7
Music blasted into the stairwell. The door to the club swung open and a small, stacked brunette stepped out, holding the door open behind her. Kat and I moved apart. She wiped thick trails of tears out of her eyes. I just blinked mine away.
Thick high heels tapped on the concrete. The brunette was agitated. Not because she was only wearing a white micro bikini top and matching white micro shorts. Ronnie, Veronica onstage, was a dancer and was well used to being underdressed for her curves.
Polecats isn’t really a “strip club,” because the city ordinances allow only nude dancing
or
alcohol sales. We chose alcohol sales, which meant the girls were always dressed—in as little as possible, but dressed nevertheless. Customers still poured in and the place made money hand over fist, which is good since it was the main funding for my war against monsters. Bump and grind to fight things that go bump in the night.
Stepping up, I took over holding the door, motioning Kat, Ronnie, and Sophia inside. We stood in a cramped little hallway meant for only one person. The end of it opened into the club itself, and I could see the cocktail waitresses carrying trays of drinks back and forth. It reminded me of a lurid, moving postcard.
I looked at Ronnie. She was a good girl and had been working the club since I rescued her from a Santeria street gang. I had been too late for her little brother, Gomez, who had given his life to keep her safe. I had pulled her from the fire on his behalf, literally. She still had the slick scars on her palms from then and the vague scent of voodoo smoke that refused to leave her skin.
I looked around the hallway, checking the ceiling and the corners. It took a second, but I spotted them. Above our heads were ghost spiders. They were big, the size of a child’s palm, and translucent, their skin almost see-through, kind of like a fogged car window. They were highly venomous and creepy as hell. Why didn’t I call an exterminator?
Because of Ronnie.
The spiders were imprinted on her. They followed her everywhere. I didn’t know how many there were. When they hatched, there were hundreds, but now I had no idea. You never saw more than a few at any given time. But where you saw Ronnie, you saw spiders. They were deadly, and creepy, and psychically connected to her. If she thought about something they could do, they just did it. She never had to find her keys or the remote anymore because the spiders would do it for her. They used to drop down and take money offered by the customers when she danced. Thankfully, she had been able to stop that, but God help anybody who got too touchy-feely with her.
“What’s going on?”
She smoothed her fingers over dark hair that was teased up eighties style. Small white teeth found her bottom lip, leaving crescent-moon scars in her crimson lipstick. “When the club opened, a group of Weres came in. A bunch of them.” She saw me tense, and put a small hand on my chest. I could feel the slick, hard scar tissue on her palm through my shirt. “Father Mulcahy has them in the conference room. Tiffany wanted me to tell you that they are not the ones from earlier and that Charlotte was with them.”
Okay. If the good Father had them corralled together, then this wasn’t an attack.
Not yet anyway.
Kat squeezed past us, making Ronnie step closer to me. I caught her faint sage-smoke scent. “I’ll go take the club over. I’ll send Tiff your way.” She turned and was off into the heart of Polecats.
A roomful of lycanthropes could turn into trouble in a split second. Charlotte being there was a comfort. She had been enslaved by Appollonia last year. Charlotte is a Were-spider. That hell-bitch had spiders as her familiar animal, which meant that she could use them as slaves, controlling them with her vampiric powers. I freed Charlotte from that hell-bitch’s control and she had been there at the end, fighting on my side.
Appollonia’s death left behind a lot of homeless Were-spiders, so Charlotte helped them relocate and settle into the area. Now she was the mother hen of the southern Were-spider cluster. A cluster composed of many different kinds of spiders, which was unusual, but she made it work.
She was also a friend. She came by with cookies for the girls and gourmet coffee for Father Mulcahy. We spent time together in a camaraderie born of blood shed with each other. Her, Tiff, and I had spent many off nights drinking and talking. Sharing things we couldn’t share with normal people.
Hell, the ghost spiders that were bonded to Ronnie were her offspring. It’s a long story how it all happened involving an ex-Yakuza assassin with a Japanese demon trapped under his skin.
