Hard Bitten - Chloe Neill [40]
“And I don’t know you,” confirmed the blond one, his expression turning cold. That he didn’t know me was a little miracle given my previous front-page antics. “I don’t like vampires I don’t know.”
I winked. “Maybe you should get to know me. If my boyfriend approves, I mean.”
The two of them exchanged a glance, and then they made their first mistake. The blond vamp wrapped an arm around my waist and yanked me back against him. “Enough with the games. You’re coming with me.”
I raised my voice to a girlie squeal. “Oh, my God, get your hands off me!”
“Aw, fighting’s only gonna get him excited, sunshine,” said the tall one.
“Not in this lifetime,” I muttered, then dug the heel of my boot into the blond guy’s foot. He yelled out a string of curses but released me. That’s what I’d been hoping for. I took a step away, then looked over at the dark-haired guy with doe eyes.
“He hurt me.”
“Yeah, well, it’s gonna get worse.” He lurched forward, arms outstretched to reach for me, but I wasn’t about to get into a fight with some socially obnoxious, magic-drunk vamp at a party I was crashing. I was not, however, too proud to keep my shots above the belt. I put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a knee to the groin that dropped him to his knees.
“Jackass,” I muttered, before adopting the squealy tone again. “And you keep your hands to yourself!” I poutily yelled, before stepping over him—curled on the floor, groaning—and hustling into the anonymity of the crowd. I figured I had a good minute or two before they barreled after me, which meant I needed to find Jonah and we needed to jet. I couldn’t yet say whether Tate or Jackson had been right about the violence, but some of these vamps were definitely on a hair trigger—and I was in their line of sight.
I glanced around to find some sign of my would-be partner, but he was nowhere to be seen. Still keeping an eye on the girl, probably, but that wasn’t going to help me. The crowd had thickened, which was great in terms of sheltering me from the thugs, but not for finding the needle in the vampire haystack.
I decided to make concentric circles around the space. With each turn, I’d move a little closer to the middle. I had to hit Jonah eventually, and hopefully I’d also confuse the guys who thought I was nothing more than a fanged party crasher.
I made my way over to the plastic wall, which was damp with humidity, and began to move forward along it, eyes peeled for any sign of Jonah. I had to bob and weave through the crowd to make progress, but still didn’t see him.
What I did see were vampires and humans enjoying one another’s company. Random bits of furniture had been placed here and there. Vampires were draped along the furniture, and humans, now brought into the vampire mix, were draped across the vampires. They seemed more than happy to be the center of fanged attention.
And I meant “fanged” literally. A few of the humans had already been tapped—with a vampire at a wrist or attached to someone’s carotid. I worked to block out the perk of interest the blood prompted—wishing I’d had a prophylactic drink box before I’d left—and to fight the urge to shake the humans back to their senses. But their expressions fairly screamed consent . . . until I reached one of them who didn’t look so interested. I stopped short.
She sat on the concrete floor, her back against a steel post. Her knees were up, her head rolled to the side, eyes slowly blinking, as if she was having trouble focusing on the world around her.
Glamour. A lot of it, if the tingle in the air was any indication.
Humans volunteering to dabble in the dark was one thing. But this looked like something different. Something much less consensual.
Ethan had told me once that glamour was about reducing a human’s inhibitions. That a human wouldn’t do anything he or she didn’t ordinarily want to do. But there was nothing in this girl’s eyes that spoke of pleasure . . . or consent.
I’d never drunk from a human before. Of course, I also hadn’t really had the urge. My recent experiences