By the end of our third dance, I didn’t need to feel his arousal to know he was as into me as I was into him. I could smell the lust coming off him in waves. We still hadn’t spoken, but no words were necessary. I wanted him, and he wanted me.
I turned in his arms and leaned in close enough for my lips to brush his ear. Mmmm. He smelled good. “Want to get out of here?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” he said in a deep, husky voice that sent a thrill through me.
I glanced in Mason’s direction and found him still at the bar, talking to Emily. Smiling, I looked at my companion. “Don’t go anywhere. I have to tell my friend I’m leaving.”
I was going to get an earful from Mason about forcing him to come with me and then ditching him. But I’d offer to go surfing with him this week to make up for it. I’d done it a few times, and it was kind of fun. I was a California girl through and through.
I’d barely gone two steps when a girl stumbled into me, dumping the contents of her glass down the front of my dress. I swore as a pink stain spread across the white fabric.
“Oh, shit! I’m so sorry,” she slurred.
Waving her off, I turned toward the restrooms to clean up as best I could. I bypassed the small line outside, and a few women complained until I turned to face them and they saw my dress. They waved me in ahead of them. Not that it mattered. The dress would require a professional cleaning to get the stain out.
I grabbed some paper towels and started blotting up the liquid, barely paying attention to the people around me. My mind was on the man waiting for me and how I planned to spend the rest of my night. The way he’d held me against him and his unhurried movements told me he was good at more than dancing, and I was looking forward to getting him alone.
The sound of retching in one of the stalls pulled me from my pleasant thoughts. In the mirror, my eyes met those of the girl at the next sink. Her lips pressed together, and she looked a little green as she hurriedly finished washing her hands. I went back to cleaning my dress. I’d seen and heard worse things than some drunk girl puking.
“Oh, my God. What is that smell?” someone choked out a second before a putrid odor filled the air around me. My nose twitched, and I nearly gagged on the foulness that smelled like a mix of sewage and blood.
Stall doors were flung open, and women ran for the restroom door without stopping to wash their hands. In a matter of seconds, I was the only one left in the room. Well, me and the unfortunate woman who was still throwing up.
“Hey, are you okay in there?” I called, figuring someone had to check on her.
She moaned and started sobbing between bouts of retching. I stared at her bare legs visible beneath the stall door, unsure of what to do. Aside from Sara that one time, I hadn’t been around many sick people in my life. I put a hand over my nose. Was it normal for it to smell this awful?
The woman began making a gagging, choking sound. Afraid she might be dying in there, I banged on the stall door. “Hey, are you –?”
My question was cut off by the sound of something hitting the water in the toilet with a loud plop. That in itself was alarming enough. And then a squelching, splashing sound came from the toilet.
“What the fuck?”
There was a soft thump as the woman collapsed on the floor. Bending down, I grasped her foot, which was jutting out beneath the door, and dragged her from the stall. Her dark hair was plastered to her face, and a greenish black sludge covered her mouth and the front of her red dress. It left a trail on the floor, and it smelled even worse up close, if that was possible. I checked the pulse at her throat and found a faint heartbeat. She was alive but barely.
More sloshing came from the toilet. It didn’t take being a warrior to know that puking up something that moved was a very bad thing.
I reached for my clutch on the vanity and pulled out my phone to send off a text to Mason. Trouble in restroom. Human down. Call for backup.
His reply came thirty seconds later. On my way.
Stuffing my phone back into the clutch, I grabbed the folded karambit I carried when I went clubbing. My dresses didn’t leave any room for concealed weapons, but I’d seen enough in my life to know I’d have to be an idiot to go out unarmed.
The curved silver blade was only three inches long, but I could do damage with that. Gripping it in one hand, I placed myself between the unconscious woman and the stall. I wanted to know what that thing in the toilet was, but my main priority was to protect the human until backup arrived.
Water splashed again, followed by a scraping sound. Before I could register that the thing was trying to climb out of the toilet, I heard a wet plop on the tile floor.
An ominous silence filled the room. I didn’t breathe.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement, and I jerked my head to the right in time to see a black tentacle appear under the neighboring stall door.
I barely had time to react before the creature came flying at me. I sidestepped the attack, and the thing crashed hard into the mirror, sending glass raining down on the vanity.
A shapeless black glob landed in one of the sinks. I raised my knife and took a step toward the vanity. At the same time, the restroom door started to open. I shouted a warning as the creature launched from the sink toward the door.
My arm moved without conscious thought, and my knife sailed across the room. The blade struck the creature and pinned it to the wall, inches from Mason’s startled face. Impaled on the blade, the thing thrashed violently and went still as smoke poured from its body.
Mason hurried into the room and shut the door, his eyes never leaving the creature. “What the hell is that?”
“No idea, but my guess is it’s a demon.”
He scanned the room, taking in the damage. “Where did it come from?”
I pointed to the woman on the floor. “It came out of her.”
His eyes went wide. “Shit. Is she dead?”
“She was alive last I checked, but God knows what that thing did to her.” I studied the demon that had stopped moving, but I couldn’t make out a shape. It was a blob with tentacles. I saw a curved black claw on the end of one tentacle.
Someone banged on the door, and Mason put his hand against it to prevent them from coming in. He looked at me. “I called for backup, but we won’t be able to keep people out of here for long.”
His meaning was clear. We had to get rid of the demon before the humans saw it. It was too big to flush, and I had a feeling Raoul was going to want to see this one. I could stuff it in the garbage, but what if it wasn’t dead and it attacked someone else? Or one of the humans found it?
I grimaced when I realized there was only one place I could hide the thing so we could get it out of here. I dumped my phone and cash from my clutch and carried it over to the door. Grasping the handle of my knife, I yanked it out of the wall and dropped the demon into the purse. I had to use paper towels to get all the tentacles inside because no way was I touching that thing if I could help it. It was a tight squeeze, but I managed to squish the demon into the clutch.
Once the demon was safely tucked away, I handed my knife to Mason, and he put it in his pocket. Then I motioned for him to stop blocking the door.
A bouncer in a black club T-shirt was the first one to enter the room, and he came up short at the sight before him. “What’s going on in here?” he demanded, no doubt wondering why Mason was in the women’s restroom.