Rolling onto her side, she curled into the fetal position and let misery and, finally, sleep, carry her away.
Quinn stood in the frozen food aisle of the grocery store, staring at the door of the ice-cream section, which had begun to bulge strangely. Light suddenly burst out around the edges. Quinn gasped and lunged, pressing against it. No! The light pushed to escape, screaming in her ears, fighting against her until the door pulsed and groaned, threatening to shatter. But she held on tight, turning to push her back against the freezing glass. No! If the light escaped, something terrible would happen. Terrible!
Across the aisle, twelve-year-old Zack sat, leaning back against the frozen-orange-juice door, his legs crossed, head bent low over his GameBoy.
Don’t look, Zack.
She struggled against the troublesome, stubborn light until she was panting from exertion, her arms weak with strain. But she couldn’t stop fighting. If she pushed hard enough and long enough, the light would die and go away. No one would ever know.
Zack would never know.
Quinn woke with a start, sitting up, groggy and confused.
A sound. At the door.
She tensed as the door opened, then frowned as a woman she’d never seen before slipped inside. A woman with the faintly glowing hair of a Slava.
Quinn struggled out of the pit of the bed and onto her feet, brushing her tangled hair out of her face.
The woman, as tall as Quinn and dressed in black pants and a black T-shirt that had been turned inside out, clasped her hands nervously in front of her. “I’m here to help you escape.”
Quinn’s flesh tingled. “Why?” She shook her head, trying to clear it. Was she still dreaming?
Impatience crossed plain, sharp features, lightning-fast. “Grant sent me. Do you want to leave Vamp City or not?” With that, she opened the door, looked both ways, and slipped outside.
Crap. Give a girl a minute to wake up before you spring something like that. But . . . hell, yes, I want to escape.
Quinn grabbed her boots and slipped out the door, closing it behind her, then, on silent feet, ran after the woman. She caught up to her just as the woman stopped in front of a door four down from Quinn’s own and clicked her fingernails against it, one after the other, in a careful rhythm. A moment later, the door opened.
The woman slipped inside, and Quinn followed, nodding to the man holding the door, a tall, dark-skinned male dressed in the same all-black clothing as the woman, an impressive dragon tattoo curling around his forearm. But his close-cropped curls were lacking that Slava shine. Holy hell.
As he closed the door behind him, she whirled on him. “You’re a vampire.”
“No way.” He turned and lifted his shirt, showing her a back sporting fresh, ugly welts that probably looked a lot like the ones decorating her own back now. “New slave, just like you. Hopefully, a soon-to-be ex-slave. Move,” he said stiffly.
Quinn turned back to the room—one identical to her own except for the manhole in the center of the floor. And the ladder leading down.
Escape. If this was a dream, she was going to be thoroughly pissed.
The woman grabbed a flashlight off the washstand as the man started down the ladder. Quinn shoved her feet in her boots and tied the laces with fast, excited fingers.
“Quickly.” At the woman’s silent urging to precede her down, Quinn hurried to the hole, grabbed the top rail, and swung herself onto the ladder. As she started down, she heard the woman follow, accompanied by the soft squeak of hinges and the click of the hatch. The room’s light disappeared, to be replaced by the flashlight beam. How was such an obvious manhole hidden from the vampires’ eyes?
Down and down she climbed, damp rock on every side. She knew nothing about these people, whether they were really sent by Grant, whether Grant was even friend or foe. But any risk was worth the chance of escape and the possibility of finding Zack before Cristoff went after him.
She heard booted feet hit the stone floor below her and knew that the man must have landed. A second flashlight erupted behind her, allowing her to see the last few rungs. The man said nothing as she joined him, but his eyes gleamed with excitement. Why? Had these two been sent by another of Cristoff’s rivals to kidnap her? Was this guy looking for some kind of reward for bringing her in?
It didn’t matter. One way or another, she’d make this work to her advantage.
The woman completed her descent, then led the way down a long tunnel deep beneath the castle as Quinn followed, the man bringing up the rear.
Finally, the woman stopped, rapping softly on what appeared to be solid rock. How were there tunnels in the rock this far below D.C. . . . and no water? She thought this part of D.C. had been built on a swamp. Then again, this wasn’t D.C., was it?
To her surprise, a narrow, short strip of rock swung open. A door. For midgets.
The woman bent low and swept under. Quinn hesitated only a moment before doing the same. In for a penny, in for a pound.
On the other side, she straightened, taking in a cave easily three times the size of her apartment back home, the walls unadorned except for the three lanterns sitting on various natural shelves, their light flickering over the damp walls. Around the cave, close to a dozen people stood watching her, as many men as women, all dressed similarly to the first two in varying shades of black and navy, some with shoes or boots, others barefoot. None of them had hair with that phosphorescent glow except the woman who’d come for her.
