| 5 | THE LATEST CONSPIRACY |
A STATELY DOORMAN HELD open the lobby door, and as Oliver walked through, he spotted his driver holding the door open to the town car that was parked nearby. Such was his life now: servants at the ready, everything he wanted at his fingertips. He flipped his aviators over his face even though it wasn’t terribly sunny, but as he’d grown older he found his eyes had become sensitive to light. He blinked at a small smudge of dirt on the glass doors that the doorman held open. Were his eyes deceiving him—or was that a pentagram?
“Arthur,” he said. “What is that?”
The doorman peered at it. “Looks like some dirt. We’ll take care of it, sir.”
“Please do,” Oliver said, concerned his mind was playing tricks on him.
He made his way to his car as the pack of reporters who were idling by the falafel cart jumped to attention upon sight of him. He frowned, bracing himself for another round of this nonsense. He had hoped that by ducking into the office after midday the reporters who congregated in front of his building every morning would have dispersed. No such luck.
“Mr. Hazard-Perry! A few questions—”
“Care to comment on the upcoming exhibit?”‘
“Sorry, sorry,” he said, wading through and brushing them off like pesky flies. He had almost made it to the car door when one question stood out from the rest.
“Is it true that your company condones the deaths of young women in the name of art?” The reporter was an angry-looking young woman, probably from one of the louder tabloids. The Daily Post had been milking this “controversy” for all it was worth since the exhibit had been announced in the press.
“Excuse me?” he asked, stopping in his tracks.
The angry reporter shot him a smarmy smile. “One of the artists who is part of the exhibit is said to have used his dead wife’s blood in the paintings.”
The Overland Trust was the finance arm of the Coven, and the Overland Foundation was its nonprofit charity organization. One that funded concerns that were of interest to their kind: blood banks, blood-borne disease elimination (just because they were immortal didn’t mean they couldn’t get sick), DNA research, and the occasional cultural grant, including the upcoming Red Blood exhibit for the Four Hundred Ball.
The reporter pressed forward, so that Oliver could almost smell her gum-scented breath. “If the rumors are true about the paintings, you have blood on your hands,” she hissed.
“Is that right?” said Oliver mildly, nodding to his driver and handing him his briefcase.
“Yes. The paint used in the works contains the blood of a girl who has been missing for over a decade now!” the reporter barked. “Missing and presumed dead!”
Well, he wouldn’t call Allegra Van Alen a girl, really. Even when she had fallen into a vegetative state and had been kept alive for years in a room at NewYork-Presbyterian, Allegra wasn’t a girl. She was a vampire, an angel, and for sure, she was gone. But she wasn’t dead. When the vampires had been offered salvation after their victory in the final battle, the majority of the Coven accepted it and returned to their home in Paradise, including Allegra. But try explaining that to this scandalmonger.
The whole event was turning into quite a headache. He’d only agreed to sponsor the exhibit as a favor to Finn, since one of the most prominently featured artists in it was her father—Stephen Chase, Allegra Van Alen’s husband and human familiar. Finn was his daughter with a mortal woman, conceived before he married Allegra. Oliver agreed that Stephen deserved more recognition for his work when Finn had campaigned for this splashy exhibit.
Besides, the reporters got it all wrong. While Stephen’s paintings of Allegra did contain blood, it wasn’t hers—all the blood in the paintings was his own. Oliver rubbed his temples in annoyance. He should never have given in to this exhibit, the path to Hell being strewn with you know what.
He held up his hands and grimaced as flashes popped and microphones and smartphones were thrust in front of his face. “Ladies and gentlemen, there is no truth to these despicable rumors. The Overland Foundation is a patron of the arts. These are important pieces of work by an artist who has been overlooked by the culture at large and who has made important contributions to the history of art. We are very proud of our participation in this groundbreaking exhibit. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for a meeting.”
