by Sierra Dean
A cluster of people with cameras cut across Bourbon, heading in the direction of the St Louis Cemetery #1. The tour guide leading them was talking about Marie Laveau and how many visitors would leave her small tokens and mark the tombs with three Xs to make wishes. I smiled to myself, recalling the times I went to the cemetery after all the tourists were gone, leaving lip gloss or nail polish for Marie and her daughter. I rarely asked them for anything. Sometimes I just liked to visit them to let them know people still thought fondly of them.
That was before the city started keeping the cemeteries open all night and charging admission. The revelation of vampires and werewolves being real meant New Orleans tourism was up tenfold, as if it were the only place in the world such creatures would be attracted to.
Thanks, Anne Rice.
Never mind that the apocalypse had almost happened in New York, or the surprising number of vampires living in Alaska during the winter thanks to the long hours of night. Nope. People were flocking to New Orleans, and as a result the city was tripping over itself to milk the cash cow.
These days people were crawling through the cemeteries at all hours, and anyone who had used the spaces for magic or meditation no longer had the haven.
Street crime was up too, to no one’s surprise. Any strides the city had made towards safety had been damn near obliterated.
Maybe Cash and my family were right to worry about me when I went running alone in the morning. Or at least they would be if I were a human.
“Hey.” A drunk girl on too-high heels with a too-short skirt stopped abruptly in front of us and jabbed a fake nail into my chest.
To say I didn’t have patience for this was the understatement of the century.
“What?” I tried to keep my composure, but she was toeing a fine line. I didn’t want to start anything with three cops standing no more than twenty feet away. I just wanted to make it to our destination and get out of here.
“Is he yer boyfriend?” she asked, leering at Wilder like he was the prime rib at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Seriously? She was going to steal my date? This chick had balls. She took a big slurp from her fishbowl of alcohol and licked her lips suggestively.
Charming.
And people wondered why locals never came down here. Who would want to miss out on this glorious behavior? Even the grits at Clover Diner couldn’t make up for this.
“Sorry, doll. I’m spoken for,” Wilder replied, not missing a beat. He kept his arm around me, fingertips dangerously close to the underwire of my bra. It was a possessive, suggestive gesture, and I felt like a terrible feminist for liking the way he was displaying me as if I were his favorite prize.
Ugh, down girl.
“Yer loss. You are hoootttt. I’d blow you like ten times.”
My jaw went slack as Wilder guided me past her. “Did she seriously say that?”
“Don’t worry, Princess. I don’t ditch a lady for anything less than an offer of fifteen BJs and a public tug. A guy needs to have standards.” He winked.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cringe, so instead I opted for neither and grabbed him by the wrist. I dragged us away from Bourbon and onto Toulouse, where the crowds were thinner and the signs offered more than just bulk liquor.
Funny how there was this mystical force field around Bourbon Street that managed to keep most of the douchebaggery contained to one long block. Tourist traps were everywhere, but somehow these side streets managed to maintain a vibe of old-world charm and mystery.
“You know I wasn’t being serious when I suggested a public tug, right?” Wilder’s cheeky smirk had vanished, and he looked downright worried that I might have thought he was propositioning me.
“Oh, hon. If I was going to stick my hands down anyone’s pants tonight, it would be my boyfriend’s, okay?” I nodded sternly, hoping this wouldn’t seem like a made-up line to keep him from thinking I was coming on to him.
“Boyfriend, eh? You never mentioned a boyfriend before.”
I had, but clearly Wilder suffered from the too-common condition of being deaf to the word boyfriend. I pretended he was right, though. “Yeah, well, it wasn’t really relevant to our previous discussions about automobile repair and murder.”
That seemed to pick his spirits up. If he was disappointed to hear I was off the market, it didn’t show. What was I hoping for? A crestfallen pout or a sigh of longing? I should be happy he was dealing with it like an adult. It meant there were no feelings involved to complicate things.
And that was good, wasn’t it?
Oh, Genie, you are in so much trouble.
I shook off the nagging sense of foreboding and dropped Wilder’s wrist. We were free of the crowds now, so there was no risk of us losing each other, and I felt he was capable of following me without assistance.
“Where are we going?”
“It’s better if you just wait to see it for yourself,” I said.
It didn’t matter what warning I gave. When he saw our destination for the first time, he still wasn’t going to believe it. It had taken me at least a half dozen visits before I was able to stop gawking at the place.
I indicated for him to follow me down a narrow alley so well hidden it would have been easy to miss if I didn’t know it was there. He hesitated, angling himself to try and see past me into the dark corridor where I was leading us.
“Are you hoping for a good old-fashioned mugging tonight?” he asked.
“No.” It was my turn to smile. “We might lose some of our cash, but we’ll let it go willingly. Mostly willingly, anyway. Come on.” I didn’t wait to see if he’d take the bait. I knew he’d follow me.
The winding passage opened into a small courtyard where a fountain, backlit with red lights, spilled into a dark waterfall. The orange neon sign over the leather-studded door read The Dungeon. A broad-chested man with a shaved head and a tattoo of a spider above his ear was standing next to the door. He wasn’t blocking it, per se, but he gave the clear indication getting in would be entirely at his discretion.
