Prowlers: Wild Things (2 page)

It was bordered by other neighborhoods, by towers that housed some of the best medical research, treatment, and education facilities in the world, and by what little remained of the sex trade in what had once been Boston's Combat Zone. In truth, it hardly warranted being called a "town" at all, but Chinatown was a kind of island in the midst of the city, isolated without walls.

Neon signs blazed in the elegant symbols that made up the Chinese language. Jack knew enough from previous visits that most of the people who lived in this tiny community kept all their business to themselves. They owned the shops and bars and restaurants and it was a matter of pride that they gave nearly all of their trade to Chinese-owned businesses within a three-block radius.

Chinatown was as insular as they could manage, and yet their economy was not as self-supporting as they might wish. The tailors and cobblers, many of the restaurants and bars, even some of the markets and other businesses, relied not merely upon neighborhood trade, but clientele from beyond Chinatown. All day long small buses shuttled people from these streets to jobs at Chinese restaurants all over the greater Boston area. The reality was that despite appearances — and many wishes — to the contrary, Chinatown was a part of the city.

Jack knew that. But it did not change the way he felt as he walked beside Bill along that foreign street. There was something wonderfully exotic about the place, a kind of electrical current that charged the air with mystery. Young Chinese men and women cruised slowly by in their cars, engines growling low and dangerous. A middle-aged man and a white-haired old woman exchanged pleasantries on a corner, angry voices shouted inside a bar, all in a clipped language that seemed more sounds than words, just as when written it seemed more symbols than letters.

Bars and restaurants lined the street, interrupted by a Laundromat, a video store, and a dozen other small businesses, some of which Jack could only guess at because most of the signs were painted in Chinese characters. Most, but not all. On one of those signs amidst the words he could not read was a single word in English: "Lotus." Even as he and Bill drew closer to the unremarkable brick front of the building, the door opened and a Caucasian man emerged. He was short, yet powerfully built, and his hair was cut to an inch of stubble. Dark glasses wrapped around his eyes, though it was long after dark.

Strange music and unfamiliar odors poured out the door in the moments before it clicked shut again behind the man. He glanced up once at Jack and Bill, nostrils flaring, and then he turned his back to them and started off in the opposite direction. Bill paused a moment outside the door of the Lotus as though waiting for the other man to put some more distance between them. Then he glanced at Jack.

"Remember what I said."

Jack nodded once, more than happy to keep quiet and follow his friend's lead. Bill knew this place. He didn't. That was reason enough. Bill nodded in return, then rapped hard on the thick wooden door of the Lotus Club. A moment later there was a click and the door pushed in several inches. Jack reached for it, but Bill shot him a cold look and he pulled back just as it swung open.

Within there stood an Asian man so large he dwarfed even Bill. His head was shaved bald and the image of a tiger was tattooed on the left side of his skull. Beyond him was a stairwell that led down into the cellar club, and it was from there that the odd music thumped. Multi-colored lights strobed the walls.

The huge doorman narrowed his gaze and glanced from Bill to Jack and back again.

"Good evening, Lao. I'm afraid we're a few minutes late," Bill said.

Lao did not take his eyes off Bill again, but he sniffed at the air and his upper lip curled back in distaste. His teeth looked too long, too sharp and even though Jack had expected that, still he shuddered at the sight.

"You brought a new face, Guillaume," the creature known as Lao intoned. "Winter's not going to like that."

"Winter owes me, Lao," Bill replied. "Are you going to turn me away from the Lotus? With all the other threats to our kind, would you make me an enemy?"

Lao lifted his chin and took a long, audible breath. Jack watched the two huge men-who-were-not-men, and he felt the rhythm of the music below pounding into his chest, and he inhaled the rich aromas of mint and cinnamon and coffee and so many other things from below. With eyes narrowed, Lao studied him again.

"What is your name?" the doorman demanded.

If he speaks to you, answer immediately and truthfully
, Bill had said.
If you lie, or you become afraid, he'll smell it on you.

"Jack Dwyer."

