by Jax Garren
Vince peeled an inch of Velcro off the side of his pants. “It’s a costume.” He smiled, smoothing things over as he stuck the waistband back together. “She asked for a conquistador. I told her the closest I could do was a cop.”
One of the men snorted a laugh, and they both went back to smoking.
Rhiannon bit her lip. “She asked for a conquistador? See, this is what I’m saying.”
Vince leaned against the porch railing and crossed his arms. “You’re saying she’s an Aztec demon who, instead of ending the world, is hiring strippers?”
Rhiannon leaned in and lowered her voice. “Well, if vampires are real, why not tzitzimime? You think only European mythology is legit?”
Vince deflated inside from an old memory, that unexpected kick to the gut still too fresh for the five years that had passed.
She groaned. “No, don’t think about your ex. This isn’t about him. I’m just saying, if he was a real, living myth, then maybe she’s a real one too.”
He tried not to growl at her. It wasn’t Rhi’s fault he was still bitter. “One, Charlie had a name. He didn’t go by ‘Vampie.’ Don’t you think she’d have an actual name if she was one of these tzitzi-me-muh things? And two, on the odd chance she is, so what? Vampires, according to mythology, are also bloodthirsty monsters. You met Charlie. He was a woodworker, for fuck’s sake.” A damn fine one, with calloused hands that could coax maple into exquisite forms. Or tempt a body into ecstasy. Vince shoved the memories of that year away, back into the locked box where he kept them. “Besides, if supernatural whatevers were running around all over the place, everyone would know about them. That’s what cellphone cameras are for. Have you ever encountered a supernatural creature, other than Charlie?”
She shrugged. “Maybe I have and didn’t know it.”
The door opened, and Javier stepped out, his smile bright and a little tipsy. “There you are!” He jerked forward toward Rhi, arms open in an oddly possessive motion. “Sister!”
She leaned in for the hug. “You are in so much trouble. Are you sniffing me?”
A petite blonde in bright, rumpled club attire—not at all goth—came out behind Javi and wrapped her arms around his waist, pulling him off Rhi. “Let’s get ’em inside, sugar.” Her accent was decidedly east Texas—the one the rest of the state thought sounded hick, making an odd counterpoint to Javier’s determined urbanity.
Rhi’s eyebrows raised. “You’re still with her?” Then she blushed at the outburst. “Uh, Emma, right? Good to see you again.”
“Party’s downstairs,” Javier announced, his voice full of excitement. He wasn’t tipsy; he was hammered. And his date was rubbing her hands on him like they’d be finding a dark corner of that room immediately on entry.
Suddenly everything made sense, and Vince squelched a laugh as he relaxed. Javier had met someone who was helping the tightly wound, mid-fellowship neuropathologist blow off some steam. About fucking time. Tzitzi must be a friend of hers. Vince turned to Rhiannon and squeezed her hand. “Go to work before Kurt fucks up the light board trying to turn it on without you. I got it from here. I’ll grab a rideshare and be back for the final number, okay?”
Emma’s laughter was as loud as her hot-pink sequined shirt. “Unless he decides to stay here and party!” She got a firm grip on Vince’s shoulder and dragged him forward. “I got me two hot-as-shit men here! It’s a good night.”
Rhi scowled at her brother, but Vince knew her well enough to see her train of thought. Chewing Javi out in front of his date when he was drunk would do as much good as chewing out a puppy. Besides, Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes deserved a break. She rolled her eyes and turned to Vince. The fear was gone, replaced by irritation. “Sounds good.” She squeezed his hand back. “You have your wristband on and your emergency supplies?”
He shook his wrist, showing off the medical bracelet he’d made for himself, and tamped down his irritation. He’d been diabetic since he was eleven, but Rhi couldn’t help mothering. “Mints are in my pocket and my injector pen’s in my boot, not that I’m going to need either. Go to work, little mama.”
Rhi genially flipped him off and headed back to the car as Emma and her fierce grip pulled him into the club.
Despite Tooth and Nail’s old-fashioned exterior, the inside was sleek modern. Interior walls and most of the upstairs floor had been removed, making a large, two-story space painted light gray and maintained somewhere between clean and immaculate. The main room was fitted out in the decadence of a Hollywood movie set with chain benches and walls decorated with modern reinterpretations of old weapons, like maces and spiked chains.
