J. Robb - Dead Of Night

“You know,” McNab speculated, “if you factor out the blood-sucking, soulless demon angle, this should be a slam dunk.”

“Good thing none of us believe in blood-sucking, soulless demons.” But Peabody ’s hand crept over and found McNab’s.

Eve caught the gesture in the rearview, just as she caught the way the fingers of Peabody ’s free hand snuck between the buttons of her shirt to close over something.

“ Peabody, are you wearing a cross?”

“What? Me?” The hand dropped like a stone into her lap. Her cheeks went pink as she cleared her throat. “It just happened that I know Mariella in Records, who just happened to have one, and I happened to borrow it. Just for backup.”

“I see. And would you also be carrying a pointy stick?”

“Not unless you mean McNab.”

McNab smiled easily as Eve stopped at a light, turned around in her seat. “Repeat after me: Vampires do not exist.”

“Vampires do not exist,” Peabody recited.

With a nod, Eve turned back, then narrowed her eyes at Roarke. “What’s that look on your face?”

“Speculation. Most legends, after all, have some basis in fact. From Vlad the Impaler to Dracula of lore. It’s interesting, don’t you think?”

“It’s interesting that I’m in this vehicle with a trio of lamebrains.”

“Lamebrained to some,” Roarke replied equably, “open-minded to others.”

“Huh. Maybe we should stop off at a market on the way, pick up a few pounds of garlic, just to ease those open minds.”

“Really?” Peabody said from the back, then hunched her shoulders as Eve sent her a stony stare in the rearview mirror. “That means no,” Peabody muttered to McNab.

“I translated already.”

Eve had to settle for a second-level street slot five blocks from the underground entrance. The sun had set, and the balmy April day had gone to chill with a wind that had risen up to kick through the urban canyons.

They moved through the packs of pedestrians-heading home, heading to dinner, heading to entertainment. At the mouth of the underground entrance, Eve paused.

“Stick together through the tunnels,” she ordered. “We can work in pairs once we get to the club, but even then, let’s keep visual contact at all times.”

She didn’t believe in the demons of lore, but she knew the human variety existed. And many of them lived, played, or worked in the bowels of the city.

They moved down, out of the noise, out of the wind, into the dank dimness of the tunnels. The clubs and haunts and dives that existed there catered to a clientele that would make most convicted felons sprint in the opposite direction.

Offerings underground included sex clubs that specialized in S amp;M, in torture dealt out for a fee by human, droid, or machine, or any miserable combination thereof. In the bars, the drinks were next to lethal and a man’s life was worth less than the price of a shot. The violent and the mad might wander there, sliding off into the shadows to do what could only be done in the dark, where blood and death bloomed like fetid mushrooms.

She could hear weeping, raw and wild, echoing down one of the tunnels, and laughter that was somehow worse. She saw one of the lost addicts, pale as a ghost, huddled on the filthy floor, panting, pushing a syringe against his arm, giving himself a fix of what would eventually kill him.

She turned away from it, passed a sex club where the lights were hard and red and reminded her of the room in Dallas where she’d killed her father.

It was cold underground, as it had been cold in that room. The kind of cold that sank its teeth into the bone like an animal.

She heard something scuttling to the left, and saw the gleam of eyes. She stared into them until they blinked, and they vanished.

“I should’ve given you my clutch piece,” she said under her breath to Roarke.

“Not to worry. I have my own.”

She spared him a glance. He looked, she realized, every bit as deadly as anything that roamed the tunnels. “Try not to use it.”

They turned down an angle beyond a vid parlor where someone screamed in a hideous combination of pain and delight.

She smelled piss and vomit as they descended the next level. When a man with bulging muscles stepped out of the dark, turned the knife he held into the slant of light so it gleamed, Eve simply drew her weapon.

“Wanna bet who wins?” she asked him, and he melted away again.

From there, she followed the strong vibration of bass, the scent of heavy perfume, and the ocean surf roar of voices.

The lights here were red as well, with some smoke blue, fog gray shimmered in. Mists curled and crawled over the floor. The doorway was an arch, to represent the mouth of a cave. Over the arch the word BLOODBATH throbbed in bloody red.

Two bouncers, one black, one white, both built like tanker jets, flanked the arch, then stepped together to form a wall of oiled muscle.

“Invitation or passcode,” they said in unison.

“This is both.” Eve pulled out her badge, and got twin smirks.

“That doesn’t mean jack down here,” the one on the left told her. “Private club.”

Before she could speak again, Roarke simply pulled out several bills. “I believe this is the passcode.”

After the money passed, the bouncers separated to make an opening. As they walked through, Eve shot Roarke an annoyed look. “I don’t have to bribe my way in.”

“No, but you were going to hurt them, and that’s a lot messier. In any case, it was worth the fee as you take me to the most interesting places.”

The club was three open levels, dark and smoky, with the pentagram bar as the center. A stage jutted out on the second level where a band played the kind of music that bashed into the chest like hurled stones. Fog crept over it like writhing snakes. Patrons sat at the bar, at metal tables, lurked in corners or danced on platforms. Nearly all wore black, and nearly all were well under thirty.

There were some privacy booths and some were already occupied with couples or small groups smoking what was likely illegal substances inside the domes, or groping each other. Eve’s gaze tracked up to note there were private rooms on the third level. The club had a live sex license, and no doubt all manner of acts transpired behind the doors.

She approached the bar where a man or woman worked at every point of the pentagram. Eve chose a woman with straight black hair parted in the center to frame a pale, pale face. Her lips were heavy and full and dyed deep, dark red.

“What can I get you?” the woman asked.

“Whoever’s in charge.” Eve set her badge on the slick black metal of the bar.

“There a problem?”

“There will be if you don’t get me whoever runs this place.”

“Sure.” The bartender drew a headset out of her pocket. “Dorian? Allesseria. I’ve got a cop at station three asking for the manager. Sure thing.”

She put the headset away again. “He’ll be right down. Said I should offer you a drink, on the house.”

“No, thanks. Have you seen this woman in here, Allesseria?” Eve drew out Tiara’s ID photo.

She saw recognition immediately, then the quick wariness. And then the lie. “Can’t say I have. We get slammed in here by midnight. Hard to pick out faces in the crowd, and with this lighting.”

“Right. You got anything on tap here but beer and brew?”

Once again, Eve saw the lie. “I don’t know what you mean. I just run the stick at this station. That’s it, that’s all. I got customers.”

“She’s not only a poor liar,” Roarke observed. “She’s a frightened one.”

“Yeah, she is.” Eve scanned the crowd again. She saw a man barely old enough to make legal limit actually wearing a cape, and a woman, nearly a decade older, all but bursting out of a long, tight black dress, who was wrapping herself around him like a snake on one of the dance platforms.