Jules hooked an arm under mine, half-carrying me into the club as my legs trembled. My body decided it was done cooperating, done pretending I was fine, done holding it together. Every muscle shook as if I’d run a marathon.
Romeo opened the door expectantly—his massive frame filling the doorway, face carved from stone and just as expressive. He didn’t ask questions. Didn’t react to the blood painting Rowan’s throat, to the way my hands shook, to Jules’s tear-streaked face. He simply stepped aside,a silent sentinel to horrors he’d probably witnessed a thousand times before.
How many people has he seen carried through these doors?
Instead of moving straight towards the main floor—toward witnesses, towards normalcy, towards the comforting lie that the world made sense—Damien turned a sharp left. He followed the wall until it rounded over to the bar and led towards the back area, away from prying eyes and questions I couldn’t answer.
I caught sight of Andy tending bar. His face blanched when he saw Rowan being carried, body slack in Damien’s arms like a broken doll. Andy looked like he wanted to speak—his mouth opened, throat working—but thought better of it. Survival instinct, maybe. Or experience. He’d been at Oubliette long enough to know when to keep his mouth shut.
Not a soul dared to approach us.
Good. I don’t have words for what just happened.
I expected Damien to take us down the hallway lined in burgundy velvet that led towards his office, but instead, he walked right past it to a set of stairs I’d never seen before. We descended those spiraling stairs down into the club’s hidden heart. The air changed with every step—thicker, warmer, carrying scents that made my hindbrain scream warnings my conscious mind was too exhausted to process. Incense, sex, something copper-sharp that could have been blood or fear or both.
Faint moans drifted up from below, but they weren’t only sounds of pleasure. There were moans of pain, of surrender, of euphoria, of sorrow—the sounds of people discoveringexactlyhow much they could take before breaking. The quiet rasp of whispers felt like a thousand confessions brushing my ears at once, secrets whispered in darkness by people who thought no one was listening.
My fingers tightened around the iron banister, steadying myself against vertigo that had nothing to do with the stairs. The metal was cold beneath my palm—grounding and solid—to remind myself that I was real, thatthiswas real. I focused on the certainty of cool iron pressed against my skin, because everything else felt like a fever dream.
At the bottom of the stairwell was a heavy-looking door, wrought from blackened metal set into the stonework of that deep undergroundbasement. There were words inscribed on the door in a language I didn’t recognize. Despite its anachronistic appearance, the door was automated—it swung open as Damien approached with Rowan in his arms.
It was inthatmoment the absurdity of the situation struck me. “Jules, what are we doing? Rowan needs a doctor. He needs to be taken to a hospital. Where are we going?”
“Sweetie,” she said without slowing her pace or turning to look at me, “I am going to need you to trust me and Damien. I know that’s going to be hard for you, but please. . . we are going to do our best to help your friend. Now, be mindful as you step through the door.”
Anger seeped into my bones then, its fiery heat a reminder of what feeling powerless was like. My words struck out. “Where are you taking him? Why are we—”
My chest seized. Stepping through the threshold, past the heavy dark doors, struck me with an intense dizziness as my world shifted. My clothes were suddenly dry, and even Jules looked refreshed. Shit, what was that?
As she held me steady, Jules said, “Easy there, sweetie. Entering this place can be hard on you the first time, especially if you aren’t in the right state of mind.”
My thoughts were thick, but I was still able to ask the obvious. “Where are we? What is this place?”
“Mi gatita,” Damien called over his shoulder, “it brings me pleasure to welcome you to my Second Circle. Although I do obviously wish you were here under moreauspiciouscircumstances.”
Second Circle? I made it. The thought was a bitter one. I had hoped to uncover the entrance of this place, to see if it was even real. I was convinced Edward was frequently within the Second Circle—convincedthatwas where he’d hidden himself away.
And there were plenty of places to hide.
Long straight hallways of polished obsidian stretched out in three directions—before us, to our right, to our left—and those halls were lined with a diverse variety of doors. The scope of it seemed impossible. The corridors shrank to small pinpricks of darkness on the distant horizon, with both sides of the hallways littered with doors. Between each doorwere torches of blue-tinted flames, giving off a clean and brilliant light without any hint of smoke.
“What happens behind those doors? What would I find if I opened them?” I asked, suddenly afraid to know the answer. I struggled to keep my senses, but the rage inside gave me the strength to poke at the world I was entering.
“It’s complicated,” Jules replied as we kept walking.
I realized then that I didn’t want to know. Couldn’t afford to wonder. My brain was already fracturing under the weight of too many impossibilities: vampyres existed, Natalia was one of them, Alice might be too, Jules knew far more about all of this than she should, and I was following a nightclub owner into his secret sex dungeon as he carried Rowan’s dying body.
Oh god. . . Natalia is a vampyre.
That thought was relentless, and it unsettled me in ways I couldn’t articulate. She’d been in my dorm room. She’d seemednormal—bitchy and beautiful and perhaps a little cold. But cold in the way college girls were so often cold, not in the way monsters were outright cruel.
And shewascruel. Heartless. She’d stood in that alley and watched the twins drain Rowan. Watched me fight, beg, scream, and break myself against their indifference. Watched like it was entertainment, like we were performances staged for her amusement. Asked me to debase myself at her feet for her pleasure.
All of thatbeforeshe’d brutalized the twins with violence so casual it bordered on comedy.
Is Alice a vampyre, too?The question ate at me. Sweet and kind Alice. Alice, who seemed so demure and thoughtful. If her story about the two of them growing up together and sharing a wet nurse was to be believed, then it was certainly possible. If Alice was also a vampyre, if she’d been lying to me all that time, it would be just one more lie built on foundations of bullshit and blood—
Can’t think about that now. Focus on Rowan first. Everything else later. Besides,I laughed at the absurdity of the thought,things can’t get much worse, right?
