Texas Hold 'Em

by PATRICK KAMPMAN

  I wasn’t sure if he was being offensive or clever with his terminology. Judging by Bethany’s glare, it was a combination of the two.

  I spoke up quickly, setting the record straight. “Actually, two of Christian’s vampires are left. One of them has my mom, Megan, and Kevin. He was supposed to be bringing them here. You haven’t seen them, have you?” I asked Marie.

  Marie shook her head. “And the other one?”

  “I think she took off.”

  “Well, that’s good news, but this isn’t the place to talk about all of this. How about we go inside? If you’re good, I might let you bring one of your wolves in with you.” Marie had leaned over to get a good look at Bethany, who was somewhere between startled and interested.

  “Man, we can get busy later—right now you need to go fix up my old lady.” Even with his arm around two girls, my brother had no issues bringing up a third. But I’d known him his entire life, and I knew that behind the façade he was more concerned about Lacey than either of the others.

  “If you insist, Bryan, then I suppose we should see what I can do for her,” Marie said.

  “That’s what I’m talking about, and then afterwards we can all go back inside to that crazy pad of yours and have ourselves a foursome.”

  To my despair, neither of the women Bryan guided toward the back of the club voiced any immediate objection. I know because I waited for a full three seconds, listening for one. Even Toni and her friends were stunned silent as they followed them toward the van.

  It didn’t surprise me that the exchange had rendered everyone else speechless. That tended to happen when my brother opened his mouth. Nocturne and I stood for a bit longer. Judging by the look on his face, we were sharing similar thoughts. Finally, our hope for womankind irrevocably shattered, we hurried along to catch up.

  “I don’t think you’ll be getting your deposit back,” Marie noted before she opened the van’s sliding door and climbed inside. Bryan detached himself from Bethany and was right behind Marie, eager to get in the way.

  “That’s the least of our problems,” I said.

  “Wow, I see what you mean.” Marie’s voice came from the open doorway. “That’s a tricky bit of spellcraft your witch pulled off. I’m impressed.”

  “Man, enough talk, woman—do something about that shit! It’s seriously fucked up,” Bryan said.

  “Did you just call me woman? Really, Bryan?”

  I knew he would wear on her eventually, but I had hoped it would come after he had gotten her help saving Lacey’s life.

  “What’s wrong with that? Next you’ll be wanting to wear shoes and leave the kitchen.”

  “Kitchen? I thought you didn’t want me leaving the bedroom.” Marie giggled.

  “Damn, see, that’s what I’m talking about. Now hurry up and juice Lacey so we can all go back to that bedroom!”

  I peered into the van in time to witness Marie holding her wrist over Lacey. She had forced Lacey’s mouth open with her other hand and a steady trickle of blood drained into it.

  Bryan, of course, was leaning in, watching with rapt attention.

  “When she wakes up, Lacey’s gonna be hungry. Hey, Marie, when you’re done with that, do think you could make us a sandwich? Ow! What? She will be!”

  At that, I stepped back out of the van. There wasn’t much I could say to the stunned looks of everyone, so I shrugged.

  Minutes later, Lacey coughed and her eyes fluttered open.

  “Hey, anyone got anything to eat?”

  “I told you,” said Bryan.

  Chapter 28

  Toni sniffed me. “You smell funny.”

  “It’s been a long week. Try me again in a couple of days and I will have resumed my regularly scheduled regimen of good hygiene and exercise.” I sat next to her on the hotel room bed, pleased that I had been able to finish as much as I wanted to of my meal without interruption.

  “That’s not what I meant. I mean, you smell like a pork chop.”

  Toni’s comment was punctuated by a cold wet assault on my calf. I looked down to see a large brown wolf busily sniffing the area of my leg that the vampire Sylvia had torn out days before. I bent down to examine the wound; it had healed up okay. There was a nasty scar, but the area that had been torn out had filled in, save for a slight indentation. The wolf studied the area with me, licking its lips.

