Holy Hocus Pocus
Phillip dragged me down a steep set of steps, heading beneath another level of pavement to a door concealed by nothing but concrete. Its entrance wasn’t anything special, but when I closed my eyes and really felt its energy, it wasn’t a normal door and it made me pause.
“A sex—”
Phillip put a finger to his mouth, smirking. “Don’t you trust me at all?”
My lips puckered with disgust. “Is that a trick question?”
After Phillip surprised me with an expensive meal, one with several courses, and we’d shared a few less-than-innocent glances, Phillip drove out of town, near an embankment.
The area was a long stretch of decrepit industrial park, abandoned nearly ten years ago by the looks of it.
Many of the buildings were covered in graffiti, while others barely stood.
The parking lots were cracked and vegetation grew where the broken slabs had come away.
To anyone else, a very odd place to take someone on their birthday.
To me, suspicious because I knew better.
Phillip may be many things, but he didn’t do something for no reason.
At first, I worried the other Hunter was there to act out a sexual fantasy in public, and I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t a little bit interested in participating.
Then I wondered if he’d taken a last-minute mission.
But as we descended another staircase below the earth and came to stand in front of an entrance seemingly forgotten, I no longer thought so.
The door creaked and shuddered, then opened with a loud screech over pavement when my partner pressed his hand onto a stone next to it.
Blue light painted the floor next to our feet, and Phillip’s exhilaration was clearly visible on his face.
Like a kid in a candy store. It’s definitely a sex party.
“Peccatum is one of the largest underground magic-user clubs in the United States.” The Austrian’s blue eyes ignited with mischief, and Phillip touched my cheek with the back of his hand. “No better place to train and have a bit of fun while doing it.”
I opened my mouth, but the enthusiastic Hunter hauled me inside and down another set of steps.
The thunder of music drowned out my thoughts in an instant.
A space swarming with bodies expanded out as far as the eye could see, and a rainbow of colorful flames levitated above us—aided by magic, no doubt.
A long stretch of bar occupied one side of the underground space, catering to any person looking for a drink and a show.
Dancing mist and translucent air of varying colors sparked and burst over several people standing behind the bar top, exposing them for what they were.
Magic-users.
“Holy Hocus Pocus,” I breathed, making Phillip snicker.
Fire sizzled from one bartender to the next, igniting several patron’s drinks along the way.
The countertop was ablaze with a dazzling line of purple and blue flames.
A woman, who barely wore anything at all, walked slowly through the fire, spinning beautifully and sashaying her waist in a way that drew every pair of eyes along that stretch of bar.
Jewels and glittery accessories hung from her body, which clinked and flashed in firelight.
Probably a belly dancer by the looks of it.
She was followed by another woman with hot pink curls dancing all around her head and a painted face.
The pink-haired beauty dragged the other dancer by the hips and kissed the back of her neck.
The magnetic eroticism was spellbinding.
Okay, so not belly dancers. They danced together, hands grabbing, mouths tasting wherever they could, and barely stayed apart long enough to speak in hushed whispers.
As if they weren’t standing front and center to a crowd of men and women who didn’t bother to pretend they weren’t watching.
A golden swirl of magic snaked around their bodies, giving their dark skin an iridescent glow.
The crowd cooed and called out, encouraging their intimacy, and it was just another nail in the coffin.
Location confirmed. This was absolutely a sex club.
But even though I should turn around and leave, I was frozen to the spot. Dazzled. Bewitched. Under the spell of this place. Spectator to all the splendor. I wanted to explore when I knew better.
“Come on, engel,” Phillip whispered next to my ear, hand on my lower back.
Bypassing several outside tables where club patrons drank merrily and talked intimately, we made our way through the crowd.
Couples of all types, orientations, and sizes touched and interacted with the intention to satisfy their urges.
Two men caught my eye as we walked by, their stares following me briefly before they were focused back on each other, mouths touching, hushed conversation full of illicit promises carrying through the air between them.
I knew because I couldn’t help but hear one of them say, “There’s back rooms if you want to take everything off and have your way with me.” Yeesh. Even I blushed as my head snapped forward to avoid looking exactly like the eavesdropper I was.
