by Jenn Stark
“Excellent.” The woman squared the deck, then reached into her leather jacket and came out with a business card. “You need to find me again, you call, okay?”
“I will.” Dana took the card with one hand as she fished in her pocket with the other. She pulled out her phone, hit a button, and put it up to her ear. She glanced at the card. Sara’s name and number on one side, while on the other…
The call connected. “Max?” Dana said, returning her glance to Sara. “I’m sending over a friend for a special covert op, Sara Wilde. I need you to help her.” She smiled at the rush of Max’s reply that came back over the phone. “Oh, yeah. I think you’re going to enjoy this.”
Chapter Sixteen
The Church Nightclub
Theatre District
Cleveland, Ohio
2:00 p.m., Dec. 24
Finn was approaching the nightclub when a soft laugh drew his attention. He glanced to the side, then stared, grimacing at the surge of pleasure that stirred within him to see Dana standing there. He’d hated lying to her, hated leaving her. Hated even more that he cared about such things. She’d seriously harshed his mellow, and he didn’t know if he’d ever get it back.
But he had bigger problems at the moment. “What are you doing here?”
“We’ve got some real trust issues to work through, you know that?” Dana stepped out from the wall, turned to look up at the building. “The Church, huh? Kind of funny, since you guys have an aversion to the place. He in there?”
“He is. Bartholomew apparently is a funny guy.”
The nightclub didn’t look all that prepossessing from the outside, its existence marked only by a shingle hanging out over the street, lettered in archaic script, long elegant letters announcing The Church, est. 2001.
“You know this club?” Finn asked her.
“Question of the hour. But yeah, I’ve been inside maybe twice, enough to figure out the layout, more or less. It’s not really my scene.”
“It looks abandoned.”
“That’s part of its shtick. The windows are draped with a heavy black crepe curtain that only comes up on certain nights of the year—Halloween, Mardi Gras, that kind of thing—so that passersby can be entertained by some of the more colorful exotic dancers the club retains as waitstaff.”
“Nice.”
“We aim to please here in Cleveland.” She nodded to the door and the black silk wreath hanging on it, ruby-red holly berries glistening within its ebony embrace. “At least they have a Christmas wreath.”
“And they’re open.” It wasn’t a question. A tiny brass placard announced the fact.
“Yeah, well. The Church is always open. How they find the clientele to keep it hopping twenty-four seven, I have no clue. But it’s been around long enough to have a track record—my dad told me about it. The police are never called here. The neighbors never complain. It’s a regular donor to community events, and it welcomes the media whenever some stringer needs to write a story on the city’s goth underground.” She glanced at him. “So why are you waiting outside?”
“I can feel him in there,” he said. “He’s waiting for me…which doesn’t make sense. They’re not supposed to be able to track my activities.”
Dana frowned. “They who? Demons? Or specifically Bartholomew?”
Finn’s eyes widened. That’s right, Bartholomew was a Fallen, not a demon. Of course he could track Finn. There was no end to the things he was learning about this being that he once was…in all cases, it was better than the being he’d become.
He wondered if Bartholomew had had anything to do with that too. There was too much about this job that resonated with him, too much that caused his skull to ache. Too much, as usual, the archangel hadn’t told him.
“Let’s go.” Finn reached out and pulled the door wide.
They were almost immediately assailed by the heavy bass of house music, even though the main dance floor was down the corridor. Giving Dana a second to adjust her eyes to the gloom, Finn frowned into the face of the Japanese school girl in heavy kabuki makeup who smiled winsomely at them as they approached the stand.
“Twenty-dollar cover, each,” the girl chirped.
Before Finn could move, Dana pulled out her wallet. “Twenty dollars? At two o’clock?”
“Donation to The Church,” the girl said with a shrug, her English as flawless as her skin. Finn didn’t wait for Dana to pay but pushed down the corridor, every sense tight.
