Hell's Warrior

by Jaye Roycraft

  “But why would they even think you raped her? Jesus, Cade, you weren’t fucking her, were you?”

  He sighed. “Vampires have never been known to be chaste creatures.”

  “Well, I know that . . . but the mayor?”

  What could he say? “Shut up.” He had no answer, and besides, he wanted to hear what the news channels were saying about him. In the actual reporting of the story, he wasn’t identified by name, “because he hasn’t been officially charged yet,” the reporters so magnanimously stated. But moments later, the commentators interviewed their panel of experts, and Cade’s name was volleyed back and forth like a tennis ball.

  The incessant ringing of his cell phone vied with the drivel from the screen. He sat down on the sofa and tossed the phone at her. “Here. You want to be useful? Screen the calls. If it’s a blocked number, it’s probably a cop. Don’t answer those.”

  She caught the phone, looking surprised, but when it next rang, she took her assignment seriously. “Blocked.”

  He nodded, listening to a panelist billed as “Chicago’s top political analyst.” “The leader of Chicago’s night-person community, Che Kincade, has always avoided the media spotlight, apparently subscribing to the old adage that Chicagoans can forgive and forget private sins, but public shenanigans are remembered in the collective consciousness forever.”

  Fool. The man doesn’t know a thing about me.

  “Cade, it’s Thor,” said Red.

  “Give it to me.”

  She handed him the phone. “Cade.”

  “Look, I know you didn’t do it. What I don’t understand is why your faith in me is so much less than mine in you.”

  Faith. It was a strange word for a vampire to say. “The cops were right behind you.”

  “They must have followed me from the club. If you would have told me what was going on, I might have been aware of the possibility of a tail and done something about it.”

  “There wasn’t time for explanations. I simply needed you to obey an order.”

  There was a pause, and Cade could feel his tyro’s irritation in the absence of words.

  “Yeah, well, I did. And for my trouble I got arrested and held for nearly the whole night.”

  Cade had expected that much would happen. “What did you tell them?”

  “What could I tell them? Nothing.”

  He smiled. “See? It was good you knew nothing.”

  The momentary silence on the other end begged to differ.

  “So what are you going to do now?” asked Thor.

  “Find the person who killed Deborah.”

  Thor laughed. “And how are you going to do that? You’ve alienated everyone who might have helped you.”

  “There’s always a path, brother.”

  “What did you do to Red?”

  “Nothing. She’s alive and well and she’ll stay that way.”

  Thor made no effort to stem a long sigh. “So what do you want me to do?”

  “I have three names for you—Kurt Koslik, Benno Stammler, and Ian Doyle. One of Deborah’s aides told me they’re all likely to run in the special election. Find out everything you can about all three, and dig deep. You’re in charge now. Keep the club running, but delegate the paperwork to Salt. You take care of this assignment for me, understand?” Perhaps a little of Thor’s frustration would be mollified by the additional responsibility.

  “Sure. I’ll call you when I have something.” Thor ended the call.

  Red, who had sat close enough to hear the phone conversation, scooted even closer. “Why didn’t you tell Thor I was your alibi?”

  He fingered her hair, already missing the red locks that had been so much a part of her personality. “You’re safer this way.”

  She reached her hand up to stroke the stubble on his face. “I didn’t know Native Americans could grow beards.”

  “My father was white.” It was a fact he’d shared only once, but it didn’t seem to matter now.

  “Well, you’re still beautiful, but it makes you look very different. More human. I guess that’s a good thing right now.”

  Beautiful. He’d always known he was beautiful. Men, women, vampires and humans alike had told him with the offerings of their bodies and blood as much as their words that his black hair, full lips, and sculpted cheekbones were irresistible. His looks had been a gift, giving him anyone he’d ever wanted, but his beauty had also been a thief, at times making him lazy and frustrated. When one had everything, what more was there? When everything was given, how could he learn to work? It was one of the curses of his kind, and he knew that. But sometimes he hated to hear the word. “Don’t call me that, Red.”

