All Souls' Night - Renee Rose Page 0,112

club, which is designated for high-level employees such as myself.

Mostly, vampire employees.

Technically, I guess you could say I’m one of the club’s assistant managers. I owe my loyalty to Lucius Frangelico, who owns the club. He turned me, and I call him Sire by choice, not simply because he demands it of his turned who stay with him. He is our self-proclaimed king, but he’s certainly earned and defended the title. At any time in my very long life, I could have walked away from him and not crossed his radar and been fine. Lucius values loyalty and respect, and he has those from me because he’s never done anything to betray me.

Over the centuries, he’s made me and my ‘brothers’ wealthy men and protected us. In return, we’ve helped him build his kingdom.

Now, Lucius’ main priority is his mate, Selene, and he’s delegated most of the daily operations to us, with Theophilus taking the lead.

I will not deny I didn’t see that one coming. At all.

Lucius taking a mate and turning her, I mean. A vampire turning a wolf shifter? It doesn’t happen. Except Lucius was in love, and Selene was dying.

Now?

She’s deadly, and every bit as ruthless as her king.

Meaning quite a few of us are breathing a little easier since Lucius and Selene embarked upon their extended honeymoon, leaving Club Toxic in our capable hands.

Having Selene around terrifies us, even if we’d never be stupid enough to admit that out loud. She could easily kill all of us before we could so much as share a breath.

Do you seriously think we’d want to ruin a good thing?

I can be sarcastic about my job and still do it.

Tonight, I’m dressed in a midnight blue Brunello Cucinelli jacket and trousers, with a dusky dark blue button-up underneath it. A black Stefano Ricci Africa Crystal tie finishes it off.

I like luxury. I grew up in a different time, on a different continent, literally in a different world than I now inhabit. I’ve survived. I’ve thrived.

I’ve hunted and killed and balanced my karmic scales quite a lot, thank you very much. If I want to spend my money on clothes and cars, I will.

They may not excite me but at least they make my existence comfortable.

After getting out, I lock the car and blur over to the club’s back entrance. We’re not open yet but gauging from the other vehicle in the parking lot, I’m not the first one here tonight. I punch my access code into the keypad and I am admitted.

The back door opens onto the rear hallway, where the stairwell door leading up to the office is located. I punch my code into that door as well and make my way upstairs, where I encounter a woman.

“Hello, Blue. I wasn’t expecting you to be here tonight.” It’s not her real name, but it’s what her name tag says tonight, even though she doesn’t appear to be wearing a wig.” Her real name is a protected secret.

She sits back and smiles. “Theophilus asked me to run a couple of errands for him today.”

“Ah. Are you staying?”

“Not long. Dex will be awake soon and we have plans tonight once he finishes with some business calls. I need to run one more errand, and then I’ll be back to help behind the bar for an hour after opening.”

“How’s the resort doing, anyway?”

She smiles. “Quite well. When will you let us have you over for dinner?” Her smile widens almost to a disquieting level. “You know what I mean.”

“I’ll have to check my schedule and get back to you on that.”

She softly snorts. “You’ve been saying that for months.”

I like Blue—or Red, or Pink, or Blondie, or whatever name she’s going by on any given night. Yet even though she’s human—I think—she disquiets me far more than Selene.

Mostly because I’ve never before met a human so completely unafraid of vampires and shifters. She moves among us as if she isn’t concerned about her safety. I’ve even seen her stake a vampire with a wooden pencil. More than once.

I wish I was kidding about that.

She’s also strong and fast, for a human. Especially for a female human of her size. When she was working full-time here at the club, it wasn’t uncommon for her to bounce a human out the door for misbehaving before one of our vampire staff could step in and intervene.

Dexter is a lucky vampire, indeed. Although I personally prefer men to women, both for feeding and for fucking.

Blue is