Ivan was snapping selfies.
Roxy’s scrutiny of me once again passed; she returned to her cell phone, tapping away with pursed lips.
I took the opportunity to check my texts.
The replies were all from Xandra and Gregory, and exactly what I expected: complete and utter freak-outs. I replied, letting them both know I was in Miami, and that I would keep them posted. I wished I could have explained more, but at least they all knew I was alive.
Nothing from Mill (no surprise), and nothing from Iona.
Something about Iona’s lack of reply made me a little sad. I guess now that Byron was out of the picture, our business was more or less concluded.
Still … with Xandra and Gregory, it was nice to tell more than one person that I was alive and know that they actually cared.
The vampire boys were YOLO-ing their way through the night, laughing and hooting, like regular teenagers out with their friends—or vampires harassing a human they intended to turn, I thought grimly, as their behavior tonight was not much different to when they’d been in Laura’s backyard.
Roxy’s moodiness apparently didn’t faze or dampen their enthusiasm. She was sitting back against her seat, twirling a gold ring around her middle finger, with a look on her face that said someone had peed in her O-neg-flavored Kool-Aid.
The limo made a sharp left turn and slowed to a stop. The boys ducked back inside the limo, talking over one another about the club we’d pulled up at, the lights, the people.
Another club? I knew that these guys weren’t living anymore, but wasn’t this exhausting to them? I was young, and I was tired just thinking of all the crap we’d done tonight. Netflix was waiting at home, and Pretty Little Liars, and I longed to watch other people spin lies instead of doing so myself at great personal risk.
This place looked a lot more like a club than the last place—a glass and steel building, with silhouettes in every window.
Benjy clapped me on the shoulder before climbing out of the limo.
The shrieks that greeted us were terrifying. I thought someone was dying, but instead, it was a group of people standing near the doors behind a rope fence.
“It’s Roxy! Did you see her?!”
“Roxy, oh my gosh, will you sign my bag?”
“Is that Benjy? He’s so hot!”
Huh. Vampire Instaphoto fangirls. Well, I never. Charlie’s arm was around my waist, grinning at the crowd. Benjy snapped another selfie us as we stood in front of the crowd. I smiled like the fool I was as they guided me past the throng and into the dark.
Vampire internet celebrities. Great.
Chapter 19
The inside of the club was what I would expect the inside of a castle to look like—stone walls, low-hanging chandeliers, torches on the wall. Miami’s lights could be seen through the many tall windows surrounding the space, but inside, it was medieval, dark, and moody. I half expected people in black capes with high collars to jump out and scare me from around the archways surrounding the room.
My nose wrinkled as we stepped fully inside. There was a sharp, metallic tang to the air, like rusted iron.
The dance floor itself was sunken into the middle of the room, and the floor was made from scorched wood. The music was more my speed than the last club, with more techno, and less rap. The pulsing lights were absent, but people were packed in here like more tightly. Except these weren’t people. These were vampires—all of them.
Well, almost all of them—I saw, with an icy lurch of horror, in one corner of the room, men and women barely older than me, arm in arm with vampires—who held leashes that drooped from their hands and affixed to collars at the humans’ necks.
Stomach heaving, I watched as one of the vampires nuzzled his face into the crook of one the girl’s necks, almost as if to kiss her, and sunk his teeth into the tender flesh.
A dazed look passed over the girl’s face, and she slumped into the vampire’s arms.
I looked away before I fainted. Just across from me, on a curving seat, one poor girl who couldn’t be any older than seventeen was—I hoped—passed out. Her handler loomed over her, leash in hand, dark splotches on his crisp white button-up.
Did these vampires have no shame? Of course they didn’t. This is what vampires did. And I was fully aware of it. If media depictions hadn’t prepared me, hearing it first-hand from the vampires I’d met should have done.
I … just had never seen it before in person. Up until this point, it had all been theoretical.
I wished it could have stayed that way.
The injustice of it just curdled my blood. These humans were being used as toys and pets—like dogs, but less. I knew that Draven and his underlings felt this was all humans were good for—he’d called us cattle—but everything in me just wanted to rescue them. Fortunately, the fact that I was so … perturbed, disgusted, horrified … went unnoticed, both by my temporary group of “friends” and the vampires in the club who had no eyes for me, but did shoot my new “friends” admiring looks and waves. So I meandered along behind, keeping a tight lid on my expression—lying with my face—as best I could, as we clambered stairs to a glass-encased room along one wall.
The room was a little quieter than the rest of the club, the glass blocking out some of the thundering music. A few round tables, also glass, were scattered around, and all but one were entirely full. Roxy and the boys walked over to it as if it had beckoned them. I followed quickly after.
The entire club was visible from this room, even the gross feeding corner. I tried to sit with my back to it, but it didn’t make the reality of it any easier to deal with. I was sure that image was burned onto my brain.
Great. More nightmare fuel.
What in the world was I doing here with these vampires? How did I get myself in this deep? All I wanted to do was figure out who they were and what they wanted with Laura. So far, I had learned nothing.
The only way that I was going to be able to stop them from harassing Laura for sure was to kill them.
