Life in Shadows (27 page)

“No,
not at all,” the hostess smiled brightly despite her confusion. She seemed
inclined to follow the bouncer’s lead, however unusual this might be. “I guess
Jake has you covered. Thanks for coming!”

The
demon returned her smile. Nothing about the hostess marked her as bound for the
Pit, though one look rarely told that much. Still, Lorelei wondered if the
hostess enjoyed Heaven’s protection. Either the hostess and all the other
mortal employees had lost that blessing, or Lester took constant care to avoid
the notice of any passing guardian angel.

Lorelei
followed Jake into the club and then off to one side of the main floor.
Skirting around the edges, she heard the rhythmic bass and electric guitar
melodies of a slow, lusty song. Amid flashing lights on stage, she spotted the
temptress in the middle of her performance. Ordinary mortals wouldn’t see her
wings, her tail, or her little horns. They saw only the beauty of her human
guise. Lorelei noted a flashing sign off to one side of the stage that offered
the name “Destiny.”
Of course you are
, she thought.

She
didn’t spot Alex, but Destiny’s focus suggested he sat at a table somewhere
near the middle. He likely wouldn’t be there long. Lorelei turned back to her
guide.

They
skirted the outer edges of the audience, finding a dark hallway with private
rooms off to either side. A short flight of stairs rose up not far from where
the hall branched off toward a kitchen. Jake led her upstairs without pause.

Her
entrance played out according to plan. This took less than a minute. “Thank
you, Jake,” she said, stroking his cheek as she stepped past him. “You may
leave
us alone
now.”

Jake
grinned at her excitedly. He’d made her happy. Lorelei had seen this reaction
before. Her guide turned and left, hoping his helpful service would be
remembered.

Alone
in the hallway, Lorelei took hold of the door handle and turned it down hard
enough to break the lock. She pushed forward, felt further resistance, and
slammed an open hand against the door above the handle. The deadbolt broke
right through the doorframe.

“Aw
shit,” hissed a man inside.

Lorelei
stepped through the doorway with a pleasant smile that didn’t match her show of
brute strength. “Hello, Lester,” she greeted him.

The
good-looking man with the dark goattee stood behind his desk in a suit with no
tie. He had a cell phone in one hand and a pistol in the other. Lester nearly
dropped both of them as recognition spread across his face. “Oh,
shit
!”
he repeated, this time illustrating the difference between being startled and
genuine fear.

“What
an adorable gun,” Lorelei said, striding across the room to his desk—and then
stopped.

Lester
stared, frozen in place. Through the broken door, they could hear the thumping
bass of the club’s main floor, but a small speaker set on his desk struck a
decidedly different tune:
“…to the place where I belong. West Virginia,
mountain momma…
”

 She
let out a sigh as the music playing in the office clashed with the modern beats
from downstairs. “John Denver? Really” she asked. “Ugh. This is how I know your
DJ is mortal.” She crossed the last couple of feet to his desk to snatch the
phone from his hand. “And who are we calling? Anyone I know?” A glance at the
screen showed an outgoing call, which she ended with a single touch.

“Wh-what
do you want?” asked Lester.

“Any
number of things,” she answered coolly.

“
All
my memories, they gather 'round her…Miner's lady, stranger to blue water…
”

“This
is also how one knows a demon in stolen skin from the genuine article,” she
grimaced. “I don’t know if it’s a native flaw in those born in the Pit or if
it’s a problem with your stolen bodies, but something goes terribly wrong with
your musical tastes before the process is finished.” Lorelei flipped through
the phone’s screens to open up the music player and cut the song short. Relief
spread across her face as the melodic longing ended. “Ah. That’s better.
Miracles happen to all of us, I suppose.” She put the phone in her coat pocket.
“I’m looking for information, mostly. The phone should be a start. Thank you
for that.”

“Lady
Lorelei!” hissed an awed voice off to one side. Lorelei turned to see a small
red creature in the corner, hiding behind a wastebasket. It had scales instead
of skin and a lizard-like head, but its demonic wings, horns, and tail marked
it as another servant of the Pit rather than some conjured beast of mortal
sorcery. It pointed at her with wide yellow eyes and repeated, “Lady Lorelei!”

