Fionan, for his part, hadn’t shut up. He was going on and on about the sangers and bleeders, the S&B lifestyle. She had to keep up the act that she hadn’t heard about any of these things a dozen times before. She concentrated on observing the minutiae of his facial features. She stared at the white skin of his neck, and gave the illusion of offering her rapt attention, all the while thinking of how it would feel to sink her teeth into that flesh and rend it to shreds.
Fionan continued his lecture, speaking a bit too loudly over the wind blasting through the open top of the convertible. His voice had taken on a pedantic quality that annoyed Rhuna.
“S&B has been around for centuries in Europe. It was the pastime of kings and the stuff of the most secret societies. Everyone knows that bleeders are humans who willingly allow vampires to feed on them. But what you don’t know is who some of them were: Marie Antoinette, the Marquis de Sade, Oscar Wilde, Lord Byron, Coleridge, and the Shelleys. Yes, both the poet and the novelist. Almost all the Romantics.
“On this side of the pond, let’s see, you have, Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Webster, and Doc Holliday. That’s just for starters. In the old days, you had to be careful. A nocturn could wind up in the whole ‘villagers with pitchforks and torches’ situation, the villagers would accuse the bleeders of conspiring with spirits or the Devil, and it was off to the big bonfire for them. Now, well, it’s still technically illegal, but no one’s going to lose a life over it.”
He didn’t even wait for a response from Rhuna. He just kept right on rolling. Which was fine by her; Fionan was easy on the eyes. She didn’t need to talk to him to do her job.
“Show me a nocturn who says he doesn’t occasionally enjoy the juice straight from the source, and I’ll show you a poor liar. It’s our nature, but it takes some folks longer to come around than others. It’s like you could get all your nutrition from drinking soy protein. You’d still want a steak now and again. Except that’s not really a good analogy, because you’d have to kill the cow to the get the steak, and we don’t have to kill the bleeders to get a little juice.”
Except that you do anyway. Rhuna ran a hand across her neck and pretended to rub it. She wanted to take a surreptitious look behind. Was the van there? Were they following?
“Something wrong?” Fionan asked.
“I’m freezing. Can you put the top back up?”
“I could. But we’re there.” Fionan smiled. The smile lit up his face and made him irresistibly gorgeous. His vampire charm tugged at her heart. How many lives had that smile ended?
He slowed the car down and pulled up to the curb. Rhuna looked around. Nothing strange. It was a simple side street with some office buildings and some small shops. Darkness swallowed everything except for an all-night drugstore on the corner.
A youngblood male nocturn in stylish clothes walked seemingly from nowhere up to the car as soon as Fionan cut the engine. The youngblood opened Rhuna’s door and held a hand out for her. She took it and helped herself out of the convertible.
“Good evening, Mr. Molony.”
“Evening, Reggie.” Fionan tossed the keys to the youngblood, then walked around the front of the car and put out his arm so Rhuna could take it.
“There’s a blood club around here?”
“One of the nicest in the city.”
They stepped around the nearest building and into an alley. At the end of the alley, lit by a solitary light, was a large male sitting on a metal folding chair. He had been watching something on a small tablet computer but looked up as they entered the alley.
A long alley, a single point of entry with a guard—this wasn’t good. Rhuna felt her heart start pounding faster. She let it. Fionan would be expecting it. A normal Wannabe going into an exclusive blood club for the first time would be understandably excited.
The male stood and reached into his pocket. It was a man. A human. Not a youngblood.
“Good evening, Mr. Molony. New girl tonight?” His tone indicated that Rhuna was some kind of prop. He didn’t acknowledge that she was even a person.
“Just showing her the ropes.”
The man pressed some kind of button in his pocket, and the door gave off a buzzing sound.
“Normally, there’s a hefty cover charge to get in here. You know, to keep the riffraff out. But I’m good friends with the owner.” He shot her a wink as he held the door for her.
