by Dee Carney
“Kadi. I almost decided against it.”
“Oh, it looks awesome on you. I don’t know that I’d be brave enough to show off that much skin.”
“But it’s not really. Hides practically everything if you look close enough.”
They continued to chat amiably. Lucy kept up her end of the conversation but made sure she stayed in tune with what happened between the date and the guard. The two humans posed no threat, but the vampire guard could be a problem in more ways than one. If the partygoers knew his origin, they didn’t betray themselves. Business as usual when he gave brief instructions toward the elevator.
“I’m Kay.”
“Lucy.” She dropped her voice a little, praying like hell the vampire kept his attention on Kay’s date. If he overheard their exchange with sensitive hearing particular to vampires, the bluff that the trio had arrived together would be over.
“Can I be nosy?”
Distracted, Lucy almost missed what she’d said. “About?”
“What was it like?” Kay’s voice dropped into a conspiratorial tone. Her dark eyes were shiny bright, and the curiosity practically oozed from her pores.
At first, Lucy didn’t understand.
Kay reached for her date’s hand and pulled him into their impromptu meeting. Together, all three began to move away. “Byron, this is Lucy. You see her glyph?”
Ah. She should have known.
Giving him a polite nod of acknowledgment, Lucy tackled Kay’s original question. “My sister and I were orphaned, so we were taken into service when we were in our teens.”
“Wow,” Byron said softly. He stood at least six feet tall, broad-shouldered and wearing the dark brown designer suit like a boss. Mocha-colored skin, high cheekbones and full lips spoke to an ancestry of kings. Any day now, Calvin Klein would be calling this guy to model their underwear. “I thought that was illegal,” he said. “You have to be of consenting age.”
Lucy tried to smile through her response. “Back then it wasn’t. This was before the Council was formed. My sister and I were identified and taken in. It’s been practically my entire life.”
Kay pressed the button for the elevator, which arrived only a moment later with a quiet hum. “I don’t know whether to apologize for it or be in awe.”
Byron felt differently. “It’s a privilege. Everyone knows that. Maybe in the next year or two, they’ll invite one or both of us to become a blood slave.”
“You’re almost thirty though,” Kay said, her voice full of regret. Lucy watched her squeeze his hand. “If they don’t take you, I don’t go either. Not on my own.”
If they’d been discussing almost any other thing, Lucy would have found the exchange endearing. She loved their dedication to each other, which was plain as day on Kay’s expressive face and the way she gazed into Byron’s eyes. These two would build a life together, grow old together. They would leave behind a legacy of children and grandchildren...that is, if they weren’t made into blood slaves first.
It made her stomach curdle to contemplate that possibility. They had no idea what would await them in that lifestyle.
The elevator dinged, snapping Lucy out of her reverie. She swallowed her fear and forced her lips to part in a smile. Just because they’d made it past security didn’t mean there wouldn’t be another potential roadblock beyond Sage’s doors. The fact that they’d ended up on his floor of the building had been a small miracle on its own. No sense in blowing it now.
She continued, “The training can be rigorous, but it’s more about being pleasant and pleasing. Also, being able to keep up with their endurance, which far exceeds ours.”
“But once they started feeding from you, it must have been worth it, right?” Kay licked her lips, burgundy lipstick left shining as a result. Her voice had grown huskier as her imagination probably supplied the supposed details of a blood slave’s life.
A voice inside Lucy urged her to tell them what it was really like, the life they’d glamorized without knowledge of the reality. About the nights of having no reprieve, only to be followed by a sleepless day wherein she was expected to prepare for another night, another orgy. Even more, she wished she could spill the secrets she and her sister Cindy carried about the most elite of the vampires. How they viewed humans in general. Blood slaves fell even lower in their sights.
“There is that rush,” she said, instead. “It’s addictive, for lack of a better word.”
Kay’s nose wrinkled. “Addicts, ugh.”
“I feel sorry for them. You don’t know what kind of reaction you’ll have over time. Not until it’s too late.” Lucy had once felt the same way about addicts until she’d seen the insidious creep of their dependence on the vampire’s bite.
