Piled into Gabe’s heavily tinted black SUV, they zipped out of an underground garage and onto the road leading into the city. Reyna drank in the sights around her. It had been so long since she had seen much of anything of interest. The sensation was like being dunked into a cold pool.
Her eyes flitted over the last large building and she nearly choked. Her hand flew to her chest as she all but craned her head out the window to get a better look.
Gabe glanced at her. “What’s up?”
“That building,” she breathed.
“Yeah? Didn’t you see it on your way in?”
Reyna shook her head, but it was Jodie who spoke. “They blindfolded us.”
“Oh yeah. Shit,” he muttered as if he’d forgotten protocol. “Well, if either of you are a Visage spy then I’m fucked.”
“What is that building?” Reyna asked.
“That’s our front. The building is home to a popular real estate company, but we live underneath it. Gives us cover to move during the day if we have to and no one looks too closely at what’s below since the place is legit.”
Reyna sat back heavily in her seat. That building was the front for Elle. She couldn’t believe it. And yet, it made perfect sense.
It was the very building that Beckham had taken Reyna to the night he’d had her take photographs of Visage from the rooftop. After they’d had a long talk about the two factions of vampires—those who thought of humans as equals and those who thought of humans as food—things had gotten pretty hot and heavy. Even then, he had been showing her this other world, trying to draw her into it, and she had never suspected.
Her heart panged at the memory. Where was he now? And how had their relationship disintegrated so completely, like sand through her fingers?
It was nearly a half hour later when Gabe finally parked the SUV in a shady parking garage with a busted entrance ramp, graffiti, and shattered lights. Reyna rolled her shoulders and hopped out of the car, looking cautiously out into the darkness. They were not in the best part of town. She was glad for her jeans and T-shirt combo, but it was actually fucking freezing and they hadn’t prepared for that.
“Hey, come here,” he said to both of them as he popped the trunk. “This is the best I can do.”
He tossed Jodie a long-sleeve flannel shirt that she held tightly around herself then passed Reyna the leather jacket he had been wearing on his way over.
“Put this on too,” he said, tugging a baseball cap low over her eyes.
He handed another one to Jodie, who looked at him like he was insane. “This is never going to fit over my hair.” She pointed at the mass of kinky curls on her head.
“Best I can do.”
Jodie muttered obscenities under her breath before trying to mash her curls down on the top to get the cap on her head.
“You’ll need these too.” He produced two dull black bracelets.
“What the fuck is that?” Jodie asked.
But Reyna knew. “ID bracelets.”
“Yeah. They’re required in the city now for basically everything. These aren’t programmed to you and there shouldn’t be any cops nearby, but it’s for appearances.”
Reyna slipped hers on and felt the weight like a shackle around her wrist. Jodie irritably added hers to her wrist. Gabe already wore his.
“What happened to curfew?” Reyna asked. There had been one for the city after the fires. The curfew and the bracelets had come together with the start of the Blood Census.
“The old mayor lifted it. Said it was only temporary, but the bracelets stayed. So, we’re straight.” Gabe nodded his head toward the stairs and they followed. “Now this place, it’s a vamp-free zone. So you should be safe, but be sure to stick close to me at all times. I can protect you if anything happens. And remember, we really don’t want you to be seen. The last thing we want is Harrington’s guys to swoop back in and try to abduct you, okay? I can protect you from a lot, but I don’t know what I’d do if that happened. So let’s not let it.”
“We don’t want to go back. Don’t worry. We’ll stay close,” Reyna said.
It was only when they turned the corner and Reyna got a good look at the building they were about to enter that she started to sweat.
“We’re going to Ferrier House?”
Gabe’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. “You’ve been here before?”
“Yeah. I saw you fight once.”
“Yeah?” he asked, beaming.
“You’re a fighter?” Jodie asked, eyeing his body corded with muscle. He was only about average height but he looked scrappy.
“Yeah. I dabble here and there.”
“Why are you bringing us here?” Reyna groaned.
“Where did you think we’d go?” Gabe asked. “I have some business. Plus, this place is as safe as it gets as far as you’re concerned.”
“The last time I was here, there was a riot!”
“That almost never happens.”
