Darkness Devours (8 page)

“I will lead if you’d like,” Azriel said softly.

I frowned as I glanced over my shoulder and met his gaze. “You can see in that ink?”

He withdrew Valdis. Her fire flickered across the dull concrete walls and danced through the darkness. “I will sense more than see if anyone nears.”

I stepped to one side and waved him through. No one could ever accuse me of letting valor get the better of sanity—at least not when it came to stepping into dark vampire pits.

He moved into the stairwell, his steps barely audible on the concrete. I followed, keeping close, my fingers itching with the need to reach out and touch him—to keep a physical connection between us as the door silently closed and the shadows pressed close.

The walk down seemed to take forever, but in reality it was only a few minutes before the stairs gave way to a long corridor. The air here was cool and musty, and surprisingly free of the scent of vampire. Black tiles lined the walls and the floor was covered by a dark red rubber matting that swallowed all sound.

Valdis’s bright flame lifted the darkness, revealing the doorway at the far end of the corridor. It was metal and extremely solid. Not something that would be broken down in any great hurry.

I glanced behind me, wondering if our astral-traveling Cazador was still following us.

No,
Azriel said.
He awaits on the street.

Wonder why?

Azriel shrugged.
Maybe Hunter fears that one of the vampires in this place will sense him and give warning.

Maybe.
And it was good to know that we weren’t going to be shadowed absolutely everywhere.

The door opened as we approached. The room beyond was small and somewhat intimate in its feel. While the black and red theme continued here, electric wall sconces gave the room a muted warmth and the combination of blackwood furniture and well-padded sofas lent it a feeling of casual elegance. A small desk hugged the right side rear of the room, and behind it sat a woman. Like the room itself, she was black, from the tips of her hair to the leather pumps that were evident underneath the desk.

“Brett Marshall waits for you in the main room, Ms. Jones,” she said in a smoky sort of voice. “Please go in.”

Two doors—which I hadn’t actually noticed until that point—slid silently open at her words, revealing a larger, darker room. The air that wafted out was filled with the aromas of vampire, blood, and hunger. A shiver ran through me as Amaya’s hissing began to filter across the back of my thoughts.

I glanced at Azriel.
How many people are there?

A dozen vampires, and at least twenty humans.
Distaste ran through his thoughts.
They are thralls, and yet not.

I frowned as I walked warily into the darkened room, wondering how someone could be a thrall and yet not. But the question went unanswered. Either Azriel didn’t know or he wasn’t saying.

The former,
he said, voice full of censure.
You really need to start trusting me more, Risa.

I do trust you—to watch my back and keep me alive.
What I don’t trust is that you’re ever going to be completely honest with me.

I have never been dishonest with you.

No. But you never tell me everything you know, either.

Sometimes it is better that way.

And that is why I trust you to keep me safe but not to keep me informed
.

A shadow loomed in front of us, forming into a long stick of vampire. He had carrot red hair and the eyebrows and beard to match, and his eyes were a merry blue. He smelled faintly of lilac and soap, which was a damn sight more than could be said about the other vampires in the room. It seemed they were upholding Aunt Riley’s pet peeve about certain sections of the vampire community—or the great unwashed, as she tended to call them. They were usually younger in vampire years, although—again according to Aunt Riley—there were a few guardians who apparently had an aversion to cleanliness, too.

“Risa Jones,” the vampire said, stopping in front of us and holding out his hand. “I’m Brett Marshall. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“I’d love to say the same,” I replied, noticing that his flesh was cool and his grip without real strength. Maybe Hunter hadn’t told him that I was half werewolf, so he was adjusting the handshake accordingly. I had certainly expected someone capable of curtailing any wayward actions of the better part of a dozen vampires to hold more physical strength than what he’d just shown. Maybe Hunter had meant something other than physical strength. “But that would be a total lie.”