“I guess,” Byron said. “Still...” Almost every human she knew shared their sentiment, while vampires took advantage. She didn’t blame them for their lack of understanding. Humans were sheltered from so much of it.
Both Kay and Byron stepped through the doors as they slid open. Lucy had no idea what to expect when she entered Sage’s place, but this hadn’t been it. Were it not for years of training and living in opulence, she might have gasped at the sudden unexpectedness of the open room.
To their right, an aquarium served as the wall. Hundreds of fish swam through aquamarine water, unconcerned by the rolling rainbow display they made. Stone pillars jutted from either side of the decorative wall, making it appear as part of a cave.
On the other side of the room, parallel to the aquarium, three arching windows exposed an awe-inspiring view of the city’s skyline. Lush curtains on all sides guarded the twinkling lights of skyscrapers, while passing cars spotlighted more of the city. Indoors, tasteful art hung between the panels, illuminated by soft spot lighting. At a distance, she thought she recognized the style of a particular contemporary artist whose work sold in the low six digits. Not surprising at all.
As they moved deeper inside, Lucy’s shoes sunk into plush carpeting, bringing comfort to each step. From the entrance, she spotted stations of canapés and tall flutes of bubbly beverages. The carafes of dark red liquid standing sentry at the snack areas were ominous yet understood.
Everywhere she could see, people dressed in the affluent world’s finest clothing mingled, chatted and laughed. Her heart thundered as she studied them all. Not the dozen or so she’d expected, but at least fifty partygoers. Most of them vampires.
It dawned on her that she might not make it out of this place alive tonight. But if she had to go, she would take with her as many vampires as she could.
It was a vow.
Victor landed in a soft crouch, his head snapping up to check for charging guard dogs or people running at him, guns drawn. He stayed quiet for a moment, but the grass had muffled his descent and the sounds of city life were the only things that drifted his way.
He didn’t know who he could trust anymore, so there was no telling who’d come after him. Vampire. Lycan. Human.
The forty-eight hours he’d requested from the werewolves had come and gone, and he was no closer to knowing who’d ordered the execution of the adolescents. His best tip—hell, his only tip—said to investigate Giancarlo Sage.
Funny how the Council member’s name had come up more than once in a week. The first time was the night he’d met that blood slave. If he’d known they were after the same guy, he might have considered her offer instead of turning her away. Hindsight being twenty-twenty and all that.
In fact, he’d felt a slight twinge of guilt for being such a dick to her at all. No doubt she’d been scared shitless about approaching him. A true merc would have taken her up on the offer instead of asking for a fuck instead. Maybe he was getting soft in his old age.
“Move it, old man,” he muttered. Regrets served him no purpose whatsoever.
Victor studied the building, noting every place that would serve as a good hand grip or foot rest. Going through the front door would be easier but also require a lot more brute. Scaling the wa
ll would take little to no effort at all.
He’d heard Sage would be throwing some sort of shindig tonight, and it created the perfect cover. If he’d been out to kill the man, a lot more planning would have gone into his preparation. Since Victor only wanted to talk to him, get a few answers, disguising himself as a guest served as a good enough cover.
The cool brick scraped his palms, but the rough edge felt good beneath his fingertips. His muscles bulged as he hefted himself up, always on the lookout for the next place to position his hand and foot. The climb wasn’t difficult, but he took his time making it to the third story. People were more likely to notice something moving quickly. Dressed in all black, he should be hard to spot.
After twenty minutes of crawling, his muscles burning from fatigue, at last he swung his legs over the iron balcony railing. Glad for the cover of sheer curtains, he did his best to peer into the room, but he couldn’t see much beyond movement of several bodies. The more, the better for him.
He withdrew a small lock pick set from inside his coat, crouched before the simple lock and got to work. Less than ten minutes later, he slipped inside. The moment he stopped long enough to study the people occupying the large home, he realized his mistake.
These were vampire elite, most blood born, unlike himself. Additionally, the few humans standing unawares in their midst were as beautiful as the vampires. Victor, with his imperfect features, couldn’t help but stand out. Shit.
