by Skye Knizley
“This thing is as beautiful as it is disgusting,” Aspen said.
“An old-fashioned vampire coffin,” Raven said. “This one probably belongs to whoever was brave enough to open this club against Mother’s decree.”
Raven gripped the lid and readied herself to take the weight. She was interrupted by a voice that dripped with a mixture of menace and honey.
“I wouldn’t do that.”
Raven turned and looked into the golden eyes of the dark-skinned vampire. She could feel the vampire trying to use a mind trick and she slowly shook her head.
“That won’t work on me. Who are you?”
“You are in my sanctuary,” the vampire said. “Shouldn’t I be asking that question? But everyone knows you, Fürstin Ravenel of the House Tempeste.”
“So much for our cover,” Aspen said.
“Indeed, little mage,” the vampire said, her eyes still on Raven. “Though I suspect many of my coven wouldn’t know Fürstin Ravenel if she tripped over them.”
Raven pulled her Automag from the small of her back. “You know my name, I don’t know yours. One more time, who are you?”
The vampire smiled. “Fürstin Ravenel and her cannon. You are becoming a legend, girl. And a pest. I am Kuren. Lady Kuren, to you.”
“Kuren then,” Raven said. “You are not a member of the House nor are you family You are no lady. Do you know a man named Fane Pepescu?”
“I do not,” Kuren replied. “Should I?”
“Maybe. One of his victims was a frequent guest. Who is BB?” Raven said.
“Why all these questions, Fürstin? Aren’t you here because we built a haven outside your mother’s chosen domain?” Kuren asked.
Raven shrugged. “I will tell her. What my mother chooses to do with the information isn’t my concern. Murder is. I’ve got a body on my hands and half a dozen pieces. I want some answers. Who is BB?”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“You’re not being truthful, suckhead,” Aspen said. “Your aura changes colors when you lie. Who is BB?”
Kuren turned and hissed. “I am under no obligation to answer your questions, familiar.”
Raven growled. “You are under obligation to answer mine and by extension, hers. Once more, who is BB? A member of the coven? The bloodsucker in the box? Who?”
“I do not acknowledge your authority, Ravenel Tempeste,” Kuren said. “I obey the Master.”
“Last time I checked the Master fit in an urn,” Raven said. “Why can’t you people just play nice for a while?”
Kuren snorted and folded her arms. “We do not recognize your mother or the Totentanz, Ravenel. You and I have nothing further to discuss.”
“Fine. You’re under arrest,” Raven said. “Lay down on the floor and put your hands on your head.”
“You cannot be serious,” Kuren said.
“Ray, I hate to say it, but I agree with her. What the hell are you doing?” Aspen asked.
“My job,” Raven replied.
“You can’t put her in lockup! She’ll eat everyone.”
“She’ll be home by dawn,” Raven said. “Whoever comes to bail her ass out will have to give us their name. Maybe they will be more helpful.”
“I will not surrender to human authority,” Kuren said human in the same tone someone in another time and place might have said ‘damnyankee.’
She bared her fangs and looked ready to pounce. Raven raised her pistol until it was aimed at Kuren’s nose.
“Go ahead. Make my day.”
Kuren narrowed her eyes and again Raven could feel the vampire trying to influence her actions. Raven thumbed back her pistol’s hammer and let the fire rise in her eyes.
“You may be a hot shit vampire where you come from, but to me you’re nothing but another scumbag to be put away. Put your hands on your head or you’ll have another hole to breath out of.”
Kuren smiled. “You may end me, Fürstin, but my coven will live on. You cannot kill all of us.”
“Ray...”
Aspen trailed off and Raven could see newdead Embraced vampires trailing into the room, fangs and claws bared.
“Call them off,” Raven said.
“No,” Kuren replied. “See you in hell, Ravenel.”
“Raven!” Aspen yelled as the vampires got closer.
“Not today.”
