Page 31 of The Mermaid’s Bubble Lounge (Sam Quinn #8)

THIRTY-ONE

My Clothing Doesn’t Require Ventilation, Thank You Very Much

Clive patted my hand, which I knew meant he wanted me to wait for him. Cadmael and Vlad got out and went to the site of the second murder, checking the area around the dumpster. Clive opened my door and held out his hand to me.

“I’m sorry I made us late.”

He kissed the hand he was holding and then tucked it in the crook of his elbow. “You didn’t. We can check out the area Meri told you about after the others leave.” He placed his hand over mine and I nodded, letting out a shaky breath.

“Right. Okay.”

Clive didn’t bother with the dumpster. He walked us to the front door of the club. The other two must have caught up because Vlad opened the oversized door for us. I didn’t realize my head was down until I heard Clive’s voice in my head, Chin up, darling.

When I looked up, I saw Nerissa, the mermaid owner of the nightclub, heading toward us. “Good evening. I’m so glad you were able to join us.” She moved in to kiss my cheek, which was super weird as we weren’t on cheek-kissing terms, but she whispered, “Two at the bar. Don’t know them. Be careful.”

Clive turned at that and then I could see him cataloguing everyone sitting at the bar.

“Nerissa, thank you for making room for us.” He slid me to his other side so he could kiss Nerissa on the cheek.

He did it so effortlessly, so charmingly, you’d never clock it unless you were me and knew he was putting himself between me and the bar.

Nerissa gestured us forward. “The rest of your party is straight ahead.”

“Thank you,” he said, wrapping his arm around me. Middle of the bar. Two men. They smell of elven steel.

Shit. Did we just walk into two of the king’s assassins having a cocktail?

No. See the way their eyes are darting around. One of them is watching the vampire table, the other just saw us and elbowed the partner. They were waiting for us.

How did they know we were coming?

Excellent question for later. In the meantime—he gave me a fast, hard kiss—don’t die.

If anything happens to me, save the jewelry.

You’re not funny.

We’d been walking toward the bar, our bodies loose, not projecting our awareness of them.

The two men slid off their stools. The room was quiet. I spared a glance at the rest of the nightclub and saw patrons frozen, some in speech, some with forks on their lips, some mid-twirl on the dance floor.

Okay. We were doing this. Clive and I spread out to give ourselves room. I snatched the axe off my back.

One of the fae men flicked his eyes at Clive and then at Nerissa, hissing, “The king will hear of this.”

“Not if you don’t survive,” she replied, stepping back into the shadows.

Oh. It wasn’t just the humans who were frozen. The vamps and the fae servers were as well. Nerissa had left Clive and me free so I’d have a fighting chance.

Nerissa told them we were coming, Clive said.

I got that. I tossed my little handbag to the side at Vlad’s feet. But she’s also the one trying to help.

“That’s not yours,” the one on the right sneered at me, staring at the axe.

They were both tall, broad-shouldered warrior elves.

They’d made an attempt to blend in, wearing black dress shirts and black pants.

One had light brown hair and the other’s was white-blond.

That was really the only difference between them.

Both were inhumanly beautiful and both looked pretty excited about handing me over to the king, or short of that, killing me on the spot.

“I beg to differ,” I said, spinning the handle. “I won this from the dwarf who tried to kill me. The axe stayed with me when his dead body returned to Faerie. It changed alliances. I have an elf’s sword at home too. Are you sure you want to do this?”

We need you in god-mode, Clive said in my head, referring to the hyper fast gear I can sometimes shift into. I focused on needing to protect Clive from harm, which usually helped me access it.

I’ll try.

Try hard.

The one closest to me lunged and Clive dove, taking the elf down before he could get his hand on me to abduct me to Faerie or swing his sword to decapitate me. While they fought, the other one leered and flipped his sword in his hand.

“Alone at last,” he smirked.

Razor-sharp claws slid from the fingertips of the hand not holding an axe. Heart racing, desperately hoping that Clive had it, I let my eyes go wolf gold and my jaw elongate to hold my wolf’s teeth.

The elf took in my altered appearance and displayed a moment of fear. It was instantaneous, but it was there. I wasn’t running away. I wasn’t following his script.

“Your boss is obsessed with me,” I told him, my voice still clear, though my jaw had reshaped itself. “It’s embarrassing.”

His sword was slicing through the air toward my head and the world slowed down. God-mode engaged. I blocked his sword with my axe, knocking it back while I leaned forward, my claws digging into his face.

He leapt back, shocked, his face in ribbons, and then he charged. We went at it, back and forth. He jabbed under my arm and I felt a breeze. My cardigan was catching strays.

“This is Chanel, you asshole. You’re paying for that.”

Nonplussed, he sidestepped and aimed for my heart. I did a disarming move that would have made sense if I too was wielding a sword. It worked with the axe, mostly, though I felt the sting on my wrist that meant I’d been cut. Thank goodness I was wearing black. It forgave so much.

I didn’t feel Clive’s fight behind me. I wouldn’t look, couldn’t take my eyes off my opponent, but it felt like that fight was over. I didn’t feel crushing grief or irreparable pain, so I hoped Clive was fine.

The elf I was fighting looked over my shoulder with an expression of shock, but I wasn’t born yesterday. He wasn’t distracting me.

When he leapt forward again, I spun out of the way, grabbed his arm, yanking him forward, and then swung my axe at his back while he was off balance.

