by Nazri Noor
Chapter 4
I sipped on what must have been my fifth drink of the day, a wine so red that I could taste every grape and sunbeam that went into it, out of a goblet that looked very much like the Chalice of Plenty. If anything, Dionysus was consistent with his branding, and nearly anything served at the Amphora came in something that could have been carved right out of Greco-Roman antiquity.
It was confusing to me, initially, that an entity would be so brazen about their domicile, especially after the effects of the god murders not so many months ago. But as I studied the bar that the god had decided to call headquarters, I understood more and more that it was cleverer for him to hide in plain sight.
“The front half is mundane,” Gil said, leaning on his elbow and bending over the table so I could hear. “See? The public seating area, it’s for scrubs, hangers-on, mortals. Those who aren’t in the know.”
It definitely felt that way. We were in scrubland, for sure, at tables clustered so tightly together on a floor not far from the Amphora’s entrance. The decor was done up in deep red swathes of velvet draped across brass fixtures, complimented by dim lighting that was meant to evoke firelight.
Scratch that, it was actual fire, on closer inspection, the magical, smokeless kind, like the ones at the hideout and the Lorica, suspended in censers and braziers. Also there was ivy. Lots and lots of ivy, snaking in and around columns and posts, working its way over and under the railings at the bar, like it had been allowed to grow that way, choking the establishment in garlands of green.
Sterling stared over the rim of his cup as he drank, gray eyes focused on the other end of the room. I’d learned that vampires could actually partake of food and drink if they wanted, not for sustenance, but pure enjoyment. He might have mentioned that their bodies didn’t process calories the way humans do, either, which, admittedly, gave me pause. Did that mean he could eat as many burgers as he wanted?
But back to the point. Sterling was examining the Amphora’s other half – the better one, as things went with these fancy shmancy places.
“To the untrained eye,” Sterling muttered, nudging his cup at me – gee, thanks – “that would be a regular old VIP area, like you’d see anywhere else. But you’ll notice that there are no velvet ropes, no bouncers to keep the riffraff out.”
I looked closer. He was right. The VIP area was elevated, set higher than the rest of the place and sectioned off behind some very fine, sheer curtains that were designed to separate Ipanema from us commoners.
“Anyone could get in, then,” I said. “That means anyone could just walk in and do what they want. That’s pretty ballsy of him.”
Him being Dionysus, manifested in the Amphora’s VIP section as what I took to be his favored form: that of a handsome youth, so impetuous and vital that he nearly looked too young to be there. He wore a shirt that opened down to his navel, sipping from a cup that never seemed to empty, spread out languorously on a velvet divan as he took in the revelers and dancers around him.
Oh. Did I not mention the dancers? Dozens of them, men and women alike, stripped to their waists or worse, writhing with reckless abandon to the curious crash-bang of cymbals and drums and flutes, like electronic dance music gone especially, horribly wrong. It would have felt like a strip joint except that I knew that almost none of these sweat-glazed, wine-crazed dancers worked there. These were regular, if incredibly attractive people in off the street, thrill-seekers who had wandered into the Amphora looking for a good night, and ending up spellbound under Dionysus’s thrall.
He seemed to have that effect on everyone around him, and he watched on in half-bored amusement as breasts and bare chests writhed and wriggled involuntarily for his entertainment. A few pairs of revelers, I noticed between the billowing of the curtains, had moved on from dancing to other, even sweatier activities on the mountains of cushions deeper in the VIP section.
“Crazy shit, isn’t it?” Sterling made an odd sort of smile and looked off among the curtains. “Like the good old days.”
I looked away, cleared my throat, and tugged on my collar. “Imagine if the cops got wind of this place. They’d be shut down in a minute.”
“That’ll never happen,” Gil said. “The place is warded. Anyone Dionysus doesn’t want knowing about the stuff behind the curtains simply won’t see or remember. And speaking of the curtains.”