Rhuna felt her heart skip a beat as their eyes met. Part of her wanted to come clean and tell him everything, that this was a trap, that she was bait, that Abraham would be there tonight to kill them all. She wanted to fall to her knees and beg his forgiveness. She would do all this if he would have her.
Then the bestial part of her stirred, its defenses shot to the fore, and she regained her senses. She suppressed a growl and flashed him a tight closed-mouthed smile as she crossed into the foyer.
Inside, the lights were dim. Down-tempo electronic music droned at the periphery of normal hearing. A young-looking beautiful female vampire stepped from behind a small podium. She had long straight blond hair and wore a red dress with a vaguely Oriental cut. She didn’t move like a youngblood.
That was bad news, too. A couple of oldbloods in here could make the difference between victory and disaster.
The hostess smiled at Fionan and Rhuna.
“Modviv?” she asked Rhuna.
It was short for “modus vivendi”—lifestyle. It was a broad question. It covered whether or not a bleeder drank or used drugs. What kind of foods they ate, whether they were vegan health nuts or fast-food addicts. How often they worked out, sexual orientation and frequency. Normally, a vampire could sniff out most of those traits, but the close confines inside most blood clubs made it more difficult to single out an individual’s scent.
Regular bleeders would know the answer to this question and would be able to answer it in a series of category words. The hostess would input it into a small handheld computer and, using something akin to ink-jet technology, spray out a little infrared stamp onto the back of the bleeder’s hand. That way, only the vampires would know who the regular bleeders were.
Rhuna played stupid.
The hostess didn’t seem surprised, but made a sly glance at Fionan.
“Another fresher? Where do you find them?”
“It’s a talent. Someday, if you’re really nice to me, I might tell you. Let’s skip the modviv tonight. She’s with me in any case.”
The hostess lowered her head in deference.
“As you wish.” She stepped to the other end of the foyer, where a bead curtain hung over a doorway. She parted the beads to one side and made a show of formality.
“Of my own free will I invite you to cross this threshold.”
Fionan responded, “For your freely given welcome, I will return no harm.”
Rhuna had done this dozens of times, and the vampires always expected her to be thrilled. She supposed a real Wannabe would be beside herself crossing the threshold into the vampiric world. So she acted accordingly.
Fionan passed through the bead curtain, and Rhuna followed. They moved into a larger room that was halfway between a bar and nightclub. The lighting was dimmer here than in the foyer. Small cabaret-style tables spread across the floor so bleeders could mingle with their prospective vampires. Smaller, more private rooms branched off from the main room, and Fionan was leading her toward one of those.
There were perhaps half a dozen couples seated at the tables engaged in small talk, some males with males, some females with females, and some males with females. As usual, sexual orientation had little to do with it. Instead, the kind of experience the vampire or bleeder was seeking that night dictated the pairings. Conversations would stop as Rhuna and Fionan passed by and when they resumed Rhuna was always the subject.
They didn’t think she could hear them, but she could. Fionan was the object of their envy. And she was what they coveted. That was good. She could use that to her advantage if she had to. If the vampires were a
lready leaning toward hostility toward Fionan, however small, and lust for her, it would take only a little bit to set off a potential blood frenzy.
She’d been secreting subtle pheromones all night, enough to keep Fionan off his guard. If she needed to, she could dial it up and have all the vampires in the place fighting each other over her. She started to formulate a plan.
Fionan led her into one of the smaller rooms. The audio design was superb. As soon as they crossed the threshold, different music, more New Age, drowned out the main room’s sounds. A central pillar with a fake fireplace rose in the center. Around it was a large very plush circular couch finished in red velvet.
There was a light smell lingering under the surface of everything. It smelled like cinnamon, but not real cinnamon, like cinnamon candy. Two couples kissed and petted one another and scarcely acknowledged their entrance.
