Twice Bitten

“So stop me if you’ve heard this one.” I leaned up against the bar, cocking my hip and batting my lashes a couple of times at the hulking, leather-jacketed alpha who’d somehow thought it’d be a good idea to sit down on a bar stool. I’d been out back taking a phone call, and when I came inside, there he was. “So a werewolf walks into a vampire bar…”

The alpha blinked back at me, slowly, a smile creeping across his face and making him look slightly less like a thug.

Slightly. Hard features, stubbled chin, short-cropped black hair, and very pale blue eyes…and the whole hulking, leather-jacketed thing. Seriously, werewolves were so cliché. Some vampires, like my colleague Victor, could pull off the leather trenchcoat look, and that even made me wince a little. But the leather motorcycle jackets? Yeah, we get it, you’re so tough.

On the other hand, he did look pretty tough. I might be way stronger than I looked—not that it’d be difficult, since I weighed about one-twenty in my clothes and boots and wore a variety of my own signature (very stylish and not at all clichéd) houndstooth jackets. Which admittedly didn’t scream “tough.” But this guy epitomized the alpha stereotype, all long muscled legs and ridiculous broad shoulders. And he had just as much supernatural strength on his side as I did to go with the mass and reach.

On the other, other hand, I had about fifteen fellow vampires right behind me, sipping drinks in the booths around the edges of the room and watching the show.

“You have heard this one?” I continued when the guy didn’t say anything. “Or maybe you forgot the punchline? Werewolves sometimes require repetition, I realize.”

His smile grew a little more, the corner of his mouth quirking up. “Ouch.”

“Oh!” I smiled back broadly enough to show my teeth, letting my fangs lengthen a little. “You understand insults! That’s refreshing.”

A few feet away, the bartender rolled his eyes and shook his head, and then started moving glassware from the bar top down to a shelf underneath. This place saw its share of brawls, to be fair. He took it in stride.

The alpha sighed. “A werewolf walks into a bar. Ouch. It’s probably not going to be as funny if I have to explain it to you.”

I stared at him. For a second, his voice distracted me from what he’d said. That voice…so deep and gravelly, almost a growl. It made me shiver a little.

But had he just used that voice to…? He had. He absolutely had called me an idiot.

“Not a bar,” I gritted out. “A vampire bar. Usually when werewolves come in here, they don’t say ‘ouch,’ they say something like, ‘Oh, shit, I’m about to die.’ Wrong punchline, asshole.”

And then the dick outright grinned at me and picked up his drink, what looked like some kind of neat whiskey, and knocked the last of it back. I shot the bartender a wounded glare. He’d actually served this furry piece of shit? The bartender shrugged and walked away.

Well, that was what we got for hiring a half-gnome. No loyalty.

“You know, it’s harder than that to kill me,” the alpha said as he put his glass down and turned to face me. “You’re welcome to try, but I’m not here to start a fight. I’m looking for someone.”

“This isn’t where you’re going to find anyone who’s happy to see you, believe me.”

“The person I’m looking for won’t be happy to see me, either,” he said, his tone going from what might’ve been teasing, though it was hard to tell with that voice of his, to grim. “Fenwick’s the authority in Lancaster. But if I go do my courtesy check-in with him all up front, I might be noticed. I heard some of his people hang out here, and I was hoping to make contact with someone a little more quietly. A bar brawl really wasn’t what I had in mind.”

That took the wind out of my sails. Unfortunately, because I’d had a hell of a week and a bar brawl sounded wonderful to me. I might ruin my suit, though. And turquoise-and-yellow houndstooth had to be custom-ordered. (The custom tailoring was, of course, a given.)

Well, that clinched it. Time to be a professional.

“Fine,” I said, with poor grace. One could be a professional without being conciliatory, after all. “Get yourself another drink, and I want a gin martini with extra olives. The top-shelf gin. Don’t be cheap. Anyway, he knows what I want. And I’ll meet you at the booth in the back.”

“You’re one of Fenwick’s guys? And extra olives? Are you even going to eat them?”

“Yes, and yes, and none of your business.”

I stalked off to the back of the bar, giving a little subtle wave of the hand to the other vampires in the place as I passed. Stand down, sorry, no fight today. They subsided, looking disgruntled. We’d all had that kind of a week.

The alpha had stood up while he waited for our drinks, and I had a great view of how incredibly tall he was. I’d long since gotten over my irritation with my own lack of stature, having had nearly a hundred years to adjust to the idea. I wore the high-heeled boots for fashion, and anyone who said otherwise would quickly learn height didn’t make the vampire.

Still. He’d be nearly a foot taller than me—even with my boots on. Ugh.

He joined me in the back booth a minute later carrying two drinks, his whiskey and my martini. My glass held a dash of gin and what looked like half the jar of olives.

He set it down with a flourish. Fucker. I hated malicious compliance so damn much, unless I was the one executing it.