A Blood Seduction

by Pamela Palmer

  Quinn turned, bile rising in her throat. Panic tore at her control. As a bloodcurdling scream rose a short distance outside the circling vamps, she began to shake. She’d thought she understood this place. One vamp had attacked her; the second, Arturo, had nearly seduced her. He’d also treated her like a guest, apologized for scaring her, and left her virtually unmolested.

  The screaming continued, a horrifying sound of unendurable pain. Quinn squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she could close it all out. Arturo had treated her like a princess in comparison to these monsters. If only he’d show up and whisk her out of here. She’d happily let him tie her to his bed again. Too late, she realized that she’d understood nothing about this place. Nothing at all. And she was in deep, deep trouble.

  Several of those in the tangle cried out in fear. One of the men, one who’d managed to climb to his feet, choked with horror and turned away. “Sweet Virgin Mary. They’re tearing her apart.”

  The crying intensified, the humans huddling together in abject terror, no longer concerned with untangling the chains, no longer worried about the corpse that couldn’t hurt them as they trembled from fear of the horrors that awaited them next. The smell of carnage caught Quinn’s nose. She gagged and began breathing through her mouth instead.

  By the time the bloodcurdling screams fell silent, Quinn was shaking badly. The vamps around the circle began to move away. One strode into the tangle of humans and jerked a sobbing girl in a pair of dirty white shorts and a navy blue GWU T-shirt to her feet, yanking her around to face him. The tears drenching her face gleamed in the firelight.

  “Look at me!” The vampire gripped her tanned face between pale fingers. Her crying stopped. Instantly.

  The girl straightened, her body relaxing as her expression transformed to one of calm acceptance. No, not acceptance. Blankness. Vampire mind control. The glamour Arturo had tried on her and failed.

  “On your feet, all of you!” While the vamp held the arm of the now-silent girl, two others waded in to untangle the rest of them, hauling them, one by one, to their feet. Quinn tried to get up on her own and was knocked down twice, her shackled leg repeatedly jerked out from under her. One of the big vamps grabbed her arm roughly, jerking her upright, until finally, they were all on their feet.

  As the vamp led the first girl off at a slow pace, his companions forced the rest of them to follow in chained order. Quinn found herself squarely in the middle of the line, directly behind a slim, dark-skinned cop. Most of the humans were silent, now, or crying only quietly, glad to be standing, Quinn supposed. She certainly felt more in control on her feet again. Though any control was an illusion.

  As the line started forward, clanking like any chain gang, Quinn kept her gaze studiously away from the place where all the screaming had come from, terrified of the carnage she’d see. As they crossed the open floor, vampires watched them from either side, dozens of vamps. Maybe a hundred or more. Why? Was this about to turn into some horrific feeding frenzy? An all-you-can-eat buffet, vampire style. A chill slid down her spine.

  The first in the chained line began to climb a short series of steps, and Quinn realized that there was a stage up ahead. Perhaps just a dais. What kind of horror would the vampires visit on them this time, just for the sheer entertainment value? Losing her focus, she got out of step with the cop and nearly lost her balance as he stepped before she was ready.

  One by one, they climbed the short stairs onto the stage, then lined up, one behind the other, pushed and prodded by their vampire captors. Another vamp, a burly man with a thick black beard, strode to the woman at the front of the line—the one who’d been hysterical—and took her face in his hand, staring into her eyes. At once, she gasped, then began to whimper and cower as he moved behind her and tore off her T-shirt and bra as if they were made of tissue paper, spilling her ample breasts into his waiting hands. The poor woman cried out.

  “Well stacked,” he called out over the noise, clearly addressing the watching crowd. He jerked her around to face him, curling his lips back to reveal sharp fangs. The girl’s cries turned to shrieks, over and over until Quinn thought her eardrums would burst. Finally, he grabbed the girl’s jaw and captured her mind once more, silencing her. “And a bundle of pure terror,” he said, turning back to the crowd.

  “Four hundred!” shouted someone in the audience.

  “Five!” shouted another.