Could I even do that again? Could I take out four of them, clearly working as a pack, when I’d barely managed to luck my way through two one-on-one encounters before now?
Iona was right. I really should have stayed out of all of this.
Problem was, I couldn’t make an easy escape now. So I had no choice but to go deeper—yet the deeper I got, the harder it would be to dig my way out. And the worse it was going to be if they found out that I was a human. Which meant that I had to kill them.
They chattered—conversations that were so normal—totally unaware that, as I sat beside them, I was frantically plotting their demise. Benjy had started on about trouble with his cell phone, and Ivan was listening intently. Roxy was reapplying her lipstick in a small compact mirror.
She glanced up and caught me staring at her. Her face hardened before I looked away as casually as I could.
Charlie tapped his foot to the beat of the music. He smiled at me.
“I’m going to go get a drink,” he said, rising gracefully to his feet.
“I’ll come with you,” I said. “I need to stretch my legs.” I stepped away from the table with him.
Sitting at that table any longer might have driven me insane. The less time I had to be that close to them—Roxy in particular—the better.
“You doing okay?” Charlie asked, hands in his pockets.
“Totally,” I said. “It’s been nice to get out.” Was he seeing through me right now? How much of my worry, my fear, was I showing?
Charlie smirked. “Nothing better than being able to hang out with our own kind, you know?”
I unconsciously looked over into the feeding corner. The girl who had been bitten before was standing again. It gave me very little relief. “You aren’t kidding.”
“You want a drink?” he asked, gesturing over to the bar in the corner.
Why was there a bar when there were humans all over the room? I gritted my teeth behind my smile as I shoved those th
oughts from my mind.
“I’m good, thanks,” I replied, trying not to sound disgusted. “I’ll catch up with you in a bit.”
Charlie shrugged and turned toward the bar.
I exhaled a breath I wasn’t aware I was holding. I turned and looked around the room.
Somehow it was harder to look at all of the vampires around the room when I was alone. I knew I looked like an idiot just standing there, so I pulled out my cell phone out and spun on the spot, the vast group of vampires behind me. Masking my photos as club selfies for Instaphoto, I banked them for Xandra later. She’d go nuts when she saw them.
If she saw them.
Caught in the front-facing camera as I twirled, Roxy and Benjy and Ivan sat together at their table inside the glass room. All of their eyes were on me. Roxy pointed at me. She was tight-lipped and glaring. Ivan seemed pensive; Benjy was frowning.
My smile faltered, but I fought to keep it in place. They couldn’t know I’d noticed. Nevertheless, I made sure to snap a photo with all three in the background. It might prove useful to show Iona or Mill later on. If Roxy was going to keep her eye on me, I was going to do the same to her. Turning again, I pretended to check my hair and makeup in the camera.
What was I going to do? How in the world was I going to get out of this? Was it possible that I could just hop back on the plane with them back to Tampa? Could I just outright ask them about Laura?
I was pretty sure my whirling thoughts were about to drive me absolutely insane when I heard a piercing scream. The atmosphere shifted instantly. The dancing stopped. All the joy of the vampires and their pets was replaced with confusion—and then, hardly a moment later, shrieking panic as a column of fire lanced up near the bar. Something was aflame, burning with a noxious smell, and the screams mingled as vampires backpedaled, moving away—
I gasped, eyes widening as the throng near the bar parted to reveal—
It wasn’t something burning.
It was someone. And as they thrashed, gripping their face, shouting wildly, I saw—
Long hair.
It was Charlie.
A loud, blaring alarm rang through the air, inciting more screams and pandemonium. Then the sprinkler system kicked on, turning the room into a wet, misty mess.
It was too late. Charlie’s skin was melting off in dark, thick globs. Screams dying in his throat, he collapsed against the bar and rebounded, falling into a still heap. Flames eating at his skin, he was already decaying into black goo, spreading across the floor like the limbs of a starfish. A hand snatched me around by the arm. I yelped, wheeling around, wide-eyed—
Benjy.
“Elizabeth, are you all right?”
I nodded, easing my arm out of his grip even though I desperately wanted to yank it free. “Yeah,” I said. Water stuck to my eyelashes and dripped off the end of my nose. Suddenly I was cold.
Benjy looked over at the bar. His eyes were wide with grief and shock. Vampires and their pet humans continued to shove past us, embroiled in a terrified panic that threatened to turn the club into a riot.
“Come on!”
Benjy and I turned. Roxy was standing just off the dance floor. I could tell she was doing everything she could to not look over at the bar.
We didn’t waste any time. We joined the throng flooding the doorway back outside.
The sound of a fire truck in the distance greeted us as we stepped out into the humid night. Vampires were running down the sidewalks in both directions. I could still hear the fire alarm blaring inside. What were the firefighters going to think when they found what was left of Charlie’s body? Not to mention all of the blood around …
None of that mattered. What was important was that Charlie was dead—and I hadn’t needed to lift a finger.
One down. Three more to go.
Chapter 20
Ivan was standing off to the side, already waiting. He saw us and waved us over. His face was blank. Benjy pulled out his phone and stepped aside, one hand to his ear to block out all of the noise. I heard him say the word “limo.”
