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Ridley Crawford didn’t drink fresh blood. Blood was for monsters.
No one in Moreau’s lair knew that. The vampires would see my aversion for fresh blood as a weakness, and my life depended on them thinking I was as strong and ruthless as they were.
Fortunately, the ruthless part wasn’t a problem.
I stowed Zaq’s phone in the safe of the ops room and monitored the video feed. In the kitchen, the cook was broiling my steak. In the formal garden, the wolfdogs slept in the sun. The beasts were a cheap and effective early-warning system.
Moreau didn’t have a camera in his bedroom, but I watched as his favorite thrall—or maybe she was a blood slave, I wasn’t sure—exited his room. Her face, throat and arms sported fresh bruises, and she had a blood addict’s zombie eyes.
Bastard. I swallowed something acrid.
I turned to the cams in Zaq’s cell. It was pitch-black, but I could see the darker shadow of his body against the wall, his arms bent.
I touched a control, turning up the lights in his cell so I could see his face. His chin rested on his chest. His closed eyes had dark circles under them, and he had a red welt high on his cheek.
I pressed my lips together. They could’ve let the man lie down.
He’s a monster. What do you care how he’s treated?
But something about Zaq’s kidnapping didn’t sit right with me. I’d been a slayer for nine years. I’d stalked syndicate vampires around the globe, and I was damn good. For me, it wasn’t a job, it was a calling.
My mom and I had spent my childhood running from syndicate vampires. When they finally caught us, my mom had died, but I’d gotten away. They hadn’t expected a twelve-year-old dhampir to be so fast.
Their mistake.
Six months later, I’d started training as a slayer. I staked my first vampire a week after turning nineteen. Since then, I’d notched up a dozen more kills, more than any slayer in my cohort, male or female.
And that’s what felt wrong about this job.
Slayers didn’t kidnap the bad guys. We staked them.
We didn’t cuff them to a wall so they couldn’t lie down or sleep without silver burning into their wrists and slowly poisoning them. This wasn’t the clean death I’d been trained to deliver.
They were trying to break Zaq Kral. But why?
I squeezed my nape, hating that I didn’t know all the facts.
The cook arrived with my sandwich, a thin-cut steak smothered with mushrooms and cradled in a crusty roll. It smelled amazing, but my appetite had fled.
I took a bite, set it down. I stared at the sandwich for a good thirty seconds, then picked it up again and made myself finish it.
You didn’t waste food. You never knew when your whole life might be ripped out from beneath you like a cartoon rug and you’d sell your soul for any food you could get your hands on, even a half-eaten sandwich someone else had thrown away.
4
ZAQ
I hung against the wall, bruised and aching. Trying to keep my wrists from touching the silver in the cuffs. Attempting to make sense of what had gone down.
Anger simmered in me, anger and humiliation. I’d meant what I’d said to the three of them. Somehow, some way, I’d get out of this fucking cell.
And I would go after them.
If only I knew what the hell was going on.
Étan was Victorine Tremblay’s second-in-command. I didn’t know how Reaper and the others came into this, but I’d been kidnapped by a rival syndicate.
And not just any syndicate.