Maybe he would approach them about a commission. Weaponsmithing was fun.
The AC was on full blast, but the packed club smelled of leather and sweat from the patrons wearing catsuits with dog collars, velvet dresses, and silk cloaks, all way too warm for Texas in June. The energy was high, people having good fun playing bad. Vince chuckled. How many of them were CEOs and schoolteachers catching a break? He smiled at the thought.
Javier and Emma kept going, guiding him past the central bar with one hand on each of his arms, like sentries. “So y’all met the other day?”
“Yep,” Emma said lightly. “Javi’s my boy.”
“Your boy?” Vince couldn’t help asking. Javi was a stick in the mud, but Rhi and her brother had bounced from foster home to foster home, back to their bio-mom, then back into the system for another round whenever their mom inevitably collapsed into methamphetamines again. He wasn’t a boy; he was a damn impressive man.
A damn impressive man who was studying Vince with a covetous fascination that looked a helluva lot like sexual interest. How drunk was he? Rhi would kill both of them if Vince helped Javi experiment. Not that Rhi cared about gender when it came to love, but she would care if Vince, the commitment averse, had a one-nighter with her brother, the good-boyfriend material.
Besides, hot as Javi might be on the outside, his cold drive, impressive at it was, turned Vince off. He didn’t have any art to him. Not like Charlie, the most brilliant artisan Vince had ever met.
Dammit, he was thinking about his ex again.
Vince pulled his arm away. To his surprise, Javi resisted.
Emma cleared her throat. “Why don’t you run on down and tell Tzitzi who’s here?”
Javi let him go and jogged away.
“Slowly,” Emma admonished, and sure enough Javier slowed down to a quick walk.
Vince slowed down his own pace, weirded out by the way she ordered him around. “What’s going on with you two?”
Emma turned a brilliant smile on him. It didn’t reach her chilly blue eyes. “Whatcha mean?”
“You and Javi...”
They reached a curving staircase going downward, and some of Vince’s earlier hesitation came forward. To his right, the wall of weapons had given way to a twisted mural—if you could call it that—which made the wall appear to fester and bleed. Disgusting. And still Emma hadn’t answered him. He stopped and studied her.
Her thick hair nearly fell to her waist with no layers or any particular cut. It reminded him of a Rossetti painting of an old-fashioned damsel with unbound hair. She was petite and her figure spare in the same way Charlie’s had been—lean, with ropey muscle instead of the gym-cut precision Vince had to keep for work. Her skin was as tanned and freckled as Charlie’s too, like someone who’d grown up in a time before SPF, with the same tan that faded up the forearms instead of on the biceps, where modern clothes ended.
His stomach turned. Vampires’ physical bodies froze at the point they’d died, scars and freckles, haircuts and tan lines, and everything else. Charlie had been thirty-five when he’d turned. She looked like she’d been younger, more like Vince’s twenty-four.
It seemed an absurd question, but he had to ask. “Are you a vampire?” What were the odds that Javier would be dating one? Charlie had said they were rare—so rare he’d never introduced Vince to another one.
Emm
a tilted her head like the question was unexpected, but not like it shocked her. Holy fuck. He was right.
Vince’s heart rate picked up as he looked around the room, but everyone else, decked out in their child-of-darkness best, seemed like poseurs next to an authenticity that didn’t need leather or a spiked collar.
“You ask strange questions,” she finally said in that twanging voice of hers. “Ain’t they supposed to be all formal and whatnot from Transylvania and fancy places? I grew up in the ass end of nowhere.”
He took a deep breath as a weight settled in his stomach. “I knew one who was a carpenter from rural France.” Holy hell, he was standing in the presence of another vampire. “Do you know him? Charlie Travert. He lives in Austin.” He shouldn’t care how Charlie was doing, but they’d been friends before they were lovers. He’d always carry around this curiosity, tinged as it was with anger and regret.
She narrowed her eyes, thinking. “That name sounds familiar.”
