she had been very clear about the location within the club—
There it was. A steel door in the far corner.
He beelined for the thing and ripped it open. The stairwell beyond smelled nasty and was refrigerator-cold, and he made fast work out of the descent. The instant he broke out into a subterranean corridor, he smelled the blood. Fresh. Female.
Vampire.
“Sonofabitch.”
Striding down, he used his nose to determine whether there was anyone else around. Nope, right now, although there had been plenty of traffic tonight: All kinds of faded scents, human and vampire, masculine and feminine, lingered like shadows, nothing but two-dimensional representations of the living-and-breathing who had come down here and fucked and gone back up to the party.
The female who had done the dialing had apparently not stuck around. So it was impossible to know which of the scents was hers.
But he knew where to stop.
In front of one of the many doors.
The fresh blood was loud as a scream here.
Before he opened the way in, he frowned and dropped to his haunches. A single footprint gleamed red on the concrete floor, its heel toward the door, its triangled toes pointed away. V looked up and down the corridor. Yes . . . there. Another print. Nearly invisible. And then a final one after that, so faint he only saw it because he was looking for the damn thing.
The killer? he wondered. Or the caller who reported she’d found a body?
Maybe they were one in the same.
He rose to his full height, grabbed the door handle, and opened up. The area beyond was pitch black, and the piss-poor light from the flickering fixtures in the corridor didn’t illuminate shit. Didn’t matter. He knew exactly where the body was, and not just because of the overwhelming scent of blood. As his eyes adjusted, he could tell there was something hanging from the ceiling directly in front of him, and like the footprint, it glistened, the spastic light from over his shoulder blinking across glossy contours.
V unsheathed his lead-lined glove, releasing the glowing palm and fingers of his curse from the confines that protected the world from immolation. The illumination that emanated from his hand was so bright, he blinked from the glare, and as he held it forward, he ground his molars.
A masked female was hanging from the ceiling, a meat hook piercing the base of her skull, its speared point protruding out of her open mouth and touching the tip of her nose. Her throat had been slashed, the veins draining their load down the front of her naked body, her blood a transparent death shroud that colored her pale flesh bright red.
Through the mask’s twin holes, her eyes were open and staring straight at V.
“Motherfucker,” he said.
Just like the other two.
* * *
Boone opened the front door to his father’s house and stepped over the threshold. The familiar smells of lemon floor polish, freshly baked bread, and roses from the ladies’ parlor made him feel like he was in a distorted dream.
It should be different, he thought as he looked around the formal foyer. Everything should be different.
His father was no longer alive. And that monumental change seemed like the kind of thing that should be reflected in this mansion that had always defined the male. Sure as his station in society and his money and his bloodline had made Altamere the male he was, so too had this sprawling manse determined the course of, and provided the grounding to, his life.
“The door is ajar.”
At the clipped syllables, Boone looked to the left. Marquist was standing in the archway of the dining room. He had a polishing cloth in his hand, his jacket was removed and his starched white sleeves were jacked up by a pair of black elastic bands.
The door is ajar.
As if the butler were part of the alarm system of the house.
“My father is dead,” Boone said.
Marquist blinked. And then that cloth started to tremble ever so slightly. Other than that, the male showed no reaction at all.
The butler blinked a number of times. And Boone knew damn well any upset was not because of the loss of the female. Ehrmine had been no more significant to Marquist’s nightly existence than she had been to Altamere’s.
Without another word, the butler turned on his heel and walked away. His free hand, the one without the cloth, reached out into thin air, as if, in his mind,