Oliver gave them his most charming smile, even though it was the complete opposite of what he was feeling, and settled into the backseat of the plush vehicle at his disposal. Even if he wanted to, it was much too late to call the whole thing off. He was starting to believe that the sooner this party happened, and the sooner this exhibit opened and closed, the better. Showcasing Stephen’s controversial paintings was a bad idea. Some things were better off left in the past.
It was the future Oliver cared about, and the future of the Coven was foremost in his mind as he toured the gleaming rows of books in the Repository of History when he finally arrived at work. The secret Coven library filled with all the important books on vampire lore had burned down during the War, and Oliver considered its reestablishment inside the Orpheus Tower one of his greatest successes.
“What’s all the hubbub?” he asked, noticing a group of excited human Conduits and young vampires gathered around a tall and austere middle-aged woman, asking her for autographs. “Isn’t that Genevieve Belrose?”
“Indeed,” Fletcher Heller, his assistant, told him with a twitchy smile.
“What’s she doing here?”
“She’s on tour for her latest book.”
Fletcher, a sharp young man with a supercilious way about him, gave him a knowing look. “Conspiracy work, of course.”
“Of course,” said Oliver. The Conspiracy was one of the great secrets of the Coven. The vampires disseminated false information about their kind in the mortal population—popular falsehoods included the notion that they were hideous creatures of the night who were to be feared and that a vampire’s bite could turn a mortal into one. What a laugh. Genevieve’s breathless and best-selling vampire romance series was the latest contribution to the canon—mortals couldn’t get enough of her troubled and eternally hunky vampire hero, Alden Cummerbund. Sometimes Oliver wondered if the Conspiracy was having too much fun.
“You can’t say she’s not doing good work, considering she’s somehow convinced the public that all we do is woo young women whose blood smells good to us,” Fletcher said, wrinkling his nose. “Who even likes the smell of blood? Gross.”
Oliver agreed he had a point. He was about to congratulate Genevieve personally, when from the corner of his eye he spotted Sam Lennox making his way toward him.
The Venator chief looked rumpled and worse for wear. Regents and Venator chiefs never agreed on much, with the Venators demanding more freedom to cross boundaries in order to keep the Coven safe, while Regents were careful not to allow them too much opportunity to use the dark arts against their own people. For instance, permission to look into dreams? Without the vampire’s knowledge? Yeah, no. But while the two of them had battled in the past, they had a good working relationship.
He looked forward to his interactions with Sam; the two of them shared the same paranoia concerning anything demon related. Oliver was relieved when the Venators had found and destroyed that Nephilim nest out in Brooklyn, stomping out the cockroaches, so to speak.
“What’s up, Chief?” Oliver asked.
“They found the body.”
Oliver’s shoulders sagged. “And?” This was not a prank. This was not a drill. There was a body count now, a victim. In his mind’s eye, Oliver saw the peace of the Coven shattered like glass against a dark wall, and somewhere in the background, a demon was smiling.
“Young girl. Puncture marks on her throat,” Sam said, flipping through the file he carried. “Bled to death.”
Oliver cursed.
“Blood signature is murky. Can’t find a match with Coven records, anyway. Unregistered. Looks like the work of a renegade.”
“What about that Nephilim hive we shut down? One of them got away maybe? Did this?” he asked.
“Maybe,” the chief acknowledged, although Oliver knew he was insulted. The Venators had cleared that hive with holy water, and nothing could’ve survived that raid. “I don’t know. Bunch of strange vampires in town for the ball…”
Oliver nodded and pressed the tips of his fingers to his lips before speaking. “All right. Let’s put all the teams on high alert. I want you to scour this fucking city and find her killer.”
Sam Lennox nodded. “We won’t rest till we do.”
“Whoever did this is going to burn,” Oliver promised. The Code of the Vampires protected mortal as well as immortal life now; it was one of the first changes he had made as Regent. Vampires who ran afoul of this law were in danger of losing their immortal lives.
There were no more second chances, not in his Coven.