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Chapter Two

  Despite the name, Rage seemed relatively innocuous, at least from the outside. The building used to be a slaughterhouse, back in the days when this part of Chicago was known for more than police corruption and gang violence. The location had been chosen deliberately: a south-side neighborhood where the people had more to worry about that a nightclub that never closed and only catered to a very exclusive clientele.

  Shapeshifters, Witches, Demon-Born. Any creature wearing human skin that went bump in the night.

  Old steel faded against a backdrop of distant skyscrapers and big city lights. At night spotlights went up, painting the sky in a drunken dance. Rage drew just enough attention to itself that no one suspected it had something to hide.

  I'd ridden by several times, eyeing the velvet-roped crowd with a hunger I scarcely recognized. I always had enough strength to keep from actually going inside. Until now.

  To my surprise, West already waited outside when I parked my bike on the street. He was getting faster. I needed to remember that.

  He paced as I approached. His head moved on a constant swivel, looking this way and that, as if he expected something to jump out of the bushes and land on him at any moment.

  "You okay?"

  He jumped when I spoke and came to a sudden stop. "Fine. Let's go."

  A line formed outside the door, all humans who didn't know any better. The travel guides must have billed Rage as the most exclusive club in the city. The chances of any of them getting in were virtually nonexistent.

  "Do I need ID?" I skidded to a stop a few feet from the door, suddenly fearful of being carded. Rage didn't strike me as an under-eighteen sort of club.

  "You either belong at Rage or you don't," West said, propelling me forward. "Age has nothing to do with it."

  The bouncer, built like a bull with a face like molded clay, sat on a stool next to the door. Tattoos twined up the rigid muscles of his arms, many-headed snakes and dancing demons, faces contorted in angry agony. If I didn't look too closely, the ink seemed to move on his skin under the glare of the lights. Twisting in the corner of my vision, ink and skin creatures come to life.

  When I turned to look at them fully, I saw only simple tattoos.

  It had to be my imagination. My gaze rose to the bouncer's face and he gave me a leering grin, revealing sharp, pointed teeth.

  I looked away as West propelled me towards the door. He nodded once at the bouncer who returned the gesture with a sardonic smile.

  "You're letting them in?" A girl in stiletto heels and a shimmery tank top shouted from the long line. The rest of the crowd echoed her grumbling sentiment.

  "Shut up." The bouncer leaned back against the wall with his arms crossed.

  That was the last I heard of the discontented crowd before the heavy door closed behind us.

  Walking into Rage felt like squeezing into a bubble of pure sound. The pulsing music crashed against my skin, beating on my heart and squeezing the air from my lungs. The music was soul-crushing in its intensity.

  We'd entered Rage on the dance floor, stuck in the middle of a crush of gyrating bodies slick with sweat and lost to the music. I moved through the club by instinct, narrowly avoiding any flailing limbs belonging to the dancers around me.

  It was quieter in the back where a long bar stretched from one side of the room to the other. Sound still beat through every cell of my body but it managed to stay on the right side of painful.

  West signaled the bartender and held up two fingers. "You've got to try the house drink," he said to me over his shoulder. "My treat."

  Getting intoxicated wasn't high on my list of priorities. Finding out what, if anything, I'd felt during the race and making sure I stayed the hell out of its way was of slightly more importance.

  Anxiety rolled through me but I let West order the drinks, even climbing onto a stool to watch the bartender began to prepare them. A thrill moved under my skin, tingling down my fingers like an electric shock. I'd forgotten what it felt to be in a place like this—a place that existed outside of the very human world I lived in everyday—to be around people like me.

  Even dirty, mangy West who always smelled like wet dog and engine oil, held that touch of the familiar. Another reminder of the life I left behind.

  The bartender slid a drink in front of me. Dark gold liquid swirled in a tall shot-glass, gleaming slightly in the dim light of the bar.

  "What is it?" I asked suspiciously.

  "The elixir of life. Honey from the gods. Mana from heaven," he drawled. "Doesn't matter. Drink it."

  "What is this?" I asked the bartender.

  He smirked. "Rage."

  I gingerly picked the glass up between my finger and thumb. Trapped liquid turned slowly round and round, hypnotizing me. The drink smelled like freshly-turned earth and sunshine.

  "You have to drink it in one go." West held up his own glass. "Cheers."

  Taking a deep breath, I downed the shot.

  The drink froze my lips as they met the rim of the glass and then burned down my throat to settle in my belly as a sparking lightening storm.

  "Good, isn't it?" West asked with a gasp.

  I could only nod half-heartedly, unable to speak.

  "Want another one?" The bartender asked.

  "No," I croaked.

  Laughing, he took the empty shot-glasses and swiped the tiny rings they left on the surface of the bar with a damp rag.