Raven squeezed the Automag’s trigger. There was barely time to watch the thirty caliber round punch through the center of Kuren’s face before she swirled away into a storm of flame and ash.
Raven pulled Aspen behind her and turned to face the approaching vampires. Aspen’s shield spell was all that was keeping them at bay.
“I am Fürstin Ravenel Tempeste of the House Tempeste,” she said. “Back away slowly and go home. This club is closed.”
As one the vampires roared and charged. Aspen collapsed under their combined power, along with her shield. Raven squeezed the Automag’s trigger again and again, sending six more of the vampires to hell before clicking empty. She dropped it and drew her blades, taking a single step away from Aspen in order to protect her.
Her blades whirled and flashed in a dizzying curtain of silvered steel. With it came death in gouts of ash and flame. Seconds passed before the onslaught slowed and Raven was able to breathe. More than a dozen vampires had died by her hands and she could still hear more moving down the corridor.
“Aspen, come on, honey,” she said, kneeling next to her familiar.
She smiled when Aspen opened her eyes and tried to hide her relief. “You scared me, honey.”
“Sorry, there were just too many of them,” Aspen said. “Stronger than most newdead or even fledglings.”
She looked around at the smoldering piles and then back up at Raven. “What did I miss? Did you vamp out?”
Raven glanced toward the corridor, hoping it was clear. “No, I just lost my temper. I don’t suppose there is another way out of here that I didn’t notice?”
“Not unless it’s in one of those coffins. The only way out is the way we came in.”
“Swell. Can you stand? We need to get out of here,” Raven said.
Aspen stood with Raven’s help and she unwrapped her belt, holding it in both hands like a garrote.
“When did you start taking Bokator?” Raven asked.
“When I got out of the hospital,” Aspen said. “I’ve been waiting for a chance to show you.”
Raven picked up her pistol and wedged in her waistband. “You may get that chance.”
She jumped back onto the dais and used one foot to kick the lid off of the coffin. The wood slid off and clattered to the floor. Inside was nothing but moldy dirt.
“Anyone inside?” Aspen asked.
Raven shook her head. “Just a box full of loam. By the stench I’m guessing it isn’t from around here. Probably European like everything else in this dump.”
She grabbed two of the braziers and dumped their contents into the coffin, making sure to get most of it on the wooden frame. When she was through she tossed them aside and stepped back down.
“Light it and let’s get the hell out of here.”
Aspen glared at the box and it began to smolder. Blood trickled from her nose and dripped onto her bodice, but she ignored it. Seconds later the box was ablaze, spilling acrid smoke into the air.
Raven stared at the blaze for a moment then turned and led the way out of the crypt, her blades at the ready. The hallway was silent and lit only by the crackling of flames behind them. The newdead had turned out the overhead lights. Or broken them. Newdead weren’t known for being particularly bright.
They reached the end of the hallway without incident and Raven called for the elevator. When it arrived, Raven looked at it in disgust and wished she had brought another magazine for the Automag. The walls were smeared with blood and some nutjob had written her name on the wall.
“Pretty good for dripping blood,” Aspen said.
“I’m not an ar
t critic,” was Raven’s reply. “They’re just trying to scare us.”
Aspen stepped into the elevator. “It’s working.”
The doors opened back on the first floor and they moved cautiously down the blackened hallway. They could see strobe lights flickering and hear what sounded like rain as they moved closer. When they reached the end of the corridor the rain sound ceased to be replaced with loud industrial metal. The music was accompanied by something else. The sick, coppery scent of plasma.
She passed through the door at the end of the corridor, fighting to keep her traitor nose under control. The scent of blood, human and animal, was almost overpowering. Aspen followed and the two women turned a slow circle, standing back to back.
“Well. This isn’t creepy at all,” Aspen said.
“I like what they’ve done with the place,” Raven said. “Blood is a good color. Now all they need are a few throw pillows and some pine-scented air fresheners. Cause, damn, I’ve smelled better corpses.”
