“A lie for a lie?”
Took shook his head. “You first.”
Gabriel pursed his lips in a shrug and waved his glass at Took in agreement. “Ask.”
“This guy wasn’t the sort who’d come up with something like this. He wasn’t smart enough to come up with it on his own, or stupid enough to think the Hounds would let him get away with it. So who did he work for?”
It took a moment and a slow sip of scotch before Gabriel decided to answer.
“I don’t know.” He raised one finger from the glass to quiet Took before he could say anything. “If Iknew, I’d put a stop to it. If I had a strong hunch, I’d throw a few punches and see what shook out. As it is, all I have are stories about people who call themselves the Hounds of God, not Gabriel, and use my mark. Whoever they are, they back it up enough they aren’t questioned, but aren’t any dog I’ve collared.”
“Who?”
“Your turn.”
Took exhaled. He suspected he wouldn’t enjoy this game.
“Ask.”
“VINE?”
Gabriel had never been one to use a lot of words when one would do. It wasn’t just a tendency to the laconic, but because people tell you more if they make up the question themselves.
Why VINE when he’d been raised to be a Hunter? Why the Biters when he could never be bitten? Lycanthropy wasn’t inherited—although the offspring of a wolf was more likely to turn than die if infected—but whatever original sin a child inherited from their wolf parent inoculated them against vampirism. Or, Took poked at the sharp end of a tooth absently, that was how it was meant to work.
“I’m not cut out to be a plumber,” Took said. “And I’m not pretty enough to marry for money.”
Reluctant humor slanted one of Gabriel’s rare, crooked smiles. It looked weary. His smiles always did, as though they’d already seen the pratfall.
“I don’t know,” he said. “There’s someone for everyone, or so I fear. Word on the street is that you’ve slummed it with the cardinal.”
“Nice try,” Took said. “You’ve heard stories about these new Hounds. Like what?”
“They’re better, faster, stronger, and they’re house-trained,” Gabriel said. He finished his whiskey and set it down on the table. “Not like us. They do the job and lick the boot of whoever loosed their chain. They haven’t quite worked up the balls to come West yet. Unlike you. The local Hunters going on about them, about how they might not need me anymore, pissed me off enough that I tracked some of them down a few years ago—”
“You came back East?”
“Is it against the law?”
“Kind of.”
Gabriel shrugged. “I grabbed one of them after they led a raid on some sucker and her bloodbag down in Gainesville. Put a few pointed questions to him but didn’t get anything. He just mouthed fucking scripture at me, like any god is going to take time out of their day to intervene for some Southern idiot. He wasn’t a wolf, though, I could smell that. I lost my temper in the end and figured if he wanted to be a Hound, he should get some teeth.” He shrugged and glanced over Took’s shoulder to give a slight nod to someone. “After that, suddenly they were a lot more careful.”
“What happened to him?”
“My turn,” Gabriel pointed out, almost gently. “But since you asked so nicely, it didn’t take. Sometimes it doesn’t, although he died worse than most. I was tempted to give him the silver stroke myself just to shut him up, but you know my rule—survive and all is forgiven.”
Took could feel the puzzle in his head. It was almost there, all the pieces lined up in order. He just needed to poke the right one into place and it would all fit together. He was so close it made his fangs ache.
“Stronger, faster, better,” he said. “Was he?”
“Than me? No,” Gabriel said. “Than he should have been, a lot.”
“And he definitely wasn’t a wolf?”
Gabriel paused and frowned as he took a drink. A man—or wolf—of few words needed to find the right ones. “Couple of my people who’ve crossed paths with them—the Hounds, not the dogs—say that they are. Or might be. They’ve got the smell, but they don’t have the eyeshine. Like someone bit them and they never turned. This one, though, he wasn’t. Not a vampire either. I would have figured him for a Goat, but the only bite on him was mine. Didn’t stink like one either. So I figure, who’s more likely to be right? Everyone else or me? It’s me and they aren’t wolves.”
Except he’d made it a point to say that some of them might be, that people who should know thought they were. That meant Gabriel wasn’t going to claim this as his problem, but if someone else wanted to clean it up, he’d point it out to them.