The Wolven

by Deborah LeBlanc

  Still holding her hand in a vice grip, Danyon led her to the long stretch of bar on the left.

  The bartender was a short, sweaty man wearing a bad hairpiece. He was running from one end of the bar to the other, replacing empty beer bottles with fresh cold ones and pouring shots of bourbon, vodka, and tequila. Danyon signaled him over.

  “Get to ya when I get to ya, Bubba,” the bartender said as he rushed past Danyon to deliver a drink to a woman sitting at the other end of the bar. As he raced back in the opposite direction, Danyon leaned over the bar, grabbed him by the shirt tail and pulled him up close.

  “Hey, man! Get your hands off me. What the hell you…” It was about this time that the bartender appeared to get a really good look at who he was talking to and the size of the hand that held on to him. “Yeah, okay, whatever. What you gonna have, man?”

  “Nothing,” Danyon said. “Have you seen a guy running through here? Bright orange shirt, long hair, skinny?”

  The bartender shook his head. “Dude, you’re talking about half the drunks in the city right now.”

  Danyon pulled him up a bit closer. “Do I look like a dude to you?”

  “Uh…no. No, man, no. I’m just saying. Shit, I’m just doing my job. There’re so many people in and out of here, everybody starts looking the same after a while. I don’t know if the guy you’re looking for has even been in here. Look, help yourself—look around the joint if you want. Maybe he’s out back or something. You a cop are what?”

  “Or what,” Danyon said, then pointed to an open door on the other side of the bar. “What’s back there?”

  “Bathroom, storage space, that’s it. Hey, uh…you mind letting go of my shirt?”

  Danyon gave him a hard look before releasing his hold on him. “Got a back door?”

  “Naw, man it’s an old building. No place for a back-door.”

  “What happens if a fire starts in here?” Shauna asked. “How do people get out?”

  The bartender shrugged. “Some do, some don’t.”

  While Danyon and the bartender continued their little “tete-a-tete,” Shauna glanced about, searching through the crowd for Banjo. A flash of orange suddenly darted in front of the bandstand, then it wiggled through the crowd and slipped between the wall and the door jam, like a cockroach running for cover under a baseboard.

  “Over there!” Shauna shouted, then pulled out of Danyon’s grip and took off after Banjo. Fortunately, Danyon didn’t waste time by stopping her to ask for clarification. Within seconds, he was beside her and forcing a path through the throng of people.

  As soon as they got outside, Danyon asked, “Which way?”

  Shauna looked from left to right. “I’m not sure. I saw him slip out the door on the left, so…maybe this way?” She pointed left.

  “No, right there!” Danyon grabbed her hand again and took off running.

  Before Shauna knew it, they were barreling into “Barely, Barely, Barely,” one of the many strip clubs on Bourbon that redefined the term, “adult entertainment.”

  The place was much bigger than Opal’s, with three circular stages in the main room. A metal pole rose from the center of each stage, and attached to each pole was a gyrating woman wearing nothing but a glittering G-string and stilettos. Shauna was surprised that she wasn’t undone with embarrassment, especially with Danyon beside her. She couldn’t help but watch the women, fascinated by how effortlessly they stretched, climbed and wrapped their bodies around the poles.

  As the woman in the middle finished her routine, she slid down her pole, slowly winding her body around it as she lowered herself. When her stilettos hit the platform, Shauna spotted Banjo on the opposite side of her stage. His body was pressed against it, and his arms were spread out wide. It took a second or two for Shauna to realize that Banjo was dry humping the stage.

  Taking advantage of Banjo’s preoccupation, Shauna tapped Danyon on the arm and pointed him out as inconspicuously as possible. She felt his body tense, as though ready to spring into action. She signaled for Danyon to lower his head so she wouldn’t have to yell to be heard and possibly risk alerting Banjo again.

  “We’re going to have to sneak up on him,” Shauna said, when he lowered an ear to her. “If we try to charge him, he’ll see us and take off again for sure. You stay here in case he goes for the front door. I’m going to slip around the stages and see if I can come up from behind him.”

