by Virna DePaul
“Hot date, huh? That’s cool. I don’t need to know more.”
She forced a smile.
Chapter 30
Nick went down a set of stairs with concrete walls and came out in darkness, outside of the circle of light that surrounded a deep, square pit. Above that hung a wire cage big enough for two combatants.
Had to be for mixed martial arts. Looked like Ouspensky was staging illegal fights when he wasn’t selling underage girls. Nick didn’t see an auction block. Maybe the victims got paraded past the customers as bids were placed.
There were tables surrounding the pit. Red velvet chairs encircled them and red velvet armchairs had been set closest to the pit. A setup crew was bringing in tables, rolling them on their edges like giant toys as a banquet manager directed their placement. Wait staff stood ready with plates and glasses and cutlery on trays.
There were a lot of them. Standing in the light the way they were, they didn’t seem to see him. Nick edged through the darkened perimeter, looking for a doorway or a niche to hide in for a bit. The cells couldn’t be on this level. His quick visual assessment told him that the basic dimensions of the main room above and this differently constructed arena below matched.
The banquet staff chatted and joked as they worked. Then he saw a guard lumber forward, coming up out of a narrow staircase that didn’t connect to the one he’d used. A second guard followed.
The burly men grinned at each other and one gestured toward several young waitresses. It didn’t take long for them to stroll over, thumbs in their belt loops, their gear clanking. Handcuffs, short length of coiled rope, billy club, mace, walkie-talkie, and a holstered gun.
Nick was infinitely grateful they didn’t have dogs.
There could be another guard below. He would have to take that chance. When the two men started chatting up the young waitresses, he made his move.
Down. And gone. He didn’t look back.
A wire door made out of the same stuff as the fight cage had been shut at the bottom of the narrow staircase. Nick looked through it, listening intently for signs of life.
The lowest level was eerily quiet.
He tried the doorknob. Locked. It wouldn’t have been if there was nothing down here. Good thing there was no keypad. He took out an all-purpose pick and got it open, closing the wire door behind him without making a sound.
A long corridor extended in either direction. Dim overhead bulbs flickered on and off—motion sensitive, he realized. Cheap ones that didn’t work too well. But that was to his advantage. The place reminded him of a low-rent storage facility.
There were the cells. Which one held Jane?
A low growl came from the first. Nick saw massive hands curled around the bars. Then he heard a faint noise.
Sniffing. Something in that cell was trying to figure out what he was. It growled.
Fuck. He would have to get past it to look into the other cells and it didn’t sound too friendly. Nick waited, checking his watch, tracking the seconds, then the minutes. In a little while, the hands uncurled and the creature moved back into the shadows of its cell.
There was a scrape of metal on concrete and Nick heard guzzling, as if the thing had stuck its face into its water dish for a drink.
He went quickly past the cell, getting the impression of something hulking in the corner. Nick stopped at each empty cell and looked in. They looked clean and unused. Jane had to be the first victim for sale in the new club.
The last cell was by itself, separated from the others by a storage closet. If Jane was here, she was in it.
This far down the corridor he couldn’t hear the creature sniffing and grumbling. But he did hear a soft breathing. Nick stopped and looked through the bars of the last cell just as the bulb overhead flickered off. A slender hand shot out and tried to claw his face.
He dodged it, swearing silently, grateful he had on the sports glasses, and stepped back.
“Jane.”
“Fuck off.”
“There’s not much time. I came to get you.” He would swear the creature in the first cell had pricked up its ears. He’d done one too damn many undercover operations not to be aware when someone—or in this case, something—was listening.
For someone who was terrified, she was tough.
“Who are you?” The whispering voice was female and young. She had stepped back into the shadows of her cell.
“I’m with the FBI. Barrett sent me.”
There was a pause. He heard her sharp inward breath. “She was my mother’s friend.”
