Dante lowered his head and sighed. “Alright,” he said, “But our plan needs to be better than this.”
“Good thing we have a few hours to figure it out,” Vik added.
“I’ll tell Madeline what our plan is,” the Keeper said, “Just so she knows what we’re up to.”
I nodded. “Leo, I take it you’ve been to the club?”
“I have,” Leo said.
“Good. We’ll need you to tell us a little bit about the layout; we’ll need an escape route, and if we know that before we go in, we’ll stand a better chance of avoiding whatever happened to Henry and Covell.”
Leo frowned. “I still hate this plan,” he said.
I smirked, triumphant. “Doesn’t matter. The mob has spoken. Now, let’s get to work.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Pandora wasn’t just a nightclub, it was a haven, a watering hole for people from all walks of life, from cybergoths to suits, from ravers to stoners, and by the time we had arrived, the party was in full swing. The speakers pumped electronic music into the press of grinding clubbers, while laser beams cast a prismatic lightshow into the smoky air above them. The club was dark if not for the dim yellow lights set into the floors and the strobes flashing rapidly, making everyone’s movements seem stuttered and more like moving pictures than real life.
The plan was simple; Dante and I would head to the bar, grab a drink, and settle near the edge of the dance floor together. Meanwhile, Leo, Vik, Raph, and Liam would fan out and hunt around for the vampire known to us only as Sterling. We had no idea what he looked like, and flimsy-at-best method of detecting him, but we figured we would have more of a chance if we weren’t all huddled together.
Dante ordered a whiskey on the rocks.
“Should we really be drinking?” I asked, when the barman looked at me.
“It’s a club. We’re supposed to be blending in. Just don’t go overboard.”
“I’ll have a dark and stormy, then, and a shot of tequila.”
My nerves were on fire, my heart pounding fast and hard. I wasn’t a stranger to nightclubs, but this one was something else. The air itself was charged with a kind of palpable energy I could almost taste. Leo had told me the majority of people in this club weren’t supernatural; there were humans, too, only those humans were from two different sects.
On the one hand you had humans who didn’t know what sort of people this place really hosted, and on the other, the humans who knew this wasn’t just a watering hole for supernatural beings, but also a feeding ground, and were eager to get their kicks.
I knocked back my shot of tequila, ignoring the salt and lime that it was served with, and walked away from the bar with my drink in my hand, looking for a good spot to stand around in. Dante followed with his hand on my lower back, making it look like we were a couple. And if we were a couple, then we were a damn good looking one; Dante looking hotter than ever in his black suit with a black shirt and red tie.
I had scrubbed up pretty well too. Several bags from Harrods had arrived at my bedroom door an hour after our plan had been decided on. I had assumed they were a gift from Madeline, but I hadn’t seen her, so I wasn’t certain. The entire outfit was Alexander McQueen, and probably worth at least 6 months of my pay at Hot Topic, overtime included. The dress was a black knitted mini dress with, long sleeves and a high neck that made sure all the attention was focused on my legs.
On both sides of the dress, red leather strings laced their way from top to bottom, symmetrically, making it a statement piece. Also in the bag were McQueen over the knee stiletto boots, and the classic knuckle duster clutch embellished with skulls. My hair was knotted into a Dutch braid, and I had smoked out my eyes and applied my favorite lipstick, MAC Diva, which I only bought because I had once read it was Marilyn Manson’s lipstick of choice.
“I don’t see how we’re going to find him,” I said, speaking into Dante’s ear, “But this looks like a good spot to hang out in.”
I had found us a spot near a set of stairs. Directly at my back was a wall, in front of us was the entire nightclub. The spot we were standing on was also a little elevated, so we had a great view of the sea of heads bouncing to the beat.
“Trust me,” Dante said, “If this vampire has any idea who you are, and he might, then he’ll notice you.”
“What makes you think he might know who I am?”
“Because no one just captures two people without doing checks on them first.”
“But I wasn’t around when the mentors were; we never met.”
“That doesn’t matter. Vampires are like roaches—they’re everywhere, and they know way more than we think. We have to be prepared for that.”
I nodded and took a sip of my drink. Dante swirled his, scanning the dance floor from behind the rim of his glass, his eyes narrow and sharp. Then they turned on me, and he came to whisper in my ear, his breath tickling my neck. “So, what happened with Vik?” he asked.
I craned my head and looked at him, feigning surprise. “What do you mean?”
Dante grinned. “I’m an incubus; I can read emotions, too.”
“It was nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“You know, sometimes I feel like slapping the smirk off your face.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“Because I feel like you’d enjoy it.”
Dante laughed. “I might. So, are you going to tell me or what?”
“What is there to say?”
“I want to know what happened, and how it happened.”
“And why is that?”
“Call me curious.”
“I’ll call you nosy if you aren’t careful.”
“Whatever gets me what I want.”
I turned to look at him now, sipping my drink, feeling the tequila already working through me. I should have eaten before drinking. “And what do you want, Dante?”
His expression hardened. “I want to know what happened between you and Vik.”
“We had sex.”
