixty years, et first dibs on any story that could expose us to the public"

In a weird way that made sense, and the fact that it did truly scared her "And the other reporters at the Inquisitor, are they like you, hiding the truth?"

"No," he said, his face earnest, "they&039;re all pretty much insane I usually hire crackpots because even if they stumbled onto the truth and tried to expose it, no one would believe them "

Well, that explained so much about her coworkers and her own position So much so that it cut her deeply "You hired me because I&039;d lost all my credibility in journalism"

His eyes burned into hers "No I hired you because you were one of the few friends I had in college Without your help, I&039;d have never graduated, so when you got into trouble, I offered you a hand-up the fact that no one would ever again take you seriously was just an added bonus"

She glared at hier aside with a wave of his tattooed hand

"I&039; to lie to you, Susan I respect you tooto me all this time"

He looked offended by that "When? Have I ever denied that vampires were real?"

"You said it was bullshit"

"No, I said bullshit pays for my Porsche and it does I&039; you to embrace the ridiculous To believe in the unbelievable"

He did have a point now that she thought about it That had been his rant at her since the day she joined his staff Sighing, she retook her seat "So why did you send me after Ravyn if you didn&039;t wantit wasn&039;t Ravyn that the student was talking about I mean, let&039;s face it-there are a lot of Were-Hunters in Seattle, and since they live for centuries, to the uninfor you&039;d go, get me a name and address, and then I could clean it up if it were real"

"Why not just go yourself?"

He scoffed at her "I&039;ative reporter I have all the subtlety of a brick, which is why I&039;m more of an enforcer Besides, I knew that even if you found out the truth and saith your own eyes, you&039;d never believe it Soitimate way to explain it all away that I could then use with other people See?" He looked past her, to the other three, who&039;d been eerily silent all this time "Noe have a bit of a proble in my shoes"

Leo rubbed the back of his neck nervously "Yeah, well, you are the proble "How do you mean?"

"Civilians aren&039;t allowed to know about us," Otto growled from his seat across from her "Ever"

"Uh-huh," she said slowly "You knoith that sinister tone you should look into working for the IRS I&039;m sure they&039;re desperate for people who can cow others with a single growl"

Leo sat forward "Sue, don&039;t taunt the cobra He tends to bite"

And by the look on Otto&039;s face she could see that Leo wasn&039;t kidding She looked back at Leo as Kyl handed him a shiny black folder He opened it briefly, then set it on the table

Leo druers on it while he addressed her "Normally, we recruit members who have skills we can use But sos come up, such as the last twenty-four hours, where innocent bystanders accidentally get caught up by mistake Those mistakes have to be corrected" His tone was deadly and threatening

Refusing to be intiave hi stare "And how do you propose to correct me?"

"You have a choice," Kyl spoke at last "Either you become one of us or"

She waited When he didn&039;t finish, she gave him an arch stare "Or what? You kill me?"

It was the woman who answered "Yes"

"No," Leo said sternly He looked back at Susan "But we can&039;t take the chance that you&039;ll expose us Do you understand?"

Was he serious? But then all she had to do was look at the doom squad to know that answer

"And what are you in all this, Leo?" she asked, needing to fully understand what she&039;d inadvertently been sucked into "Why do these guys," she indicated the other three at the table with her, "listen to you?"

"Because I&039;is for Seattle, since my dad retired I run the Theti branch which, by default, makes me the head of all the Squire branches in this area"

"Theti?"

"Blood Rites," Otto said in a low, guttural tone "We do other Squire jobs as well, but we&039;re the ones who are licensed to enforce the Council&039;s mandates"

"And we use any means necessary to keep our world a secret" Kyl narrowed his eyes fully on her

This had to be the weirdest day of her entire life, and given the fact that she spent ti was Susan&039;s reincarnated grandfather and wore her clothes wrong side out to keep the lightbulbs fro the dye, and with her coworker Joanie, who had a penchant for putting Post-it notes over her desk drawer to keep the little

They really meant to kill her

"So what&039;s your decision?" Otto asked He looked just a little overeager for her to say no

"What?" she asked, unable to resist teasing the cobra-it just see people lately?"

His face completely stoic, he responded dryly, "As a et out of practice"

"God Forbid," she said in aher attention back to him "Sue, I need an answer"

"Do I really have a choice?"

"No," they said in unison

Leo&039;s face softened ever so slightly "You know too much about us"

Susan sat there in silence as the events of the day replayed through her mind It was all too o crazy like her grand that kind to her at present Her sanity was intact, because heaven forbid she have any escape fro lanced to the others before he answered "Not much Really You swear an oath to us to keep your silence and you go on our payroll and into our system so that we can monitor you"

Those words, combined with his tone, sent a chill down her spine "Monitor me how?"

"It&039;s not as ominous as it sounds," Leo assured her "We just keep a tab on you fro to any civilians about us So long as you et a lot of perks"

"Such as?"

Leo pushed the folder toward her "Private planes Exclusive vacations A 401(k) and stock options to beat the band Funds to start your own business if you want " He paused to give her a stern stare "And the one thing you&039;ve never had A family that&039;ll be there whenever you need it"

That last bit stung and Leo knew it Her father had abandoned her and her mother when Susan was only three years old She had no memory of him whatsoever, and her mother had never taken her to meet his side of the family An only child like Susan, her mother had been close to her parents, but they, too, had died while Susan was a small child and then her mother had died in a car wreck three days before Susan turned seventeen

She&039;d been alone ever since

Fa in her life that she&039;d always craved with a burning passion, and much like her respectability, it was as elusive as a unicorn&039;s horn It was the one carrot Leo knew to dangle in front of her

Sighing, she flipped through the folder to see a contract and a list of phone numbers for different kinds of services She closed it and pinned Leo with a frigid glare "YouI&039;ve learned: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is So what&039;s the catch?"

"There isn&039;t a catch, proo about your life any way you please You&039;ll just be privy to a lot of things that the average person is clueless about"