Chapter 13

Dawn was cresting by the time I got back to the club and I found it to be virtually empty inside. Aaron was waiting near the bar for me, his mace beside him.

“We got a problem.” Aaron said as I walked towards him.

“What’s that?”

“Liz is gone.”

“WHAT? How? Did she get free?” I asked, astounded.

“Someone let her out. Raven is still down there.”

“Well, let’s go talk to her then.” I said.

Aaron nodded.

We made our way downstairs, past Steve and the guard’s bodies. I shivered a little at the site of them, laying in a widening pool of black blood.

We opened the door to where we had left Raven. We found her in the corner of the room, wrapped in one of the bed’s blankets.

Raven jumped when we entered and stared at Aaron and his mace.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

“I’m cold.” Raven replied nervously.

“What happened to Liz?” Aaron asked.

“How should I know?”

“She’s gone. Any ideas how she pulled that off?” I asked.

“I heard a voice.”

“Who? What voice?”

“I don’t know. I think it was a woman. I heard them talking through the door and then I heard something open.”

I turned to look at Aaron.

“So Liz had a friend? Any ideas?” I asked.

Aaron shrugged.

“Liz had lots of friends.” He replied.

“But it was someone that knew that she was down here.”

Aaron shrugged again.

“Not much we can do about it now. But, what about her?” He asked, motioning at Raven.

I turned to face Raven and then took a step towards her. She sucked in a breath and tried to flatten herself against the wall.

“So, take it from the top. What did you do?” I asked in the most firm voice I could come up with.

“Steve paid me to find girls, human girls, at clubs and bring them to work for him. All I needed to do was give them the down low on vampires and bring them here, then introduce them to Liz.”

“Then what?”

“Sometimes he would give them jobs at the club. Sometimes they would just hang out.”

“And me and Rose?” I asked.

“That was for fun. Rose was curious about vampires, but scared. I needed to make sure that she was really into it.”

“Why?”

Raven shrugged.

“Steve really liked it when girls were hot for vampire sex. I figured that he just wanted them to flirt and if they ended up hooking up with someone, so much the better for business, right?”

“So, you didn’t know that he was actually running a vampire sex slave and torture ring?” I asked.

Raven’s mouth fell open. She crumbled onto the floor in tears.