Cole: The Demons: Book 2 (A Phoenix Club Serial Thriller)

CH 6: Blood Drops

Cole immediately spotted Gabe's car when he arrived at the Asmodeus club. He checked the doors and found them locked. Cole looked around. The parking area was shadowed. Music boomed inside the club and the neon moniker lit up the front. Cole reached for his phone to call Gabe, then remembered smashing it against the wall.

"Fuck." Cole walked quickly around to the club entrance. Please be inside. He paid the admittance fee to the doorman out front and hurried inside. Cole went straight to the bar, hardly taking notice of the club itself or the stage performers. He and Gabe had planned to visit the club for a little decadent fun sometime soon. Fun was the last thing on Cole's mind tonight.

"How can I get you off?" the bartender—a young, gorgeous man in his mid-twenties—cooed at Cole, then feigned an apologetic smile. "I mean, start you off."

Under other circumstances, Cole and Gabe both would have flirted incessantly with the hot bartender. "I'm looking for my husband," Cole spoke loudly, trying to rise above the din of music. "His name is Gabe. He's about my height and build, short dark hair, thin dark beard, baby-blue eyes. He's hard to miss."

"Mmm. Sounds yummy." The bartender leaned forward on the bar, gazing into Cole's eyes. "If something that delicious came in here, then he's long since been devoured."

Cole's fear and panic rendered him impatient and irrational. He grabbed the bartender by the front of his mesh tank top and jerked him closer. "Are you the only bartender working tonight?" he demanded.

"Ooh," the young bartender shivered with delight. "Daddy likes it rough, does he? So do I." He caressed his fingertips along Cole's forearm.

"Answer me," Cole hissed. "Someone called my husband and lured him down here. He said he was a bartender here at the club. Was it you?" He yanked the young man even closer, their faces nearly touching. "Was it you?"

The bartender gazed back dreamily; eyes slightly glazed. Cole shoved him back and released him. The fucker was high as a kite.

It wasn't a bartender who lured him here, you know that.

Cole left the club and returned to Gabe's car. "Where the fuck are you?" he whispered, his voice tight with emotion. Terror clawed at his heart.

That isn't how you suffer.

Then how?

By watching those you love vanish... one by one...

Cole shook his head as his vision blurred. No, Gabe isn't gone... Maddy isn't gone... and Abel and Savannah...

"Shit!" Cole cried. He'd left Max and Horatio without telling them Maddy was in trouble. What could he tell them? How could he explain any of this?

Cole studied the parking area. The one who lured Gabe to the club wouldn't coax him inside the club. Cole moved away from Gabe's car and walked along the outside of the club building until he came to the alley that ran behind the establishment.

This is where he would've grabbed him—someplace dark and secluded.

Cole entered the alley cautiously, barely able to see his way. Clumps of snow clung to bits of garbage. Slushy puddles pooled on the pavement. Cole stepped over one of the puddles and slipped as his foot came down on something hard and slick. He swore sharply and caught his footing before he fell, then bent down and picked up the object he'd stepped on.

A cell phone.

His heartbeat kicked up; Gabe's phone. His thumb smeared through something wet and tacky on the screen. He turned on the phone and the screen lit up, illuminating the smear.