Blood and Bullets Read online

  Obviously, I was set up. It was the only thing that made sense. This Nyteblade guy was no threat to anyone whatsoever, especially not a fifty-vampire-level threat. That was a lot of supernatural firepower to throw at someone. From everything I had seen from him, he didn’t warrant it, so that left me. I didn’t know why something had tried to take me out, but I was damn sure going to figure it out. That came later, though. Right this moment I wanted to be safe and secure and then find out what Nyteblade knew. Survival first, answers second.

  The loaded Desert Eagle was a comfortable weight in my right hand as I pulled out my cell and punched the number with my left. It rang twice and the voice that answered was all business.

  “Polecats, this is Kathleen, how can I help you?” Kathleen, Kat to her friends, is the manager of Polecats. Answering with her name meant things were normal at the club. No trouble. If she had just answered, “Polecats,” no name and no “How can I help you?” then I would have known to come in quiet and ready to shoot someone or something.

  Truth is, I own the club, not just use it as an office. It’s a good moneymaker and helps fund my war on monsters. Kat and all the folks who work for me know just what I do and why I do it. In one way or another, they have all been touched by the monsters. Some of them I saved and they work for me out of gratitude. Some of them I was too late to save and they work for me to feel safe or to help seek revenge. Whatever their reason, they all know what I do and help me in any way I need.

  Take Kat, for example. Kat’s sister was killed by vampires years ago. It was a vicious, evil kill. I found her while hunting something else entirely. She had been playing groupie and letting vampires bite her and worse to try to find information on who killed her sister. The bloodsuckers found out what she was up to and enslaved her, forcing her to be a bloodwhore for a really twisted sonnuvabitch named Darius. For months she was forced to endure sexual sadism on a level most would not survive. I saved her and helped her get justice. She has been by my side ever since. Dedicated and faithful, but she has a deep-seated, violently unreasonable hatred for anything vampire.

  Yes, she is in love with me. No, we are not together. It’s not like that between us. There’s nothing wrong with her looks, but the trauma from what I took her out of has kept her from any romantic relationships. I am not ready to move on from my wife’s death, not by a long shot, and Kat is more like a sister to me. I love her, but we will never date. It would be too weird. Instead, we have a kinship that lets us work closely together. She keeps me organized and maintains the operation of the club in all its facets.

  Polecats is not just a strip club. It is also one of my bases of operations. I converted an abandoned warehouse into the club about five years back, after the loss of my family and the madness that came afterward.

  Before opening for business, I fortified the damn thing. Steel doors and shutters on the windows. Recessed bolted frames around them. Bulletproof Lexan in the windows and doors. Every opening and space covered by digital and infrared cameras, motion detectors, and proximity alarms.

  In short, the works.

  A trunk line carries the electricity and the Internet that is hydra branched into the surrounding systems of my neighbors. So there was no way to cut the communications or power to the building without killing the entire block, which most bad guys will not do because they do not want that much attention drawn to them. Or they simply can’t. It’s hard to think about things like that if you are not even human. Once I am inside and the club is locked down, I am safe as houses.

  “Kat, are there any vamps in the club?”

  “No.”

  “Double-check.”

  “Give me a second.” I knew what she was doing, I heard her typing over the phone. She was switching the security cameras to infrared, looking for cold spots in the club. “No, we’re clear.”

  “Lock it down, Kat. All of it. Customers out without creating a panic, employees in the break room. Tell Father Mulcahy to get out the Sweeper and be ready. I am coming in the back door with company.”

  The phone went dead as Kat went into action. She didn’t question or even waste time on good-bye. Good girl, Kat is. Stowing the phone, I jacked a shell into the chamber of the Desert Eagle.

  “Let’s go, and be quick about it.”

  The door to the Comet slowly opened and I slid out, gun at the ready. Nyteblade stumbled out of the car behind me, tripping on his damn coat and the bandolier of stakes around his bird chest. Grabbing his collar, I hauled him to his feet and pushed him to the door of the club. It is a plain gray steel door with a simple handle that is bolted to it. The bolts go all the way through the door itself and come out inside the building. Inside, they are held on by wing nuts. A few quick spins and the handle would come off, leaving anyone on the outside trying to get in with nothing to grab on to.