  “You trap that wild thing from the back, and you’re going to have a hell of a fight on your hands,” Danyon said. “I’ll get behind him.”

  “No way,” Shauna said. “You’re too tall. He’ll be able to see you coming from a mile away.”

  “And you’re short?”

  “No, but I’m shorter than you.”

  With that, Shauna made her way stoop-shouldered through the male dominated crowd, then took her time going around the stages until she was directly behind the center platform. Banjo was still preoccupied, evidently determined to impregnate the stage.

  The crowd that stood between him and Shauna was at least four rows deep. She sneaked past the back two rows without anyone taking notice, then braved the third. Most of the men in the place appeared singularly focused, their eyes locked on the swaying breasts and gyrating hips. No one paid any attention to her, and she wanted it to stay that way. She continued to inch forward, keeping an eye on Banjo. The last thing she wanted was to lose sight of him again. She didn’t even bother looking for Danyon to make certain he was standing guard at the door in case Banjo bolted. She simply trusted that he was where he needed to be.

  By the time Shauna reached the last row of men, the one closest to the stage and the only obstacle left between her and Banjo, she was holding her breath.

  So close now…

  All she had to do was duck around the last row of men, and she would be home free. She was determined to get hold of Banjo, even if it meant taking him down with a flying tackle. But she had to get close enough to him to make that happen.

  She turned sideways and gently pushed past two men who stood gaping at the live version of what had probably been their greatest sexual fantasy since puberty. Her right foot had barely touched the open space between the stage and those men, when she heard the whistling and catcalls begin.

  “That’s right, girl! Go on up there and show them how to work it!”

  The place erupted with whooping and hollering, cheering and clapping.

  “Take them clothes off, girly!”

  Worrying that Danyon had heard that last request and might come storming through, looking for blood, Shauna shot through the last row of men and took off for Banjo.

  She wasn’t two feet past the starting line, when Banjo spun around, spotted her, and bolted for the front door of the club. Shauna ran after him and saw Danyon standing in the doorway like a linebacker, arms outstretched and ready to catch the slippery little worm.

  Banjo evidently noticed Danyon, as well, because he darted left, then right, then left again, like he was trying to come up with an escape strategy.

  Shauna raced past the first two dance platforms and the cat calls grew louder. The noise sent Banjo whirling about, and when he saw how close she was, he began to serpentine right, then left, circling, circling. She heard him laugh, that horrible, twittering sound that hammered on her nerves, and gritted her teeth.

  Still laughing, Banjo darted hard to the left, then dove into the crowd that had gathered to watch.

  Fearing they might lose him, Shauna raised a hand over her head and signaled Danyon to Banjo’s location. Obviously understanding what she meant, Danyon sprinted in the direction she had indicated. Seconds later, when Shauna came to a stumbling stop beside Danyon— Banjo was no longer in sight.

  “No way!” Danyon said, incredulously. “Where in the hell did he go?”

  “Over there!” a man standing in the doorway shouted. He pointed outside and to the left.

  “There! He ran that way!” a handful of men yelled, all of t
hem pointing in the same direction as the man before them. They were obviously anxious to see this ordeal through to its conclusion.

  When Shauna and Danyon reached the street, a tall guy wearing a new Orleans Saints’ ball cap and a Dallas Cowboys jersey was standing on the sidewalk, pointing and yelling. “He ran inside the Lightning! Over in the Lightning!”

  Puzzled, because she didn’t know of any bar or restaurant in the area with that name, Shauna shouted over at the guy in the ball cap. “Where’s the Lightning?”

  The man raised both hands over his head and pointed adamantly to his left. “There—there!”

  Concerned that she might be dealing with another drunk who didn’t know his rear end from a hole in the ground, Shauna scanned the street as best she could with so many people in the way, to see if any of the blinking, multi-colored business signs on either side of Bourbon read Lightning. As far as she could tell, none did.

