Astonishment flashing across her face, Katie staggered back and fell to the floor beside him. She held up her left hand. The fingers she’d tried to heal him with were blackened and smoking. “Poison. I am poisoned. How is this possi—” She swooned.
Leo felt his body lifted and carried to the front of the club. He was placed on the bar, where he could see only the bottles and the brass-backed mirrored wall behind them. Not a silver-backed mirror, but one in which his kind might be seen as more than a blur. Katie’s body was placed on two tables shoved together.
The outclan priestess, Bethany, floated into the room and stood over him, her dark skin catching the lights, her skirts swirling in brilliant shades of blues. She sniffed his small wound, then Katie’s hand, which appeared in the mirror as blackened and smoking. Bethany pointed at three humans and said, “Feed her copious amounts of blood. Bring in more servants. Tonight, Katherine is a Naturaleza.” Which meant she would drink humans down if they were not careful.
Returning to the bar, Bethany tore her own throat and climbed over Leo, her limbs moving like a praying mantis on the hunt, elbows and hips high. She placed her ripped flesh at his mouth and began to chant softly in her native tongue.
Magic swirled over him like a dense fog from the Mississippi River, a coiling mist of opaque light, whirling and twisting, enveloping him. Sliding down his throat. Convulsively, he swallowed. Again. And again. Magic and blood twined and flowed down his throat. Magic pressed into his abdominal wound and snaked through him and curled tight with the blood of the priestess.
The magic of the assault spell that had woven itself into him parted before the onslaught of the priestess’s own power. He felt strands of El Mago’s spell snap. Agony speared through him. He gasped. Lifted onehand and gripped Bethany close, drank, sucking down her healing blood. He lost track of time before she peeled herself away and a human took her place. And then another. Trying to heal the damage of the poison, the silver, and the magic with blood.
After the third human was wrenched away, he gasped out to the nearest blood-servant: “George?”
“He is well, my master.”
“Katie?”
“Healing, my master.”
“The two human girls? Bring them to me. Now.”
“Yes, my master,” the voice replied. “You and you. Go get the girl from the apartment. You and you, bring the one from the office.”
“What’s happening?” someone asked.
“Better you don’t know, dude,” Derek said, moving for the door.
Leo closed his fangs gently, slowly, on a blood-servant’s throat. And drank.
The pain was bearable but the rage was still hot within him. He had drunk from Bethany and from ten humans, taking a little over a pint from each. He had ingested over a gallon of blood, and he could have taken more, but he had an enemy to find before dawn. El Mago. The mage would not be allowed to reside in his city if he had to cut a swath through the populace to find him.
In the private restroom of the office, Leo washed his face and brushed his teeth, his fangs, and the hinge structure that operated them. He combed his black hair and tied it into a queue, then took a moment to inspect his abdomen and torso. They should have displayed dreadful wounds, but they were unmarked. He dressed in the clean clothes that had been brought from his clan home on the west side of the river, but this time he strapped a small weapon to his right leg. The Smith & Wesson .380 semiautomatic pistol was loaded with silver/lead rounds. He belted his dueling swords around his waist and checked himself in the brass-backed mirror. Human customers in the bar hated it, but for Mithrans it was the only way to see a reflection. His flesh picked up the golden tones from the brass, looking far more human than his pale skin in the bright lights. Satisfied, Leo rifled through the zippered bag holding his clothes and pocketed a cell phone. Some wise person had placed a folded sheet ofpaper between the clamshell halves with instructions on how to use it. Fortified, Leo stepped from the restroom and walked across the room through the lines of his humans to the girls.
The one who had been tied to the chair was stretched out on a chaise, her head in the lap of the other one. The victim was named Audrey Salick, and she looked vaguely Asian. Her sister, the blond temptress who had shared Leo’s bed earlier in the night, was named Margaret Coin. The same mother. Very different fathers.
“Audrey,” Leo said softly, his voice a low purr as he wielded his mesmerism. “You have been healed. The memories of your abuse muted. Are you well?”
Audrey lifted her head off her sister’s thigh and blinked blearily around the room. “I’m fine, I think.” She focused on the Mithran standing behind Leo, the Mithran who had healed her, and pointed a finger. “I know you. You’re Estavan.” Her brows came down in a scowl. “Hey! Did you...? Did we—”
Estavan moved to the back of the couch and took her hand. “All is well,mi hermosa ave.”My beautiful bird.Leo’s lips lifted at the endearment. Estavan loved women and he was already half in love with this new one. “All is well,” Estavan finished. He lifted her hand and bowed over it to kiss her fingers. The woman sighed. “She is well, my sire. And she knew nothing about tonight’s ambush.”
Leo set his eyes on Margaret. “But this one. She knew much,” he said.
Margaret pressed her body into the couch, her blond hair coiling about her. Her blue eyes filled with tears. “He had my sister. I didn’t have a choice.”
“We all have choices, my dear. Estavan, take your new blood-servant.”
“No!” Margaret screamed, even as Estavan leaned across the couch and lifted Audrey into his arms. He whisked her through the door, into the bar. “No,” Margaret sobbed, one arm out as if to drag her sister back. “I was supposed to be saving her.”
“In return for...?” Leo asked.
“A week of...” She drew in a sobbing breath and her mouth pulled down in shame. “Servitude.”
“A week in a Mithran’s bed,” Leo clarified. “A vampire who called himself El Mago.”
Margaret nodded, tears reddening her pale skin.
“Then you shall have five weeks in mine, as payment for the trouble you have caused. For now, we will start in small sips. Give me your wrist. And this time you will withhold nothing, not even the trifling dark place in your soul that hid the knowledge of my enemy from me. The trivial dark spot that I should have forced my way into when you were compliant.”
