Authors: Patrick Kampman
Lacey’s last suggestion gave me second thoughts about tagging along. Megan didn’t look thrilled, either. I had been thinking she would simply introduce me as a friend, but what Lacey said was more likely. It made sense that vampires would travel with brainwashed humans to use as a food supply. It would make feeding much easier. Plus they would have someone to protect them during the day.
Megan knew I was stubborn and would prevail in the end, but as she was not one to give up without a fight, she tried again. “You can’t go, Chance. We don’t know that Christian won’t be with them. It’s too much of a risk. He would recognize you and then we’d really be in trouble.”
“If he’s there, even better! We’ll just take them all out.” I said it before I thought.
“All of them, huh? Me included? Or were you going to let me live so I could explain to Donovan why someone under his name slaughtered a bunch of innocent people, including the Master of Texas?”
Occasionally I forgot what Megan was. I knew I was putting her in an awkward situation, testing her loyalties. She wouldn’t want to go in and kill “innocent” vampires. On the other hand, I wasn’t going to back down on this one. If one of these vampires knew where my mom was, they were going to tell me one way or the other.
“Of course not. I wasn’t thinking. I promise it will be a nice peaceful meeting. If we see Christian, I’ll sneak out and we can get him later.”
“And if he sees you first?” Megan asked.
“Then we’ll figure something out. I’ll make a break for it, and you can deny knowing what I was. Look, I’m sorry, Megan, but I’m going.”
“Me, too,” added Bryan.
Megan stared at the ceiling for some sort of divine interference. “Oh, Lord; this will end wonderfully. Chance, you realize if you come we might all die? If Bryan comes, we
will
die.”
Lacey shrugged. “Face it, Megan—in the long run, this meeting doesn’t matter. Once someone kills Christian, the Texas vamps are going to assume you’re involved. The entire community in California knows you’re sleeping with the enemy.”
“Lacey!”
“What? They do. Between you and Toni, Chance is like the supernatural stud muffin. You don’t think news like that isn’t going to spread? If you go and ask the locals about Christian, and then Chance swoops in and kills him, they are going to put two and two together.”
“Who’s Toni?” asked Kevin.
“Some hot werewolf my brother’s banging,” said Bryan.
“Damn,” said Kevin.
“I am not sleeping with her!” I insisted.
Despite my assertion of innocence, Jacob did not look pleased by the revelation.
“A werewolf, Chance?” Jacob said it in a quiet voice. Like he’d found out his kid was not only having sex, but was also knocking off liquor stores to support a drug habit.
“Fine. Megan, tell me where this master vampire lives. I’ll go in alone and sort it out. I’ll wait until you guys get back to California before I do it; that way you have plausible deniability. Granted, they might know we have a history, but if you’re fifteen hundred miles away when it all goes down, they can’t exactly hold you accountable for what happens.”
Of course, my likelihood of success would be zero if I went alone, and Megan knew it. As I looked into her ice-blue eyes, I knew she would be coming with me regardless of the consequences.
The realization was enough to change my mind. I was about to call it off and work on a new plan for rescuing my mom that didn’t involve killing any vampires, when Megan hung her head and said, “Okay, we’ll all go, but you
have
to follow my lead. Let me do the talking—that goes double for you, Bryan—and no threatening anyone. Please.”
“Shit, I’m a lover, not a fighter,” said Bryan.
“I promise we’ll behave.” I vowed to myself then that no matter what, regardless of what happened to me, Megan would walk out of this alive.
“I’ll call Donovan and set it up,” she said.
“Do you really have to call Donovan?” I asked. “Can’t we pop in and ask around on the down low? You know, get the information out of someone not connected to the master? Maybe we can do this without anyone knowing we’re here.”
Megan shook her head. “I don’t know anyone in Texas, let alone someone who would be willing to feed us information. It’s too risky for us to go snooping. If we’re caught, not only will we be in trouble, but so will Donovan. I can’t do that to him.”
“Why?”
“Why what? Why can’t I do that to him? Because he’s a friend. I’ve known him for a long time, and I won’t betray him. Why would he have to pay? I’m under his protection. I’m not supposed to be staying in another master’s territory without formal notice. I shouldn’t have waited this long, but I kind of hoped we could get in and out a little faster and quieter.”
