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She looked at her watch, disturbed to see it had grown later than she had expected. She started briskly walking across the square to her hotel.
Confront your fears. She had done so, hadn’t she? She would do so.
In the middle of the square, she found herself pausing. She looked up at the sky and shuddered. The night was red.
She heard something and swung around. Her breath eased from her lungs. It was just an old couple, hand in hand, out for a stroll. She turned and started walking again. Her nape grew cold. Ice cold. It felt as if the darkness was following her. Looming ever closer…just a breath away. She spun around. The square was empty. She quickened her pace, trying to be calm, logical, attempting not to give in to sheer insanity and run.
Light blazed from her hotel. She was almost running as she neared the entry.
A man was exiting, arm in arm with an attractive woman. They were laughing. Lights shone behind them. Jessica recognized the man; he was an American movie idol. She gave no sign she recognized him, but thanked him as he held the door, then hurried in.
The shadows were gone. The darkness was gone. She let out a breath, shaking her head. She was letting her imagination get the better of her. She strode to the desk, smiling as she asked for her key, the old-fashioned kind that was always kept by the concierge. He gave her the key, along with a note.
She read the message left by the college student she had run into earlier, a deep frown creasing her forehead. She looked at the stately concierge, with his graying hair and upright stance. “Where is the police station?”
She felt it again. There, in the bright light of the lobby. Felt it. The darkness, so black, and yet….
Red.
It was time for her to act.
Literally.
“Oh, my God!” Mary said. “That must be her, the dominatrix the Hungarians were talking about.”
Jeremy stared at the woman. She couldn’t be missed, and not only because of the black leather mask hiding her eyes. Her hair was pitch black, her skin fair. She was wearing black leather pants that clung to her form, showing little, but somehow emphasizing the perfection of her hips and thighs. When he forced his eyes upward, he saw she was also clad in a sheer black blouse over high, full breasts—he had to look twice to realize she was wearing a skin-toned top beneath the blouse. She was completely and decently clad, but the outfit still had an erotic appeal. In this case, more was less. He tried to stop staring. The sight of her was kicking his libido into overdrive. It was a strange feeling.
But then, strange feelings had been coming on ever since Mary had first talked to him about the party that afternoon.
She had been thrilled all during the ride in the black carriage, drawn by two black horses, that had taken them deep into the woods. The carriage had felt like something out of an old-time horror film, as had the ride through the fog-drenched trees. Nancy, a cute redhead, also in the journalism school, had been every bit as excited. She had stared out the window every few seconds, saying, “Can you believe this?”
She said it again now as they stood there, just inside the entry.
“Can you believe this?”
Mary nudged her. “Nancy, don’t gawk. We’ll look totally out of place.”
Jeremy was fairly certain they didn’t look as if they belonged to begin with. The girls had dressed in miniskirts and boots, but it was cold out, so they were also wearing tights and sweaters and heavy coats. He was in his usual tourist garb, jeans and a sweater. But here…
People were in every manner of dress. And undress. Several wore traditional vampire capes, but they weren’t in the majority. A few of the women were topless. One, a redhead of about thirty, was naked. She wore nothing but a belly-button ring and a silver belt. An extremely well built black man strode by, and he, too, was in the buff, except for a flapping loincloth. A few of the men smoking and drinking at the bar wore coats—at least some people in the place recognized the fact it was cold out.
And, to be fair, there were a number of men and women in very ordinary clothing. The kind that actually covered their bodies completely. As he watched, a middle-aged man at the bar adjusted his fake fangs.
“Where’s the girl who invited you?” Jeremy asked.
Mary shook her head. “I don’t see her. It’s a big place. She must be somewhere.” She led them toward the crowd by the bar.
“Americans,” the woman in black leather said, suddenly materializing in front of them. Strangely, Jeremy got the idea that she wasn’t particularly pleased. A look passed across her face in a fraction of a second that made him shiver.
Then it was gone. As if it had never been.
“Americans,” she repeated. “You were invited?”
Her English was heavily accented. She rose, walking toward them. She was strikingly beautiful, with perfect features, dark eyes. He wondered if in real life she might be a model.
Actually, she didn’t walk. She sauntered, every move entirely languid and sensual, her eyes filled with an amused confidence that both set a fire in Jeremy’s gut and also a warning. She eyed Nancy and Mary with a smile, then turned her attention to Jeremy, sliding a hand down his arm. Again, he was strangely excited, and yet…he didn’t feel she found him particularly exciting. In fact, it was almost as if she were putting on a performance. But for whom?
