24
Cain sat in a small office behind a glass window that looked down into an interrogation room below. Next to him, Thomas gulped down the rest of his bottle of blood.
“About time that jerk is coming ‘round. I need some shuteye.”
Cain couldn’t agree more. After they’d brought the rogue vampire to Scanguards’ headquarters, the punk had passed out as if in a drunken stupor. At least that meant he’d stopped screaming for real blood, whatever he meant by that. For hours Thomas, Zane, and Cain himself had waited around in the V Lounge for the captive to gain consciousness. Amaury had long gone home after his mate had called him.
Even Cain had been able to hear Nina’s seductive voice on the phone, describing to Amaury what she was wearing. He’d never seen his fellow vampire move faster. Not that they needed Amaury to question the rogue. Zane had volunteered for that particular job, and he was already tapping his foot impatiently, waiting for the rogue in the room below.
Cain snapped his head to the door of the interrogation room as it opened and two vampires dragged in the struggling captive. His hands were cuffed in front of him. In order not to cause him any unnecessary pain, the vampire’s wrists had been bandaged so that the silver handcuffs wouldn’t touch his exposed skin. Whether the bandages remained on his wrists during the interrogation depended on his cooperation. And by the look on Zane’s face, Cain’s superior clearly hoped that the prisoner didn’t cooperate immediately so he could inflict some pain.
Thomas flipped a switch so the sounds from the interrogation room now came through the loudspeakers in the observation area.
“Leave him!” Zane ordered the two guards. They released the captive from their hold and left the room, shutting the door behind them.
Thomas pressed a button, locking the room remotely so it couldn’t be opened from the inside. “You’re locked in,” he announced through the microphone by holding the speaker button down, then releasing it again.
Zane nodded in acknowledgement, then grabbed the prisoner by the neck and slammed him into the only chair in the room.
“Now we talk.”
Cain watched intently, knowing that he could always learn something from Zane.
The captive looked up defiantly, his eyes wild. He bent forward on this chair, seemingly unable to keep still. His hands twitched, and the cords in his neck bulged.
“I want blood!” he demanded, his eyes narrowing.
“You had enough last night,” Zane claimed. “You almost drained that girl. You’re lucky she’s alive.”
“Or what?” he spat in response.
Zane jumped, grabbing his neck once more. The captive’s hand came up. However, the silver handcuffs that made contact with Zane couldn’t do him any harm: Zane wore a long-sleeved shirt and leather gloves.
“Or I would have ripped your heart out while you watched!”
Cain glanced at Thomas. “He’s bluffing, right?”
“He’s done it before. I don’t see why he wouldn’t do it again.”
Cain tried not to show his shock at Thomas’s words, and instead focused back on the events in the room below. It appeared that the prisoner was reasonably intimidated by Zane’s claim and shrunk back into his seat.
“You won’t feed until I have the information I’m looking for.”
“You can’t hold me here forever.”
“Can’t I?” Zane tossed his captive the semblance of a half-smile. “Piss me off and I’ll throw you into an underground cell and forget you.”
The wary look on the vampire’s face was evidence that he started to believe that Zane was capable of doing just that.
“What’s your name?” Zane asked.
There was a short hesitation, then the answer. “Michael Valentine.”
“Not his real name,” Thomas commented to Cain while he already typed it into the keyboard in front of him.
“Funny name! How about your real one?” Zane continued.
“That’s my name. I was turned on Valentine’s day in 1900. Somebody’s idea of a sick joke. So I took the name.”
“What was your name before that?”
“Garner,” he pressed out.
Zane glanced up to the window, a silent question on his lips.
Thomas pressed the speaker. “Give me a minute.” Releasing the speaker button, he continued typing on the keyboard. A moment later, he went back on the speaker again. “Checks out. Continue.”
Cain looked at the computer screen where a message blinked. “No entry found,” it said. He gave Thomas a questioning look.
Thomas shrugged. “Zane might not bluff, but I do. We just want him to think we can check on anything he tells us. It’ll make him more likely to tell us the truth.”
“But if Garner isn’t his real name either, he would realize you have no way of checking on what he’s saying.”
