Emma was back inside a moment later, almost knocking the door off its hinges. Snatching up the receipt, she grabbed the phone from under the till.
The voicemail kicked in immediately, telling her that Georgia wasn’t available right now, but if this was a business call then Emma could try her work extension, otherwise she could reach her at…
She slammed the phone down, so hard that the plastic case cracked. What could she do? The police would do her no good, she knew no one who’d understand. What could she do?
She found the phone book, flipping pages as quickly as she could. Finding the D’s, she ran a shaking finger down one column until she found what she was looking for.
Damascus Nightclub. 18 Palermo Street.
Emma grabbed her coat and rushed out the door, nearly knocking over an old man coming in. He shouted after her, but she didn’t seem to hear him. The old man stared at her as she sprinted away into the night. He’d never seen anyone run so fast.
The Damascus was one of Roseburg’s older nightclubs, dating from the early fifties. It’d had many owners and many refurbishments, and now enjoyed a reputation as one of the hottest nightspots in town. The decor ran heavily into floodlights, noise and energy.
The hopefuls lined up at the door watched as a Mercedes pulled to a smooth stop on the curb. A lean blonde man in a stylish leather jacket climbed out and sauntered around the car, tossing the keys to an ashen-faced valet who scurried from the entrance. The man opened the passenger door and extended a hand to help a slim, leggy brunette in a red dress onto the pavement. The man didn’t even look at the queue, but his companion glanced over at them with a sheepish grin as the bouncer parted the velvet rope and ushered the pair in. As they entered the club, a grey van cruised by on the street.
“Reese Parras,” said Meliad, from behind the wheel. “That’s Sleet’s partner.”
In the passenger seat, Gabe looked up from loading his revolver. His eyes lingered on the pretty girl in the red dress as Parras guided her through the entrance. “Exports, eh?”
“Yep,” Mel sighed, steering the van around the nearest corner. “They hire girls at their clubs, or pick them up online, or just snatch ‘em from their beds. Some get delivered to rich old bloodsuckers that don’t want to leave the lair. Most go to other cities, or offshore. The lucky ones become food. The others…” Mel shrugged. “Well, I hear there’s vampire brothels in Europe where they…”
“There are,” said Gabe.
“You’ve seen them?”
“Burned a couple down.”
Mel responded with an approving nod, pulling the van to a halt on the curb about a block from the corner. “So how do you want to handle this?”
Gabe closed the breech and slid the revolver into the holster under his arm. “Usual way.”
Mel looked dubious. “Lot of civilians in there.”
Gabe sighed. “You gonna give me the finesse talk again?”
She gave him a look.
“Relax.” He opened his door. “I’ll find a quiet way in. Take the van around the block and be ready when I come out.”
Mel nodded as he swung the door closed. She had no doubt that Gabe would find a quiet entrance to the club. It was his exits that were usually noisy.
A block down the street, Emma leaned against a wall and scanned the front of the Damascus. She’d arrived too late to see Reese and Georgia go in, but had spotted a valet taking the Mercedes around back. She turned the situation around in her head. There were about sixty people out front, if not more, and the line wasn’t moving. Besides, she doubted the bouncers would let her in with her thrift shop ensemble. They might even be able to spot her for a vampire, especially if they were themselves. And if a vampire owned the place…
No, she had to find another way in. The thought brought a genuine smile to her face for the first time in days. It had been years since she’d sneaked into a nightclub.
Georgia’s head was spinning as Reese led her into the main room of the Damascus. She’d been to clubs all over town, but this was something else. The architecture was all sweeping curves and white marble pillars, and the renovations had worked around this, enhancing it with mezzanine levels and catwalks under hundreds of pulsing lights. The huge DJ booth dominated the west wall, overlooking the heaving dance floor, and crowds thronged around the bars, booths and sofas that lined the curving walls. The music was deafening, and she could feel the bass in her stomach. Normally Georgia would have made a beeline for the dance floor, but not tonight. Reese was taking her to the VIP room.
