I stopped in front of them and tried not to breathe too deeply. “I need to speak to Vinny Castillo.”
They glanced at one another, then one said, “Top floor. You’re expected.”
“Great.” Though I wasn’t sure it was.
I headed for the stairs and began to climb. The unwashed scent of vampire began to fade the farther I went up, so that by the time I reached the eighth floor, it had all but disappeared. In its place was a mix of blossom and pine that reminded me of springtime and made my nose twitch with the need to sneeze.
I stopped on the landing and looked around. Darkness haunted the corridor to the left, but the right was lit by a series of red candles in stylized, rose-shaped sconces. The flickering light danced warmly across the graffiti-strewn walls and gave the hallway an oddly forbidding feel. Given that Ivan still had power in his apartment, the candles were obviously for effect rather than a necessity.
At the far end of the corridor, a woman waited. Like the vampires on the floors below, she was young and gangly. But unlike them, her blond hair had been recently washed, and shone like pale gold in the flickering candlelight.
Two things were obvious—Vinny liked them young and blonde, and it didn’t seem to matter whether they were boys or girls.
I lowered a shield and reached out carefully, feeling psychically for those in the room beyond. I might as well have been trying to source out a big black hole. It didn’t feel like there were psychic deadeners involved, nor did it feel like any kind of natural psychic wall I’d ever encountered. It was just a hole. Or maybe it was more like a black star, because it seemed to suck away any sort of mental resonance.
Even the kid at the door wasn’t showing up on my psychic radar, though she didn’t look like an old enough vamp to block even a weak telepath.
Weird.
I strode toward the guard. Little emotion showed on her pale face or in her dark eyes, but her wariness stung the air. She was dressed casually—jeans, sneakers, and a pale pink tank top—but there was a suspicious-looking bulge on her right side. I wondered if the bullets were the regular kind, or if they’d just happened to have some silver ones hanging about.
“I’m Riley Jenson.” I stopped just in front of her and dragged out my badge. “I’d like to speak to Vinny Castillo, please.”
Something flickered through her eyes. Amusement, perhaps. “You’re expected.”
She opened the door, revealing a plush room that was nothing like the rest of the building. The graffiti was nowhere to be seen here. Instead, the walls were covered by thick velvet drapes in a dark, dramatic red. The carpet was thick and lush, and the color of rich sand. And there were chandeliers, for heaven’s sake—two big ones that sent rainbow-colored sprays of light scattering amongst the shadows. The rest of his gang might live in squalor, but old Vinny was living it up like a king.
I stepped inside. Saw the thickly stuffed black leather chairs and sensuous-looking chaise sofas before my gaze was drawn to the small circle of people at the far end of the room.
Half a dozen toga-clad boys and girls—I refused to call them anything else, because not one of them looked to be older than seventeen—stood around a mahogany-and-leather chaise lounge. Draped over it was a woman.
A woman who reeked of power and sensuality.
I stopped. I couldn’t help it. The force of this woman was unlike anything I’d ever come across. I knew vampires who were either close to, or older than, a thousand years, and neither of them had the immediate impact this woman had. And yet I doubted whether she was anywhere near their age.
Hell, I’d put money on the fact that she hadn’t even reached triple figures yet—if only because vampires with any sort of years behind them would surely be able to afford better accommodation for themselves and their get.
She wasn’t anything stunning to look at. I guess she could be classed as average—not pretty, not ugly, just normal. A medium-height, medium-built woman with dark brown hair and chocolate-colored eyes.
But in her case, looks didn’t matter. Her power lay in her essence. In her very nature.
Werewolves had auras that were totally capable of seducing anyone, willing or unwilling. We weren’t allowed to use it on any other race but our own, of course, but that didn’t mean it didn’t occasionally happen. The energy she was putting out was similar to a werewolf’s aura. It was all heat and need and desire, and it spun around me sensually, making my pulse race. My body hunger.
The desire to run forward, to caress her pale skin as the others caressed it—lightly, reverently—hit like a wrecking ball. Sweat began to dot my skin, and the thirst to touch her, kiss her, make love to her, was so strong that I took a step forward.
