Immediately upon entering, she was surprised to find a short flight of stairs instead of the main room of the bar. With Danyon following close behind, she took the stairs two at a time only to find herself in a narrow hallway once she reached the top. The walls were black and splattered with orange, green, red and blue neon paint that came to life under a black light. At the end of the hall was another set of stairs, which led them to a narrow landing, then another set of stairs, and yet another landing.
“This is like a maze from a horror movie,” Shauna said.
The last hallway ended at the top of a longer flight of stairs. Shauna went down first, following the stairway down, down, down. The maze of stairways and landings, then the final set of stairs heading down, had been built to create the illusion that you were going further below ground than the first floor. Shauna thought that odd, since anyone who lived in, or had been to, New Orleans
knew going below ground was impossible, given most of the city was at or below sea level.
At the bottom of the stairs was the entrance to the club. It was no bigger than Opal’s, but just as dark and dank. The place wasn’t nearly as crowded, though, and the jukebox playing in the corner was at a moderate volume. An Asian couple swayed slowly together beside it, and it looked more like they were holding each other up than dancing. A pool table stood at the back of the room, and a few lopsided wooden tables with accompanying plastic chairs of various colors had been placed haphazardly about the bar. People were clustered into small groups here and there, most of them hidden by shadows.
“See any sign of him?” Danyon asked.
“No,” Shauna said through gritted teeth. Anger was rolling its way to fury inside her. How was it possible for that scrawny twerp to keep slipping out from beneath them? A thought suddenly struck her, pitching her anger right past fury to a tsunami of rage.
What if Banjo had purposely led them on a wild goose chase so real business could be taken care of elsewhere? Had he been sent as a diversion? What in the hell was his connection to this? Shauna wanted to wrap her hands around Banjo’s scrawny neck and choke the answer out of him.
“Anybody here see a scrawny guy in an orange shirt run through here?” Shauna asked loudly.
The answer was the clack of billiard balls being racked and set—the
schtack
from a pop top—the screech
of a chair shifting on a concrete floor. No one else said a word.
“Unless there’s an exit door we don’t know about,” Shauna said to Danyon, “there’s no way Banjo could’ve gotten out of here without us seeing him. We would have passed him on the stairs.”
Danyon nodded and walked over to the bar. She followed, hoping he had picked up the same feeling she had—that the people in this bar might not take too kindly to their bartender being grabbed by the collar.
When they reached the bar, Danyon rested an arm on it, then asked the middle-aged guy standing behind it, “You have a back door here?” The man’s eyes stayed flat as he shook his head. Then he turned his back to Danyon and started rearranging bottles on the shelf by the register.
“Was that a no?” Danyon pressed.
The bartender didn’t respond.
Exhausted from being pushed and shoved on the street for hours, tired of not being any closer to answers than when they started, and furious that Banjo had managed to slip past them again, Shauna quick-stepped to the bar before Danyon could stop her, then leaned over it and slapped a hand on the Plexi-glass top.
“He asked you if there was a back door,” she declared. “If you can’t answer the damn question, I’ll go looking for it myself.”
The bartender turned and looked at her, and for a moment, Shauna expected him to either burst out laugh
ing or pick up the phone and call the police. Instead, he cocked his head toward the pool table.
Thinking he may have just given away Banjo’s hiding place, she spun about on her heels.
But it wasn’t Banjo.
It was a huge white man about Danyon’s height, but at least two and a half times his weight. He had an acne scarred face, dark eyes that were too small for his face, and a bald head that not only looked like it was a trans plant from a bulldog, it was covered with tattoos of naked women.
He stared at Shauna and leaned over the pool table, stick in hand as if preparing to shoot. His thick lips curled into a sneer, that all but said,
“You’re one good lookin’ piece of prime rib, and I’m hungry.”
The man had to be Big Frank Macina, the leader of the BGW gang that Jagger had told them about, the biker gang that thought they were big and bad enough to take over some Blood and Crip territory.
She wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. Macina didn’t look big and bad. He looked like he needed a bath, a dentist, and a hard-hitting weight loss program.
It suddenly struck Shauna as she stared at his tasteless tattoos—what better way would there be for a new gang to take turf from one of the toughest gangs in the country than to be the sole provider of the most potent drug in the underground market?
The answer to that was simple.
None.
Without giving it a second thought, Shauna stormed toward Big Frank.
