When Villains Rise (Market of Monsters #3) - Rebecca Schaeffer Page 0,89
server of his, and she followed them carefully.
“It’s going to take a while,” Nita said, watching the progress bar crawl along. “There’s a lot.”
“That’s fine.” Adair was calm.
The sound of voices laughing in the hall drifted through the small hotel room, almost but not quite covering up the hum of the air-conditioning unit.
“So.” Nita kept her voice steady. “I want to know everything you know about Andrej and INHUP and the Dangerous Unnaturals List.”
“I see you’ve found some of the information on your own.” A hint of amusement laced his words.
“Yes.”
He sighed softly. “All right. So, here’s what I know for certain. Nadezhda Novikova had a lover, who was also a founding member of INHUP. He went by the name Andrej Smirnov, but that’s likely an alias. I don’t know what his real name was—he probably discarded it a long time ago.”
Nita turned this over, determined it wasn’t important, and said, “Go on.”
“They were in a long-term relationship, and they’re both listed as founders. Smirnov—no, I’ll call him Andrej, I feel like I’m talking about vodka when I say Smirnov—Andrej was never, and can never be, put on the Dangerous Unnaturals List because of all the public pictures of him at INHUP functions. The public doesn’t know he’s a vampire, but they certainly would if his face made the list. And wouldn’t that cause controversy.” Adair’s voice was bitterly entertained. “That’s why he wasn’t on the list even though he killed your father and why information on that case was classified. Speaking of, INHUP apparently found video of your father’s death. I’m still working to get it, but I should have it soon.”
“I see.” Nita pursed her lips, trying to push away all the emotions that wanted to boil back up when she thought of seeing a video of her father dying. A part of her wanted it desperately, wanted to see the truth for herself, wanted to know for sure she’d gotten his killer. And a part of her crumbled at the very idea of seeing him die. She didn’t want to watch that.
She shoved those thoughts away for another time, and asked, “And Novikova? What do you know about her?”
“In a coma for the past twenty years after a failed assassination attempt. The doctors say she’s brain-dead, but pulling the plug requires consent they can’t get.”
Nita licked her lips, and even though she knew the answer, she needed to hear it. “Who tried to kill her?”
“Ah, there’s no actual proof, but I believe it was another founding member of INHUP, a woman who goes by the name Monica Veer. Not her real name, which, I suspect you already knew,” Adair said softly.
Nita didn’t rise to the unspoken question, and simply asked, “How did Novikova survive at all?”
When Nita’s mother went to kill someone, usually they stayed dead.
“Novikova had been drinking vampire blood for nearly forty years. She healed faster and was more durable than any regular human. If she hadn’t been drinking so much blood, she’d be dead,” Adair explained. “There’s so much aggregate vampire blood in her system that she hasn’t visibly aged since she was in her mid-thirties.”
An idea formed in Nita’s head, and she asked, “Do you know where they’re keeping her?”
“An INHUP research facility in southern France, near Nice.”
Nita actually knew the one he meant. They’d been publishing groundbreaking papers on the long-term effects of vampire blood in humans. Now she knew where they were getting their data.
Nita was silent a long moment, mulling things over. Her computer beeped, and the file transfer was completed.
“Can you access the files I sent?” she asked.
“Yes, I see them.” A short pause. “You really weren’t kidding about the volume, were you?”
“Nope.”
Adair was quiet before asking in a carefully modulated tone, “What do you plan to do with all this information?”
Nita hesitated. “Use it.”
“To?”
“Intimidate the market. Take down INHUP and their list.”
“Okay.” His words were slow and precise, as though chosen with deliberation. “Do you know what information will do that?”
The words echoed Nita’s earlier thoughts so precisely that she wondered if kelpies could read minds.
She opened her mouth to brush him aside, to tell him she had it handled, but what came out instead was the truth. “No.”
He sighed softly, a brush of static over the line. “I thought as much.” A soft rustle of noise. “Nita, I’m going to make you an offer.”
“I won’t sell it all.”
“That wasn’t the offer.”
“Oh.” She cleared her throat awkwardly. “Go ahead.”
“You don’t know the value of this information. You don’t