by E. A. Copen
It wasn’t occupied, which meant I didn’t have to contend with any confused honeymooners. Thank goodness for small miracles. I dropped the luggage next to the door and picked up the phone. “Please, Josiah. If ever there was a time to pick up your phone, this is it. I swear, if he doesn’t…”
“Hello?”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Josiah, you ass! Why’s your phone been off all night?”
“Khaleda. Christ, I forgot about you. To be honest, I’ve been busy. Remiel is onto us.”
“I know. I just killed a demon he sent after me. In your hotel room, I might add. It’s not safe for you to come back here. Better if I come to you. Where are you?”
“We’re en route. Dammit, woman!”
“Then pick another destination! I’ll meet you there with your stuff.”
Josiah muttered a few more expletives into the phone before saying, “Fine, I know a place. Should be outside Remiel’s reach, but it’s going to cost.”
“I have money, Josiah.”
“Not money,” Josiah said. “Spyder trades in secrets. Although he might be interested in meeting you on reputation alone, as long as you’ve got something to offer.”
“I think I can manage. Where?”
“This time of night? Little fetish club off Hollywood Boulevard.”
I smiled to myself. “I know just the one you mean.”
Chapter Twelve
Josiah
The ‘90s were the best time to be a goth. Used to be, these little night clubs sprang up in every city, places that existed just on the fringes of proper society. The whole goth subculture was large enough that everyone knew what it was, but not yet mainstream to the point of oversaturation. It was still an exclusive club, much like Sinister.
Sinister hadn’t begun its life cycle in Spyder’s care, and his name was not on the deed. One of his feeder girls was the official owner, but she answered to him. As such, the place had a distinctly vampiresque ambiance. Of course, most of the people crowding the dance floor now weren’t real vampires. Not yet. Here was where Spyder hunted for new recruits, people for whom simply dancing under red lights and play-nibbling each other’s throats wasn’t enough.
The first time I’d come there, I was hunting Spyder, and Sinister was under different management—Spyder’s predecessor, some prick who called himself “Angel,” if you can believe it. From what I’d heard, Spyder left him tied to a rock in the desert, or what was left of him. Guess he never came back.
I stood outside the back of the club, finishing yet another pack of cigarettes while Stefan paced. “Relax, mate. You’ll wear a hole in the sidewalk.”
He stopped right in front of me. “Relax? Remiel hijacked your spell. Now, I don’t know a lot about magic, but I do know that what you were doing was big, powerful magic. Some of the costliest you’ve ever done, and he just…”
Stefan made it sound like it’d been easy for Remiel to do that. Maybe it had been. Didn’t change the end result, and neither would worrying about how he’d done it. I’d run the possibilities through my head on the way there, and there was a whole list of ways he might’ve changed the message I’d tried to retrieve. I’d been hoping for coordinates, a map, or maybe even a street name.
I supposed there was always the chance that he hadn’t hijacked the spell. If Maggie were dead… No. She wasn’t dead. I’d divined that much before even getting on the plane. She could’ve died since then, but it seemed unlikely. She was too good a bargaining chip for Remiel to sacrifice. He knew I’d come for her. The little love note inside the homunculus had been his way of letting me know he was still in control. He knew what I was up to, and could stop it anytime he chose. He just didn’t choose to.
I tapped some ash from the end of my ciggy. “Won’t matter what he’s done or can do once Spyder agrees to our terms. Spyder might not be able to match Remiel head to head for power, but this is his city. Los Angeles is a living thing, she is. She remembers who’s shed blood for her and protects her own.”
He slid into the shadows next to me and sighed. “Who is this Spyder guy, anyway?”
“Someone from the old days.”
“A friend?”
“No.” I put the ciggy to my lips and inhaled, turning the end bright red. “He hates my fucking guts.”
“Then why come to him?”
“Because we share a mutual hatred of pricks who use magic to abuse people.” I dropped the cigarette butt and crushed it with my shoe.
