“Unfortunately,” I said, stiffly. He was the current Kommandant of Brighton Beach, and a juiced up, spoiled, lazy asshole.
“Petro comes in with his guys to work out. They were talking about you with me and a bunch of other big bruisers.” The corner of Zane’s mouth twitched into a rueful smile. “You know, just in case anyone happened to want to do business with you. They say you killed a lot of your friends recently.”
“I’m sure they say a lot of things. That doesn’t mean they’re true.” A flash of anger spiked through me, burying itself like a thorn. I glanced back, looking for eavesdroppers. The girl with the shakes was throwing up now, and one of her male friends was gone. The other was too busy holding her hair out of the way to care about us. “Petro is the last man who should be blaming others for betraying him.”
“Did you screw them over?”
“The Organizatsiya screwed me so badly that my family is dead.” I rolled my shoulders, trying to loosen them. Between the cold and the stress, my back felt like it was made of planks. “I was trying to get out of the life. Before I could, Mr. Yaroshenko decided I’d reached my expiration date and reneged on our contracts.”
Zane licked his teeth while he digested that, patient as a golem. To my mild surprise, he seemed to understand the word ‘renege’, which was unusual enough to be interesting. Nuanced vocabulary wasn’t usually a high priority for guys who earned their living by fighting in a cage.
Finally, Zane rubbed his face with the back of his hand and sighed. “Damn… I seriously can’t believe Talya went to the fucking Russian mob for help. Isn’t that like a bad stereotype?”
“The Bratva have their good and bad,” I replied, with a shrug. “More bad than good. But like all things, there are reasons men like me exist.”
“Because an ethnic neighborhood just isn’t a real neighborhood until it has a protection racket, right?” Zane quirked a brow.
“Because people do bad things regardless of whether the Bratva exists or not,” I replied. “And the lines between business and crime are often blurred.”
Slowly, Zane nodded. “Fair enough. You still got Talya’s card with you?”
Without a word, I passed it to him, still warm from my pocket. He took it and read over the back, as Big Ron the Barkeep had done. “Why do you want to help her?”
The question caught me off guard. “Why? Why not? She had a difficult question, and I can provide her with what she needs. I need work… so I can’t claim sentimentality or chivalry, if that’s what you’re fishing for.”
“Pragmatism’s fine. It’s an honest reason.” Zane sighed, cracking his hands, his elbows, and his shoulders in short succession. "Come on… I’ll walk you into the clubhouse, but I better not regret this.”
The clapboard house loomed large across the yard, but I dug my heels into the gravel and crossed my arms. “Wait. Before I go anywhere, I want to know what I’m being brought into. Give me something solid, starting with some info on the club.”
Zane glanced at me with those slow, pale eyes. “I’m Road Sergeant of the Twin Tigers M.C, also known as the Big Cat Crew.”
“Show me your colors.” I motioned to his featureless black jacket.
Without a word, Zane zipped it open and shrugged it off. He had a pistol in a police-style shoulder holster, and a vest and t-shirt on under that. He turned to show me the back of his vest. It was taken up by a dust-worn patch, a pair of Chinese-style tigers mirroring each other within the confines of an elaborate egg-shaped frame. The lettering was plain by contrast: ‘TWIN TIGERS M.C’. Underneath that was a much smaller patch, the same snarling tiger badge on the front of Ron’s vest. The badges I expected to be there were there. He was a One-Percenter, a veteran, a mechanic, and a Sergeant in the club.
While I studied his colors, Zane looked back over his shoulder. “You’re meeting the Captain and the Prez tonight in that house over there, along with some others who are…” he paused, searching for the right words. “A more law-abiding set of folks. We’re having a cross-factional meeting tonight over some bad business. Talya’s our link between the people who are representing tonight. She’s got one foot in the Tigers, one foot in the Fires. We’re hoping to bring her on into the club soon.”
“A woman?”
Zane shrugged. “This is 1991. We’re an equal opportunity club.”
That did not put me at ease. Zane had the kind of straight-backed energy and bearing I associated with policemen, not bikers. I’d pick him as an undercover cop from his vocabulary alone. From what I was reading off his vest, he was an ex-soldier who’d seen action in the Gulf War, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I'd been set up. “What about cops?”
