Awakened (25 page)

“What is it you do, Sam?” she asked, catching up to her.

“I used to strip but that game got old. So I switched to warming up the audiences before the shows. That’s what Vlad wants me to do here. With a side hustle,” she added. “I’m a costume consultant.”

“Great. Can you help me out?”

Sam turned and eyed Barrett’s conservative suit. “Sure. Burn that and start over.”

“Thanks a lot,” she laughed.

“I wasn’t insulting you. You just need to find yourself something sharp to match that hair.”

Barrett stopped at the door to the dressing room when Sam did, peeking inside over the other woman’s shoulder.

“Ladies, this is Barrett Klein. She’s our new hostess, so show respect, because she’ll be checking your time sheets if you dance and bottle sales if you’re serving.”

Dead silence. Which did not bode well.

Sam forged on. “She comes highly recommended by a lady called Justine—excuse me. What are you all staring at?”

“Her.”

The terse reply said it all. The unknown name got Barrett nothing but suspicious stares. Blue eyes, brown eyes, green eyes, and one pair of brilliant purple eyes—tinted contacts, she realized—fixed on her face. No one smiled.

“Justine is Moira Finn’s friend, if you’re trying to figure out the connection,” Barrett said quickly. “I understand that a lot of you are represented by Moira?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“My agent.”

“Really? Hey, can you give me her business card?”

“Fuck off.”

The ice was broken. Most of them seemed to know Moira or her agency or they acted like they did. Barrett was welcomed into the dressing room and then more or less ignored in a friendly way as the strippers went back to what they had been doing: putting on makeup and fixing their hair and talking a mile a minute. About their boyfriends and husbands, mostly. They moved on to which clubs didn’t pay their dancers promptly or docked them for little infractions. They were hoping for better from Ouspensky.

Sam gave her a nudge. “Had enough of these heffas?”

“What did you call us?” a girl asked, more amused than annoyed.

“You heard me. Let’s go, Barrett.”

She stopped on her way out, her attention captured by music blasting from a closed room. Someone cranked it up even louder. Barrett was almost deafened.

Pounding feet jumped in and kept the beat. Stampeding cattle would have stepped more lightly. Was the show choreographer putting a chorus line through their paces? It certainly sounded like it.

Barrett looked around, realizing that she was alone for the first time. With the blasting music as a cover, she ought to do some snooping for as long as she could get away with it.

She walked quickly away, turning left into a corridor that also looked empty, glancing into rooms with open doors and grimacing at the new but tacky loveseats and other suggestive furniture. No doubt there for striking a pose, novelty chairs shaped like giant stiletto heels had been placed in each room. Ugh.

So Nick wouldn’t give her hell, she quietly turned the doorknobs of rooms that were closed. All locked. Her instincts told her that Jane wouldn’t be held on this level or the ones above it. She was looking for stairs that went down.

A heavy door, almost vaultlike, stood shut at the end of the corridor. There was no exit sign above it and no clue as to what it was for. But there was a keypad next to it with a tiny, blinking red light. No way to tell if that meant it was open, or shut and alarmed.

Barrett stopped for a second, uneasy. Had she heard footsteps? The music wasn’t as loud here but it still didn’t seem possible.

A man appeared near the heavy door. Not one she’d seen. By her guess, a guard. Bald and ugly, with a thick neck. His dark suit and dark glasses creeped her out.

“Looking for something?” he called.

“Ah—the rehearsal.”

He pointed in the general direction of the way she’d come.

“In back of you.”

“Thanks so much.” Barrett turned around and walked away with measured steps. She could feel the guard’s eyes burning into her back.

Seemed like a good idea to follow through on where she supposedly wanted to be. By the time she reached the source of the loud music, the door was open. The dancing part seemed to be over. She stopped in her tracks again, transfixed by the sight of strippers showing off their latest routines.

The pole-dancing class at her upscale gym was
nothing
like this.

Nearly naked bodies shone with glitter and sweat. Their heavily made-up eyes had a feral shine. Barrett had never seen anything like what they were doing. Undulations and rolls so sexy any man’s mind would be permanently blown. Back bends with their heads through their legs. Lifts with silk straps into lascivious, spread-legged positions that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. Solo girls in pin-up poses. Several girls, entangled.