A long story for another time.
Her being here was a good sign.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to get more weapons and ammunition.
Oh, hell no it didn’t.
8
The tension in the conference room spiked to a thousand when I walked in.
It could have been me. My reputation as an occult bounty hunter was well-known in the furry circles. It could have been the big-ass Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum strapped to my right hip.
The Smith & Wesson .500 is the world’s most powerful handgun, with bullets damn near the size of my thumb. Designed for hunting big game, it is the only pistol with enough power to bring down a lycanthrope without a head shot.
If you do get a head shot with the .500 Magnum, then you have no head left.
If I hit a lycanthrope anywhere, and it was loaded with silver, then they were done. Her name was Bessie and she hung against my thigh in a western-style holster, complete with big-ass bullets in loops, and a silvered Bowie knife to balance her out on the other hip. I still had the two Colt .45 semiautomatics under each arm, too, and no overshirt to hide them anymore.
I was betting it was the big-ass gun that made everybody nervous, but I would be damned if I would rely on there being another bottle lying around if needed.
It’s very aggressive to go into a room with enough firepower to kill everyone there. It makes a statement. Sometimes lycanthropes respond negatively to aggression and have to meet it with an equal show of their own. Alpha-male, dominance, pack mentality, whatever term applies. Sometimes being aggressive around them just sets them off.
I didn’t give a damn.
Submissive has never been my thing.
The conference room was actually a conference room inside the strip club, not a room designed for something strip clubby and doing double duty. Big oval table surrounded by chairs and a coffee maker. There was a state-of-the-art, Web-based information display also, but that was Kat’s department. I can do what any normal person can with a good search engine, but Kat is a wizard at it.
Father Mulcahy stood at the back of the room, near a broom closet that was cracked open. I knew there was a shotgun loaded with silver shot inside. The priest really likes to use his shotguns, and he could have it out and aimed at the room in a blink. A cigarette dangled from his lips, smoke curling up from it. He took a sip from a Styrofoam cup in his left hand, nodding to me over the rim of it. I have no idea how he can sip coffee and smoke at the same time without either ashing into his coffee cup or soaking his cigarette through, but he does.
He was leaning against the wall, his weight held mostly on his right leg. Last year in the mess with Appollonia he had gotten a vicious wound on his left leg. He could get around fine, but now he favored it when he could and it gave him a small hobble to his walk.
I sat in the only empty chair at the table. I didn’t actually sit, I flopped into it casually and threw my boots up onto the table in front of me with a clunk. My hands went across my stomach, not touching each other, ready to draw guns if need be. Taking a deep breath, I shoved my ability down, compressing it inside me so that I wouldn’t have to wade through everybody’s lycanthropy. It gets too distracting to deal with that many kinds of supernatural feedback if I don’t have to.
Six people looked at me with varying expressions on their faces.
Charlotte was immediately to my left. Her spine was perfectly straight; she always sat as if she were posing for a portrait. She had cut her hair since the last time I saw her and it looked good, styled into a semi-sixties Jackie-O. Her business blazer was over a light green blouse that went well with her wide hazel eyes and deep chocolate skin. When she was in spider-lady mode, she creeped me out; but as a human, Charlotte was quite a lovely woman.
I looked to Charlotte. “I am assuming everyone you brought knows who I am.” It was a statement, not a question, but she still nodded her head. “Okay, how about we go around the table with introductions, name and animal, so we can all be even. Then you can tell me what y’all want.”
Charlotte nodded again and turned to the bulky man to her left. He was a thick man. Shoulders rounded like boulders and arms heavy as logs on the table in front of him. He wore a crumpled white shirt. A thin black tie had been pulled loose and left hanging askew at his neck. The shirt didn’t fit, adding to the look of bulk on him. A thick layer of coarse black hair covered his arms, tufting out below the rolled-up sleeves. The contrast between the hair and the shirt somehow made his skin look paler than it actually was. His features had been pasted on his face, thick and heavy like an unfinished sculpture.
