"Yeah, I thought it"d be something s.e.xier," Milo agreed.
"It"s an underground secret vampire club!" Jack scoffed. "It doesn"t get much s.e.xier than that! It doesn"t need a "creative" name to entice people"
"He has a point," Milo allowed.
"I still expected more from them," I admitted.
Jack directed us to turn off of Hennepin, leading us away from the glittery lights of the gay club flashing down the street, and Milo looked a little disappointed that we weren"t going that way.
There were still people around, but much less then there were before, and without all the bright lights announcing venues, the yellow streetlamps made it seem much darker. The traffic had even dissipated.
"We"re almost there," Jack slowed his pace a bit. He held out his to me, and I didn"t understand so I just looked at him. "Give me your hand. You"re with me and I want everyone to know it."
"Okay?" Hesitantly, I let Jack take my hand, and then looked over to Milo to make sure he wasn"t going to growl and attack me for touching Jack.
"He"s got it under control," Jack explained, and then slowed down even more so we were barely walking. Even though Milo had never been there before, he stayed a couple paces ahead of us.
When Jack spoke, he lowered his voice to just above a whisper. "Listen, stay by me. And try not to get excited or think about Peter or anything. But if you do, you find me. If somebody"s gonna bite you, it"s gonna be me."
"Is that a threat or a promise?" I smiled up at him and hoped my heart didn"t start racing.
"Both," Jack laughed a little. "No. Sorry. Neither. I"m being good. But just stay by me."
"You"re making this sound dangerous." My stomach was filling with b.u.t.terflies, and I thought of the worried look on Mae"s face. "Why are we going here if it"s hazardous?"
"Its not really. I mean, it"s slightly riskier than hanging out with us in the first place," Jack relented.
"But you needed to get out and have fun. And I won"t let anything happen to you. So..." He shrugged and then stopped. "Milo. Hold up."
Jack had stopped next to a nondescript doorway in the middle of the block. The nearest streetlight had completely gone out, making it eerily dark for downtown. He squeezed my hand briefly, and I felt his temperature warm up just slightly, but it wasn"t out of control. Milo came back to where we were standing, and Jack nodded at a large black door. He raised his eyebrows, and then opened the door.
We were immediately greeted by two ma.s.sive bouncers. The door opened into narrow entryway that glowed red from the bulb above, and these two giant men were standing there, nearly 84 blocking our path inside. They just nodded at Jack and Milo, but something about the way they looked at me when I walked past a.s.sured me that they were vampires.
At the end of the narrow hall, there was a rather steep set of cement stairs leading down into what appeared to be black nothingness. The only light in the stairway came from the red one upstairs. I was terrified of falling in my ridiculous heels, but Jack was in front of me, and I was fairly certain he would catch me. We were walking into complete darkness, but that probably wasn"t a problem for most attendees. For my puny little human eyes, it was disorienting going down into that. I clung onto Jack tightly, and he never let me go.
Already, I could hear the music pulsing, some kind of heavy electronica. Jack whispered that we had reached the main level, but I still couldn"t see anything. We walked a little farther, and then suddenly, Jack opened the door, bathing us in cool, blue light and making the walls echo with the music.
Considering we were in the bas.e.m.e.nt, the ceilings of the room were amazingly high for what was undoubtedly a dance floor. There were at least two-hundred people, if not more, smashed onto the floor, dancing wildly. Slender arms waved in the air, and bodies moved delicately and perfectly in time with the music. Never had I seen movements so graceful outside of the ballet.
A long, metallic bar lined the far side of the room, and based on the bottles lining the back wall, I a.s.sumed it was an actual bar, full of alcoholic drinks for the humans. Several very attractive men and women stood behind it, manning it for drinks. The stools in front of it were full, and a line of pretty but obviously sweaty humans were waiting to get drinks.
The music was almost too loud to think, and when I turned to look for Milo, he had already disappeared into the crowd of gyrating flesh on the dance floor. Jack smiled at me hopefully and plunged onto the dance floor. The people moving all around us were stunningly beautiful for the most part. A girl with pixie white blonde hair smiled at me, and I couldn"t help but notice the fading bite marks on her neck.
Jack moved much more gracefully than I could ever imagine, and I tried desperately to keep up with him. We must"ve looked like a rhinoceros trying to dance with a gazelle, but he kept his hands on me the entire time, keeping me close to him, and that made it all worth it. The blue from the light made his eyes glow, and his happiness and enthusiasm were positively infectious.
Thanks to the speed of my dancing and the proximity of Jack, not to mention my growing joy, my heart pounded heavily in my chest.
We hadn"t been on the floor for very long when it felt like people were starting to grab at me. At first, I thought I was imagining things, and it was just the way the bodies were touching me. Then a felt a sharp p.r.i.c.k as someone scratched the back of my neck with something, and Jack stopped dancing. Fortunately, they hadn"t scratched hard enough to draw blood, or I"d be in real trouble.
He kept his arm firmly around me, and when I looked around, I realized that the crowd had definitely closed in on us.
