Texas Hold 'Em (37 page)

I walked over. Toni joined me, along with several of the others. We all crowded around to watch the handkerchief as it fixated on a spot in the heart of Texas.

“We’re in luck!” Lacey said, as she tore aside the map with her free hand to reveal another one beneath it. The cloth went limp as soon as the first map was removed, but immediately went taut again, its corner moving slowly across the map until it once again hovered over a spot.

“I found him!”

“Where is he?” I asked, squinting to read the map of Austin from where I stood.

“Looks like he’s a couple blocks north of Sixth Street, west of Congress.” Lacey looked up at me. “He’s at Styx.”

“You can’t trust a vamp,” said Toni. Marie was supposed to call if anyone showed, and unless she somehow wasn’t aware that Christian was at her club, it was obvious she had neglected to do so.

“I’m with the dog on this one, Chance,” added Lacey. “The dingbat double-crossed us.”

Maybe it was the full stomach, but for once my brain decided to actually put two and two together before I jumped to a wrong conclusion.

“No, that makes no sense. If that were the case, why would she have agreed to heal you? She knew once you were better you would lead us to Christian.”

“Maybe the dude snuck into the club like some sort of ninja,” Bryan suggested. “Or he whacked Marie and she’s too dead to call.”

“You might actually be right for once.” I started going through the armaments, selecting the Saiga assault shotgun and my trusted Kimber .45 that I had retrieved out of the Caddy’s trunk.

Lacey didn’t even make an attempt to act like she was coming. She was in bad shape to begin with, and the spell had wiped her out. After completing it, she finished someone’s abandoned box of cold fries, climbed on one of the two king-sized beds in the room, and went to sleep next to where Mike was already napping.

A bleary-eyed Mike cast a half annoyed, half appreciative glance at Lacey before swinging his feet over the side of the bed and asking, “So are we ready to go?”

“You guys have done enough already; my brother and I can handle this,” I said. Bryan double-checked his revolver and the M4 for the third time, making sure they were both loaded.

“I didn’t come all this way to let you die. At least not without paying me back,” said Toni.

It was five o’clock on Monday morning. The downtown streets were empty, students busy sleeping off the last night of revelry before fall classes began.

I should have been one of them. Instead, I was carrying a shotgun down a side alley, heading toward a vampire nest.

The red neon sign still lit the walls and asphalt surrounding the entrance to Styx. The clusters of smoking goths were absent, as were Samuel and his stool. The door to the club was closed.

Toni grabbed my arm as I walked up to the black door and reached for the handle.

“I’m not letting you go in there alone. Do you think I care about some stupid truce with the vampires?”

“I’m not going in alone. I’ll have my brother with me.” This was the fourth time we’d rehashed the same argument in the last thirty minutes. It had escalated when I identified Martin’s Ford Explorer parked by the club.

“Was telling me your brother will be with you honestly supposed to ease my mind?”

“Chill out, woman, I got my bro’s back. The only thing I do better than kill vampires is satisfy ladies. And I will be happy to give y’all a firsthand demonstration of that when I get back.” His leer encompassed both Toni and Bethany.

I stepped in before Toni took her anxiety about the situation out on my brother. “I know what I’m doing, Toni. I’m not going to confront Christian if I can help it. This is a smash and grab. Get the hostages and run for it. All you have to do is make sure is that no one else comes in behind us, and no one besides us leaves with my mother or Kevin.”

Toni relented, but only barely. “You’ve got five minutes. If you’re not out by then, I’m coming in after you. I don’t care if it does start a war.”

“Relax—we won’t need a war. A couple of hours from now, you guys will be on the road headed back to California. My mom, Megan, and Kevin will be safe, and I’ll be trying to find my first class.”

I pulled on the door, thinking my plan was about to be thwarted by a simple lock. But the door opened to reveal a brighter-than-expected entrance.

We walked past the empty counter where the blue-haired girl usually collected the cover charge. Samuel’s stool sat against the wall of the short hallway.

