Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge

by Paul Krueger

  FIG. 92—Agave tequilana.

  FIG. 93—The blue agave plant, the source of tequila, is pollinated by the endangered Leptonycteris nivalis (Mexican long-nosed bat).

  GINGER ALE.

  FIG. 94—Zingiber officinale.

  Though American apothecaries first brewed a variation on ginger ale circa 1851, the modern version, distinguished as dry ginger ale, did not arrive until some fifty years later in Canada. It was initially slow to take hold, but its popularity exploded during Prohibition, when it could be conveniently used as a way to hide stockpiles of illicit spirits (along the way improving the flavor). Ginger ale was also useful as a steadying ingredient. Much the same way that carbonation and ginger root settle an upset stomach, the combination can also tame more chaotic liquors like tequila, another quality that proved useful during Prohibition, when bartenders were forced to use subpar and unreliable products to carry out their fieldwork.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  All at once Bailey saw three ways to die.

  In one corner was Garrett Whelan, a grudge-holding old man who’d just drunk his way into godhood (or something like it) and who was more than a little pissed off at her.

  In the other corner was the impossibly powered Mona, her friend until ten minutes ago, enemy until fifteen seconds ago, and now … something else entirely.

  And in every other corner or otherwise were the tremens, life-drinking skinless demons who thankfully didn’t hunt in packs, except for the times they decided to be total assholes and do exactly that.

  Mona stomped again, and the energy shield around them collapsed. She shoved Bailey aside and took off running. With a gesture, she peeled the stagnant water puddle off the concrete and re-formed it around her arm. Zane and Bucket moved to intercept her, but Mona threw her water arm to a railing like a grappling hook and hauled herself over their heads and onto the catwalk. Barely settling on solid ground, she lashed out again, swung herself over the giant stills, and disappeared.

  Meanwhile, the tremens, dumb and nearly blind but certainly hungry, scuttled down the walls.

  “What the fuck just happened?” Bucket turned to face the swarm, swatting his ninja mask out of the way.

  “Hell if I know!” Bailey grimaced against her ankle pain. “Please tell me you brought me a drink!”

  Zane pressed a glass into her hand: smoky whiskey and sweet, sharp citrus. Another old fashioned. “Drink up. We need you.”

  Bailey chugged. Standing before them, Garrett Whelan appeared radiant. His skin was still spotted and sagging with age, but it also glowed with a golden aura, as if he’d swallowed an industrial-strength lightbulb.

  “Chicago requires none of you anymore.” His voice boomed as he flexed luminous fingers. “From now until the day the swamp upon which it lies swallows it again, it will have me.”

  He thrust out a hand. With a blisteringly bright beam of energy, he blasted two tremens whole, leaving nothing but angry scorch marks on the wall behind them. The oncoming delirium wavered, but only for a moment. Then it surged again, more fervent than ever.

  “Yes!” Garrett cried, hurling another blast of magical energy into the skinless horde. “Come to me and find yourselves lacking! Chicago is mine, and your touch will no longer sully its streets!”

  Zane and Bucket looked on, stunned and still. Bailey wiped her mouth in frustration and pitched her empty glass against the wall.

  That made the Alechemists move.

  “We have to do something!” Bailey said.

  “What about Mona?” said Zane.

  Bailey felt a stab of indignation, but it disappeared when she saw Zane’s face: panicked and pained. She couldn’t imagine what he was going through. “Mona’s gone,” she said. “She fled. Like a coward.”

  But even as she said it, she didn’t believe it. The woman who could kick any of their asses—even sober—was no coward. Of all of them, Mona stood the best chance of surviving the delirium, and she’d probably relish the chance to annihilate it.

  Garrett clapped his hands, and a crescent-shaped wave of golden energy spun from them and scythed through three tremens at once. They instantly burst into clouds of foul smoke, but still more rushed to fill the gap. Even with Garrett’s formidable powers, he couldn’t hold back the tide forever.

  She looked from Bucket’s panicked, de-ninjaed face to Zane, who appeared considerably more resolved.

  “We can’t leave him,” he said.

  “He’ll be fine,” Bailey said. “We aren’t immortal now.”

