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“We can walk and talk on the way, if that works for you, Anita?” Dolph said.
“Works for me,” I said.
23
Once the doctorwalked away to find someone to help us, Dolph said, “There have been more attacks on vampires than we have personnel to send to each crime scene tonight.”
“Sunshine murders?”
“We won’t know until dawn.”
“Sorry, of course, but are you saying there were more holy water attacks?”
“No, this is the only one of those, but the attack at the Circus of the Damned is one of five where a human tried to physically overpower a vampire or other preternatural.”
“Where, and who were the other victims?”
“Hold that question, because that’s just the tip of the iceberg for crimes against vampires tonight.”
My pulse started to speed, because not all my sweeties were safe inside the Circus or with me right now. Nathaniel was dancing at Guilty Pleasures tonight. I didn’t even wait to ask Dolph; I reached out through the marks that bound us, I had to know if he was okay. I was just suddenly in his head; I had a dizzying moment of dancing onstage, body moving, muscles, fierce grace, and then he shoved me out enough for him to fall to his knees, the front of his body bowingflat to the stage, his hair long enough to spill in an auburn pool across the floor. His amazing ass was left looking bare and inviting up in the air, the thin line of his thong lost to the audience’s view. He began to use his fingertips to crawl his upper body backward until he was on all fours, but with his head hanging low so that he looked out at the audience through the long, thick fall of his hair like a red-brown jungle for his lavender eyes to gaze at all the screaming women as he crawled slowly, sensuously around the edge of the stage using muscles that we mere humans just didn’t have. Hands held money out toward him, hoping he’d choose them to pause in front of, upping the ante hoping for a touch, a taste, a moment.
He was enjoying it all, my voyeuristic boy. He loved knowing that I was just above him watching it all. He’d end the night in half-leopard form, and he’d come home to the Circus that way. He would come home to me if we timed it right and use all that built-up lust with me. He wanted me to stay and watch and had totally forgotten pushing me away earlier from Jean-Claude’s caution. I was so happy to be this close to him and nothing bad happening that I forgot myself for a minute.
A hand touched my shoulder in the room I was standing in, and I was gone from Guilty Pleasures and back in the ER. Ethan squeezed my shoulder, then drew me into a one-armed hug. He could feel that I was a little shaky from the metaphysics, the abrupt end to them, and the relief that Nathaniel didn’t know anything about the other attacks.
Dolph was still standing there patiently waiting; he was one of the few cops who knew just how tight I was with the preternatural set. He waited for my eyes to look like they focused on him and said, “Guilty Pleasures didn’t get hit. I won’t ask why you tripled the security there in the last two months, but it was enough to keep the club off this list tonight.”
“Worth all the complaints from the new guards saying they’rebored there,” I said. I clung to Ethan a little. I wasn’t sure why I still felt shaky; I could usually go in and out of connection without this much residual effect.
Kaazim said, “That was deep and prolonged contact.”
I just nodded, still resting in the steadying circle of Ethan’s body.
Dr. Boden came back with a nurse and more protective gear over their clothes. He had a doctor that he introduced as an intern. They would take us to the showers. I looked at Dolph. “How much of this is things we’re okay with civilians overhearing?”
“I don’t want to feed any of the rumors that are already out.”
“Give us directions,” I said to the intern.
“It’s not that easy to find, and you need one of us with you to get inside, in case someone asks who you are,” Boden said.
“I’ll go ahead,” Ethan said, and kissed the top of my head. He thought at me,I’ll bring you to me.
I turned and offered a kiss, which he took, soft and tender. Definitely not a friend kiss, because from the moment we’d met we had been more than that. “Always more than friends,” he whispered, and handed me to Nicky like it was a dance and I was changing partners. Once I was settled into the curve of Nicky’s body with his left arm around my shoulders, Ethan followed our guide toward the elevators.
We started after them, leaving Fortune and Echo behind to watch over the brothers. “If they wake during all this, call me,” I said.
Echo came a little toward us, so we stopped in a small space that probably put us in the way of a wheeled bed, which we moved so it could go past. “I have a question for the Lieutenant.”
We moved closer to the elevators, where Ethan and the intern were already waiting for the doors to open. When we were more out of the way of the people who were trying to help people or be helped, but still had some privacy, Echo asked her question.
“Lieutenant Storr, were there issues at Danse Macabre tonight?” She was normally head security there, and would be tomorrow, buttonight she’d been moved to protect me. The rest of her team were excellent, but they weren’t her.
“A customer started a fight with one of your dancers; minor injuries and your security handled it very calmly from the initial witness statements.”
“Which dancer?” she asked.
I didn’t bother asking; I reached out to Damian, but I was more careful this time so that I didn’t put myself inside him, instead I hovered a little in front of and above him. He looked up with the greenest eyes I’d ever seen, set in the whitest skin of any vampire I’d ever met, with long, straight bloodred hair, but that’s what happens to a Danish Viking when he’s locked away from the sun for a thousand-plus years. He was still dressed for his job as manager and entertainer at Danse Macabre, which meant he was shirtless with only a pair of black leather pants tucked into boots that covered his lower legs. It was part of an outfit that Jean-Claude designed for him; left to his own devices Damian was much more casual.