Last call had been hours before. The empty club was lit by neon lights tucked up against the rafters of the club. Their harsh bluish-white illumination gave the large expanse a stark, almost industrial, appearance.

I sensed the vampires before I saw them. The blue-haired girl was running a broom across the floor, and the efficient waitress who had served us the night we first came into the club was busily restocking the bar refrigerator with the myriad of microbrews they didn’t have on draft.

Both turned as we entered, taking in the assault rifles my brother and I carried.

“Christian?” was all I said. Neither one responded. I thought for a second it was going to start right there, but the blue-haired one leaned against her broom as she studied us for a second, then nodded toward the back of the club. Leaning her broom against a wall, she headed toward a rear emergency exit and plausible deniability.

My internal alarm sounded; I pulled out my phone and texted Toni, saving the poor girl who left from getting ambushed.

The waitress grabbed two glasses down and poured two fingers of top- shelf scotch in each. Then she walked around the bar and headed toward the front entrance. I wasn’t much into hard liquor, but Bryan had no such problem. He downed both shots in rapid succession, then let out an exaggerated burp that reverberated in the empty room and said, “Let’s go waste this dude.”

We encountered Samuel at the entrance that led to the back offices and secret sanctum. The doorman was leaning against the wall, his massive arms crossed. His sunglasses were tucked into the front pocket of his jeans so I could see that his eyes were shut. As we drew near, he opened them.

“We’re looking for your boss,” I said.

“Which one?” he asked.

When I didn’t answer, Samuel said, “No one around here has a sense of humor.” He sent a thumb over his shoulder. “They’re both downstairs.”

“Any problems with us going down to say hi?”

Samuel smiled. “According to my last orders, as long as you don’t have any canine companions with you, you’re more than welcome.” He brought out a key card from the pocket of his jeans and casually reached to the side to swipe it down the reader. Putting the card back in his pocket, he leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.

I opened the door, and we headed for the stairway down to the club’s cellar. I knew the stairs were blocked by another door that required a keycard. I had been hoping it would be open. It wasn’t. I tried it twice to be sure, but no dice.

My brother was about to start trying to kick it in when I heard voices coming from down the hall. I put an arm out to stop Bryan from what was bound to be a loud-but-ineffective assault on the metal door.

“This way,” I said. We followed the voices to a large office decorated with an ornate desk, an equally ornate and delicate-looking sofa, and a pair of finely wrought chairs. Old-master-style oil paintings hung from the walls. The only clues to the modern era were the closed laptop computer, a desk phone, and a wall calendar. The current month’s photo was a grey tabby hanging by its front paws from a clothesline. The caption read “hang in there.” Nocturne was slumped at the desk, a half-empty glass of thick red liquid in front of him. He was complaining to a trio of his groupies, all vampires by their aura.

The conversation shifted as soon as we entered. “And here are the ones responsible for this whole mess! How did you get in here?” Nocturne asked, though his accusations lacked enthusiasm.

“We walked through the front door. Where is Christian?”

“Downstairs, in the process of usurping power, thanks to you.”

“Pardon?” I asked.

“Had you done your job, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Now I have another several centuries of following that insufferable man’s orders to look forward to.”

“Tell you what. How about you let us downstairs and we take care of that for you? Then you can follow around the sex-crazed hippie chick instead.”

“You will fail again. It seems to be what you’re good at.” Nocturne did doomed melodrama well.

“Then you’ll be rid of me. It seems that no matter how it works out, you’d be free of one of us. As Marie would say, it sounds like a win- win.”

“No,” he said.

“Why not?”

Nocturne carefully enunciated his next words, his tone that of a frustrated parent trying to explain something simple to an uncomprehending child.

“Because if I let you in, Christian will know it. Once he’s killed you, he will come looking for me. He’s not a forgiving man.”

Bryan decided it was his turn. “Tell him we took the card from your scrawny ass by force. You know, before we have to do it for reals.”

Nocturne’s groupies watched the exchange, their heads moving back and forth like it was a tennis match. Nocturne thought for a moment, probably deciding if it was worth the effort to get up and move all the way around the large desk just to kill my brother.

