knew who was behind the new threat or what their goal was.
“I need to go talk to the family,” Tohr said as he went back to staring at the corpse. “Do we think the female is going to survive?”
“Hard to know, but her vital signs were poor when she went into surgery.” V exhaled over his shoulder, releasing a blue stream of smoke. “I’ll come with you.”
“Not your style, is it.”
“The son of this worthless male is worth the aggro.”
Tohr shook his head at the dead body. “At least we can all agree on that.”
Helania, blooded daughter of Eyrn, made sure the hood of her black cape stayed up as she weeded through the crowd of live-action role players. The LARPers were overwhelmingly human, although not exclusively so. There were at least three other vampires, in addition to herself, among the two or three hundred people who were dressed in Dracula, stewing in drugs of various sorts, and looking for sex from all manner of strangers under the guise of playing characters in the game Pyre’s Revyval.
The scent of fresh blood was so faint, she was not convinced her nose was actually picking up on it.
But she had to be sure.
As she moved through the throngs of people, hands reached out and brushed her arms . . . her shoulders . . . and she hated it. Over the last few months, however, she had gotten used to the physical intrusions. The humans who were playing at being other than themselves had no boundaries to protect of their own, and from behind their masks, they assumed she was under the roof of this abandoned, drafty old shirt factory for the same reason they were.
Not the case at all.
Through the purple lasers and gyrating bodies, she focused on the sturdy exit that was her goal. And as she closed in on the steel door, dread fisted her gut. The blood smell was growing ever thicker in the air—it was not enough for any human nose to pick up on, but to her vampire senses, it was like a scream piercing through ambient noise.
Something that was undeniable. Urgent. Terrifying.
Pulling open the heavy metal panel, she winced as the rusty hinges whined in protest. The stairwell to the lower level was badly lit, its air cold and damp, tinged with mold. She ignored all that. The coppery bloom of blood, as it rode a nasty updraft from the lower level, was all that mattered.
Slipping through the doorway, she whispered down the filthy concrete stairs. The temperature dropped perceptibly as she descended, and there was a second door at the bottom. This steel panel had had a far harder life than the upper one, its rectangular body kicked in such that it hung cockeyed from its hinges and did not sit properly in its jambs.
She opened the battered weight slowly, her hot hand on the cold lever, creating a shock that went through her nervous system like a chemical fire.
Peering around, her heart skipped a beat. The corridor beyond was broad as a street, arched at the low ceiling, stained like the inside of an old sewer pipe. Sixties-era fluorescent lights flickered from fixtures set overhead, their spastic illumination animating the series of doorways that extended into what felt like perpetuity.
The blood scent was obvious now.
Under her cape, under her hood, Helania shook so badly her teeth chattered, and even as her breath came out in puffs of white, she didn’t feel the cold.
Within the folds that covered her, she felt for the gun she had holstered at her waist. She had learned to shoot it about eight months ago, and she couldn’t say she was at ease with having the weapon on her. She wasn’t even sure she had the guts to use it, but she was trying not to be foolish. Unprotected. A victim.
Like her sister had been.
Stepping out into the corridor, she stuck to one side without brushing against the paint-flaked, mold-smudged walls. As quiet as she tried to be, her soft footfalls seemed to echo like thunder, and the fear pounding through her veins on hooves of steel was something she wondered if the others upstairs could hear over the music.
Helania’s body stopped before her brain gave the command.
The doorway was just like the others, made of wood panels nailed close together on horizontal supports, the arched top echoing that of the barreled ceiling like a stab at being stylish.
She looked around. She was alone, but there was no way