A Kiss of Blood (Vamp City #2)(13)

She’d heard what had happened next back then, that Cristoff had cut off two of Phineas’s young son’s fingers before persuading the sorcerer to renew the magic and disable his death trap. And once he had, Cristoff killed the sorcerer. Vamp City had remained intact ever since. Until two years ago. Who or what had flipped the switch this time, no one knew. At least, that’s what she’d been told.

“What were you two doing that night?” she asked the vampires, since they obviously hadn’t been at the Kovena Cup.

“Destroying a Ripper nest in Adams Morgan.”

Ahead, she could make out the silhouettes of decrepit houses and row houses. Not until they passed the crumbling corpse of the White House would they start to see signs of habitation. With a lurch, the Jeep flew over a low embankment and onto the packed dirt that passed for roads in this place, as they had in the real D.C. of 1870.

“Are there a lot of Rippers in the area?”

“More now than there used to be,” Micah told her. “With so many Emoras trapped within V.C., there are fewer to hunt them.”

“Is it your job to hunt them?”

“It is, and I take it seriously. Rippers are vicious, without conscience.”

The Rippers, she’d learned, were a different race of vampire, one who fed exclusively on blood, whereas the Emoras, the more prominent race, fed on both blood and emotion. They claimed the Emoras were the more humane of the two races.

Quinn scoffed. “You just described most of the Emoras I’ve met. If the Rippers are worse, God help us all.”

Micah glanced at Arturo, then looked back at her. “You’re right, Quinn. Many of the Emoras of Vamp City have become every bit as bad as the Rippers, but they didn’t used to be. Most of the nearly five hundred vampires that first moved into Vamp City continued to hunt in the human world as they always had—fear feeders scaring their victims as they fed on them, then wiping their minds and sending them on their way. The pain feeders haunting the hospitals, the old folks’ homes, and the neighborhoods, feeding simply by standing outside the bedroom window of a human in childbirth or in pain from disease or injury. And the pleasure feeders . . .” He smiled. “Throughout the ages, the brothels have been our favorite places to feed and hunt.”

So Micah was a pleasure feeder. She’d wondered. “So why did they change?”

“We’re not sure, not entirely. And as with most things, the answer is complicated. We’d always had to remain under the human radar, and suddenly didn’t. A number of the vampires brought in their human companions. And when those humans began to turn immortal, recruiting more humans to serve us became a simple matter of offering immortality. They came willingly and happily. For a time.”

They passed the White House, its abandoned, crumbling appearance the symbol of everything wrong in this place, but Quinn only glanced at it this time, far more interested in Micah’s story.

“Most vampires continued to leave Vamp City at night to feed in the old ways. The coliseum was originally built for vampire sports, not gladiator battle. We held rugby and football matches, among other things. And, if you can believe it, we enjoyed the arts. One night an entire theater company was enthralled and brought in to perform a play, then returned to their beds without any of them the wiser.”

Quinn shook her head, knowing her face was a mask of disbelief. “What happened?”

“Some would tell you we got bored and slowly reverted to our natural inclinations, free of human retribution.” Micah glanced at Arturo. “Those of us who’ve remained outside, who live in the real world, disagree. We’ve watched the changes in those we’ve known for centuries. The magic of Vamp City has had a corrupting effect on many of those who live within its borders, disintegrating souls and consciences.”

“My conscience is just fine,” Arturo muttered.

Quinn snorted. Right.

“You still have one, Ax. Which, considering what’s happened to most in Vamp City, is saying something. Your conscience was always strong. Even so, you’ve not been unaffected. Not by a long shot.”

Arturo lapsed into a brooding silence.

Quinn turned to watch out the window as a horse and wagon passed them on the wide dirt road, driven by a male dressed in Civil War garb. A vampire, no doubt. In the back of the wagon sat three people dressed in modern clothing. New captives? It was hard to tell in the dark, but their hair appeared to lack the phosphorescent glow of Slavas—humans who’d turned immortal, as all humans apparently did in this place if they survived their first couple of years.

Her stomach cramped as she wondered who they’d left behind—wives, children, parents? And with sorrow at what she feared they’d suffer in this place.

“So there weren’t always slaves here?” Quinn asked, skeptical. “Or torturing and killing just for the sport of it?”

“There have always been human servants—humans who willingly, or not so willingly, serve their vampire masters. But the influx of humans solely for sport and food didn’t start in earnest until a few decades ago. Even that didn’t become widespread until a couple of years ago, when the magic began to fail. The depravity since has spiraled out of control, Quinn.” Micah glanced at Arturo. “And even those with honor in their hearts have turned a blind eye.”

Arturo’s jaw tightened, but, again, he said nothing.