“We haven’t figured out anything.” He sighed. “Part of me is sitting back, waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
Rachel frowned. “It doesn’t always have to go that way, you know? Just because there have been some crappy moments in your life, it doesn’t mean this time can’t be better. Sometimes, it’s all right to believe things are going to turn out okay.”
Zane would have told her that was a naive view of the world and that his experiences indicated things really could go from bad to worse to horrible damn fast, but they’d reached the stairs to find Alyssa and Diego already waiting for them.
The big, dark-haired guy with tattoos on both arms at the bottom of the steps barely looked at them, but the petite girl with pin-straight, cobalt-blue hair standing beside the bouncer stared at them like she’d seen a ghost. The girl looked eighteen at the most and too young to be working at a place like this.
“Wow,” she breathed, her lavender eyes going wide. “We don’t usually get your kind here. Now it’s like Grand Central Station.”
Zane was still trying to figure out what kind of people she meant when the girl motioned with her head toward the metal door. The tattooed bouncer opened it without a word and waved all four of them in.
“Okay,” Diego murmured as they descended another set of steps, illuminated only by small, red, neon cats lining the walls. “Is it just me or was that girl weird as hell?”
“She smelled funny, too,” Rachel said.
Zane ignored the curious look Alyssa threw his teammate’s way, praying she wouldn’t ask what Rachel meant.
As for the girl with the blue hair smelling odd, he hadn’t gotten a good sniff of her, mostly because he’d been too busy trying to understand why she was the one in charge and not the mountain of muscles beside her. Now that he thought about it, there was something off about her. Besides the fact that she didn’t seem to possess a filter when it came to knowing what to say to potential customers, her eyes seemed way too old for someone her age.
They were about halfway down the steps when he felt the bass beat of the club’s music vibrating through his boots. But it wasn’t until he got to the bottom of the stairs that he realized the music wasn’t merely loud. It was bloody deafening. The moment he pulled open the set of heavy double doors, the thumping techno beat smacked him in the face and hundreds of strobe lights did their very best to blind him.
As if that wasn’t enough, a dozen bizarre scents he didn’t recognize hit him all at once, making his eyes water. He glanced at Rachel and Diego to see it was affecting them the same way. Rachel actually used the back of her hand to block her nose.
“What the hell am I smelling?” Diego asked.
No need to worry about Alyssa overhearing anything they said in there. Zane could barely hear himself think.
“I don’t know,” he told Diego. “Forget about that for now. We need to find Stefan and his crew and figure out what they’re up to.”
Alyssa glanced over her shoulder at him. “This place is a complete madhouse. Should we split up and search?”
Madhouse was one way to describe it. Complete bedlam was another. Then again, that could just be the effect of the strobes. The flashing lights made the club’s patrons look like they were moving at half speed and fast-forward at the same time. It was disturbing as hell.
Zane tried to ignore the annoying lights and survey the club. Rachel had been right. The place wasn’t one big space. Instead, it seemed to be a series of individual rooms on different levels, all connected by archways and tunnels. This level had a gigantic bar along the back wall and a dance floor packed with partying people.
“You two take the left side. Alyssa and I will go right,” he said to Rachel and Diego. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wireless earpiece, slipping it into place, then clipped the mic to his shirt. “If we see anything, we’ll let you know. You do the same. And remember, watch yourselves. We don’t have a clue what Stefan and his crew are up to yet, but we know they’re dangerous.”
“Will do,” Diego said.
He and Alyssa slowly worked their way through the crowd, searching for Stefan, but the damn strobe lights made it nearly impossible to get a good look at anyone very clearly. He tried to use his nose to see if he could pick up anything, hoping maybe one of the guys he’d fought in the alley the other night had come with Stefan, but the strange odors in the air were messing with his head. He couldn’t seem to focus on anything but them. A few of the scents were almost werewolf like, but not quite right. Definitely not like any alpha, beta, or omega he’d ever smelled. At least whatever it was smelled vaguely like an animal, which was comforting for some reason.
The other scents worried him. Because there were at least three or four of them, including that weird mud-and-stale-blood stench Diego had mentioned that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. At first, he thought he might be picking up the odor of something decaying in the walls or the air vents of the club. He could only imagine how many rats a place like this might have. But the scents moved around too much for that. Whatever was putting off those odors was wandering around the club.
Things that smelled like dead rats walking around an underground nightclub—nothing bizarre about that.
Zane was still trying to pinpoint the source of the scents—relatively sure one or two of them were out on the dance floor—when Alyssa dragged his attention back to the real reason they were there.
“I don’t see Stefan or anyone who looks like his Neanderthals in here,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the loud music. “I think we should move to another part of the club.”
He nodded and motioned toward one of the archways that led into another room. She headed that way without comment, and he fell in directly behind her, so he could keep both an eye on her and where they were going. When they stepped through the archway, Alyssa halted midstep, surveying a room that was even bigger than the one they’d just left.
“How the hell did they fit this all in here?” Alyssa asked.
Zane had to agree. Maybe there was some kind of TARDIS magic going on and it was bigger on the inside than the outside. If he didn’t know better, he’d think they’d stepped onto the third level of the Dallas Galleria and were looking down at the ice-skating rink they set up in the main atrium of the mall during the winter season. Except this version of the Galleria was painted pitch-black, lit with more of those bloody strobe lights and neon cats, and had a multilevel dance floor instead of an ice rink, complete with at least a hundred half-drunk, barely dressed people grinding together.
As he and Alyssa made their way through the crowd, he realized it was going to be damn tough finding Stefan in here thanks to the dark alcoves all along the walls. Even with the improved night vision that came with being a werewolf, he still couldn’t see very far into them. Stefan could be ten feet away from them right now and they’d walk right past him.
Zane slowed as a strobe light spun around and almost blinded him. By the time his eyes cleared, Alyssa was a good ten feet ahead of him and he had to hurry to catch up to her. He was moving so fast he didn’t see the dark-haired woman standing at the railing overlooking the dance floor until he bumped into her. He stopped to apologize when the woman’s scent hit him. She smelled a little like a werewolf but different at the same time.
