“Ah, there you are! Let me buy you a drink!”
Syd spotted Alex through the crowd as soon as he approached the bar and motioned for him to take the space next to her. All of the stools were taken from attendees grabbing their intermission drinks, so she was leaning back casually against the bar while facing him.
He hadn’t really heard what she said over the loud music playing throughout the venue, but that didn’t matter when she was at least a head taller than everyone else anyway. Alex pulled up the collar of his black hoodie slightly out of nervousness, doing his best to put on a somewhat friendly smile. He took the space offered to him and Syd turned around to face the bar alongside him.
She waved down the bartender, a slender man with a well-groomed Van Dyke beard and a button-up shirt, who sauntered over to them and asked, “Hey Syd, how’s it going?”
“Going good, Jerry, going good. You?”
“The tips tonight are good, so I can’t complain!” The bartender, Jerry, shrugged his shoulders and held up his hands. Or rather, his hand and the bionic prosthetic in place of his other hand. There was a cocktail jigger on the end that crackled with green magical energy for a split second before unfurling into a delicate set of mechanical fingers, which grabbed a towel and started cleaning the bar top.
“Wonderful to hear! Could you get us two Deadly Nightshades?” Syd said.
“Coming right up.” Jerry put down the towel and pointed his bionic hand towards the shelves of bottles behind him. To Alex’s amazement, his hand shot out of his wrist like a telescope, extending just far enough to grab a bottle from the top shelf that would have otherwise required a ladder to reach.
Paladins are allowed to drink, just not to excess, and teetotalism is highly encouraged. In the academy, however, for special occasions cadets will sneak out to a local bar and inevitably get wasted, as young inexperienced drinkers often do. It was not uncommon for post-holiday classes and training drills to have a number of students show up with baggy eyes and slower response times, which garnered swift discipline from their superior officers. Alex himself was seldom invited to such excursions and never drank more than a beer at them anyway before leaving early.
Needless to say, he had never tried hard liquor before.
Alex said, “Um, you don’t have to do that—”
Not hearing him, Syd turned to him with an expectant grin and said, “So, Lexi! What did you think of the fight?”
“Oh! I, um, I thought it was … amazing. I’ve only heard about beastesses every now and then in passing,” he lied. “I didn’t know a human being could transform like that.”
“A blessing from the Goddess.” Syd closed her eyes for a moment.
“So I take it you’re a beastess too?”
“Sure am!” She opened her eyes again. “What gave it away?”
“Well …” Alex looked her up and down, and by the time his eyes reached hers again, he could tell that she could tell that Alex had just been checking out her body.
“Yeah, I kinda stand out, don’t I?” Syd flexed one of her mammoth biceps, the tattoos on her arm stretching with her movements.
“A little, yeah.” Alex laughed nervously. “What do you do around here, Syd?”
“Security.” She giggled when Alex raised an eyebrow. “What? As much as we’re capable of defending ourselves—and you saw how well Audrey and Roxy can fight, back there—us beastesses still have enemies, you know.”
A chill went down his spine. Yeah, he thought, closer than you know.
His fingers grazed over the side of his abdomen, where his concealed weapon lay hidden.
“Two Deadly Nightshades,” Jerry said, approaching the bar and setting down the glasses. The pair of coupe glasses each had a deep amethyst-colored liquid with a glittering swirl on the surface, which smelled faintly of citrus and licorice. A metal skewer with a pewter skull on one end held three dark blood-red cherries suspended over the drink.
“Thanks bud, put it on my tab,” Syd said to the bartender.
“Oh you really don’t have to do that,” Alex said.
“No, I insist. What, you’ve never had a girl buy you a drink before?”
“Well, no, but it’s not that! I just … I’ve never had a cocktail before.”
Syd grabbed the bar in disbelief, rattling the glasses. “Never?”
“Yeah, only a beer or two, here or there.” Why the hell was he giving up so much information to her? It’s small talk, sure, but he should really keep his mouth shut.
“Well,” she said as she delicately used her fingers to grab the stem of the coupe glass, which looked cartoonishly small in her hand, “you should try it! This one’s my favorite.”
Alex looked at the purple cocktail swirling in front of him. An iridescent galaxy in a glass, mesmerizing, hypnotic.
