Nick glanced at Damon, lifting one eyebrow.
Seeing the frown growing on his friend’s face as the bouncer’s words sank in, Nick suppressed a smile.
“Something like that,” Nick said, the humor reaching his voice. “We’re meeting Straven. They here?”
The bouncer’s crystal-colored eyes widened.
“Oh! Oh, okay! That makes sense.” He grinned. “Straven’s not here yet, Wolf, but they’re definitely coming. He never misses our theme nights. Anyway, I did get a head’s up about him… and he’ll definitely have people in tow. He always does. Probably best to not have to merge entourages, eh?”
Still grinning, he smacked Nick affectionately again.
Nick nodded, motioning with a head towards Jordan.
“Can we wait inside?”
The vampire had already begun sizing up Jordan, a distinctly more predatory look in his crystal-colored eyes. His interest was obvious enough that Nick saw a small bloom of crimson flower around the vamp’s pupil’s.
At Nick’s question, which seemed to register a beat later than it should have, he turned back towards Nick, jumping a little.
“Oh. Yeah, man. Of course!” he said.
He stepped out of the way of the door, as if remembering himself, and grabbed the handle, swinging it open.
“It’s early for us,” he said cheerfully. “Tell Rex at the bar, first one’s on me.” He glanced at Jordan, winking at him. “For you and your… friend.”
Nick again suppressed a smile.
The bouncer seemed to have figured out the two of them weren’t together.
Maybe he noticed a decided lack of bites on Jordan, or maybe he just picked up on the lack of blood connection there. As a general rule, vampires were pretty decent at spotting that kind of thing. Which was a good thing, all in all; it kept fights to a minimum, at least among non-assholes in the vampire community.
Still, fights happened, innocent or not.
Vampires could be as territorial as seers when it came to their crushes.
When vampires mated, it was even worse.
Glancing at Jordan, who’d flushed a little from the attention from the giant vampire, Nick pressed his lips together harder, trying not to laugh.
Pretending not to notice the big Puerto-Rican’s interest in his partner, he gave the other vamp a brief, polite, vampire’s bow.
“Thanks, brother,” he said, smacking the vampire back in an equally friendly way.
Without glancing at Jordan, he entered the club.
He couldn’t help but notice Jordan followed behind him a lot more closely than usual.
Again, appropriate or not, Nick had to fight not to laugh.
It might be early for them, like the bouncer said, but the club was pretty full as Nick and Jordan made their way to the bar.
It must be because of the theme night.
Although really, it could just be that it was Thursday.
Once he got a glimpse of the club’s main room, Nick didn’t have to work hard to guess the theme for the evening.
He could smell refried beans, salsa, chili con carne, chili verde, mole, guacamole, a variety of peppers and salsas. Most of it was artificial, of course, so only smelled like the real thing, but it still made Nick wish briefly for a human palate.
Born and raised in California, he was practically born eating food like this.
He more or less lived on sushi and burritos growing up.
The band up on the stage played old school salsa, and a lot of vamps whirled around the dance floor with varying levels of skill, laughing as they tackled the old-fashioned dance style with their human and vampire partners.
Some of those dancers were excellent—especially among the vampires.
Nick didn’t have to guess why.
Like him, they’d clearly been alive during the last salsa craze, which took place back before the wars. Some of them, from what he could tell, might even be from countries where salsa dancing in its various forms originated.
He glanced at Jordan, and saw him staring at the paired dancers in open amazement, his jaw loose as he followed their feet, legs, hips, and costumes with his eyes.
“What is that?” he said, bewildered. “What kind of dancing is that?”
Nick couldn’t help but roll his eyes.
“Let’s get a drink,” he said, nudging the human with an elbow and aiming his chin towards the bar, which was to their left, and on the other side of the dance floor. “Might as well do what we can to blend.”
Jordan nodded, but his eyes never left the swirling couples.
He looked completely mesmerized.
Nick began making his way through the dance floor to get to the bar, figuring Jordan would either follow or he wouldn’t.
Damon did follow him. Dodging the dancing couples was easy enough for Nick, but less easy for Jordan, who he heard mumble sorry more than a few times as he bumped into fast-moving couples while he tried to follow Nick’s diagonal line to the other side of the club.
Nick didn’t run into anyone.
Until he did.
He’d just glanced back to make sure Jordan was still behind him—
—when he came to an abrupt stop in front of a couple dancing right in front of him.
The male vampire was trying to teach his non-vampire partner how to do the dance.
She was laughing, staring down at her feet, when she flipped her long, black hair back and sideways over her bare shoulder, and glanced towards Nick.
Nick froze.
He found himself staring into the face of Wynter.
She was flushed, her eyes faintly glassed, either from exertion, alcohol, or…
Something else.
He just stared at her, paralyzed.
He couldn’t fucking move.
She stared back at him, coming to a dead stop on the dance floor.
Then her date laughed, tugging on her, and she jerked her eyes off Nick, aiming her smile back at the male vampire she’d been dancing with.
For the first time, Nick looked at him.
