The part of the stage behind the pedestals has sunk into the ground now, revealing a broad hidden passage almost as big as the auction room itself. At the end, stairs lead down into the dark. I glance around for a mechanism to open the stage from below, but I can’t see anything. I want to look harder, but I don’t think I can get away with it. Not now.
Two vampires guard the top of the stairs. The escort-tribute pair in front of me is stopped, the tribute is searched, and then they’re allowed to pass.
I deliberately keep my breathing even and steady, trying to keep my heart rate down. I expected to be searched and prepared for that eventuality, but there’s always a chance I didn’t do as well as I think I did. I’m not a master-level seamstress, although I’m usually handy enough when I need to be.
Unaware of my inner anxiety, my escort drags me to a halt in front of security. I paste on my most inviting smile and look up at the guards through my lashes.
“Is it a… strip search?” I ask, trying to look both nervous and excited by the idea, instead of just nauseated.
“No,” one of them says shortly. His expression is hard and blank. Unlike the raucous crowd who came to watch the auction, he’s clearly just here to do his job. “Only a quick once-over. Don’t need you accidentally bringing garlic down there.”
I gasp, forcing my eyes to go wide. “Garlic? I would never do that. It could hurt someone.”
Not even bothering to acknowledge my words, the guard jerks his chin, and his friend gives me a perfunctory pat-down. My nerves scream with awareness as he reaches for the skirt of my dress, but he doesn’t run his hands over the length of the fabric, just parts the slit at one side and reaches beneath the heavy layers to check that I don’t have anything strapped to my legs.
My breath hitches a little, but I hope he’ll think that’s just from having his hands on me. It’s a good fucking thing I hid my weapons, but I’m so used to having daggers sheathed at my thighs when I hunt that I almost worry he’ll somehow feel the lingering imprint of metal against my skin.
But he doesn’t. After running his hands up my thighs again, way too close to my fucking vagina for comfort, he steps back, then nods and waves us through.
“Pretty little thing, that one,” I hear him murmur to his stoic counterpart as we walk away. “More muscular than I usually like them, but soft where it counts.”
I almost manage to suppress a shudder. My escort glances down at me, a vague sort of concern on his face.
“The stairs are cold,” he says, his voice deep and gravelly. “Palace is warm, though. Don’t worry.”
“I can’t wait to get there,” I say breathlessly, rubbing my arms as if for warmth. I’m not even cold—I’ve worked in ice storms with just enough layers on to avoid frostbite—but I’d rather him assume that than realize that I’m disgusted by this whole thing.
The stairs are loud. They’re steel on steel, with rattling grates on every step. The walls are smooth, hard, and multi-faceted in just the right way to make every sound echo. The railings aren’t really railings, but smooth steel bars standing vertically from floor to ceiling, with a handspan between each one.
Fuck. So much for sneaking out once I find Nathan. The stairs are clearly set up to be an early warning system of any intruders—or escapees—and there’s no chance of climbing a bannister.
We go three stories down beneath the ground. I don’t see any other openings, just smooth walls at every landing. There are more guards at the bottom, but they don’t stop us. We’re waved through to a steel vault door, which opens from the inside after one of the escorts nods his head to a camera embedded in the wall. I try to suppress the curling dread in my stomach as I’m herded forward with the rest of the women. So far, I’m not seeing any easy way out. I can’t imagine that this is the only entrance to the palace, not with how big the place must be. There have to be other ways in and out. Hopefully they won’t be quite as secure.
The vault door closes with a dull thud behind us, and I glance around my new surroundings to see a female vampire waiting just inside. She steps forward, giving us a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. Her face makes her look middle-aged, but that just means that’s how old she was when she turned—it has no relation to the actual amount of time she’s walked the earth.
“Welcome, darlings,” she coos, pressing her hand to a few girls’ cheeks. “Oh, so many pretty things. We leave the men here. Follow me.”
Once again, we’re all herded forward, and I get the unpleasant sensation that I’m part of a flock of sheep being led to the slaughter.
This place is a maze. I’m trying to keep track of all the twists and turns, flights up and down, long hallways and random doors, but I can’t honestly be sure I’ll know how to get back to that entrance even if I do figure out a way to get up the stairs without dying.
The vampire matron moves at a vampire pace, which is just slightly faster than comfortable for the average human. It doesn’t bother me, but I need it to look and sound like it does. I put on a show, moving at the same rate as the two girls nearest me. Jog for a bit. Get a little winded. Fall back, catch up.
The first thing she does is bring us to a large room that looks sort of like a massive study or a library. There are contracts laid out on the cherry wood table in the middle of the room, and she leads us over to them.
“You’ll just need to sign these, my dears.”
I step forward, willing my hand not to shake as I reach for the elaborate ink pen next to my contract. These fuckers could get simple ball point pens if they wanted. They’re living in the twenty-first century along with the rest of us, but they clearly like to go for the effect of making us sign with these ancient and intimidating looking things.
The contract is long and full of a million lines of fine print. I see a few girls try to scan theirs quickly, glancing at the matron as if expecting to have their heads bitten off by her for dawdling, but most of them just pick up the pens and scrawl their names.
I do the same, only pausing long enough to check that the bid amount is accurate. Honestly, the words of the contract don’t matter to me. I don’t plan on staying for the full term of the contract anyway, and if the vamps find out why I’m really here, they’ll kill me in a heartbeat, contract or no.
Another little piece of my soul seems to shrivel up and die as I scrawl Darcy Claymore at the bottom of the page. Even though the signature doesn’t say Mikka Dawson, the act of signing a blood tribute contract still gives me the fucking creeps.
Once everybody’s finished with their contracts, two silent vampires come to collect them, and the female vamp ushers us out of the library.
She leads us down a few more long hallways before we finally reach the wing of the palace where the blood tributes are kept. We’re each deposited in our own rooms with a promise that the matron will come back to collect us again soon and instructions to get changed into something “suitable.”
With that alarming pronouncement, the female vampire disappears.
I close my door, thanking whatever gods might be listening for small favors. I expected to be bunking with other tributes, or at the very least, sharing a room. Keeping my façade up interminably would have exhausted me, probably to the point of making a mistake. I can never afford mistakes, but especially not now.