Angel nodded in agreement.
After two years of going to every club or party that Sunday might go to, the wolves dreaded hitting a new one. Each time, the stench of bodies dancing, stale smoke, and booze smothered them and fueled their disdain for the Incarnate. The girl certainly had a scene. If there was leather, lace, kids with pale faces, and rubber pants, she’d probably danced with the best of them. They could hardly stomach it, even after such prolonged exposure. In a packed house, Angel could be cool one minute and lash out the next. Too many bodies. Too much stink. It was hard to get control of a situation with so many obstacles in the way. Clubs meant obstacles. Obstacles meant collateral damage.
The situation put the wolves on alert. It was taxing, but it was the job. After decades straddling the fence between humanity and unhinged wildness, they’d trained themselves to deal with it, but it still took its toll.
Cyrus harkened back to Bernadette’s caveats fifteen years earlier.
“Don’t
think
!” she warned. “Don’t
touch
her! She feels everything. It makes her sick. When you’re near her, shut it down. Let your attentions stray elsewhere. She knows what you’re thinking. She knows what
all of you
are thinking. If she gets sick, she’ll punish you for it. And she’ll use everything inside of you against you. Every last one of you.”
If Bernadette had been right and she’d get sick from the onslaught of thought and touch, how had Sunday managed to make it through even a few minutes in a crowded club? Moreover, what would make her want to go to those places, seek them out with such regularity? It had nagged him from the start of his search when the pattern became evident. She was a creature of habit, and those habits included finding a place to go where she would, by definition, be surrounded by people.
The scene at the Lair was so familiar that it had grown bland from over-exposure. It was the standard goth night décor. Red ambient lights dimly surrounded a black and white-checkered dance floor under flashing white strobe lights. Velvet sofas lined the perimeter. Mundanes crowded around two bars at either end of the building. There were candles on the bar and on the tables paired with the couches. Flyers littered every surface he could see.
Before asking any questions, they had to do a fair share of casing the space. It was a well-rehearsed and well-executed plan. Angel worked the club goers while Cyrus targeted the staff. If someone was going to recognize the Incarnate, it would be a person who could pick out all the locals and put a name to each face. They had the whole night, and when it came to this crowd, no one was going home before closing time. That left them about three hours to make the rounds.
They easily made the club regulars with their leather trench coats, pirate shirts, and thick, smudged eyeliner. Angel quickly spotted two vampires among the crowd. He nudged Cyrus with his elbow as they cased the room.
Vampires at a goth club were a rare commodity. The lot tended to stay in the real shadows and steered clear of their modern clichés. These two sat quietly by the bar at the far end of the club, looking out to the dance floor. As if they’d known they’d been made, both simultaneously met the gaze of the werewolves. While a sea of club goers sipped cocktails, the foursome locked icy stares. Cyrus nodded at them and took Angel to his side so they could speak closely.
“They’re no threat,” he assured his partner. Angel took another look at the dead duo as they returned their unimpressed attentions to the dance floor beyond the wolves’ lines of sight.
“Probably not,” Cyrus agreed. “Either way, South Carolina’s got a pack. This is
their
territory and
their
problem.”
The music got louder as the next song started.
“Let’s split and make the rounds,” he said to Angel.
Even in the dim light, the men stood out from the crowd. Both tall, hulking men, they emanated the dominant aura of werewolves. If anything was going to keep their presence low-key, it would be their demeanor. They would have to push attention away from themselves, which was difficult, since attention naturally gravitated toward them. But they could be ghosts. Like the others in their pack, Cyrus and Angel were soldiers. Living as long as they had, undocumented while hiding in plain sight, they were skilled at slipping under the radar.
Werewolves had to learn to mix in with mundanes. Cyrus and Angel, clad in leather jackets and torn jeans and covered in tattoos, looked the part of the average club goer at the Lair. They appeared to be in their early-to-mid thirties, less than half their real ages. In their eyes, however, the façade cracked. The feral beasts inside them yearned to break free. Hard-won was each day they managed to overcome their curses. In those curses, they were trapped.
Cyrus took a spot at the bar near the vampires and ordered a drink. His back to the dance floor, he spoke over his shoulder.