“A couple of the Four Fires guys are cops, but they’re off-duty tonight. You know what I mean?”
Cops were never really ‘off-duty’. I was beginning to get a tension headache. “I see. How do I know you aren’t on the Yaroshenko payroll?”
“You kidding me? The Prez would kill me.” He turned back to face me, his expression inscrutable. “I mean, we aren’t out there doing charity rides for kids, but we aren’t exactly gunning down people in the street, neither. Talya bringing someone like you into the Club is worse for us than it is for you.”
“Why would you say that?” My mouth ticced. I was fairly certain that Zane could crush my head between his hands.
“Because the Russians are good at vanishing people, and we just lost a lot of ours.” For the first time, something other than calm, self-contained wariness showed on Zane’s face. He looked… upset. “So as far as they need to know, you’re Rex the Spook. Just Rex.”
I nodded, plucking at the cuffs of my gloves. “Fine with me.”
The man comforting the tweaker girl got up to his feet when Zane strolled up, giving him a nod that was returned as the huge man ducked for the door that led into the garage. This first room was a bar with a pool table and a jukebox, and here was where we found the bikers. A mixed crowd of men and women in dirty denim and leather lounged, laughed, bickered, threw darts, drank and played pool. The interior was mismatched and second-hand, everything handmade or scrounged. The air was thick with smoke, not all of it tobacco, but it was solid and comfortable. Cases behind the bar displayed militaria, photos, and motorbike parts. The Tiger theme was omnipresent. Banners, posters, patches, and murals featured the club crest. Pictures of tigers and other big cats hung from the walls. The bar was in a corner of the room. Beside it was a red door with a big hammer hole right through it and a modified road sign that read: Warning – Private Property. Keep out unless you have Really Big Boobs.”
Zane made for it, pushed it open, and beckoned me to follow. It seemed that the big boobs rule was flexible.
Shoulders hunched, I followed him as he headed down a carpeted hallway. I’d come armed: my knife was in a pocket, the hilt solid in my hand when I jammed them down to reassure myself that it was at hand. “These cops… what are they assigned to?”
“Assigned to?”
“Unit or division,” I replied. “Homicide, beat cops, FBI…?”
Zane paused for a moment. “Aaron’s a Police Chaplain stationed in Hempstead. Ayashe is FBI. She supports an Arcane Support Unit in Harlem.”
I jerked to a stop. “Wait. A Vigiles agent?”
Zane waved it off. “Don’t worry about it. Like I said, she’s off-duty. She knows that we’re expecting a spook. It’s why we’re all here.”
Easy for him to say. I’d spent my adult life inventing ways to stay out of sight and out of mind of the Vigiles Magicarum, the recently-formed branch of the FBI dedicated to hunting down and putting away ‘uncontained supernatural threats’. The agency wasn’t even ten years old, but they’d been hammering away at the magical population of the city ever since they set up practice. They were the worst combination of governmental gray-faces and religious fanatics, because the biggest organizations with the biggest stake in putting away people like me were the Fed and the Churches – all of them.
In July of this year, me and half the senior management from the Yaroshenko Organization and the LaGuetta Cosa Nostra were involved in the magical fire-bombing of a casino in Atlantic City. The Manellis had sent in one of the strongest and most genuinely obnoxious mages I’d ever met to take us out in revenge for a murder we didn’t commit. The Vigiles had been part of that investigation. We’d gotten away clean despite the body-count, but if the Vigiles had any way of identifying me after the fact… well.
There was only one peppermint left in the tin. I got it out and split it under my teeth, working the muscles of my jaws as Zane knocked on a closed door, opened it, and motioned me into the lion’s den. I cocked my jaw, rolled my neck, and went inside without a word, every inch the street-hardened wizard.
GOD-dammit. I really wish I’d had time to buy that gun.
