“Awesome,” I muttered. This guy was deranged, I reminded myself again. Super-hot, but super insane. How had he talked me into this whole thing again?
I realized he was waiting for an answer. “It was kind of random,” I said with a shrug. “And not all that interesting to be honest. One night I went to sleep. And I had a dream. About Jonathan.” I paused, then added, “That’s the series’ hero.”
He nodded. “I read the book, remember?”
“Right.” I felt my face heat. Oh I remembered all right. All too well.
I cleared my throat. “Anyway in this dream he snuck into my dorm room. Clear as if I was awake. He told me his story. And he begged me to write it down.” I smiled, remembering. “When I woke up, I ran to my computer. Skipped all my classes—just typed all day long. It was as if the words weren’t mine. That someone—Jonathan, I guess—was whispering in my ear.” I turned back to Logan. “Sorry. It sounds dumb when I try to explain out loud.”
But Logan wasn’t laughing. Instead, he was staring at me thoughtfully, a ponderous look in his eyes. “Had you ever written anything before?” he asked.
“A little. Short stories, mostly. Some poems. Nothing big. I mean, I never wanted to be a writer if that’s what you mean,” I added. “I wanted to be a librarian.”
Now he laughed, his penetrating gaze raking over me. “You would have made for a very hot librarian,” he teased.
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” I said, waving him off. Though in truth I couldn’t help a small trill of pleasure spiral through me. He thought I was hot? Not that I should care, but still!
“What about you?” I asked, wanting to turn the tables. “How did you become a vampire?”
To my surprise, his face darkened. As if a storm had suddenly rolled in out of nowhere. I sank back in my chair, the laughter fading from my lips. “What?”
“Are you mocking me?” he asked in a low voice.
“Uh, I was just trying to make conversation.”
“You don’t believe vampires exist.”
“But you do,” I countered. “Isn’t that the whole reason I’m here? So you can convince me? Maybe if I hear your personal story…”
“No!”
His voice was sharp, angry. I clamped my mouth shut and inched away from him on my seat. Clearly I had pissed him off somehow, though I had no idea how.
“Sorry,” I stammered. “I’ll just shut up now.”
“No,” he said again, but his voice was softer this time. “We can talk. About anything you like. I want you to ask questions. That’s the whole point of this exercise. So you can learn what vampires are truly like.”
“But you won’t tell me your story.”
“My story is not interesting.”
Hm. I watched him, curiously as he turned back to the window, staring intently into the black night, as if it held the secrets to the universe. The way he said that made me think it probably was pretty interesting. So interesting he didn’t want to relate it to a stranger. Maybe it had been really traumatic for him. Like, he was turned against his will… Like in Anne Rice’s Lestat books—where his vampire sire had killed himself before explaining to Lestat how to be a vampire…
Wait. What was I thinking? I didn’t believe any of this bullshit! Logan wasn’t a vampire. He was simply a deluded freak. A good looking deluded freak, I admit, but completely deluded all the same.
Because, as everyone knows, vampires simply don’t exist.
Which made me wonder once again, why was I here? How did he convince me to go along with this charade? I thought back to the party. The way he’d asked. The way I’d been completely ready to say no. And then he had looked at me. With those crazy eyes of his. And suddenly I was totally on board, all in, along for the ride. Leaving my own party to go off with a strange guy without telling anyone where I was going. Sure, that was par for the course for many girls my age. But not me. I would never do something like that. I’d be too scared I’d end up being dumped in a ditch. That no one would find my body for years.
So why had I said yes? Was it simply the lure of a large charitable donation? Or was something else going on here?
A shiver ran down my spine. One word echoing through my mind. One impossible, ridiculous word—and yet I was unable to dismiss it from my brain.
Compulsion.
Logan may have thought I knew nothing about vampires. But I knew all too well this power that vampires in TV and movies and books always seemed to have. A way to talk mortals into doing things against their will. Things they would have never agreed to do otherwise.