A cab pulled up at the end of the street, tires bumping against the sidewalk. The back door opened, and Khaleda got out. She scanned the area, saw us, and kept searching while the cabbie opened the back and got out the two suitcases she’d brought along with her.
“Fuck, where are we going to put those?” I grumbled. Carrying them through the club was going to be a pain in the ass, especially since I had my leather bag with me too. Good thing we were going through the back door. At least we wouldn’t have to navigate the crowded floor with them in tow.
Khaleda tipped the cabbie and came to meet us. “What did you two do?”
“Us? You’re the one who killed a man in our room.” I gestured to her.
“A demon-possessed man. He had Kaxis in him.”
I shrugged. “Should I know that name?”
Khaleda ground her teeth a moment before closing her eyes. “Kaxis, Xalith, Galbor. The names of the demons who tortured me on my father’s orders. There were others, but you and Lazarus killed them. Only those three remain. Remiel sent him after me with this.” She pulled a cracked iron collar with an attached wrought-iron chain from her purse and held it out to me.
Stefan took the collar and turned it over. “What is it?”
“A submission collar.” Hatred dripped from her tone. Khaleda’s nostrils flared, just looking at the thing. “At least, that’s what Remiel wanted me to think. This one is fake.”
I whistled and shook my head. “Nasty bits of magic, those. You put it on someone, and they’re as weak as any mortal. They’re costly to make and require more magic than I care to sacrifice to wield. You need divine blood to make them work, something old Lucifer must’ve had plenty of in Hell. Lots of Fallen down there with him.”
“Could you make it work?” Stefan held it out to me.
I took the contraption and looked it over. “Not this one, but one that was already charged and properly enchanted, maybe. I don’t know how much divine blood is enough. I do know I found myself on the other end of one of these once, and it was unpleasant, to say the least.”
Khaleda took it back. “When were you collared?”
“Bangkok, 2009. November, I believe. I thought she was just kinky. Turns out, she was a Manus Dei agent. Almost got me that time, they did. I’d say it was almost worth it, but I never even got my trousers off.”
Khaleda rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Josiah, you could’ve just said God’s Hand almost got you. We didn’t need the details.”
I grinned and pulled open the back door to hold for her. “Oh, I barely scratched the surface of my visit to Bangkok. Lovely city. Too bad I’m persona non grata there now.”
“I didn’t know you could get banned from a whole city.” Khaleda walked past me to stand just inside the door.
“What about our bags?” Stefan asked.
“Right.” I extended my hand toward them, whispered a few words, and snapped my fingers. The air around them waved like a mirage, and they disappeared from view. “As long as no one comes stumbling down the sidewalk, they won’t be disturbed. Even if they trip over them, they won’t see what they’ve tripped over. Should keep them safe until we come back.”
That assurance didn’t convince me to leave my leather bag of tricks behind, though. It was coming with me. I slung it over my shoulder and followed the other two inside.
An iron grate and a bouncer stood between us and the stairs that would take us up to Spyder’s so-called throne room above the bar. A long hallway stretched behind the bouncer, leadi
ng to one of Sinister’s dance floors. Beyond the mass of moving shadows, strobing lights, and dark basslines, I couldn’t make out anything of the dance floor. Even the bouncer on the other side of the grate was shrouded in darkness.
I pounded on the grate with a fist. “Oi, you fanged fuck. Let us in.”
“Go stand in line out front and pay the cover charge like everyone else,” he growled. “This entrance is for VIPs only.”
“Pull ya head in, mate. We are VIPs.”
He pressed his face against the grate and pulled back his lips, revealing white fangs. “I know who you are. Spyder doesn’t want to see you.”
“Well, he’ll want to see her.” I gestured at Khaleda.
His eyes shifted beyond me. “Why?”
“Don’t you know who I am, little man?” Khaleda crossed her arms. “Khaleda Morningstar, the rightful queen of Hell.”
