Blood and Bullets (5 page)
Once everybody was in the room I stopped working and turned to the group. The girls fell silent and became attentive. Standing against the wall, they made a line of barely covered female flesh. All of them were pretty, done up with heavy makeup and big, hairspray hair. Most people looking at them would dismiss them as anything other than dancers. Most people would assume they were all dumb bimbos who were only good for shaking their collective asses.
Most people wouldn't know their ass from a hole in the ground either.
These were good soldiers. Yes, there are some girls who worked the club who are damaged goods. Hell, we all are in one way or another. Every single one of us had our lives touched by the evil in the night. But that didn't make them less, it made them more. More determined to do what they could to fight it. More determined to help me stop it from happening to anybody else. I kept them safely back from the monsters. I protected them as much as I could, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that they would all kill for me if it came to that. Pride and love toned my voice when I spoke to them.
“All right, girls, I want you to all go get dressed and pack up. Grab your crucifix, and your guns.” The girls moved forward to form a line at the table. “Father Mulcahy will take you downstairs and see you all in your cars, and out. Of course Kat will call you about working tomorrow, and if it is going to be a few days, we will compensate you the money you are missing. So you have at least the night off.”
A slender hand rose in the air. The hand was attached to a slender arm that led to a small brunette with a body that would give eyesight to the blind. Ronnie, or Veronica when she was on stage. I nodded for her to speak. Her voice was clear when she did.
“What's going on, Deacon? If you need our help, just say the word.”
I smiled. “We have a bloodsucker problem. But we haven't figured out exactly what's going on.” I reached out and touched her bare shoulder. Her skin was smooth, silky under my calloused fingertips. “If I need you, I will call.” Ronnie leaned into my touch. Her thick, brown ringlets shimmered as she nodded. She was a sweet girl who had lost her brother in a Santeria gang war a few years back. He had given his life to try to save her, but it hadn't been enough. Thankfully, I had been able to pull her from the fire, literally. The scars on her palms were still shiny, and if you hugged her, occasionally you would get the slightest whiff of lit matches in her hair. Those slender arms moved to reach for me when Kat's voice cut in.
“Okay, girls. Stay in, and watch for vampires. If you so much as see one, call me and I will tell you what to do.” Kat has a pleasant voice, but it is a pitch deeper than you would think from looking at her. I mean, she looks so feminine and dainty, but she uses it to her advantage, putting authority into her words.
Ronnie stepped back into line. Kat nodded to her with a smile and kept talking. She lifted her own gun up for emphasis. “Be safe, and remember, if you are in doubt, shoot first, and call here before you call 911.”
One by one, all the girls picked up a gun and a cross from the table. Most of them hugged me and a few kissed me on the cheek as they went by. We are all family at Polecats. When all the girls were armed and sorted, Father Mulcahy followed them out of the room. He would make sure the coast was clear in the underground parking deck and lock it back up after releasing the girls. One of the reasons I chose this particular building to open the club was because it has an underground loading dock from its earlier life as a shipping business. It wasn't hard to secure that and make it a parking garage for employees. I had narrowed the opening to one-car access with a heavy-duty steel gate that worked on an electronic system.
A girl pulled up, clicked her opener, and that sent a signal to Kat's office. She looked on the monitor to see whether the girl was alone. If so, she passed her in the gate; if not, she alerted me or Father Mulcahy.
Kat pulled up a chair and waited without questions. She would catch up as we went along. I had called her earlier and told her about the vampire in the parking lot and meeting Nyteblade. She had put her gun away in a shoulder holster, but the strap was unsnapped for quick pull. She wasn't the best with a gun but could more than handle herself. Sitting in the chair with her feet up and her nice, girl-next-door appearance, she looked pretty normal.
Normal may be a strange description, but it fits. Hey, I am far from normal. Before my life went crazy and I discovered there really were monsters, and not just under the bed, I was a tattoo artist and a bouncer. My preferred mode of dress is lots of black and silver, lots of leather, and I am usually armed. Heavily armed. So yeah, take my look, the dancers and their working clothes, Father Mulcahy in his Roman collar and priest attire, and normal is the best description of Kat there is.