“Yeah. I could just step in there, couldn’t I?” And by that, I meant shadowstepping. All I needed was a pool of shadow big enough to accommodate my body, and I could jaunt through and jump out of another shadow. Again, like teleportation, except that I preferred to be able to see where I was going. I didn’t like the idea of stepping blind. You ever drive with your eyes closed? Yeah. Exactly.
“Nope.” Sterling shook his head. “They’re warded, too. You try stepping in there and you’ll probably be shredded into pieces. You ever try stepping from our world to theirs?”
I shook my head. Shredded to pieces? Holy shit.
“See? That’s why he’s so overconfident about this. Anyone who tries and teleports in there won’t make it. Domicile rules are in effect. So no need for any guards, no ropes to keep people out.”
“So how are we expected to commune?” I looked between the two of them. “Wait. We didn’t even bring an offering, did we?”
“Pssh,” Sterling said, shrugging off his leather jacket. “Watch this.”
He was wearing something skintight underneath, which, combined with the nut-busting tightness of his jeans meant that he fit right in with the kind of wanton, slinking supermodel types that Dionysus kept in his wriggling retinue. Sterling downed the rest of his wine, pounded his empty cup on our table, then strutted over to the curtains.
Which promptly stiffened, forming a solid, sheer barrier between the two halves of the Amphora. No one on our side seemed to notice, but I caught two of Dionysus’s serving girls tittering as they watched from his divan. Dionysus himself gave Sterling an apologetic smirk, and shrugged. The vampire tested the curtain, pushing on it with his fingers, and when it refused to nudge, he made a U-turn and stalked back to our table, his face furiously red for someone already dead. Gil was reddening too, hand clamped over his mouth to stifle his laughter.
“Oh wow,” I said. “That’s pretty harsh, dude. Ancient Greek god turned you down because you weren’t good enough to be a go-go boy? Super harsh.”
“Shut the fuck up, Graves.” Face like thunder, brows creased, Sterling snapped his fingers, calling for another wine. A server showed up with a fresh goblet, her hair just enough of an artfully curled mess to cover the smirk on her lips. So someone had noticed after all. Sterling took his cup and glared at her reproachfully as he sipped.
“Thanks kindly,” Gil said. “You can put that on our tab, but, if you don’t mind.”
He slipped a bill under our server’s tray, making sure her fingers made contact with the money. Her eyes lit up and she palmed the twenty, secreting it under the folds of the revealingly altered toga everyone who worked at the Amphora wore as a uniform.
She grinned. “And how can I help you boys this evening?”
“We’d really like to get into the VIP area, please.” Classic Gil. Brusque, but polite.
“I’m so sorry,” our server said, twirling her hair around the end of one finger. “It’s just that it’s by invitation only, and whatever the boss says, goes.” She nodded in Dionysus’s direction, and I noticed that he was still watching our table, a half smile playing on his lips.
“I mean, if there’s a cover charge, I think we’re willing to pay it,” I said, giving her a grin. “Or we could negotiate.”
The server simpered. “You’re cute, but no dice.” Her eyes hardened for just the fraction of a second. “Our master knows better than to let supernatural beings intrude on his domicile.” She eyed Gil, then Sterling icily. “This one, especially. I know that your kind like to sample exotic blood, and our master’s is about as exotic as it gets.”
“That�
�s not what we’re here for, maenad,” Sterling spat.
The server’s face darkened. She was a maenad, then, one of Dionysus’s worshippers, which only made sense. He would have his own allies out here, mortals who could do his bidding in our reality, even while he watched and moved the chess pieces from the relative safety of his domicile, which, I finally understood, sat half in our world, and half in his.
“Look,” Gil said. “We don’t want any trouble. We’re just here to talk.”
Gil was right. That was the thing about maenads, or bacchantes, or whatever it was you wanted to call the god’s worshippers. They were famous for whipping themselves into frenzy, whether through dance or devotion or drink, with the end goal of receiving just a drop of Dionysus’s power. What that meant, in mortal terms, was that they found themselves bestowed with inhuman strength, enough to tear people apart, limb from limb. I thought back to the gazebo orgy and swallowed, very slowly.
