Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10

by Laurell Hamilton

  I had also not packed with an eye for club hopping. I changed into the newest, blackest jeans I had. The Nikes would have to do because I hadn’t brought anything else. Except more Nikes. All my shirts were just different colors of one or two styles. If I find something comfy, I’ve learned to buy doubles if I really like something, and multiple colors if I really, really like a style. This means I am usually wearing last year’s style long after the fashion trend has moved on, but it’s not like I care.

  I had a royal blue cotton tee with a scoop neck. Almost all the shirts I’d packed had a scoop neck. The blue was a little softer than the rest of the colors. I added a touch of eye shadow, enough eyeliner to be dramatic, enough mascara so that the eyeliner didn’t overwhelm my eyelashes, a hint of blush, and some kiss-ass red lipstick.

  I couldn’t really get a good look in the room’s small mirror, but at least the makeup looked good. The shoulder holster was very black against the blue shirt, but the black suit jacket took care of that. Since I couldn’t take the jacket off without flashing the guys, I added my wrist sheaths with matching silver knives. If I was going to be stuck with the jacket all night, I might as well carry them. Besides, you never know when you’ll need a good blade. I ran a brush through my hair and called it done.

  Apparently, I looked okay because Bernardo said, “I take it back. If you’d packed a dress, you’d be prettier than I am.”

  I shook my head. “No, I wouldn’t, but thanks for saying it.”

  “Let’s go,” Edward said.

  “She is showing too much breast,” Olaf said.

  I looked at his completely sheer black shirt. “I can see your nipples.”

  His face darkened. I think he was actually blushing. “Bitch.”

  “Yeah, sure, you and the horse you rode in on,” I said.

  Edward moved between us, soothing the big man. To me, he said, “Don’t tease him unless you want the trouble.”

  “He started it,” I said.

  He looked at both of us, his face that icy gaze that I’d seen him wear when he killed. “I don’t care who starts it, but I will finish it. Is that clear?”

  Olaf and I looked at Edward, then at each other. Slowly, we both nodded. “It is clear,” Olaf said.

  “Crystal,” I said.

  “Good.” His face transformed into a smiling face, somehow appearing years younger. How did he do it? “Then let’s go.”

  We went.

  23

  OBSIDIAN BUTTERFLY, THE CLUB, was located between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. The club was set back from the road like one of the Indian casinos. It had high-class tourist trap written all over it. The parking lot was so full we had to circle to find a spot.

  The building was done in faux-Aztec temple. Or for all I knew real Aztec temple. But the outside of the building looked like a movie set. Red neon traced square carved faces, and the name was traced in more red neon. There was a line stretching around the corner of the building and out into the hot summer dark. This was not my town. I didn’t know the manager, so I couldn’t jump the line. I also did not want to stand in the line.

  Edward walked up the line, confident, as if he knew something I didn’t. We followed him like obedient puppies. We weren’t the only foursome trying to get into the club. We were the only foursome that wasn’t made up of couples. To blend in we needed at least one more woman. But Edward didn’t seem to be trying to blend in. He walked up to the head of the line where a large, broad-shouldered man of very Indian descent stood bare-chested, wearing what looked like a skirt but probably wasn’t, and a heavy faux-gold collar that covered most of his shoulders like a mantle. He was wearing a crown covered in macaw feathers and other smaller feathers that I couldn’t identify.

  If this was just the bouncer at the door, I was actually interested in seeing the show. Though I hoped they had access to lots and lots of pet parrots and hadn’t actually slaughtered birds just for the outfits.

  “We’re Professor Dallas’s party. She’s expecting us,” Edward said in his best hail-fellow-well-met voice.

  The feather and gold bedecked man said, “Names.” He uncrossed his arms and looked at a clipboard that had been in his hand the entire time.

  “Ted Forrester, Bernardo Spotted-Horse, Olaf Gundersson and Anita Lee.” The new last name stopped me. Apparently, he was serious about me going in incognito.

  “IDs.”