But it wasn’t my desire, wasn’t real, and I wasn’t about to become some young vamp’s plaything. Especially not a young female vamp’s plaything. So I clenched my fists, digging my fingernails into my skin, using pain to overwhelm desire. In any other situation, I would have thrown up my own aura to battle hers—but I was standing in the middle of a den of vampires, and that might cause a whole lot more problems.
“Stop it,” I said, voice sharp, “or I’ll get the Directorate to do a sweep and clean out this whole damn place.”
She laughed, a sound as rich and as warm as the room, and the swirling heat of desire abated. Not completely, but enough that it was ignorable. “I have no wish to antagonize the Directorate. Please, step forward, so that I can see you better.”
I felt like saying that, as a vamp, she should be able to see me perfectly fine just where I was, but that could have been seen as churlish. Which I certainly could be on more than a few occasions, but I had a feeling that this was one of those times when it was better to play along.At least until I got the feel of things.
I walked forward. The scent of blossom and springtime got stronger, mixing warmly with the heavy scent of desire still stirring the air. The toga-clad teenagers watched me with almost languorous expressions, but their pupils were extremely dilated. I would have guessed they were high on something, except for the fact that they were extremely still.
My gaze went to the woman. Maybe the only drug they needed was closeness to their maker. Maybe touching her was akin to a sexual or drug high. Just because I’d never heard of a vampire capable of getting someone off on the merest contact didn’t mean they weren’t out there. And hell, this woman had made me want her. If skin-to-skin contact with her was as powerful as her aura, then their expressions were understandable.
I stopped when there was still a good ten feet between us. This close, her skin looked almost luminous, as if the richness of the moon itself glowed from deep within her…I blinked. Reapplied my nails to the palm of my hand. Saw that her pale skin was just that. Pale skin. Nothing luminous and beautiful about it at all.
Anger swirled through me. As a werewolf, I’d been taught restraint almost from the beginning. Oh, not sexual restraint, because to a werewolf, sex was life. But the aura was a different matter. From the time I’d been a pup, long before my aura had even begun to develop, we’d learned that it was wrong to force another—both morally and legally. The fact that a werewolf’s aura could make the unwilling willing didn’t make it okay, because the end result was the same—you were forcing an action on someone he might not have taken otherwise.
Of course, I had done it, as a guardian, just to gain some advantage over a foe. But I’d never done it to force sex on someone otherwise.
This woman had been taught no such restraint.
“I did warn you to stop it.” I turned on my heel and walked toward the door.
She laughed again, a sound that shivered warmly up my spine. “Please, I’ll behave. You have questions about Ivan Lang, no?”
I turned around again. “Yes.”
“Then I will answer them. But please, come closer. I had a degenerative eye disease before I was turned and, as a result, my eyesight is not good.”
I studied her for a moment, seeing no lie in her brown eyes, and not sure if I would even if she were. “What is your real name?”
“Vincenta Castillo. Please, I assure you I will not play games with you again. Come closer.”
I hesitated, then did. Odd to think that this woman had me wanting to run, and yet I’d faced things a thousand times stronger, and far more dangerous. Hell, I had a permanent reminder of one such encounter on my left hand, which was now missing a pinky finger thanks to the hunger of a death god.
She smiled. It was just an ordinary smile, which meant she was keeping her word. For the moment, at least.
“If Ivan has taken the ceremony to become a vampire, why didn’t you protect him?”
“Because I was paid not to interfere in any way.”
Surprise ran through me. “You took money over protecting your get?”
“Why wouldn’t I? Look around you, guardian. These premises are more suitable for street scum than an upwardly mobile vampire. But I am young in vampire terms, and therefore have not yet accumulated the sort of money I require.”
Meaning she was earning her cash legally? Somehow, I doubted it. A vamp with the sort of seduction skills she had could entice all manner of things out of her bed partners.
“So you were just going to sit back and let a rogue vamp kill Ivan?”
She gave an unladylike snort. The toga-clad kid nearest her shoulder trailed his fingers up her neck and across her cheek, in what I supposed was a soothing gesture. “He’s not dead, is he?”