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She laughed nervously, trying to shake off the swell of lust and longing that had washed over her body with his words, but the laughter died quickly on her lips, a casualty of the raw hunger that swept her body. “Surrender. Right.”
He put one of his giant hands on the small of her back and guided her to the stairwell. “Trust me.”
Famous last words.
They made their way down the stairs. The sconces were electric, but they may as well have been flickering with candlelight for the atmosphere they cast over the narrow stairwell. It was a sensation she’d had all night: the feeling that if she turned her head just a little, she’d see the city as it had been three hundred years earlier. The past felt close here, like she might step into it at any minute.
They were almost to the bottom of the stairs when she heard music.
Jazz of course.
It was coming from the other side of a door at the bottom of the stairwell, the squeal of a trumpet growing louder as they approached.
“Remember,” Roman said, reaching for the door, “stay close.”
He opened the door and Ruby was hit with a flood of sound: the trumpet riffing over the deep thumping of bass and a chaotic melody unfurling from the ivory keys of a piano.
Roman closed the door behind him and scanned the room, crowded with tables, all of them occupied by well-heeled people transfixed by the music being played by a trio on a small stage at one end of the room.
Roman’s scan of the room came to an end when he spotted a large man in a suit coat by the bar.
The man nodded and Roman took Ruby’s arm and guided her to the bar around the tables at the back of the room. No one paid them any notice and Ruby took in the room, which was larger than it had looked when she’d first stepped into it.
It was barely lit, candles glowing from the tables situated around the small stage, the musicians sweating and lost in their music. The bar occupied most of one wall, a lone woman, her dark hair tied back with a colorful scarf, pouring drinks.
Roman headed for the big man in the suit. His head was shaved, his skin dark and shining. He was built. The broad expanse of his shoulders pulled at the seams of his jacket and his neck had the muscular look of a guy who pumped a lot of iron.
Roman leaned toward him to say something but Ruby didn’t catch it over the sound of the music.
The man’s gaze slid to Ruby and she caught three words. “Not the girl.”
Roman didn’t flinch, but when he spoke, she heard the steel in his voice even over the music. “She stays with me.”
The man walked away without another word and disappeared behind a navy velvet curtain at the back of the club to the left of the stage where the musicians were still playing.
Sweat poured off the trumpeter, his black shirt sleeves rolled up, his whole body moving with the music as the crowd clapped and egged him on.
Roman looked at her and smiled reassuringly, but she saw the tight set of his jaw. This was new — Roman on edge — and she tried to calm her own nervousness as she listened to the music.
I am safe in my body.
Think you can surrender, Ruby?
The curtain at the back of the club moved and a second later the big guard emerged, stalking toward them.
“Follow me,” he said.
Roman guided Ruby in front of him — it was too crowded for them to walk side by side — and she followed the man to the back of the club with Roman on her heels.
They stepped through the curtain and everything went black. Panic clawed at Ruby’s throat in the moment before she felt Roman step next to her. She couldn’t see him, but she could feel him, his presence a fortress of safety.
Ahead of them, the guard was still moving, clearly familiar with the dark space that connected the club to wherever they were going. As they walked, Ruby’s eyes adjusted, but it wasn’t much help. They were walking through a wide empty hall, her heels clicking on the cracked concrete floor. It was like being backstage at a theater performance — the jazz still going on the other side of the curtain, an occasional burst of applause from the audience, all of them steeped in the glamour of the club while Roman, Ruby, and the guard moved deeper down the stark, empty hall.
The only clue that they weren’t backstage at some kind of bizarre theater performance was the smell: wet dirt and the rot of vegetation, damp concrete unable to hold back the tide of wet earth around the building. The hall ended in a set of metal doors with a key pad glowing on the wall. The guard reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a card. He held it up to the display, then opened the door.
They were met by another hall, but this one was paneled with polished mahogany and lit with the glow of sconces set against a lush and verdant wallpaper that made her think of the house where they were staying.
Several doors were open on either side of the hall, and Ruby caught sight of an assortment of large men in each room, some of them watchingInterview with the Vampireon a big-screen TV in a high-end media room, others playing pool on an ornate billiards table in another.
