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“But something went wrong. That was when we realized the Sire wasn’t a wannabe. He truly believed he was a vampire. ‘Vampyr,’ he liked to say. And he craved blood. Craved it with such intensity that he lost all control. That’s what happened with Colleen. I don’t know how to explain it with any word other than-bloodlust. Once he stuck his teeth into Colleen and started drinking from her, he couldn’t stop himself. He started on her neck but eventually moved to her jugular. Blood spewed everywhere. Colleen’s eyes bulged. She screamed, but somehow that only seemed to titillate him, to urge him on.”

“Did you try to stop it?” Ben asked.

“God, yes. All three of us ran to help her, but the other members of the Inner Circle held us back. They told us not to worry-they’d seen it happen before.” She paused. “I don’t think even they realized just how out of control the Sire was. And by the time they did-it was too late.” Tears poured from her eyes. “Colleen was dead.”

Ben gave her a moment to collect herself, then forged ahead. “What happened next?”

“We didn’t know what to do. Amber wanted to go to the police, but the Sire said we were just as likely to go to jail as he was. We were accomplices; they’d get us on felony murder charges, he said. Plus-we needed that drug. If you haven’t been dependent on a drug, you can’t know what it’s like. Veronica talked about us all quitting our jobs and getting out of town-but we didn’t have the money to last a week on our own, and we knew it wouldn’t be a day before we came crawling back to Sid or the Sire to get our fix. We were hooked. We couldn’t live without it. We’d do anything for it.” Her head fell. “Even sell out our friend. Even cover up her murder.”

“So you… just went back to the party-hard swinging vampire life?”

“At first. Then Veronica came up with an idea-a way to make some serious getaway money-enough to buy a huge supply of the drug, enough to last us for years, enough to blow town and start our lives over again somewhere outside the influence of the Sire. Somewhere far away from those hypnotic eyes.”

“Do you know what her plan was?”

“More or less. She was going to film Senator Glancy having sex with her-then blackmail him for money.”

Several members of the jury stirred. For the first time, the story presented by the Glancys had received some independent verification.

“And did you think that plan was… realistic?”

“Definitely. Veronica had a way about her. It wasn’t just that she was gorgeous. She knew how to make herself irresistible, how to make men know she was interested, available, or better yet, how to make them think she wanted them. And it wasn’t all a show, either. She liked having sex and as with most things in life-practice makes perfect. She was good at it. Veronica was kind of like a drug herself. Men became addicted to her.”

“Did you follow the progress of her… plan?”

“For a while. Till the morning one of the Sire’s Inner Circle goons showed up unannounced at the apartment Amber and I shared after she left the escort service. With a gun.”

“Why was he there?”

She pressed a hand against her chest, trying to regain her strength. “The video had been released-the video Veronica made to blackmail Senator Glancy-and suddenly the eyes of the world were on her. The Sire was afraid she’d expose everything. He’d decided it would be best to ‘bring us all in.’ He’d gone to the Capitol to collect Veronica himself and sent this goon after us. Well, we knew what that meant. We’d heard about the young girls who went to the Inner Circle and disappeared. We’d seen the Sire and some of the other hard-core bloodsuckers going into that secret, always locked, back room, licking their chops. I knew if we cooperated, no one would ever hear from us again. So I made like I was coming on to him, snuggled up close, fiddled with his fly. And while I distracted him, Amber snuck up behind him and clubbed him on the side of the head with a baseball bat.”

Ben nodded. Hell of a dramatic story. But was the jury buying it? “What did you do then?”

“What else? We ran. Tried to disappear, become invisible. We knew the Sire had connections everywhere-including with the police, so that was not a realistic option. We had to lie low, deep down under the radar. But how far can you get without using ATMs, credit cards, contacting friends? And just to make everything harder, remember-we were going cold turkey, trying to function without the drug for the first time in months. We were a mess. Couldn’t think straight, couldn’t plan more than a minute ahead at a time. Stuffing ourselves with sugary foods and booze, trying to make the pain go away. Eventually Amber couldn’t stand it anymore. She went back to Stigmata for a fix. Of course, once Randy had her back in his clutches again, he never let her go. Until she ended up getting shot. Through his police connections, the Sire had learned that Amber’s father was in town and tracked him down. When her father refused to talk, the Sire killed him, stuffed his body in the trunk of his car, and stole his wallet. They looked enough alike that he could pass using Daily’s photo ID, as long as no one looked too closely. He eventually caught up to Amber in the hospital and killed her. I got to hear him brag about it.” Her head fell. She pressed her fingers against her forehead, as if trying to extinguish the pain, the grief. “Because he caught me, too.”

“But he didn’t kill you?”

“No. He’d had to kill Amber, since he couldn’t get her out of the hospital without being seen, but there was no reason to be so harsh with me. He pumped me full of drugs that kept me half stoned and tried to brainwash me, torturing me, making me participate in sick ceremonies, slapping me around and then making me beg for more. He broke my nose. But I never gave in to it. I pretended that I did-but I didn’t. The problem was-he knew.”

“So why didn’t he kill you?”

“He wanted me to suffer, just as he said he had suffered after we ‘deserted’ him. He wanted to put me through hell. So he put me in that room with the others in the back of that church of his, tied me down to the bed-and he sucked my blood. While I was still awake and alive.”

Sickened expressions crossed the faces in the jury box. The outpouring of pity was so strong Ben could feel it. If only some of that sympathy would spill over to his client…

“Not all at once, mind you. He’d take a pint here, a pint there. When he wasn’t around, his assistants would take our blood in the more conventional way. Me and the others-we were his living blood bank. He’d wait till I’d had time to produce more blood, then suck me down again.”

“A fact the police can confirm,” Ben inserted, and he noticed Padolino didn’t object. Because he knew it was true.

“But every day,” Beatrice said, “every single day he reminded me that eventually he was going to kill me. He’d… play with me. Hurt me. Torment me in any way imaginable, both mental and… physical. He never let me move, stretch, go outside. He would spoon-feed me the most disgusting gruel you could imagine. He didn’t even let me go to the bathroom-just gave me a chamberpot and told me to do the best I could. I couldn’t shower. I got bedsores. My muscles atrophied. I still can’t move my left arm. Every day the pain got worse, but he didn’t care. He wanted me to live in hell, the sadistic bastard. And I did. I did.” Tears again streamed down her cheeks. “And the worst of it was-I knew I had no chance of escape. None. The only thing I had to look forward to was death. A slow painful death caused by that disgusting psycho sucking out all my blood.”

Ben paused a moment. Her testimony had been painful, not only for her to give, but for everyone to listen to. But he had a little more ground to cover before they took a break.

“Beatrice… who killed Veronica Cooper?”

“The Sire. He told me he was going to do it, then laughed about it after she was dead. Laughed because he’d not only silenced her-he’d made a quarter of a million dollars.” She paused, wiped the water from her face, then continued. “He went to the Senate the morning after the video broke-the same morning he sent his flunkie after me and Amber. He bribed some old security guard to put a false name on the ‘expected dignitaries’ list so he could get in and out without leaving a trace. He found Veronica, overpowered her, bit her, took her money-and gave her that anticoagulant to make sure she bled to death.”