Barrett stared with wide eyes until someone all in black, not definitively male or female, came to the door, threw her an annoyed look, and slammed it shut.

Time to go.

CHAPTER
TWENTY

The auditions over, Vladimir headed back to his office, the
secure one that was below the main floor of the club. He frowned when he saw who was lounging on the chaise in the hall outside the office door. Gil Mansfield had his eyes closed as he listened to music that Vladimir could hear playing faintly in his earbuds. The toes of his stretch-sided narrow boots were scuffed. No doubt from keeping the beat, as Gil was doing now, to the abominable tunes he preferred.

For a former soldier, he was slack-bodied and going to seed, and that was even before the physical deterioration caused by the FBI’s drug had started. You got what you paid for with a turned vampire, Vladimir thought angrily. Apparently, the FBI’s experimental programs could use rigorous oversight in more ways than one. He ought to offer himself as a consultant, if only to increase his chances of poaching the better ones. As it was, however, he already had a contact inside. One who kept him one step ahead of the feds. One who’d led him to Gil.

And one who’d led Gil to Murphy, through the tracking chip planted inside all turned vampires. Gil and his men had tracked down Murphy on some godforsaken mountain and he’d soon be one of Vlad’s guests.

Then he’d be Vlad’s gladiator, competing against another turned vampire in the cage.

Real blood would be spilled. Physical limbs ripped off.

It would be quite thrilling to watch.

Mansfield yawned suddenly, bringing Vlad’s attention back to him. Vladimir scowled with disgust, wondering how Mansfield had ever survived the U.S. military. The fellow had betrayed every principle he had sworn to uphold, had aided the enemy time and again. How unwise of the army to have given up on executing traitors.

“Get up,” Vladimir snapped, yanking the earbud out of Gil’s ear. “Why are you here?”

The lanky man scrambled to his feet.

“That girl we just brought in? She’s kind of spooky. Those big eyes of hers get on my nerves, the way she stares. She keeps banging on the walls. We gotta stick her in a soundproofed cell somewhere else.”

“Do it after I talk to her.”

“First I have to do a walk-through of the dressing rooms,” Gil said. “You know, keep an eye on the regular girls.”

“Look, but don’t touch,” Vladimir advised him. “Do you think you can remember that this time?”

“Yeah, sure. Sam is always hanging around there anyway. She’s so tall she sees everything. I can’t cop a feel.”

Vladimir made no comment. Gil sauntered out, sticking the earbuds back in before he was over the threshold.

“Wait,” Vladimir said loudly. “Murphy.”

Gil turned around. “What?”

“Tim Murphy. When does he arrive?”

“Oh, him. He’s supposed to get here this afternoon.”

“Notify me as soon as the truck comes in,” Vladimir said. “Now bring me the girl.”

“What do you think?”

Jane had been studying the art on her captor’s office walls when he spoke. She jerked at the sound of his voice, but couldn’t take her eyes off the gleaming white plastic panels that were essentially three-dimensional molds of girls.

The panels were different in some ways and the same in others. Each girl was unique but each was slender and short like her. And about her age.

“What are those things?” she asked, still staring at the panels.

“The series is called
Runaways
. Do you like it?”

Jane gave another start when she felt his breath against her face. She hadn’t realized that he was so close to her.

“No. But I get it,” she muttered.

“Very clever of you, Jane. You might have guessed that is now your official designation. Certified by your guardians. Including the one who gave you to us. I believe his name is Malcolm. Can’t blame him really. Knowing you were a virgin. He actually wanted you for himself, but given how much we’d pay for you … How could he resist?”

Malcolm Prescott.

Jane’s stomach roiled at the thought of him.