He scoured the room, looking for the help. Butler, bartender, guard...it didn’t matter so long as he took on the air of one of them. He’d come here expecting to be able to pass as a guest and should have known better.
Maybe he really was getting too old for this game. Time to retire and leave this life to a younger generation, better equipped to handle it.
With no other option open to him, he straightened his shoulders. Intent on hiding himself in a crowd of people below where he stood now, he strolled down the corridor as if he’d just been giving himself a tour before at last jogging down a winding staircase. Once at the landing below, a woman’s voice came to him from his good side.
“I should have done like you and dressed in something a little more casual,” she said. He turned in time to catch her stepping from side to side, rotating her ankle each time she lifted a foot. “These things are killing me. Would you give me a h—”
She’d held out a dainty hand, but her words died before he reached out to grip it. He had to give her credit for displaying excellent breeding, because although she’d lost the ability to speak once her gaze met the paralyzed side of his face, she didn’t so much as blink at his abnormality. She stilled, but there was no widening or sudden averting of the eyes he usually received.
The woman was tall and sinewy, a pile of curly auburn hair sitting atop her head. Jewels dangled from dainty earlobes, and they paled in comparison to the beauty that graced her flawless face. Big blue eyes. Long, curling lashes. Cupid bow lips.
“Madam,” he said softly. Victor extended his hand.
The woman straightened her spine but placed her hand in his. She kept her gaze on the task, which involved correcting the strap of her fashionable heeled shoe. Once done, she slid away from his grip with what had to be deliberate slowness. “Th-thank you.”
She couldn’t have scurried away any faster.
Victor curled his fingers into his palms, forming two tight fists.
It hadn’t always been like this. And it fucking shouldn’t have hurt anymore to see a beautiful woman’s reaction to him, but on some days more than others—like now—she would have been kinder to shove a white-hot poker into his abdomen.
His thoughts drifted back to the blood slave. At least she’d been honest in her frank appraisal of him. She hadn’t been disgusted. Maybe intrigued. That, at least, he could understand.
“Sir, may I help you?”
“Looking for my date,” Victor replied. He’d seen the server’s approach, flutes of champagne balanced on a silver tray he carried. As he’d known he would, Victor attracted attention. If someone on the catering staff had identified him out of the crowd, it wouldn’t take long for Sage’s security to do the same. He needed to keep moving.
“Sir,” the waiter said with more force behind his voice. “May I please see your invitation?”
The balls of this guy. Victor would have been indignant if he weren’t crashing the damned place.
He had a decision to make. Confront the ass, make him regret ever spotting Victor in a place he had no business being. But that option might draw even more attention. He’d get his point across. However, a butt-hurt waiter might scamper to security the moment Victor’s back was turned.
The idea was tossed as soon as he analyzed its flaws.
Victor scanned the room, searching out the exits, coming up with a rudimentary escape plan when a face he recognized stood out in the busy crowd. Warm pleasure overrode sudden surprise. It shouldn’t have been a shock—she belonged here if no one else did—but it made him pause before he recovered.
“My girl has it,” he murmured. Didn’t matter if the server heard him, because fate had smiled down with a million watts. He’d found his in.
His strides ate up the room and, not much of a surprise, people parted to let him through. A person could choke swimming through the clouds of rich perfumes and spicy colognes, eyes watering from the fumes, but he kept moving. Beneath his feet, silken gowns were trampled. Some miracle kept toes from the same treatment.
He felt the stares of a dozen people trained on him, but Victor had eyes for his target. On the other side of the room, chatting it up with a pair of humans, the blood slave from the other night stood.
She probably had no idea they were fewer than a hundred feet apart, separated only by a dozen people or more. Right now, he needed her.
Victor knew expensive taste and quality apparel. Apparently, so did she. From what he could tell of it, the dress she wore could have stopped traffic and with just the right haughty look turned the right way, she could have stopped men in their tracks.