An awkward silence followed.
“Was it good?” he asked smirking behind his glass.
“Dante!” I yelled, and slapped his chest. “Why do you want to know? Are you jealous?”
“I didn’t say that, I just thought we could talk about stuff like this, open and honestly.”
“I agree that we should be honest, but I don’t know what you get by me giving you specifics about what happened between Vik and I earlier today, or about what happened between Liam and I before we left for London, or about what happened between me and Raph in that hotel in Teisendorf.”
“I get the point.”
“Do you? Because it seems to me like you’re feeling… left out.”
Dante’s jaw clenched, but he said nothing. This entire conversation was starting to get my heart working overtime. It was off script. We weren’t meant to be talking about this; we were meant to be watching out for a potential vampire drug dealer, but instead Dante was making a big deal out of me and Vik.
“Left out isn’t the term I’d use,” he said.
“Jealous, then—even though you’ve denied it.”
“I didn’t deny it.”
I moved closer to him, angling my body slightly so I could almost coil myself around him. “Then you are jealous?” I asked, reaching for his ear and whispering directly into it, letting my lips lightly brush his skin. “Let me remind you that you had your chance, and you blew it.”
“I still have my chance.”
“Really? Then take it. I dare you.”
Dante grabbed me by the waist, spun me around, and pinned me against the wall. “Don’t,” he growled.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“I’m not tempting you, Dante. I’m also not going to be the one to chase you. If you want me, you’re going to have to try much harder than that.”
“And if I do the work?” he asked, closing the distance between our lips.
&n
bsp; “How about you stop talking and just do?”
I could almost feel his breath on me now, the smell of the whiskey hot upon my lips. He was coming for me. Something inside him had changed, and he was ready to come and take me, and I wanted him to. I wanted to see if he had it in him to break his own rules and do to me all of the things I knew he wanted to do, but as we inched closer together, like moths drawn to each-others’ lights, I caught something out of the corner of my eye that gave me reason to suck in a deep breath of air.
In the middle of a club I had never been to, in a country I had never before today visited, I saw someone I thought I recognized.
The man I thought I had spotted was there, and then he wasn’t, but the image of his face had burned itself into my mind, and my brain was working hard to try and match him with a memory it knew was there, but buried somewhere, lost in the clutter of disorganized files. Dante turned his head, staring at the spot I was fixated on.
“What is it?” he asked.
“That man,” I said, pushing myself off the wall, “I know that man.”
“What man?”
I pointed, and while the man had turned around and had started to walk away from us, I had a good enough view of the back of him to isolate him from the rest of the people around him. Dante seemed to have spotted the right guy, because he set his glass down on a table and began to walk with me, navigating through the press of the crowd of people waiting at the bar to get their drinks.
The mark moved briskly, but not fast enough that I thought he had spotted me. If I knew who he was, then there was a fair chance he knew who I was too, and that spelled trouble since I couldn’t think of a single person from my past that I got along with, or even liked. He was wearing a leather jacket, he was scruffy, and had a mess of black hair. From the back, he could have been anyone, fitting the description of many old boyfriends, but I didn’t think he was one. No, the memory of him seemed more recent.
“What are we doing?” Dante asked.
“Following him.”
“Why? We’re supposed to be looking for the vampire.”
“Because you don’t just spot someone you recognize in a club on a different continent; something’s up.”
I watched him go up a flight of stairs and followed with Dante in tow. At the top of the stairs was a door, which the mark disappeared into. In front of the door was a bouncer wearing a suit. Above it, a sign read “The Viper’s Nest – VIP Lounge”. I glanced at Dante, then made my way up the stairs as if I owned the place, keeping a casual yet entitled air about me.
The bouncer, who was bald, large, and had a jaw like a bulldog’s, stepped in front of me. For an instant I thought he was going to deny me entry into the lounge, but he then stepped aside after eyeing me up and down. I walked toward him, then passed him.
“He’s with me,” I said, looking over my shoulder at Dante, who was allowed to follow me through the doors into the Viper’s Nest.
“You sure you know what you’re doing coming up here?” Dante asked.
“No, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
My skin tingled as I entered the VIP Lounge, the hairs on my arms standing on end. But this wasn’t due to something supernatural; this had happened because I knew, as the door closed behind Dante and me, that we were cut off from the others up here. There was every chance they would have thought to follow me the moment they saw me disappear, but they could have just as easily been looking somewhere else at the time, and might now have no idea where I was.
I was in the Viper’s Nest, figuratively and literally.
Downstairs there had been a mix of supernaturals and humans; up here, everyone was supernatural in some way, and I was starting to feel a little intimidated by that fact. A feeling that amplified as my roaming gaze passed across more beautiful, pale skinned women than I had ever seen gathered in my entire life. It was then that I realized, it wasn’t female supernaturals that were rare—it was female supernaturals who were born and survived into adulthood, that were rare.
“I thought women were rare in our world,” I said, taking in the sights around me.
“They are, but these lovely individuals have nothing to do with the mother-gene.”
“They’re all vampires, aren’t they?”
