Hunted (Belle Morte Book 3)

Chapter Four

The door opened and two vampires strode in, pulling a silver-chained woman with them. Seamus followed them, carrying another chair. He placed it at the end of the desk, a little way from Roux and Ludovic.

Roux couldn't help a squeak of surprise as the woman was roughly pushed into the chair. Ludovic merely watched, his face impassive.

"What's going on?" Roux said.

She could feel Ysanne's eyes on her, and she wasn't sure why. It almost felt like she was being evaluated – and maybe Ysanne did expect her to prove that she was the right woman for this job – but what did this chained vampire have to do with anything?

"Roux, Ludovic, I'd like you to meet Susan Harcourt," Ysanne said.

Seamus and the two vampires who'd brought Susan into the room exited, but Roux bet they were standing outside the door, ready to spring back inside if their Lady needed them.

She eyed Susan. The woman slumped in her chair, the silver chains sucking the strength right out of her, but when she lifted her head, Roux realised with a jolt that she recognised her. She was a plain-faced little woman, everything about her drab and forgettable, but she had been there at the final fight. When Ysanne's forces took back their House, Susan had protested her capture and impending imprisonment in the cells. Her protests had fallen on deaf ears.

Now she glared at Ysanne, but there was little real fury behind it, more a sort of dull exhaustion.

"Jemima and Etienne weren't the only ones who orchestrated the takeover of my House," Ysanne said. "Susan Harcourt was Etienne's woman on the outside."

Even Ludovic reacted to that, his eyes widening fractionally with surprise.

"Jemima and Etienne's original plan might have fallen through, pushing them to form a new one in the wake of the old, but they always planned to create batches of new vampires and use them as cannon fodder when they gradually conquered the rest of the Houses." Ysanne's mouth made a small disgusted shape. "Apparently it wasn't hard for Etienne to sneak out of the mansion a few nights a week, scaling the wall in the grounds when everyone else had gone to bed. He knew the rotation and positioning of the grounds patrol, so he knew how to avoid them." Ysanne sounded annoyed with herself at that part. The wall surrounding Belle Morte, and the guards that patrolled it, was supposed to keep out any intruders, not keep a traitor in. But on some level Ysanne would still blame herself for not having considered that possibility.

"He went out looking for victims," Roux guessed.

"Correct. And he found himself in luck – he met Susan here. She is what people call a Vladdict. Of course she recognised him right away, and being the foolish, empty-headed little thing that she is, she believed all his charm and seduction and threw her lot in with him," Ysanne continued.

Etienne's charm. It made a shudder roll across Roux's skin, but she couldn't deny the truth of it. Etienne had seduced June, and the second she was in love with him, he had used and abused her. It wasn't surprising that he'd done the same thing to this woman. What really chilled Roux was the fact that none of them had seen it coming. Etienne had been a good friend to Renie. Everyone had trusted him – even Roux. Her gut instincts had steered her so very, very wrong on that one.

"Susan had a much more practical way of recruiting potential victims. She set up a forumonline, and used it to lure people in," Ysanne said, hesitating slightly on the word 'forum'.

There would have been no shortage of victims, Roux thought. When people looked at vampires, they didn't see the reality of it. They didn't really think about living forever while the people you loved turned to dust, or seeing the world change around you, faster than you could keep up. They didn't think about having to drink blood for hundreds of years, but never be able to eat food again. They only saw the gloss and the glamour and the mystery. They were enchanted, and that eroded any doubts they might ever have had. It made them gullible and desperate, willing to do anything for a single taste of what they perceived as the ultimate lifestyle. They were willing to die for it, and Susan and Etienne had preyed on that to its fullest extent.