A Kiss of Blood (Vamp City #2)(14)

Quinn watched the passing landscape, the well-lit houses in the inhabited areas, streets that in modern D.C. were now lined with high-rise office buildings.

“Cara,” Arturo said, drawing her gaze to his in the rearview mirror. “If we are stopped and anyone asks, you and Zack are Micah’s slaves. He is leaving you at my house while he helps me search for the missing sorceress.”

“All right.” There was much to be said for getting their stories straight.

They turned onto Fourteenth Street, and she knew they were close to Arturo’s house. She’d been there before and knew it to be on F Street, only about a block from the Treasury. In 1870, F Street had been primarily residential, unlike its twenty-first-century twin.

Several minutes later, Arturo pulled into the alley that ran behind his house and parked the Jeep. Too fast, he was out of the vehicle and slinging a still-sleeping Zack over his shoulder as if her brother wasn’t close to Arturo’s size, as if he weighed nothing.

Micah emerged from the vehicle at normal speed and opened her door for her. As she climbed out, she heard a man’s scream on the wind some distance away. The sound clawed through her, raking open every memory of the terrors she’d known in this place, setting them free like nightmares flying through her mind. No one should ever be made to scream like that.

“Quinn?”

Mike’s voice penetrated the darkness, jarringly wrong in this place. But it focused her, grounded her. Screams were a common sound in Vamp City.

God, she hated this place.

With a shiver, she moved quickly toward the house, preceding Micah through the back door and into a kitchen that was, if not modern, at least a far cry from its 1870s roots. This was the one room within Arturo’s home that was fully electrical, with 1970s appliances and modern, recessed lighting.

The kitchen was empty, the faint smell of freshly baked bread lingering, reminding her she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. The tension in her back and shoulders eased now that they’d reached Arturo’s home. Oddly, she felt safe here. Arturo might have scared her mindless the first time he brought her here, feeding from her fear, believing he could take her memory of it later. But he’d never attacked her. She’d never been physically harmed in this house. And she never would be as long as Cristoff and his goons didn’t find her here. For all of Arturo’s faults, she believed that. He wouldn’t hurt her. Not physically.

As they started down the hallway, Ernesta, one of Arturo’s servants, bustled out of the living room, motioning with her hand for them to follow. Quinn knew that the matronly, Latino-looking woman wasn’t human, though exactly what she was, Quinn had yet to learn.

Quinn entered the living room to find Arturo setting a disgruntled Zack on the sofa.

“I could have walked,” Zack grumbled.

“You were sound asleep,” Quinn countered. It might be wishful thinking, but she thought he looked a little better, his skin tone less gray, the circles under his eyes a little less pronounced, though the “whites” of his eyes had turned fully silver. “How do you feel?”

Zack ran a hand through his shaggy curls and met her gaze with a spark of life that had been missing for the past ten days. “Hungry.”

“Have Susie prepare a meal for two,” Arturo told Ernesta, then sent Micah a questioning glance. When the other vampire shook his head, presumably not interested in human food, Arturo added, “And send Horace in.”

Micah settled his big vampire body on one of the chairs. As Quinn joined Zack on the sofa, Horace, Arturo’s sole male servant, appeared in the doorway. He was a balding, stocky male with a graying beard that glowed with a Slava’s phosphorescence.

“Master.” He said the word as a soldier might say “Captain” to a respected and revered commanding officer.

“What news, Horace?” Arturo asked, crossing one ankle over his knee.

The older man stroked his bushy beard. “Well now, a new sunbeam broke through right outside the slave auction yesterday, just as it was ending. A wide one, wider than anyone had ever seen. More’n fifteen vamps were caught in it, including that bitch Francesca.”

Quinn started with surprise, and no small amount of relief. She’d briefly been one of Francesca’s slaves and was delighted that no one else would suffer that monster’s torment.

“Any word on the sorceress?”

Quinn frowned, wondering why he was asking Horace about her when she was sitting right there.

“Nah. Some say she’s a shifter and turned herself into a bug and escaped Cristoff that way. Others say she’s far more powerful than Cristoff knew and transported herself out of his prison. But no one’s seen her.”

“Thank you, Horace. I need you to send word to Mukdalla. Tell her I have a couple of gifts for her, and I’m in immediate need of transport to pick them up.”

With a deferential nod, Horace turned and left.

Eyes narrowed, Quinn turned to Arturo. “What was that all about? He doesn’t know who I am?”

“You’re glamoured, cara.”

She grimaced. “Right.” She’d forgotten about that.

“But it wouldn’t matter either way. He doesn’t remember having met you. None of my servants do. Nor do they remember seeing Zack.”

“You took their memories?”

“I did. And I’ll take them again when we leave. For their protection as well as yours.”