Page 5 of Soulmates
He slams the glass in front of me. I forget to leave a tip.
LA is a big city. It used to freak me out when I ran into someone who wasn’t human. Now I figurelive and letlive,unless they get up in my face—or spit in my tequila. Then I might decide tolive and let die.
I slide through the crowd, edging around the dance floor. David’s sandwiched between two men, and they’ve worked their way into the corner. I climb onto a riser to get a better view, staring downa go-goboy who’d like to make me part of his act. All it takes is a quick nudge from my mind for thenearly nakedtwinkto find another dance partner, and I turn my attention to David.
His mesh shirt is missing, and his head rocks back against one guy’s shoulder. That guy’s got his face pressed against David’s neck, hiding behind a drape of long dark hair. The other guy’s working David’s front, twisting his nipples, athick thigh jammed betweenDavid’slegs.
The look onmy target’sface makes my jaw tight. Utter abandon. He circles his arms up and back, pulling the long-haired guy closer. The one in front isn’t much taller than David, but bulky and hairy and covered in ink. He leansin and whispers,and Davidgiveshima slow, dirty smile. A moment later,the three of them slip off thedance floor.
I can almost hear David’s laugh over the noise.
I don’t know where they’re going and I don’t know the layout of the club.Trackinga wolf in a relatively spacious airport is one thing.Trackinghim in a club dense with human and nonhuman scents, every one of them loaded with testosterone and lust, will be much harder. I leap off the riser and set my glass on the nearest table. Too bad. It was good tequila.Makingmy best guess at the direction they’re headed, I follow.
The club is small and narrow andclaustrophobicallypacked with men in suits, men in leather, men in satin and sequins. There are very few women. I slide around people, dampening my presence so no one will remember me. I can’t see David, but I catch a taste of wolf on the back of my tongue and shift my course.
I end up near the restrooms. They’re down a narrow,dimly lithall. The men are mostly in pairs, sometimes threesomes. They’re teasing and talking and groping. I pause, inhaling. Wolf, andmaybeanother shifter. Something feline that makes my skin crawl. I hate cats. A breeze swirls,carrying jasmine and exhaust, and I notice a third door. Working methodically, I check
each bathroom.
No wolf.
The third door, however, leads to a small parking lot behind the building. A single streetlight glares down on the concrete, leaving the perimeter in shadows. There are men out here, too, hiding in the cover of a bougainvillea-covered fence and under the spreadingbranches of an old bay fig.
I move slowly, every one of my senses on alert. I’d only seen the one elf behind the bar, but fighting with those fuckers will slow me down. And if I manage to cross one of the big cat shifters, things will get ugly fast.Come on, David Collins. I beam the message into the night.Didjahave to go whoring around righthere, rightnow?
Across the street, there’s a gas station. I catch another trace of wolf and jog toward it.There. His laugh, coming from behind the single-story white building. I find a shadow on the side, and, bending from the knees and hips, I thrust, smoothly jumping to the roof. I land on the balls of my feet and stay crouched, scuttling across till I can peer at him over the edge.
David and the dude with long hair are kissing, deep and messy, whilethe burly guy is on his knees, working onthe fly ofDavid’sjeans. I still my breathing, listening hard, but the only thing I hear is Burly bitching about too-tight pants.
I don’t want to interrupt them, but I can’t seem to helpwatching, hypnotized by David’s sensuality, the slow roll of his hips, the playful intensity of his kisses. I don’t want him. I want what he’s doing, and for a moment, I come close to losing control, leaping off the roof to find someone in the club.
Someone for me.
But if bad things happen to David, Jacques will kill any part of me the werewolves don’t destroy, so I stay. The sounds distract me, slick and sticky, low groans and muttered curses. Ibitedown on my lip, fangs aching. In a way, it’s a relief. Even this lukewarm desire is more than I’ve managed in over a year.
Time passes differently when you know you’ll never run out. When I was still human, celibacy was for priests. Now it’s a phase, a mood, a circumstance like any other. Though the living porno down below is going to speed me to the end of myabstinence.
A dense crack ends my reverie faster than a bucket of ice water. I drop down on my belly. Figures move around either corner of the building. Dressed in black, with knit caps and fabric wrapped around their lower faces, there are two of them, and they’re both armed.Sonofabitch.
Burly falls over, curling on his side in a pool of glossy black. Thelong-hairedguy screams. He plasters himself to the wall, dragging David with him so they’re standing side by side.
“Shut up,” one of the gunmen says. We’re less than a block from Santa Monica Boulevard, a few storefronts down from a jam-packed nightclub. Someone has to be hearing this.
“Both of you stand still.” The other gunman stops just outside of the puddle Burly is making. The injured man is moaning softly, piteously. I bide my time, waiting for the right moment.
“Which one of youfools isDavid Collins?”
I don’t know who said it, but it’s my cue. I’m unarmed, except that no vampire is ever completely weaponless. I drop over the side, landing between David and the gunmen. Their eyes widen, but neither backs down.
“If you see the chance,” I say, hoping David hears me, “run. Both of you.”
The space between the gas station building and thechain-linkfence at the perimeter is about eight feet. To my right is a side street and to my left is a row of garbage cans and recyclebins. The gunman closest to me laughs. He shifts his Glock from one hand to the other and, pulling a smaller pistol from a pouch on his thigh, takes aim.
“Big bad vampire come to save the day, right?”
I stride toward him. He shoots, but it doesn’t stop me. I figure a bullet’s only going to hurt for a minute. But it’s not lead,andit’s not a single bullet.It’ssilver,andit’s buckshot, and it sprays across my chest, tearing through the fabric of my suit.
“Tony!”
