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“Those heels are so last year.” Zee took a breath. “Is this weird? This is weird, right?”
“Indeed, it is peculiar.”
Zee downed his glass of wine in one gulp. “Imma tell everyone who I am.”
“Do not do that,” Victor advised. “We’re here to rest up, consider our next steps, and move on. We are not here to draw unnecessary attention to ourselves.”
“Easy for you to say, Fancy Daddy, but I feed on attention, and right now I ain’t gettin’ any.”
A pair of enthusiastic men stumbled against Victor, knocking him into me. “Wow, you guys didn’t try hard, did yah?” The blond on the left laughed. “You a vampire or an accountant?”
The pair high-fived each other.
Zee’s tail lashed. He stepped forward, but stopped when I laid a hand softly on his hip. We didn’t want to start anything. If we ignored them, they’d soon get bored and move on.
“That a wig, bro? Or are you like Native American?” Blondie got all up in Victor’s stoic face. “Where’s your pointy teeth?”
“Shows us your fangs!” the dark-haired friend urged.
They’d clearly had too much wine, which was probably why Victor hadn’t reacted . . . yet.
I may have stopped Zee from stepping in, but I was a heartbeat away from doing so myself. Victor could take care of himself, though.
“C’mon, you got fangs? Did you forget th—”
Victor hissed, baring fangs that gleamed as deadly as daggers, and the two tipsy bros grabbed hold of each other and bolted, stumbling into the crowd that soon swallowed them up.
“Perhaps I shall go hunting later,” Victor said, slow-blinking after the pair of idiots.
Zee snorted, but his tail lashed. “Do you think the barman serves cocaine chasers?”
“I doubt it.”
“Fuck I miss Tom.” Zee gulped his wine.
“Zodiac,” Victor rumbled. “Has it occurred to you that you likely have a drug addiction?”
“Pfft, drugs are great. How else am I gonna deal with my PTSD, ADHD, and all the other acronyms I’m collecting?”
“Therapy?” Victor suggested.
Speaking of therapists. “We could call Tom?” I suggested, steering clear of the drugging-customers conversation. “See how he’s getting on.” I knew from first-hand experience that the SOS Hotel did not run like a well-oiled machine; it ran like a possessed wreck about to blow at any second.
“Last time I called him he told me to go hang myself by my balls, so imma pass.”
“That’s his love language.” Tom was still angry we’d left him behind, but someone had to run the hotel in our absence.
Zee snorted. “Imma go find snacks so I can eat my feelings.”
“Zodiac,” Victor said in his daddy voice, pulling on Zee as though the word was a physical leash. “Be careful. There’s an underlying sense of deception within these walls, the motive for which has eluded me.”
“Always am, Fancy Fangs.” Zee saluted, two fingers at his right horn, then plowed into the crowd. As the tallest person in the room, he should be easy to keep track of. However, it was strange to see multiple wing-tips and Zee-horns in the crowd too.
“Adam, now that we are presumably some distance from your brother, have you considered how we might defeat him?” Victor asked, taking a sip of the wine and wincing, then setting it aside. We hadn’t talked much in the van about my brother. There hadn’t been much to say, other than if Syros found us, Victor and Zee would be dead. And I didn’t want to think about that . . . or talk about it, or deal with it in any way.
“Oh sure, lots of considering.” I nodded and swigged my wine. We hadn’t talked about Syros, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t been thinking about him while on the road—hour after hour, mile after mile. What should I do about my psychopathic brother who was back from the dead and really wanted to eat me, Victor, and Zee, and probably everyone else on this side of the veil too? Dragons weren’t known for their peace-loving qualities. We mostly just took what we wanted and ate anyone who stood in our way. There had never been a nice dragon . . . until me.
Even I wasn’t all that nice sometimes.
