Malcolm’s completely naked body hung from chains against the back wall. His knees sagged so that his arms, stretched to their utmost, took most of his weight. His head drooped to one side. His eyes were closed; he didn’t try to see who had entered the room. I wasn’t sure he was even conscious.
The bed in the middle of the room was a tangle of sheets and blankets, all smeared with old bloodstains. The carpet under Malcolm’s body was also darkened with blood.
Worst of all were the wounds. His entire body was covered in bite marks. Big purple bruises spread out from the worst of them, painful looking quarter-inch puncture wounds, white and ragged around the edges. Several wounds ringed his nipples, another one punctured either side of his bellybutton. There was one particularly livid mark on his neck and what looked like the edges of another one on his inner thigh, though I couldn’t see it well enough to tell how bad it actually was. His wrists had been rubbed raw by the shackles holding him, and underneath the chains he was pale.
Instinctively, I started toward him, but Deirdre gestured and a vampire I hadn’t seen stepped out from the shadows beside the door. That hiding in the shadows business was about to get on my nerves. He was a huge black man, probably the biggest man I’d ever seen. He was bald and shirtless, dressed only in khaki pants, and his muscular upper body gleamed in the reflected light. If he’d been human, I would have said he was beautiful. As it was, he was just scary. He grabbed my arms, pinning them to my side and effectively holding me in place, though I continued to struggle against him.
“Oh,” I breathed out in a long, drawn-out syllable. “Deirdre, you godforsaken bitch. Unchain him right now, or I swear to you—”
“If I were you, I’d be careful what I swore to right now, princess,” she interrupted me, speaking lightly. “It might come back to haunt you.” She lifted her head in that scenting motion that all vampires seem to use when they’re searching for whatever information it is they get from smells.
Whatever it was she detected in the air made her look thoughtful. She cocked her head to one side and looked at me thoughtfully.
“You haven’t yet had sex with this man. I’m surprised,” she said. She sniffed the air again and this time looked quizzical. “And yet you desire him.”
Greg growled at that, a growl that was animalistic, more like a sound an angry dog would make than a sound that might come from a person. Wonderful. My dead ex didn’t like the idea that I might actually consider having sex with someone else.
“My sex life is none of your business,” I ground out through my clenched teeth. “Neither of you. Now let me go to him, dammit.”
She flicked her fingers at the vampire holding me, and he released his grip. I sprinted across the room and wedged myself up against Malcolm’s side, trying to hold him up to take the strain off his arms. A low moan escaped his lips and he shook his head slowly. After a second, I realized that he was saying “no” over and over.
“Shh. It’s okay, Malcolm. Everything is going to be just fine,” I whispered. “I promise you, I’ll get you out of here. Whatever it takes. I promise.”
He opened his eyes a crack and turned his head toward me. “Elle?” he whispered. “Oh, God, Elle. Get out of here. You don’t know what they do—”
“Shh. It’s okay. Don’t talk. We’ll get out of here together. You can tell me everything later.” I brushed his hair back from his forehead and he leaned into my hand. His eyes closed and he sagged against me.
I looked up at Deirdre, who had watched all of this from the open doorway with a satisfied smirk. Greg stood beside her, his expression unreadable. I had no idea what I could possibly offer in return for Malcolm’s release, but I knew I had to try.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s deal.” My voice had gone hard.
“Oh, Gregory,” she said, turning to him. “You were right. She is absolutely delightful!” She sounded as excited as a teenager who had been given a car for her birthday.
I turned my glare on him. “You set me up.”
“I don’t know if I’d call it setting you up.”
“You never cared about the papers at all, did you?”
He smiled and shrugged. “I just gave you enough rope to hang yourself with. No pun intended.” He smirked as he gestured toward Malcolm’s dangling body and it was all I could do not to go for a stake and run him through.
I took a deep breath. Greg doesn’t matter, I told myself. The only thing I have to worry about is getting Malcolm out of here.
I turned back to Deirdre. “You’ve had your fun. Let’s start by taking him down from the wall—consider it a sign of good faith on your part. And I’ll hand over the crucifix in return.” I paused. “Well, maybe not hand it over, since you couldn’t touch it. But I’ll put it away somewhere of your choice.”
“No need for that,” Deirdre said. “Louis?” She nodded to the black vampire and he stepped out into the hall. No one said anything while he was gone; we just stared at one another as I tried to take Malcolm’s weight off his arms.
After a long, silent interval, he returned with another servant, this one a manifestly human Asian girl with bobbed hair. She carried a tray like the ones the wait staff upstairs had used to serve drinks.
“Put the crucifix on the tray. As soon as you have done so, Louis will unchain your friend and place him on the bed.”
“How do I know I can trust you to actually unchain him?”
