I slammed my door. “Let’s get this done before I sober up.”
Izumi waved and drove off.
Angie and I walked inside the hotel. A uniformed security guard sat at a central station in the lobby. A Japanese man spoke emphatically to him, asking for a limo to be brought around. Hiro’s bodyguard broke off seeing me. I saw recognition in his eyes and dislike in his face, though he hurriedly masked his response. It was good he was handy. It would save me an elevator ride.
The man took a few steps to meet me. His eyes were cold and dead. I could tell he was packing a gun under his jacket. In accented English, he said, “What do you want, gaijin.”
“Call me that again and I’ll shoot you.”
Angie looked at me like I was bluffing, or possibly being humorous. She didn’t know me too well.
“Why our master needs a gaijin dog, I do no know.”
I whipped out an automatic and shot the man just above the knee, making it a clean in and out wound. Guy was lucky I wasn’t sporting explosive rounds. He fell, hands pressed to the wound, screaming like a girl. I pointed my weapon at his good leg.
Angie gasped and seized my arm.
I raised an eyebrow at her. “What? I told him not to call me that.”
Coming off the elevator, several men in dark suits ran over. One had a gun out. I shot it out of his hand. If the Lone Ranger could do it, so could I. I pointed at the dark suit on the floor. “You, call Hiro, or do nothing ever again.” In no mood to deal with flunkies tonight, I was speaking the international language, violence.
The man pulled out his phone, speed-dialed, and waited. A few seconds later, the sitting man spoke Japanese, staring at me like I was some kind of slavering beast—the dangerous kind. After a moment he said, “Your name, sir?”
“Caine Deathwalker,” I said. He didn’t remember my name from the last visit. I didn’t think he’d forget it again.
The man repeated my name and listened some more, looking at me again with ever widening eyes. Possibly, my real nature as a demonic agent had been explained to him. He put his phone away and said something in Japanese to the dark suits surrounding us. They had their weapons out, but pointed down at the floor—ready just in case. They holstered their guns and very slowly formed a line behind the fallen man. They faced me and bowed, even the cripple on the floor.
I holstered my gun.
A few minutes later, Hiro arrived. By then, the wounded man had been dragged off and someone else was on duty in the lobby.
“You have news?” Hiro asked.
I smiled, flashing him with my false confidence as I ignored his question. “I need something Haruka may have worn recently.”
He nodded understanding, made the call, and a woman in a tea green and gold kimono soon appeared with a sweater. She gave it to Hiro. He gave it to me. I gave it to Angie. Angie looked for someone to give it to, found no one, and turned back to me, confusion in her eyes.
“Are you sure you’re a wolf?” I asked.
I dragged her over to the stairs. We climbed up to the restaurant where I’d last seen the girls. It was clean. No meat puppets. No screaming customers. No blood. A new hostess was on duty.
She smiled at me. “Table for two?”
“Two café mochas, to go,” I said. I turned to Angie, pointed at the sweater and said, “Take a deep whiff then sniff the carpet. Find me a trail to follow.”
EIGHT
Being evil is easy: you just have to
perfect your craft on those who don’t
deserve compassion — pretty much
everybody.”
—Caine Deathwalker
She didn’t need to get down on all fours to sniff the carpet. Her nostrils simply flared. “Good thing the clean-up crew used magic instead of bleach to get the blood out of the carpet; otherwise, we’d have no trail.” She walked past the hostess station, into the kitchen.
People looked at us strangely. A male high school kid wearing a hair net and an apron over his street clothes asked, “Can I help you with something?”
“Probably not.” I strolled past him, following Angie to the walk-in freezer. The door was oversized, steel, and set flush to the wall. Angie seized the handle, turned, and pulled it open effortlessly—even in human form she had a large chunk of her werewolf strength.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked. “I remember the girls heading out into the hall, not coming back here.”
“My nose doesn’t lie. Maybe someone clouded your mind. No wait, I’ve seen you drink. You cloud your own mind pretty well, all on your own.” She went in.
I closed the door on her.
The door opened from the inside.
Angie stood there looking at me. “These things are designed to open from the inside so someone can’t accidentally be looked in.”
“I knew that,” I said. “I just wanted to be sure it hadn’t been tampered with.”
She looked skeptically at me, but I’d told her the truth. I’d taken an oath to keep her safe. Until I had a damn good reason to break that oath, I’d keep it.
“So what do you smell now?” I asked.
“Her scent stops right here, and then … nothing.” Angie walked out of the freezer. I closed the door again. She continued, “When I say nothing, I mean nothing at all, I can’t smell anything in this area, not even what I should be able to smell.”
I nodded. “The girls were magically removed, and the scents went along for the ride. Someone’s being very thorough. Let’s go.”
“Where to?” Angie asked.
“A few places I know, where fey and others go to play.” I grabbed our mochas and paid on the way out. “Here.” I handed her the other drink and kept moving, entering the hall, heading for the stairs.
“Thanks,” she said.
I nodded and took a sip. “Being a demon lord and all, the restaurant shouldn’t have charged me. I provide a public service, killing gutter trash that pisses me off.”
