A Night with a Vampire Read Online Free PDF Page A

going?” she blurted, trying to get the thought out of her head.
    â€œInto the city,” he answered as they raced through four full lanes of traffic toward the Golden Gate Bridge.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause I want you to see firsthand what the Alliance is doing.”
    â€œI’ve already told you I don’t know anything about this Alliance.”
    â€œThen your brother has done you a great disservice.”
    Has he? They drove in silence as they entered the city, following the freeway onto Lombard Street then dropping down Van Ness toward the Tenderloin District. Oh, this wasn’t good. He pulled to a stop near Seventh Street, outside of several dark and dilapidated warehouses. She looked around, desperately searching for a way to escape, a way to disappear. But here, a woman on her own was easy prey. And not just to vampires.
    Especially a woman without her gun.
    â€œWhat are you hoping to show me?” she asked as he cut the engine.
    He didn’t answer, but got out of the car. Before she could blink, her door was opening. “Let’s go,” he said.
    â€œLead the way.”
    She walked next to him through the darkness, where the red tips of burning cigarettes were the only signs of life lurking in the shadows. Drug addicts and gang members waiting to accost anyone with a quarter in their pocket filled the dark corners where graffiti covered chipped and peeling paint. The smell of vomit and urine tainted the air, and bundled lumps of humanity forgotten and ignored lay in inebriated clumps against the walls and along the sidewalks of the abused and neglected buildings.
    They sidestepped the large grates in the cement where fog billowed up, its tendrils wrapping around and swallowing their legs. She walked quicker, following Marius into an abandoned building that practically hummed with the vibrations of the grating music playing within. As she passed through the darkened door where only flashes of multicolored strobe lights lit the room, Xana knew instinctively that she didn’t want to be in there.
    The air was thick with the smell of cigarettes and marijuana. She slapped a hand against her nose and mouth to keep from coughing. People stood shoulder-to-shoulder, their faces full of gleaming metal exposed in jagged harsh pieces as the light bounced off their kohl-darkened eyes, white powdered skin and hair cut at choppy angles. Yep, exactly what she would expect to see in a place like this. Even gang members might not mess with some of these freaks.
    Marius grabbed her arm and dragged her quickly through the room to a long bar in the back. She had to get away from him. But how?
    On a stage a band clad in black leather screamed about the glories of suicide and she had to wonder if it was so great, why didn’t they do mankind a favor and get it over with already? Marius exchanged a few whispered words with a vampire behind the bar then pulled her toward a staircase in the far corner and ascended into the darkness. She hesitated, not wanting to go up there, but he yanked on her arm, dragging her after him up the stairs and down a long corridor to another room in the back.
    Her stomach rolled in protest as a sickly sweet odor reached her. She tried to pull away, but Marius’s grip tightened.
    â€œLet me go,” she insisted. But it did no good. He continued forward, practically pulling her after him. When they reached the room in the back, she was horrified by what she saw through the gloom of several thick candles in iron stands and sconces around the room. People were laying on chaise lounges, on couches and on the floor in various states of undress. Making out, making love, slobbering all over each other—a sick, virtual orgy of twisting bodies.
    But not everyone was moving. Or moaning.
    Apprehension twisted in her gut.
    â€œI want out of here,” she said and pulled away, trying to wrench free from his grasp. It was no use. Trying to move him was like trying