“Yes, my lord.” Erik sat opposite Duncan and crossed his legs, propping an ankle on the opposite knee. “Bren and I bought this house several years ago from a vampire named Scovill. An older vamp. What would you say, Bren, two, three hundred years?”

“Oh, much older than that,” Brendan said. “And not too pleased with how Victor ran things, either. He bought a house way back in the Blue Ridge mountains, I think.” He shuddered discreetly. “Very unpleasant vampire, but powerful too. The locals probably think Big Foot has finally come home to roost.”

Miguel had been prowling the downstairs, but now took up a position behind Duncan and said, “Victor had this place marked as a blood house. Why?”

“Oh, that,” Erik said dismissively. “We have a small group of vampires who come together every weekend, my lord,” Eric said, addressing Duncan. “Private affairs, very discreet. There is a blood house in this area, however. On the other side of Leesburg. Victor probably did own that one. And there’s a second property, more in the way of an estate—big house, lots of property. I imagine it’s all yours now, my lord.”

Duncan nodded and signaled to Miguel. “I want to verify the addresses we have.”

Erik pulled out his PDA and began conferring with Miguel. But Brendan gave Duncan a somber look. “What you really want to know about are Victor’s parties, I imagine.” He paused, waiting for a response. When Duncan simply looked at him, he hurried on. “That’s what the estate was for. He used to come out here regularly with a bunch of big wigs. Senators, congressmen, even the occasional cabinet member, and a whole bunch of lobbyists. That was the real purpose of the parties. The lobbyists got unfettered access to policymakers away from the glare of the Washington press, and Victor got paid very, very well for making it possible.”

“And what did the policymakers get out of it?” Duncan asked quietly.

Brendan looked away in obvious discomfort, glancing over at Erik and back again, clearly reluctant to continue.

Erik murmured something to Miguel, then nodded and dropped his PDA onto the side table. “Go ahead, Bren,” he sighed. “You’ve gone this far, so you might as well tell the whole sordid story.”

“The policymakers got different things,” Brendan said evasively. “Some of our fine elected leaders got kickbacks in the form of soft money campaign donations. Others . . .” He tightened his lips in distaste. “Sex, I think.”

Duncan frowned. Sex? That was the big secret? Men in power being offered sex in exchange for favors? That was so common it was almost trivial. There had to be something more to it, something the neatly pressed Brendan didn’t want to talk about.

“Not just sex,” Erik explained, with a sympathetic look in Brendan’s direction. “Victor seduced women for these men, often very young women, and all of them very beautiful. He got them to do things that I’m quite certain most of them never would have done otherwise. Hell, he got them to do men they probably wouldn’t have done either. I know power’s an aphrodisiac and all that, but even that can only carry so far with most people.”

“So, Victor was getting paid for these parties?”

“You mean were the lobbyists paying him directly?” Erik clarified. “Yes, I think so. More than one of them joked about it. Victor insisted some of us attend his sordid little affairs, even though we refused to whore for him. We were all professionals of one sort or another, and Victor thought his clients would respect him more if they saw the kind of vampires he controlled, if they saw how powerful he was.”

“As if,” Brendan muttered.

“Yes, well. He thought so, anyway,” he continued. “And then there were the other parties, the special ones.”

Duncan felt Miguel’s attention sharpen behind him.

“Booze flowed freely at Victor’s parties and his guests liked to talk. One of the things they loved to talk about was the special parties. That’s what they always called them, ‘the special.’ Like, they’d point out a particular woman and say, ‘Hope that one’s at the next special.’ Victor didn’t have that kind of party often, maybe a couple times a year, but they were hard-core. If you can believe what the men bragged about—and I do—the women were flat out raped, and by more than one man. Some of them were even hurt pretty badly. The man who told me all this laughed when he talked about how Victor would heal the women afterward so they’d be ready to go again the next night. It made me sick, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Victor or his henchmen have a website where you can download a video of his ‘specials’ for a price.”

Miguel leaned forward. “Surely the men involved wouldn’t want their identities revealed.”

“So they film from the back,” Brendan said, with a shrug. “The viewer gets a shot of a senator’s pasty white ass while he whips some poor girl.”

“Did you report this?” Duncan asked.

“To whom, my lord?” Erik asked mildly. “Victor was our lord. By rights, he was the one to whom we’d have reported such an abuse. And every vampire lord in the country would be after our heads if we went to the human police. We’d never live long enough to testify.”