Deirdre sighed and rolled her eyes. “Very well. If you feel it necessary, you may place the crucifix on the tray at the same moment that Louis unlocks the final cuff.”
“Fine.” I said.
When Louis unlocked the first cuff, Malcolm’s arm dropped to his side with an audible thwack. I strained to keep him upright. “Be careful!” I snapped.
Louis stepped in close to Malcolm and grabbed him around the waist with one hand in order to catch his limp body when it fell from the chains.
I watched Louis closely and, with the hand I wasn’t using to support Malcolm from behind his back, placed the cross on the tray just as he finished unlocking the manacle on Malcolm’s right wrist. But I didn’t take my hand entirely off of the crucifix until Louis had Malcolm slung over his shoulder and was carrying him toward the bed. The Asian girl scurried out of the room.
Once Malcolm was stretched out on the bed, I turned to Louis. “Bring me some wet washcloths and a bowl of warm water.” He looked at Deirdre for confirmation and she waved her hand at him. She did far too much imperious hand waving, I decided. It made me like her even less.
“And a glass of cold water,” I called after Louis as he left the room.
“Satisfied?” Deirdre asked.
“It’s a start.” I sat down on the bed and continued stroking Malcolm’s hair away from his forehead. He moaned again but settled back down when I whispered quietly to him.
“Then we may begin. Gregory, please pull those chairs over here.”
Louis returned and handed me the washcloths, bowl, and glass while Greg was pulling three wingback chairs out of a corner of the room. He arranged the chairs in a semi-circle and stepped back for Deirdre to choose one. Then he sat down in the other. Louis retreated to the corner he’d been standing in when we’d arrived.
“We can begin after I’ve finished with Malcolm,” I said. I didn’t plan to take long, but I wanted a moment to clean out the worst of his wounds. I wished I had Tony’s medical kit with me. I would have liked to run hydrogen peroxide over the lacerations. And I wanted to spread about a pound of antibiotic ointment over his body.
I had to settle for swabbing the wounds with washcloths soaked in the warm water Louis had brought. Malcolm winced and moaned as I gently dabbed at the blood encrusting the edges of the worst wounds. I murmured softly to him, not really paying attention to my words. I think the tone of my voice soothed him, because he quit moaning. He didn’t quit wincing, though, and I found myself wincing in sympathy. These injuries had to hurt like hell.
Deirdre watched my ministrations interestedly, showing no signs of impatience other than that internal vibrating. Greg, on the other hand, tapped his foot on the carpet restlessly. I wondered if her ability to wait me out as compared to his foot-tapping fidgeting had something to do with their relative ages. I guessed that vampires probably learned patience over time, especially since they had all the time the in world. Literally.
I worked my way down the front of Malcolm’s body, cleaning his neck, his chest, and his stomach. I paused for just a second before gently spreading his legs to take a better look at the bruise on his inner thigh.
The wound there was bad, maybe even worse than the one on his neck. It wasn’t just two puncture wounds, either. It looked like maybe several vampires had gone at him in this spot, or maybe one vampire over and over. He cried out in pain and fear when I touched it, so I contented myself with squeezing warm water out of the cloth to run over it. The sheet under him turned a muddy reddish-brown as the blood washed away from the ragged edges of the holes.
I glared up at Deirdre. “It’s going to take a lot to make up for this.”
“Make up for it? No, my dear, I have no intention of ‘making up’ for anything. This is simply a… what shall we call it?” She waved her delicate hand in a circle in the air as she searched for words. “A warning.” She nodded with finality.
“A warning against what?” I asked harshly.
“A warning against ever again attacking any of my people.”
“Your people? I thought your people were all in Queens.”
“Yes, well. I’m planning to, shall we say, expand my business.”
“To the Bronx.”
“As a start, yes.”
By this time I had done everything I could for Malcolm—any attack marks on his back would have to wait until I could get him out of here—and the water evaporating from his skin had left him shivering. I gently shifted the wet stain on the sheet out from under him and pulled a blanket up over him. His eyes flickered open as I smoothed the cover over his arms, being careful not to touch any of the tender skin surrounding the lacerations.
“Thank you,” he whispered. His eyelids fluttered down again and his breathing steadied.
“Okay,” I said, standing up and moving to the unoccupied chair. “Let’s talk.”
“It’s about time,” Greg muttered.
“You,” I said, pointing to him, “can shut the hell up. As far as I’m concerned, you have no part in these discussions.”
“Oh, but I’m afraid he does, sweetness,” Deirdre said. She smiled gently at me, almost apologetically. “He’s the one who brought you to my attention. I’ve already agreed to reward him for that, so he does have some say in what happens here.”
