Which the creature was now attempting to suck off.
Mircea swallowed, and tried not to look as horrified as he felt.
He tried harder not to imagine himself that desperate a week from now.
God, he had to get out of here.
The blond nodded, apparently oblivious. “That’s how the condottiere makes most of his money. He gets paid for patrolling the city, but he makes a lot more by collecting fines and selling off anybody that can’t pay.”
Mircea didn’t bother asking how much the fine was, since his net worth at the moment was zero. And there was a more pressing question. “Selling off?”
The vamp looked like he thought Mircea might be a little slow. “You know. As slaves?”
Mircea just stared at him.
He knew Venice had slaves, of course, of all types and varieties. Ships regularly brought in everything from red-headed Russians to curly-haired Greeks, from bronze-skinned Saracens to Nubian beauties. Most were women and girls, sought after for domestic help and to warm their master’s beds. But there were always a few strong male backs resold to Egypt as soldiers or to the plantations on Crete or Cyprus as workers.
But that was among the human population. Vampires had their own ways of acquiring the help they needed, and it was far more permanent than any slaver’s chains. Why would a vampire need a slave?
“Different reasons,” the blond told him, when he asked. “The weaker the master, the worse the slaves he makes. Some prefer to buy them to get better stock. If they end up being useful, they get added to the family.”
“Or maybe they got a job they don’t want to risk a family member on,” the brunet said, more cynically. “It takes power to make a Child. A slave just takes money.”
“Or sometimes they need somebody with special skills,” the blond said, ignoring him. “And if they can’t find him among the humans—”
“And maybe you’re kidding yourself,” the third member of their unholy trio said, speaking for the first time.
The voice was bitter and jaded, like the face that went with it. The filthy hair was half gray, the jowls were heavy and sagging with late middle age, the eyes had dark circles that turned the swarthy skin almost black, and the nose appeared to have been broken more than once. Like the creature’s spirit, apparently, because he looked resentfully at the hope in his fellow prisoner’s eyes.
But the blond wasn’t having it. “Convocation’s coming up,” he insisted.
He was talking about the biannual meeting of the governing bodies that ruled the vampire world. Or failed to rule it as far as Mircea could tell. He hadn’t seen much that resembled governance in the years since he fell asleep a man and woke up a monster.
“And that matters to us how?” the jaded vampire asked.
“It’ll bring hundreds of vampires to the city, maybe thousands—”
“Doesn’t mean any of them will be interested in us.”
“Doesn’t mean they won’t, either!”
“Go ahead and believe that,” the older vampire said. “Right up until you’re left standing at the end of the day, leftover again, unwanted again. And they come to slip a stake between your ribs since you’re not worth feeding. Then maybe you’ll learn—we are nothing. We are no one. We have no family, no protector, no guide. Your master made you by accident or threw you away—”
“He did no such thing! He died—”
“—then his vampires threw you away. Does it matter? You ended up here because nobody wanted you. And you’ll die here. Just like me.”
“I’m not like you!” the blond snapped. “I was wanted, but there were too many of us. Without the master’s strength, they couldn’t protect us all—”
“So they left you to protect yourself. Knowing that if you ventured into someone else’s territory, they’d kill you. And if you made it this far, you’d fall foul of the local constabulary, who are tired of their port being flooded by powerless vermin, and they’d kill you. Either way, they knew what they were sending you to. If they really cared, they’d have slit your throat.”
“You take that back!”
“Or what? You’ll kill me?” The older vamp leaned his head back against the wall, baring his neck. “Come on, then. It’s no worse than what they’ve planned for us.”
“It is worse,” Mircea rasped, and the cynical brown eyes moved to him.
“Name one way.”
“It’s stupid.”
“Oh.” The older vamp smiled slightly. “Another optimistic fool.”
“No. Just someone who wants to live.”
“And where there’s life, there’s hope?” the vampire asked sardonically. “Give it up, son. We’re not getting out of here, any of us, except as corpses. The kind that don’t get back up again. And anybody who believes otherwise is—”
A scream of rusty hinges interrupted the conversation.
The prisoners jumped, having been too caught up in their discussion to have heard approaching footsteps. And then the door swung inward and the bare, dirt-floored room was inundated with torchlight and filled with the flutter of silks and fans and the gleam of satins, their saturated colors glowing like jewels in the gloom.
A moment later, still half blinded by the glare, Mircea was jerked off the floor and shoved roughly against the back wall. The others were getting the same treatment, as the soldiers lined them up around him, kicking the blond to make him stand up straight. He unfolded from a hunched position, looking miserable, and Mircea realized why.
He was naked except for a layer of dirt, and the room had just been inundated with women.
Mircea would have loaned him something, but he wasn’t much better off. His coat and doublet, belt and shoes had been stolen by the watch on the way here. Then his hosen and shirt, the latter—the only one he owned that was still without holes—had apparently been his jailor’s size. Mircea had been left with only a pair of linen mutande, the brief shorts the Italians used underneath their hosen, and which they purposefully kept thin and skin-tight to avoid wrinkling the outer garment.
It didn’t leave much to the imagination, and Mircea felt his face burn as one of the women came forward.
She was in flame-colored silk and rubies, with a golden net holding back a weight of dark hair. A red veil, the kind most women wore in Venice to frame their face and shoulders, had been drawn across the bottom half of her face in the eastern fashion, concealing everything but a pair of liquid dark eyes. Which suddenly fixed on him.
“Tell me about this one,” she murmured, as the condottiere bustled up behind her. And Mircea belatedly realized what the commotion was all about.
A potential purchaser had arrived.
Chapter Two
“Been in the city about a year,” the condottiere said, consulting a small notebook. He was a large man, with florid features and a belly that ensured that he didn’t have to pad his tunic to get the popular rounded front. “Lives with some old man over by the Bridge of Tits. Gambler, mostly small-time stuff, tries to keep his head down.”
“Crime?” the woman asked.
“Thought he’d make some money cheating at cards. My boys tried to have a talk with him and he attacked them.”
A dozen retorts rose to Mircea’s lips, but he bit them back. He’d attempted that when he was first brought in, and received a face full of fist for his trouble. But it didn’t look like the woman cared how he got here.
“Background?”
“He wasn’t forthcoming,” the man had the effrontery to say. “But he’s educated.”