Sure enough, a few seconds pass and the vampires go back to talking with each other and the music seems louder still. It takes me a moment to realize it’s Depeche Mode playing and I shake my head. Of course they’d be music for vampires.
Wolf’s head appears above the others and he walks over to us, dressed in his tux. I can’t help but smile with relief when I see him, something that makes Absolon’s grip on my elbow become vise-like.
“Wolf,” I say to him as he eyes me appreciatively.
“This is quite the look,” Wolf says. “Very dramatic. You look beautiful.”
I’d blush if I wasn’t so scared.
“Thank you.”
Absolon makes a noise of irritation and leads me away from Wolf, straight over to a pair of vampires nearby. One has grey hair, which surprises me because everyone else seems permanently suspended between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-five, and his skin is tanned. His eyes are dark red, brows black and sharp in contrast to his hair and beard, and he’s wearing a black collarless jacket, which makes him look even more sinister. He smells like an old church.
The woman he’s with looks my age, with dark black hair to her waist, and she’s wearing a lacey black gown with velvet gloves. Her lipstick is the darkest red, playing off her light skin.
“This must be the girl,” the man says with an untraceable accent. He reaches out and takes my hand, and even though I want to snatch it back, I can’t. I’m stuck in his eyes, the red pools glinting, and I know he’s compelling me. “Enchanted,” he says, and he runs his nose up from the back of my hand to my wrist, deftly flipping my hand over and running his lips over my veins.
Everything in me recoils in revulsion, but still I’m frozen and unable to stop him.
A low rumble emits from Absolon, a threatening sound that makes my hairs stand on end.
“Enough,” Absolon snaps at the man. “You’ve already gotten her smell.” He reaches out and grabs my arm, pulling it out of the man’s grip. “And you can stop compelling her, too.”
The man smiles at Absolon, his fangs sharp on the top and bottom, giving the appearance of a canine’s mouth. “Just making sure she is what you say she is.” He eyes me. “Has Solon not told you about me? I’m Yanik. I’ve been quite interested in your history, little girl. I knew who your parents were, your real ones. They were good creatures, too good. Their mistake was thinking they could run away from the lives they led. None of us can.”
Though the man is talking with a conversational tone, there’s a sinister edge to all of this, aside from the obvious.
“I knew who your real father was too,” he continues, eyeing Absolon briefly. “Jeremias.”
“That is just hearsay,” Absolon says with a scoff, but even so, his hand goes to my lower back, holding me against him. “It’s not been proven.”
I take the bait. “Who is Jeremias?”
“Ah,” the old vampire says, flashing those teeth again. “How little you know. Absolon hasn’t been truthful with you.”
“She knows no more than me,” Absolon says, lying.
“Surely you’ve tasted her blood, Solon. You can find out the truth that way.”
“Just a drop,” he admits begrudgingly. His fingers press into the side of my waist, either a protective or possessive measure.
“I see,” Yanick says, looking to me now. “You know that we can discover truth through blood. Your history. A drop won’t tell all your secrets, Solon would have to have more. But he hasn’t. Strange, don’t you think? How can we know exactly what we’re buying?”
“You’ll have to trust that this is the girl. This is the one who was taken from Alice and Hakan.”
“But that alone doesn’t make her interesting to us, old boy, and you know it.”
The fact that the aging Yanik called Solon old boy makes my brow raise.
“We should bleed her,” the girl says, her first words. “See for ourselves.”
Oh my god.
For some reason I expect Solon to get territorial and tell them to forget it, but he doesn’t. “Okay,” he says, and my heart sinks. “But then if you have some, everyone else will want to also. The price for her will go up.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Yanik says, his voice radiating evil.
Solon stares at him for a moment, then nods. “Fine. Let me get her ready. I’ll come back out and make an announcement. We have to do this fairly.”
“What?” I cry out, and then Solon is grabbing me by the elbow and hauling me across the room, the sea of vampires parting for us, their eyes hungry as they follow my every move.
Solon takes out his keys, bringing out another skeleton one, and yanks me toward the door to the side of the stage, the one Wolf had darkly referred to as one for “private events.”