She was a Keeper and was responsible for the safety and well-being of the weres in this city. She was also responsible for helping to keep peace between her weres and every other race living in the city.
However, there was one race she could not have cared less about maintaining peace with—assholes.
In her book, anyone out to harm her weres, directly or indirectly, fit into that category.
Being a Keeper wasn’t her job. It was her purpose in life. And if that meant tackling a three hundred and fifty pound, tattooed, yeast-colored piece of crap like Macina, then so be it.
Whatever it took to protect her weres.
And nothing and no one was going to stop her.
D
anyon had one eye on the bartender, wondering if a quick jab and a nose realignment might re-circuit the guy’s attitude and sharpen his memory, when he spotted Shauna heading for the pool table.
“Hey!” he called after her, meaning to get her attention, to stop her.
It didn’t work.
He saw that her hands were balled into fists at her side and knew big trouble was on the way.
Danyon took off after her, intending to steer Shauna toward a quick exit up the stairs, but he was two steps too short. Shauna was already leaning over the pool table, confronting the bull mastiff who was holding a pool stick.
Earlier, he had been so focused on finding Banjo and
keeping Shauna out of trouble, that he hadn’t noticed the tattoos on the big man’s bald head. The entire lumpy sphere was covered with ink drawings of naked women in different poses. Danyon remembered the description Jagger had given them of the leader of the BGW biker gang that had recently come into town. Although there were a lot of people in New Orleans right now for Nuit du Dommage, he seriously doubted he would find more than one man who fit the gang leader’s description. He had no doubt he was about to meet Big Frank Macina.
Shauna kicked that meeting off with all the grace and charm of a MacDonald ready to take on the world.
“So, what’s your game?” Shauna asked.
Danyon stood about six feet behind her, trying to figure out if he should just scoop her up now and get her out of here, or let her get out whatever she had in her system. He also had to consider that she was a Keeper, which meant he needed to respect her space and abilities, instead of jumping at every turn to protect her, the way he had with the drunk on Bourbon earlier. Standing back and just watching was far from easy. His basic nature and instinct wanted to toss Shauna over his shoulder and haul her outside. But who was he kidding? Even if he did haul her out against her will, she would just turn around and head right back in. What concerned Danyon even more, was that he knew even if he wasn’t standing right behind her as backup, Shauna would still be up in Big Frank’s face.
Frank’s grin was wide and nasty. He tossed the pool
stick on the table and laid his big hands palm down on the felt.
“Say again?” he said to Shauna.
“I said, what’s your game?” Shauna repeated. The Travis Tritt song that had been playing on the jukebox went silent, and the entire bar fell into an eerie hush.
Frank glared at Shauna, his eyes unwavering. “I’d say the game’s you, Missy.”
“You run with some skinny chick named Trish and a guy who goes by the name Banjo Marks?” she asked.
Frank’s grin grew wider, and he stood upright and sauntered over to the corner of the pool table, then leaned a hip against it and folded his tree trunk-size arms across his chest. “What’s it to ya?”
“Simply asking a question.”
“And I just gave you a simple answer.”
“No, you didn’t. You gave me another question,” Shauna said.
Frank laughed, a deep rumbling sound that had no humor in it at all. “Little girl, I think it’s past your bedtime. You best be gettin’ home.”
Danyon flinched. Now why did the guy have to go and call her a little girl?
As he suspected would happen, Shauna popped to attention, bristling.
Frank snorted, and his eyes traveled over Shauna’s body, pausing in places that made Danyon want to rip the massive guy’s eyeballs out of their sockets.
“The
last
thing you’re looking at is a little girl,” Shauna declared.
“Yeah?” Frank uncrossed his arms, then grabbed his crotch with a hand. “Then why don’t you come on over here and prove just how little you aren’t?”
Danyon wanted to pounce on the guy and yank his heart out through an ear canal. But he held his ground, allowing Shauna to keep the lead.
She didn’t disappoint.
“I don’t have to prove jack to you,” she said.
“Then maybe I’ll let big ol’ Frank here,” he pointed to the thick bulge in the crotch of his jeans, “be the one to do the provin’.”
She harrumphed.
Frank folded his arms again, appearing to grow bored. “So what the hell’s your game? You just bored and out to start some shit?”
“I hear you’re the head of some new biker gang,” Shauna said.
