Chapter Two

I spent the next night patrolling the area around the Tyger’s Lounge. Two nights ago, I found a half-breed in the back alley snacking on the neck of a pretty Goth girl without bothering to put her under. Fear, after all, made the victim’s blood taste better and even gave it a little kick, so some vamps didn’t mesmerize their donors for this benefit. It was number four on my top ten list of things that piss me off.

I yanked the half-breed away from the girl, and he started to fight like a wild animal. Once he realized who had him in a death grip, he fell to his knees and begged for his life. The sight cheered me up. I broke both his legs and left him in a heap, then returned to the girl.

I was a healer, and my saliva alone could close any wound. Every vamp had this ability, but mine was faster and more effective. It also provided the victim with a sense of euphoria, like the drug MDMA. That’s right, I was the proud dispenser of happy spit. I bent my head to lick the girl’s wound, erased her memory, and implanted in her mind that Goth boys and vamp-wannabes were gross and that she should never again venture in a dark corner with them. Afterward, I sent her away.

The vamp who served as the doorman for Tyger’s Lounge was a fine-looking man of indeterminate race. He might be Puerto Rican, Italian, black, or a mix of all. I'd never asked because that would be rude. He had a clean-shaven head, the most cat-like green eyes I had ever seen on a creature outside the feline family, and tightly muscled arms that could probably crush one of those old-fashioned phone booths.

He was called Ryder, and tonight he wore a black tank top that hugged his pecs paired off with black leather pants that molded so perfectly to his ass and thighs that he might have been poured into them. Or they were painted on him.

Naturally, he was surrounded by scantily clad women with big hair, cloying perfume, and thigh-high boots desperate for his attention, hoping he would throw them one of his signature megawatt grins. Chicks dug Ryder.

I skipped to the head of the long line pissing off the throng of Goth kids, punks, and candy ravers waiting to get into the club. One candy raver who looked like Rainbow Brite on crack with her multi-colored hair, red leather pantsuit, and blue faux-fur choker hissed at me as I passed and called me a bitch. With a smile that didn’t quite reach my eyes and my fangs fully extended, I whirled around and hissed right back at her.      

She wasn’t even fazed. Huh. I pushed past the gaggle of tramps in fishnets and tattooed skin to reach the door. “Hey, Ryder. Any trouble tonight?”

He shook that beautiful bald head. “Not on my watch.” He raked his gaze over my body. “Looking good, Yanmei. Hot date?”

I chuckled even as I shoved away a girl in a hot pink vinyl micro-dress who tried to elbow past me to get to Ryder. My long black hair was woven into a French braid, and I was dressed in a red suede halter top and skin-tight black leather pants that flared at the bottom to hide the guns strapped to my ankles. On my feet were my ever-present black Doc Martens. When a girl had to leap tall buildings, run, and kick-ass using her fine-honed kungfu skills, sensible shoes were a must.

“Jesus, I haven’t had a date in centuries,” I said, then realized it was true and stopped smiling. “Place is pretty packed even for a Friday.” And Tyger’s Lounge was almost always packed like a can of sardines on weekends.

“Some hot-to-trot DJ from London is in there making a ruckus, and the girls are going nuts,” he replied with a grimace. “I just don’t understand why no one appreciates a good jazz band anymore. Whatever’s going on in there is not music. It’s all computer synthesizers and drum machines now.”

I smiled at his old curmudgeon routine and fondly patted his face when he unlatched the velvet rope for me and let me in. A young full-blood in a ballerina from hell outfit—black tutu, a red bustier, fishnets—gave me a nod of deference as I walked past the coat check section. When I reached the main hall, the strength and force of the eardrum-smashing acid trance music almost shoved me back to the foyer, but I pushed forth and found myself faced with pandemonium.

It was the bastard son of Dante Alighieri and John Milton’s visions of hell mixed in a blender with a Nine Inch Nails video. There were leather and vinyl, chains, zebra stripes and leopard skin, girls dancing in cages, and strobe lights. To top it all off, an overwhelming miasma of patchouli incense, spiced tequila, and sweaty bodies loitered like an unwanted guest, potent enough to make the eyes water.

Amid the chaos, however, I was still able to spot a young half-breed female in a sheer silk halter dress with her arm around a good-looking human male, loudly broadcasting in her thoughts that she would like to get him alone so she could sink her fangs into his throat. I grabbed her wrist as she passed me, indicated to her in a glare that she better behave, then shoved her away from me.

