stand here could make the difference. Please, please, don't fight me anymore."
Daphne opened her mouth, then shut it. Her eyes were desolate. "Please try to take care of yourself,"
she whispered. She let go of Rashel's shoulders and hugged her hard. "We all know you're doing it for
us. I'm proud to be your friend."
Then she turned and ran, herding the others ^^ toward the boats.
A moment later she threw Rashel two pieces of line. Rashel tied up Quinn first, then the werewolf.
"Six minutes," she said to Daphne. Daphne nodded, trying not to cry.
Rashel wouldn't say goodbye. She hated that. Even though she knew perfectly well that she was never
going to see Daphne again.
Without looking back, she loped up the hiking trail.
Chapter 14
The first person Rashel met in the mansion was Ivan.
It was sheer dumb luck, the same luck that had helped keep her alive so far tonight. She slipped in the
back door, the way she and the girls had gone out. Standing in the huge silent kitchen, she listened for an
instant to the music that was still blasting from the inner house.
Then she swiveled to check the cellar-and met Ivan the Terrible running up the stairs.
He had clearly just discovered that his twenty-four valuable slave girls were missing. His blond hair was
flying, his eyes were wide with alarm, his mouth was twisted. He had the taser in one hand and a bunch
of plastic handcuffs-the kind police use on rioters-in the other.
When Rashel suddenly appeared on the stairway, his eyes flew open even wider. His mouth opened in astonishment-and then Rashel's foot impacted with
his forehead. The snap kick knocked him backward, and he tumbled down the stairs to hit the wooden door below.
Rashel leaped after him, making it to the bottom only a second after he did. But he was already out.
"What are these? Were you supposed to take some girls up?" She kicked at the plastic handcuffs. Ivan
the Unconscious didn't answer.
She glanced at her watch. Only a quarter to nine. Maybe he'd been taking the girls to get washed or
something. It seemed too early to start the feast.
Running noiselessly back up the stairs, she quietly closed the door. Now she had to follow the music.
She needed to see where the vampires were, how they were situated, how she could best get at them.
She wondered where Lily was.
The kitchen opened into a grand dining room with an enormous built-in sideboard. It had undoubtedly
been made to accommodate whole suckling pigs or something, but Rashel had a dreadful vision of a girl
lying on that coffinlike mahogany shelf, hands tied behind her, while vampire after vampire stopped by to
have a snack.
She pushed the idea out of her mind and moved silently across the floorboards.
The dining room led to a hall, and it was from the end of the hallway that music was coming. Rashel
slipped into the dimly lit hall like a shadow,
moving closer and closer to the doors there. The last door was the only one that showed light. That one,
she thought.
Before she could get near it, a figure blocked the light. Instantly Rashel darted through the nearest
doorway.
She held her breath, standing in the darkened room, watching the hall. If only one or two vampires came
out, she could pick them off.
But nobody came out and she realized it must have just been someone passing in front of the light. At the
same moment she realized that the music was very loud.
This wasn't another room-it was the same room. She was in one gigantic double parlor, with a huge
wooden screen breaking it up into two separate spaces. The screen was solid, but carved into a lacy
pattern that let flickering light through.
Rashel thrust her knife in her waistband, then crept to the screen and applied her eye.
A spacious room, very masculine, paneled like the dining room in mahogany and floored in cherry
parquet. Glass brick windows-opaque. All Rashel's worry about somebody looking out had been for
nothing. A fire burned in a massive fireplace, the light bringing out the ruddy tones in the wood. The
whole room looked red and secret.
And there they were. The vampires for the bloodfeast. Seven of the most powerful made vampires in the
world, Fayth had said. Rashel counted heads swiftly. Yes, seven. No Lily.
"You boys don't look that scary," she murmured.
That was one thing about made vampires. Unlike the lamia, who could stop aging-or start againwhenever
they wanted, made vampires were stuck. And since the process of turning a human body into a
vampire body was incredibly difficult, only a young human could survive it.
Try to turn somebody over twenty into a vampire and they would burn out. Fry. Die.
The result was that all made vampires were stuck as teenagers.
What Rashel was looking at could have been the cast for some new TV soap about friends. Seven
teenage guys, different sizes, different colors, but all Hollywood handsome, and all dressed to kill. They
could have been talking and laughing about a fishing trip or a school dance... except for their eyes.
That was what gave them away, Rashel thought. The eyes showed a depth no high school guy could
ever have. An experience, an intelligence... and a coldness.
Some of these teenagers were undoubtedly hundreds of years old, maybe thousands. All of them were
absolutely deadly.
Or else they wouldn't be here. They each expected to kill three innocent girls starting at midnight.
These thoughts flashed through Rashel's mind in a matter of seconds. She had already decided on the
best way to plunge into the room and start the attack. But one thing kept her from doing it.