That must have pushed Frank’s pride button, because his chest expanded another two inches. “Yeah, well, you heard right.”
Shauna pursed her lips and nodded, and Danyon had a sinking feeling that things were getting ready to go from bad to worse.
“And the name of your gang is BGW?” Shauna asked.
“Somebody give the lady a stuffed penguin for getting two right in a row,” Frank said sarcastically.
“Better make it one of those big stuffed bears,” she said, “because I’m about to hit you with a third.”
“Go for it,” Frank said, obviously amused now.
“Word has it that you plan on scarfing some territory from the Bloods and the Crips. Is that right?”
At the mention of the Blood and the Crips, four men from a nearby table got up and slowly made their way behind Frank, forming a semi-circle.
“I asked if that was right,” Shauna pressed.
Frank’s eyes grew hard. “You one of their bitches?”
Appearing far from deterred, Shauna glared at each man standing behind Frank, then set her sights back on the big man. “Get real,” she said. “Do I look like I belong to either of those gangs? Quit acting like a punk and call off your goons.”
One of the guys standing behind Frank took a step toward her.
Danyon countered it.
“Back off, Tee,” Frank said to the front man who appeared to be getting a little ahead of the game.
Tee was about Frank’s size, and he had long brown hair that he kept flipping over his shoulder like a girl.
Even though he’d been told to stand down, he took his time about it, all the while staring at Shauna.
Frank leaned toward her. “You listen close. If you’re looking for information on this ‘Banjo’ dude, you came to the wrong place. But if you’re looking for trouble, you’ve hit the mother lode,” Frank warned. “There’s no business in here for you.”
“This is a public bar. I have as much right to be here as you.”
Frank rubbed a hand slowly over his bald head.
Even from where he stood, Danyon felt anger radiating off the guy, like heat from a sunlamp.
“Know what else I heard?” Shauna asked, taking a step toward Frank.
Frank narrowed his eyes, tucked a thumb in his belt loop.
“I heard you picked up on some new stuff, and that you plan to push it, use it to take over some B and C turf.”
“And just what new stuff did you hear we got?” Frank asked.
Danyon had no idea what Shauna was talking about. When Jagger had told them about BGW, he didn’t say anything about them bringing drugs into the city. In fact, Jagger had claimed that, so far, the gang had been laying pretty low. Shauna was obviously fishing for some thing.
Shauna shrugged a response to Frank. “All I heard was ‘new.’”
Frank gave her a crooked smile. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about. We’re just here for a little Mardi Gras fun.”
Weighing Frank’s reaction, Danyon couldn’t figure out if the guy knew exactly what Shauna was talking about, or if he was simply determined to fuel her temper.
If his intention was the latter, it appeared he had accomplished the job…big time.
“Listen up, creep. I really don’t care what gang you lead. For all I know, the whole damn lot of you probably ride Schwinns. And what kind of gang name is BGW
any way? What does it stand for? Balloons, gumballs and watermelon? Grow up. You, the Blood, the Crips, all of you strut your stuff like you own the world, but all you bring with you no matter where you go is your dope and a pile of crap. People are dying because of what you put out on the street. I’m going to put a stop to your little boy’s club, even if I have to do it myself!”
Frank stood up straight, dropped his hands to his side. “Bitch, you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Your mouth is about to get your face smashed in.”
Much to Danyon’s dismay, Shauna snapped back, “Oh, that’s a big man for you. You’re going to hit a woman? Is that how you’re used to getting your way? Is that your exercise regiment for all that blubber you’re hauling around?”
Frank aimed a finger at Shauna but glared at Danyon. “Dude, if this is your bitch you’d better grab her ass and get her out of here, before my foot winds up in her face and yours, too.”
“So, who did your tats?” Shauna asked, evidently determined to get herself killed. “Some kindergartener with a green crayon?”
Frank lowered his head ever so slightly. If looks could kill Shauna would already be at the morgue.
“Oh, come on. Spill it,” Shauna demanded. “Be a man and say what you’ve got. What’s your game? What’s your stuff? What are you going to use to take over that Blood and Crip territory? Your gumballs? Your watermelon? Are you using Banjo to run your junk? Is that what you’re doing? What’s the matter? Your balls aren’t big enough
to talk to a woman? You can’t tell it like it is?” Shauna took another step toward him.
All Frank had to do was lean over a couple inches, stretch out a hand, and he would be able to grab her by the neck and snap it. She was going too far.
