Tainted Blood: A Generation V Novel (11 page)

“Why would I know that, Fort?” she asked testily. “The
metsän kunigas
have a right to use the Lincoln Woods, but we don’t do much socializing. If either group has a problem, our treaties say that we have to take it straight to the Scotts. I’m not sure I’ve even seen any of the bears in their human forms, much less talked to one. I definitely don’t get e-mail blasts about dead
karhus
.”

“Okay, you didn’t know,” I conceded, though that didn’t mean the elves were off the hook. “Do you know whether any of the Ad-hene killed him?”

Lilah was shaking her head immediately. “Fort, the Ad-hene haven’t left Underhill since your sister killed Shoney. As for stabbing . . .” She paused, and suddenly looked uncomfortable. “Fort, don’t you know the punishment your mother levied on Themselves?”

“Just that there was one.” Frankly, for the first week Suzume and I had been chasing selkies in Maine, and once home, I’d still had my hands full figuring out Chivalry’s job. “Why, what happened?”

Lilah cleared her throat awkwardly, then muttered, “Chivalry cut off the hands of each of the remaining Ad-hene.”

“What?”
My brother was not the enforcer for the territory. That job lay with—and abruptly I realized why it had been my brother. Prudence had been suffering her own punishment.

Lilah began speaking quickly, apparently deciding now that she’d rather just get the revelations over with. “That was for being involved in the murders. Nokke and Amadon fought against you and your sister, though, so Chivalry cut off their tongues and . . . well, you know.”

I dropped onto the sofa next to her. “Whoa.” I’d known that my brother was willing to get his hands dirty for our mother, but apparently I hadn’t realized
how
dirty. And while a part of me felt a very nasty sense of justice done with the Ad-hene having to experience some of the suffering that they’d forced onto my friend Gage and several other young men, I recoiled at the thought of my brother inflicting it.

“It’ll all grow back, of course. I mean, it’ll take a while. They can heal a lot of wounds pretty fast, but amputations are apparently more complicated.” For a moment I thought that Lilah was trying to cover her discomfort with babble, but a moment later I realized that I’d underestimated her, and that unlike me, she’d kept her mind on the topic at hand when she said, “But believe me, none of them could’ve held a knife.”

That definitely shot a hole in Gil’s suspicions. Hands were definitely needed to stab someone to death. Of course, the last time the elves had been involved in murders, other hands had held the weapons. “What about their fanatics? It was the Neighbors who did most of their dirty work during the sacrifices.”

Lilah had seemed to calm down, but now her eyes got rabbity again, and there was a long pause. I narrowed my eyes and looked at her. “Do you want a drink?” she asked suddenly. “I need a drink right now.”

I followed her into the kitchen and watched as she opened the fridge and removed a half-empty bottle of vodka and a pitcher of orange juice. “It’s nine thirty, Lilah,” I reminded her.

“I’m unemployed, Fort,” she snapped. “You can drink in the morning when you’re unemployed.” She pulled a mug out of a cabinet and mixed a quick screwdriver, then took a swig. She blinked her too-bright eyes, then took another sip, and I noticed that the color began fading back to her usual, human-looking golden brown. She cleared her throat, removed a second mug from the
cabinet, and filled it with straight orange juice. Then she slid the mug toward me wordlessly.

I took it, watching her carefully, and took a drink. High pulp. I waited another moment, then asked, “Lilah? What don’t you want to tell me?”

She toyed with her mug, which, like mine, had a comic from the Oatmeal printed incongruously on its side. “When you said that you needed to come over, I thought that meant you’d found out somehow.” She took a deep breath, and, not meeting my eyes, said, “Whoever killed your bear, Fort, it wasn’t the Ad-hene’s pet fanatics. It couldn’t have been, since they’re all dead.”

The words hung there between us for a long moment while I tried to wrap my head around them. “What?”

“Really dead,” Lilah clarified, and took another drink of her screwdriver. “All of them.”