Wilder, wisely, stayed silent.
I walked up to the bouncer, whose sunglasses blocked my view of his eyes, and threw my shoulders back in an effort to not look like I was half his size.
“ID?” he grumbled.
I did have ID saying I was a twenty-one-year-old organ donor. Not that anyone wanted werewolf organs these days. Even before my birthday I had a charm to make that ID say I was of legal age. Actually with the charm I could make my ID believably say just about anything. Problem was, it wasn’t going to help me here the way it had at some of the better dive bars in town.
This guy wasn’t looking for my driver’s license.
“McQueen pack,” I announced.
He snorted through his nostrils, reminding me of a bull preparing to charge. “Chicka, every dog in town knows who the Big Daddy is. You have any idea how many folks come here each night and say McQueen pack to me? If you’re going to fake me out, you’re going to need to try harder.” He glanced over my shoulder to Wilder. “You gonna say the same thing, little bro?”
Wilder must have realized what the guy was after. “I was actually the protégée to Paul Talbot, the Alpha of the Talbot pack in Shreveport, up until a month or so ago. Now I’m back under the oath of the McQueen pack proper.”
The guard was befuddled by Wilder’s response. He clearly hadn’t been expecting a real answer. I, for one, was tickled to learn this tidbit about Wilder’s past. If he’d really been under the wing of an Alpha, my guess had been spot-on. He was being groomed to take over another pack.
Verrrrry interesting.
The bouncer returned his attention to me, giving me another once-over. To be honest, with all the press surrounding me over the last couple of years, I was surprised he didn’t recognize me. Not that I was a celebrity by any stretch of the imagination, but I was well-known in certain circles. The kind of circles this big fella ought to be a part
of.
“McQueen, you said?”
I pulled out my wallet and showed him my ID, the more traditional variety. “I did say McQueen.”
He lowered his sunglasses, showing me a quick glimpse of his snakelike eyes. Once he was done confirming my name, he handed the card back to me. “Sorry, miss. You know how it is. Tourists think they can come here and flirt with disaster, go home with a story. After a couple folks got into more trouble than they could handle, we had to start being more careful.”
“Of course.”
There was a time a wolf could have walked into this bar without getting a second look. Times had changed. A lot of things were different now, not just the club scene.
I tried to pretend I was okay with how different the world was now, but frankly I hated losing the secret part of myself. It made people think they knew me, when really they were totally clueless.
“No need to apologize,” I told the guard. “Better to be safe than sued.”
With his glasses back on he looked normal enough.
But didn’t we all in our sheep’s clothing?
He stepped to the side and gestured to the door. “Welcome to The Dungeon, Miss McQueen.”
No need to tell him this was hardly my first visit. It didn’t matter. First or five hundredth, you never knew what you were going to get when you went inside.
I paused before entering. “Is Cain in?”
The bouncer hesitated. “He is.”
“Has his rate gone up?”
This made the big man laugh. “You know it doesn’t matter. Whatever he charges you, you’ll pay. If you’re asking for Cain, you need Cain.”
I gritted my teeth and nodded. Sad, but true.
Cain might mean the difference between Hank living or dying, and when it came to saving a member of my pack, I wasn’t going to quibble over the price tag.
Too bad it wasn’t usually money Cain wanted.
Chapter Fourteen
The bass rumble of the music thumped in my chest the minute we walked through the door. From the outside you could have heard a pin drop, but now that we’d entered the inner sanctum, it was all skull-rattling drumbeats and the jarring wub-wub-wub of dubstep.
The main floor consisted of a small, narrow room with a bar set along the back wall with several leather stools lined in front of it. All available seating was taken, and people were wedged between the stools shouting their drink orders at the two girls behind the bar.
Every inch of wall space was covered with pictures of fetish art and tribal illustrations. The lights were dim, so to get a good look at the photos meant leaning in really close. I’d felt a faint flush of embarrassment the first time I’d realized I was scrutinizing a woodcut print of a woman being penetrated by a giant dildo.
I didn’t give them a second glance anymore, but noticed Wilder’s attention drifting to a few of the more unique ones as we passed.
At the back of the room, next to a raised booth, an open casket was propped against the wall. The interior was lined with red velvet, and a slight indent in the pillow implied someone had only recently gotten up from their daytime nap. This, of course, was all flash for the tourists. No self-respecting vampires actually slept in coffins, thanks to the advent of blackout drapes. That coffin, I’d been told, had been in the bar long before supernaturals got outed. Now it was just an added bonus.
“Where have you brought us?” Wilder asked.
“Stay close, okay?” I warned.
The warmth of his body at my back told me he was taking my instructions a wee bit too seriously, but if it meant we wouldn’t be separated, I wasn’t going to say anything.
“If you wanted to get me drunk, I would have settled for a Hand Grenade or two on Bourbon.”