  “Human?”

  He smiled. That, he didn’t mind. Up until twenty years ago his survival had depended on his looking human. “Beautiful.”

  She blushed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply you’re feminine or anything like that.”

  “That’s not it. I’ll explain it to you some time.”

  She frowned. Apparently it was beyond a woman’s comprehension to understand that beauty wasn’t a god to be worshipped. “I don’t understand why you don’t trust Thor.”

  He was glad for the change of subject, but he wasn’t sure he could explain that to her either. She was so young, so innocent for all her brash words and streetwalking ways. “I’m master, and he’s student. It’s a straight line relationship—subject and object.” He disentangled his hand from hers and pointed to himself and then her to illustrate. “He’s young. He hasn’t grown enough to be part of the circle. He and I may never achieve that level. When he was a suckling, I looked into his eyes and saw that he was hungry to learn. Now when I look at him I see the seeds of challenge.”

  Her gaze crawled over his face, and he felt himself harden in response.

  “I don’t believe you have a circle,” she whispered. “You’re too . . . aloof.”

  Aloof. She made it sound like a mannerism he choose to affect, but he’d been different from those around him his whole life. “I was born to a purpose. Does that make me aloof? So be it. There have been those in my circle. Some have died. Some have moved on.” In any case, aloofness served his purpose. It shielded everyone and everything he cared about.

  The sound of his name from the TV turned their heads to the screen again.

  “How much is really known about this Che Kincade, Al? I think it’s fair to say that many humans view doyens as the ultimate spin doctors of our time.”

  “Fair or not, Chris, it is indeed a perception held by many. Kincade seems to fancy himself a celebrity. On his home turf in Lincoln Park he promotes his nightclub, Noctule, and puts on quite a show. When exposure doesn’t suit his purpose, he shuns the paparazzi like a Hollywood bad boy.”

  Fucking media. He’d never wanted them to know anything about him with good reason. If anyone was a spin doctor, it was the so-called experts and analysts that seemed to breed and run amok in the limelight of the cable news channels like cockroaches in the filth of a slum.

  The phone rang in his lap. She reached down and picked it up. “It’s Thor again.” Her eyebrows rose in question.

  He held out his hand, and she slapped the phone into his palm.

  “What now?” he answered.

  “I have more news for you. But if you’d rather not hear it, forget I called.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “I got a tip from a vamp in the police department. The cops have a series of raids planned on the vamp clubs. Ostensibly it’s to check for ordinance violations, but my source thinks it’s an excuse to search the clubs for either you or someone who can furnish your whereabouts. Vamphasia is first on the list.”

  Shit. Phryne hated cops more than she hated him, and her club operated on the outskirts of compliance with
the law and far beyond the border of human moral standards. As a vampire, he couldn’t care less. As doyen, Phryne and her club were a powder keg waiting to rip apart the peace he’d patched together. “Stupid bitch. I told her she was asking for trouble.”

  “I’m going over there to warn her,” said Thor.

  “No! I don’t want you caught in the crossfire.”

  “You left me in charge. Well, I’m not going to let Phryne be a sacrifice to the chaos you’ve created.” Dead air followed.

  “Son of a fucking bitch!” There was that loss of control again. It was a bad sign.

  “What happened?”

  “Vamphasia’s going to be raided by the cops. It’s a ploy to search the clubs for me. Thor’s on his way there now.”

  “I’ve only been there once. It’s a little hardcore for me. I like to donate blood, but I heard they have rooms upstairs for S&M and fetishes. I’m not into all that stuff.”

  He ran upstairs to the bedroom. “We’re going. If you want to change clothes, you have two minutes.”

  “Cade!” His name followed him up the stairs. “You can’t. If what you say is true, it’s just what the cops want you to do.”

  He changed into a black shirt and black jeans. “I’m not going to let Thor swing in the wind for my problems.”

