He met my gaze. "I see accusation in your eyes, but remember this, ma petite, you asked me to bring you here. So do not blame this particular problem on me."
"Is our entertainment so boring?" Janos asked.
"We were discussing whether to kill you all now, or later," I said, my voice very matter-of-fact.
Janos gave a low chuckle. "Please do break the truce, Anita. I would love to have an excuse to get you on one of my novelties. I think you would take a long time to break. Then again, it is sometimes the braggarts who break first."
"I don't brag, Janos. I tell the truth."
"She believes what she says," Kissa said.
"Yes, she has a disturbing hint of truth to her," Janos said. "Most tasty."
The blonde, Lisa, had stopped struggling against the chains. She sagged in them, nearly incoherent with crying. The other girl, now that she was chained, stood very still, but a fine trembling had started in her arms and hands. She balled her hands into fists, but could not stop the trembling.
"The women came for a little adventure. They are certainly getting their money's worth," Janos said.
The two female vamps opened panels in the black walls. They each took out a long coil of whip. Neither of the girls could see. I was glad.
I couldn't stand and watch, I couldn't. It would kill something inside me to just stand and watch, even if it meant I died. I'd at least go down fighting, and I'd take some of them with me. Better than nothing. But before we all committed suicide, I'd try to talk. "If you're not trying to goad us into breaking the truce, then what the hell do you want?"
"Want?" Janos said. "Want? Why, many things, Anita."
I was beginning to hate the way he said my name, sort of half-amused, and intimate, like we were friends, or close enemies.
"What do you want, Janos?"
"Shouldn't you be negotiating for your people?" he asked Jean-Claude.
"Anita does well enough on her own," Jean-Claude said.
Janos gave another rictus smile. "Very well. What do we want?"
The vampires went to the girls. They held up the whips so the two girls could see them.
"What is that?" the blonde asked. "What is that?" Her voice was high and bubbly with fear.
"It's a whip," the second girl said. Firm and clipped, her voice did not betray her the way her trembling body did.
The two vampires backed away, just enough for good whipping distance, I guess.
"What the bloody hell do you want?" I asked.
"Are you familiar with the term 'whipping boy'?" Janos asked.
"It was a person used by royalty to be beaten in the place of the royal heir."
"Very good; so few young people have a sense of history."
"What does the history lesson have to do with anything?"
"The girls are whipping boys for your two young men," Janos said.
The two vampires snaked the whips along the floor, and cracked them nearly in unison, but neither whip touched the girls. The second girl screamed, a short, clipped sound, when the whip whistled into the wall next to her. The blonde just sank against the wall, sobbing, "Please, please, please," over and over in a ragged voice.
"Don't hurt them," Larry said. "Please."
"Would you take her place?" Janos asked.