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  Ridiculous, Sebastian chided himself. He stepped through into the office, letting the door shut behind him. Again he paused, waiting for someone to show up and escort him back. After a minute, he decided to push forward. He crossed to the interior door, which was unlocked, and he passed through into an equally generic and drab hallway. He could now hear music. It was the kind of loud, pulsing stuff that trendy clubs inflicted upon anyone who dared enter through their doors.

  Wonderful.

  Sebastian followed the music to the end of the hall, where he pushed through another door into the warehouse proper. The Singularity BBQ truck was parked to one side of the large space, a steel and glass sentinel. Its front windows were like giant, black, shining eyes. But were they silently observing or patiently waiting?

  Sebastian shivered.

  He needed to stop freaking himself out.

  The thumping bass of the music vibrated the floor under his feet. The warehouse had been divided into a bay for the truck on the left and what appeared to be an additional office space on the right. The music was pouring from the room. He slowly approached the door that led into the office area, and the apprehensive feeling tried to creep up the back of his neck again.

  Get over it, loser.

  At this point, knocking seemed ridiculous, but he knocked anyway. This was crazy, nobody would be able hear a thing over the music. He reached for the doorknob, but the door flew open to reveal a grinning Jessie—a very wet and very naked grinning Jessie.

  Sebastian’s eyes bugged out of his head. She was magnificent. The perfection hinted at their first meeting was confirmed. Jessie’s honey butter skin was flawless, her firm body perfectly sculpted.

  Sebastian emitted a shocked squeak.

  Jessie reached out and grasped his arm in a steel grip.

  “T. Sebastian, you’re late,” she purred.

  Jessie yanked him into the room with such force that his feet actually left the floor. He started to squeak again—she was crazy strong—but the sound died in his throat when the room she pulled him into swam into focus.

  Blood orgy.

  It was a term pulled from the over-the-top horror movies of his youth. Zombies, vampires, cannibals with chainsaws—the monster was interchangeable, but the results were always the same—huge body count. A blood orgy.

  The room was tiled floor to ceiling like a sauna, a large drain centered in the floor. The need for the copious amount of tile and the drain was immediately obvious—ease of clean up.

  The average human body contains anywhere from a gallon to a gallon and a half of blood, and it looked as if there was at least three or four bodies worth of blood splashed around the room. Kerri and Megan, also naked, were in the process of cleaning up.

  Well, actually, only Kerri was cleaning up, standing beneath multiple shower heads—one in the ceiling and two at torso level. The water blasting her perfect curves from multiple angles was very efficient in sluicing off the layer of blood and gore that covered her body.

  Megan, on the other hand, was finishing off her . . . meal? The pretty nurse-doctor from that afternoon lay slumped in Meagan’s arms, Meagan’s mouth hungrily sucking at a gash in the unconscious woman’s neck. And Megan was a messy eater. Some of the blood escaped, spurting out from between her lips, and she was growling in pure contentment as she drained the life from the woman in her arms.

  Sebastian had a moment of clarity where he was able to take in the entire scene. There were several more bodies lying discarded around the room, and he knew instinctively that they had all been drained of their blood in the same manner as the young woman Megan was eating. The room was humid and smelled of sweat and blood. A taste like wet, dirty pennies filled Sebastian’s mouth, and he gagged.

  It wasn't real.

  It couldn't be real. It was some kind of art thing.

  It had to be.

  Sebastian choked out a giggle, and then his eyes rolled back, and his knees buckled. If Jessie hadn’t had a grip on him, he would have gone down hard.

  “Whoops-a-daisy,” said Jessie.

  She easily bore his entire weight one handed. She kept him on his feet, using her other hand to pull his lolling head upright. “Wake-y, wake-y, T. Sebastian. The fun is just getting started.”

  Sebastian heard the words but couldn’t process them. His whole body felt as if it was melting. Bones, muscles, and organs, nothing felt solid. The room around him melted into a red and white smear. He knew that Jessie was talking, but the sound was muffled as if he were underwater. He was moving. Was he walking? No, his feet were dragging uselessly across the floor. Jessie was half-carrying, half-dragging him out of the kill room.