“You said you don’t know anybody around here; how could they know who you are or who you belong to?” I asked.
“They’re tagged, like stray cats and seals,” said Lacey.
“Seriously?” I asked.
Megan rolled her eyes, but didn’t elaborate. Instead she said, “Donovan will contact the master of this area and let them know I’m here and would like to meet with them. Then someone from their house will contact me with a time and place for the meeting. I know it’s formal, but that’s how it works.”
“If you say so.”
“I do,” Megan said. “And remember, no one can know why we’re here. We can’t kill a vampire, even Christian. That would cause a major situation not only for us, but also for Donovan. Ideally, if we could prove the crimes Christian’s committed, he will stand trial under our law. For making those vampires and letting them go rogue, he might be put to death.”
Megan was reaching and we both knew it. “But since I know you’re not going to go for that, once we do find Christian, we have to find a way to get rid of him without anyone knowing it was us.”
Kevin spoke up. “Why not let Chance do it? He’s a hunter. It’s what they do. You can go back to California before he kills Christian. Then if he gets caught you won’t get in any trouble.”
“We
could
do that. At least, if Megan was willing to let Chance out of her sight and head back to California. And if Chance was actually capable of pulling anything off on his own,” said Lacey. “But since neither of those are likely, we need to bump him off so no one knows it was us. As it is, it’s going to look mighty suspicious if we go around asking about the guy, then he ends up dying.”
“Man, can y’all please stop your bitching? Give me a stake and point me in the direction of this Christian dude and I’ll cap his ass,” said Bryan.
“We’re all going to die,” said Lacey.
Megan insisted on no obvious weaponry, and considering where we were meeting this vampire, I didn’t protest. Getting arrested was something I wanted to avoid. It also reminded me that both my handgun and knife were missing, along with Jacob’s submachine gun. All of them were lost in the scuffle at Fred’s house.
Fortunately we had the goody-bag, so I took Robert’s backup Browning Hi-Power and a stake. As usual, Bryan brought along the .44 Magnum, tucking it into the front of his pants like an idiot. The girls were, of course, naturally armed.
We got lucky on parking when we got back up to Austin, pulling into a recently vacated spot a few blocks off the main street. It was after two, but the area was still packed. More than seventy clubs lined Sixth Street in Austin, and thousands of college kids and young urbanites descended upon them like a plague of locusts every night. On Fridays and Saturdays the police blocked off the roads to give the crowd more space. We walked among the students and twenty-somethings that jammed the street from sidewalk to sidewalk. Music poured from most of the doors, a mishmash of every genre imaginable.
We were looking for a place I had never heard of, which wasn’t too surprising. Between work and school, I didn’t have the opportunity to spend as much time downtown as I would have liked. Kristi and I went once in a while, but we tended to frequent the same places over and over. A sports bar with pool tables that I liked, and a dance club that she did.
Styx was neither of those. With a back-alley entrance a couple of blocks off Sixth Street, the club tried to set itself apart. Obscure band posters in various states of decay plastered the wall to either side of the large red door that served as its entrance.
A huge doorman in tight jeans, a black t-shirt and sunglasses perched on a stool at the end of a black rope used to guide the nonexistent line. Several groups of black-clad patrons littered the alleyway; most of them were smoking, forced outside by Austin’s no-smoking ordinance.
“This is the place?” asked Lacey, distaste clearly showing on her face. She was more of a trendy dance club girl.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Megan said, frowning at the red neon sign proclaiming the club’s name. It was clear she wasn’t prepared for this either. Megan’s tastes were harder to pin down. I would have guessed she preferred swanky elegance or upscale reserve. But the bar where I had met her was neither. It was more…backwoods watering hole. Of course, it had been a vamp bar and I supposed, at least in California, they preferred to keep things lower profile. The place now before us was more cliché than low profile.
“They named the club after an eighties rock band?” asked Lacey.
“I think it’s supposed to be named after the river in Hades,” said Megan.
“What are you guys even talking about?” asked Bryan.
