Who's to judge?

Chapter XV

Without warning, the two men grabbed us and dragged us through the crowd. I resisted with all my might, I tried to free myself from his grip, but nothing worked. As a last resort, I stepped on his foot with the heel of my boots. He stopped abruptly, cursing softly, but instead of letting go of me, he grabbed me by the hips and threw me onto his shoulder. The last thing I saw was Surma waving at us from the counter.

We walked down the steps and I saw us getting farther and farther away from the club. They seemed to be taking us to some kind of basement, because the steps went down quite a ways. When we finally arrived, the vampire set me down. As soon as I was on the floor, though, I kicked him hard enough against his legs that he bent slightly, enough to grab him by the hair. He cursed as I pulled out almost all of his hair. He tried to loosen my hands, but I wouldn't let go. As I lifted my leg again to give him another kick, a silky voice said, "Stop it, child."

I froze. For some reason, I got an unnatural urge to obey the voice.

"Let go, my child, and turn to me." I did as commanded. Next to me was Valerio, whose expression was completely blank, as if he had shut down. I breathed a slight sigh of relief when I saw, next to Valerio, Talon looking very irritated.

I was scared that something had happened to him, but he was fine, except for the fact that we were in a basement.

"You know each other?" Asked the voice from earlier. I finally turned my head to the source of the voice. A woman stood in front of me. She was tall, her curvy body embraced by a long, sleeveless, blood-red dress with cleavage. Slowly she approached us. In her cleavage you could see the same tattoo. A dove with spread wings from which blood was dripping.

Her hair was loose and it fell over her shoulders like a waterfall. They were black, but the further you got to the tips, you could see that they were turning a beautiful purple color. Her piercing eyes were peach pink. A fullblood.

"I hear people are snooping around my club." She said, looking at us one by one. "We were just gathering information." I contradicted her. Her gaze rested on me for a long moment as she began to play with the tips of her hair.

"'Just'?" she repeated. I nodded. She then pursed her lower lip a little and said, "But I don't want to give you the information, so it counts as snooping." She then came very close and whispered, "And I hate snooping."

I held my breath. She was imposing and her gaze was oppressive. I avoided her eyes. She then strutted on and stopped in front of Valerio.

"I know you." She said softly, but Valerio didn't make a face. Her eyes suddenly widened as she said, "But of course, you're the boy from the Monterosa family, aren't you? The one who ran off with his food." Her smile was sardonic as she uttered these words. Valerio's eyes darkened as he looked her straight in the eye. I could feel pure anger boiling inside him.

Monterosa, even I knew that name. The Monterosa family was one of the richest and most powerful fullblood families I knew. They owned almost the entire city. They were one of the few vampire families that were completely ignored by humans because they didn't want to end up on their menu. The Monterosa were also one of the few families that still publicly hunted humans. But what did she mean by running off with his food?

They stared at each other for a long time, as if they were engaged in a power struggle. She took a step back. The vampiress then briefly looked over at Talon, looked him over from head to toe, but said nothing.

"Since because of you my mood has worsened, I need you to cheer me up." She then said, slightly bored. If I remember correctly, Leroy mentioned something about an underground pit. Was she trying to get us to fight someone?