She'd heard what had happened next back then, that Cristoff had cut off two of Phineas's young son's fingers before persuading the sorcerer to renew the magic and disable his death trap. And once he had, Cristoff killed the sorcerer. Vamp City had remained intact ever since. Until two years ago. Who or what had flipped the switch this time, no one knew. At least, that's what she'd been told.
"What were you two doing that night?" she asked the vampires, since they obviously hadn't been at the Kovena Cup.
"Destroying a Ripper nest in Adams Morgan."
Ahead, she could make out the silhouettes of decrepit houses and row houses. Not until they passed the crumbling corpse of the White House would they start to see signs of habitation. With a lurch, the Jeep flew over a low embankment and onto the packed dirt that passed for roads in this place, as they had in the real D.C. of 1870.
"Are there a lot of Rippers in the area?"
"More now than there used to be," Micah told her. "With so many Emoras trapped within V.C., there are fewer to hunt them."
"Is it your job to hunt them?"
"It is, and I take it seriously. Rippers are vicious, without conscience."
The Rippers, she'd learned, were a different race of vampire, one who fed exclusively on blood, whereas the Emoras, the more prominent race, fed on both blood and emotion. They claimed the Emoras were the more humane of the two races.
Quinn scoffed. "You just described most of the Emoras I've met. If the Rippers are worse, God help us all."
Micah glanced at Arturo, then looked back at her. "You're right, Quinn. Many of the Emoras of Vamp City have become every bit as bad as the Rippers, but they didn't used to be. Most of the nearly five hundred vampires that first moved into Vamp City continued to hunt in the human world as they always had-fear feeders scaring their victims as they fed on them, then wiping their minds and sending them on their way. The pain feeders haunting the hospitals, the old folks' homes, and the neighborhoods, feeding simply by standing outside the bedroom window of a human in childbirth or in pain from disease or injury. And the pleasure feeders . . ." He smiled. "Throughout the ages, the brothels have been our favorite places to feed and hunt."
So Micah was a pleasure feeder. She'd wondered. "So why did they change?"
"We're not sure, not entirely. And as with most things, the answer is complicated. We'd always had to remain under the human radar, and suddenly didn't. A number of the vampires brought in their human companions. And when those humans began to turn immortal, recruiting more humans to serve us became a simple matter of offering immortality. They came willingly and happily. For a time."
They passed the White House, its abandoned, crumbling appearance the symbol of everything wrong in this place, but Quinn only glanced at it this time, far more interested in Micah's story.
"Most vampires continued to leave Vamp City at night to feed in the old ways. The coliseum was originally built for vampire sports, not gladiator battle. We held rugby and football matches, among other things. And, if you can believe it, we enjoyed the arts. One night an entire theater company was enthralled and brought in to perform a play, then returned to their beds without any of them the wiser."
Quinn shook her head, knowing her face was a mask of disbelief. "What happened?"
"Some would tell you we got bored and slowly reverted to our natural inclinations, free of human retribution." Micah glanced at Arturo. "Those of us who've remained outside, who live in the real world, disagree. We've watched the changes in those we've known for centuries. The magic of Vamp City has had a corrupting effect on many of those who live within its borders, disintegrating souls and consciences."
"My conscience is just fine," Arturo muttered.
Quinn snorted. Right.
"You still have one, Ax. Which, considering what's happened to most in Vamp City, is saying something. Your conscience was always strong. Even so, you've not been unaffected. Not by a long shot."
Arturo lapsed into a brooding silence.
Quinn turned to watch out the window as a horse and wagon passed them on the wide dirt road, driven by a male dressed in Civil War garb. A vampire, no doubt. In the back of the wagon sat three people dressed in modern clothing. New captives? It was hard to tell in the dark, but their hair appeared to lack the phosphorescent glow of Slavas-humans who'd turned immortal, as all humans apparently did in this place if they survived their first couple of years.
Her stomach cramped as she wondered who they'd left behind-wives, children, parents? And with sorrow at what she feared they'd suffer in this place.
"So there weren't always slaves here?" Quinn asked, skeptical. "Or torturing and killing just for the sport of it?"
