Хлоя Нейл - Twice Bitten

We belted on our katanas, then walked down the block toward the door into the bar.

The bikes weren’t the only indication that something different was going on in Ukrainian Village. When we reached the corner where the front door sat kittycorner to the street, I spied a trio of gouges in the brick wall. I stopped and peered more closely, then lifted my fingertips to the brick. They were clean marks, long, evenly spaced, and deep into brick and mortar.

These weren’t gouges, I realized. They were clawmarks.

“Ethan,” I said, then gestured toward the scratches.

“It’s a sign,” he explained. “That this is a Pack place.”

And here we were, vampires walking into their den.

But since we were here, and there was nothing to do but do it, I took the lead and pushed open the door.

The bar was one narrow room—a handful of tables in front of a large picture window, a long wooden bar along the other side. The hard-driving music was loud enough to bruise my eardrums, and I winced at the throb of it. The sound burst from a jukebox in a corner, that machine the only decoration that didn’t involve advertisements for beer, whiskey, or Malört, Chicago’s wickedly strong version of absinthe.

Men in leather jackets with NAC in giant, embroidered letters across the back sipped at the tables, somehow managing to chat over the roar of the jukebox. I assumed NAC stood for the North American Central Pack.

The hair on the back of my neck lifted. There was something unnerving about the place, about the tingle of magic that filled the room, as though the air itself was electrified.

The shifters looked up as we entered, their expressions not exactly welcoming. Apparently none too thrilled about the vampires in their midst, they stood and pushed back chairs. My heart raced, my hand moving to the handle of my katana, but the shifters headed for the front door. Within a matter of seconds, they were gone, leaving us in the middle of the bar, rock ’n’ roll still pouring out around us.

Ethan and I exchanged a glance.

“Maybe the food’s bad?” I wondered loudly, but that couldn’t be the case. The bad vibe notwithstanding, the smells in the bar were fabulous. Under the top note of cigar smoke was something delicious—cabbage and braising meat, as if cabbage rolls were steaming in the back room. My stomach growled.

“Help you?”

We turned to face the bar. Behind it stood a heavyset woman, wearing a T-shirt with LITTLE RED and a cartoon girl in a red petticoat and hood emblazoned across the front. The woman’s short, bottle-blond hair was teased above her head, and there was suspicion in her eyes.

This must have been Berna.

“Gabriel,” Ethan, stepping beside me, said over the music, “asked us to meet him here.”

One hand on the bar, one on her hip, the woman indicated a red leather door near the end of the bar. “Back,” she half yelled, then arched an eyebrow as she looked me over. “Too thin. You need eats.”

I’d only had a chance to open my mouth to respond—which, given the meat-and-veg smell of the place, would have involved a resounding “yes”—when Ethan smiled politely back at her.

“No, thank you,” he called out.

She sniffed at Ethan’s answer, but turned back to her well-shellacked bar and began to wipe it down with a wet rag.

Ethan headed for the red door.

So much for the cabbage rolls, I thought, but followed him.

Before he opened it, his hand on the tufted leather, he initiated the telepathic connection between us. Sentinel? he silently asked, checking in before we made the final plunge. I shook off the sudden, but refreshingly brief, vertigo. Maybe I was getting used to the sensation.

I’m ready, I told him, and in we went.

I was thankful the room was quieter than the rest of the bar, but the air was thick with old magic. I’m not sure I would have normally been able to separate new from old, but this felt different from the magic I’d felt around vampires or sorcerers. It was the difference between sun and moon. This was ancient magic; earthy magic; the magic of damp soil and sharp lightning, of grassy, windswept plains on cloudy days; the magic of dust and fur and musky dens and damp leaves. It wasn’t unpleasant, but the sheer difference between this prickle and the magic I was used to unnerved me. It was also exponentially more powerful than the tingle I’d felt around the few shifters I knew.

Four men—four shifters—sat around an old-fashioned, vinyl-topped, aluminum-legged table. Four heads lifted when we walked in the door, including Gabriel Keene’s. He gave me a once-over, then offered up a slow grin that lifted the corners of his mouth.

I guessed he liked the leather.

After looking me over, Gabe shifted his gaze to Ethan; his expression became businesslike.

I tried to keep my eyes on Gabriel in order to give the rest of the alphas time to check out the vampires who’d stepped onto their turf. But my occasional glimpses gave me basic details—all three had dark hair and the stiff shoulders of folks not thrilled to be in the back room of a bar in Ukrainian Village, vampires in their midst.

Finally, Gabriel nodded and gestured toward a wall that was empty but for a couple of small, cheaply framed movie posters. I followed Ethan over there and stood beside him. I wasn’t expecting immediate trouble, but I gripped the handle of my katana with my left hand, rubbing my fingers across the leather cording, the friction somehow comforting.

I didn’t have to wait long for action.

“The name of the game,” Gabriel said, pulling a deck of cards from the middle of the table, “is five-card draw.” He shuffled through the cards twice, then put the deck back on the table. The alpha to his right, who had short dark hair and a square jaw, the rest of his face hidden by aviator shades, leaned forward and knocked his knuckles against the deck.

With movements so smooth you’d have thought he was a professional, Gabriel began flicking cards to the others.

“We’re here,” he said, “because, barring objections, we’re convening in two days. We’re here to discuss ConPack.”

The alpha at Gabriel’s left, who slouched in his seat, had a few days of stubble on his face, narrowed brown eyes, and shoulder-length dark hair that was tucked behind his ears. He cast a suspicious gaze our way.

“In front of these two?” he asked. He gave Ethan a couple of seconds of derisive staring, then gave me a leering, up-and-down appraisal. A couple of months ago, I would have blushed a little, maybe looked away uncomfortably. Given that he was a shifter and, by the looks of him, a bully, I probably should have.

But even if my skills at fighting needed work, I was still a vampire, and bluffing was one of the first lessons Catcher had taught me. I knew how to give back the arrogance other sups threw at me.

Slowly, serenely, I arched a dark eyebrow back at him and raised the corners of my mouth into a not-quite smile. The look, I hoped, was equal parts vampire moxie and feminine wile. Whether he was intimidated, I didn’t know, but he finally looked away. That was good enough for me.

Gabriel, his expression all nonchalance, picked up his pile of cards and fanned them in his hand. “You agreed to these arrangements, Tony, if you’ll recall.”

So the bully was Tony, head of the Great Northwestern Pack and the man who ruled the shifter retreat in Aurora.

“Bullshit,” Tony coughed out in reply. He would have been handsome, but the chip on his shoulder tightened his features unflatteringly.

“My lieutenant,” Tony continued, “agreed to the arrangements because that was the only way we could get a word in edgewise. You called the convocation, Keene. Not me, not Robin, not Jason. You. Speaking for myself, we don’t want it.” He shrugged. “The Bering Sea was pretty and blue when I left it. Things are fine in Aurora, and we’re happy to keep them that way.”