  Yes, kill room.

  Slaughterhouse.

  All those bodies . . . all that blood.

  Jessie, Kerri, and Megan . . . they were . . . they were killers.

  Blood drinkers.

  Sebastian’s mind fought against him. It refused to accept the word. But there was no other explanation . . . no other way to describe what he had just witnessed and no other name by which to describe the three sexy women.

  Vampires.

  The ladies of Singularity BBQ were vampires.

  Chapter Five

  Sebastian realized that they had stopped. At some point, Jessie had tossed him over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry and had lugged him up a set of stairs. They were still inside the building, he was sure of that. He tried to focus on his surroundings—a dark room, no windows, and one door. His uncooperative eyes made it hard to see details. In the gloom, he could just make out a pattern of odd geometric shapes.

  Chain-link fencing . . . he was staring at chain-link fencing. But a fence inside didn’t make sense. Jessie tossed him. One moment, he was hanging upside down from her shoulder, trying to calm his spinning brain, and the next moment, he was midair. Jessie had thrown him the way a regular person would toss a bag of garbage into a dumpster. Sebastian pinwheeled, his arms and legs searching for purchase. His flight through space ended abruptly when his body smashed into a cinderblock wall. The impact knocked the air out of his lungs in a whoosh. He crumpled to the concrete floor, heaving for breath. A metal bang brought his gaze around to Jessie. She stood smiling on the other side of a chain-link fence door.

  A kennel.

  He was in a dog kennel.

  “You need to stop being such a big pussy, T. Sebastian. Maybe try some deep breathing exercises to help center yourself.” Jessie illustrated her point by taking in a few deep breaths, eyes closed and hands gesturing in and out. “See? Like that.”

  “What . . . why . . . what . . .” Sebastian’s brain was still in freak-out mode, and completing a coherent sentence was impossible.

  “Whah-whah-whah. Come on, T. Sebastian! You can do better than that.”

  He looked away, frustrated.

  “No? Okay, maybe later then.” Jessie turned to leave but then stopped short, she peered back at him over her shoulder. “By the way, if it makes you feel better, you’re free to scream your pretty little head off. No one will hear you.” She flashed her big, sexy smile and closed the door.

  He wasn’t sure how long he lay there in the dark on the cold concrete—ten minutes, an hour, two hours? However long it was, it was long enough for his mind to finally start calming down. He had accepted the fact that Jessie, Kerri, and Megan had murdered at least five people, because that’s the number of bodies he had counted in the kill room. Of course, there was no doubt in his mind that this was not the first time the three of them had done this. The number of victims could be in the hundreds. But he couldn’t go there—not yet. He only needed to deal with the current facts.

  So five victims killed in a very gruesome way. He chuckled to himself, if that wasn’t the understatement of forever . . .

  “Hello?”

  Sebastian jerked upright and scuttled back into a corner of the kennel. The voice had been real, he was sure of that, and it had come from the darkness to his left.

  “I’m sor
ry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” It was a soft, female voice.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?” Sebastian demanded. But his voice sounded weak and frightened even to himself. It could be one of them just messing with him, but he hadn’t heard the door open, had he?

  A face appeared from the darkness, the light from under the door just enough to illuminate her features.

  Heidi Aldridge.

  He recognized her from the pictures Lucy had dug up. Heidi was in the kennel one over from his. Sebastian slid forward closer to the chain link to get a better look. She, like the other three, had changed drastically. If Sebastian looked closely, he could still see the teenager she had been, but whatever process had turned Jessie and the others into super models, Heidi had been involved.

  “You’re Heidi.”

  Heidi blinked in surprise. “How do you know my name? Are you with the police?” She sounded hopeful.

  He shook his head. “No. I’m a reporter. I’m doing . . . was doing a story on the . . . um, food truck scene.”

