“What did he do to Daphne?” Abby asked, then turned to me. “Daphne was here for a long time, but she quit a couple of months before I took over from Lilith, when I was still just helping run things. She didn’t say why she was leaving, not that I get a lot of two-week notices in this business. I didn’t think anything of it when she called in and told me she quit. Seems like maybe I should have asked for a few details.”
Scarlett leaned forward and started her story. Shortly thereafter, the only question in my mind was how long I was going to make this bastard suffer before I let him die.
Chapter 34
AS SCARLETT SPOKE, the hollow pit in my stomach grew larger with every sentence. “Daphne was a dancer, and like some of the other girls, she wasn’t opposed to offering some of what she called ‘off-menu services’ to guys she liked, or regulars, or girls she liked, or whatever. That was never my thing, but I’m not gonna judge. She was a red-blooded girl who liked sex, and if she wanted to get paid for it, that’s her business.” She looked between Abby and me, almost challenging us to argue with her.
“I agree,” Abby said. “The reason I clamped down on those activities when I took over had nothing to do with morality, and everything to do with legality. If we got busted, we’d lose our liquor license. We lose our liquor license, everybody in here is looking for a job.”
Scarlett nodded. “Yeah, I get that. But Daphne, back then she was enjoying a little extra action, a little more popularity with some of the big tippers, and she was sure enjoying the extra cash. That’s where Ian comes in.
“Ian became the broker for the girls that were more . . . adventurous than a lap dance. A guy wants special treatment, he talks to Ian at the bar. Ian points out a couple of girls to him. The guy tips a little extra on his next vodka and soda. This went on for a while, and everybody seemed happy. I never spent much time with Ian, but Daff was certainly having a good time, making a bunch of money, and enjoying herself.
“Until Ian got greedy. He decided that he needed to get a cut from the girls, too, or he wouldn’t give them referrals anymore. Once he cut one or two girls off, the rest starting giving up a piece of their extra cash. Then a bigger piece. Then bigger. Until finally, the guys were just paying Ian, and he was giving the girls a piece of the action. A very small piece of the action.
“Ian wasn’t nearly as picky with the guys he chose, either. Daphne never went with guys she didn’t like. No really old dudes, no creepers, no wilting lilies who looked like they never touched a girl before. She only offered up her special menu to guys she legit wanted to fool around with. Ian didn’t care. He didn’t care if they were human, ogre, vampire, werewolf . . . whatever was fine with him, as long as their money was good.
“Daphne finally had enough after Ian set her up for a three-way with a werewolf and a vampire. She wasn’t into banging monsters, no offense.”
“Oh, none taken,” I assured her. I was long past the point in the story where I could get offended at being called a monster. For one thing, she was right, I am a monster. For the other, there was so much else in the story to be furious about, I was having a hard time keeping a straight face. This guy Ian very much needed a true-death. The only question was could I beat Abby to the killing?
Scarlett went on. “So about a week after the thing with the vamp and the wolf, Daff came back to work. It took that long for all the scratches to heal so she could work. First thing she does, she goes straight to Ian and tells him she’s done with him. She says she’s not taking any more side work, no more special clients, nothing. They get in this big argument right there at the bar, in front of the afternoon shift and the half-dozen customers that were there. Lilith has to come out of her office and break them up before Daff beats the shit out of Ian.
“But later that night, I see her in the dressing room, and she’s all smiling and laughing about this guy she was just with and how much he paid her, and what he paid her for. I was real confused, so I asked her what about her not doing that stuff anymore, and she just laughed and said she changed her mind, that was a woman’s prerogative. But her eyes didn’t look right.”
“A little glassy?” I asked. “Like she was on something, but she wasn’t?”
“Yeah, exactly like that! So we get to the end of our shift, and Daphne and me are walking out to our cars together. We had Jeckle walk with us, in case there were any creepers in the bushes, and there was this van parked next to Daphne’s car. I hadn’t seen the van before, but it screamed ‘rape van’ like nobody’s business. I mean, it wasn’t just a work van, it was a work van with the tag gone, and the back windows blacked out with spray paint, and that thing was creepy, man. Like, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Ted Bundy sitting in the driver’s seat.”
“Was this the first time you remember seeing that van?” Abby asked.
“Yeah, I’d remember something that freaky. But Jeckle walked up to our cars, and when Daphne went to get into hers, the side door of the van opened up. I saw her turn around and talk to the dude in the back, then she turned around, waved at me like everything was cool, and got in the van. I figured she had some kind of crazy friends that wanted to party so she went home with them. The van made it a little weird, but when she turned back around and waved, I thought everything was cool. I shoulda gone over there. I shoulda . . .” She dashed away a tear with the back of her hand.
I leaned forward and patted her on the knee. “If you had gone over there, you would have ended up in the same kind of trouble Daphne did, maybe worse. You couldn’t have known anything was wrong.”
She gave me a grateful little half-smile, then nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right. But I feel bad, you know? Like there was something I coulda done.”
“There wasn’t. Not then. But you’re doing something now, and that’s going to help us track down this asshole and get rid of him once and for all,” Abby said. “What happened next?”