“He makes gorgeous furniture. Functional works of art.” Hope stirred in him, but he didn’t know what it was for. He wanted to hear news. Maybe to make contact. See if he’d ever finished that chest of drawers they’d designed together as a showpiece.
No, he didn’t want to reconnect. Charlie hadn’t responded to any of the nine million attempts to reconcile Vince had made that first year after the breakup.
A breakup that was entirely Vince’s fault. He’d fucked up a wee bit by lying about his job for, oh, their entire relationship. Nineteen-year-olds in love did seriously stupid-ass shit.
He’d never gotten a chance to apologize. Charlie had kicked him out with a note and never looked back. Vince’s jaw set in an old anger that had mellowed to frustration. A fucking note. The man he still thought of as the love of his life had ripped his heart out with three sentences scrawled on the back of a poster.
“What’s taking so long?” Javier was back, his smile eager. “Tzitzi’s waiting.”
Oh, damn, he was here for a job. The strangest job ever. Vince tried to settle his zinging nerves with a breath and a quick stretch of his arms. He leaned in and asked quietly, “Is Tzitzi a vampire?”
Javier’s eyes widened. “He knows about—”
“No,” Emma interrupted, ignoring him. “She ain’t.”
Vince had to ask. “Is she a tzitzimime?”
“A what? I don’t even know what that is. She’s human. I know that for a fact ’cause I can smell it. I’ll ask around about your Charlie and see what I can tell you before you go. Redhead with freckles? Voice like a bass drum?”
“Yeah.” That was Charlie. His voice was the most soothing sound, like rumbling thunder at night.
“Shall we?” She pointed to the stairs.
Vince nodded. That would be really cool to know something, anything, about his ex. He caught Javier’s gaze as they headed down the stairs. “We have a lot to talk about. My vampire was bossy too.” He bumped Emma with his elbow. “Javi’s a full-grown man, you know. He may not be however many hundreds of years old you are, but he doesn’t need you ordering him around like a kid.”
They reached the bottom of the stairs and entered an underground private room where a birthday party was in full swing. The space felt small because curtained alcoves lined the walls on two sides, cutting into the usable square footage. A well-stocked bar took up the third wall. A door on the final one led to a well-lit hallway he glimpsed as people came in and out of it.
“Javier may be a full-grown man, but he’s a baby bat. They can get out of hand without a little guidance.” Emma handed Vince a green glass of milky-white liquid. “Pulque—it’s made from agave, like tequila. It’s Tzitzi’s favorite.”
Vince looked from the strange drink to Emma. “Bat?” Did she mean Javier was a vampire? Had she made him one? His throat went dry, and he looked at Javier again, trying to tell—but he couldn’t, not just by looking. Rhi was going to freak the fuck out.
“Stripper!” a woman yelled as she came rocketing across the room. “Welcome to my party. You are gorgeous.” She ruffled his hair with slim fingers, and he managed a distracted smile. “What do you think of pulque?” She raised her own glass to her lips and drank a quarter in one drain.
That’s right. He had a job to do. They’d paid for him.
No, fuck it, he needed to call Rhi and tell her about this. “Tzitzi?” he guessed.
She nodded. How old was she? It was hard to tell. Colorful tattoos of Santa Muerte decorated her pale shoulders. Thick bangs skimmed her eyes in front, and thin, brown dreadlocks ran down her back. Piercings in her nostrils and septum and gauges in her ears must’ve involved more pain than Vince would ever willingly submit to, but she was lovely in her radical self-decoration. He’d guess she was younger than him. Normally he’d be happy to dance for her. But not tonight. He hoped she would be cool about it. “Is Javier a vampire?” he asked point blank.
Her thickly lined eyes widened. “A vampire? Does everyone know about them now?”
“Just tell me. Please.”
“Javier,” she said with a perfect Mexican Spanish accent. Javi joined their group. “He wants to know if you’re a vampire.”
Rhiannon’s brother closed his eyes, taking a big whiff of the air. When he opened them, his lips parted.
Vince felt sick.
His friend’s skin smoothed, his eyes gleamed like moonlit water, and his teeth elongated, the canines coming to needlelike points and the incisors to smaller, more jagged ones.
