James Baldwin - Stained Glass

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.