The Wild Side: Urban Fantasy with an Erotic Edge (31 page)

Matt couldn’t have believed these guys could stop him, so his goal must have been to use them to waste his time. They’d managed to do that, but not a lot of it.

Chan took the phone to the nearest conscious man and knelt beside him.

The guy pushed backward in fear.

“Call 9-1-1,” Chan said. “Tell them where you are, that four of you are down. Say a big vampire attacked you but ran off when some strangers saw him bending over you. Stick to that story when they show up, or I’ll find you again.”

The guy nodded and reached for the phone.

Chan held onto it. “What did Matt tell you about me?”

The man pulled back his hand. “What Matt? We were just working this alley.”

Chan laid the flat side of the sword across the man’s neck. “One last time, and then I kill you and ask the next guy. What did Matt tell you about me?”

“Almost nothing! I swear!” The words came out as fast as the man could speak. “A big guy, six four, two-fifty, who might walk by the alley. Said you’d stop, we wouldn’t have to make you. We’re supposed to make sure you don’t go anywhere else.”

Chan nodded. “Anything more?”

The man shook his head. “No! That’s all of it.”

Chan handed him the phone. “Make the call.”

When the man finished, Chan stood, smashed the phone under the heel of his right boot, and left.

* * *

He waited at the end of the alley nearest Changes until the sirens drew closer. He peeked around the corner at the front of the club. At least two dozen people stood in line, waiting their turn to do the necessary paperwork and enter. He turned right out of the alley and walked to the back of the line.

The people weren’t what he’d expected. His only previous contacts with sex clubs had come through TV shows and movies, where all the attendees wore skimpy outfits and were beautiful actors and actresses. These men and couples—no single women—ranged in age from twenties to sixties and in size from bony to obese. Most fell on the older, heavier end of the spectrum.

An SFPD patrol car raced up the street and turned right into the alley.

Like everyone else, he leaned to his right, gawked at it, and then returned to waiting.

The night was brisk, so most of the people wore sweaters or coats. A few of the women wore high heels, and a few others carried them, but most were in comfortable shoes. Sneakers and casual leather shoes were the norm for the men. Ethnicity ran the gamut in classic San Francisco rainbow fashion. His own Hispanic/Asian/Caucasian coloring did not draw any particular attention. Nor did his long hair, which at six inches below his shoulder was still shorter than the hair of several other men in the line.

More people joined the queue behind him. Matt had to be happy with business.

Chan spotted two cameras monitoring the double-door entrance and another focused on the cashier windows.

Many of the people were obviously members; at the front of the line, they showed ID, got wristbands, and strolled straight inside. Three club staffers, each wearing black shirts with a neon green “Changes” in large Gothic type on both their fronts and backs, shunted newbies aside, handed them clipboards, and talked with them. When the newbies finished, they headed to one of the two available cashiers and paid their fees.

Flash back ten or twenty years, and the crowd would have been buying tickets for a show at the former movie theater. Go further back, and the performances had probably been live.

If anyone in line was a vampire, Chan couldn’t tell from any external evidence, but that meant nothing.

When Chan was four people from the front, Matt appeared in the doorway, walked straight to him, and stuck out his hand.

“Diego Chan,” he said, his smile broad and his fangs barely extended, “how nice to see you. What’s it been: maybe five, six years?”

Matt looked exactly the same age as when Chan had last seen him, which of course he would, because he’d gone over right after that. Chan had tried to talk him out of it, but Matt had long before that time decided that the shot at immortality was more than worth the trade-offs.

Chan stared at Matt’s hand until he dropped it.

“Does it have to be like that, Diego?” Matt said. His smile disappeared. “We go back, you and I. We were friends.”

Chan stared into Matt’s eyes. “Yeah, we were. No, it doesn’t have to be that way. You know what I want, so let me have it, and we’ll be done.”

Matt smiled again. “I’d like to be able to say I don’t know, but I do. There’s just one problem: I have no idea where Sam is. He’s been visiting frequently for a while now, usually right after he closed the restaurant, but when he didn’t show last night, I knew Barbara would jump to the wrong conclusion and call you.”

