Read A Blood Seduction for Free Online

narrowed. His grip tightened. “What are you?”
    She scowled. “A woman. What in the hell do you think I am?”
    True anger flashed in his eyes, reigniting her fear all over again. He leaned forward, crowding her, scaring her. “ What are you? ”
    A freak. I’m a freak. A soon-to-be-dead freak, at the rate things are going.
    The vampire attacked her without warning, turning her head, baring her neck, biting her. Like before, the puncture hurt for only a minute. And then he reared back, licking the blood off his lips as he stared at her.
    “ Mio Dio. ”
    Without explanation, he released her and strode out of the bedroom, slamming the door closed behind him. “Blood!” His voice rattled the windows.
    Quinn stared at the closed door, her mouth open with disbelief. What in the hell just happened?
    She tipped her head back as her heartbeat slowly returned to something approximating normal, even as her mind whirled, a suffocating mass of confusion, questions, and dread.
    A half hour later, maybe—it had felt like twenty years—the door opened, and a pleasingly round woman bustled into the room, carrying a tray. Eggs, by the smell of them. And coffee.
    What was the vampire doing, fattening her for slaughter? Quinn’s muscles bunched, an instinctive reaction as she fought against pulling on her ropes. Her wrists were raw and abraded from where she’d done just that too many times already. But she hated being so vulnerable. Hated it.
    “I am Ernesta.”
    Quinn’s pulse, which had begun to jackhammer at the first rattle of the doorknob, slowly began to calm. How, she wondered, was she supposed to eat or drink when she was still tied to the bedposts?
    “The master wishes you fed,” the woman, clearly Latino, said in accented English. She had the broad face of a South American Indian and wore a drab, plain servant’s dress. “I have brought you eggs and toast. You must eat.”
    “How?”
    The woman set the tray on the washstand, then turned to Quinn and began digging at the knot that held one of Quinn’s wrists.
    “Thank you, Ernesta. Are you . . . a vampire . . . too?” Her mouth didn’t want to form the word any more than her mind wanted to accept that such a creature could possibly be real.
    But the woman didn’t laugh or smile or correct her in any way.
    “No. I am one of his slaves.”
    Quinn really wished she’d laughed. “How long have I been here? It’s still dark.”
    “It is always dark in Vamp City.” The woman looked at her as if she were a moron. “Vampires shun sunlight. Even through clouds they can burn.”
    So, what, they’d figured out a way to enthrall the sun? “I thought vampires were a myth,” she muttered.
    “That is what we want humans to think.”
    “We?” Quinn looked at her in surprise. “I thought you said you weren’t a vampire.”
    “I am something else.” The rope came loose, freeing Quinn’s wrist. As Quinn bent her arm, the blood rushing through it in a swift ache, Ernesta moved to her foot and the knot there. “Something equally impossible for a human to accept.”
    “May I ask what?”
    The woman’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “No.” Moments later, one ankle was free.
    Quinn lifted her knee slowly, easing the stiffness in her leg. “Can you at least tell me how this place exists?”
    The woman glanced at her, her dark eyes enigmatic. “In 1870, the sorcerer Phineas Blackstone created a city just for vampires. A city where the sun never shines.”
    In 1870. And that’s exactly what it looked like, wasn’t it? A world created in 1870 . . . a duplicate of Washington at that time . . . left to rot and decay for over 140 years.
    “But . . . where is it? Another planet or something?”
    “No, no, no. It exists precisely where the original lies. One on top of the other, duplicate worlds. Duplicates at first. No more. The outside world has changed. And this one has moldered.”
    “Can the vampires get out? Into the real world?”
    “Of course.