She went oddly silent, as if I’d somehow threatened her.
We passed through the lobby where everyone gave us a wide birth. Outside, my car was still in front of the building. I’m so glad it didn’t get destroyed, again. I go through them quickly.
Angie looked at my vehicle in surprise as she slid into the front passenger next to me. “For an old car it looks pretty new.”
“Don’t call her old. She’s vintage,” I said, “with a few improvements.”
The engine came to life when I touched the finger print scanner. I pressed a special section on the underside of the dash, and small, magical holographic screens materialized all around me. The multiple control panels were touch-sensitive, glowing ion blue in two dimensions. They were arranged so that if I ever had to throw myself from the car, they wouldn’t slow me up. The hub of the steering wheel opened and a flat green beam raked my eyes, taking a retinal scan. Sure, someone could cut off my finger and pluck out my eyeball to steal the car, but if they could do that, they deserved a reward.
The green beam produced the floating symbol of my clan. I’d passed the test. I gripped the wheel, and a woman’s voice came out of the speakers.
“Oh, baby, lets get it on.”
Angie looked at me with wide eyes and said, “Izumi’s voice?”
“Yep.”
“Does she know?” Angie asked.
“Nope,” I said.
“We ought to talk later about privacy laws and the misuse of someone’s likeness, actual voice, and pirating of said intellectual property rights,” Angie said.
This is why I hate lawyers.
“We’ll do that,” I said, “when I give a crap.”
I hit the gas, making us both sink into our seat. I cut off a white stretch limo. Angie’s nails sunk into the arm rest and seat. The sound of my engine made me happy, as I rumbled past numerous cars, weaving in and out of traffic. We stopped at a red light and I checked the GPS. We were two miles from an underground nightclub I knew of. I pointed at a blip on one of th
e floating blue screens. “This is a good place to start putting word out that I’m looking for the girls.”
She looked at the blip on the screen. “What is this place?”
“Aes Sídhe.”
“Icy?”
I pronounced it slowly for her, “Ice-shee, a nightclub for fey and other nightwalkers. The name means ‘People of the Mounds.’”
“Sounds fun, do they have stripers,” Angie asked
The light turned green and I took off. “Yeah, but you never get what’s offered. Ever heard of elfin glamour?”
We got there in no time. The outside looked like a normal night club with a long line of humans, fey, and others waiting to get in. A troll with a broken tusk guarded the door, weeding out the wanna-be preternaturals from the real thing. The bouncer’s knuckles nearly dragged the ground. His feet were bare, and he wore faded denim coveralls held up by one strap. It was Fred. I knew him. I’d once broken a barstool over his head.
I drove past the door, looking for a place to park. It took me a few minutes. I really hated the way people parked here. Surely they could have found spaces further away so as to not inconvenience me. I got out and Angie followed. I pinned her with a cautionary stare. “This place is nice, but it’s been a very long time since they’ve seen a wolf, so keep your head down and don’t kill any one. And if anyone gives you crap, tell them you’re with me.”
“Okay, I’ll be good,” Angie said.
We cut in line right in front of Fred. He waved me through, tapping the scar on his head to show he remembered me. I handed him a hundred and went on in.
The club was on the Goth side of things, go-go girls posed suggestively, hanging from the ceiling from wide swaths of brightly colored silk. Black lights all over the bar gave many pieces of clothing an annoying glare. The dance floor lit up as people and things stepped on different colored tiles. The bartenders worked fast, putting out more alcohol then a distillery.
Overpaid and undersexed patrons prowled for partners, danced, and did assorted drugs with no idea that no matter how much juice they had, here, they were at the bottom of the food chain.
But this was L.A. Everywhere you looked, there were cameras and too many high profile Celebs that would be missed, so the fey had learned to feed with restraint, and to protect the frail humans from less scrupulous predators. The demons followed suit, seeing the advantage to nightclubs where humans could get so wasted and high enough they didn’t remember what had happened to them, or what contracts they may have signed in blood.
Angie and I walked toward the back room were the piece-of-crap owner had his office. Fey and demon could look like anything. Not Angie. She gathered speculative stares as we went along. It had been a very long time since a wolf had been anywhere near here. A few decades ago, the fey elders shoved the wolves out of the territory and made it stick. If I didn’t handle this right, there could be war on the streets again.
Two fey guards loitered down a dark hallway, outside a black door. They studied Angie and me. More Angie than me. The massive one on the right smelled of peat bog and dead things. His eyes were yellow with red vertical pupils. He wore all black and seemed to possess a few extra arms. The other guard was thin, not so much a broadsword as a rapier, light on his feet, ready to lunge. There was a jitteriness that got expressed by hands that couldn’t stay still.
He said, “The wolf can’t come in.”
“She’s mine,” I said, “and where I go, my pet goes.”
