“I don’t drink.”
“Well, maybe you should start!” Raymond yelled, as I burst out into the hall. “I gotta make a living here!”
There was more smoke outside, of the fake variety usually seen on Halloween boiling out of plastic skulls and jack-o’-lanterns. It allowed the laser light show to cut ominous blue flashes through the darkness and ensured that I couldn’t see a damn thing. But the sense that allows me to tell when a vampire is near doesn’t need sight. It’s like a tidal pull in the blood, forceful and elemental. And at the moment, it was shaking me harder than the bass line throbbing under my feet.
The place was crawling with vamps, even more than before. It looked like Cheung had called in some backup. And wasn’t that just all I needed?
And then the front doors blew open, allowing another dozen vampires to pour into the room. I don’t think most of the patrons noticed, other than those getting jostled aside as the new arrivals cut a swath across the floor. But the power emanating off them almost knocked me down.
They were all masters. Third-level, at a guess, easily able to have courts of their own. Which made it a little ridiculous that they were after one lone dhampir. I mean, I’m good, but I’m not that good. They surged forward, and I didn’t even hesitate. I turned on my heel and ran.
The pulse of the music felt like the rhythm of my heart—fast and frantic—as I fought my way over the sticky floor to the elevated DJ booth and climbed the vibrating metal frame. The lousy visibility wouldn’t bother the vamps, but it was a different story for me. I needed a vantage point.
The DJ was another young Asian guy with a fall of bleached blond hair. He was also human, judging by the fact that his tank top was stained dark down the spine. “Lost my date,” I yelled.
He nodded in time with the deafening music. “What’s your name?”
I pretended I couldn’t hear him and scanned the room. It was obvious at once that the ground floor was hopeless. The warehouse dated from the bad old days before anyone started worrying about things like natural light or ventilation for the toiling masses. It had no windows that I could see that hadn’t been bricked up long ago. But there was a catwalk around half the room with the old manager’s office perched in the middle. And I was betting he’d had light.
The DJ grabbed the back of my jacket as I started down. “Hey, hey, hey,” he said into his microphone, “if anyone out there has lost a lady, she’s up here keeping me company. Don’t hurry to claim her, all right?”
He turned a spotlight on me, causing the eyes of half the people—and all of the vamps—in the place to swivel in my direction. I hit the switch for strobes, slammed my heavy-ass duffel into the side of the DJ’s head and jumped the six feet to the floor. I landed badly enough to almost twist an ankle, and knocked over a guy with a tray of Jell-O shots. The room went black-and-white and stuttering as I slipped in the mess, righted myself and headed for the balcony.
I didn’t make it.
Someone darted in from the side, snapped the strap on the duffel and took off. I changed course to follow and saw the duffel disappear into the hallway beside the bar. It was empty by the time I got there, but a door beside the ladies’ was just closing. I kicked it back open and got a brief glimpse around—a desk, a chair, a sagging fan set in a water-stained ceiling—and then a furious vampire caught me by the wrists, using his body to pin me to the desk.
I tried to wrench free, but nothing happened. I tried again in disbelief, because I’m stronger than all but the senior masters. This time, he did let go, but only so he could grab my hips instead. He swung me up and slammed me backward onto the scarred wood, clearing the surface with a sweep of his arm. Papers, a laptop, glass and metal went flying, half of it shattering against the nearby wall.
I managed to wrestle a knife out of my boot, but he grabbed it before I could drive it home, flinging it away to land quivering in the side of the fake wood paneling. I got an elbow in a sensitive spot, but he pinned my wrists to the desk. He pressed his hips hard against me and swore softly, viciously, “If we get out of this alive, I will kill you!”
Startled out of fighting for a moment, I paused, staring at him. There wasn’t much light in the room, but a few beams of pale blue leaked in from the hall. They struck highlights in the thick auburn hair, which as usual was confined by a gold slide at his nape, and turned his face into a sculpture of elegant bone, skin and shadow. It made him look more dangerous than the man I remembered, and he’d been plenty dangerous enough.