Scarlett took a second to gather herself, then went on. “Then I went home. I came in the next night just like normal, but Daphne didn’t. When she still hadn’t showed by midnight, I went to the office and talked to you. You told me she called in and quit. I thought that sounded weird, but that kind of thing happens, so I didn’t think anything else about it. Until this week.”
“What happened this week?” I asked.
“I’d been hearing talk for about a month about girls doing little ‘extras’ again, and booking private gigs outside the club, and that kind of thing. So I come in a few nights ago and I see Warren arguing with Taylor, this new blonde we’ve had dancing here for a month or two. I don’t know what they were fighting about, but as I walk past them, Warren grabs her by the arm and says something about her needing to know her damn role or she’d end up like that bitch Daphne.
“I froze. I stopped dead in my tracks, and I asked Warren what he meant about Daphne. He stammered and made up some bullshit line about how she mouthed off to Ian, the old bartender, and he got her fired. I called him on that being a crock of shit and took Taylor back to the dressing room. We got back there, and she told me that Warren was on her about doing extras in the VIP rooms and she didn’t want to. I told her I’d take care of it, and I went to find you, Abby. But you weren’t there yet. So I told Jeckle to keep Warren out of the dressing room all night, no matter what, and as soon as you got in I told you all about it.”
Abby turned to me. “That’s when I fired Warren. I had some errands to run before I got to the club, and when I got there Heckle and Jeckle were both standing by the door to the dressing room. Now I like my bouncers visible, and when they’re ogres, it’s not like they can hide too many places, but they don’t usually hang out in one spot all night. So I asked them what was up, and they sent me to talk to Scarlett. I did. She told me that Warren had restarted some of Ian’s old activities. I went looking for him and found him outside having a smoke with his good buddy Ian. I waited unti
l he came back in, then I handed him enough cash to cover his last paycheck and sent him packing.”
“Did he cause a scene, or do anything threatening?” I asked.
“He left with the usual threats. Crap like I’d wish I’d never been turned when he got done with me. He had powerful friends, the typical crap. Then he said something interesting—that we’d all end up like Daphne, blasted out of our brains and screwing a troll for the rest of our lives.
“That’s when I stopped him. I snatched him back into my office with Heckle and asked him what he was talking about. He wasn’t very talkative at first, but between my compulsion and Heckle’s ability to break the same finger three times in one place, he finally told us that Ian sold Daphne to a troll, because she screwed with his business. And now that we were screwing with his business, we’d end up under a troll just like her.”
“And you didn’t kill him?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Scarlett blanch a little at my casual suggestion of murder, but I knew Abby’s temper.
“No, although looking back on it I should have. I told him if he ever set foot in the Angel again, I’d rip out his liver and suck it dry in front of him, and then I sent him on his way. I thought he was just talking big, you know? Some little punk trying to make me scared of him.”
“But now that you’ve seen these baby vamps Ian has been making, you’re not so sure,” I said.
“What I don’t get is why?” Abby said. “What’s his endgame?”
“Oh, that’s easy, dear,” Scarlett said, a slight smile on her face reminding me that whatever else she was, she was also Fae, and no creature born mortal would ever completely understand her motives. “He wants to take over the city. He wants your Mr. Black here dead as revenge for killing Lilith, and he wants to be the new Master. It sounds like he’s building an army to kill you all.”
“That’s been tried before,” I said. “By Lilith, as a matter of fact.”
“Yeah, that went well for her,” Abby said.
“So this guy wants me dead because I killed Lilith,” I said.
“And he wants me dead because I fired him and cut off his steady supply of girls,” Abby added. “That still doesn’t explain why he’s turning young men and women into vampires, though. What does he need with a couple dozen sex slaves in cages under the city?”
It all made perfect sense. The compulsions the newborns were under, the dozens of caged baby vamps, selling Daphne to a troll. “He’s not building sex slaves. He’s building an army. He’s making a shitload of vampires, all loyal to him, and burying compulsions in them to fight for him when the time comes, no matter where they are or who they ‘belong to’ at the time.”
I looked at Abby and felt a fierce grin stretch across my face. “He wants to take my city. He’s building an army of vamplets to hide behind, and he’s going to try to take my city.”
“Let him try,” Abby said. “We fought off Lilith, for God’s sake. I think we can take a bunch of newborns and one disgruntled ex-employee.” I looked into her eyes and saw a burning desire to rip Ian’s heart out while he watched. I recognized the look, because it was exactly what I wanted to do.
Now we just had to figure out how to pull it off.
Chapter 35
“JESUS,” GREG SAID from his place at the computer. “So what did he think was going to happen? He’d throw up a bat signal, and all his minions from all over the city would crawl out of the woodwork to attack you?”
I sat across the table from him, pouring Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka into a glass over ice. “I don’t think it was quite that complex, to be honest. I think that he killed some people and sold them into undead sexual slavery but kept most of the ones he killed in the cages to be his army. I mean, we’re not telepathic, so it’s not like he could just sent out brainwaves like Professor Xavier and activate his vampire sleeper cells.”