  “You left him at the mercy of the cops at my flat.”

  “Cops making raids have a completely different mindset.” He’d seen enough raids in the Levee to know the ferocity and brutality cops on a raid were capable of. He slipped on the knife sheath with Gravedigger.

  Red pulled on her boots, a red mini-skirt, and a red lace push-up bra. She topped it off with a black lace see-through blouse that hid nothing. “If you want me to look right, give me a minute or two to put on some makeup.”

  Impatience rumbled in his throat, but he nodded, knowing she was right. If they didn’t look the part, they’d stand out.

  Fifteen minutes later they were caught in the evening snarl of Uptown’s entertainment mecca. Once upon a time the Aragon Ballroom ruled and Al Capone patronized the Green Mill Lounge, but now it was the Midnight Theater, Liquid Lines, and the new jewel, Vamphasia. Cade parked the Chevy three blocks from the club, and they wove through the sidewalk traffic like any other pair of clubbers looking for a place to numb their pain for the night. But Cade was far from numb, expanding his senses over his surroundings like a net, feeling for anyone or anything that looked or smelled wrong. Or like a cop. Tonight they were pretty much one and the same.

  At the club entrance he hooked Red’s neck with his arm and drew her close. “Stay by me, and follow my lead.”

  She nodded, and they entered the grandeur of Vamphasia. Like Noctule, the club catered to humans, not vampires, but unlike his own club, which sported décor stark in its simplicity, Vamphasia was as ornate as a Faberge egg. The floor was marble, its veinal pattern both beautiful and unsubtle, and mosaics and murals covered the walls with color, design, and figures from the past. Chandeliers brightened the rich colors of blue, gold, and burgundy and left no shadows to lurk in. People came to Vamphasia to be seen, and seen they were. Bodies twisted on the dance floor like seaweed in a great body of water, flowing with the music, yet rooted to the marble.

  The music throbbed, a neo-Celtic wail of love and tragedy, but the dancers always seemed slightly out of sync, as if they moved more to the requiems in their own minds than to the club music. Cade held Red’s hand and led her across the floor, avoiding any of the undead hired help who might recognize him. He saw neither Thor nor Phryne. The rooms upstairs were invitation only, and Cade couldn’t access them without giving his identity away, so they remained downstairs, within sight of the entrance, at the fringe of the dancers.

  He and Red joined them, swaying as they swayed, but only going through the motions. While the others writhed in response to whatever internal whip drove them, Cade focused only on those around him. They were all mortals, would-be vampires, dressed in fashion befitting the change of season—some, like Red, in the lace of summer, some in the velvet of winter. Two hundred heartbeats filled his ears, their collective throbbing more harmonized than the bodies those hearts kept alive.

  The couple beside them was clinched more in some blood sharing ritual than in dancing. The male burrowed his face against his partner’s neck, and the woman threw her head back as though she were in the throes of passion. When the man came up for air, a trickle of blood glistened on the woman’s neck. It was like watching children play house.

  His gaze shifted, and he saw Phryne enter and step through the crowd like a queen among her subjects. She was perfect and beautiful, a dark Deborah clone but taller, with a black pageboy almost long enough to be Cleopatra-length. She was slim, wearing a red gown that clung to her thin body like a second skin. She had the fangs. All that was missing were the scales.

  Cade knew she had an initiation room upstairs and that several times per night members of her coven transformed a mortal into a suckling. Technically, it was against human law, but, like so many of the so-called night person statutes passed after Hell, it was unenforceable. Sucklings never filed complaints, for they were too caught up in the blood lust of their new existence to care about such things, and surviving family members usually kept quiet for fear of reprisals. From what Cade had learned of Phryne’s operations, most of the initiates were willing participants, culled from those patrons downstairs who made their wishes known in no uncertain terms. But Cade also knew that Phyrne’s coven delighted in initiating the unwilling to the world of the undead. In the days before Hell, such practices were more commonplace, but vampirism had a public face now, and mortal reprisal against one vampire meant trouble for all the undead.

