Night Kissed (Chosen Vampire Slayer #1) - Mila Young Page 0,6

become limited. He’d spent weeks planning out the impending confrontation; its effectiveness hinged on the element of surprise. We weren’t there to engage in a spectacle. The example had already been made of their bear shifter friend—they simply did not know it yet.

Now, it was my turn.

I slipped through the main door. An acrid haze of smoke threatened to blur my vision, mingled with the thick scents of sweat and cloying perfume.

The front room was dark and looked small, despite its size. Its main source of light were the muted lamps illuminating a handful of barely-clad women on a raised stage in the center. They rotated to hypnotic beats before a throng of admirers. Money littered the floor at their feet. I looked away.

“Not your problem, Logan,” I muttered. Indeed, my problem occupied the circular booth in the back corner, which was stuffed to overcapacity with the club’s most raucous patrons. The glint of raised glasses frequently caught my eye as I made my way closer, accompanied by loud laughter. This was the group of shifters and vampires ordered here from the Seattle clanmaster to claim Anchorage from Orion. To lay his stake, not to mention the vamp seemed to have some personal vendetta against Orion. Regardless, I was about to instigate their removal.

I stepped up to the end of their table and gradually their mean dark eyes swept over to me, six or seven sets in all.

“Can we help you?” The one who spoke smiled thinly. The very tip of a hefty fang protruded from beneath the edge of his upper lip. His arms were covered in coarse hair; tufts of it poked out from the open collar of his work shirt. In the low light, he could easily have been mistaken for some kind of bestial mutant—which is exactly what he was.

“You’re making too much noise,” I said.

The daggers in their gazes would have been practically lethal, were they aimed at someone prone to fear. I just stared back and grinned.

“Who’re you?” The same shifter asked this question as well. He fought to keep his smile, but it was quickly curling into more of a sneer. “I can’t imagine you’d do something so damn dumb on purpose, boy. You don’t want to start nothin’ with us tonight, I promise.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Does it look like I’m playing?” A mortal man would have struggled to hear me over the awful cacophony of the music. To him, I knew my words rang clear as a bell.

He scowled deeply. Dark furrows materialized in his forehead. One hand, the fingers like a vise of flesh and bone, clenched fiercely on the edge of the table. “That was my one attempt at bein’ polite,” he growled. “I ain’t gonna make another.”

The shifter’s cheeks and neck flushed a deep, searing red. A feral wildness seeped into his expression, to the point where the human shape of his body felt like a deviation, a gross mismatching of forms. I smiled at the strangeness of it all.

“Something funny, wiseass?” One of the others leapt to his feet, knocking over a glass in the process. The flood of beer doused the tablecloth, dripping in amber rivulets onto the floor. Some of the group jumped back, shouting outrage over wasted drink. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. These creatures were nothing more than instinct and raw emotion. Heads empty of everything other than hunger, thirst, and base brutality.

How pathetic. These enemies of Orion’s were neither interesting nor entertaining.

“Answer me!” This one was younger than the others at the table, more rambunctious and lithe. Before I’d even had a chance to think of a reply, he shoved his way out of the booth, sending one of his companions sprawling.

A bark of warning went up from the kid’s elders. “Control yourself, boy!”

But it was too late. Blinded by inebriated rage, the boy leapt toward me, reaching with balled fists toward the front of my shirt.

He never got a chance to finish his sentence. I stepped deftly back from the side of the table. The motion unbalanced his already unsteady feet, allowing me to turn his considerable momentum against him. In one swift shift of my arm and shoulder, I condemned him to fall on the floor. He stared up at me, stunned.

“Enough!” The oldest beast had risen to his feet. His fists slammed down onto the tabletop. Silverware jumped. Another cup tipped. The club’s surrounding patrons had started to turn toward the commotion, curious and judgmental. Spittle