The young girl inside the cell moved into the dim light where Nick could see her. She wore a thin, short dress that barely covered her body and her feet were bare. Barrett’s guess had been a good one. It wasn’t the same outfit Jane had been wearing in the transport cell but it was just as skimpy.
“Here.” He handed the folded clothes and slipperlike shoes through the bars. “Change into these while I pick the lock.”
She hesitated, an expression of fear in her wide eyes.
“I won’t look. Step back where you were before.” He kneeled and started working on the lock, inserting different picks until he found the one that worked. Good thing the cells weren’t electronically locked, either. Keeping girls penned up wasn’t that hard. That didn’t apply to the creature. Maybe it was too stupid to escape.
Nick listened for the barely audible sounds of the lock’s inner mechanism. There it was. A little more fiddling and he had it.
He swung the cell door open but Jane hesitated. She almost stumbled as she crossed the threshold. Even brief captivity changed people, making them fearful and uncertain. Then she met his gaze. Nick was surprised by the fierce look in her eyes that made her seem a lot older than seventeen.
“You have to follow me,” he said quietly. “Not too close. We’re going to walk up the stairs and wait until I give you the sign to go. They’re setting up tables around the arena. We have to move fast. Once we’re on the main level, we’re going to walk out as if we own the place. Don’t look around too much and try not to stop.”
“Okay. I sort of know the way. But you can go first.”
There was the sound of heavy flesh hitting the floor or slamming against the walls, as if the creature inside the first cell had sprawled out or was upright, scratching its back like a bear.
“What is that thing?” Nick asked in a low voice.
“It doesn’t talk. Just groans sometimes. And gnashes its teeth. I heard someone refer to it as Murphy.”
Fuck. Tim Murphy. He’d been taken from Nick’s mountain and brought here. By the looks of his swollen hands and the noises he made, it seemed Murphy’s deterioration had progressed significantly. For a split second, Nick thought about putting the poor bastard out of his misery and checking another turned off his list, but he didn’t have time. He had to get Jane and Barrett to safety.
By the time Barrett had left the hostess station at Vlad’s request, the nearest spaces to the front doors were filled with luxury vehicles and SUVs. Tinted glass was everywhere and so were dark glasses. For sure, a club affectation, worn after sundown to look cool—and for a vampire, to conceal silver pupils.
She had no idea who was human and who wasn’t. The sleek suits had a devil-may-care expensiveness to them. No women. No need, given the strippers that would be performing on the main level and the fact Jane—barely a woman—was about to go on the block somewhere close.
Nick had keys to both cars. They were parked in different places, with Justine at the wheel of one. Whichever car he and Jane reached first would be their getaway vehicle.
“An excellent turnout.” Vladimir shouted to be heard above the music that had started to blare about five minutes earlier. Lights flashed. Dancers began to gyrate. “I want to introduce you to some people. Come.”
Reluctantly, Barrett accompanied Vladimir as he introduced her to one guest after another. It was almost twenty minutes before Barrett could get back to the hostess station and che
ck on the hacked feed. To her dismay, there was still no sign of Nick. She was about to close the view window when she saw him. The ball cap was pulled down over his forehead, preventing her from seeing his face. But his clothes were different.
Barrett almost gasped out loud when she saw Jane, wearing the clothes Barrett had sent with Nick. She was right behind him. She glanced nervously from side to side but she kept moving.
Barrett minimized the window, sensing without seeing him that Vladimir was somewhere nearby and heading her way. Her senses were on high alert. Nick knew enough about the club’s layout to choose among several possible escape routes, but none were hidden.
She saw her boss in the near distance, absorbed in whatever he was looking at on the screen of the smartphone in his hand.
She risked another peek at the view window. Nick and Jane were heading down the corridor where the rehearsal studio was. They seemed to be alone, thank God. And walking like they belonged there.
Just about every great escape happened the same way.
