Rachel Caine - Chicks Kick Butt

“You mean nobody wants to know.”

“That, too. Anyway, they’ve made a big impression pretty damn fast. You’re better off staying away from them.”

“Yeah. But will they stay away from me?”

“Just take care, Dory.”

“I always do.” I fished out a five and tossed the rest on the bar. “Drinks are on him.”

Raymond Lu was a disreputable nightclub owner who had recently become a disreputable snitch. He didn’t have a tiger tat, probably because he wasn’t important enough to deserve one, but his boss just happened to be Lord Cheung. And the last time one of Cheung’s guys had taken a shot at my head, it had been due to my association with Ray.

His club’s logo had been emblazoned on the matches I’d found in the hit man’s coat, so I decided to see if anything interesting was happening. It wasn’t. Of course, that in itself was interesting.

The club usually did a pretty good business, despite being wedged between an acupuncturist and a cut-rate electronics store on a backstreet of Chinatown. Not tonight, though. The jazzy neon sign was dark and the usual bouncer-and-rope combo was missing from the front door.

Instead, a large guy leaned against the dirty bricks, in the process of lighting a cigarette. The glow of the flame into his cupped palm highlighted a familiar craggy face. Zheng-ze, aka Scarface, Cheung’s right-hand vamp and a first-level master with power to burn.

He and his boss were in the process of challenging for seats on the senate, the ruling body for vamps in North America. From what I’d heard, they’d been doing pretty good. I silently cursed and shifted a little closer to the Dumpster that was providing my cover. The fact that Scarface was standing guard duty cut down my chances of getting in by at least half.

A moment later, he finished lighting up and relaxed against the wall. And grinned at me. I gave it up and crossed the road.

“Haven’t you heard that stuff’ll kill you?” I asked as he took a long drag.

He laughed it back out. “You look like shit,” he told me cheerfully, his eyes on the not-yet-faded bruises under the pancake I’d slathered on before leaving the house. “I heard you got yourself blown up.”

“You heard wrong.” Although it had been pretty damn close.

“Good. Once I get the Challenges outta the way, you and I gotta square off.” He showed me some big white teeth. “See who’s best.”

“I know who’s best.”

“That’s the spirit,” he said approvingly. “There’s no sport in it when they just give up and die.”

I ignored that in favor of nodding at the building behind him. “So what’s going on?”

I hadn’t really expected an answer, although I got one—sort of. “Lord Cheung’s trying to clean up his image. He’s jonesing for a senate seat bad and thinks some of his activities might not look too good if they’re brought up in the voting process.”

“I thought combat decided the new senators.”

“Combat narrows the field,” he corrected. “But once we’re through, we got to be confirmed. And your senators are going to be looking for any possible reason to turn us down.”

“They’re not my senators,” I said flatly.

The senate employed me to clean up its messes from time to time, but the fact that I occasionally proved useful hadn’t made me any more popular. The only one who might not hate me was Mircea, second in command to the consul, the senate’s leader. Most vamps treated him like he was scary with a little scary on top, which I’d always found puzzling. He sparked a confusing tangle of emotions in me, but fear had never been one of them.

Of course, that might be because he was also my father.

“Look, I don’t care who does or does not get on the senate,” I told Scarface. “I just want to know why your master sent a hit man after me.”

“You’d have to ask him about that.”

“Is he in there?” A brief nod. “Then get out of the way and I will.”

He blew smoke at me.

“I’m going in there,” I informed him.

He dropped his cigarette to the stained concrete and ground it in with his toe. “I was hoping to wait until you recovered to beat you up,” he said regretfully. “It won’t be nearly as much fun this—” He broke off as I turned on my heel and headed down the sidewalk. “Hey! Where you going?”

“The side exit.”

His booming laughter followed me around the building.

The short alleyway stopped after half a dozen yards, ending at another brick wall. Three steps went up to a door, steps that were occupied by another bored-looking vamp. He didn’t seem surprised to see me, having heard my conversation with his buddy out front, and he didn’t even stand up. I decided that was rude and started rooting around in my big black duffel bag.

“What are you going to do?” he asked, amused. “Mace me?”

“Good idea.”

The heavy iron-headed mace caught him upside the head and sent him crashing through the rusted railing and into the river of slime flowing down the center of the alley. I didn’t wait around to see what mood he’d be in when he picked himself up. I threw open the door and sprinted inside, pausing only long enough to see that the sole source of light was on the balcony, one level up.

I heard a faint foot-scrape behind me and slammed the heavy old door in the vamp’s face. He cursed and staggered backward, and I took off across the dark dance floor. I reached the curving iron stairs to the balcony and took them two at a time.

I was halfway up when the guard’s foot hit the bottom step—and then abruptly fell away. He was soon joined by the rest of Cheung’s men, but they bunched at the bottom, making no effort to follow me up. That didn’t make sense until I burst out onto the catwalk and realized two things: there was already a vamp up here and he didn’t need any help.

He was standing in front of the manager’s office, halfway down the balcony. What he really looked like was anyone’s guess, of course, most of the older masters found it useful to present an attractive appearance. In this case, that meant bronze skin, high cheekbones, dark, almond-shaped eyes, and a hawklike nose with a proud tilt.

I didn’t know Cheung’s background, but he looked like the kind of guy who should be wearing heavily embroidered silk or possibly warrior leathers. Something exotic and powerful, anyway. So he appeared a little out of place in a double-breasted pinstripe tailored so tight he could have cut paper on it.

The elegance of the outfit made the large orange and black tiger tat prowling around his smooth olive skin that much more noticeable. Of course, the movement helped, too. I watched it stalk around the back of his hand before returning to the concealment of the shirtsleeve, tail slowly swishing. It was beautifully done—all long, sleek muscles under a rich blanket of fur, with watchful emerald eyes and an occasional flash of sharp white teeth.

Its expression wasn’t so nice. At the moment, both tiger and man wore the same one—of barely concealed impatience. “I thought I had warned you off,” Cheung said, without preamble.

“Was that what you were doing?” I moved forward, since it wasn’t like I could go back. “I guess the bullet grazing my ear must have confused me.”

“The fact that it missed should have told you as much.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” I stopped a yard or so away, close enough to smell his cologne, far enough away to have a chance to reach my weapons. “Maybe next time you could shoot me an e-mail instead?”

Cheung ignored that. “I know your father’s power, dhampir. I have no wish to return you to him in pieces. If you swear to cease interfering in my business, you may go.”