“So you set up those teams to waste my time?”

Matt’s smile never wavered, but his pupils contracted. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Diego. All I know is what I said: Sam didn’t appear last night, so I figured Barbara would blame me and contact you. As apparently she did.”

“You always wanted us both to join you,” Chan said. “Why’d you decide to force the issue now?”

Matt shook his head slowly. “Such prejudice. It’s sad. Really, it is. One more time: I don’t know why Sam didn’t visit last night, or where he is now.”

“So you won’t mind if I come in and look around?”

“Not at all.” Matt pulled several sheets of folded paper from the inside pocket of his deep navy jacket. “We are, of course, subject to a great many San Francisco regulations, so you’ll have to sign the standard paperwork and pay the usual fifty-buck, single-male-visitor fee.” Matt made a show of looking around. “Unless, of course, you’ve brought a female guest or”—Matt stared back at Chan’s face—“you’d like to join as a permanent member.”

Chan shook his head and took the papers.

One explained the rules. No is no. Use condoms. Don’t masturbate onto anyone else. Blood games with vampires is acceptable but no turning on the premises, even if the human brought the proper paperwork. On and on the page-long list went, and though some of it baffled him, none of it applied to him.

Another detailed the fees. More irrelevant information.

A form that absolved Changes of all liability no matter what happened.

Another that required your real name and address, with a photocopy of your ID.

A privacy statement.

Chan signed all the forms, supplied his ID, and paid the fee.

The cashier clipped a bright red band on his left wrist. “You’re all set,” she said. “Have a great time!”

Matt chatted up the people in the line and occasionally handed out coupons for free drinks. He smiled and laughed and touched arms and clapped shoulders and was generally so social that Chan couldn’t resist admiring the ease with which he worked with people. Chan would rather fight them all at once than do what Matt was doing.

When Chan opened the door to enter the club, Matt appeared in front of him and blocked his path.

“This isn’t your kind of scene,” Matt said. “I haven’t seen you in years, but I’m sure of that. I can still give your money back.”

“Sam’s not here, right?” Chan said.

“Correct.” Matt sighed. “As I told you.”

“So why do you care if I go in?”

“I don’t want you messing up my club, Diego.” Matt lowered his voice. “This place is a money machine, and it’s squeaky clean.”

“If Sam’s not here,” Chan said, “then all I’ll do is search the place.”

“Fine,” Matt said. For the first time, he looked concerned. “You and I used to be friends, and Sam and I still are. I know you’re wasting your time. I’d rather you look for him somewhere you might find him.”

“If you’re so worried,” Chan said, “you should be out searching, and you definitely shouldn’t be wasting my time now.” Chan shook his head at his own stupidity. With every action he took, Matt managed to delay him. Chan needed to stop playing along and get on with the job. “I’ve paid my fee and filled out the paperwork. Are you going to get out of my way, or are we going to get into it out here?”

Matt put his hand on Chan’s arm. “You’re more like us than them,” he said. “What you’re capable of. Hell, what you do.” He paused until Chan met his gaze. “You always have been.”

Chan shook his head. “No,” he said, “not in any way that really matters. Never have been, never will be. Now, move.”

For a second, Matt’s eyes glittered and he parted his lips slightly. Then he sighed and stepped aside. “Knock yourself out.”

Chan stepped inside.

Sound assaulted him, music that mixed a throbbing beat with moans and cries and occasionally something that might have been a word.

Everyone in the entry room paused, checked out Chan quickly, and then returned to their conversations. Chan moved to his right so he was out of the entry path, and stopped.

Matt followed.

The crowd again paused, stared, and resumed. A fresh meat ritual.

Chan stared at him.

Matt held up his hands and laughed. “Fine, fine. Whatever you want. I thought you might appreciate having someone show you around, but if you want to be on your own, go for it. Do what you need to do. If you want me, any of the staff should be able to find me. You can spot them by their shirts.”

He left.