The place was hopping. Easily a hundred of the faithful paid tribute to the kaleidoscope of lights and music that thundered out over the room, most of them barely dressed and the room itself warm enough to justify their lack of attire. He moved through the crowd, trying to look everywhere at once.
It was quite a scene. Immediately in front of them cavorted two blondes, possibly twins, certainly made up to look that way with platinum hair sticking straight up in high ponytails and heavy orange eye shadow ringed with dark black liner. Their lips were garishly orange too, their white bodies writhing in even whiter, skintight dresses that ended a few inches below their asses. The women definitely outnumbered the men on the dance floor, but the men were scarier, a collection of leather-clad misfits with enough piercings to set off metal detectors five miles away. They writhed and hissed and moved around Finn and Dana like a sea full of eels.
Finn’s gaze slid over the crowd, finally spotting a bouncer. He moved forward as a man knocked into him, scowling. “You here to drink or look around?” the waiter growled, offering him a tray of steaming blue drinks in test tubes. Finn waved him off. Around them, the lights pulsed wildly, the music growing more frenetic as they moved deeper into the Church’s domain. It wasn’t a single dance floor at all, but a collection of sitting rooms and parlors and open hallways, all draped in heavy black crepe and accented by schizophrenic lighting and horrible music. There appeared to be one bartender for every five patrons, and the alcohol was coming fast and furious.
“This seems early for so much alcohol,” he suggested.
“Christmas Eve,” Dana said, unperturbed. “Most of these folks will be entertaining family for the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours. There probably isn’t enough alcohol in the world to prepare some people for that.”
They moved into another room, this one thankfully less crowded but still thrumming with music and bodies. As Finn moved for the bouncer, the man stepped away, farther into the crowd. Irritation flashed through him. He had no time for this.
Another few steps and Finn was up in the guy’s face. “I’m looking for Bartholomew Petolya,” he said, and the man looked at him with the same dead-eyed glare that the hostess had perfected, but with significantly less makeup.
“Never heard of him,” the man sneered, his expression hard and stupid in the frenetic, pulsing lights. And he stank of sweat, fear, and bubblegum.
Finn recognized the scent of the Possessed immediately. “This might help you remember.”
He reached out and broke the man’s arm.
Dana didn’t even react at his side, but the man dropped to the floor, and Finn regretted the move for an instant as he felt the mortal’s pain. Then he grinned hard at the outrage that spilled out of the man’s eyes. The fastest way to break through a demon’s hold on a human? Unexpected pain. As the man howled, the sound of the demon inside him getting yanked up on his toes was almost lost in the noise. Almost.
“I asked you a question,” Finn said. “Where is Bartholomew Petolya?”
The demon wailed through the man’s gaping lips. “He’s not here, he’s not here!”
“Try again,” Finn said. “I can smell him, and he’s not much better than you.”
“Fallen,” hissed the demon, the man’s mouth twisting into a hideous snarl. “You’ll die for that.”
“Get him. Now.” Finn reached to the man’s thick neck and yanked the heavy medallion he wore tight, strangling him with it. “Or you’ll die inside this skin sack
as well.”
The man started choking, his eyes fixed on Finn, unable to tear himself away. Slowly, inexorably, as he approached death, the human came to the fore and the demon was temporarily overcome. The moment the man nearly passed out, Finn released the chain and kicked him forward into a group of writhing humans draped in red-and-green spandex. “Get Bartholomew,” he ordered as the mortals scattered. “Now.”
Half crawling, half running, the man fled, the demon within him outraged but unable to override the pain receptors that had triggered the human’s survival response.
“That’s probably not the best way to win friends and influence people,” Dana commented, and he looked at her surveying the scene. “So far, the bouncers here are either blind or they’ve been told not to cross each other’s territory. You’ve been picked up by two different men, and the bartender has his eye on you too. But none of them are making any move toward you.”
“Not yet anyway.” Finn reached out and took a drink off a passing waiter’s tray. It looked like sludge and smelled worse, a steaming concoction that was closer to medieval grog than anything mortals should be drinking in this century. And it was spiked with more than alcohol. He set it on the counter beside him. “I need you to promise me that you’ll leave when I tell you to.”