Glancing down at his cotton twill shirt, the black pleated pants, he had the fleeting wish he’d dressed for the occasion. Instead, he’d come prepared to be able to run, climb and fight without being hampered by his choice in clothes.
The slave’s elegant wear almost shamed him. Still, his curiosity had been piqued by her presence alone. What did she hope to accomplish by being here?
By the time he’d come close enough to catch her attention, just when he needed a few more people to get out of his way, she moved. Her expression had hardened, lips drawn tight. If she’d ever had any awareness whatsoever of Victor, the attention fluttered into the night. He followed her gaze, and it suddenly made sense.
There, on the other side of the room, lounging in a chair made for a king, Giancarlo Sage was being worshiped.
Like the blood born he was, Sage surveyed the room as if bored by it all, despite the gathering being held in his honor. His dark eyes were unfocused but homed in the general vicinity of the small crowd flanking him. Hundred-dollar haircut, starched collar and thin tie couched in a custom-made pinstriped suit kept him among the stylish elite.
Unlike the partygoers, the flute dangling from his long fingers wasn’t pink in hue. The deep, seductive red fluid filling the glass was unmistakable. While his guests deserved top-quality champagne, probably costing him a thousand dollars a cork, Giancarlo Sage demanded the best for himself. Pure, undiluted blood. Probably came from a virgin or some shit.
Victor tracked back to the blood slave—damn it, why didn’t he know her name?—and it startled him to find she’d stalked closer to Sage’s position. The black coat she wore fluttered, her hand reaching into its depths. Stomach twisting, he recognized the determined glint in her fierce eyes.
“Don’t,” he whispered. There, just beyond where she stood, the slave had also attracted the attention of another man. Although a bold sweep of jealousy shuttled through Victor, he knew bett
er than to think a potential competitor set his nerves on edge.
No, he didn’t like the way the man had pushed back the lapels of his coat, revealing the butt of a small pistol in a holster. He’d trained his sights on the slave and when she began to weave through the crowd to get closer to Sage, the vampire pushed away from the wall and began shadowing her.
Victor, not to be outdone, moved in.
Victor weighed the options. He needed to get to Sage before the slave did. Find out what he knew about the slaughtered adolescents. If he’d taken part, as others suspected, then turn him over to the werewolves for retribution. On the off chance he was innocent, let him live to see another day, hoping like hell there’d be no payback from daring to impugn a member of the Council.
Should the latter prove true, he couldn’t allow the blood slave to touch a single hair on the affluent man’s head. If his bodyguards didn’t get to her first, the Council would have her executed before the next dawn. Victor would know how to keep them off his scent, but the novice assassin would be out of her element.
He had to give her credit. She stayed focused. Although she smiled and flitted from conversation to conversation, she didn’t waver from her ultimate goal. The vampire at her back didn’t let anyone get between her and him, either. His gaze swept the room on occasion, but always tracked back to her. Victor figured he had to be looking out for any potential accomplices. Other threats.
The stealth vampire might have been good at his job, but he’d probably never dealt with the likes of Victor Collins before. Poor SOB crept closer to the slave, making the mistake of thinking she had no allies.
Unfortunately for him, that wasn’t true.
She now had Victor.
Chapter Three
Lucy weaved between bodies with deliberate slowness so as to not arouse suspicion. She paused from time to time, stopping to make idle chitchat, the words and people meaningless to her. Her directive remained constant, her true focus on the dapper man sipping blood from crystal stemware.
As she moved toward him, her gaze drifted over the platters of food, while her stomach complained with soft rumbles. Plump strawberries, succulent pineapple and fragrant passion fruit over a chilled custard called to her. Pink shrimp, blue crab and the delicate flesh of lobster tails chilled over sparkling nuggets of ice, a diamond-like similarity, must have cost the vampire thousands of dollars. Some kind of mousse had been swirled into mini-crusts, capable of being swallowed in a single bite. Creamy cheeses, some she didn’t recognize, fanned out on a silver tray. The farther she looked down the linen row, the more varieties of food she could count. All of the tables should have been bowing beneath their combined weight.