Vince had only seen Charlie vamped out like that a couple of times, but he couldn’t forget the unearthly aura Charlie had possessed. You couldn’t look at him and not know what he was, not feel the otherworldliness in your gut.
And now Rhi’s brother was one. She was going to panic. “How... why?”
“How do you know about vampires?” Tzitzi asked. “I wouldn’t think a stripper would let anyone scar him.”
“Scars? No. Charlie never bit me.” Vince had offered, but Charlie said it hurt too much and bottled blood was fine with him to drink. “Look, I’m really sorry, but I need to get back to the club. I will send somebody else.” So unprofessional, but this was...
His thoughts drifted off as he looked around. Unlike upstairs, this room was not full of poseurs. Eager faces watched him from alcoves and swayed to the driving music with eyes riveted his way. He was used to all eyes on him, but the eagerness took on a new light. They weren’t aroused. They were hungry.
Fear fisted in his stomach. Why the hell had Charlie told him vampires were rare? There were over a dozen in this room. He’d stumbled into a club full of them.
He took a step back toward the staircase. He wasn’t sending anyone here. He was getting the hell out and sticking this place on the blacklist.
But what about Javier? Should he get him out too? That earlier interest in his eyes, that hadn’t been sex. Javier was interested in his neck.
Shit.
The door deeper into the interior banged open. A man in, of all things, a cowboy getup, complete with a ten-gallon hat, burst into the room. “Death to tyrants!” he screamed for no apparent reason and lunged across the floor at a blurring speed.
Vince yanked Tzitzi behind him to hide the only other human in the room, but the cowboy knocked him out of the way with ease. He grabbed Tzitzi by the neck, hauling her up in a choke hold as Vince backed away in fear, butt sliding across the warm tile. Tzitzi coughed and spit, gasping for air. What was she even doing with a party full of vampires?
The same door opened again, and the hall light backlit a man in a leather ski mask and trench coat. Though thin and average height, he carried himself with the distinguished presence of a king. “My apologies,” he announced in a clipped accent Vince couldn’t place.
“Stay back!” the cowboy yelled as he turned to face the newcomer, dangling Tzitzi in front of him like a shield. “Can’t control me. No one can!”
“That so?” The masked man raised a crossbow and shot with a twang. An arrow t
hreaded a narrow gap between Tzitzi’s arm and chest to thump into the cowboy’s sternum. With cool efficiency, the masked man reloaded. “I suppose we don’t need you, then.”
The cowboy grunted. And exploded into dust.
Tzitzi dropped to the ground in a crouch and rubbed her neck.
Emma stumbled backward, sucking in air like she’d held her breath for too long, as her hand clutched at the railing and her back hit the stairs.
Tzitzi stood slowly, her once friendly gaze growing lustful as she glanced at Emma, then stared at the masked man. “I told you we needed another heart. The spell is failing.”
Javier, too, then stumbled backward to crumple at Emma’s feet as his chest rose and fell in heaving gasps.
Confused as fuck and pulse racing with adrenaline, Vince crawled toward them on the staircase, trying to avoid notice. Maybe he and Javier could sneak out?
Emma sat up, confusion in her gaze, like she’d hit her head. “Who’re you?” she asked Vince like she honestly didn’t know.
Javier sat up, too, the same lost fog in his expression. “Vince? Where are we?” he asked, looking around the room.
Tzitzi tapped her thigh with a gold-painted nail and stared at them. “Well. Fuck.”
Emma’s weary gaze took in the rest of the room and her eyes went wide. “Out,” she urged, hauling Javier up with one hand and Vince with another and shoving them both behind her up the stairs.
Vince didn’t need urging from her inexplicable change of heart. He lunged toward the light at the top of the curving stairs.
A billy club cracked Emma across the skull, sending her sprawling. The masked man was already behind them, from mid-room to here at an unreal speed.
“Go, go!” she still yelled as she slid downward on her side.
But Javier stopped and shoved at the masked man, trying to get to Emma.
The masked man picked him up over his head like he weighed nothing and threw him toward the middle of the room.
Javier landed and flipped himself to standing with unnatural grace. A crowd of vampires circled him, blocking his access to the stairs.