Thankfully, it hadn’t been a ploy on his part.

He really was off balance, so when I swung, my axe connected with his flesh and he popped out of existence.

Spinning, I braced for what I would find with Clive and his elf. Clive was watching me, his hand around the elf’s neck, choking him out just enough to make him pass out but not to kill him.

“If I finished the job, he’d reappear in Faerie. The only way to truly get rid of him is for you to kill him with the axe.”

I didn’t want to give the elf a chance to heal and extricate himself from the chokehold, so I swung for his chest and he popped out as well.

Clive was in front of me, raising my wrist so he could check the wound.

“I’m okay,” I said. “I barely noticed it.”

“That’s the adrenaline talking,” he said before his tongue traced the cut.

My body went up in flames as my skin knit together. His eyes were vamp black. He stepped into me, gathered me in his arms, and kissed me senseless. I was vaguely aware of people talking around us and music playing.

My axe was replaced in my sheath and my clutch was slapped into my hand. Vlad was behind me, hiding my axe and sheath until they disappeared.

“I smell Sam’s blood. What happened?” Vlad asked.

“Not right now,” Clive murmured, walking us to the table.

All the vamps were on high alert, looking in every direction. They’d been frozen for the action, but they knew they’d missed something.

“I had no choice,” Nerissa said behind us.

Clive pulled me closer and looked over my shoulder at our hostess “There’s always a choice. You chose incorrectly. Sam came here, at your request, to investigate for you and in return you told the king’s assassins she was coming.”

Nerissa stood tall, staring Clive down. “I’ve worked hard to maintain and grow my business. If I hadn’t told them, they would have destroyed it. I risked myself and my business to warn you. It was the best I could do.”

I patted Clive’s tense chest. “It’s okay,” I told him. “She shouldn’t lose everything because the king has it out for me.” I turned in his arms, though he made it difficult. “Thank you for the warning.”

Nerissa’s gaze bounced between Clive and me before she finally nodded, her stance deflating a bit. “Thank you for understanding. I’ll send Champagne to your table.”

“Don’t bother,” Clive bit out. When I rubbed his wrist, he added, “Sam prefers soda or juice.”

I hadn’t realized that Vlad and Cadmael were still flanking us until we started toward the table holding the Guild members.

There were only three empty chairs, but rather than getting a fourth, Clive pulled me into his lap and wrapped an arm around me.

Resting his free hand on my thigh, he spoke mind-to-mind.

When he cut you and I smelled your blood, it took everything in me not to snap my elf’s neck and jump into your fight.

Look at it this way, I responded, at least he cut the wrist that wasn’t wearing the expensive bracelet. I reached up to touch my necklace and earrings. All good, right?

You’re perfect.

“What did we miss?” Cadmael murmured, knowing everyone at the table would hear but the humans wouldn’t.

I didn’t know what we wanted the other vampires to know, so I kept quiet.

“The fae king sent two assassins to abduct or kill Sam,” Clive said. “We killed them instead.”

“I don’t understand,” Ahmed said. “What was done to us that we didn’t see any of that?”

“Everyone in the club, other than Sam and me, was frozen,” Clive replied.

Nerissa brought over a glass of cranberry juice and placed it on the table in front of me.

“Thanks.” I smiled, hoping she knew I didn’t blame her for the king having it out for me.

She nodded and disappeared back into the depths of the nightclub.

“The fae can do this to us?” Pablo demanded, outraged. “Why were we not told?”

The other vampires ignored him.

“The fae are made of magic,” I responded.

“There’s not much they can’t do. Like all of you, though, they have different gifts.

As for why you weren’t told, perhaps you don’t have a lot of fae in South America?

I don’t know why you wouldn’t know about them.

You were a Master before you became Counselor, right? ”

I felt Clive’s humor coming through our link. I love you.

A few of the vampires seemed to be fighting a smile while I drank my juice.

Vlad tapped my arm. When I looked over, he opened the flap of his jacket, flashing me the elf’s sword. “You forgot something. You’re quite careless with your weapons. I won’t always be around to pick them up for you.”

“Nice,” I said, noting the glove he was wearing to hold it.

Pablo stared at it with a strange combination of anger and hunger. “I thought you said you killed two.”

I glanced back where we’d fought and then remembered whose lap I was sitting on. “The fae hate vampires. You’re death. They’re life. There was no way an elven sword would switch its allegiance to a vampire, so the second one disappeared with its owner.”

Pablo’s eyes went vamp black, his expression darkening.

“Nothing personal, dude,” I said. “I thought you already knew how the whole vampire thing worked.” I turned to Vlad. “Is he a trainee?”

When he moved to fly over the table at me, he instead fell back in his seat, paralyzed, his eyes brown again and filled with fear.

“Don’t ever threaten to harm my mate,” Clive ground out.

“She asked a valid question. Why weren’t you told?

How very passive of you. Being Master means looking over all the supernatural beings in your territory.

Yes, there are fae in South America. They go by different names than European fae, but you have them, which you should know.

Being angry with my wife won’t hide your ignorance. ”

I thought it quite telling that none of the other vampires said or did anything to stop Clive.

Glaring at Pablo, Clive ran his hand up and down my arm.

“Do you have yourself in control now? Can I release you?” He leaned forward.

“Know this: If you ever threaten my wife again, I will hand you your final death in the most drawn out and painful way possible. Do you understand what I’m telling you? ”