“You haven’t been here for five minutes, and already you’re policing,” a voice said close to my ear.

I turned around and found myself face to chest with Tyger Norris. I gazed at him with an idiotic smile that managed to crawl its way across my lips and accepted the kiss he pressed against my mouth.

When I moaned in delight, he took the opportunity to slide his tongue between my lips and swipe it across my fangs. “Hello, darling,” I said as soon as he pulled away. “Magnificent crush in here tonight.”

“These London boys always bring in quite a draw,” he said in a crisp British accent that he hadn’t been able to shake despite having lived in America for the past one hundred years. “Heard you took down a half-breed in an alley nearby the other night.”

“He was in the middle of draining a young girl,” I replied grimly. “Don’t you usually have your boys patrolling the perimeter? He could have killed her, for God’s sake. You can't afford any more notoriety, Tyger. You’ve got the conservatives of the city clamoring to have you shut down for good.”

The dark-haired vampire shook his head. “We had The Argonauts here, a pretty hot goth-industrial band. My boys had their hands full with crowd control.” He rubbed a spot over his brow. “I should have sent out Ryder or Nic to check out the area. If anything had happened to that girl...”

“You’d have Queen C screaming for your hide, for sure,” I finished for him as a young half-breed waitress passed by and pressed a tall glass of blood in my hand. It was decorated with a stalk of celery to make it look like a Bloody Mary. I nodded my thanks at Fiona, the red-haired bartender and a friend of mine.

“Listen, Tyger, I like you, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t take you down if I had to... and this quaint little operation you’ve got here...” I sighed. “It’s a disaster waiting to happen. Loud music, sweaty bodies, high energy… Charlie Manson couldn’t have come up with a better atmosphere for a fangling to lose control and attack the innocents.”

“That’s why we limit the amount of fanglings who come in.” He snatched the glass of blood in my hand and took a long, deep swallow before giving it back to me. “Not that we ever see them anymore. When was the last time the Queen officially sanctioned a human to be turned?”

“It was the son of a Sultan, I believe, about ten years ago. He wasn’t anything special, but he was dying from leukemia, and the Queen was offered a villa in the South of France in return. She accepted.”

“That’s Callidora, alright,” he replied with a crooked smile. His head snapped up, and an expression of wicked glee flashed in his eyes. “Check out the newcomers. Ryder must have let them in out of sheer morbid curiosity.”

A strange tingling sensation of awareness crept up my spine, and I forced myself to turn around even though all of my self-preserving instincts shrieked at me not to.

A group of men stood at the mouth of the main hall looking like they had just stepped out of a J. Crew ad in their chinos, blazers, and button-down shirts. Some of the club kids stopped dancing and actually gawked at them like they were space aliens. Some merely glared at them with open hostility.

One man stood out in particular with his neatly combed golden hair and curious gray eyes. He was dressed in a teal button-down silk shirt and black chinos, looking like the GQ version of a Byronic hero with his soulful gaze and pursed lips. He and his friends began to move, and the crowd parted before them like the Red Sea. Tyger nodded a signal to his bouncers to watch them closely.

“The blond one is a snack,” remarked Sierra, one of the very few human servers that Tyger had hired to offset the almost entirely vampire staff.  She was a perky, little blond with big blue eyes and a Midwestern accent, and would have been perfect as Dorothy’s best friend in the Wizard of Oz, had Dorothy’s best friend been human and not a little dog.

"Dibs," I said automatically. She gave me a strange look and laughed, probably thinking I was joking.

I once had a dream where I stood in front of our ruling council without a stitch of clothing, begging to be released from my responsibilities because all I'd ever wanted was to act on Broadway.

That was nothing compared to having a man I had shamelessly pawed while he was unconscious, stop in front of me with an inquisitive glint in his eyes. If I had the power to teleport at that moment, I would have teleported myself to the bottom of a volcano. I forced myself to straighten my spine and meet his eyes.

Tyger snickered in my ear. He sketched a courtly bow to the man standing in front of me and made himself scarce. I gritted my teeth and vowed to myself that I would hunt him down later and beat his undead ass to the ground.

“Hello,” Sebastian said softly.

He had shaved his facial hair, and I couldn’t get over how much cleaner, more innocent he looked.