  “Sure it’s not the bacon?” I picked up the remainder of my bacon cheeseburger from the nightstand and held it out to her. When she frowned and shook her head, I shrugged. The wolf made a small whine and I went ahead and held the burger down to him. It was gone in one gulp.

  I cast a sideways glance to Lacey, but she was consumed by preparing the spell to locate Christian. Even after getting the infusion of Marie’s blood, Lacey had been out of commission for a couple of hours. As soon as she was functional, she had commenced a multi-tasking effort: putting together the spell while downing a couple of hamburgers, countless fries, and a large Coke.

  Lacey had set up shop on the small round table. Her neck was bandaged, and I expected it hadn’t fully closed, but between her magic and Marie’s vampire blood, she was mending. She had let us know that she was not pleased with what we did to save her.

  I knew she wasn’t Marie’s biggest fan, and if she experienced the same strange feelings I’d had after imbibing her blood, she was probably having some serious anxiety about sharing the vampire’s emotions.

  Bryan had been at Lacey’s side the entire time. He was unusually quiet, meaning he was really concerned. He was even being moderately well behaved, except for trying to sneak occasional peeks under the bandage to see the healing at work. Lacey would have been farther along with the spell if she wasn’t having to constantly fend off his attentions.

  I had been reluctant to ask Lacey to do the spell in the first place, so soon after what had happened, but once she found out I had something of Christian’s, she insisted. I knew the driving force for her was Megan’s safety. Martin hadn’t shown up to Styx like Katy said he would, and we had no idea what had happened to Megan.

  I tried to convince myself that nothing was wrong, that Martin was taking his own sweet time bringing Megan into the club, but it was making me nervous. There wasn’t much time before dawn. In a couple more hours, it would have to wait until tomorrow night, and the longer Megan and Kevin had to spend time with Martin, and possibly Christian, the worse their chances.

  I kept checking my phone. Marie had said she would call if anyone of interest showed up, but the phone had been silent.

  The hotel room was crowded. It seemed that the two-to-a-room rule didn’t apply where werewolves were concerned. The wolf that had been eyeing my leg yawned wide, allowing for an excellent view of its large white teeth. It then settled down next to my leg and shut its eyes.

  “Okey dokey, I’m ready,” Lacey said, placing what must have been the final ingredients in a small bowl that already was full of a variety of other strange substances.

  She elbowed my brother out of the way until she had sufficient personal space, and then she began to cast. She placed one hand palm down on the table, and with the other held up the white handkerchief my mother had given me—the one of Christian’s that she had used to wrap up my father’s ring.

  Lacey dropped the handkerchief into the bowl. It landed with a dull whump! A small cloud of smoke billowed out in a mushroom cloud, like a miniature nuke had gone off in the bottom of the bowl. Lacey sneezed when the smoke reached her, jerking her head forward and eliciting an “Ow!”

  She rubbed the bandages on her neck and removed a surprisingly intact handkerchief out of the smoldering bowl. She moved the bowl to one side, then held the handkerchief up so its end was about six inches above the map’s surface.

  Nothing happened for a moment, but before Bryan could say something stupid, the white silk square went rigid. The fabric elongated and became narrow, like a pointer. Lacey’s hand struggled to hold onto the handkerchief as an unseen force pulled o
ne corner of the fabric to a particular spot on the map.

  I walked over. Toni joined me, along with several of the others. We all crowded around to watch the handkerchief as it fixated on a spot in the heart of Texas.

  “We’re in luck!” Lacey said, as she tore aside the map with her free hand to reveal another one beneath it. The cloth went limp as soon as the first map was removed, but immediately went taut again, its corner moving slowly across the map until it once again hovered over a spot.

  “I found him!”

  “Where is he?” I asked, squinting to read the map of Austin from where I stood.

  “Looks like he’s a couple blocks north of Sixth Street, west of Congress.” Lacey looked up at me. “He’s at Styx.”

