Kevin Hearne - Hexed

“That makes sense.” I nodded. “Different from succubi. But it means I won’t have any defense at all. I’m not outside my nervous system in the way you describe.”

Laksha huffed in exasperation. “Fine. At least come in for a brief look around. I will escort you out once you begin touching yourself.”

“What? Hey, don’t let it go that far. That’s not right.”

A flicker of a smile played about Laksha’s lips, then it fled as she returned to the business at hand. “Leave the bats at the door. They’ll recognize them as a threat.”

“And not my sword?”

“It’s not a threat to them. You don’t want to pull them out of their ecstasy. It’ll turn to rage.”

Obeying with some reluctance, I followed her inside to the skull-pounding thump of techno bass beats and the multicolored strobe effect of sequenced lights on a rig high above the dance floor, which was to our left. The bar was to the right, with martini glasses hanging overhead and the premium liquors prominently displayed in front of a mirror. There were a few beers on tap, but since this was not the sort of clientele that drank anything so common, the bar did a blazing business in froufrou drinks. The floor of the bar area was a soft white laminate tile marbled with wispy ribbons of cobalt blue. A few tall white tables sans chairs were scattered around the perimeter, without a single booth or bar stool to be found. Satyrn clearly expected the joint to be standing room only every night, and so it was. Three glass chandeliers with electric fixtures soared high above the bar floor, providing a soft glow in that part of the club. Separating the bar area from the dance floor were five enormous load-bearing white columns, and the dance floor was utterly dark except for the flashes of random lights from the rig. The entire long, narrow space of the club was filled with writhing bodies in various states of undress and abandon. Even behind the bar, the bartenders were shaking and stirring each other instead of customers’ drinks. Still, for all that, the bar area was more restrained than the dance floor, where most clothes had already been shed and the baby-making was unrestrained.

I felt the first twinges of desire myself and reflected that the Diamondbacks really needed base-stealing threats in their leadoff and number-two slots, because until they secured the ability to make pitchers nervous and manufacture runs, they’d be easy prey. They couldn’t rely on their streaky big hitters to win enough games to matter. They had to grind it out every day … Speaking of grinding—no. The bullpen needed a couple of solid guys who could pitch two or three full innings of lights-out ball. They couldn’t keep giving away games if the starter had a bad day.

“The lack of seating is inconvenient,” Laksha complained. “I need someplace to keep this body secure.”

“What? Why?”

“Do you even understand what I am going to do?”

“Not precisely. Push their souls out of their bodies somehow?”

“No, I do that only when I am taking possession. You want me to merely kill them. I will visit one’s brain and shut down the hypothalamus, which regulates the heartbeat, then move to the next as she collapses, and so on. Their souls will leave naturally as a result of their deaths. It will take me less than a minute.”

I frowned. “What will happen to your body while you’re out doing this?”

“This body will be in a vulnerable, vegetative state until I return—which is why I need a place to sit down.” A douche bag drenched in Drakkar Noir approached Laksha from behind, slipped his hands underneath her arms, and cupped her breasts. She immediately stomped down hard on his foot, lunged a step forward, and twisted to the right with her arm cocked, smashing her elbow into his temple. He went down like a sack of cornmeal. She grimaced in disgust and said, “We need to hurry. It’s already getting ridiculous in here.”

“Where are the Bacchants?” I asked.

“There’s one over there on the edge of the dance floor.” She pointed to a woman in what looked like a sheer white negligee, gyrating her backside sinuously against the hips of a young man behind her. She had a drunken smile on her face, and it appeared to me in the dim light that her teeth were unusually sharp. Everyone’s auras were aboil with red carnal lust.

I lost sight of her abruptly as a wanton olive-skinned girl slid up to me and kissed me full on the mouth, her right leg twining behind my left calf and her tongue darting between my teeth. There was a team sport I was supposed to be thinking of at that point, but she tasted like cherries and something else—

She was torn from my arms with a startled yelp, and my head rocked to the right as Laksha slapped my face, hard. Oh, yes, baseball. A home run would be good. Where did that girl go?

“Let’s get you out of here; you’re already useless,” Laksha said, forcefully turning me toward the exit and pushing me firmly in front of her. We hit fresh air before too long, having never penetrated far into the club, but when I tried to stop, Laksha said, “No, keep going. If you stay here you might be tempted to come back in.”

“What about my bats?”

“Get them, quickly.”

I scooped them up, and Laksha escorted me all the way to the edge of the parking lot, proclaiming that I should be safe there until she finished. And then she left me standing there uncertainly, holding two baseball bats with a sword strapped to my back and staring at the entrance to the club. I didn’t think of how unbalanced that made me look to people driving by on the street until the patrol car pulled up behind me, its lights flashing so that traffic would drive around it.

“Good evening, sir,” an officer called out. I nodded back to him and returned my gaze to the club, cursing my stupidity. I should have learned my lesson back at Target, but I’d been too focused on accomplishing the night’s objective to worry about doing it surreptitiously. Wearing a sword was second nature to a man from the Iron Age, but to modern eyes it indicated a need for therapy.

“What are you doing there?” the officer said. I heard the patrol-car door whump closed. I didn’t have the time or patience for this. If these guys hung around, they might wind up in trouble or seriously complicate my ability to deal with trouble if it came boiling out of the club.

“Just waiting for a friend,” I said.

“With a sword and a couple of bats? You sure it’s a friend you’re waiting for?”

Regretting the necessity to use some of my stored power, I quietly cast camouflage on Fragarach and then responded more loudly, “What sword?”

“The sword that’s—hey, what’d you do with it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Officer. I don’t have a sword.” I heard the driver’s-side door whump as his partner got out to join him, no doubt moving to flank me to my left.

“All right, tell you what—why don’t you drop the bats and show me some ID.”

I cast camouflage on the bats and said, “What bats?” Of course my hands were still curled around them, but now it looked as if I was just standing there with my fists at my sides. I should have done this in the first place, and then these lads would never have gotten a call about me. But I knew they wouldn’t just leave me alone now. The man with the disappearing weapons was far too curious a creature for them to ignore, and, besides, I’d made them look stupid. They’d want some payback, sure.

“Show me some ID,” the cop demanded again. He was far too peremptory for my taste. Honestly, I was trying to be one of the good guys here. There were times in my past when I probably deserved to be harassed, but this wasn’t one of them.