Edie Spence (Book 5): Bloodshifted by Cassie Alexander Page A

followed.
    *   *   *
    Purgatory was nicer than Hell. While Hell had seemed a little on the garish carnival side, Perg had an Old World cathedral theme, mixed with a light S&M, stone walls with gargoyles grinning down from above, and wide black leather couches.
    Heaven was the nicest by far, appropriately. It was white-on-white, and managed to feel both exotic and monied, with white leather chairs and white marble tables and white polar bear skins on the walls. It was more like an exclusive club than a dance hall, with the space devoted more to lounging than dancing—probably because most of the dancers on this floor were paid to do so—and it had the most extensive bar I’d ever seen. The bathrooms were far nicer here as well, with walls and floors of white marble, and they were less dirty—although they needed more meticulous work, as the white marble was unforgiving.
    “How’re you doing, Cinderelly?” Jackson asked when we were done.
    “I think I’ve bleached my skirt. Does that mean I can throw it away and get a new one?”
    His eyes glazed over for a second, as though he was listening to someone inside himself, and not to me. “We’ll find out soon enough,” he answered slowly.
    I felt whatever it was, too. Like I’d just let the last bit of sand fall out of my hand, or let go of a bird I didn’t know I’d been holding. Like a piece of me that had been mine was gone.
    “It’s always a little bit like dying when the sun goes down,” Jackson said. “You’d think it’d be the reverse, but it’s not, not for us.”
    “Are they up now?” I lowered my voice without thinking about it, and he nodded.
    “Yeah. Raven will know you’re alive and where you are, but he’ll want to see you, to make sure you’re still in one piece. We’d best go present ourselves,” he said, and started leading us back down into the actual catacombs.
    *   *   *
    It was easier to pass by the door to the outside world at night. While I missed fresh air, it didn’t tempt me like the thought of sunlight did. We put our supplies back into the closet and then started our trek below.
    “Who built all these tunnels, anyhow?”
    “Don’t know. There’s a huge network of them underneath LA, though. Most of them collapsed during assorted earthquakes, but apparently the ones we’re in are stable. We’ll know an earthquake’s coming when all of our Masters run out the door.”
    “What if it happens during daylight?”
    “Then we’ll all die, and they’ll slowly crawl their way out at night.”
    “Awesome.”
    “I try not to think about it too much.”
    He led us through to the chamber where I’d been introduced the morning before. Everyone else was already waiting. Celine was again impeccably dressed, this time in club wear, a tight-fitting red dress with holes cut out to show expanses of white skin that somehow managed to stay classy. She was behind her Mistress, whose name I hadn’t learned yet, and who was dressed in a long skin-fitting white dress that flared at the neck and knees, intentionally modernizing a queen’s silhouette, with high hair and an oversized beauty mark to match. The male vampire whose name I didn’t know was dressed in leather pants with a fitted black shirt and a suggestively buckled collar. I assumed Celine would be in Hell, her Mistress in Heaven, and the unknown vampire in Perg, based on clothing alone.
    Wolf was still Wolf, though, in a leather vest and T-shirt, more muscled than manly, and Raven was still Raven, lounging on his couch in head-to-toe purple-black—the shade certain bird feathers took on under the right light. He wore a coat that would have been a costume on anyone else, swirling down to his knees. Jackson nudged me forward to stand by Lars, who was dressed in a black business suit, hovering by Raven’s side.
    Lars didn’t look any worse for our fight—and neither did I. He was still angry at me, I could see it in his eyes, and almost feel the hate radiating