In the end he sighed and said, “This is the remaining hour of freedom I have left. I’m not going to spend it arguing with you two simpletons.”

With that, he picked up his glass and, without paying us any more notice, left the room with his posse in tow. I waited until he walked out the door. The moment he was gone, I made for the desk, hoping to rifle through it and maybe find a spare card key.

I didn’t have to. One sat on the desk, right where Nocturne’s glass had been resting.

I snatched it up and made a call on my phone. Toni answered. I let her know that several more rats might flee the ship and that she should wait for the right one. She said I had two minutes left before she was coming in.

My brother and I did our best to creep down the stairs toward the sounds of conversation that were drifting up from the throne room. Despite our best efforts, I was pretty sure they would be able to hear us coming, so when we reached the bottom of the stairs I decided to simply enter the room.

The scene inside the double doors made it clear that we would have no chance to sneak anyone out under Christian’s nose. He was standing in the center of the room talking with Marie, who had her arms crossed and wore a pout that would do a reprimanded five-year-old proud.

“Did you seriously think I wouldn’t know that you were behind what happened back then? Did you think there would be no repercussions for trying to kill me? For murdering my family?” Christian snarled.

“Wow, like, I don’t know what you mean. I get how it must have been a drag that those hunters found the nest and all, but it’s totally uncool for you to insinuate that I had anything to do with it,” Marie said.

“Oh, I’m doing more than insinuating, Marie—I’m stating it as a fact. And as soon as I deal with Chance, we are going to finish this conversation. Pray that I go to the council instead of asking darling Katy to take your head off right now.”

Martin stood to one side watching the exchange. My mom was next to him, wearing the expressionless stare of someone who had been compelled to wait. Kevin was near the throne. Martin must have been too caught up with the current exchange between Christian and Marie to notice that he had slipped away. Kevin was now splitting his attention between the seventy- seven positions on the golden chair and the argument in the middle of the room.

A short girl with stylish shoulder-length brown hair stood nearby. It took me a second to realize it was Megan. She looked significantly healthier, and I had to do a double take to make sure it was her. Not only was she more beautiful than I had remembered, but she wasn’t wearing a dress. Not that she was naked—she had on jeans and a V-neck t-shirt that must have come from some all-night big-box retailer. Her last dress had been thrashed beyond repair, and apparently she hadn’t been able to get Martin to stop by a local couture shop to replace it.

Her eyes flicked to mine and she winked. My father’s ring hung from her necklace, replacing the small golden cross I had seen that night back in the apartment. I knew that her wearing the ring meant something, but whatever it was slipped away at the sound of Katy’s peppy greeting.

“Howdy, Chance!” she said, stepping out from where she had been lurking in the shadows. Her axe rested over her right shoulder like an old friend.

If the stealthy rescue attempt failed, which it certainly had, the backup plan called for Bryan and me to draw attention to ourselves and then hightail it out of there as quickly as possible, sparking Christian to come after us in pursuit. The werewolves, waiting in ambush, would be on him as soon as he exited the club, taking away any home turf advantage and making it less likely for vampire witnesses to report that a werewolf attack was responsible for the kill.

Katy’s greeting drew Martin’s attention away from the argument. After seeing us, he noticed that one of his charges was missing. He strode up to Kevin and gave him a backhand that sent the kid splayed out onto the floor, unconscious. Deed accomplished, Martin took a position beside Christian, protecting his flank. My mother stood stock still, expression still vacant.

Bryan and I definitely had their attention, but I was starting to realize the flaw in part B of my plan. Christian wasn’t that far away, and I had serious doubts about Bryan and me being able to escape the club before he caught us.

Christian’s smile was devoid of warmth. “Chance! I have to admit that was clever of you, using werewolves to do your dirty work like that. It cost me a number of friends. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to hold that against you.”

“Be my guest. I certainly hold a grudge against you.”

He let out a short laugh. “Before I kill you, and then turn your mother, do you mind if I ask you a question?”