Empath (Book 1 of The Empath Trilogy)

  Ch. 21

  We met with the Andrews clan to draw up patrol zones. We had the dual tasks of monitoring the movements of Bradley’s vampires and splitting my escorts’ duties between James and Stephen. The werecats and vampires spoke further about the mysterious happenings in Milwaukee between an ally of Henry’s and the violent vampires now coming here to work with Bradley.

  The Andrews and vampires discussed names of contacts all over Minneapolis and into Wisconsin. They were trying to figure out why no one knew what had happened in Milwaukee. All were assuming the worst but hoped a witness or survivor would have surfaced by now. It was a puzzle given their considerable grapevine for information gathering. James was spooked that it had suddenly dried up. I could tell he wanted to investigate for himself but didn’t want to leave me. I had tried to object and send him out; he’d given me a look that closed the subject.

  He was stubborn, that much I’d learned by now and I knew not to push. Henry decided he would try to call Dan, a vampire he knew with a club in Milwaukee. He was trustworthy and in the know; most vampires hit his place when they first came to town to find out who might be in the area. Henry and James hoped he would be able to shed some light on what had happened so that they could better establish what kind of force, beyond the little James had gleaned, was coming our way when the coven arrived this week. But when Henry called, Dan’s line was out of service.

  During the meeting, the clan was oddly disjointed. Stephen was distracted and elusive on what he would be doing, which Tara played off as Stephen being involved with someone new, yet it didn’t seem right. He wouldn’t answer any questions about where he was going to be and refused to commit to any specific times when he would be available to run area patrols interchangeably with his family. Stephen was definitely the most cavalier of the clan, but he was being downright irresponsible, a detail I found particularly hurtful since he had been the one concerned enough to bring me into the fold in the first place.

  Maybe it was the painkillers, but I couldn’t quite identify what felt wrong about Stephen’s protests as to why he couldn’t be more help in the grand scheme. James, disgusted with him entirely, threw up his hands, demanding the rest of the clan make up for Stephen’s unreliability. Henry made a final ruling that he backed James and that was where it ended.