Reyna shook her head and tried to calm her racing heart. Just because there had been a riot the first time she had been to Ferrier House didn’t mean it was going to happen again. Except she couldn’t shake the feeling that she usually found trouble wherever it was lurking.
An enormous bouncer loaded with weapons grunted at them as they approached. “Gabe.”
“Brought some strays,” Gabe said with a fierce grin. He greased the bouncer’s palm and the guy pocketed the cash.
“They’re not your usual.”
“Nah. Have to keep them fresh.”
“No fangs, right?”
“No guns. No fangs. No trouble,” Gabe quoted the motto for Ferrier House back at the bouncer. The guy nodded and the door popped open for them. He gestured for the girls to go in first.
“You frequently bring girls here?” Jodie asked with a grin.
“Girls are an easy cover.”
“I’m sure,” Jodie drawled.
Reyna wasn’t paying attention to their conversation as she stopped short in the doorway. When she had last been at Ferrier House, it had been a fighting ring. Now it was completely bedecked in flashing red lights, half-naked women, and club music. The transformation was complete with an enormous bar on one side and a dancing platform for the talent, which mostly consisted of women in lingerie seductively dancing for the crowd.
“What the hell,” she muttered.
“Pretty crazy, huh?” Gabe asked, running a hand back through his russet hair.
“I thought it was a fighting house.”
“Yeah. It cleans up pretty nicely when it wants to.” He reached out for her hand and she pulled back hastily. “Just to get us through the crowd.”
Reyna chewed on her lip and nodded, taking his hand. Jodie slapped her palm into Reyna’s and as a trio they snaked across the room. She kept her head low, but it didn’t seem to matter much anyway. The room was dark enough that Reyna could hardly make out more than a couple feet in front of her. She didn’t think anyone was going to be checking under her baseball cap.
“This is amazing,” Jodie cried behind her. “I cannot wait to get out on that dancefloor!”
“Jodie, we probably shouldn’t.”
“This is our one night of freedom. I am not squandering it.”
Reyna bit her lip and said nothing. She used to throw herself into everything without a care in the world. Now she was afraid to go out on the dancefloor? Maybe Visage really had broken her down. Scrubbed away the parts of her personality that she had loved the most.
They stopped and Gabe spoke to the bartender, a busty blonde who eyed him like a choice piece of meat. Jodie was already dancing to the music, lifting her arms and swinging her hips to the rhythm.
Gabe drew Reyna close, slipped an arm around her waist, and said into her ear, “I have to meet up with a contact. You two can stay and dance. Just stay near the bar and out of the lights. I need to be able to find you. I’ll be back in ten minutes. Sonya can locate me if you need me before then,” he said, nodding his head at the bartender.
“Okay.”
“Chin up, babe.” He knocked her chin playfully with his fist and then winked before he disappeared again.
Jodie had already found a group to dance with. She reached her hand out to Reyna, who obediently moved toward her friend. They were both dancing and trying to forget the cares in the world. Jodie turned to face a sexy Hispanic man with total arm porn. Reyna closed her eyes and tried to meld into the crowd with Jodie. All she wanted was a few hours where she didn’t have to think. Jodie tugged her close and their bodies moved in perfect harmony. She had been in a big nightclub like this a total of one time and it had ended poorly. Though they’d had seedy bars back in the warehouses and she knew how to move.
Hips against hips.
Gyrating movements.
Heated skin.
Touching, teasing, tempting.
The temperature spiked and Reyna slid Gabe’s leather jacket off of her shoulders. She tied it low around her waist while Jodie threw his long-sleeve shirt over Reyna’s head and used it to drag her in closer.
“This is the best,” Jodie cried.
And it was. Now that her limbs awakened and her brain quieted to the techno beat, she remembered what it was like to be young and carefree.
One of the guys Jodie had been dancing with disappeared for a minute and then returned with a tray of shots. He tried to pass one to Reyna, but she shook her head. No way was she going to drink during all of this madness.
“Oh, come on, Rey,” Jodie grumbled, shoving the shot in her hand. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
“We already know the answer to that.” Reyna placed her shot back on the tray.
But Jodie tipped the shot back and shook her head as the heat of the drink seemed to burn through her. Then she grabbed Reyna’s shot and hit that one back too.
