Page 67 of Suck This

“We could’ve,” Pavlov agreed. “But the reason…”

He continued to talk, but my focus had shifted to the man standing beside Acadia’s barstool.

He was twirling a strand of Acadia’s hair around his finger, and she didn’t like it.

I could tell by the straight line of her spine, and the way she kept trying to pull the hair away without actually appearing as rude.

Keisha wasn’t paying attention to her, her focus on the man at her side.

Which was why, when the man on Keisha’s side reached out and accidentally spilled Keisha’s drink, her attention never wavered from the man at her side. Keisha jumped up to avoid the spill, and Acadia reached forward for a stack of bar napkins that were conveniently in front of her.

The man at Acadia’s side used the distraction of everyone looking at the spilled cocktail to hide his movements as he deftly poured something into her drink. A fine powdery substance that dissolved the moment it made contact with her wine.

All the while he drugged Acadia’s drink, the vampire continued to play with her hair even though she was trying to sop up the mess of Keisha’s drink.

I hadn’t consciously moved, but one second I’d been in my seat staring at the spectacle, and the next I was standing next to the bar, back to Acadia, leaning the piece of shit backward over a barstool.

“Do you think,” I hissed, staring at the fear-filled eyes of one of the lowest vampires in my employ, “that I don’t see all, and know all?”

He didn’t answer, and likely couldn’t, due to my grip on his throat.

“You think to do this in my club…” I continued speaking so quietly that even the best of hearing wouldn’t be able to hear me from two stools away. No, only this imbecile would. “Only fifteen feet from where I stood.”

His wise answer?

“I didn’t see you.”

I squeezed tighter.

“Constantine.” Acadia slapped my arm. “Stop, you’re killing him.”

I ripped the fucker’s throat out. Latched on to the still pulsing larynx from his throat and tossed it carelessly to the ground.

“When he recovers,” I growled at Fox who sauntered toward us, unconcerned in the least that I’d just ripped the vamp’s throat out so carelessly. “Toss him into the cell. Every time that grows back, I want it torn back out again.”

Fox’s teeth gleamed. “Yes, sire.”

I turned to stare at Acadia who was watching me with fear-filled eyes.

“W-why did you d-do that?” she said. “He was only flirting.”

I picked up Acadia’s glass, which managed to withstand the commotion, and handed it to the other vampire. “Drink this.”

Vampires weren’t affected like humans were to substances. Though the drugs still affected us in some way, the older you were, the faster it filtered out of the system.

If Acadia were to have drunk the drugged alcohol, she would be incapacitated for hours. If I were to drink it, I would be incapacitated for long enough to cause me to be sluggish for about twenty minutes.

It wouldn’t knock me out, but it’d lessen my speed and dexterity to a mere human’s, and that could be detrimental to someone like me.

This vampire that reached shakily for the glass that had my bloody fingerprints on it, the same blood from his partner in crime, would be affected a whole lot worse than I would, but less than what Acadia would.

Though, if that’d been slipped into my drink, I wouldn’t have drunk it. I could smell substances that’d been in the glass up to three times prior.

Such as the glass I’d received tonight. It’d had whiskey in it the last time it was used, Jack and Coke the time before that, and something with coconut the time before that. In between each use, it’d been washed with a heavily scented cleaner that smelled of lemon and bleach.

It’d been dried with a rag that had been washed in Gain.

So it wasn’t often that a vampire would be tricked into ingesting something that could impair their senses.