Dead But Not Forgotten Read Online Free Page B

take him down from behind.”
    He would have probably agreed to pretty much anything just then, and as he pushed away from the table and walked at an angle to cut across Glick’s path, it occurred to him he was about to put himself empty-handed in front of a man who’d ripped the limbs off somebody just a few hours before.
    He was also, coincidentally, heading straight for the guards who were blocking the entrance to the velvet-roped vampire section. They might have PhDs in flexing and intimidation, but they weren’t stupid; he got their attention instantly. What was worse, though, was what was happening behind the rope . . . because all that vampire focus lasered right in on him. It was like being impaled on an icicle.
    The nerd king’s pale blue eyes suddenly glowed an even colder arctic green, and Kevin shuddered because however much the costume tried to make the vampire look human and inoffensive, those eyes gave him away. What was underneath was ancient and completely ruthless.
    Spotting Glick coming for him was actually kind of a relief.
    The greasy, blood-spotted wild man howled, though it was drowned out in the relentless sound of the techno song that started up; the beat hammered through Kevin’s bones and made him feel as if he were about to shatter. Kenya was moving, but someone was in her way—a woman in skyscraper heels, made earthquake-unsteady by the drink in her hand.
    Glick was almost on him. In the flash of the swirling lights, his eyes looked solid crimson, as if they were bleeding right out of his head.
    Kevin swept a full champagne bottle out of a sweating ice bucket on a rich man’s table, dumping cold water all over a woman’s lap, and slammed it into Glick’s temple like a wrecking ball. It should have put him down. Hell, it probably should have killed him.
    All it did was set him back on his heels, dazed, and make him stumble.
    That was enough time for Kenya to come up behind him, snap out her extendable riot baton, and deliver surgical strikes to the bends of his knees. Strong or not, Glick went down, and Kevin hit him again with the champagne bottle. He only realized once Glick was lying still that Dom Perignon was foaming out in jets all over him, and the rich man was yelling his guts out, and the woman was shrieking about her dress, and somehow over all that chaos the nerd stood up and said one soft, precise sentence.
    â€œClose it.”
    There was an instant reaction, all over the bar—not from the patrons, who were still jerk-dancing and drinking their livers away, but from the vampires. They all stood up and
moved
—flowing over the velvet ropes as if gravity were just a suggestion. There were yelps of alarm from patrons, and suddenly the music cut off, leaving an aftermath of yelled, trailed-off conversations and confusion.
    The vampires began shoving people toward the exits. There was resistance at first, and then willing flight, because one look at them showed that the vampires weren’t playing.
    Nobody laid a hand on Kevin, or Kenya, or the man lying between them. Kenya still held her baton but he knew she wouldn’t use it; there wouldn’t be any point. Fighting a vampire under those circumstances was an instant ticket to the morgue.
    The Bat’s Wing was cleared out in what seemed like seconds, and probably was; the humans were swept out like trash by the vampires’ broom, and the doors slammed and locked behind them. Without the music, and with the harsh overheads flipped on, the place looked—as all bars did—cheap and pathetically stained. Tables were littered with glasses, full and empty. Some people had even left behind coats and purses. It reminded Kevin of a disaster area, as if a random shooter had come in to pop off a few rounds and the occupants had run for cover.
    He even saw one of those seven-inch high-heel shoes lying abandoned on the floor. Add in some broken glass and blood and it could