I stared at Lilah, putting the pieces of what I was seeing together. The Ad-hene were what one could term murder-enthusiasts, and I’d seen them kill one of their most loyal followers with less concern than I showed when throwing out fruit that had gone squishy. If frustrated and maimed, or even if they were having a cranky day, I could certainly see the elves going on a killing spree of their followers. But I had a bad feeling that that wasn’t going to be the explanation here. “Lilah,” I said slowly, “if the Ad-hene were the ones who killed them, you wouldn’t be drinking right now. Tell me what happened.”

She still didn’t look at me, but she did nod, once. “People were killed, Fort.” Her voice was very soft. “If we hadn’t arrived when we did, Felix would’ve been killed. Four women were raped—it doesn’t matter if they were given drugs that made them willing, or that made them forget afterward. It was rape. More was planned.” She looked up at me, and her expression was grim. “You put me in charge, Fort, and I made sure that every single person in the community heard the truth of what
happened. I had to do it, to make sure that we couldn’t gloss it over or look the other way—that we had to face the hard truth of what the Ad-hene were willing to do, and what those of our own were willing to do in their names.”

My voice was just as soft as hers. “What happened?”

She laughed suddenly, but with no humor whatsoever. With quick movements she tossed the remainder of her screwdriver into the sink, and turned on the tap to send it all down the drain. “Well, for one thing, they got pretty pissed.” She looked pensively at the water. “It wasn’t my parents’ generation—they were shocked, yeah, but they wouldn’t have done anything. But Dr. Leamaro and the others did their work well—the largest numbers of the Neighbors are my age and younger.” She shrugged and turned the tap off. “So we acted.”

“This was your idea?” I couldn’t keep the surprise out of my voice.

“We lack the equipment for any kind of long-term imprisonment,” she said defensively, but then she looked over and met my eyes, and seemed to calm down. “I argued that we could try some sort of house-arrest situation, and there were a lot who agreed with me. But there were those who wanted blood—and they started grouping around Cole, one of the older three-quarters.” She grabbed a sponge and started wiping down her counter as she spoke, and I remembered that she was a stress-cleaner. “It would’ve happened with or without my permission. By agreeing to it, I was at least able to get Cole to agree that all the names had to be voted on before anyone was executed. It’s a very Star Chamber–style of justice, but at least it’s better than a vengeful mob.” Lilah found a spot on her counter and scrubbed it with more vigor than necessary. “We killed the last of them more than a week ago, so I’m sorry to say that whoever murdered the bear wasn’t one of them.”

This lead was drying up before my eyes, and I had an uncomfortable flashback to my mother’s directive to
either find the murderer or locate a scapegoat. “So the Ad-hene couldn’t. There are none of their flunkies left who would’ve—Lilah, do you know any of the Neighbors at all who might’ve wanted to hurt one of the
metsän kunigas
?”

“I’m sorry, Fort, but I can’t think of a single one.” Her scrubbing slowed, and she looked over at me uncertainly. “What do you have that’s leading you to the Neighbors? Was there a glamour on something? Did Suzume smell a Neighbor?”

“Neither,” I admitted. “But the
karhu
’s family thinks that the Ad-hene were involved.”

Now she snorted, and some of her anxiety momentarily receded, replaced by the protectiveness that I’d seen her display toward many of the Neighbors her own age and younger. “Well, I’m sorry, Fort, but I think they’re looking for honey in the wrong tree. Believe me when I say that we have more than enough internal issues keeping everyone busy.”

I paused, considered, but I had to ask it. “How were the fanatics killed?”

“We let the women do it, the ones who were their victims.” Now she looked me straight in the eyes, almost daring me to question her. “They wanted to, and it was pretty hard to argue that they didn’t have a right.”

“Did Iris participate?”

She nodded silently, her face pale enough that her scattering of freckles showed against her face in sharp relief, but she didn’t back down.

There was another long pause while I tried to weigh what to say next. “Lilah, murders are supposed to be reported to the Scotts. Why haven’t we been told about these?”

Lilah shook her head with enough force that small drops of water flicked off her damp hair. “We don’t have to report murders, Fort. We just have to report a death if
we want it investigated.” Her mouth twisted. “I was in charge, and I didn’t need anything investigated. All of those who died were Neighbors, so we weren’t poaching any of Madeline Scott’s humans. We destroyed the bodies in Dr. Leamaro’s old incinerator and no one is going to call the police, so there’s nothing that the Scotts would worry about.”