The entire room, top to bottom, was covered in blood. It still dripped from sprinkler heads in the ceiling and covered every inch of the expensive décor from tables to drapes. On the far wall was written “I see you, Raven Storm. You will come to me.”
WASHINGTON BOULEVARD, CHICAGO
FALL 1996
LEAVES BLEW ALONG THE NARROW street, filling gutters and piling up against the body of a young woman lying on the pavement beneath a curtain of blonde hair, her eyes sightless and staring at the sliver of moon overhead. Mason Storm squatted next to her and closed her eyes with gloved fingers. The woman, the sixth they knew of, was the same as the others. Nude, with a gaping chest wound, bloody sigils and black rose petals that didn’t match anything in the city. Her clothes, a long burgundy dress, heels and a matching bra and panty set had been left beside her body, along with a long Italian leather coat.
“How long has she been dead?”
“Six hours,” Ming Zhu replied. “It’s always around six hours.”
Storm opened the woman’s wallet and gazed at the smiling face of Marta Ardaelean, 26 of Damen Avenue. She looked happy in her driver’s license photo. It took a special kind of person person to be happy at the license bureau.
As usual, the woman’s money, identification and personal belongings had been left behind. But this time there was something different. A box of matches that looked new and somewhat out of place.
“Hey, Frosty?” Storm said over his shoulder.
Christian Frost looked up from his aluminum clipboard. “Yo!”
“Have you ever heard of a place called Club Purgatory?”
Frost paused, chewing on the end of his stick pen. “Yeah, I think it’s some kind of Goth club over in Old Town. One of the newer joints.”
Storm ran a thumb over the logo on the outside of the box. Even through his glove he could feel the offset printing and different ink textures. Whoever was printing them had plenty of money to burn. Offset printing didn’t come cheap.
He bagged the matches and added them to the small pile of evidence they’d collected. He then joined Frost, who was completing his initial report. Storm liked the skinny young man but the mountain of paperwork he generated was sometimes infuriating. Paper didn’t solve crimes, asking questions did.
“We’ve got all we can from here. I’m going to check out this Purgatory place, are you joining me or are you staying to push papers around?”
“There’s nothing wrong with filing a report, Mace,” Frost said. “If one of us buys it a report will help our successors know where the investigation stood.”
“That’s positive thinking,” Storm said. “No one would ever tell you started in Records.”
Storm turned away and walked the two blocks to where his Shelby was parked. He already had the engine running and in gear when Frost climbed in. He hadn’t even closed the door when Storm pressed the accelerator and turned toward Old Town.
OLD TOWN, CLUB PURGATORY
FALL 1996
CLUB PURGATORY HAD BEEN CONSTRUCTED in and around the ruins of an old meat packing plant that had gone under in the late 1970s. There were no first floor windows and almost no sign that it was a nightclub of any kind. The only nod to advertising was a blood red neon sign that hung outside the second floor. It sputtered and flickered, occasionally dropping hot sparks on the line of men and women standing outside waiting to get inside. At the head of the line was a short staircase and a single glass door that led into the club proper. A large man with waist-length black hair stood on the outside landing, his arms folded over his chest as if guarding the door was the most important thing he would ever do.
Storm parked on the street in a No Parking zone across from the club while Frost called in their location. Something didn’t seem right about the people standing in line. Some of them seemed perfectly normal, while others moved like they were in an old movie, flickering back and forth.
Vampires. Marvelous, Storm thought.
He climbed from the car and ejected the Automag’s magazine. It was quickly replaced with one from his secret stash. The thirty carbine bullets were ones he’d developed with his stepson Thaddeus. They contained hollow tipped bullets cast from cold iron and each carried a small payload of white oak, holy water, garlic and silver. So far they’d been capable of destroying everything he encountered and worked well with the Automag. He chambered a fresh round and returned the weapon to its holster under his right arm.
“You really think you’re going to need that thing in a dance club?” Frost asked.