  “But the delirium,” Bucket said. “Who’s going to stop it if we don’t?”

  “Who’s going to stop it if we’re dead?” Bailey snapped. She was still stuck on Mona. Maybe she knew something they didn’t.

  “Zane, we’re going!” She clutched his elbow, but he didn’t budge. His face was … reverent. There was no other word for it.

  “It’s the Long Island iced tea, Bailey.” He blinked, awed, as if the room weren’t flooding full of demons. “It’s … beautiful.”

  That was what was holding Zane back—his thirst. He was staring past Garrett to the stills. He was doing the math in his head. Deciding if it’d be safe to make a break for it. Build his own drink. Finally get his own glassful of grand panacea. If ever there was a time, it was now.

  She took his hand and squeezed it hard. “Zane.”

  “Uh, guys?” Bucket nodded at Garrett. “He’s getting brighter. Is that a thing Americans do?”

  “You can’t,” Bailey said, and she tugged on his hand a second time. “Not now.”

  He glanced down at their hands. Then back up at her. Then back at the stock of supplies. And then she felt his hand relax in her grip.

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  “Oh, yeah, just ignore the Canadian,” muttered Bucket. “Old guy’s literally getting lit and—”

  “Uncle Garrett!” Zane called, newly urgent. “We’ve got to fall back!”

  “Not a chance!” Garrett crowed, easily blasting away another tremens. One finally got close enough to try latching on to him, but the old man dodged nimbly and dissolved the creature with a touch of his hand. He’d once been a man internally illuminated; now he looked like pure light.

  “But Uncle Garrett—”

  “Boy,” Garrett said sharply, and a crack formed on one of Zane’s eyeglass lenses. “Your inconsequential dabbling in the deeper arts of bartending betrays your lack of greater understanding. You have before you the privilege of watching a master at work. I suggest you take the opportunity. Gratefully. And you, Ms. Chen,” he added, gathering more golden energy into his hands, “I will deal with you momentarily.”

  “Seriously, what the hell?” Bucket said. “Did I drink a martini or—”

  But before anyone could answer, Garrett Whelan exploded.

  Light—bright and hot enough to singe hair—detonated across the concrete floor. The impact nearly blew Bailey off her feet, but by then the engine of her psychic powers had revved up again. She pushed back against her own body and steadied herself, her eyes burning behind their lids. Bucket threw himself to the floor, his shouts lost in the roar.

  Zane tumbled past them.

  Bailey opened her eyes to a squint just in time to see the blast pick him off his feet. Bucket was too slow to reach him, but Bailey wasn’t. She visualized herself grabbing Zane by the foot. The psychic strain was immediate, but he hung horizontally, inching forward as Bailey fought to pull him in against the current of the explosion. She couldn’t let this beat her, couldn’t let him go.

  “I got you!” Bucket, who had anchored himself to a metal trapdoor handle, grabbed Zane’s other ankle with his free hand, and together he and Bailey pulled, just enough to keep Zane from slamming into a concrete wall or, worse, flying out a broken window.

  “Uncle Garrett!”

  Zane’s scream reached Bailey, but Garrett—the man at the eye of the storm—was gone. Bailey watched in fascinated horror as his clothes dissolved, and then the skin ben
eath it, and then the muscles, until she could make out only the faint black outline of Garrett Whelan’s bones before they, too, turned to dust.

  A short moment of silence was quickly followed by a fearsome, blinding crack!

  Stinging light surged in every direction, filling the massive two-story room. Heat and pain buffeted Bailey from all sides, and at last she felt her grip on the ground release.

  She was falling.

  Her eyes flew open. Why am I falling?

  Another crack! and then a crumbling sound.

  Oh, duh, she thought. Because the floor’s collapsing underneath me.

  They plunged downward: Bailey and Zane and Bucket and machinery and debris, rushing toward the Apex floor with alarming speed.

  Bailey desperately grasped for the mental strength to slow the fall. It was working: the air rushed past slower, chunks of concrete flew sideways and out of range even as pain threatened to devour her from the very center of her skull.