Could Logan have used this on me somehow? Was that how I found myself here?
I shook my head. That was ridiculous. He didn’t compel me. He just offered me a challenge. And I made a very bad, impulsive choice to accept that challenge. Period. End of story.
But for some reason, this rationalization didn’t make me feel any better. And soon my arm started itching again, begging for the relief of a fingernail or blade. I was also sweating, I realized, and it was causing the thick fabric of my dress to stick to my skin. I wanted to pull my sleeve up, but, of course, I couldn’t. I didn’t need this guy to see the weakness written on my arms. And so instead I rubbed them with my hands, trying to feel the grooves on my skin beneath the heavy fabric. The marks of times before. Sometimes that would be enough. But right now it didn’t seem to be doing much good.
“Are you all right?”
I looked up. Lost in my thoughts I hadn’t realized Logan had turned away from the window. Turned back to me. He was looking at me now with what appeared to be genuine concern in his eyes. Which only made me angrier. This was all his fault, after all. Me even being here. And now he was worried about me?
“I’m fine,” I spit out. “How far is this stupid place anyway?”
As if on cue, the limo stopped. Logan smiled.
“Actually, we’ve just arrived.”
5
My mouth clamped shut. Panic flared within me. I jerked my head around to peer out the window. It was so dark it was hard to make out what was outside. I saw some lights, some movement—but it was all fleeting and blurred. Where had he taken me? And what was about to happen?
My hands clung to the car’s leather seats, my heels pressing hard against the floor. I wasn’t sure what I expected to achieve from this—it wasn’t as if I thought he would just leave me in the limo if I suddenly decided I didn’t want to go. And yet my body couldn’t seem to help offering up one last fleeting show of resistance. A vain attempt to stop whatever was happening…from happening.
The door opened from the outside. The limo driver stood there, offering me a hand. For a moment, I just stared at it, my heart pounding in my chest. Then I reluctantly reached out and took it. What else could I do?
His hand was surprisingly cold. Even colder than Darla’s usually were and she had terrible circulation. I allowed him to help me out of the limo, wobbling a little as my too-high heels sank into the dirt. But Logan, who had come around from the other side, grabbed me and helped me stay upright. I tried and failed not to notice how strong his hands felt against my body as he ushered me to the paved side road.
He turned to the limo driver, whispering something too low for me to hear. The driver nodded and closed the back door, then returned to his seat. I took the opportunity to look around, trying to gauge my surroundings. If I needed to run, would there be any place safe to run to? I should have paid more attention to where we were going in the car.
“Where are we?” I asked, my heart beating furiously in my chest. It was definitely a part of town I’d never seen before. The kind that no one in their right mind would want to spend time in…especially at night.
“Come,” Logan said, not answering my question. He once again placed a firm hand at the small of my back, leading me away from the relative safety of the limo and down the darkened street. As we passed parked car after parked car, I could hear shouting from a not-so-far-off distance. Followed by so
mething that sounded suspiciously like gunfire. Or fireworks?
No. Definitely gunfire.
“Are you afraid?” Logan asked softly, leaning down so his mouth was only inches from my ear. “Because, if so, you needn’t be.”
I shivered involuntarily as his cool breath tickled my lobe. How could this moment be so terrifying and yet so sensual, all at the same time? I tried to choke out a laugh. To break the spell. “Really? And why is that?”
“Because you’re with me,” Logan said simply. As if that explained everything.
I swallowed hard. Wanting desperately to believe him. Wanting to be a normal girl, out on a normal date with a normal guy. The kind of thing I used to do…before.
But that was ridiculous. I wasn’t a normal girl. And this wasn’t a normal date. Or a date at all, for that matter. Instead I had gone and put myself at the complete mercy of a total stranger. Something I would never, ever do.
Except, for some reason, I had.
