Paul found that a very unexpected reaction. He sat back and regarded her. Given the past few minutes of conversation, he decided to revise his opinion about little Merry Blaylock. He’d bet thirty years in clandestine service that this kid did not know a single useful thing about Ellen Wunderling or vampires or anything connected with them. But the way she was looking back at him, with that dee-licious little smile—well, her innocence told him that conversation should go in another direction entirely.

The smile widened a little, played very fetchingly in her eyes. He could practically see her deciding that she thought his being CIA was kind of cool. The damn tag had worked for once. Damned amazing.

“Would you like to see my club?”

“They say it’s the most exclusive club in New York.”

She reached over, touched the back of his hand with the tips of her fingers. Then she laughed, a deliciously suggestive little bell-note, one of her favorites. “Oh, it is. Very, very exclusive. But if I like you, then you can come in. Welcome to the Veils.”

SIXTEEN: Demon Lovers

SIXTEEN

Demon Lovers

It looks like a wall—I mean, just like a wall.” Paul extended a large hand toward the entrance.

“Doug Henning was a master.”

“Isn’t he the one who died? Kinda young, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, he was.” He’d been a delicious young man.

She took his hand and stepped through with him.

Techno music hit him like an avalanche—one made of pure sound. The space was dark, milky with smoke. Lasers played in time with the very fast music, revealing random slices of a whole lot of dancers. On a small stage, its floor glistening like a mirror, was a shadow capering behind the most complex set of control panels and turntables he’d ever seen in a club. The dj was faceless, even his head was covered. He appeared to be as thin as his bones, but that was probably some sort of an illusion.

The intensity of the music was completely beyond anything in Paul’s experience. For a few seconds, he was virtually unconscious, reeling through a fog of reefer and crack and crys so thick he felt himself getting high on his second gasp for air. The next thing he knew, the music swept him up, seeming to yank his soul right out of his body and levitate him across the floor. He cried out, he knew it, he could feel it. But the music was so loud, the beat so intoxicating, the rhythm so danceable that his consciousness lost control of the primitive parts of the brain and his body began to move of its own accord. He thought voodoo, the shaking of priests, the trance of the gods.