I glared at her. I felt furiously impotent. What I wanted to do was pull a stake out of my boot and slam it into her heart, but I knew that I wouldn’t even get close to her before Greg or Louis, or both, stopped me.
“And what, precisely, do you expect to happen here?” I asked her.
“I hope, of course, that we can come to some arrangement that will allow you to take your friend and go.”
“And if we can’t?”
“Then I’m afraid I’m going to have to kill you both.” She said this in the same tone a kind boss might have used when saying “I’m afraid I’m going to have to lay you off.” It brought a whole new dimension to the idea of “termination.”
“Then I guess we’d better get started,” I said. “What would you ask for in return for letting me leave here with Malcolm, safely, and agreeing not to bother us again?”
“My, my. She certainly does get straight to the point, doesn’t she?” Deirdre asked Greg.
“She always has,” he answered.
“Well, I suppose we could of course ask you to take your friend’s place for a while. No,” she said when she saw the expression on my face. “I suppose not. That wouldn’t accord with your idea of safety, I suppose.” She sighed again, prettily. I was getting awfully tired of her sweet, smoky-sounding voice, particularly when it said things like “I’ll have to kill you” or “take your friend’s place.” I wanted my vampires to have creepy accents and say things like “I vant to suck your bloooood.” At least you knew exactly where you stood with those kinds of vampires: they were horrible and they wanted to drain you of your precious bodily fluids. These vampires blended in with humans too easily; they were far too… cosmopolitan. Too slick and poised and far, far too willing to negotiate for what they wanted.
All in all, they were too much like lawyers for my taste.
Oh. Wait. One of them was a lawyer. How convenient for them.
“I guess then that I will have to begin by asking you to hand over your weapons,” Deirdre said.
“What if I don’t have any weapons?” I asked warily.
“I know you have at least one,” she replied. “You were carrying it in your hand when you entered my house.”
Oh. Yeah. That. Oops.
“What do I get in return?” I asked.
“For each weapon you turn over to me, I will allow you and your friend three steps up the staircase and toward the exit, completely unmolested.”
I did some quick calculations in my head.
“Not nearly enough. I want to get us both out of here and all the way home. Completely unmolested.”
“But it is a beginning. And now I know that you do indeed have more than one weapon in your possession.”
Crap. I was too tired for these sorts of mind-games.
She leaned back in her seat with a smile. She was clearly settling in for a long evening of hostage negotiations.
I wasn’t willing to stick around that long.
“Can we just skip to the end? It’s late, I’m tired, and I’m getting frustrated with all things vampire. What do you really want?”
She laughed again with that coffee-and-cream laugh that set my teeth on edge. “Oh, all right. But you’re spoiling all my fun, you know.”
“I really don’t care.”
“Here’s what I want: I want you to turn over all your weapons to Louis. I want to know the location of your military friends’ headquarters. I want your word that you will never attack any of my people again. And finally, I want you, just once, to act as a donor for both Gregory and me. I promise we will take no more than one pint of blood—the same amount you might give at one of your human blood drives.”
I looked over at Greg. His foot had stopped tapping and he was leaning forward eagerly. I looked away quickly—I didn’t want to see him lick his lips the way he did when he saw the young woman on Fordham Road.
I rubbed my hands across my eyes. This was going to take a while after all.
“First of all, I’m not walking completely unarmed through that tangle of vampires upstairs.”
“Kiss,” she said, interrupting me.
“Um. What?” I couldn’t figure out what she meant. She wanted me to kiss her? This was getting freakier by the moment.
“My understanding is that the current collective noun for vampires is ‘kiss,’ as in ‘a kiss of vampires.’ Of course, it used to be ‘slither,’ like a slither of snakes. I rather preferred that term myself. But one must learn to change with the times.”
I sent up a silent little prayer of thanksgiving. I wasn’t going to have to kiss her, after all.
“Whatever. I don’t care what you call yourselves. You’re all bloodsucking fiends, as far as I’m concerned.”
She simply continued to smile at me, so I carried on with my own list.
“Second, I don’t know where the guys have their headquarters; all I know is that they call it ‘the shop.’ And I assume you already know who pays their wages.” I waved my hand in Greg’s general direction.
“Very well.” She nodded at me to continue.
“Third, I can’t promise not to attack if I’m threatened. And fourth, there is no way in hell I’m letting any vampire, especially him, take my blood.”
Deirdre tilted her head.
“I accept your explanation about the military men and thank you for the information about this shop of theirs. Your concerns about self-protection may well be justified. Therefore, you may carry one weapon out of here and I will ensure that you do not come under threat from any of my people. I will assume that you will not attack any of them unprovoked.”
So far, so good, I thought.
“But the taking of blood is absolutely non-negotiable.”
I thought of all the vampires upstairs. No way could I make it out of there alive without Deirdre’s permission.
