Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [31]
The were exploded into my consciousness and I snarled. The bartender stopped his fumbling with my zipper and stared, eyes wide.
I latched a hand onto the back of his neck, so hard I could feel the twin tendons curl under my fingers. Then I drove my knee into his crotch and held it there, crushing him in a vise until he screamed, which was almost immediately.
“Gods damn it!”
I kneed him again, with all of my were strength. “The gods have very little to do with this, you son of a bitch.”
He howled and folded like a hastily erected tent, limp on the floor, shaking so hard I thought he might have a convulsion. I can’t say I would have stepped in if he did.
I hauled him up, his right arm in a textbook restraining hold, and pointed him to the door. “Unlock it.”
“The … the key’s in my pocket,” he whimpered, tears streaming from his eyes. “You bitch, you killed me…”
“You’ve still got one working arm, so I suggest you use it.”
“It hurts!” he moaned.
“Of course it hurts,” I agreed. “Testicles are fragile, aren’t they? Now open this door with that key, or I open it with your head.”
He managed to fumble out the key and throw open the door, exposing us to the noise and crush of people once again. Shelby rushed over to us. “What the Hex happened?”
“She assaulted me!” the bartender howled. “I want the police!”
“You tried to assault me first,” I said, “and we are the police.”
“Jesus,” Shelby said. “And you got on my case for calling attention!”
“Sorry that getting mauled wasn’t on my agenda for the evening,” I snapped. “Hey, spitwad, where’s Samael?”
“In the back room,” he moaned. “He’ll be with clients.”
I twisted his arm to give him a little impetus. “Take us back there.”
He complied, staggering but managing to stay upright. He was just damn lucky it wasn’t close to the phase, or he’d be wearing his crotch as a hat.
The back room was an innocuous door located behind the cage that simply read PRIVATE. The chained woman had been replaced by another, a redhead, and the line was still just as long.
The bartender knocked at the private door. “Not a word,” I warned him, ratcheting up the pressure on his wrist. He cringed and nodded.
After a long moment the door swung open and a topless woman with electrical tape crossing out her nipples peered at us.
“Robbie, you’ve got to stop letting the pretty ones use you so,” she said with a smile quirking her lips. “Samael is going to be most displeased to be disturbed.”
“We’re sorry, really,” I said before Robbie could open his mouth. “Please. We just want to talk to him.”
She looked me over, tongue protruding slightly between her lips, and I felt dirtier than if I’d just won a wet T-shirt contest judged by longshoremen.
“Come in then, you beautiful hot thing,” she told me. I shoved Robbie back into the crowd and went through the door, Shelby following. If being a beautiful hot thing to a Wendy O. Williams clone was what it took to finally have some answers, then a beautiful hot thing I was.
“I’m hot too,” Shelby groused as Wendy led us through a small foyer into what had, at one time, been a walk-in freezer and was now draped with velvet and lit with the same smoky pink as the rest of the club.
“Shelby? Really not the time,” I told her.
“Some ladies to see you, dearest,” said the woman, and she ushered us in.
My first look at Samael was sort of a letdown—he was average height, muscled but nothing special, wearing leather rock-star pants sans shirt and a dainty leather Lone Ranger-style mask. There were no tattoos, no scars, not even an earring.
Then he faced me, and I found myself looking into eyes as cold as a winter ocean. His mouth was just slightly too large for his face, which made him look obscene and mad all at once. Beside me, Shelby’s scent spiked from nerves to pure fear in a jet of copper.
“Ah,” he purred, setting down the flogger he held and extending a hand. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Pick the last thing on earth I would