The circumference of the room had little booths with high walls meant to give the occupants the illusion of privacy. Fionan guided her into one of these. The confines of the booth were far more intimate than Rhuna had suspected from the outside. It pressed them tightly together.
Fionan leaned back, and as Rhuna went to sit next to him, he pulled her down and sat her sideways across his lap.
“It’s a lot more comfortable this way, don’t you think?”
He flashed those eyes and that smile at her again. Rhuna felt the room swim around her. He was much stronger than any other vampire she’d faced. Her heart beat faster. Fionan leaned in for a kiss and her lips parted willingly. He kissed her and she found her arms wrapping around his shoulders of their own accord.
The animal within her recoiled and raged. He was hitting her hard with his glamour. Human girls wouldn’t have stood a chance. The thought helped her control her arousal. Instead, she concentrated on what unpleasant things she would do to Fionan later that night.
She kicked her heels off as he broke away from the kiss.
“Wow. That was very nice,” Fionan said.
A waitress stepped up to the booth. “A drink for the lady?”
Fionan shot her a look of annoyance but masked it quickly when he saw that Rhuna had seen it.
“Go ahead. We’ll be here awhile.”
“Okay. I’ll have a Red Bull and vodka.”
Fionan interrupted her. “Make it a double.”
The waitress nodded, then stepped away.
“Hang on now. You ordered a double for me and you’re not going to drink anything?” Rhuna already knew why, besides the obvious fact, but felt it was in character to ask.
“Well, it’s part of the experience. That’s the whole point of the modviv question. Nocturn physiology is very robust. Everyone knows that. But our digestive tract is the chink in our armor so to speak. That’s why nocturns can’t eat normal food once we’re turned. If we drink alcohol, our bodies will either pass it right through, or it winds up coming back up, rather violently, I’m afraid. But if, say, I bought you a couple of drinks…”
He winked at her.
“… and then had a little sip from you, I would get the same effect as if I drank that alcohol. Drugs work the same way. In some of the other rooms there are nocturns buying bleeders joints, or needles, or whatever they’re into, so that they can share the rush.”
Rhuna nodded and feigned interest. Would it be possible to poison a vampire? Her mind moved on. A place like this was bound to have security, and she needed to know who they were and where they were.
“But if the sangers … oh, I’m sorry…”
“It’s all right. We know it’s the slang. They’re just words.” He smiled disarmingly.
“If the nocturns and bleeders are both getting high, aren’t people worried things might get out of control?”
Fionan pointed past her to a camera in the corner and to two large male vampires standing in the shadows. Rhuna was surprised that she hadn’t seen them before.
“That’s their job. Aside from being regular bouncers and taking care of things when folks get too rowdy, they’re here to keep nocturns in check as well.” He returned to his original train of thought. “Sangri and Hemotopia and the other synth-blood stuff, it’s just not the same coming from a bottle. The whole other rush is gone. It’s the difference between watching porn and fucking.”
Rhuna acted a bit shocked at his language. His hands moved to cover her stomach and her back.
“Easy now,” she said, “my drink hasn’t even gotten here. Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself?”
He ignored her. “Like I was saying, if a nocturn starts to get too carried away, those guys step in and pull the nocturn off, hold them down until their senses come back, and make sure everything is okay. The system works. A couple of centuries back, you might get some unfortunate circumstances in the community because nocturns would lose control. They’d feed too long and then they’d be left with only two choices, turn the bleeder or let them die.”
“And the bleeders wouldn’t fight back?”
“That’s part of why the clubs started in the first place. When we feed, we give off an enzyme that is a very powerful drug in its own right. It makes it so we don’t have to worry about blood-borne diseases other than a bad taste. It’s what gives bleeders a rush. There are no victims. Just consenting adults.”
He slid his hand on her stomach up to her chest and pulled her in for another kiss. Before she knew it, she was kissing him back. When he pulled away, she was breathing heavily, as if she’d just run for miles.
