Chapter Two
Bathe Nightclub
Market Street, bet. Sixteenth & Seventeenth
Can I be honest with you, Al?”
Over the din of the bass, Allhan looked across the sunken seating area at a fellow vampire he had next to nothing in common with.
Shuli, a.k.a. Arcshuli, son of Arcshuliae the Younger, was not wearing jeans and a hoodie, but a set of black silk pajamas with gold swirls and red accents as a pattern.
And the male didn’t have a shaggy haircut that was a month or two into growing out, but a style that cast his silken brown hair off to the side like a Nike swoosh.
And laundry detergent wasn’t his cologne.
He was wearing some luxury brand’s scent, and whatever it was smelled like money.
Oh, and even though it was winter and there was snow falling, his shoes were velvet slippers bearing a monogram executed in gold thread.
Allhan’s ten little piggies, on the other hand, were shoved in a damp, cold pair of Converse high-tops.
“Um… yes?” he replied, in the deep voice he was still trying to get used to.
“You’re big as a fucking house.” Shuli put both manicured hands out. “I mean, not in the slappy, flappy fat boy kind of way. No, you’re just… huge. I mean, I know that’s how the transition works. Been through it myself years ago. But… this shit with you is impressive.”
Allhan glanced down at himself for two reasons.
One, he was flushing with embarrassment.
And two, he kind of agreed. Ever since he’d been through the change, about a week ago, he’d stared out of a different face, walked with a taller body, picked up things with so much strength that he felt like he could qualify as a backhoe.
Even his hair was different. Thicker. Smoother.
“And also now look at you, you’re hot,” the aristocrat continued, loud enough for the others to hear over the club music. “Of course, I don’t personally go that route, but if I did, you’d be worth the double take.”
When he just stared at the guy all dumbfounded, a brow arched at him and then the aristocrat stood up and hobbled over. With a mental wince, Allhan zipped up his hoodie a little higher and tried to remember how to have a polite conversation with someone.
Any conversation.
Shuli sat down, crossing his legs at the knees and bouncing his velvet slipper to the beat. As he tilted his head, the enormous diamond studs in his earlobes flashed bright enough to create floaters in Allhan’s vision.
“I’m sorry,” the guy said. “I didn’t mean to make it weird. I’m drunk, very stoned, and that tends to get me talking.”
“It’s okay. I kn-know it’s strange. I don’t recognize myself.”
And as he glanced around at the VIP section, he really didn’t recognize all the stares coming his way.
Men and women were checking him out, and given that he’d been a scrawny weakling before, he kept wondering if he had an entire head of broccoli in between his front teeth.
Or maybe a horn growing out of his head.
Bloody nose he didn’t notice? How about undiagnosed cystic acne.
“Well, Al, if you decide to upgrade from the jeans-and-hoodie bull-shit, let me know. Happy to help.” Shuli brushed Allhan’s knee gently, like the guy knew that everything still ached. “Anyway, I gotta go. But the boys’ll take care of you—”
There was an instant uproar from the group, all kinds of versions of Shuli making a protest for their leader to continue to hang.
Even the human women who’d been briefly welcomed into the circle of black light hopped on board with the hoopla, although for them, they were just going with the flow in the hopes of being seen as second-date prospects.
Which was not going to happen.
Shuli got back to his feet and patted the air like a rock star trying to get a crowd to settle. “Hey, you fuckers don’t have jobs like Al and I do. We’re working stiffs.”
“We are gainfully engaged, too,” someone retorted.
“Wanking off to your investment portfolios is paraphilia, not employment.”
A couple of cocktail napkins went flying, and their impotent paths made Allhan think of birds shot out of the sky, that which should have soared nothing but deadweight in the air.
Meanwhile, Shuli tried to get to the emergency exit next to their seating area.
It took the male a good ten minutes to disentangle himself, and it was always like this.
He was everybody’s social superior, richer, more charismatic, smarter—and, because he fought in the war, a hero.
He was also ahstrux nohtrum to the heir to the throne.
And that was some real clout right there.
“Tell L.W. we said hey,” somebody else piped up. “He should come out more.”
“Would you want him here?” Shuli peeked at his sleek gold watch. “Although it’s not like he’s got anything better to do.”
Okay, that was a lie, but Allhan kept his mouth shut.
The only reason he knew what Shuli and L.W.
were up to in the field was because of the things he himself had been doing behind the scenes.
Two wrongs didn’t make a right, but they sure as hell locked you into place with any inside information you might have stumbled onto.
Meanwhile, the illicit fighting was taking a toll on Shuli.
Underneath the swagger, there was real tension in those shoulders, and you had to wonder whether any of the others noticed or cared that the male was in obvious pain.
Probably a no on both fronts. Members of the glymera, particularly slick partyers sowing their oats before they had to settle down in arranged matings, were not known for empathy and this was good news for Shuli.
The male had plenty of reasons not to draw attention to whatever wounds he’d sustained, and just as he was no doubt glad nobody was asking questions, there was going to be no medical attention for him.
Not unless there was a serious infection or something that refused to heal on its own.
Which again was the way it had to be when you’d been taken off the official fighting schedule, but were still going out into the field.
“See you, Allhan.”
Coming back to attention, he looked over his shoulder. The aristocrat gave him a nod, and then the hail-fellow-well-met stuff washed out of that strikingly handsome face. As Shuli turned away to the emergency fire door, his expression became grim as death itself.
After the steel panel clapped shut and the cold draft was eaten by all the body heat in the space, there was a tangible deflation in the energy of everyone who’d been left behind, the Perrier losing its proverbial fizz.