The bouncer snorted. “And I’m a little teapot. You’re just another bimbo in leather. Beat it, bitch, before I open this gate and take a bite out of you.”
Khaleda put a hand on my shoulder and tugged me back. I knew better than to resist. The poor idiot had made his choice. From the sound of it, he’d picked the wrong day to insult Khaleda. She wrapped her fingers around the iron grate, planted her feet, and pulled. Metal groaned and bent, then popped out of the hinges. The vampire cowered back a step as she cast the grate aside and stepped through the hole.
She looked down at her palm and blew on it. “You were saying?”
He shakily gestured up the stairs. “Right this way, Your Highness.”
We ascended the staircase, hands sliding over the cool metal of the banister. By rights, it should’ve been hot as hell in there with all the bodies and the lack of fans, but I felt the spellwork in the walls that was keeping the air at a comfortable seventy-two degrees. Spyder couldn’t do much in the way of large-scale magic, but he’d mastered the art of repetition, which allowed him to scale a small spell into a larger one. As long as it wasn’t overly complicated, that was. I’d always wondered why he hadn’t turned to mass-producing magic, or why no one had, really. Enchanting thousands of t-shirts to keep their wearers cool wasn’t impressive, but it would be ludicrously profitable. Perhaps the industrialization of magic on an assembly line was just too taboo a venture, even for the Spyder of Los Angeles.
At the top of the stairs was an open area, like a large balcony overlooking the bar. From the edge, you could also look down at the bottom floor and see the flashing lights of the dance floor, although we were too far away to make out specifics. From that distance, the sweaty bodies in black blended into one writhing mass of flesh, vibrating and twitching like speakers at a rock concert.
Pretty women and handsome men, all nude, wandered around the area, filling their plates with fruit and fancy sandwiches from the buffet table or carrying around little plastic cups full of orange juice. Had to keep their blood sugar up after being fed on, I supposed. Spyder’s elite informants claimed the edges of the room, some feeding, some fucking, some sleeping off too much of one or the other.
Spyder faced the giant bulletproof window at the front of the balcony, reclining on a brown leather sofa with his arms spread over the back of it. He was alone yet in the center of everything, watching, learning, and waiting for flies to come to him.
“Will you walk into my parlor, said a spider to a fly,” recited Spyder. “The way into my parlor is up a winding stair, and I have many pretty things to show when you get there.” He twisted to give me a look of utter contempt, raising a glass of blood to his lips for a sip.
I stopped just behind his bald head, hands in my pockets. “Never figured you for a poet, Spyder.”
“I work very hard to gather beautiful things to me, Josiah. Beauty may be forever beyond my reach, but the very least you could do is let me enjoy looking at other people’s beauty.”
I came around the sofa and sat next to him. “Is that all you do now, Spyder? Just look?”
His eyes burned with hatred. “You mean, did vampirism cure my HIV? Does it matter? After what Christian did to me, I have no drive to fuck, if I ever did. For me, all that remains is appreciation of beautiful things in all forms, and overwhelming, insatiable hunger. I haven’t known a soul in the Biblical sense since those days. But since you’re so curious about my health, yes, I’m cured. It was a fuckin’ miracle.”
“Sad way to live.” I gestured at Khaleda. “May I present Her Royal Highness, the rightful queen of Hell, Khaleda Morningstar.”
Khaleda extended her hand, which Spyder held only briefly. “I don’t know that I’ve ever met royalty before. Then again, you’re not royalty yet, are you?”
“We’ll see how the summit goes tomorrow night.” Venom dripped from her deceptively sweet smile.
Spyder gestured to Stefan with his glass. “That’s who you’re fucking now, is it, Josiah? I knew you were a switch-hitter. Christian always did think you were banging someone else on the side. Drove him crazy. What was his name? That boy you liked? Devon? Dasher?”
“Danny.”
He snapped his fingers. “Right, Danny. He was a pretty one. Actually, your new boy toy is pretty too. Seems we’re alike in that regard. We both like pretty things. You know what the problem with pretty things is? They don’t stay pretty for very long.”
