Bloodshifted Page 5

  I walked under the glass panel in a circle. “You have parties you advertise heavily once or twice a year where you tell people they can go wherever they want, so people down here can see what they’re missing—and you let people upstairs choose people below to call up. The people down here always feel like they’re performing—and the people up there get to feel like kings.”

  Jackson nodded. “Just add in some extraordinarily attractive and attentive women, quality drugs, and truly frightening bouncers for safety and keeping cops out.”

  In a town as striving as I’d always heard LA was, it was genius—and to a degree foolproof. Dammit. “I bet there’s a line out the door.”

  “Every night.”

  I looked at the broom I held. “This place must be a license to print money—so why the hell are we carrying buckets?”

  “Paying employees comes with liabilities. We just cash the DJs and the bouncers out each night. The more people we have here during the day, the more we have to explain why our Masters only come out after sundown. Raven does have some dedicated bloodslaves, a few registered family donor lines, but, well”—his lips twisted to one side, as if he was weighing what to tell me—“it’s been a lean year, let’s just say.” He reached into his bucket, pulled out a roll of trash bags, and handed me one. “Come on. I always start in the bathrooms. I like to get the worst parts done first.”

  * * *

  Hell’s bathrooms were stainless-steel affairs, all the easier to clean with harsh chemicals, but still gross. Jackson claimed they had attendants in them, but I assumed those people were just there to make sure that people weren’t doing drugs they hadn’t purchased locally, and not keeping the place clean.

  I tried to do a good job, within the limits of what could actually be done—I was a daytimer, not a magician. But keeping busy was good for me, it kept my mind off Lars’s attack, and while I was scrubbing I could pretend that this was some sort of shitty summer camp where I could just bide my time until my parents returned to save me.

  Only my mom probably thought I was dead, and if I was going to be kind to her I would have to keep it that way and not explain what had happened to me. She’d never even get to meet her own grandson.

  Oh, baby—you’d love her. And she’d love you. She’d spoil you half to death, I know it. A wave of sadness hit me like a physical blow. What Lars had done wasn’t half as bad as knowing I could never really go home.

  “What’s wrong?” Jackson asked from two stalls down. I inhaled, startled, and realized I’d been holding my breath.

  Everything was wrong. Not that I could tell him that. I gathered myself up, using the wall of the stall I was in for strength. “I just feel like some sad vampire Cinderella in here.”

  “It’s been a while since you cleaned a toilet, huh?”

  “Yes. Not that I’m too good for this, but it has, as you say, been a while.” I leaned back onto my heels. I couldn’t imagine doing this while eight months’ pregnant, either.

  “What did you used to be?”

  “I’m a nurse.” I was unwilling to use the past tense just yet. Nursing wasn’t something you ever gave up—either you were or you weren’t one. It was a permanent state of being.

  “So how did you find out about vampires?”

  “I used to work on a secret hospital floor for sanctioned donors.” I left out the occasional werecreatures and shapeshifters and daytimers and blood. No matter how safe I might feel around Jackson, the less anyone here knew about me the better.

  I heard him stand and he appeared in the doorway of the stall—the brows on his forehead knit into almost one solid line. “You mean there’s a place where they take care of donors? On purpose? Keep them in one piece?”

  “Yeah.” Which, I realized, implied that here was not like that.

  His expression slowly relaxed as he considered things. “That sounds almost civilized. And it explains why Lars wasn’t able to take you, plus or minus a pint. You knew about the system. Where was that?”

  “Back east,” I said, still being coy. He snorted and didn’t press, but then he went quiet, clearly thinking hard. I felt compelled to say something. “It’s not like it’s equality central out there or anything.”

  He nodded, standing at attention with his mop. “Still. It’s nice to know that there are different ways to be.”

  I nodded back at him. There was a chance that in the future he’d be a vampire too. Maybe if he was given a choice in the matter he’d run things differently. I hoped that I would, if it ever happened to me.