  “You can’t trust a vamp,” said Toni. Marie was supposed to call if anyone showed, and unless she somehow wasn’t aware that Christian was at her club, it was obvious she had neglected to do so.

  “I’m with the dog on this one, Chance,” added Lacey. “The dingbat double-crossed us.”

  Maybe it was the full stomach, but for once my brain decided to actually put two and two together before I jumped to a wrong conclusion.

  “No, that makes no sense. If that were the case, why would she have agreed to heal you? She knew once you were better you would lead us to Christian.”

  “Maybe the dude snuck into the club like some sort of ninja,” Bryan suggested. “Or he whacked Marie and she’s too dead to call.”

  “You might actually be right for once.” I started going through the armaments, selecting the Saiga assault shotgun and my trusted Kimber .45 that I had retrieved out of the Caddy’s trunk.

  Lacey didn’t even make an attempt to act like she was coming. She was in bad shape to begin with, and the spell had wiped her out. After completing it, she finished someone’s abandoned box of cold fries, climbed on one of the two king-sized beds in the room, and went to sleep next to where Mike was already napping.

  A bleary-eyed Mike cast a half annoyed, half appreciative glance at Lacey before swinging his feet over the side of the bed and asking, “So are we ready to go?”

  “You guys have done enough already; my brother and I can handle this,” I said. Bryan double-checked his revolver and the M4 for the third time, making sure they were both loaded.

  “I didn’t come all this way to let you die. At least not without paying me back,” said Toni.

  Chapter 29

  It was five o’clock on Monday morning. The downtown streets were empty, students busy sleeping off the last night of revelry before fall classes began.

  I should have been one of them. Instead, I was carrying a shotgun down a side alley, heading toward a vampire nest.

  The red neon sign still lit the walls and asphalt surrounding the entrance to Styx. The clusters of smoking goths were absent, as were Samuel and his stool. The door to the club was closed.

  Toni grabbed my arm as I walked up to the black door and reached for the handle.

  “I’m not letting you go in there alone. Do you think I care about some stupid truce with the vampires?”

  “I’m not going in alone. I’ll have my brother with me.” This was the fourth time we’d rehashed the same argument in the last thirty minutes. It had escalated when I identified Martin’s Ford Explorer parked by the club.

  “Was telling me your brother will be with you honestly supposed to ease my mind?”

  “Chill out, woman, I got my bro’s back. The only thing I do better than kill vampires is satisfy ladies. And I will be happy to give y’all a firsthand demonstration of that when I get back.” His leer encompassed both Toni and Bethany.

  I stepped in before Toni took her anxiety about the situation out on my brother. “I know what I’m doing, Toni. I’m not going to confront Christian if I can help it. This is a smash and grab. Get the hostages and run for it. All you have to do is make sure is that no one else comes in behind us, and no one besides us leaves with my mother or Kevin.”

  Toni relented, but only barely. “You’ve got five minutes. If you’re not out by then, I’m coming in after you. I don’t care if it does start a war.”

  “Relax—we won’t need a war. A couple of hours from now, you guys will be on the road headed back to California. My mom, Megan, and Kevin will be safe, and I’ll be trying to find my first class.”

  I pulled on the door, thinking my plan was about to be thwarted by a simple lock. But the door opened to reveal a brighter-than-expected entrance.

  We walked past the empty counter where the blue-haired girl usually collected the cover charge. Samuel’s stool sat against the wall of the short hallway.

  Last call had been hours before. The empty club was lit by neon lights tucked up against the rafters of the club. Their harsh bluish-white illumination gave the large expanse a stark, almost industrial, appearance.

  I sensed the vampires before I saw them. The blue-haired girl was running a broom across the floor, and the efficient waitress who had served us the night we first came into the club was busily restocking the bar refrigerator with the myriad of microbrews they didn’t have on draft.

  Both turned as we entered, taking in the assault rifles my brother and I carried.