  I tried very hard to keep my face blank, but it was an effort. I didn’t have any fake ID. I looked at Edward.

  He handed his driver’s license to the man, then still smiling, said, “And now aren’t you glad that I didn’t let you leave your license in the car.” He handed a second license to the man.

  He looked at both for longer than I thought he should have, as if he suspected something. My shoulders were actually tight, waiting for him to turn to me and say, ah-hah, fake ID, but he didn’t. He handed both licenses back to Edward, and turned to Bernardo and Olaf. They waited with their licenses out, as if they’d done this before.

  Edward moved back to stand by me and handed me the license. I took it and looked at it. It was a New Mexico license with an address on it that I didn’t know. But it was my picture, and it said Anita Lee. The height, weight, and the rest were accurate, just the name and address were wrong.

  “Better put it in your pocket. I may not be around to find it next time,” he said.

  I slipped it in my pocket along with my other license, a lipstick, and some money, and an extra cross. I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or insulted that Edward had set up a secret identity for me. Of course, maybe it was just the license, but knowing Edward there’d be more to it. There usually was.

  The big double doors were opened by another large muscled guy in a skirt, though he didn’t have a feather crown or a nifty collar. A lesser bouncer, apparently. The doors led into a darkened room thick with an incense I didn’t recognize. The walls were completely covered with heavy drapes, only another set of double doors showing the way.

  Another bouncer, this one blond and tanned the color of thick honey, opened the door. He had feathers woven into his short hair. He winked at me as we went through the door, but it was Bernardo he watched the closest. Maybe he was looking for weapons, but I think he was watching Bernardo’s butt. He wouldn’t see a weapon from the back. Bernardo had transferred his gun to a front cross draw because the gun had showed a lump at the back. Which told you how snug the pants fit in back.

  The room we entered was large, stretching out and out into the near darkness. People sat at square stone tables that looked suspiciously like altars to me. Or at least what Hollywood is always using for altars. The “stage” took up most of the far left wall, but it wasn’t a stage, not really. It was being used as a stage, but it was a temple. It was as if someone had sliced off the top of a pyramid temple and transported it here to this night club, in a city so far removed from the lush jungles where the building began that the stones themselves must be lonely.

  A woman appeared in front of Edward. She looked as ethnic as the first doorman with high sculpted cheekbones, and a fall of shiny black hair that fell to her knees as she moved through the tables. She had menus in her dark hands, so I assumed she was the hostess. But her dress was red with a black design, and I knew silk when I saw it. The dress was vaguely oriental and didn’t match the decor of the room, or the waitresses hurrying to and fro in odd loose dresses made of some rough material. The waitresses struggled along in loose-fitting sandals, while the hostess glided before us in high heels the same scarlet as her dress and perfectly manicured nails.

  She was beautiful in a tall, slender, graceful fashion, like a model, but she was a discordant note, as if she belonged to a different theme. She showed us to a table that was in the very front with a view dead center of the temple. There was a woman at the table, who stood and offered us her hand as we sat down. Her handshake was firm, and her hand was about my size. It takes practice to have a firm handshake with hands this small.


  Professor Dallas, call me Dallas, was shorter than I was, and so petite that in the right clothes she’d have looked prepubescent. She wore tan Docker pants, a white polo shirt, with a tweed jacket complete with leather elbow patches, as if she’d read the dress code for college professors and was trying to conform. Her hair was shoulder length, a baby fine, medium brown. Her face was small and triangular and as pale and perfect as God had intended it to be. Her glasses were gold wire frames and too large for the small face. If this was her idea of party clothes, someone needed to take her shopping. But somehow I didn’t think the good doctor gave a shit. I like that in a woman.

  A man stepped out of the odd-shaped door at the top of the temple. The moment he stepped out, silence fell in rings around him, spreading out and out into the murmuring audience until it was so quiet I could hear the pulse of my own blood. I’d never heard a crowd this large go so quiet so quickly. I’d have said it was magic, but it wasn’t, not exactly. But this man’s presence was a sort of magic. He could have worn jeans and a T-shirt and he’d still have commanded your attention. Of course, what he was wearing was pretty eye-catching all on its own.