She shot him a glance. “Is that going to be happening anytime soon? Because I wouldn’t mind meeting Bartholomew. I’ve heard so much about him.”
“You’ll see him. But only so you’ll recognize him, should you ever encounter any of his kind again,” Finn said. “Pay attention to everything about him. He’s a Fallen—stronger than a demon—but he’s gone rogue, and he’s not the only one out there, I fear. Memorize every detail. But don’t come after me if I go down. And if you suddenly get a strong, Finn-flavored urge to get out of here, heed it.” Finn glanced at her, his heart giving a hard knock to his rib cage. He couldn’t help it. He was becoming what he most feared, tempted by a mortal he was destined never to see again.
Perhaps this was the archangel’s true test of his willpower. If so, Finn was in big trouble.
As if sensing his dismay, Dana stepped toward him. Too close, too close. “I’ll leave, but you have to promise me to take care of yourself,” she said, looking up at him, searching his eyes. “Whatever business you have with Bartholomew, it’s not worth getting killed over. There’s the list to recover, right? You need that more than him.”
Finn looked back at her, relishing her nearness before he redoubled his hold on his reactions. “I do need that,” he agreed. “And I’ll find you.” He wasn’t sure if it was the truth anymore or not, but he wanted it to be.
She nodded. “You do that.” Then she glanced around. The crowd had begun to edge closer, but not by much, the stain of violence permeating the air around them. “You think they’re going to come back with him, or ask you to come with them?”
“I think we’re about to find out.”
Men seemed to flow through the various doors of the club like ink, taking up their locations around the room as the music shifted and rolled, while at the same time, the crowd gradually got the picture that something important was going down in this room and that they should move their own parties elsewhere.
Finn assessed the figures before him. Intriguingly, most of them were Possessed, not demons in full glamour. The Possessed definitely seemed to be Bartholomew’s preferred method of doing business. They were also spoiling for a fight, and probably for more than one reason. None of these men were among the ones he had dealt with last night. It would be too soon to repossess those broken human bodies with fresh demons, no matter how hardy the stock. But the demons he hadn’t destroyed would have found new hosts, and they would be eager to settle the score.
Within seconds, the room had emptied of any mortal whose body wasn’t otherwise occupied. Even the bartender had abandoned her post.
Dana shifted beside him, and he reached out an arm to block her.
“Behind the bar,” he said. “It’ll be easier on me if I can deal with them my way. Remember, no matter how bad I appear to be losing, don’t step in to help me out, okay?”
She looked ready to argue, but as the men rushed forward, she moved faster than he would have expected. She vaulted over the bar and spun around, both surprise and anger lighting her features. Surprise at her quick reactions, anger that she couldn’t participate? Finn didn’t know and frankly, didn’t care. Dana would have to watch this particular show.
The men rushed him all at once. There was no artistry or testing involved, as with Lester’s carefully staged production. It was a mob rush, the attack of wild dogs on a creature they wanted for their own. He would fight, for a while, then he would allow himself to be taken. He only wanted to get to Bartholomew.
But he had some steam to burn off before he got there.
His attackers engulfed him. The first thing he noticed was that they fought like animals, not men, tearing, ripping, fingers poking into his eyes and mouth, trying to get a purchase on his clothes, kicking and pummeling. They’d been possessed too long, their human hosts pushed deep into the background.
Behind him, Finn felt the horrified pressure of Dana’s stare. He battled back to let her know that he remained conscious, then returned to the baying and howling men that surrounded him. The music cranked up, thundering throughout the room, such that any of the lost souls at the front of the establishment wouldn’t know the thrashing that was going on in the rooms deep within The Church’s dark center. As certain members of the Possessed got close, he looked into their eyes, selectively punching some of their demons back beyond the veil with an ease that surpassed even the Syx’s legendary capabilities, the human hosts slumping in a daze without the demons to animate them. He used the pile of mortal bodies to clear a space for him to think, then deposited them carefully out of harm’s way. They would be sore when they awakened, but they would be whole again.