She gave the gyrating dancers a wistful look as Reese pulled her through the crowd. He was in a hurry, and she struggled to keep up. They emerged on the far side of the room, where another bouncer was waiting next to an elevator. Reese looked back with a smile, gently maneuvering her towards the lift. Slipping an arm around her waist, he pulled her close. “Come on, we’re going downstairs. That’s where the action is.” His breath was cold on her neck.
The bouncer pushed the button, and Reese put a hand in the small of Georgia’s back and scooted her into the surprisingly plain elevator car. He reached out to caress her cheek as the doors slid shut, cutting off the pounding noise outside. “You’re gonna love this,” he said with a grin.
Georgia’s stomach fluttered as they began to descend.
When Emma found the rear entrance, she realized how futile her plan was. It was a loading bay with a wide roller door and a smaller fire exit to one side. Six vampires were hanging around, smoking cigarettes and muttering amongst themselves. She knew they were vampires, just as she knew they were armed. She’d always stayed clear of the city’s underbelly, but she knew clan thugs when she saw them.
Slipping back around the corner, Emma cursed under her breath. She could climb the wall—she knew she could—or look for some other way in. But then what? She had no idea of the layout, or where Georgia would be. And what would she do if she found her?
The elevator stopped with a jolt. The doors slid open with a loud rattle that was more audible down here, away from the noise of the club. She saw a long corridor with painted cement walls and florescent overheads, a couple of metal doors on either side. A tall man in a black overcoat stood next to one of the doors, the smoldering stub of a cigar in his mouth. Beyond him, the corridor led to a broad flight of steps leading upward.
“Come on,” Reese took her by the hand as he started out of the lift.
Georgia hesitated, but was pulled along in Reese’s wake. “Are we on the right floor?”
Reese didn’t answer, pulling her down the corridor almost faster than she could walk. The man in the overcoat straightened up, and Georgia thought she saw a shape underneath…
“Mr. Parras,” the man nodded.
“Dutch,” Reese replied. “This is Georgia.”
Dutch offered her a smile that made her uneasy. “Miss Georgia.”
Georgia nervously smiled back as Dutch handed Reese a set of keys. He unlocked the metal door, gently pulling her closer it as it swung open. “And here we are.”
Georgia stared into the room. It was dark, and it took a second for her eyes to make out details. It was a small, unlit room with no furnishings, probably a storeroom. There were seven people inside, crouched on the floor or huddled against the walls. Seven women, her age or younger, some of them dressed for a night out. One girl was barefoot, wearing a nightdress. They stared up at her, wide-eyed and blinking, tear-streaked faces gleaming in the light from the corridor. One rose unsteadily to her feet.
Georgia’s breath stuck in her throat, and a cold hand slammed between her shoulder blades and hurled her into the gloom. Tripping over her heels, she sprawled onto the cold floor as the other women jumped up and started screaming, and the door slammed shut with a ringing crash.
“Fuckin’ sows get dumber every year,” Reese muttered, turning the key in the lock. “We on schedule?”
Dutch nodded, adjusting the shotgun under his coat. “Orlokov’s people are on their way
,” he replied, ignoring the shrieking and pounding behind the door. “They’re expecting ten.”
“They’ll take eight,” Reese replied. “We’ll make good next week.” He started back towards the elevator. “I’ll be back down before they get here. Gotta go mingle.”
It was Gabe’s own fault. He’d gotten careless.
After slipping into the club through a restroom window, he’d worked his way around the darker perimeter of the main room, as nonchalantly as he could with a silver baseball bat hanging under his coat. He moved slowly, pushing through the crowd and keeping an eye out for security. He’d spotted Reese Parras coming back up in the elevator, minus the piece he’d walked in with. Presumably she was downstairs, with a few other girls who’d found their way into Sleet and Parras’ clutches. After tonight they’d be the newest additions to Roseburg’s “missing persons” list, a document only marginally shorter than the local electoral roll.
Deciding to wait for Reese’s next move, Gabe went up to the nearest mezzanine level to gain a good vantage point. He still had his eyes on Reese when he felt the gentle nudge of a gun muzzle in the small of his back. A prickly feeling at the back of his neck heralded the gun’s owner, who leaned over to breathe into his ear. “Well hello there, Mr Pope.”
