Hell's Teeth (Phoebe Harkness Book 1) by James Fahy Page A

of carved stonework, high arched ceilings and stained glass windows lit in riotous funhouse colours. The whole thing was fabricated, of course, but it looked authentic, as though we had stumbled into some ancient long-buried church. The windows, being underground, didn’t really look out on anything other than coloured lights making them blaze from behind. The fluted stone columns which littered the massive hall were probably only resin. It was like a film set, but a pretty impressive one, I had to admit.
    The entirety of Sanctum was rigged throughout with industrial scaffolding. Galleys and balconies ran the perimeter of the fake church. There were bars, tables and barstools on each of these levels, and spiral staircases in overwrought ironwork linking the levels and leading down.
    At the lowest floor, a large bar ran the length of the far wall, where the altar would have been were this a real church. The centre of the space was the vast dance-floor, which was currently crammed with gyrating bodies. Flashing and sweeping lights poured down on the whole setup from a suspended rig in the ceiling. From my high vantage point I saw that there was a raised dais where the preacher’s pulpit would be, currently occupied by a very complicated and extravagant DJ booth. Nice touch , I thought. Preach the music.
    Along each of the walls were large, multi-screen displays showing looped footage from classic black and white vampire b-movies and other kitsch horror classics.
    The music, deafening and industrial, thrummed everywhere in the writhing darkness. I could feel it vibrating in my ribcage as we descended to the first level balcony and peered over at the vast sea of dancers below.
    “Nice place!” I bellowed at Lucy, who didn’t hear me. She was already scanning the crowds below excitedly. She tugged at my arm, almost making me drop my empty cocktail over the balcony, where it would almost certainly have ruined some clubber’s evening. I followed where she was pointing. She had found a vampire.
    Bizarrely, in the strobing darkness and confusion of the club, it was easy to pick out the Genetic Others. I spotted at least five straight away, and it wasn’t as though I’d had much practise. The DJ for one who was a heavily muscled Hispanic-looking chap. He was making the most of his well chiselled guns in a sleeveless mesh top. His arms were covered in full sleeve tattoos, his shaved head covered by an enormous pair of earphones and his eyes hidden behind outlandishly large sunglasses. He looked like Calvin Harris on steroids, but even at a casual glance he clearly wasn’t human. It wasn’t just the whiter-than-white skin, there were plenty of pale human people here too. It was more the way he moved. Faster than a normal person, oddly more fluid, and, goofy as it sounds, there was some kind of almost magnetic field about him. It’s hard to explain really, but vampires seem slightly more in focus than regular folk. I don’t know if it’s part of their genetic makeup or just undead charisma, but they stand out like there’s an invisible spotlight on them, parting them from any crowd.
    There was another vampire sitting on a barstool down at the far end of the club. This one was female, twenty-something in appearance, though that didn’t really mean much; she could have been older than my grandmother. Nothing helps a flawless complexion like immortality.
    She was dressed in a rather dominatrix-themed blood-red jumpsuit, her long white-blonde hair in neat dreadlocks down her back, lips red on a white face. She was smoking a cigarette in a long Audrey Hepburn style holder. Even without the strange sense of ‘presence’, it was obvious she was a GO just by noticing the gaggle of adoring humans gathered around her, all vying for her attention like puppies looking to get their ears scratched.
    The others moved through the crowd, working the room, their job seemingly to be seen and to interact with the lowly humans who had come to