The guys around her cheered and called her a champ. She flashed them her teeth as she took in their hungry expressions. Maybe Reyna was being a prude about all of this. Gabe would be back any minute. One drink wouldn’t kill her.
Then she saw the way Jodie tilted wildly one direction and decided she better not.
“Hey. Hey,” Reyna said, reaching out for her. “Are you okay?”
“I feel fucking amazing.”
But when Reyna looked into her friend’s eyes, her pupils were dilated and she sure didn’t look fine. “What was that shot?” Reyna asked the nearest guy.
“It’s a new shot! Like a Hot Damn, but we call it an Oh Shit!” the guy said.
“Great…what the hell was in it?”
“Whiskey, rum, vodka, and orange juice,” the guy said.
“And a dropper of that new vamp drug,” another guy said with a laugh.
Reyna’s stomach dropped out. “What vamp drug?”
“Don’t worry, baby. It’s not dangerous. It comes from their bite or something. It loosens you right up.”
Venom. Fucking fantastic.
And venom was addictive in most people. The more a person had had, the worse it got. Reyna may not have succumbed to it completely, but Jodie it seemed definitely had.
“We need to get you home,” Reyna said.
Reyna tried to corral Jodie away from the dancefloor, but she couldn’t seem to even drag her away. She knew what the venom felt like. The doses she was used to getting knocked her on her ass, but just a touch of the venom made you feel like you were on cloud nine. Like the world was at your feet. It lowered inhibitions and boosted the endorphins in the body. Usually it was because it was kicking the flight or fight signals in your body, telling you to get the fuck out of there. But right now, all Jodie wanted to do was live up the night.
Fuck.
Reyna reached for Jodie. She was feeling frantic. Where the hell was Gabe? This was a bad situation. The guys were still leering at them. They’d known what they were doing when they had given them those shots.
“Come on, baby,” one of the guys said.
Reyna shot him a threatening glare. “No.”
Adrenaline flooded her system for all new reasons as she held her ground. She latched onto Jodie’s arm and all but dragged her back toward the bar.
Luckily, the guys didn’t follow. Maybe they were really just out here to have a good time. If that drink was on the menu, then it could even be a regular. She had reacted on instinct. Save Jodie, get the hell out of there.
She shoved Jodie onto the first available bar stool and flagged down Sonya. She sauntered down to them. “What’ll ya have?” she asked in a thick northern accent. “She needs a water. Have you heard from Gabe?”
“Here you go, honey.” Sonya filled a glass with ice water and then slid it over to Jodie. “He’s still upstairs. You can go on up with your friend, if she can walk.”
Reyna looked Jodie over. She couldn’t.
Jodie brought the water to her lips. Reyna wanted to go upstairs and find out what was taking Gabe so long, but she wouldn’t leave Jodie’s side. Especially not with those guys still leering at her nearby. She would just have to wait.
A full thirty minutes later, Gabe came racing out of the door he’d wandered into. He found them at the bar. “Come on. Got to go.”
“I need your help. Jodie,” she said, gesturing to her friend. “Some guys dosed her with vamp venom.”
“Venom?” Gabe asked.
“That new drug that they drop into drinks,” Reyna explained.
Gabe growled under his breath and then slipped an arm around Jodie’s shoulders. She sagged into him. He nodded his head at the exit for Reyna to follow.
They staggered together through the crowd. About halfway through, Gabe gritted his teeth in frustration and lifted Jodie into his arms as if she weighed nothing at all. Reyna wondered what the hell he’d been doing upstairs for so long and who the contact was that he’d met with. Had something gone wrong? Were they now in danger?
Reyna kept glancing over her shoulder wondering if they were being followed. She tilted her baseball cap up a smidge so that she could check one more time before they left the dancefloor.
No one.
She breathed a sigh of relief.
They weren’t being followed. At least not yet. Maybe Gabe was equally paranoid.
When she turned around to try to keep up with Gabe, she careened right into a guy. She put her hands out to stop herself from falling.
“Sorry,” she said. She tried to move around him but his hand was still on the leather jacket she’d slipped back onto her shoulders.
“I thought that was you.”
Reyna’s eyes slowly dragged up to the guy she had given no thought to whatsoever. Her stomach hit the floor. She froze.
“Everett?”