PULSATING BEATS REVERBERATE THROUGH every wall in the club. Flashing lights paint the room in all different colors. They spotlight sweaty bodies pressed up against each other, and girls wearing costumes that look like underwear. Some are here to pick up guys, some aren’t, but whether they’re asking for it or not, the night often turns out that way. I’ve seen it many times before. Hell, I’ve been the guy picking up the girls. It takes next to no effort when people are drunk. It’s one of the perks or downfalls of being human—depending on your point of view.
Tonight’s theme at the club is amusing, seeing as it’s Halloween night. Sexy vampires, sexy nurses, sexy zombies—it’s true. Humans like to turn everything sexy. Halloween night is the one night where it’s acceptable to indulge in dark fantasies. It’s acceptable for humans to dress as a sexy vampire while fake blood is running down their lips. The gore and sexy marry each other on this night and nobody bats an eye, while the rest of the year they’d get stares for dressing that way. It’s all about fitting in and following a flow of normalcy. If everyone is doing it, what is there to fear? True fear lies in being outcast.
What makes a night like tonight fun for Yuki and me is the fact that we don’t have to completely hide ourselves like we normally do. Retaining a human-like form is the easiest way to go unnoticed, but it does become rather dull. Halloween night is the perfect night of the year to hide in human darkness and to let our beasts manifest into our physical forms ever so slightly. I’ve enjoyed Halloween nights before, but tonight my beast is agitated. It’s begging for full release, but I refute it. I give my logician primary control. I do know something of discipline.
I look through the crowd and catch sight of Yuki within moments—even with all the wriggling bodies attempting to conceal her. She’s wearing a shimmering dress that catches the lights like a disco ball. Her fox ears and tail are on full display. The orange fur is bright against her dark hair, but they make a striking contrast. She’s fluid and captivating in her every movement. She has men circled around her like moths to a flame, each one eager to have a piece of her. I grin. Try as hard as they might to touch her, they’ll only succeed if she wants them to. She enjoys tormenting them.
Typically, I’d be in the thick of it right there with her, but I’m not in the mood. Not tonight. Sitting at the bar and trying to get drunk is much more appealing at the moment. If only it’d actually work. Something is scratching underneath my skin. My beast is agitated. So. Very. Agitated.
I glance at the small TV mounted on the wall behind the bar. The channel is set to the news, and the sound is turned off since no one here would be able to hear it. There are captions, but I don’t need them to recognize the scenery on the screen. I was just there about a week and a half ago. Reverie. Images of the human girl who somehow overpowered me flood my mind. The dam I carefully built up since leaving that shit hole is broken down at the sight, and now all I can do is see her. All I can think about is what she did to me. Time away has done nothing to soothe the unease. My beast never lets me forget, even when I did banish her face from my thoughts. I’m constantly battling with my own heart and mind, and I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to be able to keep myself from tearing something apart, preferably limb by fucking limb. Preferably an angel.
Raw, dark energy pulses through my veins, threatening to manifest as tremors throughout my body. I’m going to explode.
“Sick horns, man.”
I let my eyes flicker behind me to see a young human male. He seats himself beside me and offers a smile too unassuming. He looks barely old enough to be in this club—or perhaps he snuck in. He’s wearing that Count Dracula type of vampire costume, the classic image of a vampire humans are so attached to.
I acknowledge his words with a grunt and go back to drinking the beer in front of me. I haven’t been keeping track of how many drinks I’ve had. Martinis, cocktails, wines, beer, it doesn’t matter. None of it can get me drunk. I used to think it could probably give me alcohol poisoning if I drank enough. But if that’s the case, I’ve never noticed. My body filters it out too fast. I have too much life essence to care.
“How’d you do it?” The boy is trying to make conversation with me again. “They look so real.”
I show him my teeth. “Maybe that’s because they are real.”
His hazel eyes go wide when they meet mine. Fear. Wonder. Desire. He seems to cycle through a few different reactions before settling on one of the most common I get from demons and humans alike: desire. I can see he’s entranced by me. I could tempt him to do whatever I’d like. I’m a fly zapper and he’s the fly.
“Can I… touch them?” he asks.
His eyes are glazed over; they’ve lost all of their luster. He’s let down all of his defenses and ruined himself without even knowing it. I could claim him the way my former master, Erin, once claimed me so easily.
“If you let me kiss you,” I tell him.
He doesn’t say anything to that, but he does lean toward me. His eyes never leave mine. My lips are on his in an instant. He opens his mouth wider to let me in, but he doesn’t know how to play the game. He’s sloppy. Inexperienced. He is definitely young, or maybe he’s shy. Ironic. He’s not bad looking at all by human standards.