  * * *

  After we finished with Hell’s bathroom, Jackson led the way to the stairs for the second floor. We passed a side hall with a door at the end of it and I stopped.

  There was sunlight on the other side of that door. I knew it.

  “Hey, no, don’t even think it—” Jackson said, turning around.

  “Why isn’t it guarded?” I stared at it over his shoulder. It was locked, but it wasn’t like the thick oak doors downstairs—it was just a normal-looking door. Wide, but mostly decorative. Impulsive muscles answered desires I hadn’t voiced yet—I knew I had the strength to tear it in two. Jackson moved to stand in my way before I could do anything.

  I was stronger than he was right now, I knew it. I could take this mop in my hands and snap it and stab it through his neck if I had to—what the hell part of me was thinking that?

  The same part of me that hadn’t been afraid of killing Lars.

  I quieted in horror just as Jackson started speaking.

  “Think things through, Edie. It’s not locked from this side because it doesn’t need to be. You could leave, but you wouldn’t get far. And there’s nowhere that you can hide; Raven would always be able to find you. You don’t want to piss him off like that—you haven’t seen him mad.”

  The human part of me was like a compass—I knew it was late afternoon in winter now, and the sun was beginning to dip. If I did leave I couldn’t get far enough by nightfall, and after nightfall there’d be nowhere I was safe.

  I didn’t have any ID so I couldn’t fly—and it’s not like I had any money to buy tickets anyway. I could find a police station—and tell them what? That vampires were after me? Ask them to keep me safe inside a cell? I’d seen my share of crazy people working at the hospital, I knew exactly what the cops would think and say. Rightly so. And I’d seen before how vampires could command people to make them do what they wanted them to. If I gave any cops my real name they’d think I was insane—I was sure I was on the roster of those who’d gone down with the Maraschino. If I gave them a fake name, and seemed crazy enough, they might keep me in a holding cell overnight, which was when Raven would show up and convince everyone there that I didn’t exist, after he told one of them to fetch me.

  I could call Asher, but what then? Torture him and then put him in harm’s way? Ask him to take on an entire vampire House on his own?

  I stared at the door, a hundred different pathways spooling out inside my head, none of them ending well, like reading a choose-your-own-adventure book where every option made you die or, worse yet, killed someone you loved.

  “I shouldn’t have shown it to you this early. Please, trust me. If you left like that your lives would be in terrible danger.” Jackson grabbed my wrist and gently pulled me toward the stairs. I stiffened and he quickly let go—but it wasn’t because of his touch, it was the plural he’d used. “I’m sorry—I overheard Wolf and Raven talking before they left last night.”

  I swallowed. “Does everyone know?”

  “Just them. And me.”

  I wondered what the outcome would have been if Lars had known—if his hammer would have been aimed at my belly instead of my head.

  “They’ll find out eventually, I mean, they can’t help it—when it starts having its own heartbeat, they’ll be able to hear it with fresh blood. We can hear babies here all the time, fetal alcohol syndrome ahoy. But I won’t say anything to anyone before then, I swear.”

>   Just how far could I trust him? I didn’t know. I might not know until it was too late. It seemed like the only way to find out anything here was the hard way. He stepped back, giving me a little space. “Come on—we still have two more floors to go,” he said, and I reluctantly followed.

  * * *

  Purgatory was nicer than Hell. While Hell had seemed a little on the garish carnival side, Perg had an Old World cathedral theme, mixed with a light S&M, stone walls with gargoyles grinning down from above, and wide black leather couches.

  Heaven was the nicest by far, appropriately. It was white-on-white, and managed to feel both exotic and monied, with white leather chairs and white marble tables and white polar bear skins on the walls. It was more like an exclusive club than a dance hall, with the space devoted more to lounging than dancing—probably because most of the dancers on this floor were paid to do so—and it had the most extensive bar I’d ever seen. The bathrooms were far nicer here as well, with walls and floors of white marble, and they were less dirty—although they needed more meticulous work, as the white marble was unforgiving.