  Just before impact, she jerked their three bodies horizontal as hard as she could. Bucket went spinning off to the side, but she and Zane took hold of each other and skidded across the marble.

  Crunching thuds of concrete sent shock waves across the floor. Panic clutched at Bailey’s chest, but no one was there to get flattened; the bar was empty. She jumped to her feet and flung out her arms, slowing the concrete pieces and mentally cradling them to rest.

  “Bailey!”

  She looked up and saw the twisted chunk of a distilling vat plummeting toward her. Zane rushed to her side and caught it, his screwdriver-induced superstrength halting the stainless steel meteor with barely a bend in his elbows. It was light enough for him to lift but too big to hold, so he shunted it aside, skipping it across the marble. It gouged deep lines in its wake.

  Before Bailey could thank him or even form a complete sentence, wet drops began spattering down over them.

  “Is it raining?” Zane squinted at the wreckage above.

  “The sprinkler system,” Bailey said. The floor was littered with charred furniture, discarded bits of Halloween costumes, and broken glass and concrete. But mercifully no blood.

  “Sorensen got them all out,” Bailey said. She couldn’t quite believe he’d been useful in the end. “There’s nobody h—”

  “What the hell happened up there?”

  It was Trina, her Statue of Liberty costume singed and her spiky crown askew. Her torch hung together in two barely connected pieces, like an oddly shaped set of nunchaku.

  “Garrett Whelan drank until he exploded,” Bailey said. She looked at Zane, but the truth was that she didn’t really know what had happened, and she doubted Zane did either. “And then the rest of the stuff happened,” she finished lamely.

  “You didn’t see him?” Zane asked Trina. He glanced around as if expecting his uncle to pop out of the debris.

  “No,” Trina said emphatically. “All I know is that you left to head back upstairs, that guy in the Napoleon hat told everyone to get out, and a fuck-ton of tremens started climbing outside the windows.”

  “Yeah,” Bailey said, “sounds about right.”

  “I was mixing something while everyone was trying to cram into the elevators, but right when they broke through and started for me, the whole ceiling fucking collapsed.” Trina said. “Took all the bastards out at once.”

  “Guys!” Bucket called. He limped into sight, his black ninja costume covered in soot and dust.

  Zane indicated his bum leg. “Are you okay?”

  “Nothing sweet-ass health care can’t fix,” Bucket said. He held out his wounded leg to Bailey’s own busted limb. “Hey, now we can be limp buddies!” He considered his words a moment. “Or a totally different term. A better term. A cooler term. Like—”

  “Comrades-in-legs?” Bailey offered.

  “No,” said Bucket, “I was gonna say—ugh, dammit, yours is way better.” When Trina giggled, he eyed her for a moment. An easy grin crept onto his metal-studded face. “We meet again, Ms. of Liberty,” he said, smoothing his mohawk. “You’re from France, eh? Because it just so happens I’m from a French-speaking province with an ardently separatist history.”

  Bailey smiled, but Zane didn’t seem to have a laugh left in him. He had a faraway look in his eyes, as if still in shock. She took his hand and wove her fingers between his. “Hey,” she said, “we’ll be okay. It’s over.”

  “He’s—he was my uncle, Bailey,” Zane said. “I can’t just shake it off like you can. That’s a superpower you’re born with, not one you can build in a Collins glass.”

  She could hear Trina whisper to Bucket: “What are they talking about?”

  “I’ll explain later,” he very audibly whispered back. “There’s kind of a lot of subtext.”

  Bailey could think of nothing to say. It had been too much too quickly. Maybe a golden platitude could set Zane straight after everything he’d lived through, but she sure as hell hadn’t learned it in business school. Or anywhere else, for that matter. So she just stood next to him, running her thumb along the curves of his hand as the sprinkler system rained down on them.

  “When did this happen?” said Trina, nodding at them.

  “Not totally sure,” said Bucket. “They’re better about it than a lot of the couples I’ve met.”

  “So, what now?” Trina said, surveying the wreckage that was Apex.

  “Yeah,” said Bucket. “I hate to be That Guy, but if Garrett’s gone, then I’m out a job, and the immigration people won’t be into that. Also, neither will the cops when they show up.”

