enough for a dancer to get a look out to see if an unwanted admirer was waiting for her next set. Although he couldn’t see as much as before, Cole could make out the shapes at Tristan’s table if he squinted just right.
“Come with me.”
Those three words drifted through the air without the slightest bit of warning. Both Skinners wheeled around with their hands headed for their weapons before they caught sight of Elle standing behind them.
“You’d better go now,” she said. “Those policemen were asking about you, and it’s not like we can refuse if they insist on searching.”
“Sure you can,” Rico chided.
If Elle had been even slightly intimidated by the Skinners, she didn’t show it as she grabbed hold of Rico’s jacket and dragged him away from the stage door.
Allowing himself to be pulled down the hall, he looked over his shoulder and said, “See? Told you they were cops.”
She led them all the way around the back of the club to the room that had been made into the Dryad temple. The first time Cole had seen the flowing script covering the smooth walls of a similar temple, he was fascinated. Now, it hit him on the same nerve as watching his bus pull up to the curb.
“Will this take us to Denver?” he asked.
Another Dryad was near the edge of the curtain, swaying slowly and humming in time to the thumping beat that filled the club. “No,” Elle said. “It’s to a club in Boulder, but it’s the best we could do. There seems to be some trouble at the Denver clubs.”
“Nymar?”
“No. More police. All of our sisters are staying out of sight in case more Nymar are following all the Skinners going back and forth. I don’t need to tell you what sort of trouble it would be if they found us.”
After having that thing inside him, Cole could still feel a pang of hunger at the very notion of opening one of those beautiful women’s veins and drawing their precious fluid into his stomach. He was still fuzzy on the difference between a Dryad and a nymph, other than a Dryad was supposedly much older and more experienced. Sort of the supernatural equivalent of a MILF. All he knew was that the longer he stood among them, the harder it was to resist. Before his resolve was tested further, he was shoved through the beaded curtain and sent toppling through the breezy in-between that smelled of freshly cut timber and felt like an autumn breeze.
Something was different this time. The trips had always seemed instantaneous before, but this was a bizarre nightmare where the room around him melted away, leaving only phantom glimpses of things he could hold on to. His stomach dropped. Voices screamed in his mind. Music raked against his inner ear. Heartbeats pounded against him like invisible fists, and when he tried to fight them off, his fingers became entangled in what felt like a blanket of cobwebs so thick he could hear it tearing.
Upon reaching the other side of the bridge, Cole flopped onto his side and hit a floor identical to the one he’d left behind. The music was different, however, as was the scent of the body spray worn by the dancer who helped him up.
“Oh my God,” she said. “Are you all right?”
When Cole grabbed onto the hand being offered to him, he nearly pulled the slender dancer down on top of him. She had the ethereal beauty of a nymph and smelled like heaven drizzled in vanilla. As he struggled to get his bearings, he spotted another woman standing with her back pressed against the wall. Her arms were crossed and she glared at him in a way that said she either didn’t like ferrying Skinners through the club or just didn’t like him messing up her floor. Then the beads rattled again and a large boot thumped solidly against his back.
“What the hell?” Rico grunted.
“He tripped when he came out,” the dancer against the wall explained. The imperfections around her eyes were subtle, but marked her as human. “Was he drinking?”
The big man pulled Cole to his feet and shoved him toward the door. “You got a car we can use?”
“Wha …?”
“Not you, Cole.”
Cole’s feet were moving but the voices and queasiness still filled his head.
The human woman fell into step behind them, keeping her arms crossed and her eyes locked on the Skinners. “There’s a blue Civic parked out back. Here are the keys. Just because I was told to let you borrow it doesn’t mean you get to trash it. Bring it back by tomorrow, or else.”
Rico took the keys and rattled them as if purposely trying to jangle whatever was left of Cole’s brains. “We’re taking it to Denver and may need it for a few days. That okay?”
“Sure,” the nymph replied. Seeing the increased unhappi-ness on the other one’s face, she added, “There’s a few out there given to us by the same customer. He’s a real nice guy. Very generous.”
“Generous to you, maybe,” the stern woman scoffed. “The rest of us gotta earn the hard way.”
“Gary paid two months of your rent over the summer. What are you complaining about?”
The banter between the dancers went on for the duration of the walk through the back rooms of the club. It was decidedly smaller and quieter than Pinups, but Cole’s head was pounding and he still felt as if he’d been dragged a noisy mile before he could walk on his own.
“Blue Civic. Gotchya.” Judging by the sharp tone in Rico’s voice, he wasn’t enjoying the chatter either.
“So you guys are friends of Tristan’s?” the nymph asked. She slipped a key into the alarm bar of a steel exit door and turned it so she could push it open. “What are your names?”
“Never mind that,” the other dancer snapped while propping open the door with the side of her foot. “The car’s right there. You guys need anything else before you go? Some water? Something to eat? Tristan told us to ask.”
“No thanks, girls,” Rico said. “You’ve been perfect hostesses. We’ll be on our way.”
The moment the Skinners were outside, the door was pulled shut, a key was turned, and that was that.
Rico unlocked the Civic and dropped himself onto the seat behind the wheel. After unlocking the passenger door, he started the engine and waited for Cole to lower himself in. “I don’t think she liked you.”
“She gave me a new car,” Cole said. “That puts her one up on my dad.”
“I don’t think I ever heard about your dad. Wanna regale me with stories of Young Cole Warnecki during the drive into Denver?”
“No.”
The little car’s engine revved a few times. When it started whining, Rico pulled away from the club. “You know where we’re going?”
Cole checked the GPS he’d recently added to his phone’s laundry list of services, but wasn’t able to get his results before Rico stumbled upon a sign pointing him toward southbound Highway 36.
After Cole stuffed his phone back into his pocket and started fighting with the lever for his seat’s backrest, Rico asked, “So what’s the deal with you and Paige?”
“I thought you already had that figured out.”
“And I thought you weren’t such a prissy little bitch.”
Cole rolled down the window and closed his eyes to feign complete relaxation as the cold air tore into his cheeks. “If this is building into another ‘she did what she had to do’ speeches, you can save it.”
“Well,” Rico grumbled. “She did.”
“Maybe.”
“But?”
“But she didn’t have to make it seem so easy,” Cole replied.
“Easy? Are you fucking blind?”
Cole shook his head. “I’m not talking about what was going through her head or whatever was on her face. I’m talking about the weapon in her hands being stuck in my chest. I felt her trying to push it in, and wouldn’t have been able to stop her if it wasn’t for that … that thing giving me the strength. Spare me all the talk about duty or mercy or whatever else you were going to use to justify it. She was going to kill me and I couldn’t have done that to her. Even if it was the right thing to do, it would have been nice if she’d taken a moment before letting me go to …”
The highway was covered with a layer of snow that crunched under the Civic’s tires, and the wind coming in through the window smelled clean. It was late enough for there to be relatively few other cars on the road with them, but even if they were in the middle of a traffic jam with police helicopters closing in from all sides, Cole would
