shoulder-length blonde hair was down, straight and combed off to one side.
As a matter of fact, she might have gone a tad too far by understating everything, she acknowledged, watching the dancing, flirting hordes of men and women making the scene. By keeping her distance and blatantly showing her indifference to the art of the pickup, she might actually stand out a little.
Still, if anyone could find a werewolf—given that there were such things—she was determined to do so.
If anything could lure a werewolf out of hiding, a Blood Moon would be the ticket. Her senses were keen enough to sniff out a story, honed by her journalism background and the attention she paid to her surroundings. She tried to process details in a manner similar to the way she supposed werewolves sucked up moonlight. Taking it all in.
Thus far, at this club, however, she had only come across wolves of another sort. The usual kind. Problem was, there were too many people jammed into a tight space to see individuals clearly. The hum of voices had escalated over the thump of the music as bar drinks 4
Vampire Lover
flowed.
Kelsie scanned the crowd, darting hopeful glances here and there. For what? A bit of fur showing on the back of someone’s neck? Like finding a werewolf would be that easy?
Closing her eyes briefly, she enjoyed the arrival of a rare ocean breeze. The night was glorious, even if it proved to be monster-free. She loved the dark, the stars overhead, the night heat that seared her lungs.
Miami was like no other place on earth, and about as far removed from her family’s Irish heritage as was possible.
Ireland hadn’t held anything interesting for her in some time. Living in the States made it easier to chase interests and follow her own path. She just needed this one little monster in order to get ahead. A hairy one, preferably.
"Is that too much to ask for?" she said aloud.
"Kelsie Connor, on the prowl. Trolling the dark in search of adventure." Needing to ferret out the rumors and put my strange compulsion to find Others to the test.
"Maybe you, big guy?"
Her gaze latched on to a man in a floral shirt, well beneath the club’s blue awning. A decent candidate for a werewolf? Tall, broad-shouldered, with abundant auburn hair and a perfect tan, he moved with an animalistic, lumbering step as he stalked a woman sucking down a lime-green, nuclear-hued appletini.
Hell, he actually looked like potential, the epitome of something unmorphed. After all, Weres could be anybody, anywhere, without a full moon to trip their Linda Thomas-Sundstrom
5
DNA switches. Recipients of gene splicing/coding between humans and wolves could either be complete fantasy, or an actual syndrome affecting a small segment of the population. She hoped for the latter.
Because if there were such things as werewolves, one informative bio in a newspaper column would make this freaky Blood Moon worth her weight in gold.
"Tonight’s the night. I feel it."
Squeezing her thighs together to fend off the thrill Kelsie figured she shared with most reporters about to close in on a story, she scanned the crowd again. Her grin faded as she riffled through the rest of the legends.
There were, of course, other Others. Vampires. An altogether scarier breed. The walking dead. As bloodlusting bloodsuckers, out only at night, they’d have to show up as pale anomalies in this city, and stand apart. As did pasty-hued tourists among the Miami sun and sand natives.
The thought of vampires in the area was a sudden deal-breaker, chilling the blistering night. Kelsie felt that chill waft in now, like a cold breath on the back of her neck.
Unlike werewolves, vampires weren’t humanlike most of the time. None of the time, in fact. They might walk like humans and talk like humans, because that’s what they had been once upon a time, but when the life had been drained out of them, they became animated cadavers who tended to pass on that same trait to people who came into
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