He nodded and stepped back, waving us into the hall. I stepped over the bodies and various body parts, noting that the few vampires who were alive were quiet, and showing little of their previous almost insane hunger. Suggesting, perhaps, that it had been ramped up for the occasion by an outside force—either some sort of drug or another vampire.
Again fury swept me, but I somehow kept my sword by my side as I walked past Marshall.
“Take the second door on the right,” he said, his expression wary, suggesting he knew exactly what was going through my mind—although I guess that wouldn’t have been hard given the expression I was no doubt wearing. It certainly felt dark from my side of things.
I walked into the indicated room. It was much the same as the first one, only this one had a small sink area, a medical kit, and a couple of towels sitting to one side of it. Obviously, he’d had this room prepared for us.
I swung around as he came into the room behind us. “Have we your guarantee that this is the end of the tests?”
“There will be no more tests, no more disturbances in this place,” he said. “I guarantee it.”
“What about the dead? Won’t that cause problems given the highly charged atmosphere in the main bar?”
His smile was cool, almost arrogant. “There will be no further trouble from any vampire in this place.”
Meaning he could have stopped the onslaught if he’d so desired. Which also meant he was far more powerful than I’d been suspecting. But then, if he was Hunter’s creature, I shouldn’t have expected anything else.
“Good,” I grumbled. “Now, if you could turn on the TV on your way out, I’d very much appreciate it.”
He gave me a somewhat sardonic bow, then hit the control panel to the left of the door and left. The light screen came to life; the room was being mopped out, readied for its next customers.
I took a deep breath and released it slowly. It didn’t do much to ease the churning in my stomach or the anger still trembling through my muscles.
Azriel sheathed Valdis and walked toward me. “How is your back?”
I shrugged. It hurt like a bitch but there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it, so there was little point in complaining. And hey, in comparison to what the Raziq had done, it was hardly more than a scratch.
He touched my bleeding chin, studying it for a moment, then motioned me to turn around. I stood my ground. “You can’t heal me, Azriel. Any use of energy might just warn the Rakshasa of our presence.”
“I’m well aware of that.” Though there was little in his expression, his tone was somewhat annoyed. “I merely wish to see how bad the wounds are.”
I grimaced, but turned around. He sucked in a breath, and, a minute later his fingers brushed my spine, the touch light, but nevertheless filled with a heat that sparked something deep inside me.
I shivered and crossed my arms, warding myself against the reaction as much as the instinct to turn around and reach for him.
“These are deep,” he said, “and I’m afraid they will scar.”
The first of many, if I continued to work for Hunter—and it’s not like I had another option. And to be honest, scars were the least of my worries right now.
“Just clean them up the best you can. There’s a medical kit near the sink.”
He walked across to the sink. It was then that I noticed the cuts up both of his arms and a nasty-looking wound that ran the length of his left thigh. It was bleeding quite badly, if the amount of blood gleaming wetly on his dark jeans was any indication.
“Blood loss does not present the same danger to me that it does to you.” He wet one of the towels, then opened the medical kit and pulled out an antiseptic sealer spray.
“Why not? I mean, you can find death in flesh form.”
“Yes, but my life force is energy, not blood. I may bleed, but it does not drain me.” He treated my chin, then said, “Take your shirt off.”
I did so, then turned my back to him, my eyes on the screen as he carefully cleaned the wounds. To say it hurt would be an understatement, but at least the pain gave me something to think about other than what was now happening on the TV. Another whore and customer had come into the room. The woman had to be in her mid-forties, with drawn features and scars littering her body—evidence that suggested a long history of feeding vampires. It was a history about to come to an end. Because the vampire who followed her into the room was long, lean, and vicious-looking.
And there was death in his flat brown eyes.
I rubbed my arms and wished I could stop what was about to happen. I didn’t want to watch it, either, but I forced myself to witness the unfolding brutality on the screen. She deserved acknowledgment of her death, at the very least, and I doubted the vampires would even care, much less give her any sort of funeral. After all, to them she was little more than another piece of meat. Cattle to be used and abused.