Allhan checked his phone and wondered why he’d bothered to come early. Except he knew the why. He just thought it was fucking pathetic.
“How about we go to Smokes?” somebody said.
God, he still didn’t know their names. Then again, he’d been adopted like a stray and he was way below their league socially.
Not a lot of cause for proper introductions.
They also all looked alike to him, the trim-cut suits, the open-collared shirts, the various shades of dark hair.
He’d taken to IDing them to himself by the human women they hit on.
One was into blondes, another redheads. Two of them liked to take women back together, as if they were critique partners for the sex and committed to real-time feedback.
He’d only paid attention to Shuli because of the L.W. connection.
And the grape-sized diamonds in those lobes.
As the six got to their feet and finished their drinks with a volley of chatter, the rush for the cigar place struck him as ungrounded enthusiasm.
They were looking to change the vibe by a shift in location, but the trouble was, they were the luggage they carried, and without Shuli to set an example, they were a little lost. Still, it went without saying that he was invited to come along even though he was nothing more than a cushion warmer: Once Shuli had marked him as okay, he always had a seat at the table.
So he had to give them credit for that.
He glanced at his phone again. He had seventeen minutes.
Why the hell had he thought Lyric might come? Then again, a fool and his delusions were rarely parted when it came to infatuation.
The female had found her proper mate, so she wasn’t going out anymore, yet he’d managed to convince himself that maybe she’d swing by here to see her twin.
Yeah, except Rhamp also wasn’t anywhere in sight, and besides, if she wanted that fighter’s company, he was her damn brother.
She could just look at him across the table at First Meal. Or call him. Text.
IM, DM… Holiday Inn.
As the ancient hip-hop lyric came to him, he felt a wave of nausea crest and eyed the table that was scattered with empty cocktail glasses.
What he needed was some ginger ale. He’d been living on the stuff since the change, and he was becoming quite convinced that he was never eating proper food again.
“Shall we, gentlemales?” one of the aristocrats announced over at the fire exit. “Al? You coming?”
“No, thanks. B-but… thank you.”
“You know where we’ll be if you change your mind.”
Shuli’s boys started funneling out of the sunken couches, and when the human women went to follow, the brush-offs were charming but firm.
Phone numbers were exchanged, but no dialing was going to occur.
A quick trip to a club’s private bathroom stall was one thing.
Dating, relationships—mating? Or marriage, which was what the humans called it? Hard pass.
Members of the glymera did not settle down with the other species.
“Later, my guy—”
“—bye, Al—”
“—care, my man.”
All the males checked in on their way to the fire door, and he noted the new respect in their eyes. His transition really had changed things, hadn’t it.
Oh, look. He made a joke.
Honestly touched, he offered them waves as they took off.
And in their wake, the left-behind women looked him over with a greedy interest he was wholly unfamiliar—and totally uncomfortable—with.
God, he didn’t like the smells coming off their bodies.
Their arousals made him breathe through his mouth, not because he was excited, but because he was trying to dull the scents.
“So, what was your name?” the brunette asked him in a drawl.
As she leaned down to him, her breasts were as pointed as traffic cones and the long, fake tracks she’d put in her hair swept forward and showed peeks of her scalp. Wow. Up close, her makeup was thick as spackle and those lashes had to be plastic.
Otherwise, two woolly caterpillars had given their lives to make her eyebrows look like they were double jointed.
“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “Thank you, no.”
As she seemed disappointed, he supposed the opening salvo might have been seen as a kind of compliment. By someone else. But he was beyond virginal, and besides, with everything he had going on, he was not any kind of relationship material.
“Your loss,” the blond one drawled.
On that disdainful note, the bunch of them laser-sighted the other seating areas, and he passed some time watching them size up their options in the VIP section like they were trying to get a good break on a car lease at a dealership.
Lot of competition for them on the other sunken sofas, but he guessed they were beautiful enough with their long hair and low-cut dresses. They would find another lap or two.
Maybe even some phone numbers that might pick up.
As they wandered off, Allhan rechecked his phone. Then went back to watching the crowd.
Each of the dozen or so areas was bathed in a different shade of blue light, and there was no mistaking why Shuli had chosen to stake out the couches he had. The illumination here was the dimmest, and the proximity to the emergency exit and the alley beyond was unbeatable.
Time to go.
Just like Shuli, he was careful getting up on his feet, and when he went to walk, holy shit.
Everything hurt. His knees and hips. His spine.
His feet. Doc Jane had told him the post-transition aches would get better, but he wasn’t sure if she was right.
It had been how many nights now since his body had quadrupled in size?
Since he’d taken Lyric’s blood?
God, there was a special cruelty that he’d had to take her vein when the change had hit. Nothing like getting a taste of paradise and then never, ever having a chance to go there again.
Limping over to the steel door, he took one last look across the space. Not even Mharta had come tonight. Good thing, actually. He could only imagine himself trying to strike up a conversation with that female just so he could bring things over to the subject of Lyric.
Mharta scared the shit out of him.
Punching the bar to open the way out, his skin prickled as the winter wind rushed in to scrimmage against the interior’s warmth like it intended to turn the entire club into a meat locker.
As the door slammed shut behind him, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and looked up at all the snowflakes.
The storm was finally slowing down. When he’d come here on his forced night off, it had been a positive blizzard—
Righting his head, he flared his nostrils and took in a deep breath.
Blood. In the alley.
Vampire blood.
Shit.