  Hearing those words brought Zane back to life. “Right,” he said. “We have to get out of here.”

  “How?” Bailey glanced toward the elevator bay, where the doors were warped and bent.

  “Magic,” Zane said.

  “Oh, right,” Bailey said. Even after fighting demons and shooting electricity from her fists and watching a man spontaneously combust, she forgot that sometimes there really was a magic solution.

  “The bar’s smashed, but the booze in the storage room should still be intact,” Trina said. “We’ll get out of here with white Russians.”

  “What do those do?” said Bailey. She couldn’t remember the entry in The Devil’s Water Dictionary.

  “Well,” Trina said, “they’re kind of my specialty since I’m a dessert gal. And they—”

  Bailey glanced up. Maybe because looking up at people had become a habit. Maybe her survival instincts—weak as they were, though they’d gotten her this far—prompted her to. Whatever the reason, she managed to catch sight of something large and pinkish unfolding from the ruined ceiling.

  “Tremens!”

  It got Trina first. A sticky tentacle wrapped around her leg and jerked her knees. Zane leapt forward, fists up, but the tremens tightened its grip and flung Trina into his path; together they crumpled to the floor. The tremens darted on top of them, its ring of black teeth glinting as it prepared to feed.

  But Bailey was ready. The moment its mouth opened, she flung her arm and sent a chunk of concrete debris straight down its gullet. The tremens stopped midbreath, its tentacles flailing. Bailey relaxed a tiny bit, waiting for it to explode and die, but it didn’t. Choking and gasping, the beast rounded on her and pounced.

  She couldn’t get out of its way—her ankle was too weak—but she realized that she could move it out of hers. Training her focus, she gave the tremens a telekinetic shove in the flank, then V-stepped aside like a matador. The tremens whooshed past and slammed against the wall. It shuddered and bucked, its visible muscles working to dislodge the obstacle in its throat.

  Bailey pushed the concrete back down. It was sick and brutal; she’d never killed a tremens so slowly. Behind her, Zane was up on his feet, but when he jumped forward, Bailey stuck out a hand to stop him.

  “No,” she said. She could feel the tremens’s throat muscles relaxing and giving way, its thrashing growing more feeble, and it oozed to the floor as whatever vital force ani
mated it slowly drained away.

  “Bailey—”

  “It’s fine,” she said. “It’s dying.”

  Something rammed against her knees, and Bailey buckled to the floor.

  “Bailey!”

  She felt a tug around her ankles, dragging her forward across the slick marble. Her vision was speckled—she’d clocked her head—and her hair was a wet curtain on her face.

  A trail of red followed her.

  Whatever was tugging stopped, and Bailey felt a rush of gratitude. Fireworks exploded in front of her eyes, and with the pain of her ankle, the throbbing of her skull, and the exhaustion of staving off the apocalypse, she just wanted to sleep. She was spent. Above her, the tremens heaved and inhaled, its disgusting lips convulsing around the concrete, and Bailey shuddered as the deep, gnawing ache bloomed inside her. A choking tremens wasn’t a harmless one; it didn’t need to breathe. And she’d driven the creature into such a frenzy that it wasn’t merely drinking her life essence away; it was trying to shotgun it like beer from a punctured can.

  Dimly, Bailey knew she should fight back. But she’d already saved Chicago. She’d saved Bucket. And Trina. She’d saved Zane. She’d finally actually done something that mattered. So if this was the way it was going to end—

  “No!”

  With a bone-rattling slam, the tremens shot backward and into the wall. Zane had struck it, and he bounded over Bailey and toward the wall to land another blow. From over Bailey’s head, someone lashed out with a thin whip of water that snapped against tremens flesh—Trina with her mojito. Bucket ducked and rolled to their side, a torrent of fire erupting from his outstretched hands.

  Scorched, bruised, and broken, the tremens exploded.

  Bailey gasped like she’d just emerged from the bottom of a deep pool. The night air was cold and harsh in her lungs, but she was still alive. She sat up wincing and blinked.

  “You guys saved me,” she said dumbly.