I smelled Angie’s anger and I was hoping—if the fey sensed it—they’d assume they were the cause, not the fact I’d just called her my pet. Wolves had killed people for less. The big man opened the door and waved us past. Instead of an office, there were stairs. They led up to a second story room above the dance floor. We walked into a large space with sandalwood wood furniture, Elvis pictures on black velvet, but fortunately, no sad-faced clowns. There was an entire wall of one-way glass. The human sitting behind the white desk wore a white suit. His hair was bleached white, as were the foot long, fine lines of coke on the desk before him. The white powder told me Albino John was in a party mood, not a good thing with so many fey around. A little coke in the air could have dangerous, unforeseen effects on them—and anyone close to them.
I nodded a greeting. “John.”
The man lifted his face to me, eyes pink and watery.
“Great, I suppose you’re here to destroy my club again,” John said.
“Tell me, John, how can you do so much coke and still be such a fat sack of rabbit pellets?” I took a seat on his desk, grabbed an erotic paperback on his desk and dropped it on his coke, creating a chalky cloud. I felt the protective ink on my back glimmer to life under my shirt. I bit down on a curse as my blood seemed to turn to lava in my veins.
Always a price for magic—my kind anyway.
John sighed. “What do you want, Deathwalker.”
“I’m looking for a new succubus in town. She took two human girls from the Kirishima Building a few hours ago, and I want them back, so put out the word,” I said.
“And why would I do that?”
“50K reward,” I said.
John stood and waddled to the two-way mirror. I hate people who wear white suits; they think they’re better then everyone, as if the purity of their look reflected their miserable little souls.
He spoke without turning, “Okay.”
I started for the stairs, Angie falling in behind me.
“Deathwalker,” he called, “what’s with the wolf?”
I told him what he’d believe. “An illegitimate daughter that wants to bond.”
He turned and leered at me. “I can imagine the type of bonding you have in mind. Wouldn’t mind getting a piece of that bitch myself.”
I smiled at him.
He blanched.
A migraine hit like a knife to the skull as I warmed another tat. It would take him awhile to notice, but his lines of coke had turned into cocoa powder. With any luck, he’d snort some before realizing what he was doing. I hoped so. I’d heard of a crack-head made to snort cocoa once. It’s funny how they choke, and cry, and paw at their noses, cursing at the blinding pain.
Smile widening, I led Angie downstairs.
“Not a lot of people like you, do they?” She said.
“Surprisingly, no.”
We got back to the car, and headed to the next night spot favored by Preternaturals.
NINE
“Vampires and whores are related
species; neither have souls.”
—Caine Deathwalker
Rhino’s Bar and Grill was owned by Rhino, a former lineman in the NFL. He was big as one of the African brutes, and almost as intelligent, hence the nickname. His afro was close-clipped, and he sported a goatee and mustache. His 4X shirt was a Hawaiian monstrosity; olive green palm trees on a field of arterial red. Above his head, a large screen TV set to the sports channel displayed a soccer game re-run.
He looked up from wiping the bar as I came in. His nose had been broken several times, actually improving his face. A huge grin appeared. One of his teeth had a snap-on gold sheath.
“Gonna start trouble?” he asked. “Been a while since we had a good fight in here.”
“Just might be your lucky day,” I said.
“Looks like yours, fer sure.” His glance slid over Angie who trailed me in.
I slid onto an empty bar stool. Angie took the one to my left.
I said, “Give me a Bacardi Hurricane, and a Cosmo Cocktail for the lady.”
Down the bar from us, a couple of werecat ladies had both hands bracketing strawberry daiquiris, as if afraid someone might snatch them away. I understood their attitude. The kitties were often picked on by the rest of the shape-shifting community because they were perceived as weak. That was true here in L.A. but up in Sacramento, a stranger had recently blown into town, bonded with a local tabby, and had broken the back of the local wolf pack. He’d ripped out the heart of the local Alpha, as wel
l, carving out his territory with brutal efficiency.
I’d heard he was a wereliger, half lion, half tiger, weighing in at twenty-five hundred pounds after changing. Mass usually didn’t get added with shape-shifting. This guy broke a lot of rules. Sounded like someone I’d like to meet, when all this trouble was over.
The kitties sniffed the air, turning their faces toward Angie.
She smiled at them, showing a little fang while in human form.
I’d never seen a person literally go white with fear, but the kitties did. They looked to be in their late teens, and reeked of nervous inexperience. Since I might need a little good will with the cat clans one day, I intervened. “Angie, down girl.”
She looked at me like I’d stolen her chew toy.
I put steel in my tone. “Be nice or go wait in the car.”
Looking forward, she grumbled beneath her breath, but was glad enough to pounce on the cranberry vodka set in front of her. A tall electric blue drink with a slice of lemon on the rim appeared in front of me on a napkin.
“There you go,” Rhino said, his towel thrown over a shoulder.
I nodded thanks, and jerked a thumb toward the kitties. “Their next drink is on me.”
“You’re buying a drink, Rhino said, “and there’s no gun to your head?”
I glared at him. “You trying to say I’m cheap?”
My glower bounced harmlessly off of him the same way a two-by-four might have. He grinned, not when you’re spending on yourself. “Hey, Caine, have you heard…?”
Red Moon Demon (Demon Lord) Page 6