A Blood Seduction (12 page)

They followed the wall, approaching a pair of huge, black, iron gates with a design of intricate swirls. When they were finally upon them, she got her first glimpse of the mansion inside. And it was huge. Maybe
castle
wasn’t a bad name for it after all.

Just inside the gates stood two guards, dressed in what appeared to be some kind of eighteenth-or nineteenth-century military uniform, swords strapped to their backs.

“Who do they guard the place from?”

“Everyone.” His tone was short.

“Do the kovenas war against one another?”

“Of course,” he snapped. He was getting testy.
Why?

Rather than opening the massive gates, one of the guards opened a small door within the nearby wall for them to enter.

“Arturo,” the guard said with a deference that surprised her. Her vampire master must carry some weight around here.

Arturo allowed her to precede him through. As the door clicked shut behind them, they started the long walk to the house. Shouts of laughter and gaiety filled the air as if a party were in full swing. She heard the splash of water. A pool? She’d imagined a vampire castle to be a dark, broody thing, but this one was lit up like an octogenarian’s birthday cake.

As they climbed the brick steps, the massive front doors opened, two liveried butlers standing back to let them in.

“Arturo,” the two said as one, bowing.

Arturo acknowledged them with a shallow nod. Taking her upper arm in a firm grip, he led her into a massive marble-and-ivory foyer the size of a small ballroom, in the center of which sat a mammoth black lacquer grand piano. There were vampires everywhere, holding drinks, fondling the Slava females who walked among them in what appeared to be a uniform of short skirts and low-cut peasant blouses. Along one of the walls sat a line of velvet benches, where two vampires appeared to be making out. Close by, a silk-robed vamp male grabbed one of the Slavas to him, pulling her back against him, baring and fondling her breasts as he bit her. As Quinn watched in horrified fascination, his lashes swept up, his white-centered eyes spearing her as if imagining his fangs in her neck instead. As if promising her just that.

Quinn shivered and looked hurriedly away, her face flaming, her body flushed with intense discomfort. This place was like a playground for the depraved.

“Ax!” One of the male vamps, in blue jeans and a black silk shirt, strode toward them, a drink the color of whiskey in his hand. He had dark circles under his eyes, lines of strain along either side of his mouth. Despite that, he seemed genuinely glad to see Arturo.

The two vampires greeted one another warmly. “How do you fare, Bram?”

“Not well. I’m going fucking crazy in this place.” He lowered his voice. “They lie around doing nothing but drinking and fucking as if there’s nothing else to life. If the magic’s going to kill me, I wish it would just do it and get it over with. Take me out of my misery.”

“I’ve heard a rumor a solution may have been found.”

Bram’s eyes widened. “Pray you’re right about that.” He turned to Quinn. “Who’s this?”

“My most recent acquisition,” as if that were all she was.

She was tempted to thrust out her hand and introduce herself simply to make them acknowledge her as more than a slave. But an instinct for self-preservation warned her against drawing any more attention to herself in this place than she had to.

“Are you bringing her to Kassius?”

“No,” Arturo replied slowly. “She’s of Blackstone’s ilk.”

Bram’s brows shot up, and he turned to stare at her as if she were suddenly the most fascinating thing in the room. Quinn turned to Arturo for explanation. But his attention was on the other man.

“Thank, God,” Bram murmured, then frowned. “I don’t smell it.” Without warning, he leaned close to her, sniffing at her hair.

Quinn reared back. “What do you mean
Blackstone’s ilk
?”

A bloodcurdling scream sliced the air, raising the hair on the back of Quinn’s neck and lifting the heads of several vamps nearby. Bram stiffened, his breath turning suddenly short, and shallow. The screaming continued until Quinn wanted to cover her ears to shut it out. Someone was being tortured mercilessly. Killed. Her breath hitched. Half a dozen vamps disappeared in a blur of silk and velvet, reappearing at the top of the curved stairs.

