was to be far away from here when she finally lost it. She’d dealt with injuries that most people could only imagine, functioned in situations where normal people would have broken. But she’d never feared for herself, or questioned her own sanity, quite like this.
“I’ll…yeah. Okay,” she said, shooting one more look at an obviously puzzled Phenex before she felt the door at her back and pushed it open. A few steps and she was out in the crowded club, where everyone but the tall, muscular man discreetly stationed right outside the bathroom door seemed oblivious to the bloodbath that had just occurred. That, or it was just so ordinary to him that he didn’t care.
And no one would ever believe her if she tried to tell them, so Justin didn’t need to worry about that. She just wanted to go home.
Sofia suffered only the briefest moment of hesitation as she watched the bathroom door swing shut, her eyes meeting Phenex’s for a single, electric second. If this were somewhere else, some other night, she thought wistfully, but then stopped herself. He wasn’t human. That wasn’t changing, and she needed to get out of here before somebody decided to bite her. She straightened her shoulders, turned on one spindly heel, and walked away as fast as she could.
When she hit the front doors, heels be damned, she ran.
Chapter Five
“Have you lost your fucking mind?”
Phenex glared at Justin as a section of wall slid away on the far side of the bathroom and a group of vamps with heavy-duty cleaning supplies and a reinforced body bag hurried in as silently as ghosts. Justin murmured a few instructions to the leader of them before beckoning Phenex to follow him back into the hidden corridor.
The fallen angel sighed irritably, but there weren’t a lot of choices if he wanted to know what the vampire king was up to. He was working some kind of angle, he had to be. You didn’t just pat the witness to a vamp attack and subsequent murder, however justified, on the head and send her on her way. He’d only barely managed to keep from following her out himself. Maybe then she would have tried some of those defensive moves on him. The thought made him smile. He’d never let anyone pin him, but with Sofia, it might open the door to all kind of possibilities.
Resigned, Phenex stepped through the hidden doorway into a dimly lit corridor that he knew ran, mazelike, behind the walls of the entire building. If you didn’t know where you were going, or how to open the doors back into the club proper, you could wander in here forever. He’d heard rumors that more than one curious human had been pulled out starving and half-crazy—and he didn’t doubt them. Justin could be annoyingly soft when the mood struck him, but never when it came to security. The man was a soldier through and through.
All the more reason why Phenex didn’t get what had just happened.
Justin walked a few paces away before turning and waiting. Phenex stalked over to him, keeping his voice low.
“Well?”
Justin looked annoyed, a good sign that he hadn’t just decided to embrace mercy on the off chance it would buy him a little redemption should anyone ever manage to get a stake in him—which was unlikely.
“Give me some credit, Phenex,” Justin said. “I’m having her followed. Like I said, this isn’t the first time we’ve had to bring out the cleanup crew recently. I’m starting to think there’s an organized group of breakaway vamps trying to use Amphora as their own personal feedlot. It needs to stop before we do end up in a situation where I can’t keep the police out of it.” He ran a hand through his short crop of hair, the first time he’d let his agitation show. “You know how much this could ruin.”
Phenex did, though most of the sympathy he mustered was out of a desire to preserve his own comfortable living situation. The vamps, weres, and other night creatures of Terra Noctem needed the freedom to feed, the safe-from-human-eyes jobs, and the steady cash flow that places like Amphora provided. When it worked and everyone followed the rules, Amphora was a bridge between day and night that drew humans and supernatural beings alike. If things started to fall apart, it was going to get dangerous on both sides.
And he’d be stuck in the middle. Without making overtime, no doubt. The angels were picky