  The wall behind the bar sparkled. My fingers stroked the wooden counter and even the tiniest grains were rough against my fingers. "Are shots what we came here for?"

  "You stay here, I'll see what I can find out." Before I could make a move to follow, West was out of the seat and lost in the crowd.

  I wanted to follow, but the room began to spin around me. Being planted on the bar stool was all that kept me from ending up ass-down on the floor. Gripping the edges of the bar with my fingertips, I desperately urged myself not to puke.

  "First time?" The bartender stood in front of me, wiping out glasses with a towel.

  "Is it that obvious?" I winced as the sound of my own voice clanged painfully through my skull.

  "You want something a little softer?"

  "Like engine oil," I said with a snort.

  "Soda water." He slid a full glass across the bar towards me. "It'll be good for your head."

  I took a small sip and the bartender smiled, revealing white teeth glowing under the neon lights. I resisted the urge to ask what he was. It would have been rude. It had been too long since I sat in a room full of people like me.

  I turned in my chair to face the dance floor, the dizziness from before already fading to be replaced with a heady euphoria. I felt like I was flying and falling and everything in between. Exhilaration tingled down my skin like volts of electricity. I saw the world through a haze.

  The otherworldiness of Rage wasn't readily apparent at first. Realization came to me slowly as I watched the dancers move on the floor.

  Skin that shimmered under the lights in way that a human's never would. Bodies coiling like snakes and twisting like predators stalking the night. The eyes gave it all away. Unnaturally bright, they sparked with a secret hunger that a human could never understand.

  Longing and dread mingled inside of me to form a hard knot at the pit of my stomach.

  The crowd parted for a brief and that's when I saw it. A mighty oak tree, so large I couldn't understand how I missed it, rose from the center of the dance floor. The tree split in half, stricken sides falling to hang above the dancers, its leaves falling to kiss the tops of their heads and decorate the floor.

  I traced the rise of the tree's trunk, thick enough it wouldn't be possible to wrap my arms all the way around it, to where the tallest branches traced the metal ceiling. A mural was painted there, stretching from one end of the club to the other. Jagged bolts of lightening rent a starry sky, so realistically detailed I blinked several times to assure myself that it wasn't real.

  "
Immortal spawn of the world tree," the bartender said from behind me.

  I turned in surprise. He had followed my gaze to the tree, eyes bright in the dark. "What did you say?"

  He inclined his head towards me. "Daughter of Yggdrasil, the tree that gave birth to the world,."

  Dancers moved around its trunk, pagan offerings to the spirit that dwelled within. "Where did it come from?"

  "I think it's always been here." His voice was low, respectful.

  I snorted. "This used to be a meat packing plant. I'm sure they would have noticed a tree in the middle of the kill floor."

  The tree was overwhelming, with its fallen leaves dusting the dance floor and the dark gold glimmer to its trunk. But I refused to believe it was a piece of some gigantic, immortal tree that the world hung off of like a Christmas ornament.

  "Did you notice it when you came in?"

  "Well, no."

  "You wouldn't. Not unless you've had this." He held up an empty shot-glass, stained bronze from the liquid that had been inside only moments before.

  "Rage," I said softly.

  "We make it from the tree's sap." He set the glass down and leaned over the counter to whisper in my ear. "It's like being drunk and high and having an orgasm all at the same time."

  "It's something," I said, leaning away from him.

  "I think we see the tree because it wants us too," he said meditatively. "Old magic is unpredictable."

  I brought the glass of soda water to my lips and sipped it slowly, feeling numb. I had a decent thing going. No magic meant no mayhem.

  Life was boring but this was the safest I'd even been. Coming here, where someone might recognize me for who I was, tempted fate.

  Fate could be an evil bitch.

  "Yggdrasil," I mused, uncomfortable with my own thoughts. "Is that Greek?"

  "Norse, actually."

  "Okay. There's a Norse tree with sap that makes you think you can fly if you drink it growing out of the dance floor." I grabbed my bag off a hook on the bar. "Got it."

  West was perfectly capable of gathering information on his own. I slid out off the barstool. My feet landed unsteadily and I took a deep breath to keep from falling over.

  "Easy there," the bartender drawled from behind me.

  I shot him a dirty look over my shoulder before turning back to the dance floor. The crowd had thickened, forming an impenetrable wall of swaying bodies.

  Before I could garner enough strength to push through it, West grabbed my arm.

  "You're leaving?"

  I wrenched my arm away, the skin where'd he touched me already felt dirty. "I need to go."

  "Wait," he said as I started to turn away. "I found someone we should talk to. He knows what we felt during the race."

  The temptation to go with him was too great.

  "Make it quick," I snapped. The euphoria was gone to be replaced with fear and a touch of anger. Anger at myself for being stupid enough to come to Rage and anger with whatever waited in the night.