Of course, her whole life was probably an act, if she was indeed the dominatrix, as Mary believed.
“A woman I met in town invited me. She told me to bring friends,” Mary explained quickly, then introduced the three of them. Jeremy noticed that the woman didn’t introduce herself in return.
Again something indefinable passed through the dominatrix’s eyes, so quickly that he decided he might have imagined it.
Must have imagined it.
She went on with that same sensual amusement, as if she were educating the totally innocent—which, of course, in the circumstances, she was.
“Children, let me point out the playrooms. Beyond the bar, the movie room. We have a comprehensive selection of exceptional quality, men and women, women and women, men and men…whatever might appeal. Up the stone stairway…the pleasure rooms. Just beyond that, my personal domain. My dungeon. Visit me later, if you dare.” She smiled at Mary and Nancy. “Have you been bad?” she inquired in a throaty, teasing voice. “Do you need confession? We can arrange for that, too. But first, you must have a drink. The special tonight is a Bloody Mary. Mary…how darling, just like your name,” she said, eyeing Mary again. “Tonight, everything is on me.” She laughed softly. “We’ll find a form of payment. For now remain at the bar. Watch.” She stared at the three of them for a long moment. “I will tell you when it’s all right to move, do you understand?”
“Yes,” Jeremy said, relieved. He had to admit, he was more than uneasy.
He was…scared.
She leaned close to them. “Always know the way out,” she said.
“Always know the way out,” Nancy repeated. Jeremy wondered if he had sounded almost mesmerized when he had spoken, the way Nancy did.
The dominatrix seemed pleased with the response and smiled again.
She exuded a sleek sensuality, along with something smoldering and fierce. She escorted them the rest of the way to the bar and spoke to the man behind it. “Drinks, please. Right away. For my American friends.”
The bartender was tall, lean, dark-eyed, perhaps in his early thirties. He nodded, then hurried to do her bidding.
They sat at the bar to wait for their drinks. Looking around, Jeremy thought it might have been almost any bar anywhere—except for the naked people and the masked woman. Next to them, two men were discussing something in French. At the end of the bar, a good-looking man speaking German was trying to pick up a pretty blonde.
He turned to say something to the dominatrix, but she was gone.
“This is so exciting.” Mary whispered.
“Yeah. A thrill a minute,” Jeremy murmured.
“Stop being such a weenie,” Mary told him.
“You know,” Nancy murmured, “we’re not going to learn much if we spend all night just hanging out at the bar. We need to look around.”
“That woman just told us to stay here,” Jeremy said firmly.
“She also said we should watch,” Nancy argued. “We’ll see more if we look around.”
“She said to stay at the bar,” Jeremy repeated firmly. “And to always know the way out.”
Mary giggled. “Maybe they’re worried about police raids.”
He had a sickly feeling the dominatrix had been worried about something far more serious.
“Look, Jeremy, that woman is gone, and we can’t just sit here all night,” Nancy said.
“We need to split up,” Mary added. “No one is going to talk to us if we stick together like the Three Musketeers.”
“We should stay together,” Jeremy warned uneasily.
Mary laughed softly. “You shouldn’t want us hanging on to you. Our hostess seemed to be pretty into you.”
Jeremy didn’t know why, but he had the feeling the dominatrix had quickly assessed him and found him too young and far too naive. He looked over the heads of the Frenchmen and saw that she was back at the bar. She was behaving casually, chatting with the bartender, speaking to people as they came and went from room to room, and yet…
She seemed to be watching.
For what?
“I don’t know about you two, but I’ve got to see the pleasure rooms,” Mary said, sliding off her bar stool.
“I’ll check out the movie room,” Nancy said.
“I don’t know about this,” Jeremy protested. “I can’t be with both of you.”
But they ignored him, already moving. He saw the dominatrix. She had noted their movements, and she didn’t seem pleased.
Jeremy immediately lost sight of Mary, who must have run up the stairs. He found Nancy hovering at the back of the movie room. He stopped where he was, taking the overstuffed couches and the haze in the air from cigarettes and pot. On a large screen, a porno flick played. Two women were seducing one man—and each other. As he watched, one woman held the other down while the man bared his teeth and bit into the immobilized woman’s neck. She seemed to go into instant throes of ecstasy. Blood lust apparently led to wild arousal.