Chapter 9
The room beyond looked like a well-managed squat, clean but improvised. I entered into a cloud of mingled cigarette and pipe smoke and a murmur of conversation, which died abruptly as Zane stepped in behind me and closed the door. Talya was there, dressed down in a t-shirt and blue jeans, along with an odd assortment of people who gathered around on sofas and armchairs, dining chairs and bean-bags. By clothing and disposition, I was able to roughly divide the room into four. The Twin Tigers crew were obvious enough in their black leather and denim uniforms. Facing them were a rag-tag collection of suburbanites and cubicle farmers, people who looked as uncomfortable here as I felt. A pair of intense men in different gang colors to the Tigers occupied a small sofa together.
On the Tigers’ side, I caught the eye of an older Asian woman in a spiked and armored leather jacket that looked like it had come off a Mad Max film set. She leaned nonchalantly against the wall beside a sinewy, tense-looking crewcut bruiser, a man who looked equal part Bruce Willis and Stallone. His hair was graying at the temples, but he had a muscular soldier’s build, that peculiar lock-jawed toughness that only came from protracted military service. Flanking them was a sly, button-faced Latino man with very strong cheekbones and a very weak chin. The President, his old lady, and the Captain, I assumed.
The two plainclothes cops sat apart from the rest. The Chaplain was a fit, handsome, hard-planed man with a thin moustache, smiling as he rubbed his thumb over his ring finger. Beside him, a powerfully built black woman lounged in a crisp skirtsuit and open-collared white shirt, her hair a short fall of neat rope braids bound back in a high ponytail. She was effortlessly charismatic, with the air of royalty. The Vigiles Agent, I was willing to bet.
The nervous norms were positioned around the largest armchair, where a small, tawny-skinned man in a cream and white suit was smoking a pipe, one ankle crossed over the other knee. He could have been fifty-six or six hundred: ageless, narrow-jawed, hook-nosed, with small eyes and big lips. He was not attractive, but he commanded his space with the confidence of a leader. As we entered, he looked up at us, but said nothing.
Talya stood up from her beanbag as silence thickened the small room. She had changed out of her work clothes, but neither she or the man in the big armchair fitted the biker clubhouse vibe. “Rex! You came!”
“I wouldn’t refuse your call, skvorets.” When she came up to us, I patted her arm and kissed her politely on the cheek. Other Slavs thought my greetings cold and impersonal, so brief as to be rude, but our apparent intimacy made a few of the others in the room sit up uncomfortably. Talya was more demonstrative towards Zane. She hugged him, and he hugged her back hard enough to pick her up off the floor.
“Hey kitten,” he said. There was real affection in his voice.
I looked back to the biker crew. The Asian woman in the heavy jacket had stood up from the wall. She was tiny but whip-strung, her dark eyes burning with frenetic energy. Her dry chopped hair and bony hands reminded me of Vera, and a nasty knot formed in the pit of my belly.
“So, now we are all accounted for.” The man in the armchair spoke up. “Talya, Zane. Can you introduce us?”
In the pause that followed, one of the young gang-bangers rose to his feet. He was a strikingly handsome man, his skin so dark that it caught white and blue highlights. His hair was braided in tight cornrows, and his voice was surprisingly soft and melodic. “I am Michael and this is Karim. We are Elders of the Pathrunners. I am here to arbitrate this meeting.”
Talya bobbed her head anxiously as Michael sat down. “So, yes… Rex is the man who did me the reading. Rex, this is John Spotted Elk, head of the Four Fires Community,” Talya motioned to the man in the armchair, who lifted a hand in greeting. “And this is Jenner, the Twin Tigers-”
“Twin Tigers Motorcycle Club President,” the woman in the spiked jacket interrupted her, pushing off from the wall. Her voice was hard, loud, with a strong Californian accent. She strode over to me, extending a hand. “Jenny Tran, but call me Jenner. Nice to meet you, Rex. This here is my Road Captain, Mason, and my other Sarge, Duke. You already met Zane.”
“I have.” I shook, and found she had a pleasantly strong, confident grip. Something here was odd. A female leader in the biker community wasn’t just rare: it was impossible. With the exception of lesbian separatists, motorcycle clubs were notoriously sexist.
I swept back over the room, settling on the pair of cops. They didn’t look nearly as happy to see me. “Thank you. I admit I wasn’t expecting a convocation.”
