"Rafael is a problem," a woman said. "A big problem."
The talk turned to recent changes in vamp politics and quickly became both tedious and bewildering as I listened to gossip about personal and clan relationships that had persisted for hundreds of years. Vamp gossip could originate in the seventeen hundreds, yet still be fresh and painful, and have an impact on clans today, on people dead and alive. Vamp blood feuds could last for centuries. I learned a lot but nothing that I could use. The only thing that mattered to me was the new coalitions and how they impacted my current contract. With Leo's scent marking on me, it was going to be hard to stay out of the brewing war.
And then I remembered the strange look Bettina had given me in the midst of her invitation to visit. Something wasn't right.
CHAPTER 10
Feeding frenzy
An hour later, still early by vamp standards, I asked directions to the powder room and excused myself. The crowd had reached maximum capacity, with shoulder-to-shoulder partygoers. I saw Bruiser in intense conversation with another blood-servant; was watching when he paused, drew up short, and disappeared into the crowd. I smelled vamps from Clan Pellissier several times, Leo's scent pungent on them. Two looked familiar from the fire threat in the aftermath of the hurricane. They saw me, but ignored me with vamp disdain.
The warehouse air was permeated with the stink of vamps, humans, and blood-servants. The smell of sex and fresh blood intermingled, wafting down from the second story. The mixed stench prickled my nose, a sneeze-warning, and blunted my senses, or I'd have caught the predatory smell of a hunter. But my mind was full, mulling over the twisted skeins of vamp politics.
I slid open the pocket door to the darkened powder room, seeing myself in a slanted mirror, haloed by the hall light. Stepping in, I flicked on the light.
A blur swept toward me from the left. Across the mirror. Time dilated and slowed. Beast screamed within me. Shoved her strength and reflexes into my veins with a rush of power and heat. Teeth and claws flashed in the mirrors. Falling toward me.
I dove down and right. Pulled a stake and my knife. The impact came hard, knocking the breath from my lungs. Stunning me. Stopping Beast's raging scream. Slamming my elbow to the tile. The knife spun from my nerveless grip. Clattered away.
I crashed to the tile in a jumble of limbs. Twisted my spine. Banged my knee. My oof of pain was buried beneath two vamp bodies. As their weight crushed down on me, my brain caught up. Before I could consider the meaning of an attack at a vamp party, they had me immobilized. Hands gripped and held me, my left arm twisted, canted painfully against my chest. Legs secured my torso and lower limbs.
I drew a breath that stank of my own fear, realizing what had happened, but too late. Angled mirror images had confused everything. My attackers had planned on and used my momentary confusion.
Mouths bit and slashed, the cuts like blows, the pain delayed. I couldn't see for the bodies. Couldn't strike out. Vision and movements were constricted by powerful hands, locked arms, and snake-fast legs. Pinning me as I struggled. Fangs buried behind my knee with none of the painkilling gift of vamp saliva. Another set buried in my right arm, above the elbow. That arm went numb as teeth grazed the nerve. I grunted with pain. The legs constricting my chest tightened with killing force. I couldn't get a breath.
They intended to drain me dry. I saw, above me, another vamp, watching. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted with excitement.
Beast shoved her strength into me. With numb right fingers, I tugged the packet free of my dress and shook my cross out. The vamp's teeth cut deeper with my action, but Beast blunted the pain. The cross flared with silver, retina-burning light. I pressed it into the skin closest. A wrist. A vamp shrieked. Ululating into my eardrum. Deafening. The sound was like a fist, beating my head. Abruptly cut off. Her body flipped away, leaving behind the acrid smell of burned vamp skin.
Fangs pulled from my knee and the body holding my chest shifted up, clamped into my jugular, cutting like twin knives. Agony branded me. Lightning shot through my veins. The legs constricting my chest were gone, but my breath was frozen in my lungs, the pain so sharp I couldn't expand my ribs.