Page 6 (1/2)
Chapter 1
Blood Violence Sex Cheering crowds
None of it fazed Nathan Sabine anyo that he’d be co place in the hockey rink-sized arena below his VIP booth, he’d have ripped out their throat with his teeth
Hell, that still sounded like a good plan
Instead, he atching a hyena shifter rip out the throat of another hyena shifter Should have been the same-old, same-old, but one of the males hadn’t shifted out of his human form
Which hy the e, and why he was now bleeding out in the sand
Nate didn’t give a shit why the guy had wanted to fight this battle, but he had to have known he couldn’t win The fool No a orth that
Turning his back on the bloodthirsty roar of the spectators, Nate strode out of the private viewing box reserved for club personnel and wondered if it was possible to hate hiht be anesthetized to everything outside his body, but inside, he was a seething cauldron of self-loathing Soht that if he wasn’t a daywalker, a rare vaht, he’d step out into the sun and end it all
And wasn’t he a hypocrite of epic proportions, given that he’d just wondered why the hyena non-shifter had given up his life
He took the stairs down into the coht refreshments and placed bets while they waited for the next death reed had turned his stomach Noas like any other unpleasant odor the nose learned to ignore Lately, though, the stink was stronger, the result of a cohts—and the brutality—in order to maintain pace with the unrest in the underworld Fade was desperate to keep paying spectators co the violence elsewhere for free
The crowd parted for Nate, soray-skinned deht again, and Nate swung around, his black hair snapping about his shoulders, his fangs bared
“You volunteering to get in the pit withto put another set of antlers on my wall”
The normally inaudible beat of h in the sudden silence to identify the artist
The demon cleared his beefy throat as Goldfrappe Ooh La La’d its way to the end of the song “Another time, perhaps”
“That’s what I thought” Nate hadn’t been in the arena in nearly seven decades, and these ht someone else No one ever volunteered to step into the pit with him
He sliced through the throng and slipped past the two guards who kept the general public out of the tunnel separating Gladius from Thirst, the respectable half of the club coone about ten yards and taken the first corner when he heard footsteps behind him
“Boss”
Nate stopped but didn’t turn around “What, Gunnar?”
“The body, sir” The hulking olf ’s voice was little more than a rumble in the shadowy hall
“Why are you asking ?”
“He went out”
Budag, who had once been Attila the Hun’s right-hand man, was the only person besides the club oho outranked Nate, but the asole was hardly ever around Nate had no idea what the de did in his spare time, but he certainly seemed to have a lot of it
Exhaling on a curse, Nate looked up at the flickering fluorescents on the ceiling “The male is a shifter You know the rules”
Usually the dead were fed to the creatures that were kept either as bait for training or for actual gladiatorially to apartner would be driven to find the, pissed-off female to track down the male’s remains and cause trouble
“Yes, sir”
Nate continued down the hall and up a flight of cement stairs A casual observer who arrived at the narrow landing would see only a rainy screen, and after he’d ensured that no one was inside his office, he pushed on the wall, opening a hidden doorway
Fro more than a sturdy wine rack, and it made a whisper of a click as it closed Only Thirst’s top ement knew that this was one of two entrances froht club Most of Thirst’s employees weren’t even aware that behind and underneath the most popular vampire bar in North America, was the most popular blood arena in the human realm
Nate had known for over a hundred years He’d known, and he’d planned to take it down And he would, when the tiht
Self-loathing slithered through hi that tune for decades SoHis interest had been as dead as his heart
Cursing himself, he slammed out of the front door of his office and into another hallway, this one brightly lit, the walls plastered with gaudy etting their grooves on under disco balls His shoes sank into the plush crimson carpet as he strode toward the club’s public area The h hi him the illusion, at least, that he was alive
Once he went through the swinging door at the end of the hall, he was ihts strea in the darkness, and all the erotic sounds that ith a place like this The lower level was aAt the tables and on the couches lining the walls on the upper and lower levels, there wasCocktail waitresses delivered drinks under the watchful eyes of bouncers who ensured the waitresses went unmolested
That had been one of Nate’s changes when he’d been proer—a rule that no one touched the staff or he’d maim them Period
“Yo, Nathan” Marsden, Thirst’s vampire chief of security and Nate’s second in co three scantily-clad fe on the upper level “We have a situation” Marsden’s hazel eyes shifted to the hed
“Injury, overdose, or overfeed?”
“Overfeed Vic is human”
“Shit” Bad enough when a vaer with an underworlder, but humans were a lot harder to treat, keep alive, and dispose of if they died
“It was the perp’s second offense,” Mars said, as they iven the boot”
“Hope that boot was up the nightcrawler’s ass”
Mars, the only soul on the planet who knew about Nate’s daywalker status, didn’t take offense at the dig at regular va the latest in va must be a bitch for both him and the victim