“You were glad it was me instead of Prudence, Lilah.” I pointed out. “You knew that my family wouldn’t be thrilled to hear about this.”

“Madeline Scott wants stable communities, Fort. Solid vassals who pay their tithes and don’t cause trouble.” She laughed a little, with a harsh cynicism that she hadn’t shown when I’d met her a month ago, before she had known what some of the Neighbors were capable of. “We’re keeping the tithes flowing, but we are really far from stable right now.” Lilah was pensive as she looked at me. “It
was
a good thing it was you, Fort,” she agreed.

“Are you going to be okay, Lilah?” I’d made her the Scott liaison to the Ad-hene to keep her safe from their retribution, and I’d encouraged her to try to reorganize the power structure because I’d known that she had a desire to protect Neighbors who had been abused under the old status quo, but I had the very stark realization that she was in a potentially very dangerous position now—largely thanks to me.

Lilah didn’t bother to pretend not to understand what I meant, but she shook her head. “Don’t worry about me, Fort. I’m riding the tiger right now, but they know that they need me.” At my questioning look, she smiled just a little, an expression that reminded me that she might’ve looked more human than her sister, but half her DNA belonged to a species that had driven itself right to the edge of extinction because its members had thought killing one another was fun. “They all know that I helped you when you were trying to find out who killed Gage, and
you were the one who made me the Scott liaison to the Ad-hene. So no one is going to do anything to me, since they’ll want me to be the one to contact you later on.”

“Later on?”

“There’s been talk. The treaty with Madeline was negotiated by the Ad-hene, with their interests in mind. There are a lot of people who want to negotiate a new treaty, one that’s with the Neighbors instead.” The nervousness and guilt were completely wiped from her face, and now she leaned forward, looking every bit the political operative that usually graced my mother’s dinner parties.

“I’m not sure that my mother—”

“Not with Madeline, Fort. With
you
.”

And looking into her eyes, I realized that the Neighbors knew that my mother was dying.

Her voice dropped, and I recognized my friend again. “Those who were truly loyal and devoted are dead, and the Ad-hene themselves are safely in Underhill. Nothing will happen until your mother is . . . gone, and there’s a new opportunity for change, and for the things we want. We’re all waiting, Fort, and I can’t think of a single Neighbor who would jeopardize the situation by killing one of the bears.”

“Tell me what the Neighbors want,” I said.

“You’re my friend, Fort. I’m trusting you not to tell this to your family. You know what would happen if they learned what was going on.” There was a stubbornness on her face, but I tried one last time.

“The
metsän kunigas
are what my mother told me to look into, and that’s all I’m looking into for her. But tell me what the rest of the Neighbors want.”

She shook her head firmly. “No, Fort. I told you what you needed to know—that you have to look somewhere else for your killer—and I trusted you with a lot. But we’re still in discussions about the other thing, and I won’t talk to you about it until we’re decided.”

I watched her closely. I knew that she meant everything she said, and I knew that she’d told me a few things that would’ve had my sister arguing for her death. But I also knew that Lilah had never had a poker face. “This thing,” I said quietly. “You agree with it, don’t you.”

It hadn’t really been a question, but her face gave me my answer anyway. She picked up a small dish towel and wiped her hands, then folded it precisely and set it back down. “Tell Suze that I said hello,” she said, and I knew the conversation was over.

*   *   *

Back in my car, I checked my phone, which I’d turned off when I’d gone to talk with Lilah. There were two missed calls, both from numbers that I didn’t recognize. I returned the first, and found myself speaking to the extremely polite Catherine Celik, at the Celik Funeral Home, and being told what the ghouls had found when they had examined the body closely.

“The blow to the back of the head was the first strike,” Catherine informed me. “It had enough force behind it to fracture the skull, and without quick medical attention, the bleeding into his brain would probably have been fatal on its own. It also knocked him unconscious.”

“There were a lot of stab wounds in his chest,” I noted. “It looked like there must’ve been a fight.”

“No defensive wounds on his hands or arms to suggest that,” Catherine said. “The state medical examiner is one of ours, and she was kind enough to come in last night after her shift was over and perform a full examination, so this is the same level of information that the police would be given.”