A wave of her hand and he grabbed a cane I had not seen leaning against his thigh. With a deep breath, he stood, using the cane to support him on one side.
Before he could speak, the door to the room opened. Tiff breezed in followed by Sophia, who was still a russet-colored dog. Tiff had changed for the opening of the club. As assistant manager, she didn’t dance, but she liked to dress as if she did. Tonight she had gone cowgirl. Scandalous red cowboy boots cupped shapely bare calves that stretched into shapely bare thighs that disappeared beneath a fringed miniskirt. More fringe than skirt, truthfully. Not that I was complaining.
Her top was a short-cropped, fringed western cowgirl vest that had a single button in the center and covered just about as much as a Wonderbra. She had curled her hair into a pink and black swirl that flared out from under a matching Stetson hat. She looked like a fifties pinup of a cowgirl, all sassy and sexy and sweet.
Every eye in the room followed her in except Charlotte’s, the priest’s, and the Were with the silver hair.
Yes, even mine.
She loved that outfit because it allowed her to wear the Colt. The Colt used to belong to my friend Western Jim, a monster hunter from Texas. He was a cantankerous old bastard. Mean as a rattlesnake and twice as likely to bite, but I liked him. I had used the Colt to kill him last summer after he had been turned into a vampire under the thrall of Appollonia. I had taken it with me when I left and it was all I had of his.
The gun wasn’t anything special except that it was old as dirt and had killed a ton of ghoulies. It was a Colt Peacemaker, single-action revolver in .45 caliber. Tiff loved it and was a pretty good shot with it. Like most things with Tiff, she wore it as part of a costume but never treated it with disrespect. She understood that it meant something to me because it had belonged to my friend, so she took care of it. She cleaned it after each practice session, and I think even though he was a crotchety SOB, Western Jim would have been pleased with her love and care for his old gun.
She leaned against the wall to the right, midway down the table, and hooked her thumbs in her gun belt. It pulled down on the belt and skirt, revealing the smooth bottom swell of her stomach and the valleys beside her hipbones . . . which was distracting as hell, but I knew she’d be able to draw the Colt in a split second. Standing where she was made a four-sided box with me, her, Charlotte, and the priest. The room was covered if it all went tits up. Her training with me was working well. Sophia sat beside her leg.
The bulky man blinked twice. He shook his head and swallowed deeply, making his Adam’s apple jerk up and down. His head turned to me, but it took a second for his eyes to follow. His voice was deep when he spoke, coming from far inside that wide barrel of a chest.
“I have met you before. My name is George and I am a silverback.”
Silverback? Last year I had a run-in with a Were-gorilla who was the familiar of a vampire named Gregorios who I made dead. I didn’t kill the Were, just shot him. In the knee. With a silver bullet. I pointed at his cane. “Is that from last year?”
“It is.”
“Sorry about that.”
Thick hands came up and waved in the air. “No, no. To be free of that vampire bastard I would gladly lose my whole leg.”
I nodded, not knowing what else to say. That was two people I had seen today whose legs I had injured. I was even more responsible for George’s limp than I was for Larson’s wheelchair. I didn’t feel bad about either. Things happen in my line of work. It could have been worse for George. I could have shot him in the face.
I turned to the girl beside him. She was a young woman, maybe twenty years old, and very average. Average height, average weight, straight brown hair. The only thing out of the ordinary about her was the size of her glasses. They were huge on her face. Round lenses thick as coke bottles filled the horn rims. They magnified her brown eyes, giving her a cute, almost cartoon look. Like an anime girl from a Japanese cartoon. Without them, she had to be blind as a bat.
She stood as George sat. Thin fingers fluttered around her glasses, leaving smudges behind. Her voice was a thin squeak of nervousness. “My name is Lucy and I share skin with a rhinoceros named Masego.”