  West led us to a back of the club, past the bar. He pushed open a door marked 'Pool Room'.

  A pool table sat to one side with a circle of tables and chairs directly obvious. Music from the main room was barely audible. The sounds of low laughter and clinking glasses stilled as we entered but slowly resumed. Curious, if not friendly, eyes followed us to the pool table where only a single player with his back to us wracked balls on the green felt surface.

  "Rabbit," West called respectfully.

  Rabbit shaved his head and an inverted pentagram was tattooed on the back of his head.

  "Nice tattoo," I said, sarcasm dripping from the words. Pentagrams only meant something to devil-worshipping humans and the conservative bible thumpers who disapproved them. It was obvious Rabbit really wanted humans to be scared of him.

  He turned slowly, veiny muscles bulging in his neck. "You talking to me?"

  His voice was higher-pitched than I expected, like Mickey Mouse.

  "Hey, man." West cut in front of me before I could tell Rabbit that he sounded like a kid playing with helium balloons. "Can I play?"

  Rabbit grunted and turned back to the table.

  Taking the sound for an affirmative, West grabbed two pool cues.

  "Don't fuck this up," he said in a harsh whisper, shoving past me.

  "Wouldn't dream of it," I murmured. Rabbit seemed about as reliable as the drunk guy slumped over a table three feet away.

  Rabbit broke. Balls scattered across the table, at least three sinking into pockets. "Stripes," he said with a satisfied nod.

  "We heard you might know about something new coming to town," West said casually as Rabbit circled the table.

  Yeah." Rabbit shot the cue ball and it winged the ten, which hit uselessly against the side of the table. "You're up."

  West leaned over the table. "Can you help us out?"

  "Depends." Rabbit pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and tapped it meditatively. "How much you got?"

  "You want us to pay you for information?" I asked incredulously.

  Rabbit grinned, revealing crooked yellow teeth. "Depends on how much you got."

  West scratched: the cue ball fell into the pocket followed by the four and eight. "Damn."

  "Pitiful." Rabbit gave a wheezing laugh as he re-wracked the balls. "I'd offer to play you for it, but that would just be cruel."

  "I'll play." Ignoring West's shocked expression, I pulled the cue from his limp hands. "If I win, you tell us what we want to know."

  Rabbit looked me slowly up and down, taking in the dark jeans and the t-shirt I wore for work, red with Leno's on 56th printed on it in white lettering. I glared back. "And if I win."

  I refused to say what he wanted me to say. "You get a hearty congratulations."

  He leaned back against the wall and crossed burly arms over his chest. "Try again."

  "West has forty bucks," I said, remembering his cut of the money I'd put up to race. "That's the best I can do."

  "No—"

  I cut him off with a glare before West could say anything more.

  "Don't fuck this up," I said, mocking his earlier remonstration.

  He glared back but subsided into silence.

  "Ladies first." Rabbit backed away from the table with a taunting bow.

  I circled around him, paused at the side of the table, and chalked my cue. My mother would shit a swamp monster if she saw me doing something as declasse as playing pool in a club, much less winning at it.

  The balls broke with a loud clack. Twelve and thirteen disappeared into pockets. It was a decent start. "Stripes," I murmured.

  The game moved slowly. We were evenly matched. For every ball I sank, Rabbit stayed right behind me.

  West sat at the table closest to where we played. With every ball that slid into a leather-lined pocket, he pushed closer to the edge of his seat. By the time the cue and eight ball were left on the table, West sat practically on the floor.

  Rabbit's turn, and he already smiled triumphantly. "Eight ball, corner pocket."

  It should have been an easy shot, ball lined up perfectly. Instead of sinking home and earning Rabbit an easy forty dollars, the black eight ball bounced out of the pocket as if pulled back by an unseen hand. It rolled down the middle of the table before coming to a stop against the far edge, on the opposite side of the cue ball.

  "The Goddess must like me better," I said, smiling slightly.

  "You won't make this," Rabbit shot back, anger raising the pitch of his voice impossibly high.

  I walked around the table. It was a hard shot: a bank shot . The cue ball needed to get down to the other side of the table to send the eight ball in the direction it had come from. If I didn't hit it hard enough, the eight would never make it. Too hard, and it would bounce right out of the pocket like it did for Rabbit.

  With the end of the cue, I tapped the right side pocket. "Eight, side pocket."

  My breathing slowed as I leaned over the p
ool table. All of my attention focused on the white cue ball filling my vision and the black eight ball that lay beyond it. White and Black: all that there was in the world.

  I pushed the cue with a strong, quick thrust. The cue ball flew down the table, bounced off the far edge and rolled back to strike the eight ball. To me, the eight ball moved impossibly slow. It took minutes instead of moments for the eight to reach the side pocket where it fell inside with a soft clack.

  "Yes," West cried jubilantly, jumping to his feet.

