“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.”
“What are you doing?” I cry out as he unlocks the door, looking over my shoulder at the crowd, every eye still on me, fangs bared.
Holy fuck.
The door unlocks and then he’s shoving me into a dark room. The lights flick on and I gasp. It’s about the size of the cigar room, but that’s where the similarities end. The walls are painted black, the floor is steel with black leather mats every couple feet, right below two pairs of metal chains that hook into the wall. There’s a steel table at the end, the type you’d find in a morgue, with a fridge beside it, and in the corners there are two matching red leather chaises.
“What the fuck is this place?” I say, staring at it all in horror.
He doesn’t answer me, just leads me over to the chaise and sits me down on it.
“Solon, please,” I tell him, grabbing his jacket as he turns around, ready to leave. “Tell me what’s happening. They’re going to…bleed me? How? By biting me? Is everyone in there getting a turn? Am I being chained to the wall?”
With each question I ask, my fist gets stronger, my words trembling, on the edge of panic-fueled tears.
He reaches down and pries my hand off his jacket. “I thought it might come to this,” he says, voice flat. “Just stay here.”
Then he turns, and before I can grab him again, there’s a strange shimmer in the air, and then he’s gone.
Literally, gone.
Vanished into thin air.
Not even appearing by the door, something like I’ve seen earlier when he moves fast. He just disappeared.
And I’m all alone.
But I won’t be for long.
I don’t know who Jeremias is, but if he’s my father, apparently that’s a literal selling point for me. If they can find out my history by drinking my blood, taste my bloodlines, then who knows what will happen to me. As much as I do want to know the truth, it’s not at the expense of bleeding for all these vampires, and especially if I’m being held in chains.