Shauna jabbed a finger in the air, right in front of Frank’s face. “I’ve got people dying out here because of scum like you. And I’m tired of it, you hear? I’m tired of my people always having to watch their backs because of dogs like you. You and the rest of your punks need to get on your tricycles and just get the hell out of town.”
“That’s enough, bitch!” Frank roared. His right hand shot up, then swung out, heading for Shauna’s face.
In a flash, Danyon sprang forward and grabbed Frank’s arm. “I don’t
think
so,” he said through clenched teeth.
By now, all of Frank’s goons had circled in tight.
“You don’t have any idea who you’re messing with,” Frank said to Danyon. His eyes had narrowed into slits, and he bared his teeth.
“Oh, I think it’s the other way around,” Danyon snarled.
“That little slut of yours is the one who started all this shit,” Frank said.
The second Danyon heard the word “slut” fly out of Frank’s mouth, his entire body began to vibrate, and his muscles rippled from his calves to his thighs—from his arms to his chest. He wanted to rip the man’s face off. Rip his heart out of his chest. Even if it meant transforming to were right in front of everyone in the bar.
Shauna appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and forced her body between his and Frank’s. He thought he saw her mouth move, but he couldn’t hear any words. The fury inside of him had grown too loud.
When her voice finally came through, it was panicked. “I just saw him! He’s out back—Banjo!”
Danyon didn’t know if she was making this up to prevent him from transforming to were, or if she was telling the truth. By the way she kept jabbing a finger toward the stairway, he suspected it might be the latter.
“We’re going to lose him again if we don’t go now. I just saw him dart up the stairs. We’ve got to hurry!” She pulled Danyon’s arm, and he allowed her to lead him back to the stairway.
As they rushed up, two steps at a time, Danyon heard a roar of laughter behind them. He knew the men were laughing at him, because he had been yanked out of the bar by a woman. Under any other circumstances, Danyon would have gone back and changed their tune, possibly slaughtering them all—his fury was that great. But he had an entire pack to take care of. They had to come first. They were always first.
“There!” Shauna said, as soon as they’d stepped into the street.
He spotted a flash of orange dart between two buildings about seventy feet away. This time Banjo was
not
going to slip past him.
Danyon ran.
So much tension had built up inside him, that Danyon quickly reached a speed he only acquired when he was
were. He wondered if he had transformed without even realizing it.
In a matter of seconds, he caught up to Banjo, grabbed him around the throat with one hand and wrapped the other hand in his hair. Then he yanked Banjo into a side alley and slammed his back against a brick wall.
Shauna appeared immediately after and stood at the entrance of the alleyway, which would have been Banjo’s only hope of escape, since the opposite end of the alley was blocked off by a ten-foot brick wall.
Banjo’s eyes were wide and darting up, down—left and right. Danyon knew he was looking for an escape. Anything, anywhere—if he could scale the walls he would have. His face held nothing but stark fear when he realized he was trapped.
Banjo laced his fingers together and put hands on top of his head. He started rocking back and forth, then dropped to his knees. “Whaddaya want, man? Whaddaya want? Look, she know me.” He aimed his chin at Shauna. “You know me, huh?”
“Oh, I know you all right,” she said. “You were in my shop, telling me secrets, remember? Trading secrets for cookies—does that ring a bell?”
Banjo rolled his head from shoulder to shoulder and squeezed his eyes shut for a couple seconds. “Aww, man, aww, I be takin’ stuff, ya know? Takin’ stuff—I—I don’t know.” As he jabbered, he got to his feet, lowered his hands, and took a step forward.
Danyon grabbed him again and threw him back up against the wall. Banjo dropped into a squat and clasped
his hands together as though he were praying. “Don’t kill me, okay, man? Please, don’t kill me. I didn’t do nothin’, I don’t know nothin’, I swear!”
“If you don’t know anything and didn’t do anything,” Shauna said, “then why did you take off running when you saw me?”
“I don’t know. I do that—I just do that.”
A street light near the entrance of the alley cast muted white light over Shauna’s shoulder and had settled on Banjo. Danyon saw he had broken into a heavy sweat, and his body was shaking violently. Either he was really nervous, or Banjo was going through withdrawals. Which ever it was gave Danyon an advantage.
Wearing heavy black boots, Danyon lifted a foot and parked it between Banjo’s legs, right on his groin.