“Hello,” I said in return. I studied his eyes, but they did not flicker with recognition. “You and your friends seem to be causing more of a riot than the DJ the club kids paid good money to see.”

He smiled shyly, and a small dimple popped out on the left side of his mouth. “My buddy Travis is nuts about DJ Cranium. The other guys and I just kind of tagged along to check things out.” He looked around with an expression of pure wonder on his face. “I have to admit, though, that this isn’t exactly my scene. It’s like an entirely different universe.”

No kidding. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“No. I’m originally from England. Yorkshire born and bred. My mom and sisters still live there. I moved out here a couple of years ago for a change of scenery, but it’s all still pretty new to me.”

I looked over his shoulder and found his friends flirting with some human girls with artificially sharpened incisors and dog collars around their necks. They were dressed in ridiculously provocative outfits, all in black. One girl with pink hair wore only a leather bandeau around her chest and a butterfly stud on her navel. A female vamp was watching them with a little more than passing interest. I caught her eye and glared at her in warning. She darted away to disappear in the shadows.

I returned my attention to Sebastian, who was now facing the bar, trying to get a bartender’s attention. Fat chance. The bar was so swamped that even Fiona and her supernatural crew looked overwhelmed by the Herculean task of serving the fifty people demanding their alcoholic drinks. I snapped my fingers, and Julie, a half-breed server, instantly appeared before me, abandoning a human customer in the middle of an order.

“Yes, Huntress?” she said meekly.

I told her telepathically to cut out the “huntress” crap, then said out loud, “Give me a pint of bitter and a glass of Merlot.”

Julie bowed obediently and rushed to do my bidding. She was back in under a minute. “Good job, kid. Now scram.”

When she was gone, I handed the glass to Sebastian, who looked suitably impressed.

“Wow. That was a proper British way of ordering ale,” he said and took a sip of his beer. “Have you ever been to our side of the pond?”

I’d been everywhere in the world. Around the world. Eighty times, at my last count. England remained one of my favorites, though. I enjoyed hanging out in London when I had time to go on holiday. “A couple of times in my youth.”

He laughed at this. “You’ve picked up a thing or two, then.”

“I’m a quick learner,” I said, then groaned inwardly. I’d never been a witty, one-liner kind of person, but this was just really bad. I absently sipped my Merlot and found a full-bodied wine with a clean but clearly discernible taste of cherries and plums. Jesus, had Julie raided Tyger’s personal stash for me?

“So, what’s your name?"

“What's it worth to you?” I growled, looking up from my drink.

He raised his hands in a sign of surrender, but he was grinning like an adorable fool. “Because you bought me a drink, and it just seemed polite to ask.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him my name but realized that I couldn’t even shape my lips to form the sound. A name was a terribly intimate thing. It had power. If he knew my name, maybe his memories of me would be harder to erase next time. All somebody had to do was invoke my name, and it could trigger a flash flood of memories for him. I considered telling him a fake name, but I couldn’t come up with one.

“I’m Sebastian, by the way,” he said, holding his hand out to me.

He had large hands with long, shapely fingers. An empty feeling that I associated with hunger made my stomach clench, and I could do nothing but stare at his hand. I must have stared at it too long that he began to draw it away. I quickly snatched it and held it in my own.

I turned it over, studied the veins just underneath his skin, and then turned it over again to look at his palm. There were stains there that looked like ink. I suddenly had an insane urge to put his hand on my breast, but I wasn’t sure how he would react to that.

“Did my hand pass inspection?” he asked, and his eyes were sparkling with humor.

I immediately dropped his hand and watched silently as he drank his beer. I couldn’t look away from his throat as he swallowed. There was a healthy vein there just pulsing with blood. It was a brutal reminder that I hadn’t fed all night.  I could maybe take him to the alley behind the club and sink my fangs into his neck. I would only take a little, and he would remember nothing of it. It wouldn’t even leave a mark.

I felt my fangs slowly descend from my gums until they were touching my lower lip. I shook myself and tore my gaze from his throat. I couldn’t do that, not to him. He was no longer just a walking, talking fleshbag to me. In the brief time I’ve known him, he had become more than a face to me. He had become real, and if I were smart, I would walk out of Tyger’s Lounge, maybe move to the other side of the world so that I would never see him again.

