Page 34

Yi wanted this version of Earth to be owned completely by seers.

He barely tolerated hybrids, even though he obviously found them useful as foot soldiers in his movement. Ultimately, Yi wanted humans and vampires to destroy themselves so he could take over the world and rebuild it for his own people.

Why he’d chosenthisversion of Earth, inthisparticular dimension, was anyone’s guess. Nick had to assume there were many, much better dimensions where the inhabitants hadn’t destroyed most of the oceans, contaminated the fresh water and air, irradiated the land, and killed most of the animals, trees, plants, birds, insects, and people.

But Yi had his gaze set on this one, and he was adamant that seers were the only rightful owners of what remained.

His ideology was a grand experiment in destroying the foundations of a harmonious culture. Yi feigned hatred of non-humans because he believed it would destroy human culture from the inside. He believed inflaming their “natural violence and irrationality” towards anything they didn’t understand, anything that frightened them, would pit them against one another and eventually incite them into suicidal wars.

For the same reason, Yi’s supposed hatred of half-humans was partly true and partly smokescreen. He definitely saw half-seer hybrids as inferior to himself, and as second-class citizens in his coming paradise. He seemed to see Wynter as more than that, but most hybrids seemed to arouse nothing but contempt in him.

His hatred of vampires hadn’t been faked in the slightest.

Mostly, though, Yi had wanted to destabilize the human world. He wanted them pitted against one another, and against the vampires. He wanted to ignite an irrational, bloody, terror-filled war, with the sole intent of murdering as many human beings as possible.

The crazy thing was, his plot had been working.

Yi’s father had come to collect him before he could get all the way there, but Yi had already begun destabilizing the delicate peace that had been wrought in the post-war period. He’d re-ignited fear and hatred of vampires, in particular.

But he’d also succeeded in pitting humans against one another.

Nick didn’t know what Yi’s next step would have been to take over the planet, but he had zero doubt there was one. Yi had been devious as fuck.

He’d also been patient.

He’d had a brilliant mind, so really, it was a waste.

Nick looked down at the two dead humans lying in a dirt clearing surrounded by grass, and frowned, glancing over only when Morley finished talking to the regular officers and came back to where Nick stood. Nick had been eavesdropping, of course.

He’d heard the uniforms telling Morley they had a few witnesses, humans.

He wondered if Morley would want him involved on that side of things. Nick generally only handled interrogations when he was working alone, or when they wanted him to bite someone and force them to tell the truth.

Nick glanced around at the dark buildings, and guessed Morley would ask him.

No one around here would cooperate willingly.

People were unwilling to cooperate with cops even on a good day, but up here, this close to the Cauldron and the hollowed-out Vampire District, it was significantly less likely. Only full-blooded humans could give legal testimony in criminal cases without severe restrictions, and special dispensation by the police or the courts, usually both.

While the local human residents likely had no personal interest in covering up crimes for whoever had been involved in a shootout on their street, they wouldn’t put themselves and their families at risk. They wouldn’t intentionally cross the wrong person or persons.

Up here, “the wrong people” often had somewhat different connotations.

It was too close to the vampire ghetto.

It was too close to the Cauldron.

“Gertrude’s eyes got two witnesses,” Morley said, referring to the A.I. that ran most of the administrative side of the N.Y.P.D. Her “eyes” referred to drones used by the N.Y.P.D. to get a look at crime scenes, sometimes before the cops could arrive themselves.

“Human,” Morley added, taking a sip of coffee from his ugly, blinking, obnoxious Yankees mug. “Watching from the windows of a nearby complex, apparently. Gertrude thinks at least two people in those windows saw the whole thing go down.”

Nick nodded, and glanced up and around at the high, concrete buildings, doing a rough inventory of the different styles. There weren’t a lot of windows in most of them, but there were definitely some, and maybe more than were visible to him, despite his vampire vision.

Morley jerked his jaw towards the nearest structure, a tall residential with direct line-of-sight to where the dead bodies lay.

“That one,” he said, grimly.

Nick followed his eyes.