But a lot depended on who might see them. The banquet staff that had been hired for the private event had no idea who was supposed to be in the club and who wasn’t. Tonight, with the junket over, the boisterous media crowd gone, and a much smaller group of well-heeled patrons coming in, Nick might stand out. One of the guards or bouncers could pick up on an unfamiliar guy and girl walking around.
Somehow he had dodged the guards on the lowest level.
The construction-worker disguise had served its purpose to get through the main area. She wondered where he’d stashed the hard hat and the tool chest. At least Jane could pass for a dancer in street clothes.
He wouldn’t go out through the front doors. She would have to ignore him if he did.
Vlad went by the hostess station with only a nod to her, greeted by a tall male dressed all in black. The two of them exchanged murmured conversation that seemed to be about nothing in particular, and moved away.
For several minutes, Barrett stayed where she was, being decorative. Then she gave in to temptation and checked on Nick. He and Jane had reached a curve in the corner that blocked the security camera’s view.
Barrett switched to another camera. There was Vlad and his friend. The boss of Club Red had his smartphone out again. She tapped a key to zoom in on the screen, realizing with horror that he was looking at the same feed she had, transmitted wirelessly to the phone, able to switch to different locations at a touch.
She swore under her breath. If she could see Jane and Nick, so could Vlad. By her guess, he hadn’t yet. His casual demeanor told her that he was simply strolling with his friend, maybe heading for the rehearsal studio to hook him up with a hot dancer.
Barrett abandoned the monitor and walked fast until she was out of sight of the people milling around in the front of the club. Then she ran.
She might not get to Nick in time. The long, swirling dress tangled around her ankles.
A wrong turn cost her precious seconds, but she finally got close to Jane, gasping when the girl whirled around, alerted by the sound of running footsteps.
“Barrett?”
Nick turned, too—just as Vladimir Ouspensky nearly slammed into them both. A red exit sign glowed dully at the end of an isolated corridor. The tall male in black was beside him. He narrowed his eyes, and a crimson glint flashed in their depths.
Nick whipped around, his body tense and obviously in fight mode, but Vladimir’s fist plowed into his ribs and lifted him up in the air, sending him crashing against a wall.
Vladimir gave Barrett a pleasant smile. He wasn’t even breathing hard. “Aren’t you supposed to be up front?”
“I—I had to go—” She struggled to respond, half thinking this wasn’t happening.
In another second, Vlad had her by the throat. “So. You know Jane.” He turned to the girl, who tried to bite the long-fingered, repulsively white hand clamped over her mouth as she kicked against the leg that restrained her in an obscene position.
Vladimir shook his head. “Little bitch. I knew she was hiding something from me. But not how. She wore no gold. Unlike you.”
With a hard jerk, he ripped Barrett’s ever-present bracelet off. Then he began to probe her mind and rape her memory, learning everything that he had not known. Bit by bit, the secrets she’d kept were ripped out of her brain. His deep, agonizingly thorough mind reading was excruciatingly painful. Barrett fought it to no avail. She floated in and out of consciousness.
Jane was watching, she knew that. Until the tall vampire covered the girl’s frightened eyes with a black blindfold and tied it, getting her hair caught in the knot, and slapping her viciously when she cried out.
Barrett moaned. Nick heard her and tried to crawl up the wall and stand.
She heard herself screaming as she watched Vladimir and the other vampire kick him senseless. Vlad’s thugs moved in when those two stepped aside.
Nick screamed.
She blacked out.
Chapter 31
Nick regained consciousness in a cage. The cage. The one he knew was even now swinging above the pit in Vladimir’s underground fighting arena.
He was bound with shackles around his wrists and ankles, helpless prey. His chest was bare and slick with sweat and blood. He was barefoot.
Tim Murphy was on the other side of the cage, his massive hands, which had once been wrapped around Barrett’s throat, clutching the heavy black wire. He looked barely human anymore, with rotting flesh distorting his features. Thank God, Nick thought. Thank God Gary never suffered through this.
Murphy spit at Nick.
He used his shoulder to wipe the foul slime off his face.
