The Drinker of Blood

Chapter Seventeen

Proof came in the form of one Cedric Wayne—at least, that was the name he went under. I'd identified a half dozen blood drinkers who currently were in Whitefarrow's orbit, and that man seemed to be the most important, a person who would be known to Corey because of his frequent comings and goings in Whitefarrow's office.

Or so I believed. It was difficult to get a firsthand glimpse at what went on around my enemy, so I was forced to rely on documents and records provided by Tanis. Of those, there were plenty.

I toyed for a time with reaching out to Rohan, asking what he knew of the blood drinkers who attended my enemy, but I hesitated. Could I trust him and Isolde? Maybe. No—probably. But I also recalled his words on that night, "Leave the rest of us out of it." Okay.

I got my first good look at Cedric two nights after my last conversation with Corey, when I followed the blood drinker home one morning after work. Naturally, I kept a respectable distance—most of my kind have a knack for spotting others like us—and I discovered that he kept a place at a handsome brownstone on the Upper West Side. I later poked around the neighborhood, learned a little about the "creepy yuppy" who lived on 84th, and eyeballed the man on successive nights.

He was not a day walker. I would have been shocked if he was. But his confidence in his own superiority rendered him the kind of blood drinker who did not rely on personal security at night. He walked the streets of New York without escort of any kind. Bully for him.

Might I recruit this fellow or another of Whitefarrow's followers in my plan against him? My kind are incredibly duplicitous, and turning against a boss would not be out of character. But that was the problem, my kind were duplicitous. I could not trust Cedric in any way.

No, this fellow's fate would be different. I needed to show Corey that someone close to his employer was a creature like his boss. Might that be the proof my security man needed to agree to look the other way? I hoped so. Because I was taking quite a risk in snatching Cedric. If my enemy had not divined by now that I finally was coming for him, he certainly would do so when his right-hand man came up missing.

But did Cedric need to come up missing?

I had envisioned a scenario like the warehouse where Whitefarrow's flunkies had held me in Chicago, except with me cutting gouges from Cedric's flesh while pointing out to the security officer the speed with which those wounds mended. That was a little theatric, but why not do something equally theatric, something that might not tip my hand?

Like many of my kind, Cedric was a creature of habit. The same clubs, the same watering holes, the same eateries—we were pathetically predictable. And I'd found Cedric's watering hole on the first evening that I followed him back to the office. He stopped for a few hours at a trendy whiskey bar called Maxime's, near the park, before heading to work.

That would be the place.

I convinced Corey to join me two nights later on a short field trip after work. He seemed a little skeptical, but he was a man of his word when he met me at a coffee shop a block from Maxime's about an hour after sunset. I hoped that Cedric was equally prompt.

There was no reason to worry. Corey and I found a place near a parking garage kitty-corner from the tavern in question 20 minutes later. Cedric already was there, sipping whiskey and chatting up a couple of attractive women, one of whom I'd seen with him before. The trio were clearly visible in the bar's broad front window, especially so through the small set of field glasses I'd given Corey, just so he would miss nothing.

"Whatever you see," I told Corey as I stepped into the street, "I'm not doing this guy any harm."

I quickstepped across the street, let myself into Maxime's front door, slid past the doorman, and walked to where Cedric stood laughing and trying his best to captivate the two young women. I kept my head down and my gaze averted, pulled out my knife in a reverse grip, and, as I walked past, laid the blade hard against Cedric's throat and pulled. I didn't stop walking, but kept moving to the exit on the opposite side of the barroom. The screams didn't start until I'd already left the building.