Roxy was livid. Her eyes blazed as she paced along the sidewalk.
“Did you see that?” Fear riddled her voice. I was surprised, honestly—she’d barely broken her icy façade during my time in her company, and I was beginning to suspect that nothing would crack her.
On the flipside, the fact she was asking meant that she wasn’t suspicious about my part in Charlie’s death.
“It’s kinda hard to miss a guy spontaneously combusting at the bar,” I said.
Benjy rejoined us. “Limo will be here in a minute,” he said in a low voice.
All of the energy that had been present from the moment I’d met this group was gone, replaced with a fraught unease.
Benjy had a distant stare. “Can you believe that?” he asked, sounding choked. “Someone slipped Charlie holy water.”
So that was what happened. I’d never have guessed, not least because the one time I’d used holy water against Byron, he hadn’t caught fire. I guessed this was the difference between a light splash and actually ingesting it.
Thing was—who had slipped him the holy water? And why? Based on the faces of the other vampires, I wasn’t the only one wondering that very thing.
Benjy was wringing out the corner of his shirt as the limo pulled up. Roxy waited for Ivan to open the door and then slid inside. I hurried to stand beside Benjy. Ivan barely glanced at me as I joined them in the limo. The fear of them leaving me behind was evidently unfounded.
The limo pulled away from the curb as soon as Roxy slammed the door shut.
It felt strangely empty without Charlie’s calm, cool presence inside the car. And out of all of the vampires in the group, he was the one I hated the least. Which was a weird thing to think, after seeing him terrorize Laura with the rest of them, but this was getting to be an increasingly weird life.
Roxy was like a simmering volcano. Her face, darkly pensive, was almost a snarl.
Ivan was leaning forward, the tips of his fingers pressed together, his eyes on the floor.
Benjy was rambling.
“Can you believe that?” he said again. “Who would have done that? Who would even dare?”
I would have, I thought. I definitely would have. It was a great idea. I planned to keep that in my back pocket. Maybe Mill had a secret supplier and would be willing to share them with me.
Roxy turned her gaze on me. Suspicion clouded her eyes.
“Did you see Charlie talk to anyone? You were closer than we were.”
Ah. Yes. About that. I definitely was closer than they were. But she was watching me the entire time I was away. Really, she hadn’t stopped looking at me since I joined their little posse earlier that night. But it wasn’t like I could say that out loud.
Roxy’s gaze hardened. “You left with him. I saw you talking to him before he walked over to the bar. What did he say to you?”
I racked my brain, realizing belatedly that whatever he had said to me were pretty much the last words he ever said.
“He didn’t say anything important,” I replied, shaking my head. “He asked if I wanted a drink. And asked if I was doing all right.”
Roxy clicked her tongue in disgust.
I shot her a nasty look of my own. “And he said something about how it was nice to be hanging out with his own kind.”
Benjy’s lip trembled. “I just can’t believe …”
“Did he say anything else?” Roxy snapped.
“No,” I said. “Nothing.”
Her expression was tight, disbelieving.
A thought occurred, and I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “I was taking selfies when it happened. Let me see if maybe I caught something in the background.”
I scrolled through my selfies, making a point to avoid the ones with Roxy, Benjy and Ivan in the background.
“Let me see,” Roxy said, sliding over to sit beside me.
The last three photos I’d snapped were of the da
nce floor. The first one of those captured a good portion of the room. The bar was in the background—blurry, but I could make out Charlie standing with his back to my camera.
Roxy snatched my phone out of my hand. “Who is this?” she snapped.
“Who?” I asked. She’d grabbed my phone away and was holding it up to her face, pale skin aglow with digital light.
She zoomed in on the photo and then turned the phone, showing it to me. Someone was standing beside. Someone male. Someone tall. Someone … handome. Ish.
Someone I recognized. Fighting to keep my composure, I stared down—at Mill, a drink in his hand … offering it to Charlie.
Chapter 21
Roxy was actually snarling. Her hands were knotted in her long curls, and her fangs were bared. “Who is that?”
Benjy pulled my phone out of Roxy’s hand and looked at the photo before passing it to Ivan. He didn’t seem as convinced as Roxy was.
“I don’t recognize him,” Ivan remarked before handing my phone back to me.
“Probably because he’s from the Miami territory,” Benjy said.
“Why would some random Miami vampire have killed Charlie?” Roxy spat. If her temperature grew much hotter, she’d catch fire from her own anger—two in a night, an excellent result for me, if a little hazardous right now as I sat beside her. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe he just likes to kill for fun? Gets his kicks from it?” Benjy asked.
Ivan crossed his arms. “It is unlikely, but I have heard of some vampires who have so lost their humanity that they can only feel alive by doing something as extreme as killing another vamp.”
“Charlie is dead,” Roxy said. “Someone murdered him.” She gritted her teeth. “I don’t believe for a second that this was an accident. Someone had it out for Charlie. Or for us.”
“But who do we know in Miami?” Ivan asked. “Roxy, this is crazy. I’m upset about Charlie’s death, too. But … murder? Why?”
Someone Should Save Her Page 9