Annnnnnd here was Trez “Latimer,” taking care of it anyway.
The humans in the crowd saw the Moor as simply one of them, just bigger and more aggressive. She knew the truth, however. That Shadow was far more dangerous than any of the Homo sapiens could have guessed. If he’d wanted to, he could have ripped their throats out in the blink of an eye… then thrown the carcasses on a spit over a fire, basted them for a couple of hours, and had them for dinner with an ear of corn and a bag of chips.
Shadows had a unique way of disposing of their enemies.
Tums, anyone?
As Trez’s bulk made an impression, the dynamic onstage changed instantly: Dipshit chippie took one look at him and appeared to forget the names of the two guys she’d whipped up into a tizzy. Meanwhile, the pair of boozing bozos cooled off a little, stepping back and reevaluating their situation.
Good plan—they were one second away from having it forcibly reevaluated for them.
Trez’s eyes met Xhex’s for a heartbeat, and then he focused on his three patrons. As the female tried to sidle up to him, flashing her eyes and her breast tissue, she made all the impression of a strip steak to a vegetarian: Trez was vaguely disgusted.
Over the din of the music, Xhex only caught a few words here and there, but she could have guessed the script well enough: Don’t be an ass. Take it outside. First and only warning before you’re persona non grata.
At the end of it, Trez practically had to peel the harpy off him with a crowbar—somehow, she’d grafted herself onto his arm.
Shaking her off with a, “You can’t be serious,” he stepped up. “Hey.”
That slow, sexy smile of his was the problem, of course. And the deep voice didn’t help. Or that body.
“Hey.” She had to smile back. “Female problems again?”
“Always.” He glanced around. “Where’s ya man?”
“Not here.”
“Ahhhhh.” Pause. “How you?”
“I don’t know, Trez. I don’t know why I’m here. I just…”
Reaching out, he put a heavy arm around her shoulders and drew her up against him. God, he smelled the same, a combination of Gucci Pour Homme and something that was altogether him.
“Come on, girlie,” he murmured. “Back to my office.”
“Don’t call me ‘girlie.’ ”
“Okay. How ’bout ‘buttercup.’ ”
She snaked an arm around his waist and leaned her head on his pec as they started walking together. “You like your balls where they are?”
“Yeah. I don’t like the way you’re lookin’, though. I prefer you feisty and pissed off.”
“Me, too, Trez. Me too…”
“So we’re good on the ‘buttercup’? Or do I have to get even tougher with you? I’ll pull out ‘pookie’ if I have to.”
In the way back of the club, next to the locker room where the “dancers” changed in and out of their street clothes, Trez’s office had a door on it like a meat locker. Inside, there was a black leather couch, a big metal desk, and a lead-lined blanket chest that was bolted to the floor. That was it. Well, aside from the purchase orders, receipts, phone messages, laptops.…
It felt like a million years since she’d been around all this.
“Guess iAm hasn’t been here yet,” she said, nodding to the mess on the desk. Trez’s twin would never have stood for it.
“He’s over at Sal’s cooking until midnight.”
“Same schedule, then.”
“If it ain’t broke…”
As they settled in, he in his thronelike chair, she on the couch, her chest hurt.
“Talk to me,” he said, his dark face serious.
Propping her head on her hand and crossing her leg ankle to knee, she fiddled with the laces on her shitkicker. “What if I told you I wanted my old job back?”
In her peripheral vision, she watched him recoil a little. “I thought you were fighting with the Brothers.”
“So did I.”
“Wrath not exactly comfortable with a female in the field?”
“John isn’t.” As Trez cursed, she exhaled hard. “And as I’m his shellan, what he says goes.”
“He actually looked you in the eye and—”
“Oh, he did more than that.” When a threatening growl percolated through the air, she waved her hand. “No, nothing violent. The argument—arguments weren’t a party, though.”
Trez sat back. Drummed his fingers on the clutter in front of him. Stared at her. “Of course you can come back—you know me. I’m not bound by any vampiric notion of propriety—and ours is a matriarchal society, so I’ve never understood the misogyny of the Old Ways. Am worried about you and John, however.”
“We’ll work it out.” How? She hadn’t a clue. But she wasn’t giving her fear that they wouldn’t be able to any more credibility by putting it into words. “I just can’t sit in that house doing nothing, and I don’t want to even lay eyes on the bunch of them. Shit, Trez, I should have known this mating thing was a bad idea. I’m not cut out for it.”
“Sounds like you’re not the one creating the problem. Although I do get where he’s coming from. If anything happened to iAm, I’d go fucking mental—so it’s not a good idea for he and I to fight side by side.”
“You do anyway.”
“Yeah, but we’re stupid. And it’s not like we go out looking for hand-to-hand every night—we got office jobs that keep us busy, and it’s only if something finds us that we take care of it.” He opened a desk drawer and threw her a set of keys. “There’s one last empty office down the hall. If that detective from CPD homicide comes around again about Chrissy and that dead boyfriend of hers, we’ll deal with it if we have to. Meanwhile, I’ll put you back on the payroll. Timing’s good—I could use some help organizing the bouncers. But—and I mean this—there’s no long-term obligation. You can leave whenever you want.”
“Thanks, Trez.”
The two of them stared across his desk.
“It’s going to be okay,” the Shadow said.
“You sure about that.”
“Positive.”
About a block and a half away from the Iron Mask, Xcor stood in the lee of a tattoo parlor, the red, yellow, and blue glow from its neon sign getting in his eyes and on his nerves.
Throe and Zypher had gone into the establishment about ten minutes ago.
But not for ink.
By all that was holy, Xcor would have preferred for his soldiers to be anywhere else on a mission for anything else. Unfortunately, one couldn’t negotiate with the need for blood—and they had yet to find a reliable source for it. Human females would do in the pinch they were in, but the strength didn’t last nearly as long, and that meant the hunt for victims was nearly as frequent as that for food.
Indeed, they had been here only a week, and he could feel the lagging effect on his flesh already—back in the Old Country, they had had proper vampire females that they had paid to be of service. Here, they currently didn’t have that luxury, and he feared it would be a while before they did.
Although if he became king, the problem would be solved.
As he waited, he shifted his weight back and forth on his boots, his leather coat making a subtle creaking noise. On his back, concealed in her holster but ready for use, his scythe was as impatient as he was.
Sometimes he could swear the thing talked to him: For instance, from time to time, a human would pass by the opening of the alley he was in; maybe it was a loner striding quickly, or a woman lollygagging as she tried to light a cigarette in the wind, or a small group of revelers. Whatever the variant, his eyes tracked them as prey, noting the way their bodies moved and where they might be hiding any weapons and how many bounding leaps it would take to put himself in their paths.
And all the while his scythe whispered to him, urging him to take action.
Back in the Bloodletter’s time, humans had been fewer and less robust, good for both target practice and as a source of sustenance—which was how that race of tailless rats had ended up with so many vampire myths. Now, however, the rodents had taken over the palace of the earth, becoming a threat.