A clock over a bar to Chan’s left read 11:55. He had some time, almost certainly around two hours, but that wasn’t a lot. People stood around talking and drinking. Many were naked, others wore only underwear, and a few were still in street clothes. One bartender worked the human crowd from a fairly extensive wall stock. The other served the vampires; his drinks were all below the counter. Except for the nudity, the crowd looked and behaved no differently from the after-work gatherers at most bars in any big city.

Nothing to learn here.

Ahead of Chan were five ways out of the room: two that led up, two that went ahead into the main floor, and one with stairs to the basement. Red velvet curtains hung over each of them.

The basement was the most likely place, because it would have been the simplest, but Matt would know he’d think that. No, he’d start at the top and work to the bottom.

Fewer people blocked the entrance to the stairs on the right, so he headed up them. So narrow that his shoulders touched the walls on both sides, the stairwell was an ideal place for an ambush, so Chan was glad when he reached the top. He moved forward a few yards, flattened himself as much as he could against the side wall, and surveyed the area.

The floor plan he’d studied had depicted the place accurately.

The front two-thirds of this former balcony was entirely empty and afforded a clear view into everything on the main level. The center down there was a large open space where theater seats had once stood in rows. Now, each side boasted two rooms past the bar and many small clusters of furniture in the rest of the space. Each of those four rooms afforded onlookers a great view with windows that filled most of each of their audience-facing walls. In the one nearest the bar on each side, naked couples were kissing and petting and waving to those watching them. They were showing off at least as much as they were having sex. The other two rooms were set up for burial games, with four-foot-high enclosed dirt beds that in another setting would have been flowerbeds. One of those rooms stood empty. In the other, a short female vampire with a giant mane of wild black hair sucked delicately from the shoulder of a hairless man Chan’s size who was kneeling in a hole in the dirt bed and staring up as if seeing heaven. A drop of blood ran down the man’s chest to almost his nipple before the vampire noticed it and caught it on her fingertip.

Chan would have to check out both of those rooms after he finished up here.

All the groups of chairs and small tables that sat in haphazard fashion here and there in the large open area faced an old wooden stage at the end of the room. The only furniture not oriented forward was a sofa that faced the entrance from the bar. On it, a naked, pudgy man in his sixties sprawled nude for all to view. He stroked his cock and smiled at each woman who entered. For the short time Chan watched, no one encouraged the man, but no one seemed at all put off by him, either.

Four staffers in the club’s black shirts leaned against walls and occasionally changed positions, their eyes always scanning the crowd.

Men and women in various stages of undress occupied about half the chairs on that level. On the stage, two women danced naked with one another, coming together to grind and to kiss, then backing away, facing the crowd, and gyrating. Half-hearted cheers rewarded their efforts now and again, but the dancers were lost in the motion and each other and never noticed.

A two-yard-wide balcony ahead of Chan led along the right-hand wall and down some steps to the stage. A similar balcony ran along the opposite wall.

To Chan’s left and ahead of him stood a cluster of dark spaces lit here and there by dim yellow and red bulbs. He followed a hallway beside the stairway past a pair of restrooms and one guy in a Changes shirt to the frontmost room, a round space with a leather sofa wrapping the closed part of its perimeter. Two men sat on either side of a woman, each holding one exposed breast. One kissed her deeply and then turned her head so the other could follow suit. The center of the room was a pit filled with dirt and a mock headstone that read, “Coming soon.”

The threesome glanced up at Chan. The woman raised her right hand and beckoned him to her.

Chan ignored her and stuck his hand into the pit. He hit bottom before the dirt hit his shoulder. Unlikely, but it pays to check, so he released the baton and dragged it through enough of the dirt that there was no way it was hiding a body. Satisfied, he replaced the baton and moved to the next room.

A heavyset woman kneeling in front of a seated older man gave him head while half a dozen men watched. All but two were stroking their cocks. The “Don’t masturbate onto anyone else” rule now made a lot of sense. The room held no dirt, so Chan moved on.

The five other small upstairs areas also housed groups ranging from four to ten people, typically with two or three engaged in some kind of sex and the rest, usually the ubiquitous masturbating men, watching intently. None of the spaces held dirt.