Page 41 of Surface Scratch
Vincent picked up his Champagne flute and swirled the bubbly red liquid solemnly. “Don’t worry, buttercup, I’ll tell Marcus what you guys need to know,” he said before pouring the remnants of the liquid down his throat. He fell back onto the couch and grabbed the Champagne bottle, forgoing the glass and taking a swig directly from it.
Caleb moved over to Tariq, glancing back at Vincent. He seemed like a completely different person than he had been five minutes prior. The abrupt shift in mood was dizzying. Were the mood swings common among vampires, or had he always been like that? They all seemed to jolt between emotions with zero whiplash.
“Come on, Caleb,” Tariq said.
They left the room and moved down the short hallway in silence, stopping right before the black curtain that led back to the main floor. “What the hell just happened?” Caleb asked.
“Human-vampire relationships are… not simple, especially not with someone as old-school as Vincent Bellenger,” Tariq said reluctantly.
“What do you mean?”
He shook his head. “That’s not my story to tell,” he said as he pulled back the curtain. “Let’s go.”
“The thing Luka did with his hands.” Caleb tried to mimic it from memory, pressing his middle finger to his chest. “What did that mean? It looked like it upset Vincent.”
Tariq pursed his lips to one side of his face like he was unsure whether he should answer. He repeated the gesture slowly and said in a low voice, “His heart hurts.”
Chapter Thirteen
Caleb didn’t bother grabbing his coat before he stepped out into the cold through the side door into the alley, the snow crunching beneath his feet. He just needed to cool off and clear his head. At least that’s what Ophelia had snapped at him through her Walkie-Talkie when she caught him zoning out again.
He was lost in his head again, and not even the fully packed club could pull him out of it. Having been in the room with what he now knew were six vampires and tensions so high was threatening to pull him into a panic attack. It was hard to reconcile all the warm, fuzzy feelings that built up when he thought of tender moments with Marcus in contrast with the violence.
Not to mention what Tariq had said about humans and vampires trying to be in relationships.
What the hell am I doing? There’s no way this ends well.
Caleb pressed his back to the metal door, glancing at the dent from where the female attacker’s baseball bat struck. That already seemed like it had been years ago in his mind, the wound on his neck his only reminder that five days had passed. Maybe it was just his unhealthy coping methods kicking in, shoving down the horrors of what he’d felt and witnessed so they could resurface later to taunt him like the other bad memories.
He walked over to the spot just beyond the dumpster, staring down at the clean snow that had once been bright red. His hands weren’t as swollen, now barely puffy around his knuckles, but the skin was still cracked and yellowish, and every time he looked at them, he had to force away the memory of his fists slamming into the gray-haired man’s face.
In the moment, he hadn’t felt a thing, but it was coming back to him. The sensation of teeth scraping his knuckles, the warmth of the blood that had splashed onto his skin, the weirdly satisfying feeling of striking out and finally relieving the heavy burn in his arms.
He couldn’t tell what it meant, but he knew it wasn’t good. People weren’t supposed to feel that way, right? He pressed his palms against his eyelids until he saw stars, trying to force the memory away.
“You good?” Andrew’s voice echoed in the empty alley.
Caleb glanced back at him as he stepped out of the club. He took one more look down at the snow and sighed. “I’m okay, just not feeling a hundred percent yet,” he said. He felt bad about lying to Andrew, but Ophelia had explicitly warned Caleb not to say anything to him. He couldn’t imagine how he would even start that conversation. Maybe something like “The bar is filled with vampires and by the way I’m dating our boss. Just a heads up, there’s a crazy person wandering around in sunglasses at night with a crossbow, watch out.”
Yeah, that wouldn’t fly.
Andrew propped the door open with his foot and grabbed a vape pen from his pocket. “Can you believe the boss is making me smoke outside? I’ve caught him smoking cigarettes in the breakroom at least a dozen times, but I have to come out into this frozen wasteland to vape.” He took a long pull off the device, sending a plume of thick vapor billowing up into the air.
“I think he’s allowed to because he owns the place?” Caleb suggested, scratching the back of his neck uncomfortably. “Though I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to smoke indoors.”
“You ever get a creepy vibe from him?” he asked. “Like, I dunno, he’s hiding something fucked up?”
That was a weird question. “Not really,” Caleb said. He looked toward the back of the alley. He didn’t see anyone, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone else was there with them.
Andrew scoffed. “Really? You don’t notice that he looks at you like I look at a plate of nachos after work?” He took another pull off of his vape pen. “You should be careful around him. I’ve heard some fucked-up rumors.”
“Like what?” he asked with more urgent curiosity in his voice than he intended. He kicked the snow in front of him, trying to seem nonchalant about it. At least if he started to get embarrassed, the cold weather could explain away his ruddy complexion.
“I dunno, just weird things, you know? Like a lot of people have gone missing and the last place they were seen was at this club. I have a buddy who swears there’s a torture room in the wine cellar and that, like, fifteen women are locked up in there at any given time.”
Caleb wasn’t sure whether he should laugh or entertain the idea. “I highly doubt there are women locked up in the wine cellar. Have you ever checked?” He cracked a smile.
Andrew smiled back and pulled open the door. “I don’t even know where it is. Sometimes I think the whole wine cellar thing is made up to trick people into thinking the club is fancier than it is.” He laughed. “Let’s get back in there before the queen comes up with some sort of divine punishment for us. Can you believe she threatened to pull my employee file so she could break into my house and put scorpions in my shoes? Who does that?”
