Samhain Publishing Ltd, Ebooks and Books in Print

London, 2069

Nissa pushed her way through the crowded tube platform and toward the green-tiled tunnel leading to the stairs, wishing the ancient escalators still worked. Not that much in London had worked since the Anti-Monarchy riots in 2040, the year of her birth. The riots where her parents had died doing nothing more than trying to make their way home to her and her grandmother.

Nana had been gone for twelve years now, leaving Nissa alone in the flat in Camden Town, next to what was left of Regent’s Park. But she was used to it. Being on her own since the age of seventeen had taught her to be independent, street-smart, and savvy about the rough world she lived in. She knew how to walk through a dark neighborhood without getting mugged, knew what to do about it if it did happen. She didn’t put up with shit from anyone. She went where she liked, slept with whomever she liked, then kicked him out the next day without looking back. She was used to being entirely without connections, and that was exactly how she wanted things.

And being on her own meant there was no one to miss her if things went the way she hoped they would tonight.

Using her elbows and the occasional stomp of her stiletto-heeled boots, she finally got to the stairs, her legs pumping as she moved toward the small halo of dark sky above. Careful to keep a watchful eye on the others around her, she gripped her stunstick in her hand in case anyone tried anything. These dense crowds were even more dangerous than walking down a dark, empty street alone. Not that she would usually be so foolish, armed or not.

She was always armed.

Smacking away a groping hand just as she reached the top of the stairs, she turned her head and caught sight of a cocky grin on a handsome face. A blond pretty boy with a wicked gleam in his cool, gray eyes.

“Sorry, love.” He winked at her, gave her a quick nod as she moved away.

He really was pretty, and perhaps on a different night she would have encouraged him. But she’d had her fill of beautiful boys. Tonight she had much more in mind, and it had taken her too damn long to get this invitation for her to risk screwing it up over a common beautiful boy.

The damp air hit her as she pushed her way outside, into the cold night, stepping over a pile of broken concrete. So much for the joys of the New Democracy. There was never anyone around to clean up the streets after a bombing, and you had to watch your step everywhere you went, other than in the most exclusive neighborhoods. But Nissa never went to such places.

She moved down the block, into the heart of the old theater district that now housed nightclubs, pubs, cafés, shops selling leather goods, personal-protection devices and sex toys. Neon-like jagged bolts of lightning reflected in puddles in the street, making glowing pools of eerie watercolor. Noise came from every direction—the low rumble of voices, the rattle of an engine as a car, heavy with armor, passed by, the scratchy cry of a street player’s guitar somewhere, and in the distance, the shrill of sirens that seemed to be ever-present in London. She could smell the damp as it worked its way through her worn wool pea coat and into her bones, along with the scents of wet cement, smoke, the smell of unwashed humanity and the press of too damn many people.

Walking faster, she passed a group of morphies huddled in a doorway, a woman passed out in their midst as they muttered over her, passing a pipe around with shaking hands and glazed eyes. One called out to her, asking for money. She turned her head, moving faster. As if she’d be fool enough to take out her purse in Soho at night.

Anyway, she had someplace important to be, and she didn’t want to be late. Someplace crucial. Someplace she’d dreamed of for years.

Midnight Playground.

She turned the corner onto Shaftesbury Avenue, and there it was.

The old Palace Theater stood like an elegant fortress of red brick and arched windows, surrounded by high, intricate, iron gates to keep the rabble out. Nissa pulled in a breath, ignoring the London stench.

She was here. At the most exclusive vampire club in London. The most exclusive sex club. There was a Midnight Playground in every major city in Europe: Berlin, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Moscow. These places were nearly impossible to get into, and they never accepted anyone over thirty into their membership. At twenty-nine, Nissa was close to being excluded forever. But she’d managed it, finally. Or her friend, Ilana, had managed it for her.

She moved in, tucking her stunstick into the pocket of her coat and clipping it into its harness, then flipping open the hidden pocket that held her identification and invitation as she approached the gates. The bouncers were a pair of hulking, bald figures in black leather trench coats, arms crossed over massive chests.

She nodded to them. “I have an invitation.”

Holding it out, she pinched the heavy velum between her fingers, running her fingertips over the raised lettering, and the embossed Celtic dragon’s head logo that matched the design in the center of the towering iron gates of the club.

“Let’s have a look.” One of the bouncers held his beefy hand out.

Nissa narrowed her eyes, looking for the telltale tinge of pink in the skin. Human. She supposed a vampire wouldn’t have to work as a gate bouncer. Vampires were an elite society, revered, feared. Desired.

She shivered even thinking about it. Thinking about them. About the inherent sense of power that radiated from the few she’d ever come upon.

“Identification,” one of the enormous men demanded, and she handed it over. He glanced at the other man, held the invitation out for him to peruse, as well as her ID.

“Is there a problem?”

Her heart thundered.

Both men turned to her. One held her identification up to the lamp mounted on the gate, then gave a sharp jerk of his chin. “You’re in, girl.”

Her heart lurched as the gate opened, and she stepped through.