I raise my hand. —I never said ta-ta.

She shakes her head.

—Uh-uh, hold that shit in, Pitt. Don't get cute with my ass. You say I should do the smart thing and kill one of our own, kill that poor, starving, desperate son of a bitch in the basement? OK. Tell you what sounds like a smart move to me.

Her long muscled arm extends and she points her fist at me. —Killing you sounds like a smart move to me.

Amanda looks into her glass. —Don't say that, Sela.

Sela slowly uncurls her index finger from her fist, taking a bead on my face.

—He is dangerous. I said it before, He gets people dead. He's working both fucking sides. We don't know what they really want. We don't know what he really wants. And there's no way to be sure anything he tells us is the truth.

I clear my throat and pick up the bottle. —Predo, he says he wants to know what your research plan is.

I start pouring bourbon, decide I got no reason to stop, so I pour till my glass is full.

—Wants to know, are you going to go public with the Vyrus, ask for help finding a cure? Or are you going to do like you said to me, keep it in-house? Says he wants numbers of members, security, layouts. Stuff he'd need if he decides he needs to send a crew in here. That's what he says.

I drink.

—What he doesn't say is that all he's really interested in knowing is if you can do It. What he really wants to know is if you're making any progress. He wants to know if a cure is possible. He wants to know if you can actually find it in this century.

I get a smoke up and running.

—Terry Bird, he let me go, said he'd let me back on Society turf if I came up here and poked around. Said he wanted me to arrange some back-channel

communications. Said he wants to start a dialogue. See if there's common ground.

I take my bottle and my glass and my cigarette and go to a chair and take a seat.

—What he really wants is the same damn thing that Predo wants. And he wants it for the same reason.

I point my cigarette at her.

—Because, bottom line, if there's a cure, if the Vyrus is destroyed, it all goes away. The Coalition. The Society. All the alliances and backdoor deals and spycraft and manipulations go away. All the power, it goes away. They don't want that. And if there's a scrap of a chance you can come up with a cure.

I drink whiskey. —They'll both want to know the best way to kill you yesterday.

I take the picture Predo gave me from my jacket and drop it on the desk. —Name on the back of that is the last mole Predo has in here. I don't know for sure who Bird has on the inside, but he definitely has someone reporting to him on conditions in here. I was gonna take a guess.

I point at the floor. —I'd pick that fat comic book geek you got living in the hall. He come over from

the Society?

Sela blinks.

I nod.

—That's what I thought. He's got it written all over his lazy fucking ass. Yeah, he's your man. So.

I drink some more.

—I guess that's two more people I'm gonna get dead. What / want, little miss junior psycho. Is for you to tell me what you meant before when you said business arrangement. As in, I want to know how much of your money you're going to give me if I help you feed the starving people in this building before they realize you re more valuable to them as a meal than as a savior.

Amanda folds her arms, sets her jaw.

—I'm Joe Pitt, and I'm here to chew bubble gum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubble gum.

I wait.

She unfolds her arms.

—OK, Joe, well, I'm going to give you a whole lot of money. Enough to make you super wealthy. And really, you don't even have to do that much for it.

She points east.

—All we need you to do is take a quick trip to Queens and find out where the Coalition gets their blood.

They have it, everyone knows they have it, she says.

I don't argue with her.

Why argue when someone s right? They do have it. And everyone knows they have it.

Biggest Clan on the Island, and then some. And the only one that has enough blood to supply all their members. Only one can keep them fed well enough that they don't have to worry about someone going berserk and hitting the street to make a spectacle like the one Amanda and Sela are trying to keep under wraps. No secret that they got it. Hell, get down to it, its pretty much advertised.

Best advertising you could ever have to attract Vampyres is a well-known reputation for keeping your members in the red.

Why keep it a secret.

But there is a secret. There is a big secret. There is the biggest secret.

Where the hell does it all come from?

Enough blood to keep hundreds, maybe over a thousand, members alive and kicking.

You figure that some Vampyres are more equal than others, figure that guys like Predo are getting quite a bit more in their fridges than the average infected slob on the street, and then figure a minimum of a pint a week to keep the rank and file happy.