Gabe allowed himself a tiny sigh as he raised his hands. That was the trouble with crowds, it was harder to hear them coming. And vampires were stealthy enough as it was. Glancing over his shoulder, he got a peripheral glimpse of a stocky figure in a dark suit and powder blue shirt. Four other figures were moving in on either side, three on the right, one on the left. The crowd had moved away, almost unconsciously, leaving the vampires and the intruder standing in a circle of empty floor.
“Now Riley here,” said the vampire with the gun, “he comes up to my office and he says he just saw Gabriel fucking Pope coming out of the gents’. That can’t be right, I tell him, but he’s all insistent, so I give him the benefit of the doubt. And here you are.” The vampire turned to a tall, shaven-headed figure on Gabe’s right. “Sorry I doubted you, Riley.”
“All good, Mr. Sleet,” said Riley, drawing a 9mm handgun from under his jacket.
Danson Sleet turned his eyes to the club below, where Reese Parras was greeting a group of fashionable young things near the dance floor. “Followed my partner here, eh? I keep telling him to let the boys go out and fetch the sows in, but he likes to pick ’em up himself. Always finds something tasty, though.”
Gabe kept his hands up, watching the other vampires close in. They were almost close enough.
“Still, can’t have the riff-raff nosing about,” Sleet concluded. “So let’s be going for a walk, you and I. Somewhere we won’t scare the…”
That’ll do, thought Gabe, and moved.
They were caught off guard as Gabe twisted, left arm coming back to knock the gun sideways. Sleet’s finger closed on the trigger a second too late, so that when the bullet belched from the muzzle it found Riley standing in its way. The bald henchman doubled over as the bullet punched a gruesome hole in his left thigh. Gabe came fully around to face Sleet, his right hand thrusting into the vampire’s chest. A carved-smooth ash stake, snatched from beneath Gabe’s coat on the way around, drove between two of Sleet’s ribs and into his heart. Releasing the stake, Gabe swung his elbow back into the throat of another henchman.
It was at this point that the gunshot registered with the nearest club patrons, who began to scream and scatter accordingly.
Riley was hopping backwards, clutching at his injured thigh. The other henchman was staggering back with blood spurting from his mouth. Sleet was beginning to fall when Gabe caught him at collar and belt, hurling him in the direction of the two other vampires, who’d only just thought to draw weapons. They were knocked off-balance as their dying boss, already beginning to decompose, cannoned into them.
Gabe drew his revolver, quickly weighing his options. Riley was still armed, as were the other two, and they were about two seconds away from recovering enough to use their guns. He only had time to shoot one, and then his best chance would be to jump down to the dance floor and lose himself in the heaving crowd. But the crowd was mostly human, and the vampires would think nothing of spraying the room with bullets in the hope that one might find him in the throng.
So he turned to his right—pausing only to gun down the vampire with the crushed throat—and bolted for a nearby marble pillar. He darted behind it as a bullet whistled past his shoulder, two others biting chunks out of the marble behind him.
The panic was spreading by now, the patrons from the mezzanine falling over each other on the stairwells and carrying the fear with them. It soon reached the dance floor, and the crowd began surging towards the exits. Glancing across the club, Gabe saw Reese Parras looking up at him, crimson eyes wide. The vampire turned and fled, leaping clear over the heads of several screaming patrons on his way back to the elevator.
Emma was pondering her next move when the commotion started. One of the vampires at the loading dock responded to an urgent call on his walkie-talkie—all Emma could hear was distorted shouting, and what sounded like gunfire—then he and the others were drawing guns and running to the fire exit. Five rushed inside, the sixth left behind at the exit. He watched his compatriots charge down the stairs inside, then let the door close and turned back to the alley, clutching his handgun.
It was then that Emma lunged out of nowhere and smashed his face in with a brick. She was nothing if not an opportunist.