The
facetious geniality dropped from Lorelei’s face. “Do not call me that,” she
said flatly. The imp shrank back behind the wastebasket. Lorelei turned her
attention to Lester once more, hoping to hide her concern at the unexpected
sight of a demon in its natural form. She’d simply have to stick to the
original plan. “Dear, if you’re not going to shoot me with that thing, put it
down. Guns make men look so insecure.”

Lester
opened his mouth again to protest, but gave it up. Defiantly, he shoved the
pistol into the pocket of his blazer. “You think you can barge in here, take
what you want, and boss me around?”

Her
eyebrows rose. She looked back at the broken door, the imp cowering in the corner,
and Lester himself. “Yes.” She smiled as he scowled. “Oh, don’t look so put
out, Lester. I’m here to offer you a fair trade for what I want.”

His
jaw set. “What do you want to know?”

“I’m
looking for the other demons in this city. It turns out our kind have become
difficult to find in the last couple of months. You’re the connected sort.
You’d know who is still out and about, or who has gone to ground.”

“Yeah,
you’d know why it’s getting tough, wouldn’t you?” Lester sneered. “I’ve heard
about you and Baal. I know you don’t work for Belial anymore. Heard who you
have
been running with, too. Word gets around, especially when it comes to
sellouts.”

“Oh,
Lester. I’d have to care about your opinions for that sort of name-calling to
mean anything to me. All I want is information. Names, whereabouts, whatever
you know. I won’t ask you to betray Sammael or the rest of his crew. You’d
never tell me the truth about that, anyway. I want to know about everyone
else.”

He
bit back another retort in favor of a question: “What’s in it for me?”

“A
head start out of town before fiery angelic retribution crashes down on your
pretty little face. Make it good and I’ll give you several hours. That’s more
than enough time to escape into the next Dominion over. I hear the angels there
are less diligent.”

“You
call that a deal?”

“I
do. Besides, you owe me. Do you remember that mess in Paris, oh, a little over
two centuries ago? Remember the whole town suddenly going insane? Public
executions left and right, and angels on the hunt everywhere because they
blamed the Pit for all the bloodlust and death? You ditched me.”

“I
had to get out of town!” Lester protested.

“So
did I. You were supposed to help me with that. Instead, you ran. Even I
couldn’t evade all those angels on my own. I had to go through Hell to get out
of that city. Literally. I
hate
Hell, Lester.”

“Everybody
hates being in Hell!” said Lester, holding his hands up helplessly. “That’s the
point! That’s why we’re all tryin’ to get
here
!”

Her
eyes flared. “Indeed.” She planted a lightning-fast right cross on his nose.

Lester
fell back into his seat, clutching his face. “Ow! What’d you do that for?”

“That’s
for Paris, Lester. And for dragging this conversation out. Now, you have my
offer, and you know why you owe this to me.”

“You
already hit me for that!”

“One
punch doesn’t make up for your debts, Lester.”

“You
didn’t bring this up last time we met!”

“No.
I decided to save this debt for a rainy day. You may have noticed how often it
rains in this city.”

The
other demon fumed. A small bit of blood dripped from his nose, but the
cartilage was already resetting. “What are you gonna do with that info?”

“The
same thing I’m doing with you. Run every one of you out of town so I don’t have
to see or smell your kind here anymore.”

His
lip curled up into a sneer. “Don’t you mean our kind?”

“Surely
I’ll find a way to live with my hypocrisy.”

“And
what if I tell you to go fuck yourself?”

“Then
I won’t bother with the angels. I’ll deal with you myself. And I’ll make sure
Sammael hears all about your treachery against him. Oh, don’t worry, I’ll
invent something plausible. By the time you reanimate in Hell, your lord will
be so angry with you he may not even stop to ask questions before punishing you
for your betrayal.” She smiled sweetly. “Or you can take my offer, and no one
need know we ever spoke. Your escape from the city will seem like an act of
tremendous foresight.”