Tall, blond, muscular—not muscular like the bouncer at the front of the club, or muscular like the vampires Nick fought in the ring, or even muscular like Nick himself, but a leaner kind of muscular.
He looked like a model, or maybe a runner.
Even for a vampire, he was handsome.
Nick stared at him, watching him clumsily try to teach Wynter the steps to a Celia Cruz song Nick vaguely remembered from back when he was human.
He saw Wynter’s cheeks and neck flush as the two of them danced away.
She was obviously trying not to notice the fact that Nick was just standing there like an asshole, staring at the two of them.
Then Jordan nudged his shoulder, leaning close to his ear.
“What are you doing, man?” the human detective half-shouted, so that most of the vampires on the dance floor probably heard him, even with the thumping beats of the band. “Are you just going to stand here, or—”
Jordan’s voice cut off.
When Nick glanced back at him, he saw the detective staring at Wynter, even as understanding came to his face and eyes.
“Isn’t that—?”
“Yes,” Nick snarled.
His voice came out with about ten times more hostility than he’d intended.
Deciding to ignore that fact, and the fact that his fangs had extended without him even fucking noticing, he stalked the rest of the way through the dance floor, not bothering to dodge couples that time, but simply forcing a path through them, forcing them to get out of his way.
He heard Jordan struggling to keep up with him, again muttering sorrys here and there as they fought to reach the outside circle of the dance floor.
Nick didn’t stop until he reached the bar.
Once he had, he refused to look out at the dance floor.
He avoided looking at the mirror too, keeping his eyes fixed on the bartender as he motioned the vamp over, jaw clenched.
When the male vampire wandered to their side of the bar, Nick realized he didn’t even know what he should be drinking in here.
Jordan was with him.
Was it weird to order blood?
Deciding he didn’t give a fuck, he leaned up to the bartender so Jordan wouldn’t hear.
“Blood. Freshest you have. Put it in a container where my friend here doesn’t have to see it. But don’t be fucking stingy.”
He leaned back and the vampire behind the bar grinned at him.
“You’re the White Wolf, aren’t you?”
Nick kept the scowl off his face with an effort.
Was everyone in the damned club a fight fan?
Seeing his expression, the bartender grinned, flashing a hint of fang.
“Enrique called ahead… said he was buying you your first drink.” He motioned at Jordan with his head as he leaned down to grab a semi-organic drink container from under the bar. “You and your friend. You know what he wants?”
Nick nudged Jordan, who was leaning against the bar, but staring out over the dance floor. Nick didn’t want to know where he was staring.
He had a feeling he already knew.
“What do you want?” he said, speaking loud for his human ears.
“Something with caffeine,” Jordan said, without taking his eyes off the dance floor. He looked at Nick, even as the bartender nodded at Nick’s glance. “Is that really Wynter? Your girl from the Northeastern Protected Area?”
Nick scowled for real.
“Of course it is,” he muttered.
“She looks hot,” Jordan said, loud over the band.
Nick glared at him. “Are you asking to get punched in the face right now?” His voice dropped to a harder growl. “And she’s not ‘my girl’ anymore, Damon… in case that wasn’t one hundred percent fucking obvious, given she’s here with someone else.”
Jordan glanced at him finally, right as the bartender set down two opaque glasses in front of them. Taking in Nick’s face as he reached for the container the vampire handed him, Jordan burst out in a laugh.
“Oh, man… you got it bad, buddy.”
“Fuck off.”
“Why did you two break up? You never told me.”
“Didn’t I?” Nick said, his voice a growl.
Picking up his own morphing glass, he took a long swallow of blood, glancing out at the dance floor in spite of himself. His eyes found Wynter in a heartbeat. He told himself he wasn’t even looking for her, but he picked her out as if by some magnetic force.
He hadn’t even noticed her clothes before, not until Jordan said something.
While he stood there, like a jackass, staring at her from the dance floor, he’d never even glanced down from her face.
He’d been too shocked to see her here, hundreds of miles from where she lived, on a dance floor in a fucking vampire club in Manhattan.
Now he found himself looking her over, seeing what Jordan had seen.
She wore a short dress, perfect for salsa.
Made of a pale, blue-green, light fabric that clung to her every curve, it swirled around her as her hips moved, even with her asshole date’s clumsy attempts to pretend he had the faintest clue how to dance. Her hair was longer than he remembered, still thick and black with streaks of color. The colors had changed slightly; Nick noticed more turquoise now, with less scarlet, gold, pale green.
All of it served to make her some kind of brightly-colored bird, even in a place like this, where a lot of the vampires were striking in appearance. Her slim legs moved easily under the dress as she tried to look around her, to copy the steps of the dancers on the floor who more obviously knew what they were doing.
He glanced at her date, saw him staring at her neck, her breasts, her face.
Piece of shit was eye-fucking her without even trying to hide it.
From next to him, Jordan laughed.
“Oh, man… you are screwed.”
Nick frowned, without taking his eyes off Wynter, or her date, who he increasingly wanted to throat-punch, then stomp in the genitals when he fell to the floor.
“She come here with that guy, do you think?”
Nick turned, staring at him.
