A Blood Seduction (6 page)

Opening the door, he ushered her into a kitchen oddly incongruous to the times—either the one in which Vamp City had been created or her own. With its olive green fridge and range and the big butcher-block-topped island, it looked more 1970s than 1870s. Over the island hung a rack laden with pots and pans of every shape and size. Recessed lighting on the ceiling and undercounter lights lit the room admirably.

The smell of frying hash brown potatoes filled the room as a girl of perhaps twenty served up a plate. She was cute, with a pert nose and fine features. Unlike Ernesta, she wore modern clothes—a worn sixties retro dress with faded splashes of pink and green. Her light brown hair hung long and straight, parted down the middle and highlighted with a strange, phosphorescent glow.

“Your breakfast is ready, Master.”

The hand on her arm tightened. “Did you eat the eggs brought to you earlier?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Two plates, Susie. And have Horace close the window upstairs.” He steered Quinn through the doorway on the other side of the kitchen and into a formal dining room complete with gold-and-crystal chandelier, dark red wallpaper, and what appeared to be large golden candelabras casting flickering light on the gilt-framed paintings lining the walls.

Ernesta bustled in, setting a place for Quinn with gold-toned . . . maybe real gold . . . flatware and a linen napkin. Susie followed, setting plates before each of them. Eggs Benedict, broiled tomatoes, and hash browns.

Did he really expect her to eat? Her stomach was in knots.

“Thank you,
cara mia,
” Arturo said kindly to the girl. But when Susie and Ernesta had left, his voice turned cool once more. “Dispense with your fear and eat. I will not punish you for your escape.”

She looked at him warily. “Why not?”

“Every slave attempts escape at least once. Now you know what will happen. You will be caught.”

Maybe. Maybe not.

He gripped her wrist. “Oh, I will catch you,
cara.
Every time.”

“You can read my mind now?” she snapped.

He smiled and released her. “I can read your expression. Now eat. The food is exceptional, but it will not remain so once it is cold.”

The food did smell good. And she
was
hungry. Cutting a small bite of the eggs Benedict, she lifted it to her mouth and nearly moaned. Perfect. The English muffin was neither too crisp nor too soft, the Canadian bacon perfectly cooked and flavorful, and the hollandaise sauce the best she’d tasted.

She glanced at the vampire, who sat watching her, making no move to join her. “I thought you said you ate.”

“At the moment, all I can taste is your fear. I will not be able to enjoy my meal until you calm.”

She stared at him. “You’re really not going to hurt me?”

“I am not. It would be counterproductive, would it not, when my goal is for you to lose your fear of me?”

The tension slowly fled her body. “I suppose.”

“Yet still you tremble.”

“I’m exhausted.”

He straightened, picking up his knife and fork. “I did warn you that you’ve not yet recovered from the blood loss.”

Quinn cut another bite. “Apparently, you were right.” Upstairs she heard pounding, as if someone were doing some construction in the house. She chewed the bite, then cut another.

The vampire began to eat as well, but he continued to watch her. Disconcerted, she turned to study the nearest painting on the wall as she chewed. It was a painting of a child that she’d seen dozens of times in prints, but this one looked . . .

“Is that
real
?” she asked.

“Quite real. They all are, though not quite original.”

She turned back to him. “What do you mean?”

“They’re duplicates, in a manner of speaking. Vamp City is an exact copy of Washington, D.C. Or at least it was at the time of its creation 140 years ago. Not everything replicated, of course. Almost nothing living—people, animals, even the plants and grass failed to reproduce.”

“But you have trees.”

“Dead trees. Oddly, they grow that way, which makes them ideal for firewood. V.C. is a world devoid of life but for the vampires and their slaves who soon moved in. But the wealth of D.C.’s citizens did replicate. The money in the banks, the silver in the silver chests, the artwork.”

Quinn stared at the landscape on the opposite wall. “They must be worth a fortune.”

The vampire grunted. “How do you sell an original of a painting that already exists?”

“I see your point. So you keep them and enjoy them.”

“I do, yes. Others have sold paintings as forgeries. Extraordinarily good forgeries. The amount they get is far less than they would for the originals, of course. But there is little chance of giving ourselves away.”

Quinn took a bite of hash browns, which melted in her mouth. Susie was an excellent cook, there was no doubt about it. Already, Quinn felt her strength returning.

“Where do you get the food if you can’t grow it here?” She stabbed a bite of tomato.

“Traders—nonvampires—can still come and go. They make weekly deliveries to each of the vampire strongholds, truckloads of goods and foods from the real world, though I fear the shipments may stop as the magic continues to fail.”

“What are Traders? Are they human?”

“They are not your concern,
cara.
Finish your meal.” He took another large bite of eggs Benedict, clearly enjoying the taste. As he cut another, he glanced at her. “You will tell me about yourself.”

She bristled slightly at the command, then sighed. “My name is Quinn Lennox, twenty-seven, born and raised in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I’m a research technician.” She looked at him curiously, wondering if she needed to explain, but he appeared to understand.

“And your people? Do you know your family history?”

She almost smirked. “Are you wondering if you’ve known any of my ancestors?”

“I am.”

“How old are you, anyway?”

He peered at her. “Six hundred, give or take.”

Six hundred.
Holy shit. “You were born
in the 1400s
?”

“I was. Your family . . . ?” he prompted.

The 1400s.
My God,
the things he’s seen.
She shook her head, trying to clear it enough to answer his question. “I don’t know much about my mom’s family. Her parents died when she was a teenager, and she died when I was a toddler. I’ve never met any of my relatives from that side.”