It was time to get to the bottom of what was going on and how it related to this Nyteblade character. I wanted to know why he had been expecting me, why he had thought I was a vampire, and why vampires were trying to kill me. First things first, I needed one thing cleared up.
“Is your name really Nyteblade?”
His eyes were wide and crystal blue when his head jerked to look up at me. He had pulled a pair of thin, wire-framed glasses from a case in his coat and they rode on a freckled nose on a small face. The makings of a thin red goatee framed his mouth and sharply pointed chin. The same redâorange hair bristled up on his head in a short, clean cut.
Sitting with the gigantic duster on his small frame made him look like a high-school kid. Truthfully, he looked kind of like he was joking, dressed as a bad TV show's idea of a vampire hunter for Halloween. His big eyes flashed a little anger and he drew a deep breath.
“That is the name the creatures of the night know me by.” He actually looked indignant.
Kat, God bless her soul, snickered, and I tried, I swear I tried, to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “Really? What creature of the night gave you that name?”
For a moment he thought about getting angry, I could see it in his eyes. Then his shoulders slumped and he deflated like all the air had been taken from his balloon. I'm not sure if it was my sarcasm or Kat's snicker.
“My true name is Larson.”
“That's better.” Yep, I liked Larson a lot better than Nyteblade. It was easier to say and fit him a lot better. He looked like a Larson. More like a librarian or a computer programmer, less like a super-mega-awesome vampire hunter. “So tell me what you know about the vamp attack tonight.”
“I don't have to tell you anything. I don't even know who you are.” Now his chin did raise up and point at me.
I smiled and tried to make it friendly, really I did. I can't help it that on me a smile usually looks like the grin of a pit bull. “You already know my name is Deacon Chalk. This here is Kat. The guy in the priest robes with the big-ass gun who will be back here in a moment is Father Mulcahy.” I needed to get a point across to Larson and I wanted to get it across fast.
My foot hooked a chair and kicked it around so that I could sit backward in it but still face Larson. The Desert Eagle slid out of its holster under my arm and into my hand. I didn't point it at him, just held it casually. A naked gun makes a nice subtle threat on its own. I knew it would be especially effective after he had seen the fighting with the vampires earlier.
“Now you know who we are.” The Desert Eagle waved around, the ruby dot of the laser indicating me and Kat. “And while I appreciate that you think you don't have to tell us what you know, I will have to respectfully disagree.” The Desert Eagle tapped the face of my watch. “Time is of the essence, so tell me why those vamps set me up using you.” The Desert Eagle draped in my hand off the back of my chair, pointing in the general direction of his crotch, red dot dancing on black denim like an exclamation mark.
The safety was on, I promise.
Larson's eyes were really, really big and really, really focused on my gun. Snapping the fingers on my left hand to get his attention made him jump. His eyes flickered to meet mine. “I don't know why I was attacked. I assume I must have made an enemy in the vampire realm.”
“So you killed some vampire and this was retaliation against you?” His ears burned bright red and he sheepishly turned his head away, refusing to look at me anymore. “You've never killed a vampire, have you?” I knew the answer before he shook his head. It was the only answer that made any sense at all. The gear he had was the most ineffective way to take out a vampire. You use wooden stakes when they are in their coffins and you are trying to be quiet. Any other time you blow them apart using the proper ammunition. “So, what? You have been snooping around vampires and getting in their way?”
He shook his head again. “I have asked around and done field research but have not taken action as of yet.”
Well, that explained how they knew about him, his damned research. He probably had been poking around at some of the clubs owned by vampires and the Goth clubs that catered to wannabes, asking a million questions and acting like a vampire slayer. So that brought it back to me. Nyteblade, sorry, Larson was zero threat to the vampires.