  A slave auction. Quinn tasted bile at the back of her throat.

  Heart pounding sickly, Quinn watched as one after the other of her companions was paraded before the vamps like so much meat. Most of the women and all of the males were divested of their shirts, most shaking or crying, or rigidly still. Only those who screamed or fought had their minds controlled. The vamps enjoyed their fear too much to quell it with glamour.

  As the humans were bought, they were enthralled and unshackled, then led away by their new masters. Quinn watched with increasing tension because when her turn came, they wouldn’t be able to enthrall her. Not unless this new vamp had more power than Arturo had.

  The cop in front of her was finally pulled to the fore, Quinn right at his elbow as the vamp tore off the stoic man’s shirt, revealing a fine six pack.

  “Show his cock!” a woman shouted from the audience.

  The poor man’s face turned a dark cherry.

  “Drop your pants, slave, or I’ll do it for you,” the auctioneer ordered. “And I’ll not be careful.”

  His jaw set hard enough that Quinn thought he might start dropping broken teeth, the man unfastened his belt and did as he was told. Quinn looked away, unable to add to the man’s misery. Fury and a deep, quaking fear trembled inside her as she saw the hungry faces in the crowd. She searched for the two she’d recognize—the woman who’d taken Zack, and Arturo. She desperately hoped he was out there somewhere, ready to claim her again. But she saw no sign of him. No sign of either of them.

  “Seven hundred!”

  “A thousand!”

  The cop went for more than any of the others had. Maybe after spending that much money on him, they’d take care to keep him alive.

  The woman who’d demanded a look at his cock ultimately bought him, a female with a round, cherubic face and deep dimples. As he pulled up his pants, she leaped onto the short stage, grinning like a girl. “We’re going to have so much fun, you and I.” She gripped his chin, capturing his mind, then, once his ankle was released, led him away.

  It was Quinn’s turn, and she was shaking. Calm down, she told herself. Don’t fight it. Now’s not the time. But the moment she felt the auctioneer’s hands moving around her, ready to rip off her shirt, the instinct to defend herself reared up, eclipsing everything else. She slammed her head back, colliding with his nose.

  The vampire roared, and she pressed the advantage, throwing her elbow into his chest. But he didn’t budge. He just glared at her with a snarling, bloody fury.

  This is when he’s going to kill you.

  Instead, he hauled her against his chest, one arm binding her to him like a steel bar until she could barely breathe.

  “This one’s a fighter! Perhaps a good choice for the Games. She hasn’t much in the way of tits, but she has good long legs and broad, strong shoulders. An excellent laborer. Do I hear five hundred?”

  The crowd was silent.

  Seriously?

  And how screwed up was it that she was offended that no vampire wanted to bid on her?

  “Two hundred,” a woman called unenthusiastically, as if she were doing the auctioneer a favor in offering so much. Jeez Louise. Unlike the others in the crowd, this vamp looked like she’d stepped out of the 1940s—bright red lipstick, smooth, stylized hair, and a clingy dress that fell to just below her knee.

  “Two hundred going once, twice, sold!”

  The auctioneer moved in front of Quinn and gripped her chin painfully. At first, she thou
ght he was about to seek his retribution. Almost too late, she realized he was trying to capture her mind. And like Arturo, he was failing.

  Her pulse skipped. She had to pretend to be enthralled!

  She forced herself to meet his gaze, then let her eyelids droop, her eyes unfocus. As her pulse continued to pound, he knelt to release her shackle. A big, bald, ebony-skinned man strode up onto the stage and took her by the arm. She didn’t fight him, didn’t even look at him as he steered her down the wooden steps to the woman who’d bought her.

  “Hold her with the rest,” the woman said with a casual wave of a slender, manicured hand.

  “Yes, Mistress.” As the auctioneer listed the attributes of the man who’d been chained behind her, the bald man led her through the crowd and out the door into what appeared to be true night. The street was lined with horse-drawn conveyances of every size and shape, the horses nickering softly. Across the street sat a couple of automobiles—a Land Rover SUV and a monster pickup. With disappointment, Quinn saw no sign of a yellow Jeep.