Murphy bent his scabbed knees. Again and again. He was making the cage swing over the pit.
Huge torches set in basins supported by pillars threw flames high into the underground arena. Their red light seemed to bathe the arena in living blood.
“If I may have your attention.” Vladimir’s voice boomed and echoed. There were not enough guests to fill the underground space. But they looked eager for the show to begin.
“One of tonight’s combatants has been forced to cancel. But we have found a worthy opponent for Tim Murphy! Let us call him the Man of Iron.” The sarcastic edge in his voice got scattered laughter. “Those of you who joined me in subduing him earlier know how strong he is. Let’s test that strength, shall we?”
Applause. Restrained but enthusiastic.
Hundreds of black and silver eyes peered up at Nick, their cold shimmer communicating evil intent. The monster didn’t seem half as bad as they were.
Nick looked down through the wire, queasy from the swinging motion and the beating he’d undergone. Where were Barrett and Jane? Vladimir answered that question soon enough.
“The auction is postponed until after the fight. Of course,” he said with a smirk, “if the Man of Iron wins, he and the women will go free!”
That surprised Nick. He’d suspect it was a lie, only he knew vampires were biologically incapable of uttering falsehoods. Which meant, of course, that Vladimir was damn certain Nick wasn’t going to win. In truth, he didn’t believe it, either.
A roving spotlight picked out Barrett and Jane, tied to chairs and to each other. Both were gagged.
A door on the cage’s side unlatched, dragged up by a rope from high above. The cage tilted. Nick was dumped out onto a stage set.
A woman who looked like the “Sam” Barrett had described came strolling down the runway, her long dress whispering against her silken legs. The metallic fabric caught the light and reflected it out into the crowd when the roving spotlight hit her. She turned and struck a pose, extending one leg and displaying a garter, which she slid up and down her toned thigh to the cheers of the crowd. Then she started to sing, getting louder and louder, making them beg for an encore. She obliged with a classic show tune, putting a fresh spin on the lyrics.
“My heart belongs to Vladdy! Oh yes it does!”
She walked on to where Nick had been dumped, teasing him, working the crowd, which roared with laughter. She dragged him up with the strength of a man, Nick thought groggily.
Sam’s long fingers moved over his fly, cupping and squeezing. She splayed her hand, digging her red fingernails into the material of his pants.
“Should I?” she purred. The small crowd howled a collective yes. She slid the button out of the buttonhole at the top of his fly. Then she plucked at the zipper tab.
She wasn’t the stripper.
He was. Or the strippee. He couldn’t think. The beating he’d taken from Vlad and his goons was clouding his mind again.
Little by little, she pulled the zipper down, then slid her hand inside his pants, curving her fingers around the front of his briefs and pulling out the heavy flesh of his still-hidden cock and balls. She rested them on the vee of his open fly.
“Don’t they say the low-hangin’ fruit tastes best?” Her sultry voice was so resonant it reached the back rows. “And don’t those hang nice?”
Dazed, he wondered where she’d learned to make herself heard without a mike. A church choir, maybe. The lady could sing. It made sense in a weird way. Nothing else did. Nick heard catcalls and jeers inside waves of noise. It was hard for him to tell how many were watching.
Sam kept toying with him. Then she pressed her face to his as if she wanted to kiss him. Her slick lips never touched his skin. Jesus. Of course not. His mind began to focus.
This was an act, even if she was making it up as she went along, and she wasn’t going to mess up her flawless makeup as she sent him to his doom. Barrett thought of Sam as an ally. Was she playing Vlad or had she been playing them? Fucking bitch. If it weren’t for the metal cuffs biting into his ankles and wrists, he’d send her sailing.
Sam flirted with the audience, giving them what they’d come to see. She slid her body against his, up and down, nearly squatting on her high-heeled platform shoes and slithering up again. She pressed against him, regaining eye contact. She was more than tall enough. Her body heat was bringing him back to a semblance of life.