“Is there a cover charge to get into the club?” I ask the girl who’s standing at a little lectern to one side of the door. My heart stills as I look into her crystal blue eyes. Her narrowing pupils tell me she’s a vampire, and every instinct in me screams to take her out now, while no one is looking.
“Not for women,” she drawls in a bored tone as she takes my big coat and drapes it over one arm. “Here’s your coat-check ticket. Have fun.”
“Yeah, sure.” I crumple the ticket in my palm and toss it to the floor as soon as I’m through the door. I’m not planning to come back for the jacket anyway.
The club is about what you’d expect. It’s not at all my scene, but that doesn’t matter. It’s not why I’m here anyway. All I want is to find the door to the basement. Threading my way through the press of bodies, I pass by stages full of topless—and occasionally bottomless—women, keeping count of any vampires I notice. There are at least a dozen watching the dancers, and just as many dancing.
My stomach tightens, my jaw clenching. I guess that’s one way to get a meal.
When I’m about halfway across the large space, a burly man steps in my path. I stop quickly enough not to run into him, and he eyes me for a second, his gaze running up and down my body.
“You look lost,” he rumbles.
Shit. I knew I was being too obvious. I scramble to think of something to say, debating whether it’s better to attack now before he has a chance to anticipate it—but then he leans down next to my ear and whispers, “Employment or tribute?”
“Tribute,” I breathe.
He nods once and jerks his head, indicating for me to follow him. I do, taking several more breaths to unclench my muscles again as he leads me to a curtain. When he draws it aside with one hand, I see stairs covered in red carpet leading down to the basement.
“Take a left at the bottom,” he tells me. “Ask for Boris.”
“Thanks.”
Lifting the heavy skirts of my dress, I make my way down the stairs, not looking back at the man who waits at the top.
As I step off the last stair at the bottom, I can feel the change in the air. There’s a thick atmosphere of sex and debauchery down here. A flat-screen TV is playing porn on mute, and neon arrows are pointing to the left. There’s a window cut into the wall on the other side of the room with another bored-looking vampire sitting behind it. She flicks her gaze at me and away again, not seeming interested or impressed. She clearly knows why I’m here, and I allow that knowledge to bolster me a little. The disguise I picked is working.
Since the woman behind the window seems content to ignore me, I ignore her too, venturing deeper into the underground club. Scanning my surroundings with a subtle glance, I turn left and step through another curtain. This one leads to a narrow, dingy, poorly-lit hallway which, as soon as I turn the corner, becomes a narrow, dingy, poorly-lit tunnel.
My stomach churns. Fucking hell.
I wasn’t hoping for puppies and rainbows, but this isn’t what I was anticipating at all. It’s creepy as shit, as if every level of this place I pass through is peeling back a layer on the vampires’ veneer of humanity.
Down here, they clearly don’t feel a need to keep up any pretenses.
But I grit my teeth and keep walking anyway. Not only do I refuse to back off and leave Nathan to his fate, but running would probably only make the vamps suspicious at this point, or give them an excuse to chase me down.
Never turn your back on a fucking predator. I learned that lesson a long time ago.
At the end of a tunnel, a huge man stands beside what can only be described as the biggest vault door I’ve ever seen. His arms are crossed, and he’s got a gun on each hip. I don’t know why a three-hundred-pound body building vampire needs any guns, but he’s got them. He lowers his arms as I approach and looks me up and down. His eyes linger on the blood-drop earrings which are brushing seductively against my throat as I walk.
“Lost?” he asks gruffly.
Gotta be stupid. Gotta be vapid. Come on, breathy tone, wide eyes.
“I don’t think so.” I step closer to him and drop my voice to a stage whisper. Cue the drama. “I’m here to offer myself as tribute… to the vampires.”
He frowns thoughtfully and circles me like a shark, feeling me up with his eyes. I smell the hunger on his breath and see it in the bulge of his pants. I bite the tip of my tongue gently, just enough to remind myself to keep my expression neutral, but I hate the way he’s looking at me. This expensive as fuck dress won’t be worth a damn if he decides to take me for himself.
I stiffen my posture as his hand brushes my ass, my heart jolting into overdrive. I can’t let him keep touching me, or he’ll feel everything that I have hidden.
“This is the auction house, isn’t it?” I ask, forcing my voice to sound uncertain and a little panicked. He drops his hand. “Did I come to the wrong place? A friend told me about it. I heard that… but maybe I was wrong…”
“Nah. This is it,” he says. He looks me over once more then shrugs as if deciding I’m not worth the trouble. “You’ll do, I guess.”
He opens the door, and despite his casual dismissal of me, I can still feel his gaze glued to my neck. I suppress a shudder, reminding myself that this is
