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Harold glared at her. “You have our soul stone. Give it back, or we’ll take it by force. It belongs to the High Priest of our order, and he’ll destroy you when he gets back.”
“Your High Priest is lying in the lower laboratories, gutted like a fish,” Smoky said. “I’d advise you not to expect reinforcements.”
“No matter. I’ll take over,” Harold said, barely blinking an eye.
I stared at him, amazed he even had the balls to speak. “Get a clue, dude! Your uncle was just killed, and you don’t even care. We destroyed the demon you summoned. Is it that you delight in being dense, or were you out to lunch when they were handing out brains?”
“Bugger off, vampire,” he said, sneering. “Or I’ll haul out a toothpick and dust the floor with you.”
I leapt forward and backhanded him away from the altar and away from the elf. He went flying back to land on one of the circular tiers of the amphitheater. “Cocksucker! You’ve murdered so many women only the gods know the number, and yet you stand here, telling us to butt out?”
As I stomped toward him, he leapt up and quickly back-flipped away from me, landing on his feet, his hands out as he Bruce Lee’d me with his index finger.
“Bring it on, Daisy. We might look like a bunch of geeks, but we took a clue from the Evil Overlord List. We can fight. So either back off or prove what you think you’ve got going for you.”
The sneer in his tone grated on me, almost more than the cocky look in his eyes. This boy was bucking for an etiquette lesson, and I was the woman to teach it to him. I sped up and was nose to nose with him before he realized I’d even moved. Obviously, Geek Boy wasn’t used to dealing with vampires. Before he could say a word, I grabbed his head and yanked it to one side, stopping just short of breaking his neck.
“You feel that, babe? You feel how strong I am? You have any idea of how little it would take for me to snap your scrawny neck and send you into oblivion?”
I leaned over him and let my fangs extend, letting all my anger for Sabele and Claudette and the other women spill to the surface. “You’re the kind of whack-job pervert that I eat for dinner. You got it? I suck your kind dry and leave the hollow husks for the rats to find. Any reason I shouldn’t do this to you? Any goddamn motherfucking good reason?”
He struggled, but one move of my index finger to his neck, and he stopped. The pressure must be incredibly painful, I thought. Maybe I should make it just a little worse. I pressed harder—just a fraction, but enough to make him groan. He’d pass out if I exerted any more force.
I glanced at the other members of the group. There were thirteen of the original pack left here, and they were waiting for a sign from Harold as to what to do. Duane was there, nursing what looked like a broken nose. Damn! And I thought I’d broken his jaw.
Duane took a step toward me, and I shook my head. “One more step, and your lame Pooh-Bah gets it. Seriously. Back off, or the minute he’s dead, you’re next on my list.”
Smoky, Morio, Vanzir, and Delilah moved to fence in the remaining men. Camille managed to free the elf again with the help of Rozurial, who handled the iron cuffs for her. Camille gathered the girl up—she was a wispy thing—and carried her to the side, laying her down on the floor. She glared at Smoky until he crossed to her side and offered his trench to cover the unconscious girl, then returned to cage in the idiots we’d managed to corral.
I eased up on Harold’s neck as his pulse began to fade. “Now, you’re going to tell us everything: how many women you’ve killed, you’re going to give us a list of your membership, just all sorts of good things. Or we’ll kill you. All of you. One by one, in the most painful manner we can think of.”
“You . . . you wouldn’t . . .” he started to say, but I yanked my shirt up, forcing him to look at the scars lacing my body.
“Ding! Sorry, wrong answer. Look at me. I was put through torture you can’t even imagine before I was killed and turned into a vampire. I’m not squeamish. I know how to give as good as I got. You understand me?”
With a slight hiss, I leaned into his face and unmasked my full glamour, both vampire and Fae. Harold went limp in my hands, a puddle of cooperation. I reluctantly let go of him—I really wanted to mess him up—and he scrambled back.
“On your knees,” I said, deciding that if I couldn’t play executioner—at least not yet—I would make him grovel.
He fell to his knees, whimpering. The other men stared at him, then at me, and their eyes went wide. They began to back up, but the boys and Delilah herded them back into place.
“You killed Sabele, didn’t you? You stalked her, kidnapped her, and sacrificed her to the demons?” I wanted to hear him say it aloud. “And Claudette, the vampire?”
He sucked in a deep breath, but when I shook him, he answered. “Yes! I did it. Sabele wouldn’t give me the time of day. She wouldn’t look at me. So I decided she’d become a sacrifice. She was out for a walk, and I grabbed her. She begged us for her life,” he said, his face twisting with a manic smirk. “She begged us, on her knees, naked.”
“What about Claudette—the vampire?”
“We thought she was Fae at first. We invited her over and found out she planned to make a meal of us. So we managed to trap her in a ring of garlic and silver. We had no choice—we had to stake her.”
I closed my eyes. So Harold had been interested in Sabele. Even if she’d returned his attention, he’d probably have ended up killing her. And Claudette had been hunting them, yet she became the hunted. Too bad she hadn’t succeeded.
“How long have you been summoning actual demons?”
Harold blinked, and the smirk slid off his face. “We never managed to attract their attention until my uncle started studying necromancy with the sorcerer last year. This is the first time the Demon Gate really worked for us. Before, we just burnt the hearts of our sacrifices and offered them up to the demons.”
“Who started the order?” I asked, even though I already knew.
Harold whimpered again but said, “My great-grandfather. He belonged to another tradition before he left England. He updated it and decided to take the group in a different direction. A more forceful one, he said. He found the soul stone, and people began following him. He passed it down to my grandfather, who passed it down to my uncle. But the lodge was still a pale shadow compared to the level to which I’ve taken it.”