Duncan was forced to agree. Even if Erik or Brendan had complained to another vampire lord, Victor would have been told, and the two vampires would have been executed without anyone raising a word of protest.

And even now, hearing about it for the first time, Duncan didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t sound like a meaningless platitude. All they had was his word that he was different from Victor, that such things would never happen under his rule. Duncan stood, turning to face Erik and Brendan, who had jumped to their feet.

“If you ever need anything,” Duncan said, “you may call me. If I’m not available, you may speak to either Miguel or Louis. They’ll fill me in, and I will get back to you. I’m not Victor, gentlemen. You will see that in time.”

He stepped around the couch, signaling Louis who was waiting by the front door.

“Thank you for the information, and for your hospitality.”

“My lord,” Brendan said when Duncan was halfway to the door.

Duncan turned and gave him a questioning look.

“Thank you, my lord. We knew you were different from the moment you claimed the territory. You cared more in those few minutes of terror and confusion than Victor had in his entire rule. Just by getting rid of him, you’ve done every vampire in this territory a service already. We’ll talk to the others, too, and let them know.”

Duncan nodded. “We’ll see each other again, Brendan. I don’t intend to be a stranger to my people.”

* * *

“Fucking Victor,” Duncan swore as Louis steered the big SUV down the curving driveway. “I can’t believe none of us realized how corrupt he was.”

“How could you, my lord? He never let anyone but his guards live in the District, and anyone else who may have known was too frightened to take action.”

“That’s no excuse. I saw him every damn year at the Council meetings, and I never suspected any of this. Neither did Raphael, and it’s not easy to pull one over on him.”

Miguel shrugged. “Not if he’s looking for it, but why would he have looked for any of this? I’ve never been to a Council meeting, but I know they don’t last long. A few hours, maybe? It’s not like they meet for cocktails and dinner afterwards. And when they’re together, I imagine everyone has their shields locked up as tight as a virgin’s knickers.”

Duncan gave his lieutenant a sideways look. “You’re not old enough to know about virgins or knickers, Miguel,” he said dryly.

“Hey, we still have virgins!” Miguel protested with a smile.

“If you say so,” Duncan agreed. He was grateful for the change of mood. “You checked the addresses with Erik?”

Miguel nodded. “It’s the same two we have, though we didn’t have a record of the one property operating as a blood house. From what Erik said it’s pretty active, too. It’s the only one for a hundred miles around here.”

“I’m beginning to think this whole trip was a waste of time, but we might as well check it out next.”

“We need to leave enough time to get back to the city tonight, my lord,” Miguel commented. “And that blood house is a good hour’s drive on the other side of Leesburg. I don’t want you to end up spending a day unguarded in a strange blood house, or worse, that party place of Victor’s. God knows what sort of people he let in there. We should head back tonight and get an early start tomorrow. Check them both out then.”

Duncan frowned. The whole idea of Victor’s parties made him want to kill the vampire lord all over again, but it also sounded a lot like what Lacey had described to Emma, and that couldn’t be good. He wanted to see the house for himself, but Miguel had a point.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll do them both tomorrow. The blood house and Victor’s party place, though I expect there’s nothing left there but the ghosts of pain and old blood.”

* * *

The next night, as Duncan stood in the yard of Victor’s Leesburg estate, he looked back and remembered those words. He remembered and thought how foolish he’d been to believe he’d already understood the full depth of Victor’s depravity.

Chapter Eight

Emma found it nearly impossible to concentrate. Two days had passed since she’d spoken to Duncan at the vampire embassy, and she’d heard nothing back from him yet. She was so strung out with nerves that she’d skipped her morning coffee, figuring she didn’t need the caffeine, even though she’d barely slept last night. But then she hadn’t really slept since the first night Lacey had gone missing. And no matter what anyone else thought, Emma had never doubted Lacey was missing. They’d known each other since they were eleven years old, that horrible year when Emma’s mother had died from the same cancer that had taken her Grandmama years before. Overnight, she’d found herself orphaned with no other family on her mother’s side to take her in. She’d never known anyone from her father’s family; didn’t even know if there was anyone. So Emma had been left all alone in the world, shuffled into foster care along with the thousands of others just like her. And she would have stayed all alone, too, if not for Lacey.