would have thought she would be used to it, but with every time, the disgust for what they did to her grew. As did the fear, the fear that she would give up the fight, that she would finally succumb and lose herself, become a mindless vessel that only existed to serve their needs.
Twice a night, sometimes three times, they called upon her. She was growing weaker, she could feel it. Not only physically, but mentally too. And she wasn’t the only one. The other girls were in the same situation. They were all Chinese like her. Some young, others older. It didn’t seem to matter to them, because it wasn’t the women’s beauty they were after.
She’d been barely twenty-one when they’d captured her one night in New York after she’d left an evening lecture at NYU. It was her last semester, but she would never finish it. How she had dreaded the final exams—how eager she was to please her parents! If only she had those kind of simple problems now. They seemed so trivial now, so easy to solve.
Getting up from the bed, she grabbed the frame and pushed it closer to the wall, hiding what she’d carved into the exposed wooden beam behind: her parents’ names and address and a message, telling them she was still alive. Every day she survived, she added a date to the list, her carvings now covering virtually the entire area hidden by the headboard.
She had only started the carving at this place, to which they had moved her three months earlier by her own count. At her previous prison, there had been no possibility to do the same—the walls had been made of concrete. Why they had moved her to this place, she didn’t know. But one night, they’d simply packed everything and everybody onto several trucks and deserted the building from which they’d conducted their bloody business.
When the key turned in the lock, Ursula looked at the door. It swung open, revealing the guard who had come to lead her to a room where the next customer was already salivating for a taste. She recognized him as Dirk, and of all the guards, she hated him most. He took obvious pleasure in seeing her suffer, in seeing her be humiliated night after night.
There were always four guards on duty for the thirteen-or-so prisoners if she had counted correctly, even though there were more vampires on the premises. Whether her count of the girls was correct, she could never be sure; recently they had brought in two new girls, and it had been a while since she’d seen a girl called Lanfen. Had she died? Had they finally wrung too much from her fragile body? Ursula shuddered at the thought. No, she couldn’t give up. She had to fight on, hope that she would somehow be saved.
“Your turn,” Dirk ordered with a motion of his head.
She complied as she always did, setting one foot in front of the other, knowing that he would use whatever means necessary to make sure she executed his command. And means he had plenty. She had been at the receiving end of each and every one of them and could say with certainty that she liked none of his methods.
As she walked past him, her head held high, she felt his body shift. Then his mouth was at her ear.
“I like watching you the best. You’ve got more spirit than all the others together. Makes it so much more exciting. Have I ever told you what a turn-on that is for me?”
A cold shiver of disgust ran down her spine.
“Always have to jerk off right after it.”
Ursula closed her eyes and pushed down the bile that rose as a result of his words. How dare he taunt her with something he knew was beyond her reach and the reach of every woman they had kidnapped?
When she turned and glared at him, he laughed.
“Oh, I forgot, that’s right, you can’t get off, can you? Despite the arousal that we allow you to sense, you’ll never climax. Pity that.”
Without thinking, she spit in his face. “Sick bastard.”
Slowly he wiped the spit off his face, glaring at her with red flickering eyes. It took only a second for his fangs to descend. Then the back of his hand hit her right across the cheek, whipping her head to the side so forcefully that she feared it would rip her head off her shoulders.