  My foot pushed the door to the Comet shut and my finger punched the key fob to lock it down tight. The keyhole for the club’s back door is recessed. Still keeping my eyes on our surroundings, I had to use touch to feed in the key. It slid in and turned the heavy lock.

  The steel door was heavy enough to make me grunt opening it. It is a solid sheet of three-inch steel. Most steel doors are a frame covered with an eighth inch of steel sheeting. Not this one. I put my back against the door and held it open, motioning Nyteblade inside with a quick head jerk. I backed in after him and the door closed behind me on oiled hinges.

  The inside of the steel door has a round spinner like you see on a bank vault mounted on it. Giving it a quick twirl, I heard four clicks as the bolts it controlled locked into each side of the frame of the door. Two-inch-thick steel bolts sunk six inches into the steel frame and surrounding wall. Nothing was coming in behind us without a rhino.

  Or a Sherman tank.

  We were now in the back part of the club. It is the only part left that still looks like a warehouse. Bare brick for walls, no windows because of the back alley, and a stairway made of metal and concrete that leads upstairs. It’s mostly used for storage. Kat keeps it clean and tidy. Boxes of supplies were sorted into stacks for the club and stacks for me. The club got the stacks with alcohol, glasses, and peanuts. I got the stacks with shotgun shells, bullets, and grenades. Go figure.

  Heading up the stairs to the break room with Nyteblade in tow, I heard the customers being asked to leave. The break room is at the top of the stairs and is the most central room of the club. The entire thing is as secure as a bank vault and is where all the weapons in the club are kept.

  Okay, not all of them, but a good part of them. It isn’t actually used as a break room either. That is what it was used for when the place was a factory, so thats what we call it. Employees take breaks in the lounge behind the main area of the club. It is pimped out with couches, a stocked fridge, state-of-the-art microwave, foot massagers, and anything else needed for the employees to relax.

  The break room is large and well lit, consisting of a big open room lined with metal cabinets. Inside, the cabinets are weapons, and each one had the kind of weapons they held stenciled on the door. A long metal table with chairs takes up the center of the room.

  Nyteblade was deposited in a chair and I began pulling guns and crosses out of the cabinets and lining them up in pairs along the table. All of the crosses were silver and were blessed each day. The guns were all CZ 75 9mm and were identical. The CZ is a Czechoslovakian gun and is a nice little piece of work. Light and smooth, it holds fourteen rounds. I provide them for the employees so they are interchangeable. I didn’t want anyone to feel crippled if they lost “their gun,” so everybody’s gun is the same.

  They are loaded with the silver-jacketed Orion bullets and they are all 9mm because it is a good size for someone with smaller hands but packs enough of a punch to get the job done. You might have to use two or three rounds for that job, but that is why you have fourteen in the clip. We have a few amazons working the club, but most of the girls are petite, so the guns work.

  The unmistakabl
e sound of high heels on tile announced company before the first girl entered the room. In twos and threes they began to enter the room and line up along the wall in various stages of undress. We had a full staff tonight of about twenty girls—blonds, redheads, brunettes, tall, short, thin, buxom, all nationalities, and all different styles. At Polecats, we have what you are looking for. I thought Nyteblade’s eyes were going to pop out of his head, but it is a strip club. Clothing is pretty minimal for most of the employees.

  I kept working, making sure I laid out a cross and gun combination for each girl. I’m used to it all, and believe it or not, owning a strip club has zero to do with sex for me. It’s all business. It makes money, a ton of it, and it is all mostly untraceable. Plus, you can do things like throw everybody out with no notice and they will line back up tomorrow to see the show.