Jack started to lead me off the floor, towards a doorway into another room. Someone touched me, letting their fingertips glide lightly down my arm, almost caressing me. I looked back quickly, and I half expected whoever touched me to slink away into the crowd, but he was just standing there. Not dancing, not moving, just staring at me. Naturally, he was perfectly gorgeous, with thick hair slicked back.. His eyes were a mesmerizing black and they burned straight through me. His skin glowed flawless blue under the lights, and there was something seductively evil in the way he smiled at me.
He must"ve had me frozen in some kind of trance, because Jack was half-carrying/half-dragging me away. When I noticed it, I managed to look away, and the way my lungs burned reminded to breathe. Then the bodies were starting to break up, and the light was shifting from blue to dull 85 red. We were slipping through a doorway into the next room, and the walls m.u.f.fled dampened the sound of the music.
This room was smaller than the last, and dressed more like a bar or a coffee shop than a club.
There were lots of doors and darkened hallways leading out of it, and I wondered where they went to. Several soft looking couches filled the room, and there was a small bar in a very dark corner. While there appeared to be a bartender standing behind it, with long red hair pulled back in a ponytail, there weren"t any bottles lining the wall, and I figured that had to be an entirely different kind of bar in the other room.
On the couch nearest to us, a stunningly beautiful women laid with her head lulled back. Her silky hair had to go down to her knees when she stood up. Her clothing with black and leather and so tight, I couldn"t believe she could move. There was an intricate black tattoo running down her arm. But the most startling feature about her was the pretty young girl she had curled up on her lap. Her eyes were closed and her mouth had curled into a state of bliss, and there was a thin line of blood on her neck. The vampire holding her looked at me and smiled stunningly as she licked the blood from her lips. There was a come hither look about her that made Jack produce a low rumbling growl next to me.
"Stop it," Jack murmured in my ear.
"What?" I asked, pulling my attention from the women to look about the room.
Scenes similar to the one the couch were playing out all over. There were some people (or vampires) that were simply sitting and talking, and some that were just making out. Everyone was so insanely attractive they made Jane look like the elephant man. Strangely, as soon as we had entered the room, everyone seemed to turn and look at us. Vampires with their stunning, entrancing eyes, kept fixing their gaze on me, and I would forget to breathe. If I wasn"t careful, I would end up suffocating.
"Stop," Jack repeated and jerked my hand so I would focus on him.
"What?" This time, I looked up at him, away from everyone in the room.
"Don"t look at anyone," Jack warned me quietly.
"Why not?" I was bewildered. Was I supposed to look at only him for the entirety of the night?
"You keep letting them... captivate you." He nervously looked over the top of my head, and I could tell he was starting to think that maybe this was a bad idea. "Don"t do that."
"Sorry," I mumbled, but I wasn"t exactly sure how to fix that.
"Don"t be sorry. Just..." He shook his head. "Come on." He pulled me off to the side of the room, to a mostly empty couch, and I was careful to keep my eyes down.
When he sat down, I sat as close to him as I possibly could. On the other side of him was a girl with hair that shown purple under the light. Her eyeliner was caked on and her lipstick was black.
When we sat down, she"d been sipping a drink and looking around like she was watching for someone, but then she turned her attention to us. She smiled, mostly at me, and her fangs were far more p.r.o.nounced than Jack"s were. Almost comically so, and I wondered if that was a natural occurrence or if she did something to make them like that. I also noticed a little silver stud in her cheek, the piercing girls got to look a metal beauty mark.
"You"re new here," she purred, directly to me, and her voice sounded like honey and helium.
86.
"Yeah," I told her dumbly, and Jack dropped his arm around me. It was supposed to be casual, but I don"t think anybody would confuse it for anything but the protective gesture it was.
"You, I"ve seen around before." She looked at Jack, narrowing her eyes at him. Her makeup was so thick and heavy around her eyes, it looked like was wearing a kind of mask, like the one superheroes would paint on. She bit her lip, carefully so the fangs wouldn"t tear her skin, and tried to place him. "Did we f.u.c.k?"
"No, I can"t say that we have," Jack replied quickly.
I tensed up instantly, which I knew was a bad idea since I was supposed to be keeping my heart rate down, but I couldn"t help it. As stupid as it sounds, it had never occurred to me that Jack had s.e.x. In some realm of my mind, I had realized that vampires probably had s.e.x, that Mae and Ezra did, and I had definitely considered the prospect of me having s.e.x with Jack, but I had never thought about it actually happening. That vampires had s.e.x with other vampires, or people. With whoever or whatever they wanted. Not only had Jack most likely bitten girls here, he had probably slept with some of them.
"Pity," the girl said, but then her eyes dropped back to me. Her smile tilted wickedly, and she was noticing the change in my heart rate. "Mmm... So you"re that kind of girl."
"What kind of girl is that?" I asked tightly.