Again anger rose, but I thrust it aside and continued to watch the screen. There was nothing pleasant about this feeding, and certainly nothing that remotely resembled pleasure for the woman. The vampire battered her, fed on her, and tore at her, until her body was slick with blood and all that seemed to be holding her upright was the vampire’s brutal grasp. In my head, the keening of the ghosts echoed, getting stronger and more desperate with every sickening blow.
Yet the woman said nothing. Maybe she couldn’t. I wouldn’t put it past Marshall to somehow restrict the vocal capacity of those whores destined to die.
The feeding seemed to last forever, but in reality it took little more than ten minutes. The vampire ended the woman’s torment by driving his teeth into her neck and ripping it open. Blood sprayed across the white walls, and the spark of life in her odd green eyes slowly died as her head lolled back and she stared up at the camera.
And in my head, the ghosts grieved and wept and raged at a world that wasn’t capable of hearing.
Then it happened.
As the vampire sucked the last droplets of life from the woman, three bloody rents appeared on his back, stretching from his left shoulder to his right butt cheek. He snarled in fury and spun, but this foe was not one someone like him could see.
But the ghosts could, and they were screaming for murder, not just blood.
The Rakshasa obviously wasn’t about to change the pattern of her hunt just to appease the ghosts, though, and nothing further happened. After a few minutes of somewhat confused searching, the vampire stepped over the broken body at his feet and left the room.
“The Rakshasa has also left,” Azriel said. “But she waits outside for her victim.”
I frowned as I pulled my shirt back on. “Will she sense us leaving?”
“I do not know how sensitive the Rakshasa is to those of us who guide and guard, so I cannot answer that.”
It was a risk we would have to take if we were to have any chance of killing this thing. I walked over to the panel, found the intercom, and swiped my hand across it. “Marshall? You there?”
He didn’t answer immediately, which suggested he hadn’t been keeping an eye on us—although that didn’t mean the council wasn’t. When he finally came online, his blue eyes were bright and somewhat annoyed. I wondered what we’d interrupted. “What do you want?”
“I want the address of the vamp that’s just left the ghost’s room,” I said without preamble. “The Rakshasa just marked him.”
Marshall sucked in a breath. “So kill her.”
I snorted. “If it was that easy, I wouldn’t be here.”
He grunted in acknowledgment of my point. “Jerry Harcourt was the vamp just in there. He rents a room in Lyle Place boardinghouse—it’s only a few minutes down the road.”
Which meant we’d better hurry if we wanted to set our trap. “Thanks.”
“Do you need me to do anything?” Marshall asked.
If he could have done anything, I very much doubted we’d have been called in. But I just said, “No. Just ensure that he leaves, and we’ll do the rest.”
“Righto.”
As the screen returned to the image of the bloodstained room, I swung around to face Azriel. “Will this work?”
He shrugged. “As I have said before, I’ve never hunted a Rakshasa. I’m told they can be extremely difficult kills.”
And this one was killing people who deserved to die—a fact that didn’t make going after her any easier. But since it was my life or hers, there was really no other choice.
“Then we’d better get over there and set our trap.” And if the trap didn’t work, then we hunted it back to its lair. I shivered, and hoped like hell it didn’t come to that. Not if the Rakshasa was feeding more than just herself.
Azriel held out a hand. I placed my hand in his and let him pull me into his embrace. It felt so warm and safe that I wanted to cry. Or maybe that was just a reaction of the bitter anguish that still echoed inside my head.
His energy surged, and in an instant the room disappeared and we were zipping through the gray fields. The room we reappeared in was dark and smelled faintly of urine and booze. Obviously, vampire Jerry did not live in one of your more up-market boarding establishments.
Azriel immediately stepped away and moved to one corner of the room. He raised his hands and paced the walls, murmuring softly. The words were lyrical and easy on the ear, but there was a dark undercurrent to the energy that swirled around and through his voice, and foreboding crawled down my spine. It somehow seemed wrong for such darkness to be coming from beings who were warmth and light.
He continued walking around the room. Mist formed behind him, becoming luminous tendrils that crawled up the walls and across the ceiling, until the soft, glowing, ethereal net of silver covered every compass point as well as the floor and ceiling. When the circuit was complete, the net locked together, then faded. But the power of it remained, making the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
“Won’t the Rakshasa feel the energy and run?” I asked, rubbing my arms and trying to ignore my growing sense of unease.