Bram’s expression grew pained, his eyes filling with misery. “I have to go.” He shoved his glass into Arturo’s hand, then turned and climbed the stairs, human pace, his shoulders bent as if he fought every step, and lost.

Arturo took her arm and steered her away from the stairs and out of the huge foyer, into an even larger room, but the change of rooms did little to dampen that horrible, continual scream. Vampires played billiards on one of the two tables, while others played poker at one of three gaming tables. At the far side of the room, an entire wall of glass doors had been opened to the outside and a swimming pool lit by torches.

None of the vampires appeared to even hear the woman’s screams, let alone care. She glanced at Arturo. “How can you all ignore that?”

“Calm yourself,
cara.
Cristoff is a pain-feeder.” He said it so matter-of-factly.

“And that makes it okay?”

His dark eyes flashed. “We are vampires, Quinn Lennox. One way or another, we feed off humans or we die. We’re at the top of the food chain.”

“So all we are to you is food?”

“To most vampires, yes. I am afraid so.”

She wanted to ask if he felt the same and couldn’t, afraid she didn’t want to know. She had a feeling she wouldn’t like his answer, not at all. “The vampires who ran for the stairs. They’re pain-feeders, aren’t they?”

“Yes. As is Bram, as much as he hates it.”

And she’d seen that, Bram’s misery, his reluctance to climb those stairs and join the others. She thought of Arturo’s words to him. “What did you mean I’m of Blackstone’s ilk?”

“Quiet,
piccola.
That was not meant for other ears.” He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a bare whisper. “There is danger here.”

With that cryptic warning, he steered her through the game room and out onto the pool deck, where several vampires swam in the nude.

Her instincts told her to pursue the question, that she needed to know. But she hardly trusted Arturo to tell her the truth. So she held her tongue. For now. “Is there no other way for Bram to feed?”

“Before the magic began to fail, he worked as a trauma doctor in the emergency room at George Washington Hospital. He has for the past twenty years.”

She looked at him with disbelief. “A vampire
doctor
?”

“Bram is an excellent doctor. He genuinely likes to help humans in pain. He hates that he’s forced to feed on that pain, but it has been a good compromise for him.”

“And now he can’t get to the hospital.” She was beginning to understand his misery, though. Were there really vampires who were that moral, that altruistic? Maybe there were. “Do you have an outside job?”

He led her around the pool while she kept her eyes averted from the carnal play going on in the water. “I do not.”

“Do you have a house in the real world?”

“No, but a friend of mine does. I have an office in Micah’s house, where I work on the computer a couple of nights a week. When I was able to get there.”

“Is Micah still in the real world?”

“He is. But I’ve no way to contact him. He’s as locked out as we are locked in. Would you like a drink?” he asked, steering her to the bar.

She would, absolutely, if it might dull the piercing screams that went on and on and on. But she had a feeling she’d better keep her wits about her in this place.

“No, thank you.”

Slowly, the screams began to die away. As did, undoubtedly, the screamer. She tried not to think of her, of how she was dying, even now, for fear she’d start screaming herself. And she couldn’t. No matter what happened, she had to keep it together. For Zack.

“Come,
piccola.
” Arturo steered her back toward the foyer. “We must speak with Cristoff, and this will be a good time, now that he’s fed.”

She shuddered at the thought of what might happen if they approached a pain-feeder at a bad time. As Arturo led her past the piano, toward the stairs, Quinn was hit with a terrible smell, like something burning. The smell only worsened as they climbed. At the top of the stairs, he ushered her a short way down a wide hallway to a pair of open doors, then inside a huge room. A throne room. There was no other word for it. The ceiling soared, propped up by thick, gilt pillars. The walls were hung with all manner of weapons and tapestries and coats of arms. At the far end, the marble floor rose to a low dais graced by a huge golden chair . . . a throne . . . upholstered in dark red velvet. And upon the throne sat a young man staring with unrestrained pleasure at the naked woman lying in the middle of the room in a shallow puddle of blood, being fed upon by four vampires.