When Lao raised his eyebrows in surprise, the tiger at his temple seemed to crouch as if it were about to strike. A sound came from his chest; a kind of rumble, either of contemplation or anger, Jack could not determine which. Then Lao leaned forward, practically bending over, to stare at him eye to eye.

"You don't look like much, boy," the doorman grunted.

Jack said nothing. He steeled himself, gazed back defiantly, and simply waited.

"You know there are those downstairs who'd like to kill you just to prove you're not as dangerous as the whispers say you are."

This time, Jack could not help a tiny flinch, not of fear but of surprise. He had no doubt, any time he was within any real proximity to Prowlers, that they would be happy to kill him. Most of them were savage. So that information was hardly news to him. But the idea that he was considered dangerous, that they whispered about him . . . that he had become some kind of bogeyman to these monsters who lurked in the shadows of the night . . .

Jack found that he liked that. He liked it a lot.

But he did not allow that pleasure to show, did not crack the tiniest smile.

"He wants peace, Lao. Live and let live. Same as you do," Bill explained. "Nobody who comes to the Lotus has anything to fear from Jack, or from me. Come on, old friend. We're not here to start any trouble."

A car passed by with pop music turned up loud, somehow out of place here. A short way up the street, a girl stepped out from the darkness of a recessed doorway and strode toward the car as it pulled to a stop. She wore a white shirt tied at the waist to bare her belly and a plaid skirt that would have looked like a school uniform if it had not been so short. She bent to speak softly to the man in the car and then walked around to climb into the passenger's side.

The distraction caught Jack's attention for mere seconds. When he glanced back at Lao he realized that both the doorman and Bill were staring at him.

"Is he brave or stupid?" Lao asked.

Bill chuckled softly. "A little of both sometimes."

Jack frowned, not liking this turn in the conversation.

"You turned your back on me, boy. I might have had your life just now," Lao told him.

"Not if you wanted to survive the night," Jack replied curtly, remembering too late Bill's admonition to keep silent.

But Lao only smiled and nodded and stepped aside. "Go in, Guillaume. Remember this, though. If there is a mess, you will be the one to clean it up."

"Agreed."

With that, Bill led Jack further inside. The door closed behind them and Lao locked it with a metallic clank. The music grew louder the moment they began to descend the stairs and as they entered the club, the swirl of colored light seemed to mute and diffuse everything so that at first Jack could not see well at all. Slowly his eyes began to adjust.

As they moved through the establishment, Jack found himself disappointed. Down the center of the club was a long oval bar that appeared to be constructed entirely of stainless steel. On one side was a small dance floor upon which several dozen gyrated slowly to techno-punk — or whatever the music was that pumped from the speakers. On the other side, tables and booths where clubgoers sat and drank, perhaps ate something off the traditional Chinese menu.

Jack had expected something else entirely. He had read stories and heard things about some of the wilder clubs in Manhattan, and even a few illegal after hours things in Boston, where people played bondage games, hurt each other for pleasure, or sat and watched perverse floor shows. He had no idea what he had thought the Lotus would be like, but this was not it.

The clientele was mostly, but not exclusively Asian. And though there was a kind of grinding, insinuating flavor to the place, as Bill led him around tables and past the bar, Jack at first thought that there was nothing really extraordinary about it.

Then his eyes adjusted further and the music seemed to grow louder and the lights blurred into one red haze glittering off the eyes of the clientele in the Lotus Club. As he passed, one by one, they sniffed the air and turned to gaze at him. Some of them reacted physically, crouching just slightly as though on guard. Jack felt the hairs on the back of his head prickle and his breathing slowed. He could practically feel all their eyes on him, all those predators.

And he the prey.

Then he remembered what Lao had said, and he knew that the roles of predator and prey could easily be reversed, and he felt better. Most of the customers in the Lotus were not even people, but Prowlers, members of an ancient race of shape shifting monsters who could look human, but who would never
be
human. Their numbers were comparatively few now, and the great packs of olden times dissipated far and wide, hunting the fringes of human society, many Prowlers hunting alone.