“Never mind; let’s go in and find this…whoever it is we’re supposed to meet,” I said.
None of us were dressed appropriately. Megan at least was in black, but it was a classy cocktail dress that was too short, too devoid of lace, and entirely the wrong style to be considered gothic chic. Lacey was wearing jeans and a Salem, Massachusetts t-shirt that might have worked if it wasn’t pale pink. Bryan and I wore jeans and t-shirts as well, but again, they were the wrong style.
“Maybe I should wait outside with Bryan,” Lacey said.
“That’s what I’m talking about. Let’s you and me go find a darker spot in this alley.”
“On second thought, he can wait out here on his own.”
“Like hell. Why would I do that?” Bryan said.
“Because you’re not twenty-one,” Megan said, smiling as she realized the one upside the club had going for it.
“Seriously? Screw that,” said Bryan.
I came to Megan’s aid. “No choice, Bryan, we can’t draw attention to ourselves trying to sneak you in. So unless you have a fake ID, you’re out here watching the door. Keep an eye out for vampires. If you see any you recognize, call us.”
Bryan had been watching from the van the night the vampires came and burnt down my mom’s trailer. He had gotten a good look at a few of them, including Christian. It actually would be useful having him outside making sure no surprises walked in the front door.
“Dude, this sucks,” Bryan said.
“It’s not so bad. At least a couple of the chicks over there look cute.” I nodded to a group of patrons huddled near the entrance to the club. This particular group had a disproportionate amount of black-clad, milky-white-skinned hotties.
They were keeping to themselves, but Bryan had no social qualms about inserting himself where he wasn’t welcome. He perked up after seeing a couple in the herd that must have caught his fancy. Without another word, he started off in their direction.
I pitied them.
The smoking contingents outside of the club uniformly looked startled when, instead of passing them by and continuing down the alley, the three of us walked up to the bouncer.
I froze for a second before recovering and pulling out my driver’s license. The bruiser was giving off a familiar vibe. He was a troll. I had tangled with one once before, and it hadn’t been a pleasant experience. They were incredibly tough, easily able to handle even the toughest werewolf or vampire by themselves. Which, I’m sure, was why one had been chosen as security for this club.
His look of surprise as we walked up to him made it clear that even he thought we were at the wrong bar but, to his credit, all he said was, “IDs.”
We complied, and after handing over a cover charge of ten bucks each to a cute purple-haired attendant who never looked up from the game on her phone, we entered into an unexpectedly large club.
The theme was underworld chic with a dash of scuzzy. The walls and ceiling were black, and the decorations were all suitably gothic in nature: a collection of gargoyles, horror and geekophile movie posters, walls covered in sexually twisted macabre murals that would have done H.P. Lovecraft proud, and the final touch, a battalion of fog machines working away to ensure that the first several feet of the floor were continuously shrouded in smoke.
All of the tables littering the floor, along with the series of circular booths that ran along the walls, were upholstered in blood red and were full of customers. Several dozen more pale patrons filled the dance floor. Most of them danced by themselves, rather than in pairs, swaying to Bauhaus pounding out of the speakers, like morose marionettes.
Two bars—a large one in front, and a smaller, more intimate one set way in back—were both buried several rows deep by thirsty consumers of cocktails and red wine. A better-lit area in a corner was set aside for pool tables, pinball machines, and old-school video games.
A line of people stood in front of a window next to the games. A scrawny guy covered in facial tattoos and piercings took food orders.
As we stepped down into the club and swam through the throng of people, the suffocating heat conflicted with the cool presence of several vampires. I had no immediate way to pick them out of the crowd, but they were here. It was the same familiar sensation that emanated from Megan by my side.
I looked to Megan for direction, having no idea what this head vampire looked like. She was busy scanning the crowd as we moved, her brows drawn together. When we finally made it to the critical mass crowding the large bar, she stopped.
“Any idea where this guy is?” I shouted, forgetting she could hear me regardless.
She shrugged. “Let’s grab a table and see if he comes to us.”
Somewhere during our journey, Lacey had disappeared. On a hunch I looked toward the food window, but now that we were down on the same level, it was lost from view.