Next was the music itself. It seemed to use the smoke from the fog machine in visually dazzling ways. When the bass was booming, the fog formed into thunderclouds that hung heavy over the dancers and enveloped them inside the vibrations. When the higher-pitched treble segments came to crescendo, the fog thinned into cometlike streaks that darted between the gyrating patrons before striking certain dancers and sending them into blissful spasms. And within every manifestation of the fog, those tiny little orbs winked with their strange light.

“Don’t breathe them in,” Ian warned, his tone low yet urgent. “I know that sort of magic. It strips away glamour.”

I clamped my lips shut to make sure that no lights inadvertently found their way into my mouth. Thank God we were all vampires and didn’t need to breathe. Still, that took away our scent-deciphering advantage, and that was no small loss.

“How do we find these people?” Vlad murmured while leaning in and pretending to fix a hair clip on my head.

How indeed? When I’d asked Mircea what the necromancers looked like, he’d only responded with a cryptic “You’ll know them when you see them.” He hadn’t mentioned the part where we’d have to pick them out of a crowd of hundreds at a magically enhanced dance club. I wanted to find the nearest corner and slice open my hand to link to Mircea and demand a more thorough description, yet if I did, I already knew what Mircea would say.

“Mircea is testing us,” I whispered back, cursing Mircea once again. “We don’t just have to be strong enough to defeat these people. We also have to be able to find them, too.”

“They will be vampires,” Mencheres said, giving a little wave to a group of guys who openly leered at him. “They cannot have amassed such great power otherwise. There aren’t many of our kind here, so we will start with that.”

“And they must be regulars, work here, or own the place,” I added, trying to fill in more of the missing pieces. “Or else you-know-who would’ve told us to come on a specific night.”

I wasn’t saying Mircea’s name out loud here. Like the fictional villain Voldemort, I was sure that bad things could happen if it reached the wrong ears.

“We split up,” Vlad murmured, gesturing to Mencheres and Ian. “You two take this room. Leila and I will search the other sections. Maximus and Marty, see if there’s a back room.”

“What’s the signal if we find something?” I asked low.

Ian snorted. “I expect the rest of us will simply follow the ensuing screams.”

Vlad shrugged in concurrence. On that rather ominous note, we left in pairs to begin our search.

Chapter 34

Ian’s choice of our disguises had gotten us past the bouncers, but it didn’t take long to discover their downside. I should have realized that looking like an African goddess while dancing with Vlad’s buxom blonde disguise would result in a lot of turned heads, not to mention a ton of come-ons.

“No,” I said to yet another offer to dance as Vlad and I continued to make our way toward the back of the club.

“Ah, American, yes?” the guy’s pal asked, grinning down at a now-much-shorter Vlad. “I looove Americans. Especially blondes.” Then the guy grabbed Vlad’s hips and forcefully ground his pelvis against them. “Dance, baby, you like it with me!”

He might be wearing the face and body of a petite female blonde, but his smile was pure Vlad the Impaler as he turned around, grabbed the guy right in the crotch, and squeezed.

A high-pitched scream cut through even the piercing crescendo of an Adele remix song. Every head around us turned. The guy dropped to his knees while gasping, crying, and still screaming at the same time.

“Ruptured testicles can be serious,” Vlad said, the cold words at odds with his new, wispy voice. “Best seek medical attention.”

His friend began yelling at us in Polish, which I didn’t speak, but Vlad did. Whatever he said in reply shut the guy up. With a last, furious glance, he helped his still-sobbing buddy to his knees and began half supporting, half dragging him away.

“Is there a problem?” an accented voice asked behind us.

I turned. If I’d been my normal height, I would have needed to tilt my head to meet the gaze of our questioner. The woman had to be six feet tall in her bare feet. In her stiletto heels, she was almost Maximus’s height, and she was beautiful in a way that defied convention. You would think her prominent nose and full, wide mouth would have had better symmetry with thick brows, but hers were pencil thin and her cheekbones were delicate compared to her strong jawline. Her almond-shaped eyes were a striking shade of burnt umber and her thick blond hair was styled in crisscrossing, elaborate braids.

More importantly, from the aura that wafted off her and added a sizzle to the air that hadn’t been there before, she was an old vampire, no matter that her human appearance looked frozen at the south side of forty.

“No problem,” I said at once. “Someone needed a new set of manners, and that happened to come with a pair of damaged balls.”

She laughed in a husky, throaty way that denoted a blend of sophistication, amusement . . . and warning. “Perhaps, but you still overstepped yourselves. Our employees are supposed to manage the customers if they warrant managing. Not other customers.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Vlad shake his head and make a quick, dismissive motion. No doubt warning the rest of our group not to swarm after the guy’s screams would have drawn their attention. Then he turned to the tall, striking vampire.