He laughed. It was a pleasant sound, but sat oddly against the tense, almost needy atmosphere in the room. “I would have questioned your sanity if you’d said anything else.” His gaze flicked over my shoulder. “I see you have brought along a rather impressive guard.”

“His name is Azriel,” I said, “and can you blame me?”

“Certainly not. Please, follow me.”

He turned and walked down some steps. The darkness seemed even deeper here, a blanket that was lifted only by the flickering of Valdis’s fire. It was hard to see anything, but I could smell booze and blood under the stink of vampire. Another shiver ran down my spine and my pulse rate jumped a little—never a good thing in a room filled with needy vampires.

I followed Marshall across the room. Tables and chairs gradually became visible as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, but the vampires remained curiously out of sight. They had to be shadowing, because the scent that surrounded us indicated that some of them were quite close.

Marshall opened a door at the far end of the room, and faint amber light fanned out across the nearby shadows, briefly lifting them. To the right of the door stood a vampire who was little more than skin and bones. His face was gaunt—sunken-cheeked and pop-eyed—and he reminded me very much of someone on the edge of starvation. But given the underlying aroma of blood in the room, that surely could not be the case.

I stepped into the room and looked around. Like the foyer, it was comfortably furnished, with an office set up at one end and a sofa and chairs at the other. A percolator burbled away in one corner, the rich aroma
thankfully overwhelming the smells coming in from the larger room.

“Please,” Marshall said, “help yourself to coffee.”

I glanced at the percolator, but—mindful of my somewhat uneasy stomach—opted not to take him up on his offer. I perched on the edge of one of the chairs instead. Azriel stopped behind me, the heat of his presence swirling around me, a blanket I wanted to wrap close to chase away the increasing sense of trepidation. And I wasn’t sure whether it was this place, Hunter’s warning, or something I sensed but had yet to uncover.

Marshall walked past us and took a seat on the sofa opposite us, one arm stretched across the back of it. If he was worried about the deaths linked to his club, he wasn’t showing it.

“So tell me,” he said pleasantly, “why you?”

I shrugged. “I have more experience roaming the gray fields, so Hunter thinks I may spot something the Cazadors would miss.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And did Hunter give you the nanowire you’re wearing?”

I hadn’t felt him attempting to read my mind, but then, with the best telepaths, you didn’t. “No. That’s something I thought might be handy considering who I’m often dealing with.”

“It’s not one I’ve come across before.”

“Because it’s not actually on the market yet.” I’d gotten it from Tao’s cousin, Stane, who had some very well-placed fingers in the black-market pie. “I haven’t come here to discuss nano implants. Hunter tells me the five victims were all regulars of your club.”

He crossed his legs and plucked at lint on his pants—
a gesture that reminded me oddly of Hunter. “They were. Although Jack Mayberry was a recent inductee.”

I wondered which victim Mayberry was. Hunter hadn’t exactly been forthcoming with their names. “Inductee?”

He studied me for a moment, then said, “What has Hunter told you about this club?”

“Only that it caters to a particular type of clientele, and that it would be extremely dangerous for me to be here after dark.”

He half smiled. “It’s typical that she would send you here expecting results without fully explaining the true purpose of the club.”

That sense of unease grew. In the back of my mind, Amaya’s hissing increased, a dark and edgy sound filled with a sense of expectation. She wanted to fight, to rent and tear, and though she really didn’t care who or what, her anger seemed to be centering on Marshall. A chill ran through me—not because of the longing in her song, but because I was beginning to understand it.

I leaned back in the chair and crossed my legs, trying to appear relaxed. The faint lines of amusement crinkling the corners of Marshall’s eyes suggested I wasn’t succeeding. “She probably expected you to fill me in.”

“No doubt.” He paused, as if considering his words carefully. “What do you know of blood whores?”

“The usual stuff—that it’s a term for a human who is addicted to the pleasures of a vampire’s bite.”