And Grant Blackstone.
He stepped forward, the only one still dressed in nineteenth-century landowner garb, his expression no more friendly than it had been any other time she’d met him. “I have a proposition for you, sorceress.”
Nice to see you, too, Grant. “What’s the proposition?” And really, was she likely to say no? Even if she wanted to, she probably couldn’t find her way back to her jail cell. And she certainly didn’t want to.
“I want you to free these slaves.” His hand waved to encompass the entire lot.
“And how am I supposed to do that?”
“Send them through a sunbeam.”
Quinn frowned. “They can’t walk through on their own?”
One of the slaves stepped forward, a petite young woman with a bit of a weight problem. “I heard how you escaped. So a couple of days ago, I was in the right place when a sunbeam broke through, and I ran right into it and out the other side, still in V.C. Three times. It didn’t work.”
“Could you see the real world in the light?”
She looked surprised. “No.”
Quinn turned to Grant. “Why can I do it, and she can’t?”
“Because you’re a sorcerer.”
“What about you? Are you able to see the other side through the sunbeams?”
Grant lightly scratched his beard, his nails clicking at his whiskers. “I don’t know. I rarely leave the castle and haven’t seen the sunbeams.” A wistful look crossed his face. “I should like to. It’s been far too long since I’ve seen the sun.”
Quinn frowned, turning to look at the girl thoughtfully. “Even if she couldn’t see the outside world, she should have been able to run into it. The sunbeams are the real world breaking through.”
“True,” Grant replied. “But perhaps it takes a sorcerer to lead a human.”
She was a human, dammit. He made it sound like she was one of the weirdo crea
tures that inhabited this place.
“Was your brother touching you when you came through together?”
“Yes.” She’d been holding his arm. She glanced at the hopeful faces, then back at Grant. “You want me to help them escape.”
A chorus of whispered yeses and sighs echoed off the cave walls.
Grant nodded. “The ten in this room.”
She took a quick count. There were eleven in all—nine with normal hair plus the woman and Grant. With understanding, she met the sorcerer’s gaze. “Not you.”
“No. I can never leave.”
“What about her?” Quinn glanced pointedly at the woman who’d sprung her from her room, the other one with the glowing Slava hair.
“Celeste only turned Slava a year ago. She should be able to escape.”
Celeste stepped forward, her features pinched. “I don’t care about the risk. My children were left orphans when I was captured. I have to get back to them.”
Quinn’s heart went out to her and the children whose mother had been missing for . . . what? Three years, now? She turned to Grant. “If I can hand them through without going myself, I will. But I’m not leaving Vamp City.” She resisted adding without my brother. It was time she started keeping that to herself.
“Good enough. But if you’re going after your brother, you should know he’s no longer at Smithson Castle.”
So much for the secrecy. “Smithson Castle?”
“Lazzarus’s stronghold.”
So, had Arturo lied about that, too? Or was Grant lying, now? Was there anyone she could trust to tell her the truth? “Where is he now? And how do you know?”
“He was moved yesterday to the Gladiator camp.”
Her eyes widened, her blood turning cold. “The Games?”
“Yes. He was the one chosen for this week’s.”
She swayed. Her head began to pound. “How do you know?”
“I may not leave this castle often, but I have a valuable network of spies.”
“You don’t even know what he looks like.”
“No, but Arturo does. It was his spy my own learned this from.”
Arturo had probably seen him that day when she and Zack first came through.
“So Arturo knows that he was moved.”
“He does.”
Hell. Would the traitor grab him and take him to Cristoff or leave him there to die? She squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her fingers to her eyelids. She wasn’t sure which she preferred.
Zack.
Not the Games. Was there ever a kid less suited to violence than her brother? He had height, but little muscle, and had never been into sports or skateboarding or anything physical. He’d always been a mind kid—video games, computer games, school. He was a great student with a quick, agile brain. And now they were going to put him in an arena and order him to fight to the death.
The cold seeped from her blood into her flesh and down into her organs, a debilitating frost that threatened to strip her of her ability to think, to act.
She turned to Grant. “Tell me how to find the gladiator camp.”
“Not until you’ve fulfilled your part of the bargain.”
She blinked. “Not until I’ve freed all these people?”
“Yes.”
Her temper flared. “Do you have any idea how long it can take for the sunbeams to appear? It took me six days . . . six days . . . to get back in after I escaped.” From the moment she’d first arrived in this place, she’d been chained, enslaved, ordered about, and punished . . . by vampires. She’d be damned if she was taking it from a slave, too. She closed the distance between them, eyes shooting fire as she got in his face. “We’re doing it my way this time. You tell me where the gladiator camp is, and we’ll start in that direction, hunting sunbeams as we go. But the Games are in two days. Zack will be dead in two days. Two days that aren’t likely to matter one bit to your buddies here.”