I opened my mouth. To tell Logan I didn’t want to do this. That the joke had gone too far. That I wanted to go home. That if he didn’t take me home, I’d scream. I’d call the police. I’d—
My eyes fell upon the building in front of us. I squinted at it for a moment, wondering why it looked so weirdly familiar. It took me a moment, but then my eyes locked onto a small neon sign at the entrance. A sign that read: FANG.
“Wait, is this Club Fang?” I asked, curious despite myself. After all, I knew all about this place. My readers were always talking about it on my Facebook page. A lot of them were regulars. From what I could tell it was some kind of chain of clubs—goth clubs on steroids. Like, the kind of place someone would go if they fancied themselves a vampire or other creature of the night.
Or wanted to prove to a certain author that the aforementioned creatures existed, I supposed.
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, relief coursing through my veins. I can do this, I told myself. It’s a public place. There will be plenty of people around. Maybe some will even be readers. And there will be bouncers to step in if things get weird…
“You know of Club Fang?” Logan asked, sounding surprised.
I turned to him. “I may be a recluse, but I still have Google.”
His mouth lifted. “Of course. Silly me.”
“So…” I looked around the building. “Do we just get in line?”
My eyes wandered down the line in question, which was actually absurdly long for a weird fetish club like this. Filled with goth kids dressed in black with various piercings on various appendages. Who knew we had such a large scene in our town?
I noted that a few of them were watching us curiously and at first I wondered if maybe they had recognized me from my author photo. That happened sometimes, especially in places like this. But then I realized they weren’t staring at me at all. They were staring at Logan. Especially the girls.
I was surprised at the shimmer of jealousy that rippled through me as I took in their hungry eyes. I mean, how could I blame them? After all, they had no idea how pig-headed and annoying he was. They just saw a tall, hot guy with a sharp jawline and high cheekbones. I wondered what they thought of me, standing by his side, as if I had some claim over this hotness. A gothic king, escorting a plain little mouse past the line and to the front of the club.
Because, it turned out, with Logan we did not just “get in line.”
In fact, when we finally reached the front door, the bouncer didn’t even hesitate. He opened the red velvet rope and we stepped across the barrier as if we belonged there. Okay, fine, Logan clearly did belong there. But he was the only one. That said, I had to admit it was pretty cool to waltz into the club as if I was someone important. I mean, I was never a club kid, but I had seen this kind of thing many times on TV. The celebrities rolling up in their limos. The velvet ropes parting as the crowd in line seethed with jealousy. And now, for the first time in my life they were seething with jealousy over little, old me!
But all thoughts of celebrity and jealousy vanished as we stepped into the club itself. Into a treasure trove of sights and sounds that defied my craziest imagination. It was huge inside—way larger than it looked from the outside. And the dinginess of the neighborhood fell away, replaced by an opulent Victorian chic décor. Almost everything here was the color of crimson. From the ornate velvet upholstered couches to the shiny metallic floor. Even the lights that bounced off the ceilings and walls were mostly red.
And then there was the music. Loud, dark, haunting. Goth music, I assumed, thinking back to when one of my fans had put together an unofficial soundtrack for Maisie and Jonathan. Which, at the time, I had found pretty amusing; after all, Maisie and Jonathan may have been vampires, but they were definitely not goths. In fact, Maisie had a thing for Taylor Swift. And Jonathan? Well, he liked old school. Like really old school. Bach, Beethoven…
“So,” I said, trying to raise my voice to be heard over the music. “This is a vampire club?”
Logan shrugged. “Partially,” he said. “They allow humans to come here, too.”
“What, as hors d’oeuvres?” I couldn’t help but quip.
He frowned, looking a little insulted. “As customers,” he corrected, stiffly. “There aren’t enough vampires to keep the place open on its own. Not to mention vampires hardly ever pay a cover.”
“Of course they don’t.” I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.
