She trailed followers behind her as though she were a bride and they the attendants assigned the task of carrying her veil off the ground. The attendants closest to her were human, one pretty blank-faced man and a pretty blank-faced woman.

Both humans were naked and covered with bite marks on all of their pulse points and lots of other points, too. The girl had suntan lines, and some jokester had drawn along the bikini top with a black Sharpie. The boy was very dark-skinned, and in the shadows of the basement, he was harder to see.

I tried not to look at their faces, because it was unlikely I could do anything to protect them. Unlikely I could do anything to protect myself from what was coming tonight. They’d been here long enough that some of the bite marks were scars, so there might not be a lot left of them to save.

A vampire like Stefan, who took care of the humans he fed from, could keep them mostly unaffected by his bite for decades. But most vampires were too impatient for that. I was betting that Mary’s seethe was full of vampires who didn’t care about the humans they fed from. The Sharpie bikini was a dead giveaway.

The rest of Mary’s attendants were vampires of both sexes and various appearances. None of them was the woman who had caught me and stuffed me down here. When they quit coming down the stairs, there were ten of them, not including the humans.

I wondered that she thought I was so dangerous. Surely she didn’t always travel around her own home with twelve minions? Maybe she was trying to impress me. Maybe she was simply making a statement of some sort.

Or possibly she trailed minions wherever she went. Just as she trailed the stench of a black witch. What idiot vampire had decided it was a good idea to change a witch into a vampire? She must be able to hide her scent—or she never went out on her own—because any werewolf with a nose would otherwise understand immediately what she was. I supposed that a witch who could hide her seethe in the middle of Prague for over half a century could probably manage to hide what she was if she wanted to.

Libor’s pack thought her a lesser vampire, but a vampire who could pull on the power of witchcraft was a contender for the scariest monster in town by any definition.

I clung to the contact I had with Adam, drawing courage and resolution in equal measure. I would not let this be the last place I saw on this earth. I would not let the last time I saw Adam be the laughing face he’d given me as I died a dramatic death at the hands of his daughter. I would not let the last air I breathed be the fetid stench rising from the dirt of this abattoir.

I would survive this. Somehow.