Thomas smiled. “But Garner is his real name.”
“How do you know?”
“Experience. I watched the movement of his eyes. It tells me a lot about whether a person is lying or not.”
“I see. And what about the database then?”
“We don’t have a complete database of all vampires past and present, nobody does. There must be hundreds of men named Michael Garner. It would be a waste of my precious time to go through all public databases and the internet to find the right one. However, I’m adding to my database every day. And that punk’s name is in it now.”
Cain looked back down to Zane and the vampire who called himself Michael Valentine. Zane stood only a few feet away from him now, his legs broad, his arms at his sides. He looked almost relaxed, but the captive would be a fool to assume such a thing. Zane was ready to pounce if Valentine made a single wrong move. Cain had seen Zane in action before. He knew what to expect.
“So, here’s the deal, Michael Valentine: I ask a question, you answer it. Do you get that?”
Valentine nodded.
“What happened at the nightclub? Why did you feed in public?”
He lifted his head and grinned up at Zane. “That’s two questions.”
Before the last word had left his lips, the back of Zane’s hand hit right across the idiot’s cheek, whipping his head to the side so violently that Cain almost expected it to separate from his neck.
“F*ck!” the prisoner hissed as blood dripped from his nose. “You broke my nose!”
“Well then you’d better start talking before I’ll break something more precious.”
Finally, Valentine seemed to heed the warning and understand that Zane meant business. “Fine, I was ravenous. I needed a fix.”
“A fix?” Zane repeated. “Elaborate!”
Valentine’s eyes darted to the window as if he was worried about who was watching him.
Zane growled. “I’m waiting!”
“A fix, you know. Of blood. To get high. And the chick, she was Asian. I figured she might have what I needed. She looked like the others. But . . . ”
“But what?”
“It was just ordinary blood. Nothing special. I couldn’t get high. It wasn’t the right stuff.”
Zane looked up to the window, a strange look on his face, as if wanting to ask Thomas and Cain if they knew what Valentine was babbling about.
Cain pressed down the button for the speaker. “What makes you think the blood would get you high?”
Valentine jerked up at hearing the voice from the loudspeaker and looked up to the window. But Cain knew he couldn’t see him, since the window was mirrored on the other side.
“Because I’ve had it many times. But they’re not there anymore. And I needed a fix. I needed the rush. It’s not my fault. Once you start, you can’t stop.”
Cain recognized an addict when he saw one. And this vampire was an addict. But what was he addicted to? Blood? Was he falling victim to bloodlust? Before he could ask anything else, Zane continued questioning him.
“Let me get this straight. You’re claiming you’re suffering from bloodlust and that’s why you went berserk on that girl?”
Valentine shook his head. “No! I’m not in bloodlust! Are you crazy, man? I’ve just got a substance abuse problem. It’s nothing major. I can handle it. I just need a fix and I’ll be fine.”
“A substance abuse problem? What the f*ck are you talking about? Do you think I was born yesterday? Drugs have no effect on vampires. Every newborn knows that! So don’t dish up crap like that or I’m gonna shove it back down your throat!”
Valentine jumped up from his chair. “But you have to believe me!”
Zane glared at him. “I don’t have to do anything! You almost killed that girl! And whoever the other vampire was, he butchered another one downstairs. Or was that you too?”
Shocked, Valentine shrunk back. “No! I didn’t kill her. Larry, he was even more in need of a fix than I. I swear! It was Larry, he killed that girl. He couldn’t stop. And when he realized she didn’t have the right blood, he went apeshit on her.”
Zane snatched him by the collar of his shirt. “What right blood? A specific blood type?”
“No! Not a blood type. It’s not that. It’s just . . . ”
“It’s what?” Zane growled impatiently.
“I don’t know what it is, but it’s like a drug. It makes you high. It comes from those Chinese girls. They keep them in that place.”
Cain let out a breath and exchanged a quick glance with Thomas. Was this conversation going in the direction he thought it was?
“What place?”
“Down there, an old building in Hunter’s Point. They keep a bunch of them there. They rent them out. It’s expensive, but that shit is good. But f*ck, they’re gone! They just left from one night to the next!”
