His voice echoed hauntingly around the dance floor, the bar, the VIP room. No one.

Nothing.

Where was his brother? Why had he felt such a powerful pull to this distasteful place if the certain source of all his problems-Dimitri-wasn’t even here?

Then Lucien heard it. Heavy footsteps, coming from the front of the building. He turned expectantly.

“Can I help you?”

It was Reginald, Dimitri’s three-hundred-pound bodyguard/ bouncer, still wearing his gold chain with his name emblazoned proudly across it. His dark head gleamed, newly shaved.

“Hello there, Reginald,” Lucien said, genuinely pleased to see him. This was going to be easy. Some humans-like Meena, for instance-were impossible to control, their minds too damaged or crowded with mental baggage. But Reginald’s was a vast, open plain.

“How did you get in here?” Reginald had a Hollywood-gangster-style grip on his gun, raising it sideways to shoot at Lucien instead of straight on, using his other hand to steady it for better aim.

Lucien felt even more cheered. Poor Reginald.

“Put the gun down, son,” he said. “You remember me. I was here the other night, to visit my brother.”

Reginald lowered the gun obediently. “Oh, yeah,” he said, recognition dawning. “You messed Mr. Dimitri up.”

“That’s right,” Lucien said, smiling fondly at the memory. “I’ve come back to do it again. You wouldn’t happen to know where Mr. Dimitri is right now, would you?”

Reginald shook his head, putting the gun back into the waistband of his sweatpants…not the most propitious place to keep a loaded firearm, in Lucien’s opinion. “Naw,” Reginald said. “Everybody got all excited about something and took off a little while ago and just left me here. They didn’t say when they’d be back or nothing. I don’t even know if I’m supposed to open up tonight or what.”

“Interesting,” Lucien said. “And would you happen to know what it was they got ‘all excited about,’ Reginald?”

“Hell, no,” Reginald said. “No one tells me nothing around here.” Lucien reached into the man’s brain with his own mind and probed gently. Reginald was telling the truth. He knew nothing…except…

“Reginald,” Lucien said. “Are we the only people here?”

“No,” Reginald admitted. Lucien could feel the man’s fear. It was as sharp and as pointed as a knife. “There’s the folks in the basement.”

“The basement,” Lucien repeated. “Would you take me to the basement, Reginald?”

Reginald’s fear stabbed him. “Mr. Dimitri said none of us is supposed to go down there,” Reginald protested. He did not want to go down to the basement.

“It’s all right, Reginald,” Lucien said calmly. “I’ll be with you. Nothing bad will happen to you in the basement if I’m there with you.”

Reginald believed him…but only because Lucien was there in his brain to comfort him. Reluctantly, he went to the bar to get the keys to the basement, then led Lucien to a door that he unlocked with hands that still shook, despite Lucien’s presence.

Whatever was in the basement, the human employees of Concubine, who weren’t supposed to know about it, not only knew about it but feared it.

Lucien followed Reginald down the narrow concrete staircase, sensing approaching death more closely with every step. He couldn’t just smell it…he could feel it, oozing through his pores the way moisture seeped from the basement walls. This had been what he’d noticed when he’d entered the club: the thump of human heartbeats, quivering with life…and impending doom.

Was this what Meena Harper felt every day of her life, walking down the street, getting on the subway, going about her daily business?

How could she stand it?

They came to two doors. Behind one of them Lucien could hear the heartbeats thundering so loudly, he wanted to fling his hands over his ears.

Behind the other, he heard…nothing.

He nodded toward the door where there was only silence.

“Open it,” he said to Reginald.

Reginald, holding the keys like they were a rosary, looked like he was about to cry. “I really don’t want to, sir,” he said. “Please don’t make me.”

Lucien nodded, understanding. There was only so much the human mind could take.

He lifted his foot and smashed down the heavy metal door with a single powerful kick.

Inside the darkened room, on concrete mortuary slabs, lay the seven financial analysts from TransCarta to whom his brother Dimitri had introduced him the night before.

Only they were no longer alive.

On the other hand, they weren’t quite dead, either.

They were in a place between life and death. Someone had turned their stiff white shirt collars down and bitten each one neatly along the carotid artery, not once, not twice, but three times.

And along each man’s mouth, Lucien saw faint traces of blood.

They were turning. They were currently in a metamorphic state. When they woke, they would be vampires.

And they’d be hungry as hell.

“Who did this?” Lucien demanded, turning to face Reginald, who, unable to control his curiosity-even terrified as he was-stood peering in past the broken door, which hung by its hinges.

“I have no idea,” he said. “What the hell is wrong with those guys? Why are they just laying there like that, all bitten on the neck? Are they…are they-” Reginald couldn’t bring himself to say the word.

“Yes,” Lucien replied.

He swept from the room and back out into the hallway to face the second door, the one behind which he could hear so many heartbeats.

Reginald stared at him.

“I know you’re not going to kick that door down,” Reginald said. “If there were vampires behind that first door, what’s going to be behind that door? Don’t even think about-”

Lucien kicked down the second door.

Behind it blinked a half dozen young women, all very much alive, all in various states of semi-dress, stretched out across cheap mattresses, seeming very weak and confused to see so much light streaming into the room all of a sudden. The smell was not very pleasant.

None of the girls, Lucien could tell, was a vampire. Yet.

But all of them had been bitten and drained, just enough to keep them compliant.

The mystery about what the vamps next door would eat when they awoke was solved.

“Gerald?” one of the girls asked in a bewildered voice.

“Is not Gerald,” another said, sounding even more bewildered.

All of them looked terrified.

Lucien turned around and signaled to Reginald.

“Get them out of here,” he said. “Start taking them upstairs. Wait for me there.”

“Okay,” Reginald said, affable now that the mystery of the basement had been solved. “But what about-” He nodded his head toward the room next door.

Lucien looked around the tiny cell in which the girls had been held, clearly for quite some time, and with no toilet facilities that he could see, save for a bucket. He saw a rickety chair and smashed it to pieces.

“This will do,” he said, lifting one of the chair legs and examining the pointiest end. “Now go.”

While Reginald went to work corralling the girls up the stairs-they needed a lot of assurance that it wasn’t a trap and that they were being set free-Lucien set about his own task.

It was grim work. He had no idea if the men had asked to be turned or if his brother was forming some kind of indentured vampire investment banker army to handle his finances.

Knowing his brother, he guessed the latter.

In any case, these men were not going to wake immortal, with superhuman powers, and thirsting for human blood.

They were never going to wake again at all.

When Lucien was finished with his foul task, he threw the chair leg away, washed himself off as best he could-humans who had not quite turned still exuded massive amounts of blood-and turned to leave the concrete room, giving it one last glance over his shoulder.