Winter Halo (Outcast 2)

“So you think it was a male?”

“Yeah, felt his cock pressing against me.” She laughed, the sound sharp. “But it wasn’t really erect. The old boy wasn’t enjoying himself much, it seemed.”

“And the second time it happened?”

“It wasn’t sexual. The bastard bit me.”

I raised my eyebrows. “He bit you.”

“Yeah.” She swept the hair away from the right side of her neck. “You can still see the scar.”

You could, but it wasn’t teeth marks; wasn’t a vampire bite. They were far too precise for either of those. They’d been created by either a very small blade or a large syringe.

“Do you remember much about the attack?”

She frowned. “Oddly, no. I felt this sharp sting on the back of my neck and then everything sort of went hazy. I could feel him biting, but that’s about it.”

Meaning it was possible a very short-term drug had been used. But why would anyone want to steal blood if they weren’t actually a vampire? Did this have something to do with the attempt to gain light immunity for the vamps and the wraiths? Or was something weirder going on?

“How long were you hazy?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Ten, maybe fifteen minutes at the most.” She shrugged again. “What was weird, though, was the fact that my fellow guard claimed she saw nothing. I played back the vid, and she was right. Nothing showed up.”

“Had it been erased?”

She shook her head. “No, it simply showed me walking through the foyer as usual. No assault, no nothing, despite the evidence on my neck. Weird, as I said.”

Meaning someone, somewhere, had tampered with it—and had done so pretty much at the same time as the attack. “What did you do after that?”

“I went down to personnel and quit on the spot. No job is worth putting up with that shit.”

“So why did you, given you were aware it was happening to others?”

“Because it wasn’t a fucking problem until it happened to me, was it? And as I said, the pay was good. It was worth gambling on it not happening.”

“Are all guards assigned to that floor attacked?”

“All of them are attacked, yes, but not everyone gets bit. I was hoping to be in the latter group. Guess I got unlucky.” She shrugged again. “That’s why there’s such a high turnover of security guards. Some are scared to go up there again, and some simply don’t want to risk it being worse on the upper levels.”

And I had no doubt it would be worse if they were taking blood samples. It was unlikely they’d be looking for something as simple as guards with a specific blood group—especially given that information had already been scanned in from their RFID chips when they were first employed.

Kendra glanced at the time. “You’ve got a couple of minutes left.”

“Did you ever talk to the favori? Or talk to anyone who knew what was going on in the upper levels?”

“No. But I can say that everyone who was bitten was moved up. You could probably talk to personnel and get a list from them.”

Nuri probably could. I wasn’t about to risk either of my current identities being outed to Sal’s partners by accessing yet another employee.

Kendra took a gulp of her coffee. “You know, if there’s one good thing about working in a brothel, it’s that I’m at least getting paid to be touched up and bitten.”

Intuition stirred. “What brothel?”

“Deseo.”

Which just happened to be the brothel Sal had not only owned, but one that had a false rift sitting in its basement. Thank goodness I’d taken the time to alter my appearance—though I daresay if anyone did question Kendra, then an orange-haired woman asking questions about the company would still raise alarms.

And if I was going to raise alarms, I might as well do it properly. “Who runs that place now? I thought I heard something about the owner dying recently.”