I looked around the club, trying to take it all in. The place was packed with goth kids (and vampires posing as goth kids?) dancing to the beat. The dance they were doing looked something akin to having one’s foot stuck in a mud puddle. They’d carefully remove the foot, lifting it up into the air, then setting it back down again, only to repeat the movement with the other foot. Meanwhile their arms were going wild, waving in the air, as if they were some weird brand of sorcerers casting a spell.
“So…who are the vampires?” I asked. “They all look alike to me.”
Logan scanned the room for a moment before answering. “I think everyone out here is mortal,” he said. “Vampires don’t always come out to the main floor. They usually prefer…the back rooms.”
I tried to suppress a shiver running down my spine. The way he said “back rooms” sounded menacing, though I wasn’t sure why. Most clubs, after all, had a VIP room, right? Well, maybe this was a VIV room—for very important vampires who didn’t wish to mingle with mortals.
“So what’s in the back room?” I asked, against my better judgement.
He smiled. “Come,” he said. “And I will show you.”
And so I followed him through the crowd, trying my best to dodge all the dancers and those carrying drinks. I had to admit, it looked like a pretty fun club—if you were into this sort of scene. I would have to tell my readers next time I went online that I had come here to check it out. They would be so excited. After all, they wanted nothing more than for me to be one of them. For once I wouldn’t disappoint.
Finally, we reached a back door, guarded by another bouncer. This guy was even bigger and burlier than the one outside—who had been pretty intimidating in and of himself. But he only smiled when he saw Logan and I, reaching out and opening the door.
“It’s good to see you again, Sir,” he said, addressing Logan with a stiff bow. “It has been far too long.”
Logan gave him a respectful nod of his head in return. “Good to see you, too, Francis,” he said. “My duties for the Blood Coven have kept me quite occupied.” He smiled. “No time for getting my groove on.”
“Blood Coven? What the heck is a Blood Coven?” I asked as we stepped through the door. Logan waited for it to close behind us before turning back to me.
“A coven is a vampire’s family,” he explained. “They are also a political entity that resides under the jurisdiction of a larger vampire consortium, made up of coven representatives that decide the laws of the land.”
“You guys have an actual government?” I asked. “That’s
pretty hardcore.”
“Pretty necessary,” he corrected. “If we are to survive as a species and live amongst humans, we need to retain law and order amongst our kind.”
“Sure,” I said, resisting the urge to roll my eyes again. It was crazy how serious these people took this game. I mean I’ve seen some pretty intense fandoms, but this was on another level entirely.
We walked down a hallway, painted (predictably) all in red. The further we got, the more nervous I started to feel and my hands began to tremble. Back in the club I felt relatively safe, surrounded by people. Now I was once again alone with a guy who seemed to truly believe he was part of some vampire cult. What was I going to find at the end of this hallway? And would I ever be allowed to leave?
Finally, the hallway ended, opening up into a large waiting room. At least it looked like a waiting room, complete with couches and coffee tables and magazines. There was even a receptionist, sitting behind a desk, reading a novel. And each wall had multiple doors. Like little booths or something.
I frowned. “What is this?” I asked.
Logan gave me a wicked smile. “The dining room,” he replied.
“The what?”
“Where vampires feed?”
Ew. I wrinkled my nose, realizing what he was implying. I had tried to tell myself that maybe these vampire wannabes didn’t actually go so far as to drink actual blood. But who was I kidding? Of course they drank it.
“So, what? You drag humans back here and suck them dry?” I asked, my stomach starting to feel quite queasy. I really hoped I wouldn’t suddenly be told I was on tonight’s menu.
He snorted. “It’s a bit more regulated than that,” he said.
“Regulated blood sucking? Now that’s a first.”
“Actually it’s been practiced for years,” he corrected. “I mean, think about it. You can’t just grab someone off the street and drain them dry. Who knows what kind of blood diseases they may be carrying?”
“Also, you know, there’s the whole first degree murder thing,” I added.
He laughed. “Yes. Also it’s murder,” he agreed. “And if the cops started finding a bunch of dead bodies in alleyways, drained of blood, they might start getting suspicious.”