“Yeah, that makes more sense, I guess. Do we have any idea how many people he . . . sold?” Greg asked.
“None whatsoever. Abby fired him months ago, and she figures that at least a dozen girls from the Angel have left their jobs without calling since then. Now, not all of them were kidnapped, but it stands to reason that at least a portion of them were.” I sipped my vodka and tried to decide between dismemberment or flaying for my planned murder of Ian the asshole.
“And that’s not even taking into account the three hundred people that go missing in Charlotte every month,” Abby added. “If even ten percent of those were taken by Ian, he could have a hundred vampires or more running around.”
“Well, a lot less after you guys got through in the tunnels,” Emily said from the bottom of the stairs. We all turned to her. She looked better after a little rest, standing there swimming in Greg’s favorite Garfield T-shirt. “Is this a private war party, or can any dead girl join in?”
Greg pulled out a chair, and she sat beside him at the table. They were tentative around each other, almost like they felt like they should know each other, but had never met. Which they kinda hadn’t, at least not for better than twenty years. She looked at the vodka and raised an eyebrow to me. I grabbed her a glass and poured it half full. That eyebrow came back up at the generous pour, and I chuckled.
“I know, that much straight vodka would have knocked you out last week. But now it’s barely enough to take the edge off for half an hour, and not even that long if you chase it with a blood bag. Booze and drugs have a much harder time affecting us than they used to. There’s probably a physiological reason to it, but I just chalk it up to being a magically animated undead beast of darkness and bitch about my excessive bar tabs.”
She shook her head at me and drank. “You are one weird dude, Jimmy Black.”
Abby laughed, throwing her blond hair back. “Oh, girl! You don’t know the half of it. Just wait until he starts talking about video games.”
“Anyway,” I said, trying to move the conversation back on track. I turned to Greg. “Did you have any luck finding a map of the abandoned subway tunnels?”
“Yes. I was able to get into the city permitting office’s archives, and I found a set of plans. There’s just one problem.”
“Of course there is,” I grumbled.
“Yeah, this is a pretty big one,” Greg said. “They aren’t digital. All I got was the database index. The plans only exist in hard copy, and they are in the physical archives in the basement of the Old Courthouse. There’s literally zero chance that we can get our hands on them in any reasonable timeframe.”
“Why not just break in? We’ve still got a few hours of dark left,” Abby said.
“Have you ever been in a government records office?” Greg asked. “Especially one that hasn’t been used in a couple decades? This place is going to be wall-to-wall boxes, with only the loosest form of organization. These subway plans are from the 1890s, when Charlotte was a booming textile town and city leaders thought it was going to be the centerpiece of the New South. Even if we could find them, orienting them to current landmarks would be almost impossible.”
“So what, we just wander around in the tunnels and hope we find this asshole? I don’t think so.” I slammed the rest of my Firefly and reached for the bottle. Abby slid it out of my reach and slapped a blood bag and a metal straw into my hand.
“Don’t be a dick. We need you clear-headed.”
I wanted to protest, but she was right. If we were going after this guy, I needed to be on top of my game. A few hours’ sleep would be nice, but a bag of go juice would suffice in the meantime. “Okay, buddy. I’m sure you didn’t get me all spun up just to let me run off half-cocked, so what’s the plan?”
Greg nodded. “First, we have to get the vamplets to a safe place. Then we go bloodhound on your buddy Ian.”
I sat back in my chair, literally stunned by the simplicity of it. Between the three of us, our senses rivaled that of a
ny tracking dog in the world. We should be able to track Ian through the subway using trace he rubbed off on my shirt when we fought. “That’s why we keep you around, pal. You’re the brains to go with my beauty.”
“What am I, chopped liver?” Abby mock-protested.
“You’re obviously the brawn, Abs,” I said, reaching over and grabbing her bicep. She flexed for me, laughing.
“Just one problem,” I said. “Where can we stash your sister that she’d be safe? I mean, we could keep them here with William looking after them, but I don’t know if our defenses are enough to keep out an army of vamps if Ian decides to come for them.”
“I wasn’t thinking just about keeping them safe,” Greg replied. “I was also thinking of having some people to teach them about being a vampire, what it means, how to live, what our rules are and how to make a living. You know, Vamp 101.”
“You mean all the stuff nobody ever taught us?” I asked.
“Yeah, that. But also, you know, just let them meet more vampires, see the different ways people approach the whole live forever and live on a liquid diet thing,” he replied.
“You’ve obviously got something in mind, so spill.” I knew what he was going to say, I just wanted to hear it. It’s not like there are that many collections of vampires in the city, after all.
“I want to take them to Morlock City. With Rabbit and Alexander both gone, I can kinda see Jang-Mi taking over both groups. If that happens, they’ll be plenty strong enough to protect them, and . . . I liked the way they were living. So we can leave them in Morlock City and send a message to Jang-Mi. Then she can come integrate her people with the Morlocks and look after Emily and the others at the same time.”
All Knight Long Page 23
