Page 31 of How to Entice a Fiend

“You think Mads did all of this?” Leona asks. “I didn’t take him for a fighter.”

“We will know more shortly,” Marcus says, voice stern as he repeats what I said.

Brooks tries to usher them away, but a man whose name I don’t know shakes his head. “If someone is killing off people from the council, we should know. We have risked our lives to come here, and apparently one of us is already dead. Did this Ender guy do this?”

“Ender works alone,” I say.

Marcus is getting irritated from having to deal with them. “Get out and let us do our jobs.”

“How do we know you’re not hiding something?” he asks. “I don’t know you. I just know that someone from the council is now dead and that one of us could be next.”

I decide that I really need to do something about this before Marcus gets pissed. “What was your name?”

“Afonso.”

“Afonso, I really understand your concern, but at this point, we need to make sure none of the evidence gets disturbed. So please, give us some time and we will inform all of you what we’ve found.”

Quite a few of them aren’t pleased with this, but they do allow Brooks to escort them out, leaving us to the crime scene.

“Before they interrupted, you were going to say that the only person who fights this well against this many people is Ender, weren’t you?” I ask.

“It does line up with what he’s done in the past,” Alexei says. “But why would he protect Mads?”

“I can’t imagine that he would protect anyone but Rylee and maybe Finn,” Claude muses. “Everyone wants to protect Finn.”

“You… don’t think it was Ender they shot… do you?” I ask. “I know vampires can heal, but whoever lost this blood lost a lot of it.” I stare at the spot on the floor before looking up at the blood splatter. “I guess they could have gotten shot and then bled quite a bit here.”

“Why, though?” Marcus asks. “If you’ve shot someone, they’re going to die. Why would you bother attacking them?”

“Let me call Orin. Just… see if Ender is there or not,” I say.

I step back and call, but it takes a few rings before Orin answers. “A bit early to be hearing from you,” he comments.

“Is Ender there?”

“He is not. He stepped out, oh… an hour or so ago… why?”

“We have reason to believe he was at our current crime scene.”

Orin grows quiet.

“Orin?”

“Should I refuse to let him back in? Did he do something wrong?”

“I don’t think… he was the one doing the crime,” I admit. “We’re considering the possibility that maybe Mads was thetarget of a group of vampires and Ender stepped in to protect him? That sure doesn’t sound right. Maybe he just stepped in for the hell of it. Or maybe the vampires who attacked Mads are the ones he’s been looking for. I honestly don’t know. Hopefully we’ll know more shortly.”

“You don’t know where Mads or Ender are now?” Orin asks.

“No… we’re afraid one of them got shot.”

“You mean withthatammunition.”

“Yes. We’re not quite sure whether either could live through it. Maybe Ender could? He’s certainly different in some way… unusually strong and fast. But if Mads was… I have a hard time believing he’d live through it.”

“I’ll let you know the moment I hear from Ender. He hasn’t been leaving Rylee for long. I would hope he’s here soon.”

“Thank you,” I say. But I know that he’ll only be there soon if nothing has happened to him.

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