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.”