Club Eternity: The Ninth Jonathan Shade Novel

by Gary Jonas

  “Is the sun up yet?” I asked. “It has to be about time for you to climb back into your coffin.”

  “One night in 1927, Marina and I drove into the city to meet some friends, and a spirit slipped into her as she was climbing out of the car and took her away from me. You were in New York the night Marina was possessed and disappeared.”

  “It wasn't me.”

  “Her body was taken by a member of the Vanguard, and I have it on good authority that you were the one who called them.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He pointed at me. “The spirit who took Marina told me your name. I commanded him to do so, but when I commanded him to release her, he was pulled away.”

  “He?”

  “Male spirit,” Victor said.

  “Did he feel up your wife when he took over?”

  “Jonathan!” Brenda said. “Show a little sympathy.”

  “I'm fresh out of sympathy,” I said. “And I hear footsteps outside, so Kelly and Esther are back. So much for getting laid.”

  The front door opened and Kelly stepped inside. Esther popped into view in the middle of the room. She looked solid, which meant anyone could see or hear her. When she wants to be stealthy, she goes translucent and then only I can see her.

  “We're back,” Esther said. “Oh, you have company!”

  Victor stared at Esther. “A ghost!”

  “You got a problem with that?” Esther asked.

  “No,” he said, rising. He faced Kelly. “Hello, Kelly.”

  “Who are you?” Kelly asked setting a shopping bag on the table beside the door.

  “I'm Victor Pavlenco, and as it happens, I'm friends with the other Kelly Chan who currently resides in Denver, Colorado.”

  I bolted to my feet. “You know the other Kelly?”

  “Indeed I do.”

  “Oh shit,” I said. “We need to go. Now.”

  “What's wrong?” Brenda asked.

  “Victor just signed all our death warrants,” I said.

  He looked confused. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “The Men of Anubis are keeping tabs on the other Kelly, which means they know about you, which means they told the Vampire Council to send you.”

  “Just like I said.”

  “I thought the Council chose to send you.”

  “They did.”

  “Because the Men of Anubis specifically told them to assign this job to you. They can track you, which means they can find us. We need to get the hell out of Dodge right now, or we're dead.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The gondolier swept his large oar through the water of the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy and ferried us along on a private gondola ride. We'd agreed on a one hour tour, and I overpaid for the privilege, but it was worth it. By we, I mean Victor, Brenda, Kelly, and myself. Esther was there, too, but she didn't cost extra as the gondolier had no clue she was with us. The evening trip was supposed to include facts and trivia about the flat bottom gondola boats, and about the history of Venice. He was also supposed to point out the various attractions as we moved through the canals and neighborhoods. So yes, we saw St. Mark's Basilica, the Rialto Bridge, Doge's Palace and the rest, but the gondolier didn't speak a word about them because I paid him extra to keep quiet and let us talk.

  We'd all taken separate routes to get to Italy, and two days had passed since our conversation in Cozumel. I wasn't taking any chances. The Men of Anubis would have to come at me physically, and directly.

  We'd left the condo within ten minutes of Kelly's arrival, and we didn't see or talk to one another again until we connected at St. Mark's Square in Venice. Each of us now had a brand new burner phone and the first thing we did was exchange numbers so we could keep in touch.

  The next thing we did was board a gondola so if the Men of Anubis turned up, they'd find it difficult to get to us. I was most worried about Brenda because she was the youngest, and would be the easiest to erase from history. If the Men of Anubis were aware of her, they didn't see her as a threat because she made the rendezvous without any trouble.

  Now as we floated down the Grand Canal by moonlight, I wrapped one arm around Brenda's shoulders and faced Kelly and Victor in the boat. Kelly kept her eye on the gondolier. Yes, we'd hired him at the last minute, but he didn’t speak much English, and that oar would make a perfectly good weapon. If he made any sudden moves, Kelly would be on him in a heartbeat.

  “Looks like we pulled it off,” Brenda said. “We're all still here.”

  “Time can change around us, my dear,” Victor said. “If they mess with your beginning, you'll just disappear on us because time is layered. As we have lives that have extended for centuries, well I have anyway, and these two--three if you count the ghost--are artifacts in time, we'll know if time changes around us provided those changes are big or have a direct effect on us.”

  “And depending on when they make the change,” I said. “I don't think they'll try that, though.”

  “Why not?” Brenda asked.

  “Because,” Kelly said, “Jonathan and I aren't supposed to exist. If they come after us, they have to do it themselves or send physical assassins. They can't tinker with time to eliminate us. We aren't supposed to be here.”

  “How did that happen?” Victor asked.

  I shrugged. “Let's just say the plan to cast us into the void didn't work.” I didn't point out the fact that they had a short span between 1927 and 1929 where they could still find and kill us because Victor didn't need to know that. Kelly and I were separated at that point, which meant it would be a lot of extra work. So it was easier for them to come at us now, and wouldn't require rewriting history again.

  He nodded. “Very well.”

  “So what do we do?” Kelly asked.

  “Victor here has forced my hand. I didn't want to do anything.”

  “Isn't it possible they don't know about us yet?” she asked.

  “They sent Victor to kill us,” I said.