I clenched a fist. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what happened to Danny.”
Spyder settled back into the sofa. “I know everything, or almost everything. One thing I don’t know is why you’re sitting in my private lounge in my club after I told the doorman specifically not to give you the fucking time of day.”
“That, he owes to me.” Khaleda sat down on the other side of Spyder, forcing him to move closer to me.
I lit a cigarette and looked around. “So, how did you come by all these pretty things?”
“It was easy. All I had to do was kill the last owner and take his stuff.”
I eyed Spyder carefully. “How’d you survive killing the vampire who turned you?”
He grinned at me, showing sharp teeth. “You think you’re the only one who’s read Christian’s grimoire?”
“I have information to trade,” Khaleda cut in.
He eyed her, pressing his lips together. “For what?”
“Safe haven for myself, Josiah, and Stefan until our business in Los Angeles is concluded,” Khaleda said.
Spyder threw his head back and laughed before standing. “You’re shitting me. Do you know what this motherfucker did to me? What he does to everyone? You’d have to have some serious information to trade for me to even consider that. Potential queen of hell or not, you can’t have anything that would interest me.”
Khaleda smiled. “How about the secrets of congressmen? Foreign diplomats? Presidents and kings.”
Spyder lowered his glass and stared at her. “I’d say it’s useless to me. My operation is local.”
“But imagine if it wasn’t. Imagine if you could build an empire that spans not just one little city, but the entire nation or beyond.”
He reappraised her. “How the fuck do you even have that sort of information?”
Khaleda laughed. “I thought you knew everything. I’m a succubus. I don’t just feed on the sexual energy of others, I dominate their minds, take their memories, and make them mine. A fleeting touch at the right moment and I have the President’s nuclear codes. A laugh, a light tap on the back of the right man’s wrist, and I can glean the names of his mistresses, the forged numbers in his books, the dark fantasies he wants no one to find out about. With a kiss, secrets unfold before me like flowers in bloom. For a price, I’ll sell one of them to you. We can negotiate for more in the future. Perhaps even become partners. Why settle for Los Angeles when you could have the world, Mr. Spyder?”
“And you’d give it to me? Just like that? For a warm bed in this shithole?”
Khaleda crossed one leg over the other. “You’d be surprised what some people would offer for a safe place to slee
p in this city.”
Spyder looked at me as if to ask if she was telling the truth. “No.”
“Think carefully,” Khaleda advised.
His attention snapped back to her. “I am. I don’t know you, but I know him, and I know what he’s capable of. If he’s asking me for a place to hide, he’s desperate. That means whatever’s hunting you three is at least powerful enough to kill him, which isn’t something I want at my front door. No information is worth dying for. I sold my soul for life. I’m going to keep on living, and you three can get the fuck out of my club.”
The bouncer’s hand came down on my shoulder.
Spyder smirked. “Don’t make a scene.”
I shrugged. “I don’t think it’s me you’ve got to worry about, mate.”
Khaleda stood. “I didn’t want to have to do this, but you haven’t left me much of a choice.” She cupped Spyder’s cheek before he could back away.
His whole body jerked as if he were trying to free himself from her grasp but lacked the strength. Maybe he did. The best he could manage was to meet her eyes and stare at her, slack-jawed as her power chewed through him.
The bouncer went for his gun—bad move since he didn’t bother checking his surroundings first. Stefan had made his way around the room during the conversation and hovered close to the bouncer. The minute he saw him go for his weapon, Stefan kicked him behind his knees and drove him to the floor to twist the gun out of his hand.
The vampires around the room turned away from their leisure and rose, hissing and snarling at us, forming a ring to keep us from escaping the room. I stood slowly, cracking my knuckles. If it was a fight they wanted, I’d give it to ‘em.
Spyder gasped suddenly as Khaleda withdrew her hand. He lowered his head and blinked. A single tear slid down his cheek. “Stop. Everybody stop!”