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“Meaning you found one, but you did not find the other.”
I stared at him—her—for a moment, my stomach churning as I remembered that Vonda didn’t live alone. “You’ve taken her sister?”
“You weren’t paying attention, huntress. Did I not say victims, plural, last time we spoke?”
Like I was supposed to understand the nuances of every word spoken by a crackpot? “Taking two women at once doesn’t follow your usual pattern, and I suspect you’re a man who likes his patterns and rules.”
“Indeed, I do. But I have never come across twins such as these before.”
“What is that supposed to mean? And what have any of these women done to you?”
“They are not what they pretend to be. They are Kudlak, and therefore must be destroyed. That is my destiny, huntress. It is my task by birthright.”
It was his birthright to hunt harmless women? Sanity and he really weren’t on speaking terms. “I have no idea what a Kudlak is, but I know these women are vampires—and harmless ones at that. You’re mistaken—”
“No, I am not. Nor am I about to argue.” The words were snapped, the tone annoyed. “The sister has an hour left.”
And with that, the woman collapsed.
I lunged forward and caught her just before she hit the floor. The mark on her forehead was even more putrid this close, and her breathing was shallow and uneven, even for a vampire.
“Rhoan, we need an ambulance.” I lowered her gently to the floor and looked up at Azriel as he materialized beside me. “Is she going to die?”
“Yes,” he said. “He may not have drained her blood, but he has drained her spirit.”
I closed my eyes and fought the useless rise of anger. Vonda’s sister was still out there, and getting angry wouldn’t find her any faster. “Is there anything left of her mind now that he has released her? Or has he drained that, too?”
“She is mentally present.”
“Can you read her?”
He hesitated. “No. Her thoughts are blocked. I would damage her mind further if I broke past them.”
She was dying anyway, so it wouldn’t really have mattered, but I guessed it came down to reaper rules. He couldn’t do anything that might harm an innocent.
Which meant I had to do this the hard way. I pinched her pale cheek as hard as I could. It was a mean thing to do to someone who was dying, but I really had no other choice. She might just hold the key to finding not only her sister but the crackpot behind these murders. “Vonda, wake up.”
She murmured something that sounded decidedly unladylike, and made a weak movement with her hand, as if trying to swat me away.
I pinched harder. “Vonda, your sister is in danger. We need your help to find her.”
Her eyes fluttered briefly open, but there was little life or understanding in the green of her gaze. “Dani?” she murmured. “No.”
I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Yes, Dani. Where is she? Where did she go?”
“Club.” It was so softly said it was little more than a sigh of air.
“What club, Vonda?” I looked around as Rhoan came in. He glanced from me to the woman, and motioned me to continue. “You need to tell us or Dani dies.”
Distress ran briefly across her pale features. She made a couple of attempts to speak before finally saying, “Underground.”
Underground? Oh fuck, I thought. Surely she couldn’t mean those clubs—the ones that catered to vampires who were addicted to feeding from blood whores, humans whose whole life revolved around the ecstasy of a vampire’s bite. The council had no intention of ever allowing the rest of the world to know about those clubs; the only reason I did was because one of the clubs was haunted by those who’d been killed there, and their anguish had summoned a Rakshasa—the same Rakshasa that had given me the scar down my spine before I’d killed it.
God, surely fate couldn’t be so cruel as to send me into one of those places again, could it?
“What club, Vonda?”
Her mouth opened and closed again, and though I leaned closer, I barely caught her reply. It sounded like “the Crimson Dive,” but I wasn’t completely sure.