He was weak, inexperienced, and from the look of his gear, didn't know his half-ass from a hole in the ground. So this whole thing had been a hit on me. I was set up, put in the crosshairs by some vampires where I would be outnumbered
and
distracted trying to keep this bumbling idiot alive. This was not good news. I hate it when I haven't done anything and people still try to kill me. It really pisses me off. I mean sure, I have dusted my share of bloodsuckers in my time, but I hadn't targeted any in quite a while.
and
distracted trying to keep this bumbling idiot alive. This was not good news. I hate it when I haven't done anything and people still try to kill me. It really pisses me off. I mean sure, I have dusted my share of bloodsuckers in my time, but I hadn't targeted any in quite a while.
That would change as soon as I figured out who was behind this.
For the time being, I put the gun away and turned in Kat's direction. “Okay, let's think and tell me if you know of anything I have done recently that may have pissed off a local vampire with the pull to have fifty disposable bloodsuckers to throw at me.”
Her blond ponytail waggled back and forth as she shook her head. “I can't think of a vampire with the power to command fifty other vampires to do anything, much less have them to spare.”
She was right. Vampires organize and work together in bloodlines and clans to run a lot of underground crime and other shenanigans. However, the basis for all of that is a kiss of vampires, which is a small group of three to ten. A kiss is usually centered around one sire and a few that he turned into vampires.
Sires have some mental control over their fledglings, especially when they are freshly turned, but even the most powerful vampire will usually be able to hold only a few before they start to lose control. Individual vampires have minds of their own and are unpredictable. Plus, vampires have varying levels of intellect. The larger the group, the more likely it will fracture. For someone to send out fifty other vampires, we were talking big-time power.
Either that or all the vamps that attacked were pissed off at me personally. That couldn't be it. If that were the case they wouldn't have worked together without one vampire calling the shots.
Kat's feet hit the floor and she stood up. Shapely arms lifted her hands over her head in a stretch. Her black T-shirt rode up, exposing a pale curve of hip over the waistband of her jeans. I caught Larson watching her and he quickly looked away. Like I said, Kat isn't a dancer because of her nature, not because of her qualifications.
Done with her stretch, she pulled her shirt down and started for the door. “I'll go look into it.”
Kat headed out of the room as Father Mulcahy came in. He sat on the corner of the table. Laying the Sweeper down, he shook a cigarette out of the pack he kept in his shirt pocket and put it between his lips. The sharp tang of matchstick flared as he snapped a thumbnail over one from a book of matches.
I knew without looking that the matchbook was black or red with silver writing on it. Father Mulcahy uses the matches for the club.
P
OLECATS
âL
IVE
, A
LMOST
N
UDE
G
IRLS
, the front of the matchbook would read with a set of lips imprinted beside the words. Menthol-tinged smoke streamed from his nostrils. Father Mulcahy smokes Kool brand cancer sticks.
P
OLECATS
âL
IVE
, A
LMOST
N
UDE
G
IRLS
, the front of the matchbook would read with a set of lips imprinted beside the words. Menthol-tinged smoke streamed from his nostrils. Father Mulcahy smokes Kool brand cancer sticks.
“All the lasses are off and away. It's all quiet out there as far as I can tell.” Father Mulcahy was a mix of Italian and Irish descent. It gave a strange sound to his voice, a mixture of accents that rolled into an odd cadence. Plus, his voice was gruff from all the black coffee, cigarettes, and whiskey the man consumed; but that same voice could coax tears from the congregation at Sunday Mass, just like angels singing. I had experienced it myself. “So what world of shite did you stir up this time, son?”
I shook off my jacket, peeling the left sleeve away, where it was stuck to my arm. Dried blood left a pattern of rusty brown over my tattoos. Pushing the sleeve of my T-shirt up exposed the two puncture wounds from the vampire in the alleyway. They were clotted black with blood and stuck to the sleeve.
“Vampires. Other than that I have no idea, that's the problem. Kat was going to see if she could sort it out.”
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