Texas Hold 'Em (36 page)

“I told you, this fellow’s friends here are werewolves,” said Samuel, confused again.

“You most certainly did not tell me, and they most certainly
cannot
come in. You know the rules, Samuel!” The troll’s confusion turned to a frown and Samuel looked ready to bounce Nocturne.

Nocturne walked right past me. “I am quite sorry, Bryan—you and your brother may come in, of course, but
not
your pets. We have a strict no-dogs-allowed policy.” He flashed a toothy smile at Toni.

Oh, no! It made sense that he’d addressed Bryan. It was my brother that Marie had taken a fancy to. Unfortunately, Bryan was the last person you wanted leading your diplomatic efforts. The odd exception was when trying to pick up chicks, when apparently his crass lack of class and over- inflated ego were a supercharged mixture of Win.

“Yo, dude, I need to see my woman,” said Bryan, shouldering his way past me as he happily realized that he was the lead on this.

I could see Nocturne’s internal struggle as he processed the demand. He managed a tight, “Of course you do, Bryan. And please, you’re welcome to go right ahead and see her Ladyship. Alone.”

“Nah, screw that noise, my friends are coming with,” Bryan said, crossing his arms.

“No, your friends are most certainly not ‘coming with,’ and the only screwing around that is going to be done is by me, when I twist that insolent little head of yours until it pops off like a cork.”

You would have thought Bryan had learned his lesson after the debacle earlier with him and the tiny new vampire. But no. Bryan moved to get in the less small and significantly less new vampire’s face, forcing the troll to hop off his stool with surprising agility. He inserted himself between my brother and the fop before Bryan did something truly dumb.

My brother bent sideways so he could see Nocturne and said, “Look, fruitcake, either get out of our way or I’m shoving that stupid hat of yours right up this dude’s ass!” He poked a finger into Samuel’s chest.

“You little shit! Out of the way, Samuel, I’m going to teach this—”

“Wow, hostility. Totally a buzz-kill on my good mood.” A whimsical voice cut off Nocturne, and Marie drifted out of the club’s entrance. She had changed since we’d dropped her off earlier. She was now dressed in a long, flowing black lace gown. It was cut modestly in front, but as she passed in front of me to put her arm around my brother’s waist, I could see that it dipped into plumber territory in the back. I had no complaints.

Nocturne’s tone was an inch short of a whine. “Marie, not only is this human of yours an insolent buffoon, he is trying to bring a pack of werewolves into our club.”

“Well, technically, it’s still
my
club he’s trying to bring them into, not ours, at least for the next few hours. But I hate to get all materialistic, and Reginald has a point.” Marie managed to commend Nocturne for barring entry to the werewolves at the same time she scolded him for fighting with Bryan by using his real name in public. It was times like these that reminded me she wasn’t as dumb as she pretended to be.

She further underlined that fact when she turned to me and said, “Werewolves, Chance? Now, why would you want to go do a thing like that?” I was pretty sure her single comment encompassed hanging out with them in general, doing one in particular, and trying to bring a bunch of them into her club.

“Lacey’s been badly hurt and I need your help to heal her,” I said, giving up on witty banter and getting straight to the point, mostly because I would probably lose a witty banter fight.

“And I’m the first person you thought of? Aw, how sweet.” Marie released Bryan so she could walk up and put her hand on my chest with only a slight flick of the eyes to Toni. Did women have to bait each other like that?

Toni rose to the bait, growling at Marie. Her pack closed in around us.

Marie ignored them, and stepped even closer. “How exactly was she hurt? It wasn’t these wolves, I suppose?” Her glance drifted sideways to Toni.

“No, it was Christian.”

“Pity. The wolves would have been more convenient. Where is Lacey now?”

“Lying in the back of our van—it’s parked out back behind your club.” I nodded in the general direction.

“And Christian?” Marie asked innocently, her hand sliding from my chest to grasp my shoulder.

“He got away.”

“What do you mean he got away?” Marie’s tone had developed an edge I hadn’t heard in her before, and her gentle touch was suddenly not so gentle. My shoulder screamed as it was caught in a vise.

“Look, you undead toothpick—” Toni started toward her. The troll’s brow furrowed as he tried to decide between keeping Bryan away from Nocturne, or Toni from Marie.