But Grant wasn’t one to be cowed, especially by a sorceress who couldn’t find, let alone control, her power. Blue eyes flashed with a temper equal to her own. “You do realize you’re not getting out of here without a guide.”
Quinn straightened, folding her arms across her chest. “Then it looks like we have a stalemate.” She frowned as the implication of his demands hit her for the first time. “Or a trap.”
It was his turn to frown. “A trap?”
“If Vamp City’s magic fails, you die. Are you convinced I don’t have the power to renew it? Is that it?”
“I have no idea what kind of power you possess.” But he looked away as he said it, making her think he knew precisely. Making her think, too, that he was a lousy liar.
“If I escape Vamp City with my brother, I’ll never be back. You know it, and I know it. So either you think I’m going to be of no use in helping you renew the magic, or you don’t think I’ll ever escape. Which is it, Grant? Am I powerless, or are you planning for me to be captured once I help your friends?”
He scratched his jaw absently, studying her with those blue, blue eyes. “I have no plan for you to be captured. Escape Vamp City with my blessing.” So he did think she was powerless. Or he was just one more liar.
“Where’s the gladiator camp?” she persisted.
A muscle leaped in his jaw, but he told her. “Approximately H Street and North Capitol.”
That was only a few blocks from Union Station in the real D.C., which wouldn’t help her much in this world since she was pretty sure Union Station hadn’t been built until long after 1870. Still, she knew the general location. She’d find it.
Quinn met Grant’s gaze. “I promise you, I will do everything in my power to see these people free of this place. But my brother is not going to die for it. He comes first. If we run across a sunbeam as we head for the gladiator camp, I’ll get them through if I can.” She lifted her hands and dropped them again. “You have to understand, I don’t know how the sunbeams work. I don’t know if I can send them through without going with them. And I can’t risk leaving Vamp City and not being able to return for a week, again. But, I’ll do everything I can to get them out of here.”
The woman, Celeste, moved beside Grant, eyeing Quinn with eyes bright with hope. “I can live with that.”
“Me, too,” the dark-skinned man said. “If I can help free your brother, I’m down with that, too.”
She nodded, then swallowed as she remembered Lily. She didn’t even know if the girl was in Vamp City, though her pen’s lying on the sidewalk precisely where the worlds collided made it more than likely. Still, how was she supposed to find her, let alone free her? How, for that matter, was she supposed to free Zack from the gladiator camp? Her odds of accomplishing any of it were practically nonexistent.
For one dark moment, the weight of those impossible odds threatened to crush her, stealing her breath, her hope. Leaving either Zack or Lily behind was not an option. Yet how would she ever save them both when twice she’d found her freedom within this world devastatingly short-lived?
Celeste walked over and took Quinn’s hand. “Thank you. Bless you. You’re the only hope we have.”
The dark-skinned man joined her. “Yes, thank you, sorceress. We’ll be forever in your debt.”
Quinn felt that terrible weight lift slightly, enough for her to take a deep, unsteady breath. “Okay. Who’s leading us out of here?”
A guy with a stylishly shaggy haircut and silver reflective glasses unfo
lded himself from the back wall of the cave. “I’m your guide. Grab your packs and your stakes, boys and girls.” He turned and slammed his palm against the wall beside him, and yet another door opened in the stone. “We’re going home.”
She would never get used to this place.
Grant kissed Celeste’s cheek. “Be happy.” As she hurried to join the others filing through that back door, Grant turned to Quinn, his gaze probing, his expression enigmatic.
“Thank you,” Quinn said quietly.
He nodded once. “Stay out of the Crux.” She started to turn away, but he stopped her, his three-fingered hand on her arm. “Good luck.”
She might escape, but he never would. And his hatred of this place was palpable. She wasn’t sure what got into her, but she found herself leaning forward and placing a quick kiss on Grant Blackstone’s cheek. “Thanks, Grant. May you find happiness in some form.”
A small smile lifted his mouth, warming his eyes a few degrees. “Go.”
And she did.
Chapter Fourteen
Quinn left Grant and strode quickly across the cave, to where the dark-skinned slave waited for her by the hidden door in the stone.
The man handed her a twelve-inch-long wooden stake. “Don’t lose this. Vamps die if you stake them through the heart with wood.”
“So that legend really is true?” She ducked through the doorway into another dimly lit passage through the rock. The other slaves were already a distance ahead.
“It’s true,” he said, following her in.
“Who built all these tunnels?” The tunnels were barely tall enough for her, let alone anyone taller than her own five-foot-nine. “I would think we should be up to our eyeballs in water down here.”
“Slaves built them about fifty years ago. With Grant’s help.”
“With magic?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Are they hidden from the vampires?”
A Blood Seduction Page 19
