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For a while, it works.

Then someone moves beside me.

Handsome guy. Dark shirt. Short hair. Too small for a werewolf, too pale for most humans. He dances close without really dancing, eyes flicking toward me and away. Something is off. He isn’t as high as everyone else. Too composed. Too controlled.

The smell reaches me through sweat and smoke. Sweet rot covered under cold iron. And I know it all too well. Death.

Fuck.

A necromancer.

My eyes blink hard, trying to clear the drugs. Necromancers don’t go clubbing. They don’t party. If he is here, it’s for one reason.

To kill.

I start moving through the crowd, pretending I’m only changing spots. Then I see another man cutting across the room in my direction.

Ok. It’s getting bad.

I head for the corridor, pushing past bodies, memory kicking in through the drugs. Pulse had a back exit past the old bathrooms. If I can get there, Sava can pull around, and I can lose them before this turns into a public execution.

I text Sava with shaking fingers.

Back door

When I reach the end of the corridor, the old exit is gone. Bricked over. The wolves sealed it after taking over the club. I look back and see dark shapes moving toward me. No time.

I slip into a broken bathroom and press myself against the wall behind the door. The room smells like old piss and dust. I warm my hands by opening and closing my fists, trying to pull in enough darkness to survive. The music turns muffled behind the doors. Drugs still run through my veins as the walls start closing in. My heart hammers. I have no weapon. No backup. I try to gather any power I have and focus but after the nightrush I can’t. I will have to do it all manually.

The fastest way for me to kill someone is by focusing on their face. Grab and push darkness through the skin towards the brain.

The door opens slowly. A man in a dark shirt steps inside.

The second he crosses the threshold, I catch his head between my hands and shove death into him.

He screams.

Good.

Then the second necromancer rushes in behind him, catches me by the throat, and rips me off the first one. The wounded necromancer drops to all fours, choking. The one holding me pulls a black knife, calm and controlled, like this is just another job.

He squeezes my throat with one hand and brings the blade toward it with the other.

I don’t know what to fight first.

The choking or the knife.

So this is it.

Slit throat in a bathroom at a rave club.

Then a tattooed hand catches the knife wrist and snaps it.

Bone cracks.

The grip on my throat loosens. I stumble forward, gasping, and see the necromancer fly into the opposite wall.

Nero.