“Seriously,” he said. “What the fuck is the matter with you?”
Jordan laughed, leaning back against the bar.
“Sorry, man,” he said. “Maybe I’m hoping you’ll actually do something about it, if I goad you enough.”
“Do something? Like what? Like hit you in the face?”
Jordan shrugged, unfazed as he took a sip of whatever the bartender had given him.
Whatever it was, he seemed to like it.
“Or maybe just ask her to dance,” Jordan said, speaking louder. He finished swallowing his mouthful of whatever it was he was drinking—something that smelled sweet, like maybe artificial coffee mixed with caffeinated soda. “Or… you know… admit you fucked up, and actually try to make things right with her.”
Nick scowled harder at that.
He told himself to turn around, to face the bar.
Then he told himself he had to keep an eye out for Straven.
He didn’t do either.
He watched Wynter and her date.
He watched her try to dance while her over-eager, over-young, overly model-looking motherfucker of a date stared at her tits.
He watched them as the song ended, and Wynter clapped for the band, whistling and calling out along with everyone else. She laughed at something her date said, leaning towards him to hear, her face still flushed, and now a few strands of her hair sweated to her neck and the side of her face.
He could have sworn her eyes flickered towards him at the bar, but she looked away too quickly for him to be sure. She definitely looked away too quickly for him to decide why she might be looking at him… assuming she even was.
The two of them walked off the dance floor for the next song.
They walked back on the dance floor for the one after that.
They walked off again, and Nick saw them sitting at a cocktail table on the other side of the room, ordering drinks from a vampire waitress dressed in what looked like an old-school tango dress.
They danced the song after that.
They danced the song after that, too, and the date was getting more handsy, even though he still hadn’t managed to teach her so much as the basic fucking steps of salsa. Nick honestly couldn’t tell if he’d shown her anything, not in this dance, or in the three dances before this one.
Then again, her blond, model-asshole date didn’t seem to know the dance steps himself, so maybe that was for the best.
“Goddamn it,” he muttered.
He honestly wasn’t sure if he’d be able to stay.
He couldn’t stay here, and watch her leave with that fucking guy.
“Where in the hell is Straven?” he growled, glancing around the rest of the club.
He downed the last of his third cup of blood, and set it on the bar, motioning to the vampire bartender that he wanted another one.
Feeling Jordan’s eyes on him, he glanced over at the human.
That time, the detective was watching him more seriously, a faintly alarmed look in his dark eyes.
Or maybe it was concern Nick saw.
Either way, somehow that look was worse than when he’d been laughing at him outright.
“Just leave it,” Nick growled. “Jesus. Are you always this much of an infant?”
Jordan’s lips pursed. “I was giving you shit before, man… sort of. I mean, I was serious about you needing to talk to her.” He paused, still studying Nick’s eyes. “Now I’m actually worried. What the fuck happened between you two?”
Nick shook his head. “Drop it, Damon.”
“You know you’ve been staring at her… nonstop… for like an hour. You’re looking at that guy she’s with like you’re plotting his death.”
Nick frowned harder.
Even so, he knew the human wasn’t
wrong.
He knew he should probably go outside, wait for Straven there.
Or at least find a table in another corner of the room and keep his eyes to himself. Hell, he’d be better off asking another vampire to dance, if only to distract himself.
“Seriously,” Jordan said. “Seek help. You’re acting like a lunatic.”
He was about to answer him, or maybe just tell him to fuck off, when someone appeared out of nowhere in front of him.
“He’s not wrong,” a too-familiar voice said shortly. “You are acting like a lunatic. Not like that’s going to make me fall down in shock or anything… or even so much as feign the slightest amount of surprise.”
Nick stared at the face there, unable to believe she’d snuck up on him, without him noticing, feeling, hearing, or seeing a damned thing.
He had no idea how she did that.
“Are you just going to stare at me?” she said, her voice hard. “Or are you going to actually talk to me, Nick?”
He stared at her.
He honestly had no idea what to say.
She stood in front of him, those stunning, blue-green, cat-like eyes seeming to glow from her face. He found himself staring at the sharp line of her jaw, her high cheekbones, full mouth, the strange tone of her skin, which he’d never quite pinpointed in terms of its ethnic or genetic origins. He didn’t know if she’d gotten that darker skin tone from her seer side, or if it had something to do with the ethnicity of her human parent—which he remembered her saying was her mother.
He stared at her.
He watched her chest heave as she stared back at him, her hands curled into fists. She held them by the part of her dress that flared out over her hips.
His eyes rose back to hers.
He spoke before he knew he meant to.
“Dance with me,” he said.
She blinked.
“What?”
Jordan burst out in a laugh.
Nick didn’t look at him. He didn’t look away from Wynter’s face.
Wynter didn’t so much as glance at Jordan, either.
Staring up at Nick in disbelief, she scrunched her eyes and mouth in a way that told him he’d completely thrown her. Before she could recover, he took her hand lightly in his, pulling himself off the bar.
He tugged her after him.
The Prescient: A Science Fiction Vampire Detective Novel (Vampire Detective Midnight Book 3) Page 8