Around them stood half a dozen vampires, including Bram, who appeared to be coming out of the throes of pleasure. Bram’s mouth was tight as he raked his fingers through his hair and turned away.

As Arturo led Quinn into the room, she caught sight of the woman’s arms and legs, the raw, fresh burn marks, and knew she’d found both the source of the screams and the horrific smell. Burning flesh. Her stomach cramped, her head turning hot, then cold as Arturo steered her toward the man sitting upon the dais.

Cristoff? He looked too young, too strange, to be such a powerful vampire. Then again, vampires didn’t age. He could be very, very old, and he’d still look twenty-five, she suspected. He had good bone structure beneath a shoulder-length fall of bleached white hair, his eyebrows and small King Tut beard jet-black in contrast. His mouth was thin and cruel, his pale blue eyes as cold as a killing frost.
A pain-feeder.

A primal anxiety crawled across Quinn’s flesh. She wanted out of here, out of this room, this house, this world. And she wanted out, now! But she swallowed hard, tamping it down. Fear was an emotion she couldn’t afford to show, let alone feel. Not in this place, where they fed on such things. There would be no hiding it.

She forced her gaze away from Cristoff, then wished she hadn’t as she met the gaze of the bald guard standing at his right, a vampire whose gaze felt like rancid fingers stroking her flesh as he looked her over. His eyes gleamed as if he had every intention of throwing her down and having his way with her. She sidled closer to Arturo even though he still gripped her arm.

“Master.” Arturo dipped his head slowly, in a show of deep respect that felt somehow wrong. How could a man with any kind of morals bow to such a monster? “I have found you a sorceress.”

Arturo pushed her forward.

Quinn’s jaw dropped, her head suddenly ringing with his words. With his
lie
. “I’m not!” She whirled on Arturo. “Why would you say such a thing?” What did he think he was doing?

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of movement, then shrieked as Cristoff grabbed her and bit her neck with a razor-sharp stab of pain. Tears burned her eyes as she struggled against his impossible vampiric strength.

Cristoff lifted his head, a triumphant look on his face as he stared at her, his mouth bloody and smiling. “You’ve done well, my snake.”

“I’m not a sorceress.” But the weirdness she’d lived with all her life raised its ugly head and laughed at her denial.

She turned to Arturo for help, saw the apology swimming in his dark eyes, and understanding crashed. This was why he’d brought her here. This. Not, as he’d told her, to search for Zack.

Arturo turned back to Cristoff. “She has a half brother who was taken by one of Lazzarus’s vamps. I have a contact within the kovena. I can find out if the brother possesses any magic, if it please you.”

She stared at him, her scalp crawling with his betrayal. He knew exactly where Zack was. He’d known all along.

“Do it, but say nothing of the sister. She is our secret, for now.”

Quinn stared at Arturo, willing him to meet her gaze. “Will you bring Zack here?”

He didn’t turn. “No. He belongs to another.”

“Please!”

He whirled on her, all warmth gone from his eyes. “Forget him,” he snapped. “He’s lost to you.”

“You lied to me.”

“I said what I must to keep you from trying to escape.” And this time she saw only truth in those hard eyes. This had been his intention all along. To bring her to his master.

Cristoff laughed softly, a sound that formed ice crystals in her veins. “I call Arturo my snake for a reason.”

On a burst of fury, she tried to get at the vampire who’d betrayed her, but Cristoff held her fast, binding her against him with an iron arm until she could barely breathe. She trembled with outrage and a deep, quaking terror.

“Go, now,” Cristoff ordered his snake.

And Arturo did, walking away without a backward glance.

A
rturo’s gut twisted with guilt as he descended the brick steps, leaving behind the suffocating confines of Gonzaga Castle. The sorceress hated him for what he’d done. Rightfully so. But they’d needed a sorcerer badly, and she was the first they’d found in more than two years of searching.