"There have always been human servants-humans who willingly, or not so willingly, serve their vampire masters. But the influx of humans solely for sport and food didn't start in earnest until a few decades ago. Even that didn't become widespread until a couple of years ago, when the magic began to fail. The depravity since has spiraled out of control, Quinn." Micah glanced at Arturo. "And even those with honor in their hearts have turned a blind eye."
Arturo's jaw tightened, but, again, he said nothing.
Quinn watched the passing landscape, the well-lit houses in the inhabited areas, streets that in modern D.C. were now lined with high-rise office buildings.
"Cara," Arturo said, drawing her gaze to his in the rearview mirror. "If we are stopped and anyone asks, you and Zack are Micah's slaves. He is leaving you at my house while he helps me search for the missing sorceress."
"All right." There was much to be said for getting their stories straight.
They turned onto Fourteenth Street, and she knew they were close to Arturo's house. She'd been there before and knew it to be on F Street, only about a block from the Treasury. In 1870, F Street had been primarily residential, unlike its twenty-first-century twin.
Several minutes later, Arturo pulled into the alley that ran behind his house and parked the Jeep. Too fast, he was out of the vehicle and slinging a still-sleeping Zack over his shoulder as if her brother wasn't close to Arturo's size, as if he weighed nothing.
Micah emerged from the vehicle at normal speed and opened her door for her. As she climbed out, she heard a man's scream on the wind some distance away. The sound clawed through her, raking open every memory of the terrors she'd known in this place, setting them free like nightmares flying through her mind. No one should ever be made to scream like that.
"Quinn?"
Mike's voice penetrated the darkness, jarringly wrong in this place. But it focused her, grounded her. Screams were a common sound in Vamp City.
God, she hated this place.
With a shiver, she moved quickly toward the house, preceding Micah through the back door and into a kitchen that was, if not modern, at least a far cry from its 1870s roots. This was the one room within Arturo's home that was fully electrical, with 1970s appliances and modern, recessed lighting.
The kitchen was empty, the faint smell of freshly baked bread lingering, reminding her she hadn't eaten anything since breakfast. The tension in her back and shoulders eased now that they'd reached Arturo's home. Oddly, she felt safe here. Arturo might have scared her mindless the first time he brought her here, feeding from her fear, believing he could take her memory of it later. But he'd never attacked her. She'd never been physically harmed in this house. And she never would be as long as Cristoff and his goons didn't find her here. For all of Arturo's faults, she believed that. He wouldn't hurt her. Not physically.
As they started down the hallway, Ernesta, one of Arturo's servants, bustled out of the living room, motioning with her hand for them to follow. Quinn knew that the matronly, Latino-looking woman wasn't human, though exactly what she was, Quinn had yet to learn.
Quinn entered the living room to find Arturo setting a disgruntled Zack on the sofa.
"I could have walked," Zack grumbled.
"You were sound asleep," Quinn countered. It might be wishful thinking, but she thought he looked a little better, his skin tone less gray, the circles under his eyes a little less pronounced, though the "whites" of his eyes had turned fully silver. "How do you feel?"
Zack ran a hand through his shaggy curls and met her gaze with a spark of life that had been missing for the past ten days. "Hungry."
"Have Susie prepare a meal for two," Arturo told Ernesta, then sent Micah a questioning glance. When the other vampire shook his head, presumably not interested in human food, Arturo added, "And send Horace in."
Micah settled his big vampire body on one of the chairs. As Quinn joined Zack on the sofa, Horace, Arturo's sole male servant, appeared in the doorway. He was a balding, stocky male with a graying beard that glowed with a Slava's phosphorescence.
"Master." He said the word as a soldier might say "Captain" to a respected and revered commanding officer.
"What news, Horace?" Arturo asked, crossing one ankle over his knee.
The older man stroked his bushy beard. "Well now, a new sunbeam broke through right outside the slave auction yesterday, just as it was ending. A wide one, wider than anyone had ever seen. More'n fifteen vamps were caught in it, including that bitch Francesca."
Quinn started with surprise, and no small amount of relief. She'd briefly been one of Francesca's slaves and was delighted that no one else would suffer that monster's torment.