He linked his arm with mine. “Yes, and you’ll want to keep your voice low. They have incredible hearing.”
I nodded and walked into lounge room with him, passing by a table where four men in business suits sat around discussing drugs, money, and women; most of them bearing the characteristic pale skin of the vampire, others looking as flush and human. Moving past another booth, I saw a woman in a forest green dress, gently caressing the cheek of a man who couldn’t look away from her eyes. The puncture wounds in his neck caught my attention almost immediately, two tiny pinpricks from which a trickle of blood seemed to flow. When the blood would reach the collar of his shirt, the woman would reach for his neck with her tongue and draw it up and along his skin, delicately lapping up the blood.
But they weren’t all vampires in here. It would have been impossible to tell just by looking at someone if they were a mage, or a psychic, or even a demon; to me, Liam, Raph, Vik, and Aiden all looked perfectly human, but I was starting to notice that vampires moved more slowly than humans did, their actions were deliberate, and planned; liquid and smooth, but carefully considered. Other supernaturals weren’t like that. Other supernaturals talked with their hands, blinked, took casual sips of their drinks, and laughed.
We reached the bar, and Dante ordered us another round of drinks. I sat on a stool and turned to face him.
“So, what do you think?” I asked, keeping my voice as low as possible.
“I don’t know. Do you see the guy you were following?”
“No.”
“Who was he, anyway?”
“I have no idea. I know I’ve seen him before, but I don’t know where.”
“How is that possible?”
I shrugged. “Beats me. I’ve never been here before.”
“Maybe he just looked like somebody you knew?”
I shook my head. “No, for an instant I had him. I knew exactly who he was and where I had seen him, and then it was gone.”
The drinks arrived. I gathered mine and took a sip. Dante settled the tab immediately, with cash. “He could be anyone.”
“He isn’t in this room. I know he isn’t. If he were here, and I saw him even once, I would know.”
“So, what do we do?”
I took the room in one more time, making sure this ghost was nowhere to be found, then I swung around and waved the barman over. He was young, attractive, and wearing a tight uniform that accentuated his toned physique. There were two of them, in fact; both bright eyed and young, with dark hair, neatly kept, and looking almost impossibly like brothers. Maybe even twins.
“Hi,” the barman said.
“Hey,” I said, leaning over the counter. “I had a question I was hoping you could answer.”
“Okay? Shoot.”
I leaned a little closer and beckoned him over. “So, someone told me if I really wanted to have a good time, I could come to the Viper’s Nest and ask for Sterling… is that true?”
The barman’s eyes shifted from left to right. “Sterling isn’t here tonight,” he said, and my heart could have stopped, but then he said, “His colleague is, though… through that door.”
I looked over my shoulder at the door the barman had directed me to, then looked back at him. “Thanks, handsome.”
He smiled, blushing slightly, and went back to his duties. I took my drink and downed it in one go. “Trying to get drunk?” Dante asked. “I thought we just agreed against that.”
“No,” I said, “Just anticipating what’s going to happen when we go through that door and find what we’re looking for.”
“Should we call the others?”
“And risk spooking whoever is dealing? No way. Number one r
ule of drug dealing; if you’re outnumbered, you get the fuck away, otherwise those guys are likely to steal your stash and give you a beating.”
“Did you deal a lot of drugs back in Seattle?”
“Of course I didn’t, you presumptuous asshole… I just dated a few guys who did.”
Dante gave me another smirk, one that I wanted to slap off his face
“Oh, don’t judge me rich boy, I’d love to take a peek into your dating history.”
“All you’d have to do is ask.”
“Maybe another night. Shall we?” I said, standing.
Dante took my arm, and together we walked across the Viper’s Nest and toward the door we had been asked to go to. It was marked INVITE ONLY – RESTRICTED, and it was closed, so I knocked loudly enough to be heard, and waited for what felt like an unknown number of tense, anxiety ridden minutes for the door to open into what looked like an even more exclusive lounge. There were clusters of red sofas, tables with candles on them in the back, Japanese screens separating each section. I spotted a velvet rope barring passage into this lounge, and a bar on the other side of the room, but no barman. No patrons, either.
Standing directly in front of me was a man, probably in his late thirties, well dressed and wearing a Rolex even Dante would appreciate. He had light blond hair, sharp, blue eyes, and a disarming smile that I wasn’t falling for one bit. Not because he wasn’t good looking, but because his lips were blue, his skin was pale, and he hadn’t moved a muscle except to open the door; not even to blink.
He looked at me first, then at Dante, and then let his eyes settle on me again.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
I put on a winning smile. “Yes,” I said, “You can. I’m looking for someone who is supposed to work here. Goes by the name of Sterling.”
“Sterling isn’t here,” he said.
“That’s right, but the barman said his colleague could help us find what we were looking for.”
He nodded, then smiled, and opened the door enough for us to enter the room. Once inside, he closed the door behind us, then signaled for us to follow him as he made his way across the lounge and toward the bar. Music was playing, light jazz, nothing at all like the electronica pumping downstairs.
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