Page 86 of Night's Reckoning
“Does it matter?” Tenzin was disgusted by the waste.
It was completely unnecessary to kill a human to feed. No vampire, not even a newborn, needed that much blood. Sometimes, if a human had other health problems, the shock of blood loss could trigger a heart attack or stroke. And newborns often killed purely by accident because they could pierce arteries and didn’t understand how to seal wounds. But there were no newborns on the ship.
Whoever had done this was careless, vicious, or both.
This human was no threat and had harmed no one. She was working for Zhang, and her safety should have been guaranteed by that alone.
“Sure, why not?” Tenzin said. “Call them.”
* * *
Johari,Kadek, Cheng, Tenzin, and Ben stood around Meili’s body. Ben watched all of them, but they were nearly impossible to read. The poker face had been invented by vampires.
Ben knew whom he suspected. Kadek’s face was ruddier than normal, a clear signal that he’d fed recently. While all the vampires had all been instructed to feed on bagged blood for the duration of the job, Kadek had grumbled about it, complaining that they would be less effective if they couldn’t feed from the ready supply of humans on the boat.
Now a human had been fed on and killed. Had she struggled? Had Kadek been afraid his amnis wouldn’t wipe her memory?
Johari—the only other option in Ben’s mind—was watching the body with more sympathy than he’d expected. Her eyes were trained on the young woman, and she nearly looked sad.
“Did she have a family?” Johari asked.
Ben said, “Yes.”
“Very unfortunate.” A line formed between her elegantly arched eyebrows.
“This is not good,” Cheng said. “Kadek, you’ll need to take care of this. She can’t simply disappear or the humans will be distracted. They’ve made very good progress in the past week, and we can’t interrupt that. Can you make it look like a drowning or shark attack?”
“Of course. I’ll wait for Professor Chou to bring up her disappearance. Then we will conduct a thorough search before we find her body in the ocean.”
Tenzin nodded. “The best solution.”
“Agreed,” Johari said.
“Wait a minute!” Ben said. “That is not the best solution.” He looked around the room at the impassive immortals. “One of you did this. You can’t just cover it up.”
Kadek turned his eyes on Ben. “Are you accusing one of us?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Ben looked at Kadek, not wanting to give away his suspicion if he was the only one who suspected Kadek. He turned to Cheng. “This was a human working under the protection of Elder Zhang Guo and you.”
Cheng said, “I hired them. I never offered my protection. This is unfortunate, but—”
“Unfortunate?” He struggled to keep his ire in check. “Meili’s death requires more than a carefully constructed cover-up. She was twenty-seven. She was the only child of her parents. The first in her family to go to university. This is more than fucking unfortunate.”
Cheng nodded seriously. “I understand your concern, and her parents will be compensated for their loss.”
“You’re unbelievable.”
Cheng narrowed his eyes. “What would you have me do, Ben Vecchio? I cannot bring her back from the dead. There is no court that will hear her case. That is not the world we belong to.”
Tenzin spoke. “Cheng, I think we would all agree that you are the least likely to have killed this young woman. Do you—”
“Not even exempting yourself from suspicion, are you?” Cheng smiled. “You’re one of a kind, Cricket.”
Ben hated that Cheng called her Cricket. Absolutely hated it. But he didn’t say a word.
