Page 11 of Blood

Some things are not meant to be associated.

“We need to hurry.” Alex grips my elbow and all but drags me into the museum. “They’re in session currently, according to their secretary. I want to make sure we meet with them before they disperse.”

Tension rocks my body. And as always, I do what I do best in a stressful situation—babble complete and utter gibberish.

“Disperse. That’s a pretty smart-sounding word. Dis. Perse. I don’t know why I think of diapers whenever I hear that word. Is it just me? Yes? No? Do you think of diapers, Alex?” I’m belatedly aware that Alex is dragging me forward, his black-painted nails digging into the flesh of my wrist. As we move through the crowd, I force myself to focus on the matter at hand. “So, how do we find this monster council? Is there a secret word we need to give security? Is it pineapple? I swear it’s always pineapple.”

Alex doesn’t even blink as he surveys the crowd. “You just need to talk about the orgy,” he murmurs distractedly. He pauses abruptly, and a frown touches his lips. “Stay here.” Before I can protest, he releases me and disappears into the flow of pedestrian traffic entering and exiting the museum.

“Stay here?” I croak out to no one in particular, my tone incredulous. “Stay here?! In the middle of enemy territory? After my mate just died? FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE!” An old man wobbling beside me on his walking cane recoils at my outburst. One of his bushy white brows quirks, but I simply hold his stare without flinching.

I meant what I said.

His wife mutters something to her husband, and both of them give me strange looks, as if I’m the one insane here. I mean, they’re the losers visiting a museum in the middle of the day by themselves. Such nerds.

I give them a flinty-eyed glare until the woman pulls the man away.

“Yeah, you run from me, bitch,” I mumble, glaring after their stooped-over forms. “Be scared. Be very scared.”

The crowd seems to move as one entity toward the security checkpoint, and like a swimmer in the ocean, I’m unable to resist the current and find myself swept along. I furtively glance over my shoulder, searching for Alex, but when I don’t see his shock of dark hair and leather jacket, I allow myself to move with the crowd.

Where the fuck is he?

Did he leave me?

I remember what he said I needed to do in order to secure a meeting with the council.

Determination fills me and bolsters my resolve.

Pushing my shoulders back, I saunter toward the security guard with a renewed sense of purpose.

Her brown hair is streaked with gray and white, and wrinkles bracket her steel-gray eyes. Her no-nonsense stare doesn’t falter, not even when I move in front of her—shoving away the five-year-old bitch who tried to cut in front of me—and flash a winning smile.

“Hello.” I glance in both directions, trying to remain inconspicuous. The last thing we need to do is alert any humans to our illicit activities. “I’m here to inquire about the...cream puff.”

She blinks at me.

“The...what?”

“The jizz and the wizz. The sausage taker and log maker. The moose and the caboose.” I wink exaggeratedly, but she continues to regard me with a stunned, disbelieving expression.

How is she not understanding?

Can I make myself any clearer?

“The hot dog choker. Boarding the beef bus. Fruit in a banana salad. Batter dipping the corn dog. Filling the cream donut. Bushwhacking. Dipping the wick. Cleaning cobwebs in the womb tomb. Using a telescope to explore the black hole.”

She stares at me.

I stare at her.

She stares at me harder.

With a groan, I throw my hands up in the air. “Orgy! Where the fuck is the museum orgy?”

Silence descends almost instantaneously, and I find myself the sole focus of over one hundred penetrating stares. One woman even goes so far as to place her hands over her child’s ears.

The security guard slowly reaches for the Taser in her belt.

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