Page 67 of Throwing Shade
I held that staring contest longer than any sane person should before power-walking through the rest of that unsettling sculpture garden and around the club, which occupied roughly a city block.
When the front door slid soundlessly open to admit me, the bouncer inside got up off his stool and walked to the entrance, frowning. He couldn’t see me, but the motion sensor had detected my presence. I added that fact to my mental indexing. Did they detect vampires or had someone else checked out my property the other night? Someone with cloaking abilities—did Ohrists even have those?
I glided past the bouncer, out of the foyer where bass and drum rumbled up from the black tiles, and into the packed club. My mouth fell open.
The outside walls curved into a mural on the ceiling of the night sky, its inky darkness revealing itself as nuanced smudges of indigo and midnight blue like a kiss of silk from the heavens.
Cozy seating areas were grouped in the shadows outside the flickering glow cast by lit torches mounted on the glossy stone walls. The firelight softened the cavernous space and created a false intimacy that beckoned and seduced as much as the vampires prowling the room and flirting with patrons.
Ohrists worked here along with the undead. The human staff wore shirts with “Rome” embroidered in black over their hearts. The play of torchlight on the red fabric cast a bloody wash over the employees, which I had no doubt was intentional.
Some Ohrists took drink orders, others bartended or bussed tables. Two men worked to restore a stone gargoyle water feature set within a tiny oasis of greenery. While each and every human employee was ridiculously attractive, they didn’t compare to the otherworldly beauty of the vampires of all different ethnicities. Even the occasional ugly vamp had an incredible sexual allure.
The faintest hint of some exotic musky spice wafted out from air vents, and my nipples tingled. The vampires outside had leashed their full potency, but in here, even I wasn’t immune to the intoxicating presence of the fiends.
Rome sold the not-so-thinly veiled promise of sex and beauty set against a dangerous edge. This entire territory was a theme park allowing Ohrists to flirt with the dark—
I knocked into a table.
A male vampire was feeding off a young man in a shadowy corner, their bodies writhing together. Even fully dressed, it was provocative and carnal, especially when the human shuddered and cried out.
I snapped my mouth shut, and spun away, my cheeks flushed, and came up against another human/vampire pair leaning against the wall. Humans didn’t have fangs so why was he sucking on her—oh, that’s how that worked.
There was a fine line between playing a game of seduction and crossing the line into something more hardcore. Not everyone indulged to that extent, but there were enough couplings that I tried to keep from peering into the darker recesses of the room as I cleared each level.
I came out of one stairwell and almost tripped over this young woman who lay spread eagle on a sofa, her dress pushed up and a vamp sucking on her inner thigh. Her eyes were unfocused and her hips arched. Was this part of the allure for Jude? Were all these people willing participants?
Had Laurent been seduced or coerced into a similar act, his lithe body rolling in a slow grove and a dreamy cast to his expression?
My fingers drifted to my lips and I shifted to ease the restlessness inside me.
The vampire raised her head and wiped a trickle of blood off the corner of her mouth, wiping it on the sofa.
Now all I could think about were cleaning supplies and how often this place was disinfected.
When I didn’t find anywhere this “Zev” the vamp had mentioned might be stationed, I made my way downstairs to the dance floor mostly convinced that I’d leave here safe and sound with Laurent. After all, every vampire was dangerous, as were Ohrists for that matter, and not one of them had noticed me here. My cloaking magic would get me out of anything.
A vampire violinist in a semi-translucent floor-length gown stood on a high platform at the far end. Two torches burned on either side of the mad fiddler, her body weaving in wild abandon.
Lush, throbbing music grabbed me in my gut and hips. I hadn’t gone dancing in years, but I wished that I could lose myself in the press of bodies on the dance floor who were so tightly packed together that they sinuated as one.
The sprung dance floor was bouncy under my feet and the air was as hot and muggy as a tropical forest, condensation running down the walls. Keeping my cloaking up was exhausting and I was way over-dressed for this place. Wiping off the sweat trickling down the side of my neck, I snaked along the edges of the crowd, following in the footsteps of the large vamp ahead of me pushing through the mass of people. He held a cocktail glass in each hand in which a dark jade liquid rolled from side to side like angry waves crashing on the shore.
The beat grew faster, the dancers writhing with their arms flung high.
My skin prickled in awareness and I broke through the crowd right as a familiar figure disappeared through a nearby door.
I’d found my missing golem, and this time, I wasn’t leaving without answers.