  “So back to my question.”

  I considered it. “If we're going to take on gods of time, we're going to need help. They're too powerful.”

  “You'll need immortals on your side,” Victor said.

  “So you mean recruit vampires like you?”

  He shook his head. “Most vampires would never sign on to such a suicidal mission. We're too easy to kill. I've heard that there are weapons capable of slaying the gods. But some of them are mythological rather than historical. And all of them are lost or hidden.”

  “Tucked away in the Vatican,” I said. “Or some warehouse with the lost Ark of the Covenant.”

  “You laugh, but that movie is closer to the truth than you realize. Hitler did try to gather as many occult relics as possible, including the Ark. The Ark exists. And it's dangerous. It's also guarded by assassin monks in an Ethiopian monastery, and would likely destroy us should we try to use it.”

  “I'd rather not die, so what else you got?”

  “I don't. But I know of someone who does. We need to get in touch with a man named Damon Nomad.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment to store the name in my head then stared at Victor. “The guy's name is a palindrome.”

  “It's not his real name.”

  “No shit.”

  “He likes it.”

  “Whatever. So where do we find him?”

  “He'll be at Club Eternity.”

  “A bar?”

  “More of an elite night club. It specializes in serving a unique clientele, primarily immortals, as you might have guessed from the name.”

  “And where is it?” I asked.

  “It moves around. The last time I went, it was in London.”

  “Is it still there?”

  He took out his phone and tapped on an app. “It's currently located in Tulsa, Oklahoma.”

  “I thought I told you to get a burner.”

  “Don't worry,” he said. “I stole this from someone at the airport.”

  “And you do
wnloaded an app to look up a place like Club Eternity?” I snatched the smart phone from him and tossed it into the Grand Canal.

  “Hey!”

  “A gathering place for immortals would be known by the Men of Anubis.”

  “They don't go there. Nobody likes them.”

  “Well, we have that in common,” Kelly said. “Shall we book flights to Tulsa?”

  “You can't all get in,” he said focusing on Brenda.

  “Why the hell not?” she asked.

  “Because of the cover charge for mortals.”

  “I've got plenty of money,” I said. “I'm not worried about the cost.”

  “It's not the financial aspect that you need to worry about. Any mortal who enters Club Eternity, pays with their soul.”

  “Maybe we'll just wait outside,” Brenda said.

  “You, the ghost, and I will definitely wait outside,” Victor said. He pointed at Kelly and me. “Those two will go in.”

  “Oh,” I said, “so we're supposed to give up our souls, but you're not?”

  “On the contrary,” Victor said. “You'll go in because you're both unattached aspects in time and that means that neither of you has a soul.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Tulsa, Oklahoma was not where I would have expected to find a bar filled with immortals. Club Eternity was tucked away in the basement of a downtown hotel. A brass banister led the way down steep steps into a dark alcove. Kelly and I descended and pushed through a glass door into a narrow red-bricked hallway. At the end of the hall, a sign read, Soma served here.

  A small silver placard was screwed into the bricks and when we got close, the letters swam around switching from hieroglyphs to kanji to squiggly little lines to the Greek alphabet revealing the words Club Eternity.

  “I guess this is it,” I said. I opened the door. “Ladies first.”

  “Very funny,” Kelly said. She stepped into the darkened alcove.

  I followed her and we found ourselves at a precipice that dropped into a mist. To our left, a black wall even with the door drove straight out and disappeared into the fog. On our right, we had a bit more room, but the black wall there also shot out into the haze. Jazz music played, but it sounded miles away. A podium shot up through the floor to stand before us, and simple man in gold robes looked down his nose at us.

  He studied us for a moment. Pulled back a bit, then came out from behind the counter. He had a large beak of a nose, and long flowing white hair. Whiskers sprouted in patches beneath his nostrils and lower lip as though he were trying in vain to grow a mustache and soul patch. His eyes, however, were the same gold as his robes, and while he was rail thin, he stood six foot eight and had to crane his neck forward to look at us.

  “Who's playing tonight?” I asked.

  He didn't answer. Instead, he walked around us, continuing to study us. He sniffed my hair, which was odd, and he bent over to look into Kelly's eyes.

  “I see you standing before me like twigs in the darkness,” the man said. His voice sounded like a screeched whisper, and goosebumps sprouted on my arms. “But I sense that you don't exist. And yet, your arrival pulled me from my slumber. You appear to be human mortals, but your souls are...”

  “Gone?” I asked.

  “They are there, but they are not yours. This is especially strange with you, young man, as your soul is hooked to your body by a silver thread, but that thread thinks it belongs there as it has taken on the genetic qualities of your host body. In her case, the soul is hers, but it also is not hers because it is currently in use elsewhere. I can feel it singing in the shadows.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “We have business inside.”

  “You do not belong here.”

  “We'll pay the cover.”

  “One cannot simply hand over souls to which one has no ownership, young man.”

  I pulled out a debit card. “Then name a price.”

  “This is highly irregular.”

  He stepped behind the podium, ran his hand across the top and the unit dropped away into the ether taking him with it and leaving us standing alone in a misty alcove.