  “Got it,” Danyon suddenly shouted, then grabbed Shauna by the hand and pulled her along as he pushed forward.

  Half a block down, he pointed to a small swinging sign that hung over the threshold of a narrow entryway. The sign read, UNDER the STAIRS, and the logo beside it was a yellow lightning bolt. As soon as Shauna read it, she recognized the name. It was one of the dives Lurnell had told them that Banjo frequented. Shauna let go of Danyon’s hand and quickly took the lead through the entryway.

  Immediately upon entering, she was surprised to find a short flight of stairs instead of the main room of the bar. With Danyon following close behind, she took the stairs two at a time only to find herself in a narrow hallway once she reached the top. The walls were black and splattered with orange, green, red and blue neon paint that came to life under a black light. At the end of the hall was another set of stairs, which led them to a narrow landing, then another set of stairs, and yet another landing.

  “This is like a maze from a horror movie,” Shauna said.

  The last hallway ended at the top of a longer flight of stairs. Shauna went down first, following the stairway down, down, down. The maze of stairways and landings, then the final set of stairs heading down, had been built to create the illusion that you were going further below ground than the first floor. Shauna thought that odd, since anyone who lived in, or had been to, New Orleans knew going below ground was impossible, given most of the city was at or below sea level.

  At the bottom of the stairs was the entrance to the club. It was no bigger than Opal’s, but just as dark and dank. The place wasn’t nearly as crowded, though, and the jukebox playing in the corner was at a moderate volume. An Asian couple swayed slowly together beside it, and it looked more like they were holding each other up than dancing. A pool table stood at the back of the room, and a few lopsided wooden tables with accompanying plastic chairs of various colors had been placed haphazardly about the bar. People were clustered into small groups here and there, most of them hidden by shadows.

  “See any sign of him?” Danyon asked.

  “No,” Shauna said through gritted teeth. Anger was rolling its way to fury inside her. How was it possible for that scrawny twerp to keep slipping out from beneath them? A thought suddenly struck her, pitching her anger right past fury to a tsunami of rage.

  What if Banjo had purposely led them on a wild goose chase so real business could be taken care of elsewhere? Had he been sent as a diversion? What in the hell was his connection to this? Shauna wanted to wrap her hands around Banjo’s scrawny neck and choke the answer out of him.

  “Anybody here see a scrawny guy in an orange shirt run through here?” Shauna asked loudly.

  The answer was the clack of billiard balls being racked and set—the schtack from a pop top—the screech of a chair shifting on a concrete floor. No one else said a word.

  “Unless there’s an exit door we don’t know about,” Shauna said to Danyon, “there’s no way Banjo could’ve gotten out of here without us seeing him. We would have passed him on the stairs.”

  Danyon nodded and walked over to the bar. She followed, hoping he had picked up the same feeling she had—that the people in this bar might not take too kindly to their bartender being grabbed by the collar.

  When they reached the bar, Danyon rested an arm on it, then asked the middle-aged guy standing behind it, “You have a back door here?” The man’s eyes stayed flat as he shook his head. Then he turned his back to Danyon and started rearranging bottles on the shelf by the register.

  “Was that a no?” Danyon pressed.

  The bartender didn’t respond.

  Exhausted from being pushed and shoved on the street for hours, tired of not being any closer to answers than when they started, and furious that Banjo had managed to slip past them again, Shauna quick-stepped to the bar before Danyon could stop her, then leaned over it and slapped a hand on the Plexi-glass top.

  “He asked you if there was a back door,” she declared. “If you can’t answer the damn question, I’ll go looking for it myself.”

  The bartender turned and looked at her, and for a moment, Shauna expected him to either burst out laughing or pick up the phone and call the police. Instead, he cocked his head toward the pool table.

  Thinking he may have just given away Banjo’s hiding place, she spun about on her heels.

  But it wasn’t Banjo.

  It was a huge white man about Danyon’s height, but at least two and a half times his weight. He had an acne scarred face, dark eyes that were too small for his face, and a bald head that not only looked like it was a trans plant from a bulldog, it was covered with tattoos of naked women.