“We’re not looking to start any trouble, boys.”
His voice was crystal clear despite the penetrating music. Heightened senses weren’t a uniquely werewolf gift.
At the other end of the bar, Angel leaned against the wall, while chatting up a girl in dark skinny jeans and a buckled corset. In spite of his appearance, or perhaps because of it, women always flocked to Angel, lusting after his bad-boy charm. His scars made him dangerous. The tattoos on his knuckles and the backs of his hands told a story that women wanted to read for themselves. Angel fingered the thin strap of goth girl’s corset and let it drop down her shoulder. That didn’t look like a business transaction, but Cyrus knew better. Angel was setting himself up. He’d probably already singled the girl out as someone eager to answer his questions.
Leaning against the bar, Cyrus propped his leg on the rung of one of the vampire’s seats.
“See anything good?” he asked to neither one in particular. His voice was so low that any mundane beside them might have thought he was talking to himself. Little would they have known that they were in the company of real-life monsters.
The vampire closest to Cyrus spoke.
“Same shit.”
“Different fucking decade,” finished the second vamp.
“I hear ya,” Cyrus answered, bringing the cold bottle to his lips.
The vampire farther from Cyrus turned to look at him. After a quick inspection, he reached out his hand and offered a shake.
“Joshua. Pleased to meet you. This is Phillip.”
The other vamp lazily turned his head to Cyrus, raised his chin, and pursed his lips before turning away.
“You come for the buffet?” Phillip asked as his eyes grazed over the dancers ahead of him.
He licked his lips to spite Cyrus just as Joshua slapped his friend’s arm. Both vamps appeared to be in their twenties, looking younger than him by a few years at least. They wore blue jeans and tees, Joshua in a black cardigan, and Phillip in a track jacket. They blended in so seamlessly that Cyrus feared for any unwitting mundanes they encountered.
“Phillip’s being an asshole.”
“We already ate,” Phillip promised. He unenthusiastically flicked his fingers over his not-beating heart in the shape of a cross. He watched the crowd through dead, unimpressed eyes as if he’d caught a synchronized swimming display between channel surfing for porn.
Joshua flashed an ungodly pearly white smile.
“What brings you to our despairing stomping grounds?”
“Same shit,” Cyrus replied.
“You’re kidding me!” Joshua countered, fluttering his lashes and clapping his hands with manufactured delight. “You’re here because you’re bored, and it’s Sunday, and you couldn’t care less about football, so instead, you slept till dark and found yourself restless enough that you needed to get out of the house? It’s like we’re all the same!”
“Now tell us,” Phillip interjected sternly. “You’re here for what, exactly? For whom? You’ve got that look about you. You and your friend.”
“Soldiers, right?” Joshua asked, leaning in closer and raising an eyebrow. “We’re curious.”
Cyrus nodded. He didn’t enjoy being at this particular end of an interrogation, but he wouldn’t offer any more than he wanted. They could ask their questions, and would be satisfied with terse answers, a few nods, and head shakes along the way. His mission was to find the Incarnate and turn her over to the Pastophori of Iset, a contract that paid well and had kept the pack employed.
The Incarnate, however, was a highly sought after item. A vampire or any other creature who’d picked up her scent would be tracking her as well, acquiring her for their own purposes. There was no way he could flash these two her photograph and expect them to answer truthfully if they
had
seen her. He wasn’t about to feed the competition whether they knew they were his competition or not.
“We getting a war up in these parts? Or are you just keeping up with the local politics of your little dog pound coalition?”
“Always so friendly, you vamps,” Cyrus bit back. His face remained expressionless while he thought of at least three ways to destroy them even as they sat nonchalantly at the bar beside him.
“Tsk tsk tsk,” Phillip cut in. “We’re curious, you know. Concerned citizens, as it were.”
“Scoping out the local territory,” Cyrus chewed out between clenched teeth. “We’ve got friends here, and we wanted to get to know the area a little better. You?”
Satisfied, Joshua returned his gaze to the dance floor, joining Phillip in ignoring Cyrus. Neither vampire answered him. Cyrus turned back, sucked down his beer, and waited for the bartender to return so that he could grab another. He could ask the bartender to take a look at the picture, but he didn’t want to take a chance with the vampire boys so close by. Rather than get straight to work, he walked off, patting Phillip on the shoulder as he did.