  His crown was a mass of thin, long feathers, a strange greenish, bluish, goldish color, so that as he moved they shifted color like a trapped greenish rainbow hovering in a fan of colors above his forehead. His cape hung nearly to his knees and seemed to be formed of the same feathers as his headdress, so that he moved in a wave of iridescence. The body that showed was strong, square, and dark. I was sitting close enough to tell if he was handsome or not, but staring at him, I wasn’t sure. It was impossible to separate his face from that presence, and so the face didn’t matter much. He was attractive, not because of the length of a nose or the turn of a chin, but just because.

  I found myself sitting up a little straighter in my seat, as if coming to attention. The moment I did it, I knew that even if it wasn’t magic, it was something. I had to fight to tear my gaze from him and look at the others at the table.

  Bernardo was gazing at him, as was Doctor Dallas. Edward was gazing out over the hushed crowd. Olaf was studying the doctor. He watched her, not as a man watches a woman, but as a cat watches a bird through cage bars. If Dallas noticed, she ignored it, but somehow I think she didn’t notice. I think even with the man’s presence filling the room, his rich voice riding the air, I’d have felt Olaf’s gaze like a cold wind down my spine. That Dallas was oblivious to it made me worry about her, just a little, and made me very sure that I never wanted Olaf alone with her. Her survival instincts just weren’t up to it.

  The man, king or high priest, talked in rich tones. I caught part of it. Something about the month of Toxcatal, and a chosen one. I could not concentrate on his voice, any more than I could gaze upon him because to give him too much of my attention meant I was caught up in the spell he was weaving over the crowd. It wasn’t a spell in the true sense of the word, but there was power in it, if not magic. The difference between magic and power can be very small. I’d been forced to accept that fact in the last two years.

  The high priest was human, but there was a taste of ages to him. There are just not that many ways for a human to last centuries. One way is to be the human servant of a powerful master vamp. Unless Obsidian Butterfly was more generous about sharing her power than most of the Masters of the City that I’d met, the high priest belonged to her. He was too powerful an echo of his master to be endured unless she was that master. Master vamps have a tendency to either destroy or own that which is powerful.

  The high priest had been powerful in life, a charismatic leader. Now centuries of practice had turned that charisma into a kind of magic. I’d had full-fledged vamps not affect me this much. If this was the servant, how scary was the master going to be? I sat there at the stone table, flexing my shoulders to feel the tightness of the shoulder holster. I was glad I’d packed an extra clip of bullets. I moved my wrists just enough to feel the knives resting against my arms. I was very glad I’d brought the knives. You can stab vamps and keep them alive, but still make your . . . point.

  I was finally able to separate the power of his voice from the words. Most vamps, when they can, do tricks with their voices. The words themselves hold the key. They say beautiful, and you see beauty. They say terror, and you feel afraid. But this voice had little to do with the words. It was just an overwhelming aura of power like a great white noise hum. The audience may have thought that they were hanging on every word, but the man could have recited a grocery list with similar effect.

  The words were, “You saw him as the god Tezcathpoca in our opening dance. Now see him as a man.” The lights had been dimming as the priest spoke, until he was left in near darkness; only the iridescent gleam of feathers showed as he moved. The light came up on the other side of the stage, revealing a man, pale skin that glowed in the lights from his bare feet to equally bare shoulder. His back was to the audience and for a moment I thought he was nude. There was nothing to break up the curve of his body from the swell of his calves, to his thighs, the tight roundness of his buttocks, the lean waist, the spread of shoulders. His hair looked black under the lights, cut so close to his head that it looked shaved. He turned slowly, revealing the barest of G-strings, a color so close to his skin that you knew the illusion of nudity was a planned effect.