  “How’re you doing, Cinderelly?” Jackson asked when we were done.

  “I think I’ve bleached my skirt. Does that mean I can throw it away and get a new one?”

  His eyes glazed over for a second, as though he was listening to someone inside himself, and not to me. “We’ll find out soon enough,” he answered slowly.

  I felt whatever it was, too. Like I’d just let the last bit of sand fall out of my hand, or let go of a bird I didn’t know I’d been holding. Like a piece of me that had been mine was gone.

  “It’s always a little bit like dying when the sun goes down,” Jackson said. “You’d think it’d be the reverse, but it’s not, not for us.”

  “Are they up now?” I lowered my voice without thinking about it, and he nodded.

  “Yeah. Raven will know you’re alive and where you are, but he’ll want to see you, to make sure you’re still in one piece. We’d best go present ourselves,” he said, and started leading us back down into the actual catacombs.

  * * *

  It was easier to pass by the door to the outside world at night. While I missed fresh air, it didn’t tempt me like the thought of sunlight did. We put our supplies back into the closet and then started our trek below.

  “Who built all these tunnels, anyhow?”

  “Don’t know. There’s a huge network of them underneath LA, though. Most of them collapsed during assorted earthquakes, but apparently the ones we’re in are stable. We’ll know an earthquake’s coming when all of our Masters run out the door.”

  “What if it happens during daylight?”

  “Then we’ll all die, and they’ll slowly crawl their way out at night.”

  “Awesome.”

  “I try not to think about it too much.”

  He led us through to the chamber where I’d been introduced the morning before. Everyone else was already waiting. Celine was again impeccably dressed, this time in club wear, a tight-fitting red dress with holes cut out to show expanses of white skin that somehow managed to stay classy. She was behind her Mistress, whose name I hadn’t learned yet, and who was dressed in a long skin-fitting white dress that flared at the neck and knees, intentionally modernizing a queen’s silhouette, with high hair and an oversized beauty mark to match. The male vampire whose name I didn’t know was dressed in leather pants with a fitted black shirt and a suggestively buckled collar. I assumed Celine would be in Hell, her Mistress in Heaven, and the unknown vampire in Perg, based on clothing alone.

  Wolf was still Wolf, though, in a leather vest and T-shirt, more muscled than manly, and Raven was still Raven, lounging on his couch in head-to-toe purple-black—the shade certain bird feathers took on under the right light. He wore a coat that would have been a costume on anyone else, swirling down to his knees. Jackson nudged me forward to stand by Lars, who was dressed in a black business suit, hovering by Raven’s side.

  Lars didn’t look any worse for our fight—and neither did I. He was still angry at me, I could see it in his eyes, and almost feel the hate radiating off him. I wondered if he was worried that I would rat him out to our shared Master.

  “Who put her in that?” Raven asked aloud as I took my place. I noticed he wasn’t asking me.

  Jackson stepped forward. “There wasn’t any other clothing around, Master.”

  Raven’s thin lips puckered in distaste. “She can’t attend the bathrooms in that. Not even on the first floor.”

  The queenly female vampire looked to Celine, who bowed apologetically, while gesturing to her more petite form. “I don’t have anything in her size.” It was hard not to roll my eyes, but I managed.

  Raven sighed as though my fashion troubles ought to be beneath him. “Jackson—”

  Jackson stepped forward at the mention of his name. “If I may, Sire’s Sire—”

  Beside me, Lars tensed. Maybe he thought Jackson would be the weak link. Raven waved his hand in the air. “By all means,” he said as ironically as possible.

  Jackson went on, seeming used to being ironized. “I don’t think she should be upstairs at all. She was a nurse before she came here.” It was my turn to tense. I hadn’t considered that Jackson might rat me out, instead. “It is possible that she may be of use to Natasha.”

  Raven made a thoughtful noise as I looked around the room for a person I hadn’t met yet. And a cruel smile parted Raven’s lips as he looked toward the door behind me, and I looked over my shoulder at the girl walking through. “Speak of the devil.”

