RiTS: Forever Knight: A Stirring of Dust, Chapter 9

Snowflakes! I'm almost done with another novel! It has no vampires in it, though, but! After I'm done with this one, I'm on to the next book in the Imperial Vampires series, so I'm excited! Everything I say has exclamation points lately! Let's recap!

Radu is bopping around Toronto, wishing for the arms of a woman. He'd spent the day in someone's basement apartment, a man he killed. He assumed it was a servant's apartment, but then no one came looking for the dude, so Radu haz the confuseds.

So since he's been dreaming about women all day, he tries to find a woman to eat, but all he finds is some old lady, and that's just not good enough – though he kills her anyway.

He basically just drops her and then flies off, because there's someone else he's looking for, someone he's angry with. That he believes he has a right to be angry with. But he's angry at everything, because it's all so confusing – the weird "castles", the strange "beasts" in the street with glowing eyes. He wishes the moon goddess would come and save him, like she did once before.

Janette and Radu are waiting for a coach to come by. Radu acknowledges that Janette might have questions, but she ignores him until he compliments her.

"You are the moon hidden by clouds," he told her when she didn't speak.His words were received with a slight turn of her head, a faint smile. "You don't have to explain to me, Radu."

Because I super don't care about anything except that I can make you do what I want. Right, Janette? I mean, I get it, I do. I understand this game, this seeming cruelty. Janette's trapped with possessive Lacroix and whiny Nick, and Nick's not really besotted enough to indulge her in anything. Lacroix sees her exclusively as a child at this point – and who knows if he ever saw her as anything else, really? He saved her from a life on the streets, a life of selling herself. Given what we know of Lacroix's character, I doubt he ever took her as a lover, because he would have waited for her to come to him – and I don't think she ever has.

Anyway. Radu goes on to tell her that he's in pain, that this whole zombie-vamp thing is a sickness in his blood. It also seems to be a sickness in his head: he says he can't remember pain, but that must be what he feels. He says time confuses him, that decades pass and he can't remember them. He's lonely, because he can't make children anymore, only the zombies.

Janette's decidedly cool about this. "I see," she keeps saying, and finally he's all, "What do you see?" That he tells her these things because he wants her to stay with him. And the subtext here is that Janette will do what Janette wants, and that's it. Telling her, not telling her, begging her, Nicholas and Lacroix laying down the law – it's all incidental, isn't it. She gets to choose.

The coach comes along and they kill the people in it, then have sex. Radu hasn't taken the head off his victim, though, so it starts moving when they're done. Janette removes its head, and then scolds Radu that he must always remember that part.

On the street, Radu removes the old woman's head so she won't rise. And then he's off to find Nick, because Nick will have answers for him.

At the Raven, Tammy's waiting in line to get in when Lacroix sneaks up behind her. "I want to belong to you," she tells him, as she's been waiting to do all day. Oh, Tammy.

Lacroix warns her that he never releases what's his, that she should think carefully. She tells him all she's ever wanted is to belong to someone, and he quips that psychologists wouldn't find that very healthy, would they? She doesn't care. Of course not. She wants a father. It would probably be better for her to just go be a stripper, frankly. Or maybe not. Maybe Lacroix is what she needs. I can't decide on this one, guys. I like Lacroix, we all know that, but I worry that what's so entertaining about him would be a nightmare if you actually had to put up with it every night. (See: Grant Black.)

Lacroix calls her out for disobeying him, and she's all, "Psh. You knew I'd do that." He asks again why she won't leave him alone, and does she really know what she wants? She insists that she does. He speaks to her telepathically: This isn't what you think it is, but she insists that it is, that she knows what she's doing.

He says he'll think about it. She's overjoyed, and starts to talk about things not meant for public: "You'll make me – …You'll adopt me," she amends, knowing better than to say "vampire". He says, again, he'll think about it, and then he disappears.

Vachon finds Radu's latest kill, but for the moment, thinks it's unrelated to the creature he told Screed he'd check out. He thinks it's just another human-on-human killing, until he touches the body, and the physical connection makes clear to him that something else did it.

He opens his extra senses to get more information, and can feel that it was a vampire – an old one. He thinks of Lacroix, but no, Lacroix wasn't mad, as this vampire was. But not mindless, so he couldn't have any connection with the thing Screed saw – unless it made the thing Screed saw. Which isn't possible, is it?

Too bad the cops show up just then.

Lucky for Vachon, they're not American, so they don't just start shooting right away. They tell him to get his hands up, and to shut up when he tells them he just found the body. He needs them to get closer so he can mojo them, so he does as told while the officers have a little chat about how clearly, the perp in these beheadings is drinking the blood. Between that and the animal attacks, Toronto's turning into one creepy-ass town.

One of the officers finally gets close enough to Vachon, who mojos him. "I wasn't here, you didn't see me," the usual. It works, and the cop starts to examine the body, ignoring Vachon – who now has to deal with the other guy.

Vachon steps toward him, and the cop shoots him. Vachon rushes him and grabs the gun, but "…the policeman's unprofessional use of his firearm probably didn't give Vachon just cause to kill him."

Yeah, Vachon. You have to wait until they're running away, unarmed, or they can't breathe, or they're in handcuffs, or they're pregnant, before you can kill them. Duh.

He drops the gun and mojos the guy, then hightails it out of there before more cops can show up and tie him to the crime.

At the precinct, Reese is having a meeting about the beheadings. He tells everyone that there are no werewolves or vampires, and Nick winces. He doesn't want anyone to even say "vampire" in connection to these killings, because if it's in a mortal's head, it's dangerous.

Tracy winces at the mention of vampires, too. She's worried about Vachon, about the danger he might be in if people are thinking vampires ripped off all those heads. Despite, you know, most people thinking there's no such fucking thing.

Reese asks Nat to speak to the forensic evidence in the case, and she does, but not before ruminating that she shouldn't look at Nick OR Tracy as she goes up to speak, because then she'd let Tracy know that she knows about vampires. Which she can't do, because Nick doesn't want to be outed to Tracy.

WHY that's the case, though, is rather too conveniently left out of Natalie's thoughts, which is a frustrating shame. This really is the perfect opportunity to finally explain to us why the fuck Nick insists on keeping this secret when life would be so much easier if Tracy knew. I mean, what, does he think he'll be responsible for saving her even more often or something? WHAT IS THE DEAL, NICK?

Nat tells the squad that there's a lot of mauling, to which the cops are like, "Um, then shouldn't there be dog packs roaming the streets or something? People are seeing zombies, not animals." Reese steps in to yell at them for asking a perfectly valid question, and then tells everyone to go catch the beheader.

Nat and Nick are called to a fresh crime scene. Nat goes to get the coroner's van, and Nick goes to his car, while Tracy says she'll catch up with him in a minute, she has to stop by her desk.

Vachon is waiting at Nick's car. Nick braves the gauntlet of reporters with a "No comment" and heads to his Caddy, where Vachon actually takes him by surprise. Vachon's all, "Um, didn't you sense me?" and Nick doesn't tell him a simple "no", but blames it on the negative energy of the press.

Vachon wants an update on the case. Nick says he can't talk about it, that it's his responsibility. Vachon says Nick isn't the only vampire in Toronto – snerk – and that maybe it's everyone's responsibility. Nick says he'll give him an update when he can, Tracy's coming, Vachon better go. So he does.

Next week: Chapter 10! These chapters are getting long! People think too much in them! Maybe we'll have some more missing heads and Janette being an HBIC!