Total pages in book: 37
Estimated words: 34791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 174(@200wpm)___ 139(@250wpm)___ 116(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 34791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 174(@200wpm)___ 139(@250wpm)___ 116(@300wpm)
Sky sighed and climbed out when Nolan did. The man still wasn’t steady on his feet. He was going to fall over and break something if he wasn’t careful.
“You can’t. They kicked you out of Phoenix for nearly starting a fight,” Sky explained as he reached Nolan’s side. He grabbed his neighbor’s arm as he swayed, standing in the middle of Sky’s yard, seeming utterly confused. Sky swallowed the part where Nolan had almost gotten into a fight with a vampire. It was better if Nolan didn’t know about that part.
“No. I gotta go back. My brother. I need to find my brother,” Nolan argued. He took another step toward the street, but Sky wasn’t sure where he was going. He didn’t see Nolan’s car in his driveway, which meant it was probably in Hartford. That was not good, but hardly Nolan’s biggest problem right now.
“Your brother? He was at the club?” Fuck. Where the hell was the man? Had he been in the bathroom when Nolan was stirring up trouble? Well, his friends were still at Phoenix. Maybe they could locate the man and tell him what was going on.
“At the club?” Nolan shook his head, sending his hair flopping around his face. “No. That…that bloodsucker’s got him. I know it.”
“The man at the table?” Sky asked. Maybe he didn’t mean that word like Sky meant that word. He couldn’t know…
“No. The woman. The vampire.” Nolan leaned close enough to Sky that their noses almost touched. “Don’t laugh at me. I saw their fangs. Both of them. They’re vampires. Real ones. And they have my brother.”
Now the penny dropped.
Tightening his grip on Nolan’s arm, he turned him away from the street and toward his front stairs. This was bigger than getting drunk and kicked out of Phoenix. Nolan had fallen into a secret world he should know nothing about.
And if his brother was missing in that world, he was going to need help to get him out. Insider help.
Chapter 2
Nolan Banks
Nolan blinked his eyes several times to get them to focus and adjust to the lights Sky was turning on as they entered the house. His brain was a foggy mess. Each thought was like slogging through a cold bog at night as the wet muck sucked at his feet, slowing him.
But then there was his weird neighbor, who believed he could talk to the dead, gently guiding him back to the light with his perpetual cheery smile.
Even with his foggy brain, he didn’t miss the worry that entered his bright hazel-green eyes when Nolan mentioned vampires.
Yeah, yeah. He sounded crazy, but he knew what he saw.
And he had to get Owen out of this mess.
Sky didn’t sit him in the small living room with its crowd of big, overstuffed furniture. Instead, he guided Nolan along the narrow hallway to a large kitchen with a round honey-wood table and four chairs.
“Your kitchen is big,” he blurted out as he took in the U-shaped counter that ran along two walls, the extra-large stove with six burners, and the double-door fridge.
Sky chuckled next to him as he carefully sat him in a chair. “Yeah, when I bought the house, it was a mess. Since I had to remodel anyway, I knocked down the wall that connected the kitchen to the dining room and made it one big room. All my friends like to cook, so I needed the space so multiple people could comfortably be in here at the same time.”
Nolan grunted. He’d seen Sky’s three friends regularly coming and going from his place at all hours. They seemed okay, if a little weird. His best friend, Jennifer, loved spying on them through his front window. She speculated they were taking part in one big orgy a few times a month, or they were a coven of witches. Jennifer was crazy.
With his hands on his hips and a crooked smile, Sky stood over him in an eye-catching gold vest and black slacks that accentuated his lovely round ass. His blond hair was like spun gold on the top of his head. It was messy, as if he’d run his fingers through it, but everything about his appearance screamed that he’d been out on the town, looking to get laid. But now he was home with Nolan.
“You were drinking at Phoenix?” Nolan asked, though that was pretty fucking obvious.
His neighbor waved a hand at him, dismissing that. “Just out with my friends for a drink and some fun. No big deal. They can party on without me. It’s more important that we get you sobered up.”
Didn’t Sky know about the vampires at Phoenix?
There were all kinds of crazy rumors about the eccentric owner of the nightclub. People said that Rafe Varik claimed to be a vampire and that his first club, Blush, had been burned down in some kind of turf war between gangs. Nolan had thought it was all bullshit. A gimmick to get people to go to that club over others in the city.