Bones propelled her back toward our little group.
“This is William,” he said with a nod to Dave, still in my arms. “The rest aren’t worthy of names,” he finished, indicating me and Tate.
Priscilla ran a finger over his chest. “What’s yours? You never did tell me.”
He brought her hand to his lips. “I’ll tell you afterward.”
My teeth ground again, but I didn’t say anything.
“Follow me,” Priscilla said. “This way.”
His former promiscuity is finally coming in handy, I thought darkly as we approached the entryway into the hidden room. This would have taken time to find on our own.
It was concealed underneath the unused bar in the far corner. You stepped behind a half wall and lifted the false cabinet to reveal stairs. They traveled down, the noise from the revelers and music masking the sounds below. Something thumped in the room beyond the narrow passage, rising and falling with increasing volume as we approached.
“Welcome.” Priscilla smiled as she opened the door. “To the real Marquis.”
The room wasn’t large, but it was filled from top to bottom with unnatural devices of every kind. Manacles hung from the walls, the cuffs attached to them stained with blood. We stepped past benches of a variety I never wanted to know about, straps and buckles worn from repeated use. A wheel? I didn’t even want to guess what that was for.
The thumping noise we’d heard turned out to be the flogging of a couple tied to one of the welded poles. They were faced away from their tormentor, foreheads smacking into the pole with every blow, and from the looks of them, they weren’t enjoying their punishment.
The whip master paused in his measured staccato to glance up at us. He was a vampire, roughly two hundred from the feel of his aura.
“What have you brought me, Priscilla?”
Another vampire lounged on the nearby couch, drinking from the neck of an unconscious woman on his lap.
“Guests, Anré,” she said.
He rested his sherry-colored eyes over me. “I’ll take her. It will be a pleasure to mark her flawless skin.” Next he considered Bones. “You look familiar, have we met?”
Bones gave him a cold smile. “Not formally, but we did run into each other in London, round 1890, when I was looking for a bloke named Renard. Recall me now? I took his head but left you the rest of him.”
Anré lowered his whip. Realization bloomed on his features, and then he shot Priscilla a truly evil glare.
“You idiot, do you know who this is?”
Priscilla gave Bones a confused look. Her distraction gave me the chance—and the great satisfaction—to knock her down and then ram my silver-heeled shoe right through her heart.
“She pissed me off for the last time,” I said to no one in particular.
The vampire on the couch, watching this exchange with alarm, froze over his victim’s neck. I lunged at him next. The girl was snatched from his hands and thrown to Dave while I head-butted the vamp with brutal force. He was stunned for a moment. Just long enough for me to jab the heel of my shoe into his heart and straight out through his back.
Anré began to back away, although there was nowhere for him to go. Tate and Dave were behind him, Bones and me in front of him.
“Please don’t kill me, I have done nothing to you,” he whimpered.
“Bloody hell, show some dignity. You’re an embarrassment to the race,” Bones chided him.
“Tate, get the unhappy couple,” I directed him.
Tate went over to them, slashed his palm, and clapped it across each of their mouths. Soon their welts disappeared. Then he untied them from the pole, herding them well out of the way of the other bodies.
Anré held out a hand to Bones. “You have no cause to harm me. You want the humans? They’re yours.”
I shook my head. Wasn’t it always the bullies who feared retaliation the most?
“You’re afraid of him, but it’s me you need to worry about.”
I retrieved one of his fallen whips and cracked it for punctuation. Bones had thought I couldn’t handle seeing what he dished out to Max, but I could prove that I wasn’t too squeamish when it came to doing necessary dirty work.
“Give me the names of your other playmates, Anré. Refuse and, well…you have a lot of mean-looking toys here. Tried any of them out on yourself lately?”
An hour later I was in possession of a name—Slash. He was here somewhere, scouting out his potential dinner. With all the noise from above, I doubted he even knew what had happened to Anré.
I made my way through the dancers, seeking a man with the tattoo of a silver dragon along his jaw. Along the way, I was bumped, jostled, and even slapped by an overzealous woman whose partner turned away at the last moment. She didn’t even apologize, either. Just glared at me and snapped, “That wasn’t your gift!”