A look of realization crossed Zane’s face as he lifted his head to look up to the window.
“Are you saying that there’s a place in Hunter’s Point where vampires are keeping women for their blood?”
Valentine nodded. “It’s not just ordinary blood. It’s like a drug, like crack or heroine. And all the girls are Chinese. That’s why we figured, Larry and I, that if we found some Asian chicks and fed from them, maybe we’d find one who has the same kind of blood. But it wasn’t the same. It was just ordinary blood.”
“Shit!” Zane cursed.
Cain looked at Thomas. “Ursula was telling the truth.”
“Thomas, get the guards in here and have him taken back to his cell,” Zane ordered.
Moments later, the guards picked up Valentine.
“What are you doing with me? You have to let me go!” Valentine whined as they dragged him from the room. “I told you everything you wanted to know!”
“What the f*ck are we gonna do now?” Cain asked.
Thomas shoved a hand through his blond hair and leaned back in his chair. “Find those bastards.”
“And Ursula?”
“There’s nothing we can do now. Oliver wiped her memory, and she would have landed in Washington DC by now. Maybe it’s for the better.”
“But she would have been able to help us. She knows what they look like,” Cain insisted. “We should—”
The ringing of the phone interrupted him. Thomas picked up the line. “Yeah?”
Cain heard a familiar voice, then Thomas’s greeting. “Quinn, you’re back? That’s a nice surprise.”
The door flew open and Zane tore into the room, cursing loudly. “F*ck, f*ck, f*ck!”
Cain refrained from saying anything, knowing that Zane was seething over his failure to recognize Ursula’s claim as the truth.
“We have to come up with a strategy,” Zane said, then turned to Thomas. “Get off the phone. This is more important.”
Thomas pursed his lips. “It’s Quinn, and I think you want to hear what he’s got to say . . . Quinn, I’m putting you on speaker. Zane and Cain are here.”
He pressed a button and put the receiver down. “Now tell them what you just told me.”
“Hey guys. I’m a bit out of the loop—just got in a few hours ago—but the girl who says she was imprisoned by vampires, she’s here.”
Zane leaned over the desk. “Oliver didn’t take her to the airport?”
“No, why would he?”
“Because I ordered him to!” Zane thundered.
There was a pause on the other line. “Guess he didn’t like your order.”
“Guess not,” Cain murmured to himself, not a bit surprised at the turn of events. He’d seen the way Oliver had looked at the girl. She’d probably used her big brown eyes to wrap him around her little finger and make him do whatever she wanted to.
“Well, it doesn’t matter now,” Thomas said calmly. “She might still be useful, because we’ve just found out what the deal is with that brothel.”
“Care to share?” Quinn asked.
Thomas shifted closer to the phone. “Apparently all the girls at the brothel have special blood. It acts as a drug to vampires. They go crazy for it, and when they’re not getting any more, they’re showing withdrawal symptoms. Like human drug addicts. It’s not pretty.”
Not pretty didn’t even begin to describe it, Cain thought, remembering the scene in the nightclub.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Absolutely,” Thomas confirmed.
“Then we have a problem,” Quinn said gravely.
Zane put his hand on Thomas’s shoulder, leaning over the speaker phone. “I know, Quinn. I was thinking the same thing.”
Cain stared at Zane, then at Thomas who nodded.
“What?” Cain asked.
Zane sighed. “Oliver was a drug addict when he was human. He’s susceptible to any kind of addiction. If he’s with the girl and bites her, we have to assume the worst.”
Thomas turned toward the phone. “Quinn, has he slept with her?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m suspecting it.”
Zane cursed. “F*ck, then he’s probably already bitten her!”
“No!” came Quinn’s voice as if shot from a pistol. “He made a point to say he wasn’t going to bite her.”
“And you believe him?” Cain asked. “Quinn, I was there, I saw the girl, and I saw how he looked at her. He wanted her, not just her body, but also her blood.”
A sigh came through the line. “Jesus, Rose and I should have never left.”
“We’ll take care of it,” Zane assured him.
“What are you planning?”
“We have to separate them. It’s for his own protection, and for hers too. As soon as the sun sets, here’s what I want you to do . . . ”