  Her black hair was pulled into a high ponytail, which then spilled down her back in a thick wave. She had her father’s ice-blue eyes and his widow’s peak and his same aquiline nose, and was wearing an oddly modest black turtleneck—which I realized hid her neck—and jeans. A simple bracelet hung at her right wrist, charms dangling. Despite her youth and her casual-Friday outfit, I recognized her instantly—she looked exactly like her father, Nathaniel, the psychopath who’d infected and then sunk the Maraschino. He’d sacrificed four thousand innocent people in his attempt to raise a monster to obliterate the vampires that’d kidnapped her.

  When she saw Raven she broke into the world’s hugest smile. It was completely disconcerting.

  “Hey baby,” she said, and walked across the room to him as if the rest of us weren’t there.

  “Dear one,” he replied, reaching out for her. She hopped onto the couch and folded under his arm and he held her the exact way Asher held me sometimes, closing his eyes and pulling her close.

  I had no idea what to make of that. Her resemblance to her father was chilling—and he was why I was trapped here. But watching her snuggle with Raven—and him snuggle back—was like watching a nature program, viewing the intimate habits of an unknown beast, being both aghast and unable to look away. Beside me, Lars tensed. I wondered if Lars had known her father—or if he’d ever tried to kill her, too.

  “How’s work tonight?” Raven asked her solicitously, stroking a hand through her hair.

  “It was good—I’m close, things are almost done,” she told Raven, pulling back to smile up at him. “I just need two more test subjects. I want to be sure.”

  “Of course. I appreciate your thirst for perfection.” And he smiled down at her, amused, showing teeth. It was as if the rest of us weren’t even in the room anymore. While he couldn’t give her warmth or real love, I realized he could give her his completely undivided attention, a particular talent of vampires—and she basked in it like a flower does the sun. I looked around quickly, and saw the male vampire I didn’t know grimace.

  Jackson did more than that. He groaned. She turned from Raven’s shoulder to look at him with an irritated frown. “I wouldn’t ask for them if I didn’t need them.”

  “You said that last week,” Jackson said. Wolf subtly moved his hand to stop him from speaking further, and I could almost see Jackson biting his tongue.

  “Jackson’s just
upset that you’re making so much extra work for him,” Wolf apologized, as though Jackson were incapable of speaking for himself.

  “Good. I would hate it if we no longer shared the same goals,” Raven said, thin lips pulling into a dangerous smile above Natasha’s head. He glanced at me again, then squeezed her, and pointed his chin at me. “Could you use the services of a nurse in your lab?”

  She shrugged. “I could use-use her,” she said, “and then lazy Jackson would only have to find me one more—”

  “No, I need her alive, for now. I meant to help you. I worry that you’re working too hard.”

  “Of course I am. I want to make things perfect for you,” she said without the slightest hint of guile.

  “I know. But maybe if she could help you some, you’d have more time to spend with me.”

  The look on her face was meltingly sweet. “I’d like that.”

  “It’s done then.” Raven looked over to me. “You will do whatever Natasha tells you to,” he commanded. I could feel the order go through my body, as if he’d just chiseled it into my bones.

  Natasha turned to regard me as my pulse began to race. I knew every vampire in the room could smell my fear—because I’d just been given over to a psychopath’s daughter like some baby bunny to a toddler on Easter. Fuck you very much, Jackson.

  She didn’t catch my horror, though—or perhaps, she was so used to seeing people afraid of her that she was oblivious to it, even taking it as some sort of tribute.

  Raven smiled indulgently at her, leaning forward, rubbing his cheek against her hair, before turning to regard the rest of us in the room. “We should be open already—unless there’s anything else to deal with tonight?” No one moved or made a sound. “Let’s get on with it then. And speaking of extra work, Jackson—I’ve left some trash at the crossroads for you to dispose of, although you should make sure to blame that on Lars.”