“Her name?”

“Jillian Minor. I don’t know what her parents’ names were. My dad is Darrell Lennox. His mom was a Markham, I think. Beyond that, I don’t know.”

“You know little about your own flesh and blood.”

“My ties with my family have never been strong. Except with my brother.”

“Tell me about Zack.”

“Why?”

“I wish to know.”

Was he finally going to help her? She tried to quell the flutter of hope and couldn’t quite manage it. “He’s actually my half brother, born to my stepmother three years after my mother died. He’s twenty-two and looks kind of like me except he has curly red hair.”

“A half brother,” he murmured. As if that mattered.

They lapsed into silence as the vampire finished his meal. Ernesta cleared their plates, then poured them each a cup of coffee. So . . . civilized. As if she were his guest and not his captive.

“What are you going to do with me?” she blurted.

He watched her as he took a sip of the steaming liquid, then looked away. “I will keep you.”

“As your slave.”

“Yes.”

Still he didn’t meet her gaze, and her instincts began to ring a low warning. He wasn’t being honest, and she wasn’t sure what it meant. Did it matter? She was at his mercy either way.

“You will help Ernesta with the housecleaning and the laundry.”

She looked at him warily. “That’s all?”

“No. You will feed me. But I will not do what was done to you before. I will never take enough to weaken you.” He reached for her, his cool hand covering hers, drawing her gaze to his. “I promise you,
cara,
when I draw from your vein, you will feel pleasure.” His eyes turned smoky, his smile breaking slowly and turning very, very carnal. “When I slide my fangs into your neck, I will slide my cock into your body, and you will scream with pleasure, I promise you.”

His words turned her at once hot. And cold.

“Every fourth day, I will visit your bed to drink from you.”

“Every
fourth
day?”

“When I add you to my household, I will have four slaves.”

Quinn jerked her arm away from his hand, realizing what he was saying. “You have sex with
all
of them?”

His mouth twitched. “Not Horace.”

She’d seen nothing intimate between him and Ernesta. A servant/master relationship and nothing more. Was that the way it would be with her? A quick feed and fuck every fourth day, then back to work cleaning his house? Was this to be her life?

No, she couldn’t accept that.
Wouldn’t
accept it.

“
Cara,
” the vampire said quietly, drawing her gaze back to his. “Do not attempt to escape me again. If you become too difficult, I will sell you to one of the Traders for the slave auction, and your fate will be far worse than here with me.” His fingers closed around her wrist in a cool vise. “There is no escape for you. Humans never escape Vamp City. If they did, you would have heard of it, yes? The missing would have returned. Yet none ever have.” He squeezed her wrist lightly. “Accept your fate, and you will be content here. I will see it so.”

She didn’t argue with him, didn’t reply at all. Perhaps the best thing to do was let him think she’d given up.

Heavy footsteps approached, and, a moment later, a man appeared in the doorway, a broad-chested, stocky man, with little hair on top of his head but a thick, bushy, graying beard that shimmered just like Susie’s hair. “It’s done, Master.”

The vampire nodded once, released her, and rose. “See Quinn to her room, Horace.”

“Yes, sir.”

As Quinn rose, the vampire met her gaze again. “Rest today. Tomorrow, you will begin your duties. All of them.” Then he turned and walked out of the room, leaving her to stare after him.

All of them.
She shivered even as her body warmed.

“Come along, girl,” Horace said gruffly.

With a frustrated sigh, she followed Horace into a compact entry hall and up the hardwood stairs to the bedroom she’d left less than an hour before.

“You were a fool to try to escape, girl,” Horace said, as they reached the door. “The master’s the best of the lot of them. He don’t hurt his slaves like the others do. And he don’t give us over to other vamps.”

“But he feeds from you.”

“ ’Course he do. Feeds from my wrist. It don’t hurt none.”

“What about your family?”

“Family’s long dead, young’un. Been dead for more ’n a century. Now git you in there and forget everything that came before. Don’t none of it matter no more. This is your home, now.”

Feeling stronger than she had earlier, but still more tired than she should, she walked into the room, allowing Horace to close and lock the door behind her.

The linen rope was no longer tied to the dresser leg. She couldn’t see it at all. And the curtains made no movement, making it clear that the window had been closed.

Suddenly, she remembered the hammering. Her eyes widened, and she ran to the window, pushed the curtains aside, and stared at the boards that had been nailed across it. He’d boarded up the window!

Gripping the boards, she pulled, the wood digging into her fingertips, refusing to budge.

“Shit!”
How in the hell am I
supposed to get out of here, now?
She wasn’t, which was precisely why the vampire had done this. Spinning away from the window, she paced across the room, her fingers digging hard into her hair.
I’ll
never get out of here, never reach Zack.
I’ll
never see him again, never know if he’s
alive or dead.

Despair slowly got the better of her. She climbed onto the bed and curled into a ball of misery as the tears began to roll.

H
ours later, Arturo stood at the foot of the bed, watching the woman sleep. Quinn Lennox. An interesting name though not the one he’d expected.

She lay atop the covers on her side, both hands balled tight against her chest. A lock of sun gold hair caressed her chin, making his fingers itch to move it, to feel the satin softness once more beneath his fingertips. Her eyes were puffy, dried tears streaking satin cheeks. Despite the tears, her skin was lovely, a flawless lightly tanned cream with a spattering of freckles across the bridge of her slender nose.