He'd been tailed by someone on foot when he fled the club--one of the two big dudes who'd been somewhere inside the place and evidently had seen him dealing. They might have been undercover cops, maybe even DEA, but both the dark-haired one in sunglasses and his equally intimidating companion who came at Ben like a freight train looked to be the shoot-first, ask-questions-later types.
Ben wasn't about to wait around and find out. He'd run out of the club and made a frantic, helter-skelter dash in and out of the surrounding streets and alleyways, finally ditching his pursuer long enough to circle back, reach his van, and get the hell out of Dodge.
The situation at the club was still playing through his head in a haze of confusion. Everything had happened so fast. The kid taking the jumbo hit of Crimson. The first sign of trouble, when his body began to spasm as the drug entered his system. The freakish roar that came out of his mouth an instant later. The answering screams of the people around him.
The sheer chaos that ensued.
Most of those intense several minutes were still spinning through Ben's mind in strobe-light flashes of memory, some images clear, others lost to the dark fog of his panic. But there was one thing he was absolutely sure of... The kid had sprouted fucking fangs.
Sharp-ass canines that would have been damn hard to hide, not that the kid had been trying to conceal anything when he'd let out that bloodcurdling howl and made a grab for one of the club girls standing next to him.
Like he meant to rip her throat out with his teeth.
And his eyes. For crissake, they had been glowing bright amber, like they were on fire in his skull. Like they belonged on some kind of alien creature.
Ben knew what he saw, but it made zero sense. Not in this world, not by any brand of science he knew, and not in this reality, which cast things like that firmly into the realm of fiction.
Frankly, by everything he knew to be logical and true, what he had witnessed just wasn't possible.
But logic had little to do with the fear pounding through him right now or the chilling sense that his harmless little "pharming" endeavor had suddenly veered way off the track. An overdose was bad enough, even worse that it had happened in a very public place, with him still on the premises to be identified. But the incredible effect the Crimson seemed to have on that kid--the monstrous transformation--was something off-the-charts unreal.>More's the pity, because Dante was still itching for some up-close-and-personal combat. Before the night's patrol was through, he wanted to get bruised and bloody. Call it attitude adjustment, after the clusterfuck way he'd kicked things off tonight.
Harvard, on the other hand, looked like he'd kill for a long shower. Maybe a cold one, Dante thought, following the vampire's gaze across the club, to where a petite female with a long mane of cascading pale blond hair was standing with some other humans. Every time she tossed some of that flaxen silk over her shoulder, the Darkhaven agent seemed to crank tighter. He watched her hungrily, tracking her slightest movements and looking like he was ready to pounce.
Maybe she sensed the heat of the vampire's stare; human nervous systems tended to respond instinctively to the feeling of being stalked by otherworldly eyes. The blonde twirled a length of hair around her finger and cast a sidelong look over her shoulder, zeroing in on the Darkhaven agent with dark, inviting eyes.
"You're in luck, Harvard. Looks like she digs you too."
Chase scowled, ignoring Blondie as she broke away from her pack for an obvious flyby. "She is nothing that I want."
"Could have fooled me." Dante chuckled. "What, you Darkhaven types don't do hot and interested?"
"Unlike others of our kind, I find it personally degrading to give in to my every urge, like some kind of animal who can't be brought to heel. I try to maintain some level of self-control."
There was certainly something to be said for that, Dante thought irritably. "Where the hell were you with that advice a few hours ago, Dr. Phil?"
Chase shot him a questioning look. "Excuse me?"
"Never mind." Dante gestured to a knot of clubbers near the other end of the place. Among the humans was a small group of Darkhaven vampires, young civilian males who seemed less interested in the females throwing off fuck-me vibes than they were in whatever one of the human males appeared to be peddling in the center of the rowdy crowd.
"Some shit going down in the far corner," he told Chase. "Looks like they're busting out party favors. Come on, let's go crash--"
He'd barely gotten the words out before Dante realized what he was seeing. By then, all hell had broken loose.
One of the vampires took a hit of something, snorting it hard. His head snapped back on his shoulders and he let out a deep howl.
"Crimson," Chase snarled, but Dante had already gathered that.
When the Darkhaven youth's chin came down again, he roared, baring long fangs and feral, glowing yellow eyes. The humans screamed. Chaos sent the small group scattering, but it was a clumsy break, and one of the females wasn't quite fast enough to escape. The vampire lunged for her, leaping on top of her, knocking her to the floor beneath him. The kid was lost to sudden, swift Bloodlust, his sharp teeth stretching longer in anticipation of his kill.
Two hundred people were about to witness a very bloody, very violent--and very public--vampire feeding.
Moving too fast for human eyes to see, Dante and Chase sliced through the crowded dance floor. They were closing in on the catastrophe taking place in the corner when Dante caught a glimpse of the human who was standing there holding a spilled vial of Crimson powder, his jaw slack with horror in the split second before he bolted out the club's back door.
Holy hell.
Dante knew the son of a bitch.
Not by name, but by face. He'd seen him just a few hours ago--with Tess, at the art museum.