A Blood Seduction by Pamela Palmer

it—closing the distance between them to snap a thick metal slave’s collar around Quinn’s neck before Quinn even registered the movement. She felt the heavy metal bite into her collarbones. A moment later, her mouth exploded in pain, blood tricking over her tongue. The bitch had slapped her across the mouth. Hard! Though she never saw the vamp’s hand move.
    The woman grabbed her arm and dragged her back to where the others waited, plus one more. Another female slave, a slender brunette, whom she must have just bought. The two big guards placed collars on all of them and fed a chain through the eyebolts of one collar, then the other, stringing them together. Quinn was last. The female vamp pushed Quinn forward, and she soon felt the clank of steel against her neck as she was chained to the others. Four across, the two men on one side, the two women on the other.
    One by one, the female vamp unenthralled Quinn’s companions. The woman gasped. The Asian growled. Wingtip remained perfectly silent. None of these three had been hysterical during the auction, as Quinn remembered. They’d all been stoic and quietly furious.
    The two giants left, returning several minutes later, each carrying a brightly-lit lantern and leading three horses between them.
    The humans eyed one another, but remained mute as the two giants and the vampire mounted. The bald guard rode around them, coming to a stop before the four slaves. “Follow me and make no sound. The more you cry out, the worse it will be.”
    His words chilled. With that cryptic statement, he started forward. None of them moved. Not until the first crack of the whip slashed down the farthest man’s back, and he stumbled forward, dragging his chained companions with him. The other three hastily caught up, none wishing for a taste of that whip.
    But moments later, Quinn heard the crack, felt the lick of stinging fire down her back, and clamped down hard against the cry of pain that clawed to get out. Over and over, the whip cracked, flaying the four of them equally. It didn’t seem to matter what they did, whether they walked quickly or slowly, not even if they cried out as Wingtip had begun to do every time he was hit.
    Quinn’s back blazed, her cheeks growing damp with the tears she tried to hold back. Fury rode her, a need to grab the lash and beat its wielder to a bloody pulp, but she was collared to the others, unable to move except as they did. And even if she could move, she’d seen the vampire’s speed for herself. She was helpless against her. They all were.
    The bald man turned, something akin to sympathy in his dark eyes. “She’s a pain-feeder. When she’s sated, she will stop. If you anger her, she will continue regardless.”
    A pain-feeder.
    She hoped to heaven Zack hadn’t been taken by such a creature. More than a week he’d been trapped here.
    The lash tore through her shirt, burning a strip of fire down her back for the fourth time. Quinn hunched her shoulders against the pain, squeezing her eyes closed against the tears she couldn’t control.
    Beside her, the other woman cried out as the lash finally broke her composure.
    Block after block, they walked, in the heart of downtown. It was true dark, now, and she could see little beyond the light shed by the two lanterns. But twice she’d spied street names on the corners of buildings and knew they walked east on K Street, not far from the Capitol, for whatever good it did her.
    The woman beside her glanced at her, then away. “What is this place?” she whispered.
    Quinn hesitated, not wishing to draw the vampire’s fury, yet feeling incredible sympathy for the woman. “Washington, V.C. Vamp City. Some kind of otherworld for vampires.”
    “Hell on Earth for humans,” the woman muttered.
    “Silence!” The lash burned across Quinn’s shoulder. A second snap, and the woman beside her groaned. Quinn had to hand it to her, and to their other two companions. Only Wingtip had yelled at the sting