“Talk?” The maenad bared her teeth. “You don’t just walk into a god’s haven and demand to ‘talk.’ You guys have been nursing the same cup for the last half an hour, and you didn’t even bring an offering for – ”
Her eyes glazed briefly, and the air caught in her throat. She turned her head towards the curtains, then back to us, a glimmer of fear in her eyes. The maenad’s posture adjusted as she collected herself, and she smoothed down the front of her toga with one hand.
“I – I apologize. Dionysus says he will see you. But only one of you.” She lifted a finger to point at me. “The mage.”
“Fine,” Sterling said. “Whatever. Let’s just get this over with.” I had to admit, there was a perverse sense of pleasure in knowing that the god picked to commune with me over him, but hey, this was my forte. Having great people skills, as I was happy to discover, translated pretty well when it came to communicating with ancient deities and demons and beings of myth.
“Awesome,” I said, sliding my chair back and rising from the table, when the maenad placed her hand on my chest.
“But he demands an offering. A spot of your blood.” She smiled, the same kind I’d once seen on a succubus shortly before she sucked out a tiny bit of my soul. It hurt like hell, and I watched in trepidation as the maenad pulled out something slender from the folds of her robe. I looked to Gil cautiously, but he just nodded, almost imperceptibly so.
Communing with entities – the blanket term for the beings who exist between the corners, the gods and demons who live in the reality layered over our own – came with its own rules. Many of the more powerful entities lived in their own domiciles, pocket dimensions outside of our world, and access was only granted after the right rituals and motions had been performed. In many cases it involved casting a circle, which symbolized opening a door into another plane. A gateway, if you will.
I wasn’t sure how the rules differed for the Amphora. I’d never seen an entity so bold that he would literally straddle both worlds and leave himself so vulnerable, but maybe that spoke to his actual power and how confident he was in his ability to remain safe. What I did know was what they called the slender little thing the maenad had produced.
It was a miniature version of Dionysus’s symbol, the thyrsus. A thyrsus was a pole that ended in a point made out of a pinecone, often with a sharp end, which made it both a staff and a spear. Every maenad had one, a copy of their master’s favored weapon. This thyrsus was tiny, like a wand, only a little bigger than a regular pencil, but in the firelight I could tell that the pinecone tip was razor sharp. I guess the god wanted to go with the times, shrinking the instrument the way humanity invented progressively smaller cellphones.
“A drop of blood,” the maenad said, “and you will be granted your audience with our master.” She made a light stabbing motion in the air, then giggled, the zealous worshipper melting from her expression, and the cheery, twenty-something waitress from earlier zipping back. “Just a little prick.”
“That’s.” Sterling grunted, then chuckled, in spite of his prolonged sulking. “That’s what she said.”
The maenad tittered again. “Well?”
Gil nodded. “Go on. You know what needs to be done. Ask everything Carver wanted to know, or as much of it as Dionysus will tell you.”
“Right.” I eyed the thyrsus warily. Color me dramatic, but I didn’t do well with small, pointy objects, not since someone stabbed me in the heart with a sacrificial dagger. But this was work, and it needed to be done.
I extended my hand. The maenad smiled, lowering the thyrsus and prodding the end of my thumb in what felt like a precise and, I don’t know, respectful manner. I hissed at the brief jolt of pain, then winced when she squeezed the end of my thumb and lowered herself to the floor.
No one in the Amphora seemed to think it crazy that a waitress was on her knees ready to receive some random guy’s blood in her mouth, but there we were. Offering or no offering, this was the standard: every entity expected a bare minimum of blood.
A single crimson bead dripped from my thumb and fell into the maenad’s mouth, spreading across her tongue. It hissed as it landed, dissipating into a wisp of smoke that, oddly, smelled both like copper and a little bit of sandalwood.
“Such a shame,” Sterling said, shaking his head and running his tongue over his lower lip.