Where were Roeland and the others? She wasn’t going to be able to hold this off much longer. The effects of the flesh she’d eaten earlier combined with Fionan’s glamour had weakened her rational defenses. It was hard to think.
She felt a sharp pinch on the soft skin of her arm. To her surprise, she realized Fionan had bitten her and was feeding. She let out a soft gasp and felt a low moan building within her as her muscles went slack. One of his hands had her arm pinned to the booth’s side wall; his other hand worked its way under her blouse and sought each nipple in turn. Suddenly there was a river between her thighs. She wanted to shout, to scream, to pull away. All she managed was a weak groan and a gasping whisper.
The beast inside her struggled to assert itself.
“Don’t fight it. Go with it,” Fionan cooed. He returned to feeding.
She had to fight it. Her body surged as if attached to an electric current. She felt impaled on a high-tension line.
The hand on her breast moved lower. Much lower. A piece of her wanted it there; her legs parted, and he moved her panties out of the way.
She couldn’t breathe. Her body fought itself. She was a live wire and bucked against his hand in paroxysms of ecstasy.
He pulled his mouth away from her arm and the euphoria died away.
Rhuna sucked in a breath and looked at him. She saw the look of surprise and horror on his face. He had tasted it in her. He knew!
How could she have been so stupid? She’d have only seconds to act.
“Oh don’t stop!” she murmured. Her senses were crawling back to her through the aftermath of the orgasm. Her hand moved down to rub the bulge in his pants. She simultaneously hit him with a burst of pheromones that would drive vampires insane with lust and hunger the instant they caught a whiff.
She saw his eyes begin to glaze with the start of a blood frenzy. She knew he wouldn’t be lucid for long. In moments, every vampire nearby would be fighting for a chance to get at her.
She leaned in close to him and smiled.
“Did you think you could glamour me?”
She moved her hands behind his head, the fingers already shaping themselves into flesh-tearing talons. She relished the look of horror on his face. How many young girls had felt the same at his hands?
Her eyes turned yellow as she started the change. “My turn.”
12
10:45 P.M.
The unmarked Ford Explorer glided from lane to lane, shifting elegantly as it slid around the obstructing c
ars. Alex couldn’t help but smile. He loved driving, particularly this large SUV. He adored the sense of power. He was easily topping ninety and didn’t need to check the speedometer. He could feel it. But then he’d always loved physical speed. His thoughts flew to heady days skimming along the cataracts of the Nile, where the waters grew swift, heedless of the rocks and a dozen different dangers.
He snarled and buried the brake pedal into the floorboard. The taillights in front of him nearly disappeared beneath the hood as his tires screamed in protest. The SUV stopped just shy of kissing the other car’s bumper.
Alex smacked the wheel. There used to be a time when traffic grew thinner after dark. Everything was twenty-five/eight now, three-sixty-five. There were vampires about now and they were customers like everyone else. So as much as they might drain their victims of blood, the economy could drain them of money. So everything was work, work, work—go, go, go.
Marcus was unfazed as usual. He reached back and pulled out the other bottle of Sangri. The cap made a popping sound as he twisted it open. After a cursory sniff, Marcus drained the contents in one long pull.
“Thirsty?” Alex asked.
“It helps to curb the baser instincts. If one is to be infiltrating this ‘juice joint’ it doesn’t do to have one’s head muddled by the younger patrons.”
“I wonder what Aguirre would have to say about that.” Alex had dropped all pretense of his cover accent, and his words now carried the cadence of his normal speech, tinged with the inflections of foreign times and ancient lands.
“Some such thing about temptation blocking the path to redemption. Every time I go into one of those places it gets a little harder not to let loose and allow nature to take its course. The temptation to just give myself over to the lusts and passions of my kind is very great sometimes.”
“For some nubile young girl of twenty summers to legally open up her neck to you, at your age, you’re going to have to pay for it.”
In truth, Marcus didn’t look over forty, but it was his disposition that made him act his full age of over two millennia.
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