Chapter Two
Gods be damned, there he was, Mr. Brown, their supposed savior, drinking himself into a stupor.
For the third night in a row.
Shea grabbed the pole in the center of the catwalk and gave the few men sitting in the Spyder Club’s front row a good view of her naked breasts as she swung around a second time. She needed the tips.
While the midnight regulars lining the catwalk ogled her, Mr. Brown never glanced toward the stage from his table in the back corner. She didn’t think he even realized there was a dancer up there.
The dark-haired man with the don’t-fuck-with-me expression probably wouldn’t recognize her if he fell over her on the street, which was a distinct possibility at the rate he was sucking down tequila.
Great. Just great. What the hell am I supposed to do now?
She barely heard the throbbing beat of the Black-Eyed Peas’ “My Humps” as she went through her bump-and-grind. She knew it well enough not to trip over her four-inch, stiletto heels. But the chill spreading through her body scared her.
Four days ago, she’d called the number in the phone book, the one she and Leo had found using the locator spell.
A female voice had said hello but when Shea had asked for Mr. Brown, she’d been told he was unavailable and would she liked to talk to Mr. Blue?
Her mother’s letter mentioned only one name. Mr. Brown. Not Mr. Blue. She’d hung up without answering.
That night after work, she and Leo had cased the street listed in the phone book. They’d scrutinized every building for ten blocks and she had known immediately which house was Mr. Brown’s. The Etruscan runes carved around the door like decoration gave it away.
They’d parked and staked out the house, her ’72 Dodge Dart blending in among the older Plymouths and Chevys on the street. Later that night, an unfamiliar dark-haired man had walked into the building.
They’d left without knocking on his door.
Tomorrow, she told herself. She’d approach him tomorrow.
But the next night, that man had taken up residence at that table and begun to drink. And drink. And he’d returned to that table every night since.
He hadn’t said a word to anyone except Harry. Of course, “Give me the bottle” wasn’t exactly conversation.
This was the man her mother wanted her to entrust with Leo’s life?
Uh, no. She didn’t think so. Not until she’d learned a lot more about him.
* * *
“Leo? Hey, hon, I’m back.”
Shea shut the door to the dressing room behind her, walking through the cluttered space to throw the few scraps of material she’d stripped off on stage in her cubby.
“Shit, you done already?” Vibia groaned at the makeup mirror, outlining pale blue eyes with black liner, dark hair already teased and sprayed into carefully tousled waves. “Guess I better get a move on. You know how Marci gets when I’m late. What a bitch.”
Shea just shrugged her shoulder. No way was she getting between the two lucaniversipelli. Skin-shifter tempers were infamously short, particularly the Etruscan wolves, who had the whole Latin temperament going against them, too.
The fur would fly, literally, if the women shifted into their wolves and went after each other.
“Hey, Vi, is Leo in the bathroom?”
“No.” The woman waved her hand toward the door. “Dilby came to take him DownBelow. Said the band wanted him to sit in on percussion. He’s got a gift for music, your boy.”
Cold fear swamped her before she could prepare, stealing her breath and crushing her stomach in its grip. She nearly ran for the door before she stopped and took a deep breath.
“Hey, sweetie,” Vibia said, frowning at her. “He’s fine. You know Dilby won’t let anything happen to him.”
“Yeah.” She forced a smile. “Yeah, I’m sure he’s fine.”
Dilby had been the first person to befriend them after Shea had gotten the job here. Shea hadn’t wanted to make friends, but Dilby had been relentless. In a good way. Always chatty but never nosy. The lead singer of DownBelow’s house band, Dilby had been the first person to put a musical instrument in Leo’s hands. She’d make sure nothing happened to him.
Still, these past few weeks, Shea had become terrified to let him out of her sight.
She refused to leave him alone in their apartment when she went to work. The kid was only six. But dragging him to a strip club nearly every night, even if he only sat in the dressing room, was no life for a kid. Hell, being on the run was no life for a kid.
He deserved more. He deserved to grow up in his own home with his parents, free from harm. Safe. Cocooned.
Suffocated.
Like she’d felt.
Oh, not at first. At first, it’d been heaven. Just her and her parents. A forest to play in. Books to read. Weapons to train with. Spells to learn. Not that she’d had much luck with that, but still…
Until she was twelve, she hadn’t known there were living beings in the world other than her parents and the animals who roamed a forest so thick it blotted out the sky in spots.
Then a lost hiker had stumbled through her parents’ strong perimeter wards and asked her to show him the way back to the road. Fear had frozen her vocal cords and she’d run home, barely able to for words to tell her dad about the hiker.
Until that moment, she’d never once questioned her parents about why they never left the forest surrounding their cozy log home.