Even without seeing his face, I could hear his smirk. Wilder Shaw was the kind of guy who was accustomed to getting a long way on his charm, which seemed funny now, given how coarse he’d been when we first met. I was starting to like him more the longer I spent with him, but I wasn’t sure how much of that was genuine and how much was his innate ability to smooth talk.
Before we reached the stairs at the back of the room, I pulled him down a claustrophobic hallway leading to the dingy bathrooms. A bare light bulb hung overhead, creating garish shadows on the green paint and making him look rougher and more dangerous than he had previously. My pulse shivered when I realized how close and how alone we were here.
We were both Alphas, and I outranked him, but if push came to shove, I didn’t think I could overpower him.
I stepped back so there was as much space between us as possible. Not that I thought Wilder would hurt me, but being around him made me uneasy. There was something about him I didn’t trust, though I wasn’t sure if it was him or me I was more unsure of.
“Listen, there are a few things you need to know before we go upstairs. If you’ve been away from New Orleans a long time, you might not appreciate who it is we’re here to meet.”
“Enlighten me, then.”
Out of anyone else’s mouth it might have sounded pompous, but I got the feeling Wilder really wanted to help. I reminded myself he could have run off half-cocked and sought out the Church by himself, but he was tagging along and doing things my way. I appreciated it. I also felt like I owed it to him to get this right since he was putting a lot of faith in me to save his brother.
“Beau Cain knows things. It’s why people come to him. You trade something he wants for the information he has. He’s never wrong. He’s not psychic, and he can’t make things happen, but if you need to know something, he always has a way of finding the answer for you. If anyone can help us find Hank on short notice, it’s Cain.”
“And what kind of things does he want?”
Ah, the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.
“It varies.” I paused because I didn’t really feel like finishing my thought. Vague answers were best in situations like this. I’d only needed Cain’s help twice in the past. Once he’d wanted money, but the other time he’d wanted something…darker and more difficult to come by.
I was willing to pay the price, but I couldn’t put the responsibility on Wilder. Whatever Cain wanted, I would be the one to get it for him, end of story. I felt it was my duty. If sacrifices needed to be made and debts had to be paid, it was on me, not Wilder.
“Genie…” He stared at me long and hard. Hearing my real name out of his mouth sounded foreign and strange, but also told me I was worrying him.
“It’s not as bad as I’m making it sound. Normally he wants money. Lots and lots of money.”
“What about when he doesn’t want money?”
I knew right away where Wilder’s mind was going, and I felt guilty because I might have implied it unintentionally. Waving my hands in front of my face, I tried to chase away his fears of anything untoward or dirty.
“It’s not sex.”
His face relaxed so quickly it was like someone had flicked a light off.
God, sex would have been easy by contrast.
“He’s got Delphine, he isn’t interested in anyone else. Calls her his White Queen.” Ironic, since Del was black, but I shrugged. “No, the thing about Cain is he collects…oddities. They call him the Collector in some circles. He’ll always have something in mind, and it’ll never be something you can pop into a CVS for, you know?”
“I really don’t.”
“Okay, for instance, the last time I asked him for a favor, he made me bring back the skull of someone who had died on April 19th, 1864.”
“He… Wait, what?”
I nodded. “Not a specific person. Just the skull of anyone who had died on that day.”
“Why?”
I raised a finger like I was scolding a puppy, my voice dead serious. “You never ask why.”
“And you actually got it for him?”
Grimacing, I nodded again. I wasn’t proud of my grave-robbing escapade, but what was done was done
. I’d needed something that could keep me well-hidden inside city limits in my wolf form if I was unable to make it out to a rural area for any reason. Cain had been able to get me what I’d needed, and I wasn’t in a position to ask for the dark details of why he wanted a skull from a specific death date.
Nor did I want to know, if I was being honest.
“This is messed up, Princess, you know that, right? There has to be an easier way for us to find out where they’re hiding Hank.”
“Maybe, but would we find out in time?” I challenged.
We both knew a clock was ticking on his brother’s life. The sooner we figured out where he was the better our chances of saving him.
Wilder had no immediate response for this question, which spoke volumes. The precious little time we had left was already starting to run out.
“You ready for this?” I asked.
“As much as I’ll ever be. Aren’t you going to tell me to let you do the talking or something?”
I laughed, a whoosh of pure amusement escaping my lungs and releasing some of the tension I hadn’t realized I was holding inside me. It felt good, no matter how inappropriate it was.
“Just…don’t let anything surprise you, okay?”
“Sweetheart, you should see my poker face.” He winked.
Maybe. As long as we weren’t playing the strip variety.
We navigated out of the hallway to a small roped-off set of stairs that was too narrow for people to pass each other going up and down. A tall woman with her hair in a slicked-back auburn ponytail eyed Wilder and me as we approached.
“Did Jimmy check your ID?” She pretended she didn’t care about the answer.
“Yup.” No human would have noticed, but I’d seen her nostrils flare as we approached. She didn’t smell like a wolf to me. Definitely something in the big cat family, though I often had trouble telling the difference between leopard and jaguar. It didn’t matter. She knew what we were, which was enough to get you a pass to the VIP section where Cain resided.
