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Ethan didn’t have a death wish, but he certainly wasn’t going to let these assholes hurt Marcus or Bel or anyone else. He had to find a way to quickly warn Marcus, and then he needed to get the hell out of town. He’d made some good money working for Marcus, but not nearly enough to easily disappear.
Lying on the floor, he wracked his brain, trying to think if he had anything that he could sell for some quick cash. His one luxury item was a laptop, but he knew he couldn’t get much for it since it was already two years old. His cell phone was the most basic of smartphones and definitely wasn’t worth much.
Fuck. What the hell was he going to do?
He needed to tell Marcus the truth. He had to come clean so Marcus could take steps to protect himself and his family. After that, Ethan could worry about his own ass. He had enough money for a bus ticket. Once he got to a new city far from here, he could maybe worry about things like where he was going to sleep and how he was going to eat.
He’d screwed up, but he still had a chance to make it right.
To hell with Carl and the League.
Chapter Fourteen
Marcus tugged at the cuff of his black button-down shirt and smoothed his hand over his deep blue tie. Matched with a pair of black slacks, his entire outfit was what Rafe would have called boring.
But Marcus wanted to be boring. He wanted to sink into the shadows and not be noticed by the roving eyes within the nightclub, but there was no chance of that. Marcus rarely made appearances at The Bank, and when he did, the others always seemed to take notice.
The Bank was an exclusive bar that catered only to vampires. But that didn’t mean only vampires were roaming the club. Humans worked as servers and entertainment.
There were more than a few personal pets wandering around, their flashy collars reflecting the dancing lights. The idea of pets was something Marcus had always struggled with. The human was well aware their owner was a vampire, and they just willingly served as an in-house source of food, sex, and other entertainment. The pets even had their own society of cliques and rules. The most expensive and extravagant collars proved that the pet was highly valued by the master.
But what they were all seeming to ignore was that pets didn’t last long. Humans weren’t meant for that much constant blood donation, and vampires tended to play too rough. The idea that the master would turn the pet into a vampire was an absolute fairy tale. There was no happy ending. After a while, pets disappeared and no one talked about it. It ruined the fun, endless party image.
It made Marcus glad that he and his brothers never indulged in such things. Rafe liked to dress up his playthings and one-night stands in fancy collars, but those weren’t true pets. Those people didn’t know what they were playing at, and they were shuffled out his door the next morning with no clear memory of what had happened.
The few humans moving around him tonight either worked at the club or belonged to someone else, but they all had the same job: to be a source of fresh blood. And every last one of them within the club was a willing donor. At least, that was what the law said. Marcus wasn’t entirely convinced, but he had bigger problems to worry about besides whether some of the humans had been coerced into their servitude.
Colored lights flashed around him and bodies writhed in time to the throbbing bass of the music pumped from the speakers at the far end of the large room. Marcus wove his way through the crowd, his eyes constantly skimming for familiar faces. Particularly, threatening faces. There was no sign of Meryl or Cain so far, but there were others who were not fans of the Variks, and there were more than a few who were not fans of Aiden, which naturally made them enemies of the Variks.
When they’d decided to follow their mother and become vampires, not one of them had contemplated the notion that they would have to find a way to maneuver through an entirely new society with new rules and new politics. It wasn’t too different from human life, but it definitely had the potential to be bloodier.
At the back of the long room, he climbed a set of old wooden stairs that creaked under his feet. There was a set of double doors that were opened by a pair of men in tuxedos.
“Good evening, Mr. Varik,” they intoned at the same time. Marcus gave a small nod as he walked through.
A soothing hush fell over everything as the doors were closed behind him, blocking out the noise from the first floor. Where the nightclub was loud and garish, this club on the second floor was polished and ordered. The floors were covered in a thick burgundy rug that seemed to soak up the noise while cushioning feet. The walls and doorways were all covered in rich mahogany wood. The club reminded him of the exclusive clubs that he was a member of while he lived in London nearly two centuries ago. Back when he’d still been human.