“Buddy, you gotta stop doing that,” I said, retrieving my thumb and sticking it in my mouth to suck on the rest of the blood. Sterling watched quietly. Like I said: creepy. He’d threatened to suck my blood the night we met – the night I met both him and Gil, actually, when they more or less assaulted and chased me through a darkened park.
He kept grossly hinting at the possibility of it happening over the time we’d spent being roomies – housemates? – over at Carver’s hideout, and it was Gil who had to explain that vampires sought out rarer kinds of blood to sate themselves, or to stave off the boredom of immortality. I guess I was a special treat because I was a mage, but that made it clearer why the maenad was so apprehensive about letting Sterling cross over into the VIP area himself.
The maenad rose to her feet and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her gaze went distant for a moment, and she smiled again.
“The master will see you now. Right this way.”
I looked over my shoulder at Gil for any last minute advice – nothing, apparently – and maybe I threw Sterling a last little taunting look. He stirred his wine with a finger, sucked it, then rolled his eyes away from my general direction.
As I stood, I reached for my backpack, the enchanted leather satchel that Herald had given me as a loaner from the Gallery. The thing could never be filled to capacity, its insides far larger than it appeared, which made it a cinch to smuggle Vanitas into the Amphora in case I needed him. The maenad clicked her tongue and wagged her finger. Dang. Guess not. I left the backpack in my seat.
The maenad stopped short of the step that led to the VIP area. She held up one arm and gestured past the curtains, smiling, but silent. I stepped past her, leery of the curtains stiffening at any moment, but I managed to pass through safely.
Couldn’t help it. I guess I still wanted to gloat, so I turned around to give Sterling another little jab – and all the breath left my body.
The common area, scrubland, whatever you wanted to call it was completely gone, in its place a thick, impenetrable hedge grown over completely with vines and ivy. Behind me the strange song played on, keening flutes and crashing cymbals and drums keeping time for the undulating masses dancing and fucking and worshipping for the wine god’s pleasure. Above the music and the mating came Dionysus’s voice, clear as a bell over the ruckus.
“Clever, isn’t it? That you could see me from your end, not knowing that the barrier was there all along.”
I turned to him and shrugged wordlessly. As I thought, the entity was much smarter than he was letting on. He was perfectly defended all this time, and only those who’d been granted permission could have entered his home. I walked closer to Dionysus on his divan, s
tepping carefully between the greased, gyrating bodies of his many dancers, the cast and atmosphere of the domicile oddly red and blood-like in spite of all the greenery.
“So why bother letting them see at all?” I spoke as casually as I could, because you really never can tell with these gods. It was always best to feel them out, so I could pick the right approach. Flattery worked wonders with most of the ones I’d communed with in the past. I wondered what strategy I would have to adopt here. “Why let the riffraff see you when they know they can’t enter without an invitation?”
Dionysus grinned, black curls tumbling over his brow as he took a long pull from his Chalice. “Because it’s good for sales. They see all of this,” he said, gesturing at his worshippers, “and they want in. And then they see this,” he continued, thumbing at himself, puffing his chest out, and wearing a winning smile, “and they’ll do anything to be near me.”
Ah. Flattery it was, then.
He pushed one of his serving girls off his divan. She collapsed to the floor, tittered madly, then sauntered off to join the dance. Dionysus patted at the empty space he’d just cleared.
“Sit, mage. Come and talk.”
So I did, taking my place next to the god on what must have been the most comfortable piece of furniture I’d ever laid my ass upon. Still, it was all so new to me. Every communion I’d ever been on had an ever-present edge of danger in the experience. Sure, the entities were amicable in the end, if you could call it that, but basically all of them had tried to kill me, one way or another. I decided that I shouldn’t get too comfortable just yet.
“So,” Dionysus said, grinning through a perfect set of teeth. “To what do I owe the honor of a wizard’s visit?”
Wizard? I didn’t know very much about magical hierarchy, but I still knew enough to acknowledge that a wizard was at least several notches more prestigious than a plain old mage. So flattery it was. “I’m only here for information, your, uh – ”