"Where are my manners?" She laughed, a tinkley, fragile sound, like breaking gla.s.s. "I haven"t even introduced myself. My name is Violet." She held out her hand to me and only me. It was covered in one of those lace fingerless gloves that Madonna used to wear, and gingerly, I took her hand and shook it. I was tempted to look at Jack to see how I should proceed, but I thought it would be better if I made the decision on my own.
"I"m Alice." I let go of her lacy, tepid hand and looked up at Jack. "This is Jack."
"Jack." She clicked her tongue and looked at him again. "We never-"
"Nope," Jack repeated with an edge to his voice.
"Are you sure?" Violet looked dubious. "Cause I have a really excellent memory, and I could swear that we knocked boots, know what I mean?" She winked at me then and elbowed Jack playfully in the ribs, but he didn"t smile.
"I"m quite certain," he replied icily.
"Yeah, yeah! You did this thing-"
"Stop," Jack told her, his voice low and even. "I know exactly what you"re doing, and I want you to stop." She batted her eyes innocently, and he turned to me. "When she mentioned it the first time incidentally, you"re heart sped up, and now she"s just saying things to make it race. She"s just trying to set you off."
"It"s beating like a moth caught in jar," Violet smiled wistfully at me. "I just can"t help myself. It sounds so beautiful."
"I"m sorry," I mumbled.
"You have nothing to be sorry for," Jack rea.s.sured me quietly.
87.
Blushing deeply, I curled up closer to him. Even in the dimly lit room, I could see the way Violet looked at me. There was nothing but pure thirst in her eyes. I knew Jack would never let anything happen to me, and I don"t even think she wanted to kill me. But she wanted to taste me, and that was a weird thing to feel, to know that she was actually hungry for me.
"Are you gonna go back to one of the rooms?" Violet asked, turning her attention back to Jack.
She nodded her heads toward the dark doorways that led out of the room, and I wondered what kind of rooms they had back there. "I would kill just to watch. I"m sure she smells terrific."
"We"re good, thanks," Jack informed her curtly.
Violet was unabashed, though. She kept her eyes locked on me and slid up closer to her Jack, pressing her body against him. He tried to recoil, but I was at the end of the couch and he didn"t want to smash me. His body was rigid next to me, and he was glaring at her severely.
"You"re just a little treat, aren"t you?" Violet winked at me.
"Alright, that"s fun." Abruptly, Jack stood up, pulling me to my feet with him.
"We must never have messed around, otherwise you wouldn"t be turning me down," Violet laughed at him. "I can do things, for the both of you, that you"ve only ever dreamed about."
"Yep. I"m really missing out." Jack steered me towards the bar in the corner, and Violet was still cackling behind us. "I am sorry. This was a terrible idea. I"ve never brought a human here before though, so I didn"t really know what to expect."
"It"s not so bad," I whispered, and it really wasn"t. In its own, twisted way, it was kind of fun.
At the bar, Jack moved me in front of him, so my stomach was gently pressed against the wood.
He stood behind me with his arms on either side of him. Whatever was going on was making him nervous and he wanted to surround me as much as he could. Oddly enough, I didn"t feel the slightest bit anxious, and my emotions tended to mirror his. Something about being in this room, it made me strangely sedate. The bartender with the long red in a ponytail came over and gave him an odd look.
"I"d like a drink. Just whatever you have handy," Jack told him, but that only deepened the bartender"s confusion. "Do you have any vodka back here?"
"All the light drinks are out there," the bartender nodded to the dance floor. He looked at me, then up at Jack. "Are you sure you really want a drink?"
"Yep." Jack replied, and when the bartender started looking me over, Jack added, "She"s just for looks."
"Whatever floats your boat, buddy," the bartender shook his head and walked away to get a drink.
"You know what? Cancel the drink." He slid his arm around me again and took a step back from the bar.
"What"s going on?" I asked, looking up at Jack.
"This was a stupid idea, and we"re getting out of here," Jack whispered harshly. He looked around uneasily as he started to lead me away. "Everyone is looking at you like... I don"t know. I knew you were... tantalizing, but I didn"t think everyone else would feel the same way. I thought you"d just be a normal girl, but apparently you"re not."
"Know you now how I feel when we go out!" I exclaimed.
88.
"Well, I"m really sorry," Jack laughed a little.
"What about Milo?" We were just about out of the room, back to the dance floor where my words would be drowned out completely, so I stopped sharply.
"I"ll text him when we get outside," Jack suggested.
"He won"t heart it! It"s too loud. And even if he does, he wouldn"t answer. He"s having fun."
"Well... then... we"ll leave him here and he can call when he"s ready," Jack stumbled. Violet had started laughing again, and he glared at her before turning back to me.
"We can"t just leave him here!" I insisted. He might be a vampire, but he"s still my little brother, and I wasn"t prepared to leave him alone on his first night out.
Jack was going to try to reason with me, but I wasn"t having any of it. I jerked my hand away from him and crossed my arms over my chest, giving him a stubborn look that said I refused to leave without Milo. Behind us, the vampire with the long hair and the girl on her lap whistled loudly at my display, so both Jack and I turned back to look at her.