“How will you take it?” I asked.
“In the usual manner.”
“Usual for you or usual for me? The usual manner for me is to have someone—preferably a nurse or a doctor or a blood drive worker—stick a needle in my arm and have it run into a bag. That’s generally how we all know when they’ve reached their one-pint limit. If we’re talking ‘usual for vampires’ as in ‘bite me and suck the blood,’ then I have no way of knowing when you’ve taken a pint and have to stop.” I felt pretty good about that argument because I wasn’t sure how she could contradict it. If I was going to have to give my blood to get Malcolm out of this hell hole, I would, but I would much prefer to do it in a more sanitary way than having it leeched out by mouth.
“Perhaps we could perform an experiment that would satisfy your concerns in that regard,” Deirdre replied. “Louis, please bring one pint of fresh blood and two glasses. Two straws, as well, please.”
Oh. She was going to time their blood drinking. Again, I say: Gross.
That’s exactly what she did, of course. I won’t go into the details—trust me, they were disgusting. If you’ve never seen someone suck up a wineglass full of blood through a straw, count yourself lucky. Believe me, you don’t want to. Deirdre was fairly matter-of-fact about the whole thing, but Greg enjoyed it far too much for my comfort.
I knew that the test wasn’t perfect—it didn’t take into account the motion of the blood as the heart pumped, and I suspected that the blood in the glasses was slightly cool and likely to have coagulated a bit, so blood-in-a-glass drinking time was probably a bit longer than blood-from-a-body drinking time. But Deirdre countered these issues by offering to cut the time down by a third. It had taken them each roughly fifteen minutes to completely drain a wineglass—about as much time as it would take me to drink a milkshake. So each of them would get ten minutes of my blood. But that meant that in thirty minutes, maybe less, we could be out of this nightmare and on our way home—ignoring for the moment the fact that my home was no longer safe now that Greg knew where I lived.
“Satisfied?” Deirdre finally asked.
“More like nauseated.”
“But you agree to our final requirements?”
I didn’t know what advantage these vampires might gain from drinking my blood, but I knew there had to be something. I hated this. Hated it, hated it, hated it. But, same as since this night had begun, I had no choice. I had over-estimated my ability to deal with vampires, and I was about to pay for it.
“I agree,” I said.
“Then let’s begin.”
At that moment, the cell phone in my boot began to vibrate against my ankle bone. I spoke loudly to cover the slight buzz it made against the leather of the boot.
“First let me go take my weapons off, though.” I looked around. “I’ll need some sort of bathroom or dressing room or something.”
“Very well. Louis?”
I scurried out of the room behind Louis, thankful that apparently no one had heard the phone go off. I made overly loud small talk with Louis as we walked down the hall, throwing every question I could think of at him.
“So. Where are you from? When did you become a vampire? Do you like it? How are the benefits? You get dental with that?” He didn’t bother to answer.
The phone had stopped buzzing against my ankle by the time we made it to the ladies’ room at the end of the hall, but it started back up almost as soon as I shut the door behind me.
I scrabbled around in my boot, almost dropping the phone in my haste to answer.
“Elle!” It was Nick. He sounded frantic. “God! I was so worried. Where are you?”
I locked myself in a stall. “Long Island. In the middle of some vampire party. Things are not good here, Nick. Come get me!” I hissed into the phone.
“A vampire party? Jesus Christ, Elle, you could get yourself killed.”
“You think? Quit talking and find me, dammit!”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“Don’t you have some magic GPS equipment or something?”
“No. We don’t.”
“Then try the address list. Under ‘Deirdre.’”
Louis knocked on the door and opened it. “Almost ready, miss?” he asked. It was the first time I’d heard him speak. His gravelly voice rumbled in his chest.
“Just a minute!” I sang out cheerily. Louis shut the door again.
“Okay. Nick. Just listen. I’m not going to hang up, but I am going to turn the volume on my end all the way down. With any luck, you’ll be able to hear what’s going on. And hurry, okay?”
“I will, Elle.”
I adjusted the volume and shoved the phone back into my boot, praying that Nick would be able to hear through the leather.
Then I pulled a stake out of each boot and ripped off the chopsticks that I had taped to my arms and my stomach. That left me with a stake in each boot and a phone in one.
Yeah, that was one more stake than I had agreed to keep. But I figured I didn’t have to play fair. They were vampires.
I was slightly breathless when I ripped open the door and stepped back out into the hall. I handed the weapons over to Louis.
“Okay. I’m ready. Let’s go.”
Greg was still sitting in his chair when we re-entered the room at the end of the hall. Deirdre, however, stood up and turned to face me. With a long, slow, languorous smile, she said, “I need you to remove your clothing and lie on the bed.”