“Why did you approach me?” I asked before I could stop myself. For a few moments, the noise and din of the crowded and overwhelming nightclub seemed to dissipate, and there was only him and me. We could have been sitting in a sidewalk café in Paris, and it wouldn’t have made a difference. 

Even when an idiot human jostled me and I spilled a good half of my Merlot on my pants, I didn’t stir. I could only look at Sebastian as I waited for him to answer my question.

“You looked at me when I first walked in, and it just seemed natural for me to come to you,” he said, shifting his gaze to his shoes as though his own words embarrassed him. “That probably sounds like a line, but it really isn’t.” He smiled sheepishly. “I really can’t stand this music. Do you want to go somewhere else and have coffee with me?”

“No.” There, I said it. Make a clean break and run for it, Yanmei, I told myself. His eyes went flat, but a smile remained on his face that felt cold and distant. He was hurt but had quickly masked it with nonchalance. I briefly closed my eyes and felt like a complete moron. Damn it, I’m going to regret this, I just know it. “I mean yes,” I said out loud.

Hadn’t I sworn to myself just two nights ago that I was going to do everything I possibly could to stay away from him? He was Clark Kent, Peter Parker, and a baby duck rolled into one. I could eat him alive and spit him out before he even knew what happened. I was a monster for even thinking I could have something substantial with this nice human man. He deserved to have a little blond wife with little blond kids and a small Spanish-style house in the suburbs of Poway. But he had only offered coffee. Coffee didn’t mean he would get down on his knees and pledge his fealty to me.

Couldn’t I pretend for one night that I was a normal woman who only wanted to share a cup of coffee with a nice man who didn’t know that I was the vampire scourge of the undead?

“There’s a little place not too far from here that serves the best cappuccino,” he said, reaching into his pocket to pull out his wallet. “It’s not the fanciest place, but it’s cozy and quiet.”

“That sounds wonderful,” I said and meant every word. I watched as he pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and reached around me so he could put it on the bar. I grabbed his wrist before he could drop the money. “I bought you a drink, remember? You can pay for the coffee.” I leaned over the bar and crooked a finger at Fiona, who caught my eye and glided over. “I’m stepping out for a bit. Call my cell if you need anything.” The last word I emphasized in a way she couldn’t misunderstand.

She glanced at Sebastian and raised her amber-colored brows. You’re leaving with a human? her stunned lilac eyes asked me.

Only for coffee, I responded silently.

Is it naked coffee? There was no mistaking the lascivious grin on her elfin face.

I shook my head and stepped away from the bar before she could ask me anything else. Sebastian excused himself to tell his friends where he was going, and a curly-haired one with brown eyes clapped him heartily on the shoulder, while another looked pointedly at me and ogled me appreciatively. He attempted to give Sebastian a high-five, but Sebastian only good-naturedly tapped him on the back of the head and pushed him towards the rest of their friends.

“Have you reasserted your status as the alpha of your pack?” I asked dryly when he returned to me.

“I tried, but when I told them we were only going for cappuccino, they kind of laughed at me,” he replied in a deadpan manner that surprised a chuckle out of me. “You’re even more beautiful when you smile.”

I rolled my eyes and took his hand. “Come on,” I said, yanking him toward the exit and pushing a group of young mohawked punks out of the way.

On our way out, Ryder noticed that I was holding Sebastian’s hand and leered at us. Embarrassed, I dropped it, like it had suddenly turned into a snake and threw Ryder a dirty look. If Sebastian noticed the abrupt way I let go of his hand, he didn’t say anything.        

Ryder wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Gone for the night, boss?”            

Wordlessly, I picked up Sebastian’s hand again and practically dragged him down the block before we could run into any more assholes.

Café Bordeaux was indeed a small, cozy place. It could maybe fit about thirty people at most. It had soft, muted lighting, overstuffed sofas and armchairs strategically placed throughout the room, and an old-fashioned jukebox in the corner. The music playing was a sharp contrast to the jarring noise I experienced in Tyger’s club, as it was a woman singing in a soft bluesy contralto about falling in love with a thoroughly unsuitable for her. Still, she can’t stop thinking about him. I smiled grimly.

Sebastian put his hand on the small of my back and led me to two velvet armchairs by the window facing each other.  A human girl came up to us to take our orders, and Sebastian asked for a large mocha, while I ordered a cup of jasmine tea. I hardly drank tea, but whenever I did, I found that I immensely enjoyed it. It was smooth and soothing to the body.

