The first person Rashel met in the mansion was Ivan.
It was sheer dumb luck, the same luck that had helped keep her alive so far tonight. She slipped in the
back door, the way she and the girls had gone out. Standing in the huge silent kitchen, she listened for an
instant to the music that was still blasting from the inner house.
Then she swiveled to check the cellar-and met Ivan the Terrible running up the stairs.
He had clearly just discovered that his twenty-four valuable slave girls were missing. His blond hair was
flying, his eyes were wide with alarm, his mouth was twisted. He had the taser in one hand and a bunch
of plastic handcuffs-the kind police use on rioters-in the other.
When Rashel suddenly appeared on the stairway, his eyes flew open even wider. His mouth opened in astonishment-and then Rashel's foot impacted with
his forehead. The snap kick knocked him backward, and he tumbled down the stairs to hit the wooden door below.
Rashel leaped after him, making it to the bottom only a second after he did. But he was already out.
"What are these? Were you supposed to take some girls up?" She kicked at the plastic handcuffs. Ivan
the Unconscious didn't answer.
She glanced at her watch. Only a quarter to nine. Maybe he'd been taking the girls to get washed or
something. It seemed too early to start the feast.
Running noiselessly back up the stairs, she quietly closed the door. Now she had to follow the music.
She needed to see where the vampires were, how they were situated, how she could best get at them.
She wondered where Lily was.
The kitchen opened into a grand dining room with an enormous built-in sideboard. It had undoubtedly
been made to accommodate whole suckling pigs or something, but Rashel had a dreadful vision of a girl
lying on that coffinlike mahogany shelf, hands tied behind her, while vampire after vampire stopped by to
have a snack.
She pushed the idea out of her mind and moved silently across the floorboards.
The dining room led to a hall, and it was from the end of the hallway that music was coming. Rashel
slipped into the dimly lit hall like a shadow,
moving closer and closer to the doors there. The last door was the only one that showed light. That one,
she thought.
Before she could get near it, a figure blocked the light. Instantly Rashel darted through the nearest
doorway.
She held her breath, standing in the darkened room, watching the hall. If only one or two vampires came
out, she could pick them off.
But nobody came out and she realized it must have just been someone passing in front of the light. At the
same moment she realized that the music was very loud.
This wasn't another room-it was the same room. She was in one gigantic double parlor, with a huge
wooden screen breaking it up into two separate spaces. The screen was solid, but carved into a lacy
pattern that let flickering light through.
Rashel thrust her knife in her waistband, then crept to the screen and applied her eye.
A spacious room, very masculine, paneled like the dining room in mahogany and floored in cherry
parquet. Glass brick windows-opaque. All Rashel's worry about somebody looking out had been for
nothing. A fire burned in a massive fireplace, the light bringing out the ruddy tones in the wood. The
whole room looked red and secret.
And there they were. The vampires for the bloodfeast. Seven of the most powerful made vampires in the
world, Fayth had said. Rashel counted heads swiftly. Yes, seven. No Lily.
"You boys don't look that scary," she murmured.
That was one thing about made vampires. Unlike the lamia, who could stop aging-or start againwhenever
they wanted, made vampires were stuck. And since the process of turning a human body into a
vampire body was incredibly difficult, only a young human could survive it.
Try to turn somebody over twenty into a vampire and they would burn out. Fry. Die.
The result was that all made vampires were stuck as teenagers.
What Rashel was looking at could have been the cast for some new TV soap about friends. Seven
teenage guys, different sizes, different colors, but all Hollywood handsome, and all dressed to kill. They
could have been talking and laughing about a fishing trip or a school dance... except for their eyes.
That was what gave them away, Rashel thought. The eyes showed a depth no high school guy could
ever have. An experience, an intelligence... and a coldness.
Some of these teenagers were undoubtedly hundreds of years old, maybe thousands. All of them were
absolutely deadly.
Or else they wouldn't be here. They each expected to kill three innocent girls starting at midnight.
These thoughts flashed through Rashel's mind in a matter of seconds. She had already decided on the
best way to plunge into the room and start the attack. But one thing kept her from doing it.
There were only seven vampires. And the eighth was the one she wanted. The client. The one who'd
hired Quinn and set up the feast.
Maybe it was one of these. Maybe that tall one with the dark skin and the look of authority. Or the
silvery blond with the odd smile....
No. Nobody really looks like a host. I think it's the one who's still missing.
But maybe she couldn't afford to wait. They might hear the powerboats leaving over the steady pounding
of the music. Maybe she should just...
Something grabbed her from behind.
This time she had no warning. And she wasn't surprised anymore. Her opinion of herself as a warrior
had plummeted.
She intended to fight, though. She went limp to loosen the grip, then reached between her own legs to
grab her attacker's ankle. A jerk up would throw him off balance....
Don't do it. I don't want to have to stun you, but I will.
Quinn.
She recognized the mental voice, and the hand clamped across her mouth. And both the telepathy and
the skin contact were having an effect on her.
It wasn't like before; no lightning bolts, no explosions. But she was overwhelmed with a sense of Quinn.
She seemed to feel his mind-and the feeling was one of drowning in dark chaos. A storm that seemed
just as likely to kill Quinn as anyone else.
He lifted her cleanly and backed out of the room with her, into the hall, then up a flight of stairs. Rashel
didn't fight. She tried to clear her head and wait for an opportunity.
By the time he'd pulled her into an upstairs room and shut the door, she realized that there wasn't going
to be an opportunity.
He was just too strong, and he could stun her telepathically the instant she moved to get away. The
tables had turned. There was nothing to do now but hope that she could face death as calmly as he had.
At least, she thought, it would put a stop to her confusion.
He let go of her and she slowly turned to look at him.
What she saw sent chills between her shoulder blades. His eyes were as dark and chaotic as the clouds
she'd sensed in his mind. It was scarier than the cold hunger she'd seen in the eyes of the seven guys
downstairs.
Then he smiled.
A smile that shed rainbows. Rashel pressed her back against the wall and tried to brace herself.
"Give me the knife."
She simply looked at him. He pulled it out of her waistband and tossed it on the bed.
"I don't like being knocked out," he said. "I don't know why, but something about it really bothers me."
"Quinn, just get it over with."
"And it took me a while to get myself untied.
Every time I meet you, I seem to end up hog-tied and unconscious. It's getting monotonous."
"Quinn... you're a vampire. I'm a vampire hunter. Do what you have to."
"We're also always threatening each other. Have you noticed that? Of course, everything we keep
saying is true. It is kill or be killed. And you've killed a lot of my people, Rashel the Cat."
"And you've killed a lot of mine, John Quinn."
He glanced away, looking into a middle distance. His pupils were enormous. "Less than you might think,
actually. I don't usually kill to feed. But, yes, I've done enough. I said before, I know what you think of
me."
Rashel said nothing. She was frightened and confused and had been under strain for quite a long time.
She felt that at any moment she could snap.
"We belong to two different races, races that hate each other. There's no way to get around that." He
turned his dark eyes back on her and gave her a brilliant smile. "Unless, of course, we change it."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm going to make you a vampire."
Something inside Rashel seemed to give way and fall. She felt as if her legs might collapse.
He couldn't mean it, he couldn't be serious. But he was. She could tell. There was a kind of surface
serenity pasted over the dark roiling clouds in his eyes.
So this was how he'd solved an unsolvable problem. He had snapped.
Rashel whispered, "You know you can't do that."
"I know I can do that. It's very simple, actually- all we have to do is exchange blood. And it's the only