Outside the hospital, of course.
They’d summoned him through his personal portal, as they always did, though they probably hadn’t expected him to respond so quickly. This was the first time he’d seen the summons when it came, and he’d taken only a few minutes to shower and don a robe. Tayla had asked questions, but he’d avoided them, telling her only to help herself to whatever she wanted in the kitchen and make herself comfortable.
Now he stood in the Vampire Council chambers, where they stared at him, their haughty asses planted in gilded, thronelike chairs arranged in a semicircle around the portal that had brought him here. Red and black tapers burned in copper candelabra, adding to the mystical and theatrical atmosphere. If there was one thing vamps loved, it was drama. Hollywood had invented the Gothic vampire melodrama, and the vamps had adopted it as fashion.
Eidolon really, really did not like vampires.
Come forward.
The mental compulsion came from the Key, a silver-haired vampire named Komir. Eidolon resisted the command, willed his feet to remain where they were. He was here to answer for a crime, but this wasn’t his species’ Council, and fuck if he was going to obey as if it were.
“My respect for your work only goes so far, incubus,” Komir said, and Eidolon smiled.
“My medical work, or my work on the females of your species?” It was something Wraith would have said, which seemed appropriate, given that Eidolon was here to pay for Wraith’s transgressions.
“Both,” a female to the right said, her voice an appreciative husky murmur he suspected would go even huskier just before climax.
“Silence, Victoria,” Komir snapped, and then gestured to one of the two burly enforcers flanking Eidolon. “Escort him to the platform.”
The platform that was stained with the blood of countless others, that would soon be stained with Eidolon’s. Again.
“Hold,” he said. “One of yours was recently taken by Ghouls. What do you know of them?”
Komir’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you care?”
“Because the victims end up in my hospital, dead or dying.”
Victoria sighed. “More vampires are killed by The Aegis every day than are taken by the black market operators in an entire year. We don’t care. Neither should you.”
Idiots. Shrugging off his robe, he strode naked to the platform without the aid of the enforcer thugs. He cleared his mind as he mounted the stone steps and stood beneath the reinforced wooden structure from which chains dangled. Numbing himself out was the only way to deal with this and, probably, the only way to survive.
A massive warrior vamp, whose name Eidolon didn’t know, stood. “Your brother Wraith has taken more than his limit of humans this month. Are you here to receive his punishment?”
“I am.” Though he’d really like to know how they always knew when Wraith killed a human. Thousands of vampires existed in the world, and they couldn’t all be policed. Yet the Council seemed to keep a running tab of Wraith’s kills. Granted, Wraith took pleasure in flaunting them, but still . . .
“The incubus is ready.” Komir’s lip peeled back to reveal fangs as sharp as a 33 gauge hypodermic needle. “Let it begin.”
The twenty-four hours were up. More than up, and since Eidolon hadn’t called, Gem was taking matters into her own hands. She’d have done it sooner, despite her promise to the other doctor, but she’d been stuck at the hospital on a sixteen-hour shift.
Shift over, and she was going to confront Tayla, and she was going to do it now.
She took the stairs to Tayla’s apartment two at a time. As she topped the second-floor landing, the hair on the back of her neck stood up. She crept to the apartment door, listened.
No noise from inside.
Still feeling the tingle of goosebumps crawling over her skin, she turned the doorknob. Unlocked. The door creaked open.
The rich, fresh odors of blood and death swirled around her, soaking into the walls and becoming another layer of scent in the ancient apartment, which had been ransacked. She entered, noted the boxes in the corner. No, not ransacked. Packed. Someone was moving Tayla’s things out.
A bloodstain marred the floor near the godawful orange couch. Humans wouldn’t see the soiled area, but it was there. Recent. It had been cleaned up within the last hour.
Where was Tayla?
Voices in the stairwell jammed her heart up into her esophagus.
“Shit, man, did you leave the door open?”
“Don’t think so.”
The unmistakable sound of metal blades clearing weapons’ housings echoed in the hallway.
Slayers.
A chill went through her, a bone-deep cold she hadn’t felt since she was a child and her parents had shared Aegis horror stories. The nightmares had plagued her into her teens, had come roaring back with a vengeance when she learned her own sister had become a slayer. A butcher.
A monster.
Gem shot to the bedroom, which was empty. No furnishings, no boxes.