An uncomfortable pause followed. Then Talya spoke up, her voice high and over-bright. “So, that’s all I had to contribute to this tonight. Rex is a sorcerer, maybe. Any questions?”
“Many,” I replied.
“No doubt. Let me start with one, Rex.” The man she had introduced as head of the Four Fires, whatever that was, waved his hand like a magician. John Spotted Elk was a little effete, I thought, as unlikely a leader as Jenny Tran. His body was soft, his voice was reedy, a little too high-pitched for synesthetic comfort, and heavily accented. He was nut-brown and had the kind of stereotypically hawkish face I associated with Plains Indians. His accent wasn’t like any accent I’d ever heard before, almost affected. “You may be a street mage… but are you a Phitometrist?”
A small thrill passed down the back of my neck, and I turned to face him. “Yes.”
“Do you know what that means?” He arched an eyebrow.
“A mage who has undergone Shevirah,” I replied. “Though your terminology may vary, Mister Spotted-Elk.”
He laughed. “Either call me John or call me Spotted Elk. I get enough Mister-this and Mister-that at the museum. Your answer’s good, though. What does he know about our dilemma already, Talya?”
“Hardly anything,” Talya replied. She was fidgeting, still standing close to Zane. “I didn’t think you’d, ah, want me to say anything much.”
“Yes, so it would be very nice if you could enlighten me.” My accent bled through again. With nothing but natural light to guide my cycles and far less coffee than what I’d drunk at home, I was used to sleeping with the sunset and rising with the dawn. It was way past bed time.
“Wait.” The black woman leaned forwards, hands planted palm-down on her open knees. “John, we agreed to screen an operative together. Who the fuck is this guy?”
“’This guy’ has a name.” I crossed my arms and looked back at her. “And is listening to you talk about him like he’s not here.”
Spotted Elk sighed. “Ayashe-”
“We agreed to hire a freelancer, not someone one of our youngest decided to pull off the street. I want references.” Ayashe thrust her jaw out as she spoke. This lady had a mean, dark eye.
“Sure thing. The last guy we chose by committee did just great,” Mason said. His voice was deep and raspy. “The one that fucking disappeared.”
Ayashe’s flare faded into sullen embers. She sat back, scowling. Mason and Jenner both smirked, squinting their eyes like smug cats. Wonderful. They couldn’t even agree amongst themselves.
“Everyone, please,” Michael said.
I crossed my arms,
and jerked my head towards the door. “Look. I didn’t come here to be kicked around like a football. Either you people give me the short of it, or I’m walking out of here.”
Spotted Elk held up a hand before anyone else could say anything. The room simmered down to a reluctant silence. “Rex, did you read about the Wolf Grove Group Home in the papers? Two murders and a mass kidnapping, nearly two weeks ago to the day. The eighth, to be precise.”
I had read about it, in passing, on my daily scrounged copy of the Times. Even by New York standards, it had been a big deal: a wealthy couple murdered in their beds up in the nice part of north New York, and all the children at the home were unaccounted for. It hadn’t meant much to me at the time. “I remember.”
“Mmph.” Spotted Elk drew on his pipe. “Wolf Grove was run by Dru and Lily Ross. They were esteemed and valued members of our communities, and united us across our various cultural, ethical and moral divisions. I suppose you wonder exactly what it is we do?”
“I know what bikers do,” I replied. “And I know what goes on in museums and police stations, but I’m more wondering what you all are.”
The small sounds of the room quieted, like spooked birds falling still in a forest clearing. Jenner glanced at Mason, then at Zane. He shrugged.
Spotted Elk raised a brow. “Was that a guess or an inference?”
“A deduction. Phitometry isn’t a word I often hear thrown around. I didn’t know anything about it until I met something very personal and very ancient.” Tiny details of Spotted Elk's body language fit together into a strange whole. His nostrils were flaring like a deer’s. His neck was long and slender, and there was something in his mannerisms that made my teeth ache and my mouth water. Strange feelings to have, in the presence of a man one has only just met… but then again, I hadn’t killed anyone for a while.
“Fair enough.” Spotted Elk spread his hands. “I’ll come clean, ay? We’re shapeshifters. Every man and woman in this room, save for Aaron.”
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