As the kiss grows deeper, the scratching underneath my skin gets more intense. My beast starts rumbling in my chest. Growling. This is getting dangerous now. If I kiss him for much longer, I’m going to lose control.
My body moves instinctively, my beast acting out. I pin the boy against the bar, forcing glasses out of our way as they fall to the floor and shatter. More than kissing him, I’m pressing my whole body into him. I don’t know if I want to play with him or kill him. My logician warns me that killing him here and like this would be unwise, but my beast doesn’t care.
“The hell you doing?!” the deep voice of a man manages to make itself heard over the pulsing music.
I feel a meaty hand on my shoulder. It only makes my beast angrier.
“Get off my brother, bastard!”
The brute’s expecting me to turn my face in his direction, and then he’s planning on punching me. I don’t follow suit. I jerk to the side, twist around, and kick his legs out from under him. The guy falls to the floor with a heavy thud. He grasps his shin, writhing in pain. The sides of his head are shaved and the middle section of his hair is dyed blue and sprayed into a hard mohawk. The young man I was pinning to the bar comes to his senses and inches away from behind me. I can smell the fear on him now.
I’ve officially caused a scene at this point. All the people anywhere near us are gathered, waiting to see what will happen next. The air is charged with their want for blood. Mohawk Guy gets up from the floor and forms his hands into fists as he bounces back and forth on the balls of his feet. I let my hands fall to my sides in a devil-may-care fashion and stand perfectly still.
“You’re going down, you sick fuck!” Mohawk announces as he takes his first swing at me.
He misses of course. To the crowd it looks like he misses, that is. I can move subtly and too fast for the humans to process. My beast is growling at me and tearing at my insides, begging me to release it, but I can’t. I need to keep it in check. Its aura is too powerful. I can’t afford to paint a target on my back—especially not when that girl is out there. My beast grows angrier as thoughts of her once again make it to the front of my mind. Damn that girl.
I keep dodging as Mohawk continues to throw punches.
“Fight back, you coward!” he screams.
I am no coward.
I punch the guy in the nose, breaking it and spraying blood all at once. I bare my fangs and lurch forward, about to snap the presumptuous bastard’s neck—
“Please, stop!” the young man I made out with screams. He’s on his knees, literally begging as he grabs my leg. “Don’t hurt my brother!”
“Get up, Tommy!” Mohawk barks, spitting blood out of his mouth. “You’re the reason all of this is happening in the first place!”
The brothers couldn’t look any more different. They couldn’t act any more different either.
I jerk away from “Tommy’s” grasp and kick his brother in the gut to get my point across. I glance over and see Yuki pushing through the crowd. It’s about time she made it over here.
“Shall we go?” she asks, after deftly assessing the situation.
I lick my lips. I’m all hot and bothered. The smell of life essence, of blood, is intoxicating. I want it. I need it.
“Yes,” I say rigidly, pulling myself away from temptation as I put my beast back in its place.
Yuki follows me as I lead the way out of the club and into the rainy night. The sound of sirens and the rush of cars replace the sounds of pulsating music. We don’t dawdle. We make it to our hotel room within minutes, shutting out all the infuriating noise and leaving us in silence as soon as I shut the door behind me.
I take a deep breath.
Stay calm. Don’t let your beast out. It’ll be your undoing. You can’t afford it right now. My logician reminds me of these little details over and over.
I bite down on my lower lip until I make it bleed. That calms the energy surging inside of me for a moment. Glancing over my shoulder, I see Yuki in the process of changing out of her short, form-fitting dress. She’s already turned over her entire physical appearance to her logician; her fox-like tail and ears are absent as if they were never there to begin with. I take in another deep breath and follow her example. My beast wants so strongly to take over. It’s slamming against my rib cage again incessantly. It’s almost unbearable!
Once dressed in a sheer nightgown, Yuki lies down on the bed without even making it move. She looks up at me, inviting me to join her as she traces her slender fingers up her thigh, hiking up the already less than useless material of her nightgown.
“You going to join me?” she asks when I don’t make a move toward her.
I glare at her and then open the room’s window, slipping out into the cold night air as I climb my way to the roof, where I look out at the city before me.
Humans. Angels. Angels using humans as weapons. I spit in disgust. I can’t get that girl’s face out of my head, and my beast is rebelling against me. I can’t ignore this any longer. If my beast won’t cooperate, then I’ll just have to fix the problem as soon as possible.