“Whatchuwant, you?” the largest of the girls asked. She was six inches taller than me and had to weigh over two hundred pounds. Her arms were crossed over her substantial chest, and she didn’t look like she wanted any part of whatever I was selling.

It hadn’t occurred to me on the walk here I would need any kind of a backstory. Foolishly, I had hoped the prostitutes would see me as one of their ranks and accept me into their questionable sisterhood. Then they would immediately start talking about the vampires who had taken others of their kind, giving me the answers I needed so I could call it a night. I could be such a dumb blonde sometimes.

“Uhh.”

“Park Avenue is da other way, girly. You a long way from da escort services of da Upper East Side, ya know?” This was from the black girl as she exhaled her ornamental smoke in my face.

The skinny white girl laughed but said nothing. It was clear she was the minority here and she knew it.

The big girl took a hard look at me and snorted. “You think you can come here? You think your pretty blonde hair gonna make us say oh, Blondie, you can be one of us? Hmm? You lost on your way to a strip club? Whatdafuckyouwant.”

What I wanted was to give her a good reason to shove her attitude right up her ass before I did it for her. These girls were treating me with the same disdain young vampires did upon hearing my name for the first time. It pissed me off, but in her case she had a reason to look down on me.

A line of tears shone in my eyes, turning them into wide, wet orbs of sorrow. “I was working a few blocks east. Last week this girl on my corner got into a car. She never came back and they found her in the park all ripped up.” My voice trembled convincingly. The Oscar goes to…

They looked unmoved, but I saw the two leaner Latinas bobbing their heads in enthusiastic agreement.

“Yolanda, like what happened wit Cleo, yeah?” The black girl was silenced with a raised hand from the larger girl. She was clearly the leader.

Yolanda’s eyes narrowed, and she assessed me more seriously now. “Whatchyourname, girl?”

“Brigit.” I used the name at the forefront of my mind after meeting with Mercedes.

“Brigit. Sounds like a fucking cheerleader.”

The other girls laughed for a second before they settled into observant silence. In the darkness near the river, at least one vampire was watching the whole exchange. Holden’s presence covered me like a thin, protective blanket. Thinking of Holden brought another vampire to mind. I wondered what Sig would think of this if he knew it was a result of the assignment he’d given me. I thought he might get more than a little pleasure out of my current situation. Doubtless, Holden would let him know about tonight’s antics.

A car drove by and slowed, and I became the girls’ last concern. I hung back, and the five of them launched into a well-oiled chorus of, “Hey, baby! How you doin’, honey? You need a date? I’ll show you a real good time.” The whole thing made me queasy.

I was expecting him to pick one of the thin, prettier Latina girls, but to my surprise large, bland-faced Yolanda was chosen by the john. I craned my neck to get a better view of him, but the guy looked like any other hard-up, middle-aged schmuck who could only get pussy on a street corner.

The other four returned to huddle near me and gawked at me like I was a zoo display. They said nothing, just blew clouds of smoke in my face. I was willing to bet none of these girls were older than sixteen, yet each one looked about forty.

“Who’s Cleo?” I broke the silence and hoped it didn’t make me sound like a cop. I had crossed my arms over my chest and was pretending to be cold.

The two skinny Latinas looked at each other and said nothing, but each wore a grim expression. The white girl shuffled uneasily. The chatty black girl was my in, that much was clear. I stared at her, and she folded faster than a lawn chair.

“She used to be wit us, ya know?” the black girl said. One of the Latinas snarled when the girl started to speak, but it did nothing to stop the newly opened fount of knowledge. “It was like you said, yeah? She was here, she got picked up, but she did come back. Only she wasn’t right.”

“Wasn’t right how?”

“Veda. You shut your fucking mouth.”

Veda ignored her. “What it matter now, Misty, huh? Cleo dead, ain’t she? What da fuck it matter now?”

I needed to be clear on what Veda had said. “She’s dead?”

“Yeah, fuck man. Yeah.”

“But she was alive when she came back to you guys?” I asked.

“She got dropped off in this like, limo. She got out and she was like, staggering, ya know? Like she was drunk?” Veda pantomimed the weaving and bobbing of a woman under the influence, then abruptly stopped and pretended to smoke again. “Cleo ain’t no dummy. She knows you don’t drink when you wit a john. Dat shit get you killed.” Veda shook her head, heaving a solemn sigh as she pointed her cigarette at me for emphasis. This was the knowledge of world-weary teenaged prostitutes.

