He looked across my body. I might have thought he was checking me out, but he’d had plenty of time to do that already and hadn’t even tried. Besides, his gaze was more assessing, calculating. Like he was looking at a weapon. I paused uncertainly.

He pushed the second drink at me. “Drink.”

“What is it? Some kind of angel drink?”

“It’s vodka. With a little magic added in.”

I stared into the glass. Good enough for me. I threw back my head and emptied the magic vodka down my throat. It burned even worse than regular vodka.

“This is some nasty shit,” I told him, coughing.

“Do hurry,” he replied. “The girl doesn’t have much time before the vampire kills her.”

“Then why don’t you help her? That’s your job.”

“And this is your test,” he said coldly.

Cursing the inhumanity of angels, I pushed away from the bar and headed for the door that led to the bathrooms. He just sat there, watching me. Growling under my breath, I opened the door into a dark hallway. As I entered the ladies’ room, I heard a wet slurping noise. I could see feet shuffling in feeble protest under one of the stalls. I paused in the doorway, considering my options.

If I attacked him outright, the victim might get hurt. I had to lure the bloodsucker out of the stall. And to do that, I needed to present him with a more appealing target. With that decided, I allowed the door to slam shut, then I walked across the bathroom, my boots echoing off the tiled floor.

The slurping ceased. I stopped in front of the sink and turned on the water. I heard the brush of fabric, like he was wiping his mouth against clothing. He slid out of the stall, and I turned around. He was blocking my view of the inside of the stall. I hoped the woman was ok.

The vampire swaggered toward me, smiling. He had that glow vampires got after feeding, like their skin was shining from the inside.

“Hey, darling,” he said, trying to dazzle me with his charming smile. I didn’t see any blood on his mouth, so he must have wiped his mouth on his victim’s clothes. Yuck.

He was moving like he was a bit drunk. Must have been a new vampire. It took more than sipping on one victim to get an older one drunk. And this one was clearly drunk. Good. It would make him slow and sloppy. Maybe I would even survive this.

“Hello,” I said, smiling back. “Looking for a good time?”

I brushed my hair off of my neck. His gaze darted from my throat, to my hair, then back to my throat again—around and around again, like he couldn’t decide which one he wanted more. His eyes did eventually hone in on my pulse. Which was really pounding fast right at the moment. I tried to calm myself. Getting nervous would just make my blood pump faster, which would only excite the vampire even more.

He glided forward, closing the distance between us in an instant. Some people would have been impressed, even awed by that, but those people were too blind to see vampires for what they really were: monsters.

The monster before me reached out, brushing his hand down my hair. “So beautiful. Like a silver waterfall.” A smirk quirked his lips. “Shame I have to stain it.”

He dipped his head to my neck with leisurely slowness, apparently confident that I would be easy prey. I loved to prove people wrong. Before his fangs had descended, I smashed my knee hard into his groin. As he doubled over, I sidestepped and pushed him headfirst into the mirror. Glass shattered, pouring all over the sink. Dazed, the vampire stumbled back. I grabbed one of the mirror shards and stabbed him in the neck. He howled with rage, blood gushing out of the wound. He staggered forward like a beast, and I ducked to avoid the heavy swipes he swung at my head.

“You will pay for that,” he snarled, tearing the shard out of his neck.

He rushed forward, trying to grab me, but he was still too dazed and drunk. Though the rage was quickly burning off the blood high. I didn’t have much time. I grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall and sprayed him in the face. Sometimes a strength could be a weakness. The vampire’s enhanced senses meant he felt the pain that much more. He howled in agony, blindly scratching at his eyes. I swung the fire extinguisher, hitting him hard over the head. He crumpled to the floor.

I was about to check on the victim when two more vampires entered the bathroom from the other door.

“Hey, Derek, are you done suck—”

The new arrivals froze when they saw the unconscious vampire at my feet. I had a split of a second, and I took it. I barged out of the first door, sprinting down the hallway to enter the main club area. The vampires were hot on my heels, shoving dancers and drunks aside to get at me. The crowd scrambled, people fleeing for the exit, knocking over speakers, chairs, and one another in their mad dash to be the first one out the door.

The vampires went straight for me. I jumped at the bar. The bartender had abandoned his post when the mayhem hit the dance floor, so the bar was empty. I slid over the top and ducked for cover as a vampire’s fist swung at me. I smashed a bottle down on his hand, drenching him in liquor. Then I reached for the matches under the counter and set that bloodsucker on fire.

He stumbled back, then ran for the nearest wall, trying to put out the flames by banging himself against it. Repeatedly. I left him to it, and poured another bottle of alcohol over a dish towel, which I set ablaze as I tossed it over the other vampire’s head. He tried to pry it off, but the flames had already spread across his body.

The two vampires ran around the now-abandoned club, howling and shrieking and burning. The flames wouldn’t kill them—they were too resilient for that—but it did keep them busy. I grabbed a hot saucepan from the cooking area and knocked one, then the other, over the head with it. They fell to the floor.