For a second we just stood there, me swaying on my feet, her watching me with those impossible blue eyes, the hallway humming with fluorescent light and the distant echo of music from the club.
Then she did something I absolutely did not expect.
She dragged one finger across the blood smeared on the front of her torn white dress. Before I could even process the motion, that same finger was in my mouth, cool and metallic, the taste of her blood flooding my tongue. I jerked back on instinct, but her other hand snapped up and clamped gently yet firmly over my lips.
"Ssswallow," she whispered.
Dizzy, cold, and too confused to argue, I swallowed. The thought of every blood-borne disease known to modern medicine flickered through my brain in a panicked slideshow, but it was too late. Her finger slipped free. She pressed one finger to her own lips in a universal gesture for silence, then turned her head toward the metal door that led back into the club.
For a heartbeat nothing happened.
Then the door exploded inward.
The entire slab of metal tore free from its hinges, shot across the hallway like a thrown shield, and smashed into the opposite wall with a deafening crunch.
The corridor filled with vampires.
There was no more pretending, no more clever marketing gimmicks or theatrical makeup. Every piece of the puzzle snapped into place at once. The speed, the grace, the eyes, the strength. They weren't actors. They weren't staff committed to a theme.
They were vampires.
And the girl standing beside me, blood still wet on her dress, was one of them.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, my grandfather's voice rose up in smug triumph. Told you so, boy. If I lived through the night, he was never going to let me hear the end of it.
My Sight locked onto the man at the front of the group—the massive bouncer from the entrance. Vadim. His right arm was already drawn back, fingers stiffened into a spear-hand strike. Under the harsh hallway light, his nails glittered like polished blades. A calm, detached part of me noted that he could probably punch straight through my chest without slowing down.
He stepped forward.
"Nyet!"
The command cracked through the air like a whip. The girl beside me—my girl in white, now stained crimson—hadn't raised her voice, but every vampire in the hallway froze as if nailed to the floor. Heads turned toward her in varying degrees of surprise and disbelief.
The blonde dancer pushed through the crowd, Lydia close behind her. The vampires parted down the middle as another woman emerged, a brunette with sharp features and an aura of authority that didn't need to announce itself. She spoke rapidly in Russian to Vadim and the blonde. My rescuer answered, her words halting at first, then flowing faster, more certain. The brunette's eyes widened, shock flashing across her face. Two of the male vampires blurred away down the hall toward the shattered doorway.
I sank back onto a stack of crates, shivering despite the stale warmth of the corridor. The blonde stepped closer, studying me like I was a puzzle she didn't entirely trust.
"He's lost a lot of blood," she said sharply. "He needs fluids. Now."
My vampire turned her head slightly. "Lydiiia?"
"I'm on it," Lydia replied, already gone in a streak of motion.
The brunette leader's gaze pinned me in place. Her eyes were blue too, but pale, glacial where the dancer's were electric. "Who are you?"
For a second I honestly forgot. My name drifted somewhere just out of reach, like a word on the tip of my tongue. "Chris," I managed. "Chris Gordon."
"He's a cop," Lydia added as she reappeared, pressing an open bottle of Gatorade into my hand. Red. Of course it was red. I let out a weak, delirious chuckle before I could stop myself. "He came in with other officers. I saw him follow a man who was following Tanya."
So that was her name. Tanya.
I took a careful sip, the sugary liquid shocking my system back toward consciousness. Around me, vampires murmured in low voices, slipping in and out of Russian like it was their default setting. The irony wasn't lost on me. Demons. Vampires. What was next—zombies filing a noise complaint?
How much could I tell them? What would they even believe? For all I knew, vampires might think demons were fairy tales. The image of me trying to prove the existence of Hellbourne to a room full of blood drinkers while they debated whether to drain me dry almost made me laugh again.
Exhaustion pressed down on me like a lead blanket. I was so tired. A tiny, treacherous thought whispered that bleeding out wouldn't be the worst way to go. No more hunting. No more running. No more waking up with scars I didn't remember earning.
The blonde's eyes widened suddenly, as if she'd overheard my thoughts. She turned and fired off a rapid string of Russian at the leader.
That was getting old fast. I'd always hated when people switched languages around me. Back home there'd been a French-Canadian father-and-son vet team who used to do it constantly, right in front of me. Drove me insane.
"Well," I muttered, pushing myself upright, "you people clearly have this under control. I'll just… go."
I stood. The world tilted. I steadied myself and took two steps toward the exit before a vampire slid into my path. He snarled, lips peeling back to reveal fangs at least two inches long. His eyes were black from edge to edge, no whites, no pupils. Just darkness.
"You go nowhere, human blood bag."
Fear hit me sharp and cold, and then, almost immediately, it turned into anger. I'd learned early in life that fear was just anger waiting for direction. Being scared never made me freeze. It made me remember.
I was small again. Too small.
Marcus's closet smelled like dust and old sneakers. The hiding space he'd built behind the hanging coats barely fit me. He shoved me inside, his hands shaking harder than he wanted me to see.
"Don't move, Christian," he whispered fiercely. "You stay here till it's clear. No matter what."
He shook me once for emphasis, the same way he had when he caught me sneaking his comic books. Then he grabbed his baseball bat from the corner, slid the panel shut, and ran from the room.
I curled into the darkness, hands clamped over my ears, trying not to breathe. Trying not to make a sound. The noises from downstairs, the crashes, the shouting, the things I never managed to forget, slipped through anyway.
Too scared to move. Too scared to help.