He figured they’d appreciate the difference.
After his third demon expulsion, he thought he heard Dana cry out, an exhalation of sheer horror. Finn risked a look over toward her, to see her struggling with a man who was screaming obscenities at her as she pummeled him. This particular Possessed had more fight than most of them, and he wasn’t giving up easily, but Dana seemed to grow stronger in her conviction the more he raged at her, her return anger directed not at the man but at the demon inside him. In terms of who’d win dominion over this particular human, Finn’s money was on Dana.
Then a new group of attackers poured out of the hallway into the already packed room. As the first wave retreated and a second wave struck, Finn crashed to the floor, the weight of the demon scrum pressing him down into the alcohol-and-sweat-soaked floor. What seemed like hours passed, until he’d lost count of how many demons he’d allowed to pile on him, and how many had actually started to get in shots that were beginning to hurt.
Suddenly, the music stopped.
A single sound permeated his ears over the pounding of his heart. The sound of a man clapping.
Wincing, Finn rolled over, shoving off the demon soldiers that had gone mute and dormant around him, an army of rag dolls. He got to his feet, and came face-to-face with the rogue Fallen.
“And to think, I have imagined this day for centuries, only to have it surpass my wildest expectations,” Bartholomew said, his voice a rich mixture of a dozen cultures. “Finally, I see my own kind once more.”
Tall and rangy, the rogue Fallen had the warm skin tone and dark eyes of a Saudi prince, his hair and beard neatly trimmed, his manner commanding respect. He dressed expensively, his well-cut suit perfectly tailored over his large frame. Gold glinted at his cuffs and ears, and around his neck hung a similar medallion to the one the bouncer had worn. There must have been a sale running at the mall.
Either way, Bartholomew Petolya had left his guise as a holy man well behind him, leveraging his abilities of a Fallen to reenter society with a vengeance.
&nbs
p; “I know your name is Finn. And you have brought the woman, I see.” Bartholomew grinned. “We’ve been trying to get her for some time. So I can also thank you for that.”
Finn stiffened, but Bartholomew raised a hand. “Be at peace,” he said, gesturing one of his men to go behind the bar. “Indulge me.”
The man grunted as he stepped behind the bar, moving over to where Dana’s jacket lay crumpled. “She’s not here,” he said.
Finn turned. Dana’s leather jacket lay over the shoulders of the slumped body of the man who’d attacked her, but she was nowhere to be seen. Hopefully, she’d run when she’d seen him go down under the pile.
Bartholomew sighed from the front of the room. “Mortals have such a tendency to go off script, don’t they?” He signaled to two of his men, who left the room immediately. But Finn knew that Dana wasn’t stupid. She wouldn’t have escaped the room during a fight that she saw Finn was losing on purpose, only to let herself get captured by Bartholomew’s men.
At least, not unless she had no other choice.
“But come now,” Bartholomew said. “We have much to discuss. I find the fetid stench of this place to be something I can only endure on a limited basis. Let us walk a bit.”
He gestured expansively, and Finn followed him out the door, into the cold white brilliance of the Cleveland winter’s day.
The moment they cleared the door, it swung shut behind him, effectively closing in Bartholomew’s other stooges. Bartholomew turned to him and smiled, and for the first time, Finn got a good look at his eyes.
There was…something wrong with his eyes. They flashed with madness and desire, but there was also an unholy purpose lighting their inner depths.
“You feeling okay, there, buddy?” Finn ventured. He’d been beat up more than he’d expected by the demon scum inside, but he edged forward anyway, looking for an opening to attack the rogue Fallen.
“Finn, Finn, Finn,” Bartholomew said, his face flushed with excitement. “There is so much I would teach you, so much that you should know.” He flung out his arms wildly, claiming the street, the city, the planet for his own. “Catch me. I beg you.”