His mind was telling him not to give in to the temptations of demons, to not drink potential poison from your enemy, to say ‘no thank you’ and walk away.
But his gut reminded him of a very important fact he should consider—the woman of his dreams had just bought him a drink.
Even if she was his target, it would behoove him to get on her good side for now. Maybe a little liquor would loosen her tongue. Or his, he cautioned himself.
He grabbed the coupe glass by the stem as well and almost spilled his drink on the bar.
“Whoa, careful!” Syd laughed. “All right. Cheers to you, Lexi, on having your first cocktail, seeing your first beastess fight, and …” She considered her words carefully. “… having an unforgettable night.”
Her smile was the widest he had seen from her yet. He could see just how razor-sharp her fangs really were, how they gleamed in the dim bar lighting. Were her golden eyes glowing?
“Cheers,” Alex finally said, and smiled back the best he could. Syd sipped her cocktail gently, closing her eyes to appreciate the flavor, and then downed the rest of her drink in one gulp. Dumbfounded, Alex watched as she ate the three cherries right off the skewer, licking their sanguine juices off of her lips like she had just bit into a slab of meat, and let out a satisfied belch.
Pagans can be so disgusting.
Alex in turn took a long sip of his drink. It was surprisingly tasty! The citrus and licorice he had smelled earlier were accompanied by some sort of other fruit he couldn’t place, and it really—
He coughed violently as the harsh warmth of the alcohol hit the back of his throat.
“Whoa, easy there!” Syd chuckled as she pounded his back, which nearly knocked him over.
With a hoarse voice, he placed the drink down and said, “Really good. Delicious. Love it.” He coughed a little more to clear his throat for good measure. “What the hell is in that?”
“Poison.” Alex stared at Syd in shock, before she let out a wild cackle. “Goddess above, you’re so gullible! No, it’s just absinthe. The strong stuff. Make sure you breathe out the alcohol fumes when you swallow.”
Might as well be poison with how strong that drink is, he thought. Alex grimaced and, surprising himself, drank the rest of the drink in one go, breathing out just like Syd said. It still burned, but it didn’t catch in his throat like before. He felt warm and tingly all over.
Syd said, “Wow! I’m impressed. Not bad for your first cocktail!”
Alex let out a high-pitched giggle, then stopped himself.
“Th-thank you,” he said, more curtly. Where did that come from? That drink is hitting him hard.
Syd frowned slightly and narrowed her eyes at Alex, staring at him, lost in thought, considering him. He wondered what she thought about him. Maybe how much of a weakling he was compared to her. Maybe how crushable his skull was. Maybe she was thinking about someone else entirely.
She smiled again. A big smile. Did she always smile like that, or just with him?
“I have another reason for wanting to chat and get to know you,” she said, “besides just showing a newcomer around, that is.”
His head slightly foggy from the strong drink—he regretted being too nervous to have more than a light meal before the mission—Alex steadied himself on the bar and looked up at Syd.
“And what would that be?” he said.
The gigantic woman next to him leaned down so that her mouth was level with his ear.
“I think you’re really cute, Lexi.”
Alex froze.
Time stood still.
He felt a warm tingle in his stomach.
… Cute?
Him?
That can’t be right. He was a weakling. A pathetic excuse for a man. The only other times he’d been called ‘cute’ in the academy was with heavy sarcasm by his fellow male cadets. Syd must be teasing him too, just like earlier.
“You’re lying,” he murmured, looking down at his empty glass.
Taken aback, Syd said, “I’m not! Honest!” When he didn’t answer her, she rolled her eyes, placed her hand under his chin, and tilted his head up to face her.
“Lexi, look at me: I. Think. You. Are. Cute.” She punctuated the last word with a gentle tap on his nose as she withdrew her hand. “Now tell me, from looking at me, do you think I’m lying to you?”
He looked into her eyes. Yellow like twin harvest moons. God in heaven, she was absolutely beautiful.
“No, I don’t. I just … I have a hard time believing that.”
Syd placed her glass on the bar. She looked behind her for a second, over the crowd towards the back of the nightclub, before turning around.
“Well … why don’t I prove it to you?” She delicately placed one finger on his shoulder, took her time to trace it down to the center of his chest, and withdrew it with a beckoning gesture. “Come with me. To the back.”
“N-now?”
“Now.”