It was apparently such a problem when I was young that it was treated the same as any other addictive substance. The government introduced strict new laws geared toward controlling the number and type of establishments
catering to blood whores, ran a series of media campaigns advising consumers of the dangers, and set up recovery programs. Whores still existed, just as junkies still existed, but the problem was at nowhere near the plague proportions that it had once threatened to become. Or so the media and the government would have us believe. Personally, I wasn’t so convinced—especially after walking into this place and smelling humans.

Marshall nodded and said, “What few people know about the blood whores is that they are not only addicted but addictive.”

I blinked, not sure what he meant. He obviously sensed this, because he grimaced and then continued. “Whores who are constantly fed from remain in an almost continuous state of ecstasy. It gives their blood a”—he paused, obviously searching for the right words—“richer, heavier flavor. And that, in turn, can become very addictive to those who were of that nature before they were turned.”

The chill in my stomach grew. “So clubs like this cater to the needs of the blood whore–addicted vampires?”

“We do. We have to. If an addicted vamp is without a food source for too long, he can become extremely dangerous. And that, I’m afraid, would be bad news for humanity.”

And for vampires in general if humanity got wind of it. Vampires might have been a part of society for a long time now, but there were still pockets of humanity who viewed them with great suspicion. Knowing it was possible for vamps to become addicted—and violent if
that addiction wasn’t fed—would only fan the flames of that suspicion and make it spread.

“I would have thought it’d be illegal for clubs like this to use what are basically drugged-up humans as a constant food source.”

He shrugged. “It is. But where there is a need, a way will always be found. The whores are here willingly. They are well fed, in well-maintained, generous-sized accommodations, and on rotation, so that they are never overdosed on sensation.”

But also never allowed to experience life outside these walls, by the sound of it. I wondered where in the hell the families of the whores were. Or had they simply given up, knowing that the addiction was so strong it was something they could never cure?

“So, slaves,” I muttered, not quite able to keep the distaste out of my voice.

He shrugged again. “They are not slaves, because slaves, by definition, are owned, and have no right to freedom or property.”

But they were slaves to their addiction—an addiction that the vampires were readily fueling in order to cater to their own addicted. It was an almost incestuous relationship, one addiction feeding the other, a wheel in constant motion that no one could escape.

You are not here to judge,
Azriel reminded me softly.
And the sooner you question him about the dead, the sooner we can be gone from this place.

Good point. “Could one of the blood whores be a connection point between the men who died?”

“No. We thought of that possibility—that perhaps
someone close to a whore might be taking a bit of retaliatory action—but the five men had different tastes when it came to their preferred source.”

I frowned. “And there was no obvious connection between the men themselves?”

He shook his head. “None that we could uncover.”

Which meant I was totally out of ideas. Some investigator I was. I hesitated, then asked, “Where do the feeds happen? Out in the main bar?”

“No. Watching another vampire feed can be an erotic experience, especially for one of the addicted. We keep the feedings in one-on-one soundproofed rooms. There is less chance of a frenzy being created that way.”

And that, I thought with a chill, was his first real lie. There was too much desperation—and the scent of blood was too strong—in this place for the feedings to be entirely separated.

“Where are these rooms?” I asked.

“Downstairs.”

“And the whores’ living quarters?”

“Also downstairs, but on a separate level.”

Living underground, never to see the light of day or breathe fresh air. It was a hell of a high price to pay for ecstasy.

“Can we see the feeding rooms? And talk to a couple of the whores?”

“Sure. But they have already been interviewed.”

“And Hunter sent me here to do it all again.”

He smiled. “And if one values life, one does not go against Hunter’s orders.”

“Precisely.”

He rose and headed for the door. I followed, Azriel
at my back. As we headed left across the club floor, I noted that the scent of vampire and need seemed thicker than before. I edged a little closer to Marshall and said, “What time does this place start getting busy?”

“Usually not until the sun sets. Most of our clients are lower-rung vampires and, as such, cannot handle much sunlight.”

“Then why are there more vampires in here now than before?”