  Her captor led her to a small gathering of three men, two of whom she recognized as slaves who’d been bought before her—a skinny man in suit pants and wingtips and an Asian in basketball shorts and high-tops. The third was a big, blond wrestler type with hair that shimmered like Horace’s and Susie’s had, dressed all in white. A guard, then.

  Still fighting to appear mindless, she noted that the other two slaves remained unfettered. And why would they bother to tie or chain them if they’d been enthralled? They wouldn’t. Which was exactly what she’d been counting on. If she planned to make a move, she’d have to do it soon, before her new vampire mistress arrived. If that vamp moved anywhere near as quickly as the ones who’d attacked her and Zack, there’d be no outrunning her. Hopefully, the two guards didn’t have that kind of speed, or she was going nowhere.

  If she could make it behind the building across the street, perhaps she’d find alleyways to escape through.

  She waited until the man who’d fetched her from the stage left again, no doubt returning to his vampire mistress. When the man in white turned away, Quinn took a breath for courage and took off, running as fast as her feet would carry her over the dirt-packed road.

  Moments later, she heard the guard’s shout and feared her escape was over before it had begun. But the big man didn’t come after her, and she wondered if she might just pull this off after all. Her heart pounding in her throat, she darted down the nearest alley. It was lined with barrels and crates, boxes, and metal cylinders of all shapes and sizes. She considered trying to hide, but decided that way would almost certainly lead to capture. Ahead, the alley dead-ended into another. Once she turned the corner, she’d be out of sight of any pursuer. She might just make it!

  But as she turned right into the connecting alleyway, she pulled up short at the sight of the woman standing there, as if waiting—the red-lipsticked, now-furious-faced vampire who’d bought her.

  Holy hell. There is no outrunning these bastards! Not unless an errant sunbeam kept them at bay. The female stood a few feet away in her slinky dress, looking as if she’d merely run a few feet to catch a taxi instead of zero-to-sixtying it in high heels to catch a runaway slave. The woman moved . . . zoomed—there was no other word for it—closing the distance between them to snap a thick metal slave’s collar around Quinn’s neck before Quinn even registered the movement. She felt the heavy metal bite into her collarbones. A moment later, her mouth exploded in pain, blood tricking over her tongue. The bitch had slapped her across the mouth. Hard! Though she never saw the vamp’s hand move.

  The woman grabbed her arm and dragged her back to where the others waited, plus one more. Another female slave, a slender brunette, whom she must have just bought. The two big guards placed collars on all of them and fed a chain through the eyebolts of one collar, then the other, stringing them together. Quinn was last. The female vamp pushed Quinn forward, and she soon felt the clank of steel against her neck as she was chained to the others. Four across, the two men on one side, the two women on the other.

  One by one, the female vamp unenthralled Quinn’s companions. The woman gasped. The Asian growled. Wingtip remained perfectly silent. None of these three had been hysterical during the auction, as Quinn remembered. They’d all been stoic and quietly furious.

  The two giants left, returning several minutes later, each carrying a brightly-lit lantern and leading three horses between them.

  The humans eyed one another, but remained mute as the two giants and the vampire mounted. The bald guard rode around them, coming to a stop before the four slaves. “Follow me and make no sound. The more you cry out, the worse it will be.”

  His words chilled. With that cryptic statement, he started forward. None of them moved. Not until the first crack of the whip slashed down the farthest man’s back, and he stumbled forward, dragging his chained companions with him. The other three hastily caught up, none wishing for a taste of that whip.

  But moments later, Quinn heard the crack, felt the lick of stinging fire down her back, and clamped down hard against the cry of pain that clawed to get out. Over and over, the whip cracked, flaying the four of them equally. It didn’t seem to matter what they did, whether they walked quickly or slowly, not even if they cried out as Wingtip had begun to do every time he was hit.