But Bill was proof that there were also those who had given up the old ways, whose only interest was surviving the spread of humanity, living peacefully within that society as best they could. Even for those, however, there was an urge to gather. Perhaps there was no pack for them now, not really, but they felt a desire to draw together, to be amongst their own for a time.

The Lotus Club was the place where they could do precisely that. Jack knew from his friendship with Bill that there were Prowlers who were not savage killers, but he had never imagined there could be so many of them existing beneath the notice of their human counterparts. So many of the Prowlers in the club were Asian that he had to wonder if the Lotus was the only such place in Boston. And what of the other cities in America . . . and around the world? The implications of that line of thought were staggering to him.

Bill led the way to a booth in the rear corner of the club, far from the bar and partially shielded from the swirling lights of the dance floor. A thin black man with a white streak in his hair glanced up at them from the booth as they approached. He clutched a tumbler of whiskey and ice in one hand and rapped the table in time with the music with the other. He wore a dark silk shirt without any visible adornment on his clothes or body. And yet there was something about him, the way the bartender and waiters looked his way and the fact that there was no one seated at the adjacent tables, that spoke volumes about the man's power.

At the edge of the booth, Bill paused and Jack followed his lead. They stood there as the thin man studied them, a slim smile on his face.

"Hello, Guillaume."

"Winter," Bill replied.

The Prowler's dark gaze swung toward Jack. "Why do I think you're Jack Dwyer?"

You already know I am
, Jack wanted to say. He could sense it. Someone had told Winter he was there, or the man had seen him before somehow, but it was not a guess. Winter
knew
who he was. But this time Jack remembered Bill's admonition and kept silent.

"Sit," Winter told them. Though he gave them an enigmatic smile, the word was not an invitation. The skin at the edges of the man's eyes crinkled slightly with that smile. Winter sat back in the booth, leather sighing as he moved, and he regarded them.

"Thank you for coming," Bill said. "I would not have asked you to look into this if I knew of any other way. It's been nearly two months since Dallas died, and I've tapped all my sources in the underground trying to track Olivia down. She just disappeared, Winter. I couldn't turn to anyone else."

Bill's tone was almost reverent. Jack had never heard him speak that way to anyone before. Though Bill had told Lao that Winter owed him, clearly, it seemed he was not about to remind the other Prowler of that debt.

Winter barely acknowledged Bill's words. Instead he focused on Jack, who forced himself not to squirm under the intensity of that scrutiny.

"You really killed Tanzer?"

Tanzer
. The leader of a vicious pack that had ranged up and down the eastern seaboard slaughtering humans with abandon. It had been many months ago now, but the memory was still fresh.

Jack nodded. "Not alone, but yeah, I killed him."

"And you took out the sanctuary up in Vermont?"

Again, Jack inclined his head, but more slowly this time, less willing to lay claim to that particular feat.

Winter laughed softly. "I wonder how long your luck is going to hold out, Jack. Jack the Giant-Killer."

The dark-skinned man's eyes were almost mesmerizing. Much as he wanted to tear his gaze away, though, Jack would not. A dozen retorts came to mind but he kept his teeth clamped down on all of them and simply stared back at him expectantly.

At last, Winter looked away, turned his focus on Bill.

"Guillaume, I owe you my life," Winter said kindly, almost sadly. "And when I had an opportunity to save your sister's, I failed in that. No matter how far I wander or how many people whisper about me, I will never forget that. You have never called upon me before because you did not want to."

Bill began to protest but Winter waved his words away.

"I understand. Truly, I do. I walk a line between this underground world and the surviving packs and yet somehow I stay alive. Somehow." He smiled, and there were a thousand secrets in the lines of his face. "But you should know that you could call upon me forever and my debt would not be paid. Claudia's death is a dark cloud upon my heart, just as it is upon yours."

Winter paused, glanced at Jack, and then looked to Bill again.

"When her mother died and she realized her father was not going to ever behave toward her the way a father should, Olivia stayed for quite some time with your mother's pack in Quebec. In April of last year she simply left without a word. Weeks later she turned up in New York. She made friends in the underground quickly enough, and word from the wild there is that she wanted to make it in the music business. She played clubs, met all the right people, joined that scene.