“So,” Sebastian said as I settled my body into the overstuffed armchair and sank in the cushions. “Do you work at that nightclub?”

I opened one eye to look at him and wondered how much I could tell him without lying. “I do some consulting work for it. Security,” I answered with practiced ease. “What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a comic book illustrator,” he said. “A frequent collaborator of mine just finished a story about a feud between vampires and werewolves and wants me to draw it for him. It was actually one of the reasons I was at the club tonight. I wanted to get a feel for the atmosphere.”

I straightened up in the armchair and gazed levelly at him. He had no idea, of course, that there was a real feud between vampires and werewolves, nor that either species even existed. I was slightly amused by this. “I suspected you might be an artist,” I murmured. “You have ink on your hands.”

He held them up and chuckled. “I can’t ever get the ink off, no matter what I do. I could scrub my hands raw, and the ink would stay. I think it’s bone-deep.”

What was bone-deep was my attraction to him. He was so beautiful that I couldn’t tear my eyes off of him even for a second. His golden hair glowed like a halo on his head in the soft light, and his eyes were as bright as the full moon. I had never been so entranced by a creature, human or vampire, in my entire existence. When my heart skipped a beat at the smile of thanks he bestowed upon the server who brought him his coffee, I knew I was in trouble. It was stupid of me to stick around, but I couldn’t have moved from my spot even if a pack of ghouls stumbled into the café and began to tear its patrons limb from limb.

“So tell me about yourself,” he said, bringing his giant mug of caffeine to his lips. “Are you originally from San Diego?”

“No.” I was born during the Han Dynasty in a small province of Xi'an. When I was eighteen years old, I left my vampire parents to escape a marriage my father had arranged for me. That was the last I saw of them. I had no idea if they were still alive, but then I’ve heard rumors that they were living in Seattle and running a bed & breakfast together. I’ve never confirmed it for myself and wasn’t sure they would even accept a wayward daughter who abandoned them almost two thousand years ago. “I’ve actually lived all over the world, but I’ve found that I quite enjoy San Diego.”

“Me too. I think it’s the people. Everyone’s really nice here. You can go anywhere and feel welcome. It’s a big city, but there’s a small-town feel to it,” he remarked, setting down his mug on the table. Suddenly, he leaned towards me with an earnest look—a dangerous look—in his eyes and took my hands in his own. “I don’t know what it is about you, but I feel like you can see right through me. I’m trying to stay cool here, but one look at you and my composure is out the window.” He smiled shakily. “And now I’m babbling like an idiot.”

I closed my eyes and verified his words' truth by setting my finger on the pulse in his wrist. When my eyes opened, he was staring at my lips like there was nothing else in the world that he would rather do than to kiss me. It was almost reflexive for me to bend my head towards him. Our lips were mere inches from each other when an unpleasant sensation, almost like static electricity, made the little hairs on my neck stand on end. I froze for a moment, unable to move, then I sprang away from him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked in concern.

I sniffed the air and confirmed my suspicions. Under the pungent, almost overpowering coffee scent, I detected a more subtle smell that reminded me of pine and animal musk. I stood up and scanned our surrounding areas, but saw nothing. That didn’t mean they weren’t there. They could hide from me, but I could always feel and smell them coming. The fact that my skin was crawling like I was laying on a bed of bugs meant they were nearby.

I grabbed Sebastian’s hand and yanked him to his feet. “We have to get out of here.”

He looked confused and more than a little wary. “Why?”

“I don’t have time to explain.”

He pulled out his wallet. “Alright, I’ll just—“

“Come on,” I commanded, dropping a twenty-dollar bill on the table as I practically dashed to the door with him in tow. He managed to catch up with me when I stopped before my motorcycle in front of Tyger’s Lounge. I tossed him the helmet. “Put this on.”

He took it reluctantly but held it out back to me. “No, you wear it.”

I couldn’t explain to him that I could crash headfirst into a tree at a hundred miles per hour and walk away without a scratch. “Just do it, alright? Put the fucking thing on.”

He looked like he wanted to protest, but my voice projected that I would tolerate no arguments. He pulled it on with an attitude of a little boy who has just been told that he couldn’t go out to play.

I swung my leg with ease over my motorcycle and stared at him until he was compelled to follow suit. “Hold on tight.”

I kick-started the engine and zoomed away from the curb like a bat out of hell.