  Quinn’s back blazed, her cheeks growing damp with the tears she tried to hold back. Fury rode her, a need to grab the lash and beat its wielder to a bloody pulp, but she was collared to the others, unable to move except as they did. And even if she could move, she’d seen the vampire’s speed for herself. She was helpless against her. They all were.

  The bald man turned, something akin to sympathy in his dark eyes. “She’s a pain-feeder. When she’s sated, she will stop. If you anger her, she will continue regardless.”

  A pain-feeder.

  She hoped to heaven Zack hadn’t been taken by such a creature. More than a week he’d been trapped here.

  The lash tore through her shirt, burning a strip of fire down her back for the fourth time. Quinn hunched her shoulders against the pain, squeezing her eyes closed against the tears she couldn’t control.

  Beside her, the other woman cried out as the lash finally broke her composure.

  Block after block, they walked, in the heart of downtown. It was true dark, now, and she could see little beyond the light shed by the two lanterns. But twice she’d spied street names on the corners of buildings and knew they walked east on K Street, not far from the Capitol, for whatever good it did her.

  The woman beside her glanced at her, then away. “What is this place?” she whispered.

  Quinn hesitated, not wishing to draw the vampire’s fury, yet feeling incredible sympathy for the woman. “Washington, V.C. Vamp City. Some kind of otherworld for vampires.”

  “Hell on Earth for humans,” the woman muttered.

  “Silence!” The lash burned across Quinn’s shoulder. A second snap, and the woman beside her groaned. Quinn had to hand it to her, and to their other two companions. Only Wingtip had yelled at the sting of the whip and only the last time or two. The vampire had chosen her slaves well.

  At the corner of K and Third, the vampire called for them to stop, and the black man rode back to his mistress.

  “Bring me the smaller woman,” the vampire commanded. “I don’t want the fighter.”

  The woman beside Quinn gasped. One of the men muttered a low, “Fuck.”

  Quinn grasped the other woman’s hand. “She won’t kill you. She paid too much money for you.” She prayed she was right.

  As the big black guard unlatched her collar, the woman fought, kicking out, clearly done with acting strong and stoic, and Quinn couldn’t blame her. The guard slung her over one broad, bare shoulder, carrying her to his mistress as if she weighed nothing.

  Quinn glanced over her shoulder, watching as t
he female vamp took the struggling woman from him and grabbed her against her with the ease of an adult cradling a small child. The vampire’s fangs dropped, her pupils turning white as she struck, sinking her fangs deep into the throat of her victim.

  Quinn turned away, sickened, terrified the vamp would drain her dry and toss her aside like so much trash.

  The sucking, hungry sound of the vampire’s feeding had the rest of them edgy and tense. Quinn was certain she wasn’t the only one wondering if she’d be next.

  Now that they were still, the chains no longer clanking, the sounds from the auction began to drop like pebbles in a pond around them—the clip-clop of retreating horses, the rattle of horse tackle, the low keening of sharp misery punctuated by the occasional shout or scream. And underneath it all, the sound of a vehicle engine. One of the two she’d seen parked across from the auction?

  Moments later, a familiar yellow Jeep turned the corner, kicking up a small cloud of dust, Arturo in the driver’s seat. Quinn’s knees nearly buckled in relief. Then again, did he even know she was here? Would he care? And if he was looking for her, it might be only to track her down and torture her for hurting . . . killing? . . . Ernesta with the water pitcher.

  Her stomach twisted sickeningly at the thought. But she’d still choose him over the pain-feeder who’d just bought her.

  With wary eyes, she watched as he slowed the Jeep to a crawl, then pulled to a stop a short distance in front of them, climbing out with a smile she could hardly credit. A bright, boyish, charmer’s smile that did strange things to her insides and seemed so out of place on such a dangerous male. And it was firmly directed at her new mistress.

  He was dressed, as before, all in black, the sheath of a long knife hanging from his waist. Dangerous and armed. His dark hair ruffled by the wind, Arturo was the epitome of rugged handsomeness as he strolled past Quinn, sparing her no glance.

  “I see you’ve been shopping, Francesca.” Clearly, they were old friends. “Stopping for lunch on your way home?”