Behind the pillar, Gabe slipped his coat off to allow easier access to the mobile armory strapped to his body. He risked a split-second glance around the pillar, which told him everything he needed to know. Sleet was a pile of moldering bones in an expensive suit. The injured Riley had pulled himself behind another pillar. Another of the vampires was crouching in the nearby stairwell, while the third had jumped down to the main floor. The crowd still scrambled over one another to reach the exits, but the dance floor was clear. Reese had made it into the elevator and escaped to some lower floor. There wasn’t a lot of time to waste.
Which was why, when Riley leaned out to try for a clear shot, Gabe didn’t waste any. Darting out into a low crouch, he fired an iron-tipped .455 that caught Riley above the left eye and spattered the pillar with what passed for his brains. As he toppled, the vampire in the stairwell sprang out of hiding, arcing across the gap between himself and Gabe. He got a silver throwing knife in the chest for his trouble, and tumbled past Gabe in a flailing mess of limbs. Gabe turned to face the third henchman as he jumped from the floor below and sprang over the railing to attempt a flanking maneuver. That plan was laid to rest, along with the vampire, with a well-timed bullet through the face.
Satisfied that the immediate threats on this floor were taken care of, Gabe turned and ran for the elevator.
Reese Parras hopped and jittered as he waited for the doors to open on the lower floor. When they did, he found himself staring at the business end of half a dozen guns.
It was Dutch who recognized him first, and lowered his shotgun. “Sorry, Mr. Parras.”
Reese pushed his way through the little knot of henchmen, waving them back into the lift.
“Get up there and kill that motherfucker,” he growled. The doors closed on five determined faces.
“What’s going on?” Dutch asked, hurrying to keep up as Reese strode down the corridor.
“Pope’s here,” Reese replied curtly.
If it were possible, Dutch’s face turned a little whiter. “What do we do?”
Reese’s blazing eyes were fixed on the door where the women were locked up. “We take the merchandise and get the fuck out of here.”
“I say leave ’em,” Dutch advised. “We can’t manage all eight.”
“Fuck that,” Reese spat. “We’ll take four and put the rest down. Give me the keys.”
Dutch shot a nervous glance at the elevator—distant screaming and muffled gunfire could now be heard from the floor above—and
fumbled the keychain out of his coat. As he moved to pass it to Reese, his eyes strayed towards the petite figure coming down the stairs. “Er, Mr. Parras?” he murmured, and pointed.
Emma reached the foot of the stairs and walked down the corridor as confidently as she could, hands behind her back. She’d dispelled her glamour, assuming that a vampire could move more freely down here than a human. She looked up to see Reese staring at her with blood-red eyes. “Who the fuck are you?” he called, one hand straying inside his jacket. “You one of Orlokov’s bit…”
Swinging her arm around, Emma lifted the handgun. She’d never so much as touched a gun until taking it from the senseless guard outside, but had spent enough time with it to work out where the safety catch was and how to check the magazine. It was loaded with silver-tipped bullets, which she rightly assumed would be effective against vampires.
She expected the recoil and braced herself for it, but due to her vampire strength this wasn’t necessary. The bullet went wide, missing both vampires and taking a chunk of cement out of the wall, but it caused them to duck and bought her time to compensate. As Reese fumbled for his gun, Emma fired a second time and the right side of his neck split open, blood spraying across the wall. He stumbled, falling to one knee and grabbing at his throat.
Dutch pushed past his injured boss, bringing his shotgun up, but Emma grabbed her gun in both hands and fired three more shots. One missed, the others struck him in the chest and throat. Dutch jerked back and fell against the wall, choking bile from his fanged mouth, and left behind a curving trail of blood he slid sideways to the floor.
Reese was struggling to get up, awkwardly holding his injured neck with his left hand while trying to draw a gun with his right. Emma strode forward, firing two rounds that hit him in the arm and shoulder. He fell to his knees, a choking scream coming from his injured throat, until Emma squeezed the trigger one more time at close range, hitting him between the eyes. He flopped gracelessly onto his back, and Emma shied away and raised her hand as blood sprayed her shirt and speckled her face.
Both Barrels of Monster Hunter Legends (Legends of the Monster Hunter Book 1) Page 19