The hairs on her nape rose in a wave. Fear shot down her spine like a cold electrical current. Her heart raced, palms going damp.
Someone was there.
Hiding, but not gone.
Watching her, even now.
Who was it?
What did they want?
She wasn’t about to go back to the building and find out. Carys’s leftovers weren’t going anywhere tonight.
As for Jordana, the idea of going home alone to an empty apartment while her pulse was still jackhammering in fear didn’t sound very appealing. Of course, she could always call Elliott. He’d come over in a moment’s notice if she asked it of him. But she didn’t want Elliott.
The sad fact was, she never had wanted him.
And he deserved to know that.
But that was a problem she’d have to deal with soon enough.
Right now, Jordana just wanted to make it to her vehicle in one piece. She needed to go somewhere public, somewhere she knew she’d be safe among friends.
She hurried across the dark pavement and hopped in her car, then peeled out of the parking lot.
Her penthouse was just a few blocks away from the museum, but Jordana passed her building and kept on going, heading deeper into the city, to La Notte.
8
NATHAN LED HIS TEAM INTO CASSIAN GRAY’S CLUB AT THE height of the evening’s most lucrative hour. The dance floor and bar on street level were jammed with people who’d shelled out the steep cover charge just to get in, but the real commerce—Cass’s bread and butter—was taking place in the cages below.
With fearful glances and anxious murmurs rising in their wake, the heavily armed patrol squad cut a path through the crowd upstairs and headed down to La Notte’s arena.
The fights, and the sizable bets that accompanied them, were already well under way. Rune always drew the largest numbers, and tonight appeared to be no exception. The immense, dark-haired Breed male was matched against an opponent almost his equal in size and menace.
At six and a half feet tall and 300-plus pounds apiece, the two vampires dressed in little more than leather breeches and locked in brutal hand-to-hand combat inside the cage was a sight few humans would ever see in their lifetimes.
So much the better that the Breed-on-Breed blood sport could be enjoyed from the perceived safety of the club surrounding the steel-reinforced arena.
The crowd gasped as Rune drove a hard right hook into his opponent’s jaw. Bone cracked and blood spewed from the vampire’s slack mouth.
The blow was punishing, catastrophic, given that each fighter wore titanium-spiked, fingerless leather gloves in the ring. The metal was meant to increase the savagery of the contest, but it also served to discourage the fighters from doping their performance with excessive feeding before a match.
If a Breed pushed himself into Bloodlust—the addiction only a rare few had ever beaten—the titanium of his opponent’s knuckle spikes would enter his diseased bloodstream and kill the vampire faster than any pounding he might suffer in the cages.
With the spectators cheering wildly, Rune’s opponent sank down onto his knees on a low howl of anguish. Nathan assessed the damage with a shrewd assassin’s eye. Another strike like the last one and Rune’s kill count would increase along with the stakes on him at the cashier.
Rune didn’t seem interested in beefing up his record or his worth. The big male stood back, allowing the other vampire the choice to either hit the mercy button on the cage and deliver Rune a jolt of electricity to the U-shaped steel collar each fighter wore around his neck or continue the match without the benefit of the handicap. Shouts of disapproval traveled the crowd near the cages as their champion refused to end the bout with an easy, but unnecessary, kill.
As the fight resumed, Nathan gestured to his squad to begin clearing the place out. It took only moments—and the flash of fangs from a group of combat-ready Order members—to send the bulk of the club’s clientele in the direction of the nearest exits.
But the intrusion also got the swift attention of La Notte’s security staff. Nathan and his men played rough with them tonight, no need to pretend they weren’t there to stir things up and make their presence known.
Elijah, Jax, and Rafe bounced a few Breed guards into the brick walls of the place, while Nathan soon found himself going hand to hand with a couple of the other fighters employed by Cassian Gray.
He disabled both in seconds, stopping just short of killing them. He wheeled around to face yet another of Cass’s fighters, but Syn made no move to take him on. Just shy of Nathan or Rune’s size, and handsome to the point of being pretty, the blond Breed male held his own impressive record in the cages. But he seemed to know better than to invite further problems with Nathan. All around them, the club was emptying out.
“Tell your boss we’re gonna come back every night and toss this place until we hear from him,” Nathan warned. “The longer he takes, harder the Order’s gonna push.”