  “That was weird,” I said, slipping the card back into my wallet.

  “Do we wait here?” Kelly asked.

  “I don't know. Is that really a drop-off or is there a floor under all that smoke?”

  Kelly kept her balance on her back foot and reached out with her other to tap the mist. Her foot went down into the smoke and she pulled back. “Nothing there. Or if so, that first step is a doozy.”

  “Maybe we should go back and talk to Victor,” I said. I turned to go back through the door, but there was only a blank wall behind me. I pushed on it. Solid stone. “I guess we wait.”

  “This could be a test,” Kelly said. “Maybe there's a stairwell going down into the mist, but we can't see it and the first step is a ways down.”

  “Yeah, I still think we should wait a few.”

  “The guy didn't say he was coming back.”

  “True, but I don't like the idea of trying to find steps where there might not be any. That could be a sheer cliff face for all we know.”

  “In a Tulsa hotel basement?”

  “Based on the way that podium appeared and the door disappeared, I think we're in a pocket dimension.”

  “Great,” Kelly said. “We aren't even in the world?”

  “It's a hypothesis.”

  “We can't go back and there's nothing on either side, so we have to go down into the mist.”

  “Grandpa Goldilocks might return.”

  Kelly turned to face me. “Take my hands and lower me down.”

  “I think this is a bad idea.”

  “Noted, but I'm not staying here.”

  I took her hands and centered my weight so I could lower her over the edge. Tendrils of smoke swirled around her. They felt cold on my hands as I went to one knee. Bending forward, I felt a strain in my back, but I kept hold of Kelly. I’d dropped her once a long time ago, and I was not about to do that again.

  “Nothing down here. Hang on, the wall is there. That's the corner. Take me to the right.”

  I swept her to the side and went all the way to the other wall.

  “That's the edge there too. The cliff face is smooth as silk. I can hear music in the distance, but I can't feel anything we can grab.”

  The podium shot up behind me and I about jumped out of my skin. Fortunately, I kept my grip on Kelly.

  “What are you doing?” a female voice asked.

  I pulled Kelly up. We rose and turned to face a woman who looked like a housewife from the fifties. Her hair and her dress made me think of Leave It to Beaver, but I didn't say anything about that because she held a glowing scimitar in one hand.

  “There's nothing there,” the woman said. “That cliff goes down twenty feet then shoots under us. If you step off the edge, you fall for all eternity.”

  “The void,” I said.

  “A void.”

  “Good advice. We'll avoid the void,” I said.

  Kelly nudged me.

  “Who are you?” the woman asked. She kept the scimitar at her side. “Landro couldn't get a read on you, and I must confess you baffle me as well. You're both mortal, yet you don't seem to exist.”

  “A blessing and a curse,” I said.

  “Which are you?” she asked. “The blessing or the curse?”

  “I'm Jonathan,” I said.

  “And I'm Kelly.”

  “We heard a great band is playing tonight,” I said, “and we wanted to check them out.”

  “We've enlisted some local talent,” the woman said. Mortals named Steve Pryor and Junior Markham, but they don't play until nine. You may check them out, as you say, another time. They play locally at various establishments open to mortals, though you'll want to attend one of Steve Pryor's events soon as his road is almost at its end due to an upcoming motorcycle accident.”

  “We'd like to check them out tonight.”

  “You ar
e incapable of paying the cover charge.”

  “I can pay in actual money,” I said. “Name your price.” I took out my debit card again.

  She snatched it from me and inserted it into a slot on the podium. She nodded. “Impressive. Thank you.”

  “Can I have my card back?”

  “I emptied your account.”

  “Lady, there was a hundred thousand dollars in that account.”

  “And now there's nothing. It's still not enough.” She raised the scimitar, and Kelly stepped between us, drawing her sword.

  “You should put down the blade,” Kelly said.

  The woman smiled. “My name is Dalina. You wish to cross blades with me?”

  “Anytime,” Kelly said.

  “Perhaps you should think twice about that.” She moved the glowing blade so it touched Kelly's sword. Her blade sliced through Kelly's with ease. Metal clanged on the floor.

  Kelly launched herself at Dalina, who caught Kelly by the throat and slammed her against the wall.

  “You're fast,” Dalina said. “I'm faster.”

  Kelly wrapped her legs around Dalina's throat and squeezed.

  I grabbed Dalina's sword arm and chopped at it with my fists trying to loosen her grip and to keep her from cutting Kelly apart.

  Dalina shoved me aside, slipped the scimitar into the scabbard at her waist then released Kelly's throat. Kelly didn't let go. Instead, she punched Dalina in the face several times, then twisted hard to the side. Dalina tried to pry Kelly off, but that wasn't going to happen.

  “Die, bitch,” Kelly said.

  “I'm immortal, and I don't need to breathe,” Dalina said. Her voice sounded squeezed, but her eyes held no pain. “And for the record, I wasn't going to hurt your Jonathan friend.”

  “You just pulled a scimitar for show?”

  “I was going to place it on his shoulder,” Dalina said. “It would not have cut or burned him. It would merely tell me whether or not he's worthy of admittance. For a hundred thousand dollars, it seemed I should give him something.”