  Besides, with the zoning in this city, there are no actual “strip” clubs. In the adult entertainment places around here, girls cannot be nude. Seriously. Here strip clubs are more like skimpy attire clubs because it is illegal to serve alcohol and have nudity on premises. You have to have one or the other in this county. So lingerie and micro-bikinis all around. It’s actually pretty common here in the South. Works for me, works for the girls, works for the customers, and works for the county.

  The girls didn’t interrupt me or ask any questions, they just let me work. Like I said, they all know what I really do. Voices murmured as they talked amongst themselves quietly and a few waved or smiled at Nyteblade, which turned his face scarlet and made him study the floor.

  Finally, Kat walked into the room. I didn’t hear her coming because she wore Dr. Marten’s instead of high heels. Kat is not a dancer. She’s pretty enough to be, but her demeanor is all wrong. It’s not that she has no humor, but it is so dry that most people have a hard time connecting with her. She is all business and that business is serious.

  Her hair is long, blond, and bone straight. She keeps it pulled back in a ponytail that shows her Midwestern, corn-fed, girl-next-door looks. Big green eyes, with high cheekbones and a straight nose, over full pink lips made her look like the stereotypical high-school sweetheart. Her compact cheerleader’s body was kept in shape with Muay Thai training. Her gun was out and in her hand, the CZ 75 9mm gleaming in contrast with her black Arch Enemy shirt and dark jeans. An ever-present array of blessed crosses hung around her neck.

  She was followed into the room by Father Mulcahy, our bartender. He was holding a modified Benelli shotgun we call the Sweeper because it was loaded with hand-packed silver shot that was so fine it was almost like pepper. The hand packing made the birdshot spread dramatically when fired. Two rounds from it could sweep the entire room and slow down any supernatural critter, but any humans would basically be unharmed. It was a tool Father Mulcahy brought with him when he started working with me. He loads the shells himself and he loves the damn thing.

  He’s an odd cat, our Father Mulcahy is.

  He is actually a bona-fide Catholic priest, and one of the exorcist order at that, with a face that looks like a beat-up version of Robert De Niro’s. Really, I am not being mean, and it’s not just because I am so pretty, but Father Dominic Boru Mulcahy is a rough-looking man. He’s a foot shorter than me, but probably only fifty pounds separate us. Cut into the shape of a square, he has thick dockworkers’ arms attached to a barrel chest. Coarse salt and pepper hair rides over a square face marred by a boxer’s nose, cauliflower boxer’s ears, and scar tissue masquerading as eyebrows.

  He smokes, drinks, cusses, and believes in God, His Son Jesus Christ, Holy Mother Mary, and all the saints in Heaven with all his heart and soul. Proficient in Shaolin Kung Fu, Brazilian jujitsu, Ninpo, Kenpo, and Muay Thai, he can shoot like a sniper and knife fight like a hardened convict. The priest is one of the toughest son of a bitches I know. I met him when I first started on this road. He serves bar downstairs at night, performs Mass in the mornings, and is there for whatever I need to fight my war. Sometimes it’s advice. Sometimes it’s cover fire.

  Once everybody was in the room I stopped working and turned to the group. The girls fell silent and became attentive. Standing against the wall, they made a line of barely covered female flesh. All of them were pretty, done up with heavy makeup and big, hairspray hair. Most people looking at them would dismiss them as anything other than dancers. Most people would assume they were all dumb bimbos who were only good for shaking their collective asses.

  Most people wouldn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground either.

  These were good soldiers. Yes, there are some girls who worked the club who are damaged goods. Hell, we all are in one way or another. Every single one of us had our lives touched by the evil in the night. But that didn’t make them less, it made them more. More determined to do what they could to fight it. More determined to help me stop it from happening to anybody else. I kept them safely back from the monsters. I protected them as much as I could, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that they would all kill for me if it came to that. Pride and love toned my voice when I spoke to them.

  “All right, girls, I want you to all go get dressed and pack up. Grab your crucifix, and your guns.” The girls moved forward to form a line at the table. “Father Mulcahy will take you downstairs and see you all in your cars, and out. Of course Kat will call you about working tomorrow, and if it is going to be a few days, we will compensate you the money you are missing. So you have at least the night off.”

