Retribution

In spite of it all, she’s smiling at me. “I’m glad you’re here,” she says. “I never got a chance to thank you.”

She’s small-boned and waifish. How long have you been vampire?

She looks at me expectantly as if waiting for a response to her greeting.

I try again. How long have you been vampire?

The expression on her face remains the same—eager, a little puzzled now at my silence. When I probe her thoughts, I realize with a start that she isn’t hearing me telepathically.

You see, Rose says. Something’s wrong. She is much stronger than the others, much farther along in the healing process. She should be able to understand us.

The girl is frowning now, picking up on negative energy without understanding the cause for it. “What’s wrong?” she asks, her voice trembling.

Rose and I look at each other. Neither of us knows how to respond.

The girl is becoming agitated. Her hands fly to her throat, her body begins to shake.

I step to her, put an arm around her, hug her close. She doesn ’t deserve more terror. “I’m sorry,” I say. “Nothing is wrong. You’re safe.” I feel her ribs through the fabric of her top. I turn her back to her bunk. “Sit, please.”

She lowers herself onto the bed, clings to my hand.

The other three vamps are watching. The same sense of silence pervades this room that I felt in the other. I project my thoughts into their minds. I get flashes of emotion, but nothing else. No recognition, no response to indicate they are aware of my probe.

Rose echoes the question in my own head when she says, They are not like us. They are vampire, but different.

I look from one of the girls to the other. They are all staring at Rose and me, feeling our anxiety, projecting their own.

Anxiety is the only thing they project. I don’t understand it. I know I heard them in the warehouse. Heard their screams. It’s how I was able to find them.

But now?

The girl beside me on the bunk gives my hand a squeeze. When I look at her, she says, “My name’s Rebecca.”

I push my concerns away for the moment. “Hi, Rebecca. I’m A

She nods.

“How did this happen to you?”

Rebecca closes her eyes. “I don’t know,” she whispers.

“Can you tell me how long you were there?”

A voice on my left answers. “She was the newest. She was brought in three days ago.”

I turn. The speaker is a woman in her early twenties, dark hair, huge eyes. The marks on her neck are almost gone. “They only brought in a new one when one of the others—”

Her voice breaks off. She pauses, gathers herself, continues. “It happened the same for all of us. We are newly made. We were to meet our sires for the first hunt. We were directed to an abandoned building. When we got there, we were drugged. We woke up in hell.”

She speaks in a measured voice, calm, detached. She projects an i

“What happened then?” I ask gently.

“We were given something to wake us up. There was a man, a human. He bound us and strung us up. Then he —” A sharp intake of breath, a hand to her throat. “He forced the collars on. The pain was terrible but we couldn’t move, couldn’t scream. To try only made it worse. When he was sure it was on properly, he attached the bags. We watched our blood—our life—drain into those little bags a drop at a time.”

Rebecca is crying beside me. I put an arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry.” It’s directed at all of them but it echoes like an empty sentiment even in my own head. Saying I’m sorry means nothing.

Killing the witch who is responsible will mean something.

Rose raises an eyebrow at me. Find out what you can.

She ushers the human hosts out of the room and leaves me alone with the girls. They all have the same expression on their faces.

Expectant. They’re looking at me as if I have answers, when in reality, I have nothing to offer. Not yet.

“I know this will be hard for you, but I need your help. I need you to tell me everything you remember about the people who did this.

Can you do that?”

The brunette is the first to speak. “What do you want to know?”

“The man who collected the blood, did he ever talk to you? Mention what he was doing with it?”

They look at one another, heads shake slowly from side to side.

“Can you describe him?”

“Sadistic.”

“Cruel.”

“Enjoyed his work.”

Rebecca wipes at her eyes. “He was big,” she says, finally giving me something I can use.

“How big?”

“Like a sumo wrestler. But he had soft hands. I remember thinking how odd it was. He didn ’t talk to us. He just went about his work with a grim smile on his face.”

Sumo wrestler—Burke’s bodyguard?

“Was there ever a woman with him?”

Rebecca shakes her head. “No. He was always alone.”

“What about the vamp who sired you? What was his name?”

“He called himself Loren,” Rebecca replies.

“He sired all of you?”

The others nod. Rebecca adds, “But that wasn’t his real name.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No. I overheard him on the phone once. When he answered he said, ‘Jason Shelton.’ Like he was answering a business phone.”

“That’s very good, Rebecca. Did you hear anything else?”

She shakes her head.

“What did he look like?”

“He was short. Maybe five feet five. Stubby. Had cold eyes.”

“How did he find you?”

She looks down and away. “On the street.” She points to the blonde. “He found her in a shelter. And her. He was a talker. When he first brought a girl in, he’d talk to her like she was awake and make fun of how easy it had been to fool her.”

Runaways. Easy pickings for a predator. “How many died before I found you?”

“Six.”

The bodies that Williams told me about in Beso de la Muerte. He was right. Someone had been killing vampires.

Rebecca rubs her eyes with the palms of her hands as if rubbing away the nightmare. “I thought I was so lucky when Loren—when Jason—found me. He promised me freedom and money and eternal life. I should have listened to my instincts. I knew it was too good to be true. And I was right. First he made me have sex with him, then he bit me. I didn ’t feel any different. He said that would change after I fed from a human. He sent me to a vacant building that stunk of piss and shit and was overrun with rats.” She shudders. “I hate rats. I think he expected me to eat them.”

Rose is back, listening from the doorway. She reaches out. Have they given you anything you can use to track these monsters down?

I can’t answer. Rebecca’s words have sparked a flash of—what? My brain wrestles with an image. It’s blurred, like a picture through an unfocused camera lens. I concentrate harder.

An abandoned building.

Rats.

A man with something in his hand.

“Rebecca, how did Jason drug you?”

She shakes her head. “He shot me with something. It looked like a crossbow but it was smaller.”

My heart begins to race.

I saw it.

I saw it all.

In a dream.

CHAPTER 32

A DREAM. HOW IS SUCH A THING POSSIBLE?

Rose is watching me. What’s wrong?

I can’t answer. I don’t know what to say. It’s crazy. How could I have dreamed what Rebecca just described? I try to dredge up images from the dream but all that’s left are impressions. Fear. Confusion.

I bury what I’m thinking deep in my subconscious.

To Rose , I think I’d better go. I’ll start a search for this Jason character. He’s the only real co

I face the girls. “You’re safe here. Rose will take care of you. I’ll be back when I have news.”