I stopped, stunned. Mad Max was still lying on the floor, but now a small figure straddled him—a female, if the long curls of black hair were any indication. The other two vamps were rapidly backing up the corridor away from her and Max, their faces contorted with fear. They reached the end and one banged on the steel door, while the other, his brain obviously slightly less panicked, produced a keycard, swiped it and they both fell into the room beyond the moment the door slid open.
As the door closed, the female figure shook herself then, in one fast, sinuous movement, she leapt to her feet and twisted to land perfectly on her red leather six-inch-heeled boots without so much as a wobble. A knife protruded from Mad Max’s chest, its bronze handle sticking up like a shiny exclamation point. She put her hands on her curvy hips, took a deep breath she didn’t need, and her waist very obviously cinched in even tighter and her breasts mounded even higher above her red leather corset. Then she cocked her head to one side and stared at me, her eyes reflecting yellow like a cat’s in the blackness of her face.
I grimaced. Vamps can never resist a flashy entrance.
I recognised her, of course: Yana’s new sponsor, Francine, the vampire from Darius’ old blood-house. Up close she looked younger than I remembered, more late teens than early twenties, although vamp-wise she had to be at least a couple of hundred years old if she was capable of taking Mad Max. And with her knife sticking out of him, she was either an opportunist, or an ally. I was hoping for the latter.
My hand tightened on the backpack just in case. ‘So why did they run?’ I jerked my head towards the door the terrified vamps had gone through.
The air wavered round her and for a second a pretty good likeness of Malik stood in her place. Then she was back to being herself again.
‘Impressive illusion,’ I said, and it was. ‘So, are you the new Head of Golden Blade blood?’
‘Not yet,’ she said, her sultry voice matching her sex-on-legs kick-ass red leather outfit.
Ah, so the position was still up for grabs, which probably meant she needed Malik’s backing. Maybe she’d decided assisting me was the best way to get it? I waved towards her and Mad Max. ‘You know, the show’s wasted if you’re not going to help?’ I raised my voice in question.
Moving almost too fast for me to see, she was standing in front of me, the sharp end of a bronze knife hovering steadily under my chin. I held my ground, ignoring my hitching pulse, and flicked a finger against the blade. ‘Nice toy,’ I said.
She smiled, her full lips pulling back to showcase longer-than-normal fangs—another illusion—and the knife flew back and thudded into Mad Max’s chest, perfectly aligned next to its twin. He grunted. I looked around her at his face. The bricks had done their job: it was a battered, blood-covered mess, and when he stared back at me from between already swelling lids, surprisingly, he was very much aware, and oddly speculative.
‘The bronze knife in the heart,’ Francine purred, drawing my attention back to her, ‘she paralyse him. Stop his power.’
‘Good to know,’ I said, stepping past her and over Mad Max to look through the diamond-shaped window in door eleven. It was as bad as I’d hoped it wouldn’t be.
The room was square, maybe twenty feet by twenty, and it looked like a hurricane had passed through recently. Broken bits of metal bed and shredded lumps of mattress littered the carpet, a wooden chest was overturned on its side, and the flat-screen on the wall was smashed.
Darius was in the centre, at the eye of the storm.
The eye-candy romance model with the drool-worthy six-pack was gone; instead, his body had shrunk back to bone. His stomach was concave above his jutting pelvis, and only a few wisps of hair straggled from his scalp. A raised map of blue-black veins corded his leathery-looking skin. He looked like he’d been left to starve. As I watched he twisted and turned from side to side in evident confusion, his lips curled back over all four of his fangs, his arms open wide, fingers clutching at empty space. Rissa and Viola were weaving around him in some sort of shifting pattern, their floating grey outfits and long white-grey hair fluttering as if blown by the wind. As I watched, one would flit past him, trailing a bloody wrist and snagging his attention, then as he lunged for her, the other would do the same, distracting him the other way, only they were moving so fast it looked as if there were more than just the two of them …
‘You’re doing something, aren’t you?’ I turned to Francine.
‘I make the illusion of many Moth. Darius do not think with his brain now, but with this.’ She tapped her corseted stomach. ‘The Moth, they bait him with the blood. He does not know which to eat next. It is a trick we use sometimes.’
I turned back to the room and came face to face with Lucy, staring at me through the glass. Startled, I jumped back in fear as my old phobia hit;
Why the Moth-girls sign up for it, rather than the standard venom hit, which is all about pleasure, is a total mystery.
‘We need to get in there,’ I said, still looking at Lucy’s body.
‘The door, she is sealed until sunrise,’ Francine said at my side. ‘She is on the time lock, precaution to stop the bloodlust spreading.’
‘Sunrise! Fuck, they’ll all be dead by then!’
‘Yes. The heart of Lucy is weak. I beat it for her, but I cannot for long. My power, she is lowering.’ She spoke calmly, as if the situation wasn’t a death sentence for the girls and for Darius—especially Darius, because even if he came back to his senses after draining the Moths, the vampires would rescind his Gift, not in public retribution for killing the girls—it was doubtful any of them had any family, or anyone to worry about them other than the other Moths; their bodies could and probably would just disappear. As would Darius’. No, they’d rescind his Gift because the Moths’ deaths would be unsanctioned killing. The vamps can’t afford not to control their own.
Even if I did manage to save him now, unless one of them took him on, he was a dead vamp walking. I clenched my fists, desperation and guilt burning in my chest. I shouldn’t have encouraged him to stand on his own feet. More than that, I should’ve kept a closer eye on him.
But crying over spilled milk—or rather, spilled blood—wasn’t helping anyone. I had to save the Moths first, and after that I could worry about Darius … except—
I was all out of ideas.
I looked at Francine. ‘So, what’s the plan?’ I asked.
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘The door, I can open her.’ Francine stared at me, her odd reflective eyes transparent like glass. ‘I make the illusion stay for the escape of the Moth. But Darius, he has the blood-lust, he cannot escape the room. I cannot control him, and I do not like to bring the final death to him.’
Okay, good to know she didn’t want to kill him, for all her flat statements. But then, if he wasn’t rabid with bloodlust, she wouldn’t have to. So she was asking me to feed him—my blood would sate his bloodlust—but getting it into him without ending up as dinner was the problem. Unless …
He was young enough that I could catch him in my Glamour—I’d done it before, after all.
‘Darius …’ This time some emotion flickered in her gaze, then was gone. ‘I will
I blinked: a democratic vampire?
‘Okay, leave Darius to me,’ I said with more confidence than I was feeling.
