behind us, just the power of the two new vamps.
"What are you guys doing, running a halfway house for all vampires over five hundred years?" I asked.
Everyone turned towards me. The two female vamps smiled, most unpleasantly. They looked at me like I was a piece of candy and they wondered what sort of center I had. Soft and gooey, or hard with a nut in the middle? I'd had men undress me with their eyes, but I'd never had anything trying to picture what I'd look like with my skin off. Yikes.
"Do you have something to add?" Janos asked.
"You can't just drag a couple of underage girls in here and expect us to do nothing."
"On the contrary, Anita, we expect you to do many things."
I didn't like the phrasing of that. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"First, the young women aren't underage, are you, girls?"
The second girl just glared at him. Lisa shook her head, still staring at the floor.
"Tell her your ages," Janos said.
Neither of them answered. Ivy yanked hard enough to make the blonde girl cry out.
"Eighteen. I'm eighteen." She collapsed on the floor in a sobbing heap, and the vampires let go of her so she could do it.
One of the female vamps said, "Your age, now." Her voice was like quiet thunder, a warning of the coming storm.
The second girl's eyes widened behind her glasses. "I'm nineteen." There was fear now peeking out from behind her anger.
"Fine; they're over eighteen, but an unwilling human is still an unwilling human, regardless of age," I said.
"Would you play policeman here, Anita?" Janos asked. He sounded amused.
"I won't just stand here and watch you hurt them."
"You have a high opinion of yourself, Anita. Confident. I like that. Always so much more entertaining to break someone strong. The weaklings fold and cry and snivel, but the brave ones, they almost demand that you hurt them." He stalked towards me, reaching out one white spider-hand. "Do you want me to hurt you?"
I remembered Jean-Claude's warning not to use weapons, but fuck it, I was going for the Browning.
Jean-Claude was just suddenly there, holding Janos's wrist. Janos seemed impressed. Truthfully, so was I. I hadn't seen him move, and apparently neither had Janos. A nifty trick, that.
I let my hand relax away from the gun, though I was pretty sure that drawing it would make me feel better. But the purpose of tonight's exercise was not to make me feel better, it was to stay alive.
"No harm to any of us; that was the promise," Jean-Claude said.
Janos drew his wrist from Jean-Claude's grasp slowly, almost lingeringly, as if he enjoyed it. "Once Serephina's promise is given, she keeps it."
"Then why are the young women here?"
"Those two"--he motioned to Larry and me--"would truly not stand by and watch harm come to strangers?" He sounded surprised, but not unhappy about it.
"Sadly, yes," Jean-Claude said.
"And if they join the fray, you will come in to protect her?" Janos asked.
"If I must."
Janos smiled, and I could hear his skin creak with the strain of holding in his bones. "Splendid."
I saw a tremor run through Jean-Claude's back, as if he had been caught off guard. I was just plain confused.
"The two young women came willingly into our house. They knew what we were, and agreed to help us entertain guests."
I glanced at the second girl. "Is that true?"
One of her vampire guards touched her shoulder, lightly, but it was enough. "We came willingly, but we didn't know..." The vampire's hand squeezed. The girl's face crumbled in pain but she made no sound.
"They came of their own free will, and they are of the age of consent," Janos said.
"So what happens now?" I asked.
"Ivy, chain that one over there." He pointed as he said it to some fur-lined manacles to the left of the door. Ivy and Bruce picked up the girl, pulled her to her feet, and led her stumbling to the wall.
"Her back facing the room, please."
I stepped next to Jean-Claude and whispered, though I knew within reason they'd hear, "I don't like this."
"Nor I, ma petite."
"Can we stop it without breaking the truce?"
"Not unless they offer harm to us directly, no."
"What happens if I break the truce?"
"They will try to kill us, most likely."
There were five vampires in the room, three of them older than Jean-Claude. We would die. Dammit.
The blonde girl sobbed and struggled, pulling at her arms as the vampires chained her to the wall. She screamed and pulled so violently that without