  He stared at Shauna and leaned over the pool table, stick in hand as if preparing to shoot. His thick lips curled into a sneer, that all but said, “You’re one good lookin’ piece of prime rib, and I’m hungry.”

  The man had to be Big Frank Macina, the leader of the BGW gang that Jagger had told them about, the biker gang that thought they were big and bad enough to take over some Blood and Crip territory.

  She wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. Macina didn’t look big and bad. He looked like he needed a bath, a dentist, and a hard-hitting weight loss program.

  It suddenly struck Shauna as she stared at his tasteless tattoos—what better way would there be for a new gang to take turf from one of the toughest gangs in the country than to be the sole provider of the most potent drug in the underground market?

  The answer to that was simple.

  None.

  Without giving it a second thought, Shauna stormed toward Big Frank.

  She was a Keeper and was responsible for the safety and well-being of the weres in this city. She was also responsible for helping to keep peace between her weres and every other race living in the city.

  However, there was one race she could not have cared less about maintaining peace with—assholes.

  In her book, anyone out to harm her weres, directly or indirectly, fit into that category.

  Being a Keeper wasn’t her job. It was her purpose in life. And if that meant tackling a three hundred and fifty pound, tattooed, yeast-colored piece of crap like Macina, then so be it.

  Whatever it took to protect her weres.

  And nothing and no one was going to stop her.

  Chapter 17

  Danyon had one eye on the bartender, wondering if a quick jab and a nose realignment might re-circuit the guy’s attitude and sharpen his memory, when he spotted Shauna heading for the pool table.

  “Hey!” he called after her, meaning to get her attention, to stop her.

  It didn’t work.

  He saw that her hands were balled into fists at her side and knew big trouble was on the way.

  Danyon took off after her, intending to steer Shauna toward a quick exit up the stairs, but he was two steps too short. Shauna was already leaning over the pool table, confronting the bull mastiff who was holding a pool stick.

  Earlier, he had been so focused on finding Banjo and keeping Shauna out of trouble, that he hadn’t not
iced the tattoos on the big man’s bald head. The entire lumpy sphere was covered with ink drawings of naked women in different poses. Danyon remembered the description Jagger had given them of the leader of the BGW biker gang that had recently come into town. Although there were a lot of people in New Orleans right now for Nuit du Dommage, he seriously doubted he would find more than one man who fit the gang leader’s description. He had no doubt he was about to meet Big Frank Macina.

  Shauna kicked that meeting off with all the grace and charm of a MacDonald ready to take on the world.

  “So, what’s your game?” Shauna asked.

  Danyon stood about six feet behind her, trying to figure out if he should just scoop her up now and get her out of here, or let her get out whatever she had in her system. He also had to consider that she was a Keeper, which meant he needed to respect her space and abilities, instead of jumping at every turn to protect her, the way he had with the drunk on Bourbon earlier. Standing back and just watching was far from easy. His basic nature and instinct wanted to toss Shauna over his shoulder and haul her outside. But who was he kidding? Even if he did haul her out against her will, she would just turn around and head right back in. What concerned Danyon even more, was that he knew even if he wasn’t standing right behind her as backup, Shauna would still be up in Big Frank’s face.

  Frank’s grin was wide and nasty. He tossed the pool stick on the table and laid his big hands palm down on the felt.

  “Say again?” he said to Shauna.

  “I said, what’s your game?” Shauna repeated. The Travis Tritt song that had been playing on the jukebox went silent, and the entire bar fell into an eerie hush.

  Frank glared at Shauna, his eyes unwavering. “I’d say the game’s you, Missy.”

  “You run with some skinny chick named Trish and a guy who goes by the name Banjo Marks?” she asked.

  Frank’s grin grew wider, and he stood upright and sauntered over to the corner of the pool table, then leaned a hip against it and folded his tree trunk-size arms across his chest. “What’s it to ya?”