  A slender hand rose in the air. The hand was attached to a slender arm that led to a small brunette with a body that would give eyesight to the blind. Ronnie, or Veronica when she was on stage. I nodded for her to speak. Her voice was clear when she did.

  “What’s going on, Deacon? If you need our help, just say the word.”

  I smiled. “We have a bloodsucker problem. But we haven’t figured out exactly what’s going on.” I reached out and touched her bare shoulder. Her skin was smooth, silky under my calloused fingertips. “If I need you, I will call.” Ronnie leaned into my touch. Her thick, brown ringlets shimmered as she nodded. She was a sweet girl who had lost her brother in a Santeria gang war a few years back. He had given his life to try to save her, but it hadn’t been enough. Thankfully, I had been able to pull her from the fire, literally. The scars on her palms were still shiny, and if you hugged her, occasionally you would get the slightest whiff of lit matches in her hair. Those slender arms moved to reach for me when Kat’s voice cut in.

  “Okay, girls. Stay in, and watch for vampires. If you so much as see one, call me and I will tell you what to do.” Kat has a pleasant voice, but it is a pitch deeper than you would think from looking at her. I mean, she looks so feminine and dainty, but she uses it to her advantage, putting authority into her words.

  Ronnie stepped back into line. Kat nodded to her with a smile and kept talking. She lifted her own gun up for emphasis. “Be safe, and remember, if you are in doubt, shoot first, and call here before you call 911.”

  One by one, all the girls picked up a gun and a cross from the table. Most of them hugged me and a few kissed me on the cheek as they went by. We are all family at Polecats. When all the girls were armed and sorted, Father Mulcahy followed them out of the room. He would make sure the coast was clear in the underground parking deck and lock it back up after releasing the girls. One of the reasons I chose this particular building to open the club was because it has an underground loading dock from its earlier life as a shipping business. It wasn’t hard to secure that and make it a parking garage for employees. I had narrowed the opening to one-car access with a heavy-duty steel gate that worked on an electronic system.

  A girl pulled up, clicked her opener, and that sent a signal to Kat’s office. She looked on the monitor to see whether the girl was alone. If so, she passed her in the gate; if not, she alerted me or Father Mulcahy.

  Kat pulled up a chair and waited without questions. She would catch up as we went along. I had called her earlier and told her about the
vampire in the parking lot and meeting Nyteblade. She had put her gun away in a shoulder holster, but the strap was unsnapped for quick pull. She wasn’t the best with a gun but could more than handle herself. Sitting in the chair with her feet up and her nice, girl-next-door appearance, she looked pretty normal.

  Normal may be a strange description, but it fits. Hey, I am far from normal. Before my life went crazy and I discovered there really were monsters, and not just under the bed, I was a tattoo artist and a bouncer. My preferred mode of dress is lots of black and silver, lots of leather, and I am usually armed. Heavily armed. So yeah, take my look, the dancers and their working clothes, Father Mulcahy in his Roman collar and priest attire, and normal is the best description of Kat there is.

  It was time to get to the bottom of what was going on and how it related to this Nyteblade character. I wanted to know why he had been expecting me, why he had thought I was a vampire, and why vampires were trying to kill me. First things first, I needed one thing cleared up.

  “Is your name really Nyteblade?”

  His eyes were wide and crystal blue when his head jerked to look up at me. He had pulled a pair of thin, wire-framed glasses from a case in his coat and they rode on a freckled nose on a small face. The makings of a thin red goatee framed his mouth and sharply pointed chin. The same red–orange hair bristled up on his head in a short, clean cut.

  Sitting with the gigantic duster on his small frame made him look like a high-school kid. Truthfully, he looked kind of like he was joking, dressed as a bad TV show’s idea of a vampire hunter for Halloween. His big eyes flashed a little anger and he drew a deep breath.

  “That is the name the creatures of the night know me by.” He actually looked indignant.