I raised my hand, stopping her. “The point is, Marie, if you can help Lacey, then we can find Christian and finish the job we came here to do.”

Marie removed her hand and I resisted the urge to rub my shoulder. She couldn’t hide her disappointment.

“Finish the job? Not to be a Debbie Downer, Chance, but you’ve had ample opportunity to ‘finish the job,’ as you put it. It’s still not done, and we are about out of time. I can only hope for Megan’s sake that you’re a bit better at finishing the job in other areas of your life.”

I could sense Toni’s hackles rising, and hers weren’t the only ones. The rest of the werewolves were tense, feeding off their alpha’s emotions. I knew we were about a heartbeat away from a serious fiasco.

“Marie, listen—Christian is alone now, on the run. We can take him. I just need Lacey to help find him for us.”

“Alone? How do you know?”

Toni answered for me. “Because the rest of his bloodsuckers are all dead.” At least she left off the “like you’re going to be” that I knew she wanted to tack onto the end.

Marie sauntered back to my brother. Giving a gentle pull on the front of his shirt, she asked, “Is this true?” Perhaps she thought my brother was too dim to mislead her.

“Yup! My bitch and I took care of the last of his vampires a couple of minutes ago.” Bryan snaked an arm out to reel in an alarmed Bethany while moving his other arm around the waist of Marie.

I wasn’t sure if he was being offensive or clever with his terminology. Judging by Bethany’s glare, it was a combination of the two.

I spoke up quickly, setting the record straight. “Actually, two of Christian’s vampires are left. One of them has my mom, Megan, and Kevin. He was supposed to be bringing them here. You haven’t seen them, have you?” I asked Marie.

Marie shook her head. “And the other one?”

“I think she took off.”

“Well, that’s good news, but this isn’t the place to talk about all of this. How about we go inside? If you’re good, I might let you bring one of your wolves in with you.” Marie had leaned over to get a good look at Bethany, who was somewhere between startled and interested.

“Man, we can get busy later—right now you need to go fix up my old lady.” Even with his arm around two girls, my brother had no issues bringing up a third. But I’d known him his entire life, and I knew that behind the façade he was more concerned about Lacey than either of the others.

“If you insist, Bryan, then I suppose we should see what I can do for her,” Marie said.

“That’s what I’m talking about, and then afterwards we can all go back inside to that crazy pad of yours and have ourselves a foursome.”

To my despair, neither of the women Bryan guided toward the back of the club voiced any immediate objection. I know because I waited for a full three seconds, listening for one. Even Toni and her friends were stunned silent as they followed them toward the van.

It didn’t surprise me that the exchange had rendered everyone else speechless. That tended to happen when my brother opened his mouth. Nocturne and I stood for a bit longer. Judging by the look on his face, we were sharing similar thoughts. Finally, our hope for womankind irrevocably shattered, we hurried along to catch up.

“I don’t think you’ll be getting your deposit back,” Marie noted before she opened the van’s sliding door and climbed inside. Bryan detached himself from Bethany and was right behind Marie, eager to get in the way.

“That’s the least of our problems,” I said.

“Wow, I see what you mean.” Marie’s voice came from the open doorway. “That’s a tricky bit of spellcraft your witch pulled off. I’m impressed.”

“Man, enough talk, woman—do something about that shit! It’s seriously fucked up,” Bryan said.

“Did you just call me woman? Really, Bryan?”

I knew he would wear on her eventually, but I had hoped it would come
after
he had gotten her help saving Lacey’s life.

“What’s wrong with that? Next you’ll be wanting to wear shoes and leave the kitchen.”

“Kitchen? I thought you didn’t want me leaving the bedroom.” Marie giggled.

“Damn, see, that’s what I’m talking about. Now hurry up and juice Lacey so we can all go back to that bedroom!”

I peered into the van in time to witness Marie holding her wrist over Lacey. She had forced Lacey’s mouth open with her other hand and a steady trickle of blood drained into it.

Bryan, of course, was leaning in, watching with rapt attention.

“When she wakes up, Lacey’s gonna be hungry. Hey, Marie, when you’re done with that, do think you could make us a sandwich? Ow! What? She will be!”

