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Chapter One Hundred Eight

CARMINE

—Luna went in with the donors.

I can’t get to her

That’s the last of the string of texts from Orlando. They started coming in right after Ario’s. She’s managed to get herself into trouble with four men in the club to protect her. Until now, I enjoyed how she surprises me.

There’s no returning exactly the way I came. There’s no more sneaking through walls. I will not get in or out undetected, so I take the first stairway I find.

I should have scented her by now. I smack the lock bar on the door and enter a back room where waitstaff crowd around a bar and shout orders. I follow a waitress carrying a tray with a bottle of Macallan, a bucket of ice, and four glasses. Her brown ponytail swings like a pendulum as she walks.

Coming from behind her, I push the door open just as she backs into it.

“Excuse me,” I say, laying a glamour over her so she’s not startled. “I think I got turned around. Where does someone like me go for a drink?”

She smiles warmly. There was a time when I would have had her on her back and half drained already.

“Just follow me,” she says.

I walk beside her. It’s too slow. I use glamour to part the crowd of humans.

I still can’t scent Luna at all. Am I becoming so mortal that I can’t even scent a Strega in the same building?

And where the fuck is Amon?

The waitress heads for a bank of tables surrounded by a railing. She doesn’t need to tell me where to go. I see the door with a neon sign shaped like a single red drop of blood.

As soon as I go through that door, I stop being just another guy in a crowd. I am exposed.

Without hesitation, I leave the human space and enter vampire space. The bouncer takes one look at me and waves me through to the lounge.

Ario grabs me as soon as I cross the threshold. “Viaro saw her coming down the ramp.”

Luna stands in the display with the number 6 lit above her. She’s nervous.

“Fuck.” He looks at his phone. “I got outbid.”

I’ve been to clubs before. I know how this goes. My nerves go on high alert. The surface of my skin tingles and my breath gets sharp and hard. Everything gets brighter, redder, louder.

This will not happen.

I will throw my body on hers. She will not be touched.

“Capo, are you okay?”

Luna moves slowly across the span of the two-way mirror. The orange of her dress is washed out by the lights, but her eyes are bright and brave.

No one will put out her light.

None will come between us.

I’m in a room full of my kin, any of whom would tear her apart and thank me for the meal.

“Who’s the bidder?” I bark at him.

“You’re not gonna like it.”

“I already don’t.”

Ario tilts his head toward an entourage of four Viking vampires at a table. I know them.

The man furiously bidding is a king.

I don’t think I have the strength to kill two kings tonight, but I will kill the first one who touches her.

Where the fuck is Amon?