Teaser Tuesday

Another teaser from the same book as last time. I changed a few things around, so a couple of the same sentences from a previous teaser appear in this excerpt.

A rockabilly band of vampires led by a witch—we were the ultimate Halloween cliché. As I took one more bow, a bottle zinged past my head. I heard the whiz as it flew by.

“Hey, watch where you’re throwing your blood, jerk,” I yelled.

This was not good. Not good at all. I’m not highfalutin or anything, but I was kind of partial to my eyes. Not since Grandma Annie’s last Halloween party had a glass container come that close to taking out my eyeball. Looking out over the crowd, I realized the bottle probably wasn’t meant for me, but whoever had thrown it didn’t care if it whacked me in the head.

Pandemonium had broken out across the nightclub. Glasses and bottles shattered. Chairs were hurled across the dance floor. The girl beside the jukebox smashed her martini glass over the young guy’s head. I scanned the dimly lit space. Men punched other men, while women pulled other women’s hair. Talk about a motley crew. I’d seen shady-looking characters before, but this bunch made leather-clad biker gangs look like a group of prep school graduates.

Before the eager young vampire or his angry girlfriend attacked me, I shoved my way through skirmishing bodies, taking a punch in the side, and slipped backstage. Last call was announced over the chaos as if this was a nightly occurrence. My tired muscles could have made that call two hours ago.

My dressing room wasn’t much larger than the size of a closet, but at least it was refuge from the madness. I eased into the space, trying to avoid banging a knee. A small table set against the wall, with a plastic chair in front, served as my makeup area. No mirror or no light. Vampires seemed to forget the rest of us still saw our reflections. My face probably looked like a deranged clown when I went on stage.