Despite all the flesh on show, the movie didn’t begin to arouse him. He realized he was far too tense to feel anything other than an unsettling sense of alarm.
A girl rose from one of the couches and approached Nancy, taking her hand. Nancy followed her back and sat down.
Jeremy decided that Nancy could fend for herself. The woman who had approached her was slim and not more than five two. Nancy was giggling and over twenty-one. If she wanted to live on the wild side in pursuit of her craft—or using her craft as an excuse—it was completely her call.
He made his way to the stone stairway and hurried up.
They should have stayed together at the bar, as they’d been told, and just watched.
He reached a long hall lined with doors.
The hall itself seemed far longer than it could possibly be. Perhaps it was the dim lighting and the way the far end of the hall was almost completely dark, adding to the illusion that it went on forever.
On and on…as if in an impossibly long shot for a horror film.
Except this was real.
He told himself that he was only giving in to fear and letting his imagination run wild. Look. All he had to do was look.
No one was in the hallway. He had no idea which door Mary might have chosen.
As he stood there, he felt rather than saw a shadow. No, not a shadow, exactly, a sense of greater darkness. As if something large had cast a pall over the meager light offered by the candles that burned in medieval sconces every ten feet along the walls.
A lump formed in his throat. He was tempted to turn, run back down the stairs and out into the night. Of course, if he did, he had no idea of where he would actually wind up. They had been driven through a dense, fog-shrouded forest, and they hadn’t passed another living soul until they had reached this place, which, from the outside, had appeared to be nothing more than a ruin on a cliff. Yet the urge to run, escape, flee to any other place on earth, tore at him with an urgency that defied all logic.
He would not yield to it. Mary and Nancy were here, and while they were welcome to whatever pursuits they chose, he couldn’t abandon them to this…
“This danger,” he whispered aloud.
Because somehow he knew that his unease was justified. He felt a raw sense of instinctive panic taking hold in his gut.
The shadow was there, real, palpable, evil and malignant.
It was just a shadow, he tried to tell himself. A result of the candlelight, the intense darkness of the night…
“Where are all those psychologists when you need them?” he mocked himself out loud.
He felt the most intense desire to keep looking over his shoulder. There was something there. Something pursuing—no, stalking—him. Slowly, playing with him. He could feel it. Feel the danger, like a gazelle on an African plain suddenly aware that a lioness was silently slipping up behind it….
He spun around. He was alone in the hall.
It was simply the time and place, he told himself. He was in the land of legends, with a bunch of no-life idiots who liked to play at being vampires. It was silly; it was sad.
But fanatics could be dangerous.
And still he felt he was facing something that didn’t remotely resemble a human danger.
He turned back, staring at the doors.
And felt it again. There was a shadow, something…evil.
It was laughing at him, he thought. It knew his fear, thrived on it, and laughed….
They had to get out of there.
“Mary?” he called aloud—almost screaming it. He no longer cared what anyone thought, what ridiculous expectation the girls had for journalistic success. They had to get out.
“Mary?” he called again, and opened the first door.
It was simply too fascinating. Mary was pretty sure she was standing there in wide-eyed wonder. No matter how sophisticated she might have considered herself to be in her own world, she knew she must appear like a lamb in a forest here. Still, this was the kind of thing that made for a great story. People loved to share such wanton and carnal experiences—vicariously. They wanted to be shocked and appalled. They were curious, and satisfying their curiosity sold print. And she? She intended to sell. People were always intrigued by sex and violence. It was unlikely that she would be traveling to any major war zones, so that left sex.
Well, sex and fantasy. The vampire fantasy. It kind of made sense that some guys wanted to act like they were vampires, because vampires had power over women. And some women loved the idea of being taken, dominated….
There was certainly fantasy here, combined with masks…and sex….
First she had stumbled on an intimate ménage à trois. They hadn’t noticed her in the doorway at first, they had been so…involved. Then a husky voice had suggested she join in. Certain her face was a thousand shades of red, she had apologized and moved on.
Another door had led to an empty—but prepared—chamber. And chamber was the right word, not room. The space had been decorated to resemble an ancient dungeon, with shackles on the wall, and whips and chains laid out on a table, ready for use.
