Page 33 of Bloodgrove

At that very moment, Mr. Arcos’s eyes snapped to Will, as though he had known all along that Will was watching. His brows darkened—irritation seemed to be the only response Will could ever draw from him. Even so, he stroked the chimera’s astonished face one final time before sending it toward a chained vampire with a nod. In the next instant, every trace of innocence vanished from the creature as it charged its victim. The ground shook beneath each step. With a primal roar, it opened its jaws over the vampire’s head, sank its teeth into the skull, and bit clean through. Mr. Arcos did not so much as blink. He merely stared darkly at Will.

“Want to see a better show?” someone beside Will asked suddenly. Three young men in fine clothes passed by and beckoned for him to follow. He hesitated, but it offered the perfect excuse to escape Mr. Arcos’s gaze.

“Perhaps you can tell me how to get back to the ballroom,” he said, marveling at the confidence with which they navigated the maze.

“You’re from the Capitol, aren’t you? Forget the dance floor. We’ll show you the real party.”

They were probably a few years younger than Will and so unmistakably noble that he almost saw the blue blood pulsing beneath their skin. They questioned him greedily about the Capitol and tried to outdo every one of his descriptions with something from Bloodgrove. Yet he held their attention because he possessed the one thing no one in this city could offer them: stories of the wide world.

Back inside the mansion’s heat, they found a bottle of liquor, and Will followed them into the labyrinth of corridors. Warning bells rang in the back of his mind, but they had been ringing ever since he boarded the train to Bloodgrove. The young men were confident, a little arrogant, and completely unaware of how deranged their anecdotes sounded to an outsider. But they treated Will as one of their own, and on a night like this, that felt like the safest place to be.

“What do you know about Duchess Ormonde?” he asked eventually. They had just turned onto a narrow spiral staircase winding down into the rock. Red light played over moss spreading across the walls like tumors, while the sounds of sex echoed up toward them.

The blond young man ahead of him turned, eyebrows raised. “She’s mad. She murdered her father.”

His friend behind Will laughed. “We should emphasize that those are only rumors, of course. But they say she poisoned his blood until he lost his mind and became a vampire. An exceptionally embarrassing affair for a family of such high standing.”

“Auntie says he was already mad and dragged the family name through the mud until there was nothing left of it. When we were schoolboys, we used to dare one another to look through his windows or ring the doorbell. The butler would always come running and try to beat us—as though he had any right to.”

The conversation died off as they reached the bottom of the stairs and entered a dimly lit vault. A man who looked suspiciously like a doorman examined them closely, making Will hesitate. At a ball like this, there should have been little left that needed to happen behind guarded doors.

But the nobleman behind him eagerly pushed him forward, and a new spectacle opened before Will. At first glance, it looked like another chamber devoted to pleasure, equipped for bondage and gagging. Men and women were strapped to benches and beds, hung from the ceiling, or spread-eagled across crosses. Guests used them for their amusement.

Then Will realized what the second sound had been, the one he had been unable to identify in the stairwell: bone-chilling hissing and roaring of vampires.

The restraints held their heads and arms in place, and most had their legs in chains as well. One female vampire wore a muzzle, baring her teeth wildly inside it while a guest forced himself on her on the bed. Another had nearly bitten through the piece of wood jammed between his jaws like a bridle.

Shocked, Will looked at the young nobles. They laughed proudly. One seized a female vampire by the hair where she had been strapped over a leather bench and yanked her head up.

“Charles, isn’t this your cousin?”

They laughed again. His cousin. Eighteen years old. She had succumbed to bloodlust two months earlier, they told him.

The girl still looked so human. She fought wildly and desperately, torn between the urge to flee and her hunger for blood. Her eyes shone with tears, though everything that had once been white was now red. The man taking her from behind slapped her backside. She hissed and snapped at his hand, but the buckles held her fast. The skin beneath them was rubbed raw.

Will barely heard the nobles debating whether Charles should fuck his cousin. He stood with one hand covering his mouth and felt the images burn themselves into his soul.

Slowly, he turned and walked away.

But he did not get far. He stopped on the first stair and stared at the wall while the noises reached for him with thorn-covered hands, tearing wounds into his heart.

Weakly, he braced himself against the slick wall. He had reached the point where he could not even vomit anymore. His hand sank into the strange growth, so thick here that it swallowed his fingers.

But none of it reached him. White noise roared in his ears, mercifully drowning out the sounds from the chamber. Yet the images remained before his mind’s eye—pulsing, blinding, corrosive. He did not care that they were vampires. To him, it made no difference.

“Pup.”

Chapter 18

Ahand settled on his shoulder, and Will flinched, but it remained there.

“Mr. Frank,” the voice repeated sharply.

“Mr. Arcos?” Confused, Will turned around. It took him several seconds to connect the man, the voice, and the place.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Without waiting for an answer, the ambassador pushed him up the stairs.

“Where is Elodie?” Mr. Arcos asked as soon as they reached the outer edges of the party.