Storm leaned on the roof of the car. “Things never exactly go as planned, Frosty. I’m not taking any chances with these guys.”
Frost shrugged. “Your funeral. I think you’d be safer without a gun.”
The pair crossed the street, Storm walking slightly ahead of Frost. When they reached the line, Storm didn’t pause, he climbed the steps and turned toward the entrance.
The bouncer placed a hand on the door and held it closed. “Get back in line, pops, I’ll let you in when it’s your turn.”
Storm looked at the vampire, his face hard as granite. Before he could say anything Frost said, “Excuse us, we’re police detectives Frost and Storm. We’d like to ask your manager a few questions.”
“You got a warrant, old man?”
“We aren’t searching the premises, we’re going to ask the staff some questions,” Storm said. “What’s the problem, kid?”
The vampire bristled and lowered his Terminator style glasses to glare at Storm. “If you got no warrant you get back in line, pops. I decide if and when you get in. Get going!”
Storm turned and squared off with the vampire. “Now you listen to me, little man. You’re nothing but a maggot blocking my way. Move your hand before I move it for you.”
“Here we go,” Frost muttered.
The vampire sneered and made a grab for Storm’s arm. Mason stepped out of the way and used the vampire’s momentum to push him face-first into the wall. He then kicked the vampire’s knee, popping the joint and crippling him, at least for the moment. He ended the maneuver with his Automag drawn and the barrel pointed at the vamp’s head.
“I’m not here for you, punk. Tonight I’ve got no time and other business. So my partner and I are going through that door and you’re going to be a good boy.”
“That thing won’t kill me, pops,” the vampire snarled. “Go ahead. I dare you.”
“You dare me? Son, this is the thirty caliber Automag, one of the most powerful handguns ever made,” Storm said. “And it’s loaded with enough silver to turn your head into a mushroom cloud if you so much as break wind in my direction.”
He thumbed back the heavy pistol’s hammer and straightened. “It’s your call, kid. Put your hands on your head and back away or keep up your tough guy act. One choice ends with you going home. The other ends with you in a matchbox.”
The vampire paused for a beat then put his hands on his head. Storm stepped away and allowed the vampire to move
away from the door.
“Good choice. Frosty, get the door.”
Frost jerked the door open and stepped through. Storm winked at the bleeding vampire and followed, not holstering his weapon until the door had closed behind him.
“Nice work,” Frost said. “Did you ever meet anyone you didn’t kill?”
Storm shrugged. “I haven’t killed you yet. And the vampire lived.”
“I’m sure your mother will be very proud.”
The entry lobby consisted of a short hallway that contained the club's restrooms and emptied into a coat and weapon check that was being overseen by another vampire, this one only slightly older than the bouncer. Storm showed her his badge and continued through the rubber curtain entry into the club. The dance floor of Club Purgatory was massive, covering more than half of the warehouse. Humans, vampires, lycans and less familiar preternaturals shared the floor with one another, most of the humans unaware they were, in many cases, less than inches away from predators they thought existed only in their nightmares. Storm felt sick. No way should humans be allowed to rub shoulders with the monsters. Sooner or later they were going to get infected, either with HVT or Lycanthrope. Or both, and who knew what that would do to someone?
On the far side of the club was a stage where a band called Blood Corpse was playing what could only be some kind of metal in front of a mosh pit deep with vampires pushing, shoving and occasionally killing each other to the delight of a handful of nearby humans who thought it was all some kind of show.
“Are you seeing this?” Frost asked.
Storm nodded. “Yeah. Try not to step in anything.”
Frost loosened his ten millimeter Colt in its holster and frowned at Storm.
“I have a bad feeling about this, Mace.”
“That makes two of us,” Storm replied. “Come on, I’ve got more vampires to annoy.”
Storm crossed the club, his eyes taking in everything. This place was everything he hated about the city’s preternatural underworld all under one roof. It was one stop scumbag shopping and if he had the time he could come down once a week and clean house. Maybe one day he would make the time.