Lester
glared. Lorelei waited. Behind her cordial yet steely façade, Lorelei felt
Alex’s fierce arousal. Someone stroked his shoulder and neck again, this time
draping herself along one side of his seat. She could feel the pleasant
nearness of her and knew from his reactions that this must be the temptress.

Then
she felt another such body slide onto his lap and hook her arm around the other
side of Alex’s neck. “Let’s start with your crew. Since when do you rate more
than one assistant?” she asked, gesturing to the imp. “And who are the two
temptresses downstairs?”

* * *

“I’m
Chance,” said the woman sitting sideways on his lap. She gently ran her fingers
through his hair. Destiny sat on the cushioned arm rest of his seat, caressing
his neck. The music kept bumping as the club returned to its previous patterns
of dancers on stage and in the audience. “Crystal told us you could use some
cheering up.”

Once
again, his libido shouted all manner of enthusiastic agreement. Every one of
Lorelei’s enabling comments came back to him in a rush. With two gorgeous,
scantily-clad women fawning over him, Alex found that it hardly mattered how
good he had it at home. The pair had him well beyond aroused.

Demon
strippers!
he remembered. The danger they presented didn’t
turn him off. The absurdity of those words, however, made a slight difference.
Humor offered a lifeline. He grabbed onto it and pulled. The names helped.

“Destiny
and Chance?” Alex asked with a cooler grin than he would ever have managed
before the autumn saw his life turned upside down. “My night got existential
fast.”
Don’t say “sexistential,”
he thought quickly.
Don’t say “sexistential.”
No puns. Don’t do it.
“Is there a Karma here, too?”

“Aw,
don’t make fun,” pouted Destiny, sliding her fingers down the back of his
collar and dragging her nails back up over the nape of his neck. It gave him a
pleasant shiver. “They’re only names. I like yours…Alex.”

“Didn’t
mean anything by it,” he replied, looking from one to the next as they pawed at
him with increasing familiarity. It felt entirely too good, and worked entirely
too well. “I’m glad to meet you. Both of you. Just don’t know if this is luck
or if it’s fate.”

“That’s
the spirit,” Chance purred in approval. “Truth is, Crystal told us why you’re
here. She said out of all the men in this club, you deserve special attention.”

“There
are other men here?” Alex grinned.

Destiny
laughed and shifted around so she could lean her head against his. “None that
matter now,” she said into his ear.

“We
could have more fun in private, though,” suggested Chance. Her hands roamed
lower toward his groin. “Destiny and I have a VIP room all to ourselves. Care
to join us?”

“Wow.
Now I feel really special.” The sensations continued: nails, caresses,
Destiny’s breath on his ear, and Chance’s pleasant weight shifting in his lap.
“How much did Crystal tell you?”

“Only
that your girlfriend ditched you like an idiot,” Chance explained. “Everything
else, we can tell about you all on our own. Her loss. Our gain. Yours, too.”

“Trust
us, Alex,” said Destiny. “We’ll make you forget all about her.”

Once
again, nothing brought him back to Earth like a good dose of absurdity. Forget
his girlfriend? No way. Still, he had a job to do here. “Challenge accepted.”

With
confident smiles and graceful moves, the pair returned to their feet. Each took
one of his hands and drew him up from the seat, then led him out of the audience.
Alex noted their posture and stride, all of it deliberately intended to show
off their tight bodies to any onlooker. They split their attention between him
and the other men who called out to them as they left, assuring the others that
they hadn’t been forgotten while making sure Alex knew he was the most
important man in the room…for now, at least.

They
led him under the club’s balcony into a hall of red lights and doorways blocked
only by curtains or beads. He heard more music, along with feminine moans here
and there. It all seemed a little too much for him. He wondered if the voices
weren’t recorded to provide atmosphere. It would certainly get a guy’s hopes
up. Alex saw a couple of burly men in black t-shirts and jeans in the hallway,
too, providing a visible reminder that any transgressions would be quickly
dealt with. It made sense to him. Any decent security would put the safety of
the dancers first. Real privacy wasn’t an option.