Chapter 5
Kieran clasped the cool ivory of the antique bidding sign as he looked with approval at the girl on stage. She was beautiful, with innocent features and a lithe, graceful body. And her hair… strikingly red.
“What do we think, boys? Was I right, or was I right?” the auctioneer said, not a little impressed himself with the specimen on stage. “Like something from the old country.” He winked in the direction of the Irish group.
There was something else about her, thought Kieran, waiting with eager impatience for the bidding to begin; something different from the other girls. But he couldn’t put his finger on it.
“Aye,” said Ian, his voice low and whispered, “you finally see something you like up there?”
Kieran said nothing, but his mouth curled into a slight smile.
“About damn time,” said Ian with a smile of his own before turning back toward the stage.
“Bidding for this lovely young thing will start at…” the auctioneer’s voice trailed off. It seemed that he had been given a number to start, but was doing mental calculations to determine a higher number now that he was seeing her in the flesh.
“Fifty thousand!”
A brief chattering spread through the crowd. They didn’t see numbers like this very often, but the auction house knew when they had something on their hands that could fetch such a high price. With a lackadaisical raise of his arm, Kieran placed his bid.
“We have fifty thousand to the Irish gentleman in the back. Do we have fifty-five thousand?”
Kieran spotted a flash of white out of the corner of his eye from the Ukrainians. It was Drugi.
“Fifty-five thousand to the Ukrainian gentleman!”
Kieran shot a look to Drugi, who responded with a shrugged shoulder look that seemed to say, “Can you blame me?”
Kieran’s expression softened. No, he couldn’t. He raised his sign once more.
“Sixty thousand to the Irish gentleman!”
Kieran did some quick calculations, thinking how much money he could spend. He had yet to purchase a girl from any of the annual auctions, which gave him a substantial amount of cash to play with. And he knew he’d need it all.
“Do we have sixty-five thousand?”
Another sign shot up, and Kieran’s eyes tracked it. It belonged to someone in the Polish society, but he couldn’t see who.
“That is sixty-five thousand! Do we see seventy-five thousand?”
Drugi’s sign went up.
“Seventy-five thousand to the gentleman in the navy suit. Do we have eighty-five thousand?”
Kieran moved to raise his sign.
“One hundred thousand!” a voice called out in silken, allegro tones.
Murmuring erupted through the crowd of seated men. The six-digit ceiling was rarely cracked.
Kieran craned his neck and moved in his chair to see who the voice belonged to. Sure enough, it was Marcus Ricci, one of the newest members of the Italian society. Though he was only recently turned, his ostentatious, flamboyant nature was already making waves. He was bold, brash, and above all, impudent. Already wealthy from before his turning, Marcus had wasted no time in using the elevated levels of energy that came with being a vampire to increase his fortune even further. Kieran had heard rumors that Marcus had recently purchased one of the most expensive penthouses in the East Village, where the Italians lived, but it had to be merely rumors. Kieran knew there was no way the status-conscious Italians would allow an upstart to pull a move like that.
Kieran looked at Marcus, noting his curled and swept-back coal-colored hair, his aquiline nose with long nostrils, and scheming, scouring eyes. His lips were tomato-red and curled into what seemed like a permanent smug sneer.
“One hundred thousand!” called the auctioneer.
“One-ten,” called Drugi.
The auctions tended to move like this: Gentlemanly, incremental increases of five thousand until the hundred mark was hit, then it was a slug-fest.
Kieran looked again at the girl on stage, at her comely face and slender body, and asked himself if she was worth it.
Yes, she is.
“One-twenty-five,” he called.
Drugi shot him a surprised look, then waved his hand toward Kieran in a motion that seemed to say, fine, you want her? She’s all yours. He then tossed his sign onto the table and finished his vodka with a quick swig.
“One-fifty,” called Marcus.
“One-seventy-five,” said Kieran in response, not missing a beat.
“Hey, I know you’re sweet on this one, but you got the funds for this?” asked Ian, leaning in and talking in a low whisper.
Kieran said nothing in response.
“Two hundred,” said Marcus.
Now the room was in a mild commotion. Vampires from each society were talking amongst themselves, gesturing to Kieran and Marcus with hands holding drinks, trying to figure out who these two men were, exactly, and just what was so exceptional about this girl on stage beyond her obvious beauty. The rest of the vampires of the Irish society looked toward Kieran with worry; they were pleased that one of their own could throw money around like this, but the question of whether he had it to spend was another matter entirely.
Kieran thought for a moment, rubbing the tip of his index finger against the cool, polished ivory handle of the bidding sign. He knew that all the eyes of the room, the hundreds of men of the society of vampires, were on him.
“Two-twenty,” he said, his voice loud, but impassive.
More murmurs and chattering rippled through the crowd.
“Two-fifty,” said Marcus, his eyes flicking over to Kieran for a brief moment. He wanted to see how Kieran would react, but didn’t want him to see that he was looking. But Kieran saw.
The room was quiet and gripped with anticipation. The auctioneer maintained his professional demeanor, and awaited the next move from either of the two men. Kieran could see Drugi’s face painted with a wide-eyed expression of incredulity.
“The fuck’re ya doin’, man? You got this kind of money?” said Ian, keeping his voice to the same low whisper.
“Three hundred,” Kieran said.
Upon hearing these words, many men in the room dropped the cool façade and began to outright talk amongst themselves, wondering in confused, expletive-laced terms what was going on, who was this this Irish upstart and the redhead he was bidding on, where, exactly, did he get all this money, and so on.
Kieran waited for Marcus to react. He knew that he had the money, if he wanted to spend it. But was he acting with the same strange impulse to buy this girl that Kieran was?
His question was answered by Marcus tossing his bidding sign on the table and throwing up his hands in an exaggerated, open-palmed gesture of defeat.
“She’s all yours, my friend, for whatever good it does you,” he called out before taking a slow sip from his glass of bloodwine.
“Sold for three hundred thousand dollars to the Irish gentleman,” said the auctioneer in a grand, proclaiming voice, followed by a slamming of the mallet on the podium.
The girl was led off the stage, the soft tinkling of her chains audible in the silence of the hall. Despite the drama of the girl’s auction, there was no pause in the events of the evening. After she was taken from the stage, the next girl was brought on, bid on, and sold off… for a price much lower than three hundred thousand dollars.