“I don’t know what ‘share skin with’ means.”
If she had been born with an Adam’s apple, it would have bobbed up and down as she swallowed. “My family was cursed by an African shaman for poaching rhino horns many generations ago. As punishment for my great, great, great uncle’s crime, the oldest offspring of each generation shares a body and a life force with a kindred rhinoceros totem. The one I am tied to is named Masego.”
Curious.
“So you are not really a lycanthrope?”
“No.” Her head shake bobbed hair around thin shoulders. It made her look really young. “I am a shape-shifter, but not because of lycanthropy. Masego and I are totally separate. We get along, but we are not one and the same.”
I nodded and indicated she should sit. I would keep her story in mind. Just because she was here did not mean her animal would want to be. A push of my booted foot spun my chair slightly to look at the other side of the table. It was just as interesting.
Across from the girl with the coke-bottle glasses sat a man taller than me. Smooth muscles played under a designer T-shirt so tight it could have been painted on. He had worked hard for his physique, but those muscles had not come from work. They were gym muscles. It didn’t mean he wasn’t strong, but his body had the polished look of a male model.
Shiny aviator glasses hid his eyes, reflecting back the room. His chiseled jaw was scraped smooth. Even though he looked to be only around twenty-five, his hair was steel gray and cut in a stylish hundred-dollar haircut. You know, the kind that looks like your hair hasn’t been cut at all. That’s why I shave my head with a straight razor. It costs me nothing but time in the shower every other day.
He was also the only lycanthrope in the room wearing a gun.
I couldn’t see it, but I have worn a pistol in the back of my waistband for years now. I know it makes you sit differently. He was too forward in his chair to be comfortable. Leaning up just slightly so that he could reach back to his gun if need be.
I had never run across a shape-shifter who carried a gun. They all relied on tooth and claw. I would be keeping my eye on him. Tilting his head down, he stared coolly back at me over his sunglasses. The irises of his eyes were a pale red like watered-down wine, glowing almost pink below thick steel-gray eyebrows. No wonder he wore the sunglasses.
“I am the Templar Rex of the Red Clay Warren. My name is Boothe, with an E.” The words came out languid, relaxed, with just a hint of southern drawl.
“What’s your animal?”
His chest thrust out. “Rabbit.”
That explained the pink eyes. I liked the fact that he didn’t try to make his animal sound more impressive by calling it a lagomorph or something equally retarded. He said the word
rabbit
as if it were something to be proud of.
I liked that.
“What are you carrying?”
His face broke into a slow grin. “I knew you were going to pick up on that.” He reached behind himself and slowly drew out a square, black, semiautomatic pistol. His fingers splayed out, away from the trigger as he held it up. “Springfield XD. Forty caliber.” It was a good gun. Easy to carry and reliable.
I nodded. He put the gun back behind him. Father Mulcahy took his arm out of the broom closet, and Tiff’s hand slid back to her belt and away from the handle of the Colt.
The man beside him moved to draw my attention from Boothe. He was almost preening to get me to look at him. He was also a pretty boy. Thin and lithe, built like a runner or a swimmer. Athletic, but not bulked up like Boothe. His clothing was strange. Everyone else was dressed like normal humans, but he looked like he had been called from the Renaissance Fair to this meeting. His shirt was a light green linen and done in a poet style. I would not be surprised if when he stood up he was wearing tights of some sort. Shaggy, fawn-colored hair kicked wildly around his head, framing two of the largest eyes I had ever seen on a man. I had to admit, his eyes were beautiful. I felt the pull of them from across the table. They were like pools of everything good and noble in the world, seasoned with a current of wildness.
What? I am secure enough to say he had the prettiest eyes I have ever seen on a man.
“And who the hell are you?”
Chest puffed up in an attempt to make himself look bigger, his voice was a nice tenor that he tried to deepen when he spoke.
“I am the Lord of the Forest.”