  “Oh.” Heidi looked down, defeated. “It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. At this point, they’re probably unstoppable.”

  “You know what they are?” Sebastian still couldn’t bring himself to say the word vampire out loud. “What they’re doing to people?”

  “Yes, I helped create them.”

  Sebastian’s mouth fell open. He started to slowly slide back into his corner.

  “It’s not like that. I’m not like them. Something went wrong. None of this was supposed to happen.” Heidi was almost crying. “They were my best friends, and now they’re monsters. We were just trying to help, you know . . . be a positive force in the world.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the door, straining to hear anything. What if this was some kind of trick? Maybe Heidi was the leader of this psycho gang of people eaters? Maybe this was all part of the game? Maybe they liked to play with their food before they ate it?

  And if that were true, what could he do about it? If he was going to die, at least he wanted to hear the story first. Despite his current employment, he was a journalist at heart. He had to know.

  Sebastian turned back to Heidi. “What exactly were you guys trying to do that would cause this?” He waved his hand in the direction of the door and the three women beyond.

  “We, all four of us, are scientists. We—”

  Sebastian cut her off. “I know this part. You’re all a bunch of genius Cal Tech graduates. But how do you go from that to what I saw downstairs? They are, you know, they are . . .” He had to say it. To make it real, he had to say the word. “Vampires.”

  He slumped down, dropping his head into his hands. Even though he had been able to say it, he still couldn’t believe it. Vampires—the undead blood-suckers of legend—were real. How many of them were out there walking around, preying on an unsuspecting population? If there were three, there had to be more, right? And how did the Singularity BBQ ladies walk around in the daytime? Wasn’t there supposed to be rules that even vampires had to follow?

  “Oh, they’re not vampires.”

  Sebastian’s head snapped up.

  “At least, not in the traditional sense.”

  “Traditional sense?” He was incredulous. “They are eating people, drinking their blood. There are countless books and movies that all agree that is pretty much the definition of vampire.”

  “Well a better classification would be blood-mage.”

  “A blood what?”

  “A blood-mage, or a person who uses blood-magic to do things that would be considered supernatural,” explained Heidi.

  “Blood-magic? Like hocus-pocus, abracadabra witch stuff?”

  “If you consider hocus-pocus stuff to be things such as energy manipulation, which includes telekinesis, levitation, and mind control, then yes.”

  Sebastian’s brain was reeling again. He had just started to accept the idea of vampires, but now magic?

  “I don’t understand. How is something like magic—real magic—kept a secret?”

  “That’s a good question. We stumbled on it by accident ourselves. Jessie found an old alchemy book at a garage sale . . .”

  “A garage sale,” repeated Sebastian.

  “I know, right? But yeah, that’s where it all started . . .with a two-dollar book from a garage sale. We were just goofing around following one of the spells in the book. It was a game . . . you know, a hobby. It was something to help our minds decompress from our daily routines.”

  Sebastian scooted forward, caught up in the story.

  “We couldn’t follow any of the spells—not exactly anyway—because some of the ingredients have no modern equivalent. So we used our knowledge of science to make substitutions. We chose things that seemed appropriate and, well, it worked.”

  “What worked? What did you guys do?”

  “It was a spell to make our fingernails long, sexy, and indestructible.” Heidi held up her hand, waggling her fingers. The nails were long and perfect, they looked just like Jessie’s nails. Heidi then dropped her hand to the concrete and used the nail on her index finger to gouge a small groove in the cement floor.

  Sebastian’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. He leaned over to get a closer look. Heidi dug a second groove next to the first.

  Whoa.

  “If you can do that then can’t you just . . . you know . . .” He rattled the chain link, “rip this fence to pieces?”

  Heidi shook her head. “It’s complicated.”

  “What’s complicated? You could get us out of here, and we could call the CIA or the Navy Seals or something.”

  “I tried to escape, it didn’t work. The three of them are different, the magic did something to them that it didn’t do to me.”

