Free Betrayal Bites (Tales of Sydney Sedrick Book 2) by Mandi Casey Page B

wet spot on the back of my favorite jeans and the pain starting to cover my entire body. I wouldn’t recommend ever spending quality time lying on a club floor. They weren’t exactly clean, and I didn’t want to ever lie on one again.
    Blake put his hands gently on each side of my face and leaned his forehead to mine. Despite being surrounded by people dancing, laughing, and spilling their drinks as they thumped to the music, he made me feel better. His touch centered me while the pain and nausea started a gradual retreat.
    “Sydney, you scared the hell out of me. Don’t do that again, okay?”
    I laughed. I didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter.
    “I’ll do my best. Let’s just get out of here, and let’s take the lovebirds with us.”
    Blake raised his lips and placed a gentle kiss on my forehead. His lips lingered overly long, resulting in a low growl sounding from deep in his chest, making me giggle.
    “Blake, now’s not the time to get all excited. You know we can’t be like that. I’d really appreciate it ...”
    He didn’t let me finish my usual lecture because he shoved me roughly behind him. Before I could ask him what the heck he thought he was doing, Blake said, “Stay there.”
    Normally, if a man shoved me like that, with such force, I would have balked. But something in his voice told me to let it go. That something was fear.
    I looked over his shoulder as he was trying to encircle me with his arms behind him. A hooded man and woman swayed through the crowd. Not one of the club goers seemed to notice them or even look their way, despite the wide berth the people on the dance floor gave them.
    They clearly were not human. The female had black skin streaked with silver lines running over it, and the streaks were shaped into some type of tribal art. As she approached us, I saw the silver streaks on her skin weren’t stationary; they roamed over her body as she moved.
    The icy feeling I felt before, when I sensed the presence of the rogue, was gone. Now the air felt charged with an indescribable darkness, like a void. It was unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.
    The woman, or whatever she was, thought she was hot stuff. Clearly she thought she was sexy, too. In my opinion, she looked like a snake slithering over the floor, readying to strike.
    The male at the woman’s side kept his distance, even from her.
    “Blake, Selected. Don’t worry about the rogue vampire. Damas has already taken care of him while you two were busy enjoying this nice club.” Disdain dripped from her words as she sneered while gazing over the bar patrons. I could tell she didn’t like the club one bit.
    Blake didn’t look happy to see her, whoever she was.
    “Sydney, this is the Judge, Kasdeya. She’s the one I told you about when I was scouting the compound, the one who attacked me from behind without justifiable cause.” Blake turned from me to the male beside her. “I assume the demon with you is also a Judge?”
    Real live Judges stood before me. I never thought I’d meet one, let alone two. It was like meeting a celebrity, only the dark, scary, Underworld kind. The mystery and intrigue that followed them throughout the vampire and werewolf communities made the Judges out to be legends.
    They were the big, bad boogie men to the beings that humans thought were the creatures to be afraid of. Little did most humans know, their boogie men had stories of beings so scary that made even them behave.
    The Judges were the ones to keep naughty vampires and werewolves, so afraid of experiencing the wrath of the Judges, in line. Blake said the threat of the Judges being dispatched upon them made it so that there were rarely ever such severe crimes committed among their kind that warranted the Judges’ notice. It was sort of like not getting presents from Santa because he knew when you were naughty, except in their world Santa was a big bad demon with black or oozing green skin that liked to torture and kill the