  “Christian?” was all I said. Neither one responded. I thought for a second it was going to start right there, but the blue-haired one leaned against her broom as she studied us for a second, then nodded toward the back of the club. Leaning her broom against a wall, she headed toward a rear emergency exit and plausible deniability.

  My internal alarm sounded; I pulled out my phone and texted Toni, saving the poor girl who left from getting ambushed.

  The waitress grabbed two glasses down and poured two fingers of top- shelf scotch in each. Then she walked around the bar and headed toward the front entrance. I wasn’t much into hard liquor, but Bryan had no such problem. He downed both shots in rapid succession, then let out an exaggerated burp that reverberated in the empty room and said, “Let’s go waste this dude.”

  We encountered Samuel at the entrance that led to the back offices and secret sanctum. The doorman was leaning against the wall, his massive arms crossed. His sunglasses were tucked into the front pocket of his jeans so I could see that his eyes were shut. As we drew near, he opened them.

  “We’re looking for your boss,” I said.

  “Which one?” he asked.

  When I didn’t answer, Samuel said, “No one around here has a sense of humor.” He sent a thumb over his shoulder. “They’re both downstairs.”

  “Any problems with us going down to say hi?”

  Samuel smiled. “According to my last orders, as long as you don’t have any canine companions with you, you’re more than welcome.” He brought out a key card from the pocket of his jeans and casually reached to the side to swipe it down the reader. Putting the card back in his pocket, he leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.

  I opened the door, and we headed for the stairway down to the club’s cellar. I knew the stairs were blocked by another door that required a keycard. I had been hoping it would be open. It wasn’t. I tried it twice to be sure, but no dice.

  My brother was about to start trying to kick it in when I heard voices coming from down the hall. I put an arm out to stop Bryan from what was bound to be a loud-but-ineffective assault on the metal door.

  “This way,” I said. We followed the voices to a large office decorated with an ornate desk, an equally ornate and delicate-looking sofa, and a pair of finely wrought chairs. Old-master-style oil paintings hung from the walls. The only clues to the modern era were the closed laptop computer, a desk phone, and a wall calendar. The current month’s photo was a grey tabby hanging by its front paws from a clothesline. The caption read “hang in there.” Nocturne was slumped at the desk, a half-empty glass of thick red liquid in front of him. He was complaining to a trio of his groupies, all vampires by their aura.

  The conversation shifted as soon as we entered. “And here are the ones resp
onsible for this whole mess! How did you get in here?” Nocturne asked, though his accusations lacked enthusiasm.

  “We walked through the front door. Where is Christian?”

  “Downstairs, in the process of usurping power, thanks to you.”

  “Pardon?” I asked.

  “Had you done your job, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Now I have another several centuries of following that insufferable man’s orders to look forward to.”

  “Tell you what. How about you let us downstairs and we take care of that for you? Then you can follow around the sex-crazed hippie chick instead.”

  “You will fail again. It seems to be what you’re good at.” Nocturne did doomed melodrama well.

  “Then you’ll be rid of me. It seems that no matter how it works out, you’d be free of one of us. As Marie would say, it sounds like a win- win.”

  “No,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  Nocturne carefully enunciated his next words, his tone that of a frustrated parent trying to explain something simple to an uncomprehending child.

  “Because if I let you in, Christian will know it. Once he’s killed you, he will come looking for me. He’s not a forgiving man.”

  Bryan decided it was his turn. “Tell him we took the card from your scrawny ass by force. You know, before we have to do it for reals.”

  Nocturne’s groupies watched the exchange, their heads moving back and forth like it was a tennis match. Nocturne thought for a moment, probably deciding if it was worth the effort to get up and move all the way around the large desk just to kill my brother.

  In the end he sighed and said, “This is the remaining hour of freedom I have left. I’m not going to spend it arguing with you two simpletons.”

  With that, he picked up his glass and, without paying us any more notice, left the room with his posse in tow. I waited until he walked out the door. The moment he was gone, I made for the desk, hoping to rifle through it and maybe find a spare card key.