Vlad shrugged. “As a warm-up. We thought the Roxie would be sort of a dry run before we took on the big guns.”
“The Metreon?” I guessed. I felt the fingers on my arm again, and when I glanced back, the teenage girl was nearly pressed up against me, eyes glazed and fixed firmly on Vlad. I looked back at him, saw the sly smile creep across his lips.
“Well, hello,” he said over my shoulder.
The girl’s grip on my arm tightened and I stared at her fingers in awe. “Who are you?”
She ignored me. “I—I want to be with you,” she said to Vlad, her voice breathy.
Vlad raised an interested eyebrow.
“I know what you are. I understand you,” she continued, seeming to muster courage from her ever-tightening grip on my arm. I shrugged her away a second time and she simply pushed past me and went directly to Vlad.
“I get you.”
The smile disappeared from Vlad’s lips. “You get me?”
“I know you don’t want to be this way.”
“Oh, here we go,” I muttered.
“We can be together. I want to help you.” The girl yanked up her sleeve, exposing the fleshy part of her arm, pink with youth and baby fat. “I want to be a donor.”
I watched Vlad’s nostrils flare. “Then go to Red Cross.” He hitched up his sign and glanced over his shoulder at me. “Later, Soph.”
I grabbed his shoulder. “Have you seen Nina?”
Vlad shrugged. “Not since last night.”
I felt the grip of fear starting at the pit of my stomach. “She’s missing.”
“What do you mean, missing?”
I leaned closer, turning Vlad from the group of glamoured teens who were trying to inch their way toward the other VERMers. “Ophelia. Ophelia has kidnapped her.”
The teenage angst/smugness dropped from Vlad’s face all at once. Fear shot through his eyes and his expression was soft, a momentary glimpse into what he may have looked like, pre-fang. He dropped his protest sign and gripped my arm, pulling him along with me.
“Where’s the angel?”
Vlad and I piled into Alex’s car and Alex pushed the gas pedal to the ground. We hit thirty-five before being cut off by a trolley stuffed with grinning wedding guests, their cheeks ruddy with champagne and the cold grey air.
“I hate this town,” Vlad muttered.
“We need to get Sophie somewhere where Ophelia can’t get into her head. Loud noises, lots of action—it’ll confuse her.”
Vlad climbed over the center console and turned down the blaring radio. “Is that why you’re broadcasting the soccer game?”
“It’s called football,” Alex and I said in unison.
“Do we have any idea where we’re going?”
“I know a place,” Alex said, expertly weaving through traffic. He skidded into a parking spot and I gripped the car door to save myself from sliding across the seat.
“Parking karma,” he said with a shrug when I gaped at him. “Are you coming?”
I slammed the car door shut and looked up, the flashing lights from the two-hundred-foot-tall sign glaring down at me. The yellow chaser lights spelled out BIG AL’S, the words platforming an enormous, angry-looking mobster in a pinstriped suit carrying a tommy gun.
Vlad snorted—although whether it was a snort of disgust or humor I couldn’t tell.
“Really?” I snarled at Alex. “Really? This is the only place in the entire city that you could think of that would offer distraction?”
Big Al’s was an adult superstore, housing all manner of sexual vices and advertising each one in bold, multicolored neon lights. The lights pulsed to the sound of a thrumming bass coming from somewhere inside, and the sidewalks were littered with throngs of people zigzagging their way through sidewalk displays of half-naked women arching wantonly on glossy poster board. Interspersed were big, angry-looking men with crossed arms who guarded darkened doorways, and the occasional few who danced around out front, slapping fliers in the hands of unsuspecting passersby and yelling things like “Ladies always free!” and “You fellas like to dance, don’tcha?”
“Just come on,” Alex said, threading his arm through mine.
To my relief, we passed Big Al’s and its gaudy assortment of neon-colored paraphernalia. I yanked on Vlad’s arm, dragging him behind me as he started to slow down, his dark eyes going big and wide at the splashy photography. He may have been of age—way, way of age—but to me he was still my best friend’s sixteen-year-old nephew and I was in charge.
“Stop staring,” I muttered to him, pulling him along.