“Have a good night, boys. Stay thirsty.” He raised his glass to toast them and took a swig of his drink before walking up to the dance floor to investigate.
CHAPTER SIX
The vampires were there again. Sunday could sense them a mile away. The girls didn’t come to the Lair all the time, but the last two times that they had gone, the vampires had been there too. They sat as they always did, with their chairs facing the dance floor, watching silently, and hardly speaking a word between them. They were always there by the time the girls arrived, and they remained after the girls left. It was always just the pair of them, and they seemed harmless enough to an untrained eye, but to her, they were dangerous. But Sunday wasn’t some preternatural policewoman anymore. They were no longer her business. Her life wasn’t about them, and it wasn’t about their kind anymore.
Now her life was about dancing. It was about abandoning her wicked recollections and the oppressive worry that haunted her for years. It was about unwinding in a way that didn’t harm anyone else. When she danced, she was free. The Incarnate had been a prisoner in so many ways. Going out and having fun like young women were wont to do had been so long outlawed that Sunday never tired of her belated rebellion. Everything about these dimly lit, loud, stuffy gatherings became a ritual of that rebellion. It became her religion. Through it, she was elevated from monster to mundane. No vampires perched at this bar or any bar would rob her of this small token of her freedom. She wouldn’t let them.
Sunday grabbed Kayla’s hand as she steered them toward the dance floor. As usual, she hesitated a bit when engaging in physical contact. But it was her friend and such a slight gesture couldn’t do much harm at all if the person she was touching wasn’t amped up or buzzed with emotion.
“Why are you taking us to the corner over there?” Kayla shouted above the music.
“It’s safer there.”
Kayla frowned and shook her head slightly.
“You’re kidding, right?! What are you keeping us safe from?”
Instead of answering her, Sunday continued dragging Kayla along until she found a spot where the vamps couldn’t see them. Kayla wasn’t ready to discover the depraved things vampires could do to unassuming humans, and if Sunday could help it, she never would be. Let alone, Kayla wasn’t ready to discover vampires existed at all.
As she navigated the sea of night owls, Sunday kept abreast of her shields, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to relax until she was lost in the music. Dancing gave her an opportunity to do something other than keep out the dredge of energy. In a crowded club, the energy massed into a fog too dense to penetrate. It was harder to manage one-on-one contact. Then, the energy was too direct, too precise. A crowd, however, offered Sunday a blanket under which she could hide. Here, she didn’t stick out. She was just a part of the bigger picture. One drop in a sea of sensitivity. And it was liberating.
“I
so
needed this!” Sunday shouted. She threw her arms above her head and moved her body to the rhythm.
“Woo!” Kayla belted beside her. Blonde hair swaying over her shoulders, she laughed and leaned closer to Sunday. “With moves like that, I wonder how you’ve never had an orgasm. Girl, you’re wicked sexy!”
Sunday slapped her friend’s shoulder and rolled her eyes.
“Don’t be a jerk! People can hear you.”
“They can all
fuck off
!” Kayla threw her head back and yelped at the top of her lungs.
They had danced all of ten minutes, when a sudden surge of energy jerked Sunday back. An emotional assault struck her in the chest, and she lost the ability to breathe. She staggered and fell. Stars burst in her eyes, and then her vision faded to black. Her butt hit the tile, and she was thrown back in a seizing fit that lasted a handful of seconds. However temporary, as soon as the episode ceded, Sunday bolted upright. Her vision returned to her. Eyes bulging, she frantically searched for the source of that unforeseen threat.
No sooner had Sunday gotten wind of the scene she had caused, Kayla dropped to her knees beside Sunday. Her face skewed with concern, she grabbed Sunday’s face in her hands.
“Sunny, are you okay?” she asked. Her breaths were ragged, and her eyes were wide.
Sunday shook her head into Kayla’s body, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. Panic burned in her chest. While she was trying so hard to compose herself, a touch, even Kayla’s caring embrace, threatened to interfere with the process. She pushed Kayla’s hands away.