  His face shone unadorned like a star, starkly beautiful. He looked somehow pure and perfect, which wasn’t possible. No one human was perfect. But he was pretty. A line of black hair ran down the center of his chest and stomach to vanish into the thong. Our table was close enough, and his body white enough, that I could see the thin line of hair encircling his nipples to meet that thin line down his chest like the soft arms of a T.

  I actually had to shake my head to clear it. Maybe it was being celibate, or maybe there was more magic in the air than just the voice of the human servant. I looked back at the stage and knew that it was only a trick of the light that made his skin seem to glow. I looked over at Professor Dallas. She had her head bent very close to Edward, talking to him in whispers. If she saw the show almost every night, it was nothing new to her, but the lack of attention that she paid the man made me turn and search the dim tables around us. Most eyes, especially the women, were turned rapt to the stage. But not all eyes. Some were drinking, holding hands with their dates, doing other things. I turned back to the stage and just looked at him, drinking in the lines of his body. Damn, it was just me. Or rather, it was just a normal human reaction to a nearly naked and attractive man. I’d have preferred a spell. At least then I could blame someone else. My hormones, my fault. I needed more hobbies, that was it, more hobbies. That would fix everything.

  The lights came up slowly until the Priest was visible once more. “It was traditional that twenty days before the great ceremony, brides would be chosen for him.” I caught a glimpse of fur, and for just an instant I thought it was a line of shapeshifters in their half-human, half-beast guise. But it was men dressed in leopard skins. Not hanging loose like cloaks but as if the skins were sewn around their bodies. Some of them were too tall for the skins so that a foot or more of bare leg showed below the animal feet, or out of the clawed arms. They moved among the tables in a strangely graceful line, encased in fur with their faces framed through the open jaws of the dead animals.

  A man passed within touching distance of our table, and I saw the black rosettes that decorated the golden skin more closely, and it wasn’t leopard. I was spending a lot of time with St. Louis’ wereleopards. I’d killed the wereleopard leader because he was trying to kill me, among other things. But I’d left the leopards without a leader, and shapeshifters without a leader are anyone’s meat. So I was de facto leader until we could work something else out. I’d been learning how to forge them into a stronger unit, or pard. One of the ways you did that was sheer physical closeness, not sex, but closeness. I stared at the skin, and my hand went out without thinking. The man’s movement stroked my hand over the once living fur. Th
e spots were larger. The markings weren’t as neat somehow. I watched the cat heads on the men, and the heads were more square, not the rounded almost feminine line of leopard. Jaguars, they were jaguars, which made perfect sense with the Aztec motif, but, like the bird feathers, I wondered how they’d obtained the skins, and was it legal. I knew it wasn’t right. I don’t believe in killing for decoration. I wear leather because I eat meat, just using the whole animal. Nothing wasted.

  The man turned and looked at me. His eyes were blue, his face tanned a pale gold that matched the line of belly fur just before it turned white. The moment he looked at me energy danced down my skin like a hot breath. A shapeshifter, great. There was a time, not long ago, that that much power this close would have drawn an answering energy from me, but not this time. I sat there staring at him, and I was safe behind my shield that squeezed down a layer of energy that stood between me and all the psychic shit. I gave him innocent brown eyes, and he moved off through the tables as if I was no longer interesting. Which was fine with me.

  I didn’t reach out for it, but the energy came here and there from them. It would have been so much worse without the shielding. They had to be werejaguars or the costumes were like the ultimate false advertising. Somehow, this didn’t strike me as a show that promised anything it couldn’t deliver.

  The werejaguars picked women from the audience, took them by the hand and led them towards the stage. A petite blonde was pulled from her seat giggling. A short, square woman with skin the color of tanned leather was pulled solemn-faced and didn’t seem to be nearly as pleased, but she let herself be led to the stage. A taller more slender Hispanic woman was next, with long black hair that shimmered as she moved like an ebony curtain. She stumbled on the steps, and only the werejaguar’s arm saved her from falling. She laughed as he steadied her, and I realized she was drunk.