At that, I stepped back out of the van. There wasn’t much I could say to the stunned looks of everyone, so I shrugged.

Minutes later, Lacey coughed and her eyes fluttered open.

“Hey, anyone got anything to eat?”

“I
told
you,” said Bryan.

Toni sniffed me. “You smell funny.”

“It’s been a long week. Try me again in a couple of days and I will have resumed my regularly scheduled regimen of good hygiene and exercise.” I sat next to her on the hotel room bed, pleased that I had been able to finish as much as I wanted to of my meal without interruption.

“That’s not what I meant. I mean, you smell like a pork chop.”

Toni’s comment was punctuated by a cold wet assault on my calf. I looked down to see a large brown wolf busily sniffing the area of my leg that the vampire Sylvia had torn out days before. I bent down to examine the wound; it had healed up okay. There was a nasty scar, but the area that had been torn out had filled in, save for a slight indentation. The wolf studied the area with me, licking its lips.

“Sure it’s not the bacon?” I picked up the remainder of my bacon cheeseburger from the nightstand and held it out to her. When she frowned and shook her head, I shrugged. The wolf made a small whine and I went ahead and held the burger down to him. It was gone in one gulp.

I cast a sideways glance to Lacey, but she was consumed by preparing the spell to locate Christian. Even after getting the infusion of Marie’s blood, Lacey had been out of commission for a couple of hours. As soon as she was functional, she had commenced a multi-tasking effort: putting together the spell while downing a couple of hamburgers, countless fries, and a large Coke.

Lacey had set up shop on the small round table. Her neck was bandaged, and I expected it hadn’t fully closed, but between her magic and Marie’s vampire blood, she was mending. She had let us know that she was not pleased with what we did to save her.

I knew she wasn’t Marie’s biggest fan, and if she experienced the same strange feelings I’d had after imbibing her blood, she was probably having some serious anxiety about sharing the vampire’s emotions.

Bryan had been at Lacey’s side the entire time. He was unusually quiet, meaning he was really concerned. He was even being moderately well behaved, except for trying to sneak occasional peeks under the bandage to see the healing at work. Lacey would have been farther along with the spell if she wasn’t having to constantly fend off his attentions.

I had been reluctant to ask Lacey to do the spell in the first place, so soon after what had happened, but once she found out I had something of Christian’s, she insisted. I knew the driving force for her was Megan’s safety. Martin hadn’t shown up to Styx like Katy said he would, and we had no idea what had happened to Megan.

I tried to convince myself that nothing was wrong, that Martin was taking his own sweet time bringing Megan into the club, but it was making me nervous. There wasn’t much time before dawn. In a couple more hours, it would have to wait until tomorrow night, and the longer Megan and Kevin had to spend time with Martin, and possibly Christian, the worse their chances.

I kept checking my phone. Marie had said she would call if anyone of interest showed up, but the phone had been silent.

The hotel room was crowded. It seemed that the two-to-a-room rule didn’t apply where werewolves were concerned. The wolf that had been eyeing my leg yawned wide, allowing for an excellent view of its large white teeth. It then settled down next to my leg and shut its eyes.

“Okey dokey, I’m ready,” Lacey said, placing what must have been the final ingredients in a small bowl that already was full of a variety of other strange substances.

She elbowed my brother out of the way until she had sufficient personal space, and then she began to cast. She placed one hand palm down on the table, and with the other held up the white handkerchief my mother had given me—the one of Christian’s that she had used to wrap up my father’s ring.

Lacey dropped the handkerchief into the bowl. It landed with a dull
whump!
A small cloud of smoke billowed out in a mushroom cloud, like a miniature nuke had gone off in the bottom of the bowl. Lacey sneezed when the smoke reached her, jerking her head forward and eliciting an “Ow!”

She rubbed the bandages on her neck and removed a surprisingly intact handkerchief out of the smoldering bowl. She moved the bowl to one side, then held the handkerchief up so its end was about six inches above the map’s surface.

Nothing happened for a moment, but before Bryan could say something stupid, the white silk square went rigid. The fabric elongated and became narrow, like a pointer. Lacey’s hand struggled to hold onto the handkerchief as an unseen force pulled one corner of the fabric to a particular spot on the map.