  More circumspect, I settled for a small triumphant smile while Rabbit glared at us both.

  "You cheated," he wheezed.

  "Yeah, right." I slid my cue onto the rack on the wall. "Pay up."

  "I can't believe I lost a bet to a weasel and a fucking preschooler." Rabbit slumped into a chair with a grumble. West and I took the seats across from him.

  "Watch your mouth," I snapped. West may have been a weasel: always figuratively and literally about half the time, but I wasn't a child.

  Rabbit snorted and stuck a cigarette between his lips. "This thing you felt. It was big?"

  "Huge," West confirmed.

  "Big enough that we should have seen it," I added quietly. "There was nothing out there."

  "Was it a dragon?" Excitement tinged West's voice.

  Rabbit and I shared a small moment of perfect understanding. West was an idiot. The last dragons were killed off before the Renaissance. There was a chance a few were still left in the mountains of Mongolia but anyone who went out there looking for them never came back. Just another of life's little mysteries.

  "No." Rabbit paused, his expression solemn.

  "Then what?" I said sharply, patience running thin.

  When his answer came, I wished I'd waited to hear it. Whether whispered or spoken, one word had the power to level me completely.

  "Blooded."

  I instinctively pushed my chair back from the table, muscles tensed to flee, before I forced myself to calm. West had gone still next to me.

  "You're sure?" he asked.

  Rabbit took a slow drag from the cigarette. "Sure as death."

  He tapped the cigarette with his thumb. Ash broke from the end to float gently to the floor. I watched it fall and thought of fire. Burning, consuming fire that laid waste to my life.

  "Why?" I forced the words out through the painful lump in my throat. I felt fragile as glass, a single breath and I would shatter.

  "I hear they're look for someone." His gaze rose to meet mine, boring into me with harsh intensity. "Wouldn't want to be that unlucky bastard."

  The Blooded were boogeymen, only more dangerous and far more real than any childhood nightmare. Judge, jury, and executioner all rolled into one devastating package. It was because of them that magic was kept secret: reserved for those born to it and never shared with humans. Any resistance was dealt with in as final a way as possible.

  Deadly and unstoppable, they struck in the night and were away again before the victim ever got a decent look. No one knew who they were or what they looked like. Violating the one law of the underworld: never share magic with a human, was the only way to meet one face-to-face. Of course, that would only be in the split second before you died.

  I'd only seen them in action once before. That was enough to last a lifetime.

  The Blooded might have been the worst thing that my world had to offer. And now they were here.

  "You don't know who it is?" West asked. The conversation had continued without me. I was lost to the spiraling waves of fear threatening to overtake my entire being.

  "Wish I did. We're talking a huge force here, enough to feel from a mile away. I want to know who pissed them off that much."

  "I think I'll just stay out of the way."

  "I here you."

  I was up and out my chair before my brain processed the fact that my body was moving. The club flew by around me as I ran, dodging the dancers and shoving past the heavy metal doors to get outside. Frigid air stung my face and burned in my lungs when I made it outside.

  The bartender eyed me curiously as I burst from the building. I slowed to a brisk walk as my heart beat painfully in my chest. It wouldn't do any good to call more attention to myself. In fact, that was a good way to get myself killed.

  My bike still sat parked where I'd left. Even with the lights from Rage and the perpetual splendor of a city that never slumbered, the night seemed darker—stiller—than it ever had before that moment.

  I felt exposed and vulnerable as my gaze passed up and down the deserted street. No place to hide. I threw one leg over the body of the motorcycle and moved my key towards the ignition. The sooner I could away from this place the better.

  "What the hell, Hex." West came jogging towards me from the direction of the club, leather jacket flapping awkwardly around him. I considered revving the engine and squealing away, leaving him alone in a cloud of engine smoke.

  My eyes narrowed as he approached. I blamed him a little—irrational as that might have been. Coercing me into coming to Rage, forcing me to face the monsters creeping in the darkness of the city. I was better off not knowing, then there might be some chance I could sleep at night.

  "I'm going home," I said shortly, once he was in earshot.

  "I got that." He breathed hard through his nose. "What happened."

  "I don't want anything to do with the Blooded." My hands clenched hard on the handlebar at the sheerness of that understatement. "I might skip town for a while, until it all blows over."

  "You want me to make sure you get there okay?"

  I eyed him suspiciously. West didn't know where I lived and that was the way I liked it. Safety in numbers aside, I didn't trust West that much. Hell, I didn't trust anybody that much.

  "I'm good." I gunned the engine and West took an automatic step back. "We'll catch up in a few days, maybe."

  He nodded once, his face expressionless. I felt his eyes on me as I maneuvered the bike away from the curb, sliding smoothly onto the deserted street. My back tensed under his detached regard. I knew if I looked back, he'd still be standing there. Watching me.