“But she was alive?”

“Fuck, girl, you deaf?” Misty said, but she didn’t seem hell-bent on putting an end to my questions anymore, so I would take what I could get.

“It was weird, yeah?” Veda continued, looking from me to the other girls, who each nodded seriously. “Like, she was babbling some shit in a weird language. Like you see on dem Jesus shows where the guy touches their heads and shit?” Veda mimicked this by acting out a faith healing on the skinny white girl. The girl giggled when Veda touched her forehead and dramatically announced, “You be healed, bitch!”

“She was speaking in tongues?”

“What da fuck else she gonna speak with?” Veda rolled her eyes. I saw no reason to explain, so I let her go on.

“Anyway.” Veda was enjoying being the center of attention even for such a small group. Her voice had begun to bubble with enthusiasm. I suppose being around Yolanda must have limited her opportunities to be noticed. “She went home after that an da next day Yolanda goes to check on her, right? ’Cause Raymond would be right fucking pissed if Cleo missed a night, ya know?”

I nodded as if I knew the full extent of their pimp’s wrath.

“And?”

“And Cleo was dead.”

“Dead how?”

“Fuuuuuck, Blondie, you ask a lot of questions.”

“I’ve been told that before.”

“Yolanda said it looked like she’d been dead for days,” Misty interjected, looking for her own chance to be the group’s source of knowledge. “Said she was all pale and shit, and looked like she had no blood in her.”

I felt the blood drain from my own face. I knew all too well where this was going. “Did you have her buried?”

“Do we look like we can afford to pay for a funeral?” This obvious point had been brought up by the previously silent white girl, who had recovered from her faith healing enough to resume smoking.

“Did someone bury her?” My heart was pounding.

Misty looked guilty, turning away from Veda, who appeared ill at ease upon hearing the question.

“No.”

“No?”

Veda glared at me and I shut my mouth. “We wanted to. We called the cops, right? Anonymous-like so that someone would take care of her?”

Now I could see where this fit in with the information Mercedes had given me. I nodded. They all bobbed along.

“But when the cops came, they didn’t take a body. There was no news about it. It was like she ain’t never even been there.”

But she had been there. It was no longer a mystery what had happened to Cleo the prostitute. And I knew, too, what had happened to the girls like the one Mercedes had told me about. I’d thought the body in the park was too sloppy to be Peyton, and now it was clear to me why.

I looked at the girls and could tell they had sensed the change in my attitude. I wasn’t hiding the horror on my face and was thankful they would have no understanding of its deeper meaning.

I had a clear grasp on what the base level of Peyton’s plan was. At first I’d believed he was killing and eating the girls for food alone, because no one would miss a dead prostitute. But if Cleo had just been drained for a meal, her body would have still been there for the cops to find. She wouldn’t have been speaking in tongues.

The signs described by Veda and Misty were those of a baby vamp before the change took effect. Drinking the blood of a vampire often caused hallucinations, violent fits, nausea and a number of other side effects. Then it caused death—one so fast-acting it didn’t resemble a normal human passing. Lastly, it resulted in rebirth.

And with that birth came the hunger.

Peyton or one of his nest had turned Cleo into a vampire and then unleashed her onto the unsuspecting streets, sending her with a newborn’s blind thirst to hunt her own people.

She would not be the only one.

Chapter Twenty-Five

There were a lot of swears and protests when the shiny new BMW rounded the corner and beckoned me to its passenger door. Veda and the other girls were trying to tell the driver he was wasting his time and a skinny-assed girl like me couldn’t satisfy him.

I took offense to the last statement, knowing perfectly well my ass wasn’t bony and some people seemed to enjoy it a great deal.

The girls put an end to their complaints when they got a look at the driver’s face. Mercedes had told us some girls on the street reported the mystery john had been very good looking, so Holden’s face must have set off alarms for them.

“Good luck, Blondie,” Misty said with a sneer, her farewell acting as a eulogy.

I accepted my fate and got in next to Holden, mumbling, “Take me home.”

“We aren’t looking for Peyton?”

“We won’t find him tonight. Take me home.”

“What did they say?”

I turned to face him, trying to find a way to summarize what the girls had told me so he would experience it with the same gravity I had.

“They’re the rats of London,” I said at last, knowing no other way.