a receipt, but this time I hopped up on the counter and swung my legs over. I landed with a soft thud behind it and the coat-check girl jumped up in surprise. ‘Hey, you can’t—’
I reached out and touched her face, entering her mind as easily as driving through an open gate. ‘Hi’—I checked her name badge—‘Cheryl. Can I have your keycard, please?’
She reached down, unclipped it from her belt and held it out to me.
‘Thanks,’ I smiled, taking it. ‘That’s great. You just forget about me now, and carry on with whatever you were doing.’ I reversed out of her mind just as easily and let her go.
She sat back down again.
I swiped the card down the lock and pushed open the ‘Office’ door. The room inside was a standard security centre doubling as a staffroom. One wall held a row of grey metal lockers; the other wall was banked to the ceiling with TV monitors showing shots of the club above a long bench full of blinking lights and switches. I quickly scanned them: entrance, coffin room, gift shop, the toilets—yep, the loos really were coffin-shaped!—and what had to be the vamps’ private rooms. Sitting bolt-upright in front of the TV screens was the human security guard with his eyes fixed intently on the monitors. A cup of tea was steaming on the bench in front of him.
He ignored me.
But of course. Mad Max was expecting me.
I walked past him to the door on the opposite wall, opened it and strolled inside.
‘Cousin, how nice to see you again.’ Mad Max stood and came round the desk to pull out one of the guest chairs for me. My backpack sat on the other. He gave me a wide beam of a smile and said, ‘Please, come and have a seat.’
As offices go it was pretty basic: desk, grey chairs, grey carpet, grey filing cabinet, a flat-screen LCD— currently showing the cloakroom girl—instead of a window. There was nothing to say vampire, or even well-heeled executive about it, other than Mad Max himself. His bright red Hussar jacket, worn over white shirt and blue trousers and with highly polished black boots made him look like he was playing dress-up, which of course he was.
‘Thanks,’ I said and sat. Of course, there was one thing that said vampire: the three bags of my blood sitting on the desk, one of which was squashed into a clear pint tankard with coffins decorating the outside. A black curly straw was sticking out the top.
‘Glamouring a human carries the death penalty, Cousin,’ Max said cheerfully, waving at the cloakroom girl on the screen as he sat opposite me. ‘Or were you not aware of that particular law?’
Ignoring him, his threat, and my blood, for now, I reached for the phone and called Malik, or rather, Sanguine Lifestyles, his 24/7 answering service. A woman’s voice answered with a tentative, ‘Ms Taylor?’
‘Yes, it’s me, and I’m fine,’ I reassured her before she could ask, keeping my gaze fixed on Mad Max who was still beaming his hundred-watt smile my way. ‘Could you repeat the last message you were given, please?’
‘Certainly, Ms Taylor,’ she replied efficiently. ‘Mr Maxim Andrei Zakharin called, and his message was: “
A beep sounded, and I stopped listening to the woman as Max’s beaming smile cut out and was replaced by an almost panicked expression. He produced a remote, pointed it at the flat-screen and the picture of the cloakroom girl switched to one of strange, amorphous red and blue shapes shifting around a dark interior. Two red figures were huddled together in one area, and another red figure was merged with the only blue figure. I frowned, puzzled, until it clicked: I was looking at the new state-of-the-art CCTV monitoring system the vamps were touting on all their websites, supposedly designed to keep the humans safe. It showed a computer overlay of enhanced heat signatures, so basically, the red figures were humans, and the vampires, having a lower core body temperature, showed up as blue.
Max jumped up and rushed out of the office, leaving the door swinging.
‘… give Mr al-Khan your message along with the others when he checks in,’ the woman’s voice was saying in my ear.
Worry tied a knot in my gut. ‘Thought you said he checked in at sunset?’
‘Normally, yes. Not tonight. Is there anything else I can do for you, Ms Taylor?’
‘Thanks, not just now.’ I cut her off, and stared at the screen.
Now I knew what I was looking at, the figures looked more like people and less like blobs. The red figures were two upright humans huddled together. The other human was on the ground, with the vamp on top, and the blue vamp was slowly turning red— It didn’t take a genius to work out something was badly wrong. Then I saw the flashing number in the screen’s corner.
Room Eleven: Darius’ room.
I looked in horror at my blood on the desk.
Surely Mad Max couldn’t be stupid enough to take it all? Hadn’t he heard what had happened at Christmas, when Darius had gone rabid and fallen into bloodlust?
Chapter Twenty-Two
The security guard was rattling away into his radio, and either Mad Max’s original mind-lock was still in force or he was too busy to worry about me. I grabbed the keycard off the cloakroom girl in passing, vaulted over the counter again and strode towards the vamp who was standing guard in front of doors 1–15. She was dressed in a wide grey crinoline and starched nurse’s cap, vaguely circa the Crimean War.
Her eyes widened as she saw me coming.
‘Move, or I’ll make you,’ I warned, knowing I had the unfair advantage. No way was she going to fight back —or even touch me—not with Malik’s decapitation threat standing behind me like a looming shadow.
‘Sorry, can’t do that,’ she said. ‘Orders.’
I swung the backpack, letting its own momentum carry it and it hit her square on the shoulder. I’m nowhere near as strong as a vamp, but compared to a human of the same weight, I’m a superwoman. Add in the bricks—
The vamp stumbled far enough away from the door for me to swipe the keycard down the lock and lunge through it before she had recovered.
My heart pounding, I raced along the carpeted corridor, past grey steel doors with curious faces peering out from their diamond-shaped windows, towards the group of three figures I could see at the end.
Mad Max held his hands up to stop me as I got closer. ‘Cousin, Genevieve,’ he called, ‘we’ve sealed the door. There’s nothing to be done until morning now. I suggest you go back—’
Bastard! He wasn’t supposed to seal the room if there were still humans inside.
This time I didn’t give any warning. I hoisted the backpack in front of me and, praying to any gods that might be listening, I launched myself at him, aiming for his chest with the brick-heavy backpack. I caught a glimpse of his eyes rounding with disbelief just before I barrelled into him, knocking him on his back. I landed on top of him and, yelling, I heaved the backpack up and smashed it down on his head, again and again, like a pile-driver. He shifted beneath me, his hands gripping my thighs, the muscles of his stomach bunching, getting ready to buck me off. Desperate now, I slammed the bag down again, wishing I had something sharper, like a stake, knowing I had to damage him enough that he wasn’t going to be getting up anytime soon—
Someone grabbed the back of my jacket and threw me back along the corridor.
I tried to tuck and roll, but the backpack dragged awkwardly on my arm and instead I landed in an inelegant heap. I scrambled back up to my feet, clutching the backpack, raging with determination and anger. I wasn’t going to let—