One running theme in the place was a freedom to let loose; to let magic be used without restraint. Even at the tables, drinks were served up in the flashiest manner, and it wasn’t very far from the magical worlds created on Netflix.
Despite living the vampire hunter lifestyle since I was seven years old, I still had trouble believing my eyes with all the magic floating around the room.
Laughter and chatter carried from every part of the expansive underground space, but the main dance floor was where I found my eyes straying time and again as Phillip led me through a throng of people.
Inside a glass cube nearly twenty feet tall, the people dancing on a fog-covered floor were separated from the rest. It was evident many of them weren’t human, their eyes colors no human could achieve—their beauty and flickering magic no simple illusion in a space full of it.
Glass walls gleamed in the burst of light from outside the floor, casting the crowd in shiny glow before they disappeared inside clouds of fog and darkness one achieved only inside the box.
Like it was its own world.
When Phillip led me to the dance floor and we crossed the thick gold band outlining the glass, the sensation in the air was different.
The music transformed and boomed like it was alive.
Heat melted the skin, causing instant perspiration.
But a cold mist sprayed through the space without source, coating my skin with glitter.
Still, somehow the air didn’t circulate or move.
It was stagnant and frozen. I couldn’t put a word to the feeling, but it occupied without a presence.
Shimmery glitter hung in the air above our heads in a billowy cloud of fog, reflecting the light every time it shined.
The dancing bodies disturbed its frozen presence, moving it awkwardly.
It didn’t swirl or shift naturally. It captured the path of each movement, of every limb swinging through it and the entire shape of the person.
That’s fucking awesome.
“The music inside here feels different.”
Phillip’s lips swept up proudly. “Good observation. The music is broadcasted with magic, so it will only exist inside this space. Make sense?”
“Guess so.”
“Eventually, you’ll know the difference between magically manufactured and naturally created sound.”
My skin tingled with an unfamiliar sensation of dense power. An urge grew inside of me, and without understanding why, my body swayed on its own to the rhythm of the music playing inside the glass world.
Phillip was close, his hands naturally finding my hips, and we gyrated together in time with the beat. “It’s a spell. Makes you want to dance. Forces you to enjoy yourself. Sort of fun, right?”
“Is that what you’d call it?” I grumbled, sliding palms over his chest like I couldn’t help myself. “More like nonconsensual.”
One of his arms locked around the back of my waist and his hand tangled in my red curls, fingers twisting strands and pulling.
It felt too good, and reactively, I shut my eyes and swallowed a heady moan.
Desire collected inside my body, encouraging me to do more.
I rolled and swiveled, shifted and swayed in hopes of achieving greater pleasure—and I had no control over it.
The Austrian’s gorgeous face appeared in short bursts of multicolored light. “Then break it.”
“Break what?”
“The spell,” he clarified, hips swinging with mine. I closed my eyes abruptly, overcome, before opening them to his penetrative stare. “You have the strength to tear apart this low-level magic. All you need to do is find the spell’s weakness and break it apart.”
So this is what he meant by train.
“And how exactly do I do that?”
The tempo changed, bringing our bodies closer. Our movements sped up and grew more insistent, becoming increasingly more provocative the longer we danced.
I clawed at his chest and let my head fall back to the lull of the beat. Glitter painted my chest and made me sparkle like something out of Twilight, but I didn’t even care. I couldn’t think properly. I only wanted to move and be free inside the musical sway of a forbidden new world.
The rest of the crowd inside the room responded to the change, the sounds from a nearby few veering on blatantly sexual.
Moans and groans reached my ears, and I snapped out of the daze I’d been put into.
Eyes straying, I stole a glance at a couple nearby and couldn’t miss how the dude’s hand was sunk between the chick’s legs with his lips trailing a path down her neck.
I didn’t need to be a genius to figure out what the two were doing, and I balked openly before tossing the taller Hunter a scornful look.
“It is a sex party!”
Phillip’s laughter was rich and amused, causing me equal parts frustration and excitement. “I mean, not really. But maybe?”