  “But now there are two of us, we could try again. I’ve got a car right outside,” Sebastian pleaded. He didn’t want to die in this warehouse, and he was pretty sure that’s exactly where this was headed.

  “It won’t work. The little bit of magic I could do has been dampened.” Heidi held up her hand again and pointed out a thin silver bracelet around her wrist. “This is stopping me from accessing the little power I have. I can’t get it off, and I’ve tried everything.”

  Sebastian’s argument died in his throat as the door banged open. He spun around to see Jessie, Megan, and Kerri framed in the doorway.

  Megan spoke first. “Oh good. You’re up.”

  “And look, ladies. It seems our dear T. Sebastian has been putting the moves on Heidi,” said Kerri.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Sebastian caught Heidi moving backwards into the farthest corner of her kennel. Yeah, like that was going to help.

  “I’m glad you two are hitting it off. We have an idea,” said Jessie.

  “Yes, a fun experiment, with you two as the lab rats,” said Megan giggling.

  Sebastian stood his ground. He wasn’t going to cower. “People . . . my coworkers know where I am. They will come looking for me if I don’t check in.” He hoped he sounded strong and assured and that he was just imagining the quaver he heard in his voice.

  Jessie laughed a snorting guffaw. “Please, T. Sebastian. It’s not like you work for The New York Times. I don’t think the staff at the freebie paper you work for are observant enough to even notice if you don’t show up for a few days.”

  He knew she was right. He wasn’t really close to anyone at the paper. Lucy might wonder where he was, but probably not for a day or two. He didn’t speak with his parents all that often . . . maybe a call, or more likely a text, every other week or so. He didn’t really have any close friends who would miss him either. No, he was the perfect victim. He could go missing, and by the time anyone noticed his absence, he would have disappeared, his trail wiped clean by the three very dangerous creatures standing in front of him.

  His only hope was that whatever this experiment was, it would keep him alive for a little while longer, and then maybe he and Heidi could figure a way out of
this nightmare. He glanced over at Heidi, she was curled in a ball head down.

  Great.

  “Heidi hon, it’s time to make yourself useful,” said Jessie.

  Megan unlocked Heidi’s door and pulled the other woman to her feet. Heidi slumped like a rag doll, and Megan had to carry her out of the room.

  “Okay, T. Sebastian, here’s the thing. Anyone of us could rip your throat out in the blink of an eye,” said Jessie. Her eyes bored into his, and she stared until he acknowledged her statement with a nod. “So I’m going to unlock your cage, and you’re going to behave. Correct?”

  He nodded again and said, “Yes.”

  “Great,” said Jessie cheerfully. She unlocked his door and gestured for him to lead the way out of the room. “Trust me, you’re going to love what we have planned.”

  Sebastian shuffled forward, he had to squint against the light of the room they entered. Bright fluorescents lit the space, and after the darkness of the kennel room, his eyes took a minute to adjust.

  It was a lab with metal tables jammed full of scientific equipment. As a journalism major, he had only taken the required science credits, and so most of the stuff in the room was unfamiliar. There were the classic glass beakers and test tubes but also some very sophisticated-looking digital gear.

  Megan, Kerri, and Heidi were on the far side of the room. A shower station had been set up. It was the kind of thing Sebastian had seen in documentaries about nuclear or biological research—a decontamination shower. Megan and Kerri were washing Heidi, and even though he was battling a near-crippling fear, he couldn’t help but be a little aroused. Three beautiful, naked women in a shower, people paid good money to see stuff like that.

  “Strip,” Jessie demanded.

  “Huh?”

  “I said strip.” Jessie smiled at him. The smile that earlier in the day seemed sexy and a come-on now held the pure menace of a predator.

  “This is the male fantasy come to life, isn’t it?” Jessie licked her lips. “You’re about to get naked with four—well three and a half—of the hottest women you’ve ever met. And you get to shower with them.” Jessie reached out and literally ripped the shirt off of his body. He had to admit it was expertly done, she hadn’t even so much as scratched him with those long, wicked nails.