  Phryne must have caught his scent, for she turned his way, and after a moment, locked her gaze with his. Anger uglied her perfect features for an instant, then she straightened her bitch mask and made her way toward him.

  “Get out, Cade, and take your whore with you. You’ll find no sanctuary in my house.”

  Cade felt Red’s warmth behind him, reaching for his hand. He took it. Cade rarely wasted time in hating other vamps, but she was worth the brief exertion of energy. “Don’t flatter yourself, Phryne. I wouldn’t ask for your help if your hole was the last haven on earth.”

  Her pale eyes were like blue phlegm, ugly and watery. “Get out of my house. And I hope they catch you and put you in a cell so deep and dank . . .”

  He cut her off. “I’m here in support of my tyro, who, for some reason beyond any comprehension, sees fit to warn you.”

  “Warn me? About what?”

  “That the cops are on their way now to raid this dump.”

  Phryne’s upper lip hitched in a snarl, displaying less than dainty fangs. “This is your doing. You bedded your way to peace with the mortals, and in prostituting yourself, you’ve castrated every vampire in this city. We should be the strong ones, not them!”

  Ignorant, stupid bitch. She knew nothing about what it took to keep peace. “I created an environment in which we can do almost anything we want without consequence, but you’re careless and sloppy. You go too far. This raid was in the works before the mayor was killed.”

  They both turned to the front entrance as Cade sensed his tyro’s presence. Thor spotted them almost as quickly and worked his way through the crowd to join them. Thor blinked at Cade’s short hair and stubble, but all things considered, one blink wasn’t bad.

  “The cops are about two minutes behind me.”

  Phryne blinked. Twice. “This is your noble, selfless warning? Two minutes’ notice?”

  Thor didn’t back down. “Consider yourself lucky you have that. They’ve got raids set for all the vamp clubs. Vamphasia was at the top of the list. Personally I don’t care if the cops spoil your evening, but I wanted your vamp help to have a chance to get out before they get busted
for all your dancehall violations.”

  Applause, applause. Phryne slithered off toward the bar.

  Thor shrugged. “I lied. We don’t even have two minutes. The cops are right behind me. And I’m sure I was tailed from Noctule. You need to get out of here, now.”

  “No. We’re here. We wait.” But as he spoke the words, Cade pulled Red into the sea of dancers. Thor, as befitting a good warrior in training, drifted in the opposite direction to lure any pursuit away from his master.

  True to Thor’s word, two uniformed officers entered the club, followed by a trio of suits that smelled of cop. It was a combination of sweat, chewing tobacco, and Lubalox, a lubricant used on Claws, the vamp-killing bullets cops carried. It was a subtle odor, but Cade knew it. The uniforms looked wary, their hands resting on the butts of their weapons, but the trio looked like sharks waiting for dinner. Cade also knew their type. Intel, probably. The Goon Squad.

  “Cade . . .” The word Red breathed was full of fear.

  He squeezed her hand, hoping she’d shut up. A few clubbers turned to stare at the new arrivals, but most ignored the cops. Cops were a common enough sight, even when they were somewhere you didn’t want them to be.

  Phryne strode up to the uniforms like a model strutting down a runway. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. The music was still playing, but Cade’s hearing was excellent. Besides, Phryne’s voice had a way of cutting through noise like feedback from a microphone.

  “Tavern check,” answered one of the uniforms. “You the owner?”

  “I am. This is private property.”

  “We have a right to check the premises, and you know it.”

  Stupid, stupid bitch. If Phyrne didn’t back down, there’d be trouble.

  The uniforms started moving toward the first bartender, asking for licenses. Two of the goons started threading their way through the mass of bodies on the dance floor, and the third took up a position near the entrance.

  Phryne took a step closer to the cop nearest her. “You get out now.”