He’d known how she felt about staying a virgin until she was married. He’d pretended to respect her decision even as he’d used it as a bargaining tool to sell her for the highest price possible. Just like he’d pretended to respect her relationship with Dante—

Jane closed her eyes for a moment as grief for her friend overwhelmed her. Dante had been dark. Troubled. She’d known that. And sometimes how dark he was, how he liked to bite her, scared her. But he’d been smart. And despite being into all that was vampire, he’d been kind. She’d known they’d never last for the long haul, but she’d cared about him. He’d tried to help her when this guy’s goons had grabbed her, but …

Jane nodded toward the molded art. “So these are a warning or something?”

“Everyone has their own interpretation. That is the purpose of fine art. To make us think.”

Christ. He was more pompous than Malcolm.

“Who are they?”

He only shrugged. “They don’t have names anymore. They were street girls, not like you.”

Jane turned around and met his unreadable dark gaze.

“You killed them.”

He smiled thinly. “They were immortalized at the moment of their last breath. I would rather not explain how. I assure you that they felt no pain. And now they will live forever.” He gestured to a chair. “Sit down.”

Jane glanced back toward the door they’d entered by. A silent man with a scarred face stood just outside it, his thick hands clasped in front of him. He held rope and manacles.

Vladimir went to the door and shut it with a nod to him. She wondered what had happened to the other guard.

“I have no wish to force you to do anything, Jane.” His tone held chilly courtesy. “And if you are imagining that I will, think again. You are a valuable commodity as long as your virginity can be verified. After that—well, your buyer will determine what happens to you.”

She moved toward the chair and sat, forcing her thighs together until the muscles hurt.

“You’re going to sell me?”

He remained standing, looming over her. A long lock of roughly combed black hair fell over his chiseled jaw, shadowing his eyes. He was much too big for her to attack. She was puny by comparison, a stray kitten facing a vicious monster superior to her in every way. Including intelligence.

“To be precise, you will be auctioned off. Your purchaser will determine your ultimate worth. Connoisseurs are flying in from all over.”

She hesitated, then asked an audacious question.

“Why don’t you keep me for yourself?”

He looked at her with curiosity. “Are you bargaining with me, Jane?”

Why not? She had never been as innocent as a lot of people seemed to think and she couldn’t help it if she had a baby face. Though she really was a virgin. Maybe that was why she had hung on to that useless bit of flesh. Just to keep herself to herself as long as possible.

But time was running out.

This guy was like no criminal she’d ever imagined or seen on TV. Well groomed. Cultivated. And cruel in a sophisticated way.

He’d mocked her helplessness.

Yet when the journey here was over and Vladimir had come to get her, she’d stayed in a corner of the cell, numb and silent and staring at the door when he opened it. At that moment, she’d actually felt grateful. Which was so weird she didn’t want to think about it.

She’d kept her emotions on lockdown and stayed in survival mode. Better the devil you knew than the one you didn’t. For some reason, he seemed to be intrigued by her.

If she could find a phone or use a laptop—there was one on his desk—she had a chance. Slim, but still a chance. She’d caught a few glimpses of a suburban-type development with spindly trees during her transfer from one cell to another. She had made eye contact with a few of the furtive women who’d bathed her and dressed her. If they were captives, too, maybe she could persuade one or two to escape with her. They hadn’t been shackled.

There had to be a way out. She’d always been good at finding one.

How long had the girls in those panels been allowed to live?

“Did any of them sit in this chair and look at you?” Jane bit her lip. “Never mind. It’s not like you’re going to tell me the truth.”

“But I will.” Vladimir followed her gaze to the art. “And no, to answer your question. It was clear from the beginning of their captivity that they were unsuitable for auction.” He looked at her again. “We prefer docile girls. It would be best if you cooperate.”

She said nothing.

“Unbutton the top of your dress, Jane. This will be only a visual inspection,” he added calmly.

She hesitated but did as he asked. So what. Let him look at her tits. But he didn’t.

“Now spread your legs,” he said firmly.

His dark eyes bored into hers. Compelled by the aggressive intensity in their depths—and suddenly afraid—she obeyed.

“Wider.” His tone was cool and professional.

Again she obeyed, inwardly amazed that he never looked down. His eyes held hers. Jane realized that he probably got off on humiliation more than anything else.

“Thank you. I have no need to perform a physical examination,” he said. “I merely wanted to see if you would do as you were told.”