“There are people out there who would hurt you if they knew about you,” her mother had said. “It’s for your own good, Shea.”
As a stupid teenager, she’d believed her mom had wanted to control her life.
“You’re special, Shea,” her dad had claimed. “We can’t trust anyone else. This was the only way.”
Yeah, she was really special. A special kind of screw-up.
Well…shit. She shook those thoughts out of her head.
She hadn’t planned on going DownBelow tonight but no way would she make Leo leave. If he was going to sit in with the band, she didn’t want to miss it. The kid was a musical prodigy. Put an instrument in his hands and he could play it. And not just play it, but make it sing. Percussion, guitar, bass, violin. Anything he could hit or had a string. He had some trouble with wind instruments but she was pretty sure that had to do more with lung capacity than talent. Give him a few years and he’d master those, too.
If he had a few years.
No, none of that now.
If she was going DownBelow, she needed to change. The jeans and t-shirts she’d worn to work weren’t gonna cut it. Not if she didn’t want to stand out.
And she really didn’t want to stand out.
“Hey, Vi. You got anything I can wear? I wasn’t exactly planning to go tonight.”
Vi gestured with the bright red lipstick she was applying. “Not really. Look in the closet, babe. Something’ll jump out at you.”
Hell, why hadn’t she thought of that? Probably because she had too damn much on her mind.
The club had been built as headquarters for a beneficial society in the early 1800s, but in later life had been home to the Reading Communist Party, the Daughters of the American Revolution and, for a time in the 1920s, a burlesque theater.
Only the red velvet curtains over the stage and windows remained in view from those days, but the heart of that old theater lived in this closet. Along with clothes from just about every decade since.
Leo loved to hunt in the trunks for treasure like plastic swords and funny hats. He was too young to realize the treasure was the clothes. Growing up as she had, clothes had never been much of a concern. Jeans, t-shirts, sweaters.
But now…well, now she knew the difference between a basque and a corset. Black velvet on her skin made her shiver with lust. Leather molded to her body like a lover and the sheen of satin against her olive-toned skin and dark hair made her glow.
Ah, there it was, the cream satin basque, hanging from the pole on the side wall. She pushed aside two Victorian gowns to reach it then turned to one of several old steamer trunks on the other side of the room. She’d seen a whole trunk of black leather… Yeah, this was it.
She pulled out a couple of skirts that looked like they might fit her then headed back into the dressing room.
Vibia would need to help her with the basque and then she was going DownBelow.
There, at least for an hour or so, she could forget that the man she needed to save her brother was drinking himself into a coma.
* * *
“Hey, Harry. What’s happening DownBelow?”
From behind the huge mahogany bar that dominated the north wall of the club, Harry gave him a once-over as he tapped a beer for a waitress.
Gabriel figured he didn’t look too good, not after three steady days of drinking.
Fuck it. Tonight at ritual, he’d sober up fast.
“Since you’ve been drowning yourself in tequila for the past three nights, I guess you didn’t have any luck?” Harry asked.
He met Harry’s gaze head on. He’d managed to avoid this conversation until now. “Nothing there.”
Harry nodded once and a brief flash of sympathy passed through his eyes. Anyone else, Gabriel would’ve told them off. He didn’t need their sympathy.
But Harry was the only person Gabriel trusted with this part of his life. Harry wanted Dario dead, though he’d never explained why.
And Gabriel didn’t really care. They wanted the same thing.
“Band’s in,” Harry said finally. “Gonna be full. You know the drill.”
Yeah, he knew the drill. And no one, if they wanted to be allowed back into The Spyder or DownBelow, ignored Harry’s drill. No weapons, no fighting. No excuses. You fucked up and you were banned. Forever.
Looking at the guy, you wouldn’t think he was such a badass. Five-ten, short brown hair, brown eyes, average looks, the kind that would get him passed over in a lineup even if he was guilty.
But looks, as they so often were, were deceiving mothers.
Gabriel had been in Harry’s office a few times, long enough to look at the photos on the walls. They chronicled the building’s history from the time of its construction in the early 1800s through the next two-hundred years. In every single picture, Harry stood somewhere in the background, looking exactly as he did today.
Not such a shock, considering all Gabriel knew about the world. Still, Gabriel didn’t know what Harry was. He wasn’t Enu, a human of magical Etruscan descent, like the streghe and the versipelli. And not Fata, an Etruscan elemental being such as the winged folletti and the goat-legged salbinelli.
Harry was something else. Someone you didn’t want to fuck with. He was ancient, older even than the cursed streghe, though no one wanted to piss him off by asking just how old. Everyone who came through The Spyder’s doors learned to get and stay on Harry’s good side. And those who didn’t…well, nobody had actually dared get on Harry’s bad side since Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance.
Gabriel was no exception.
In the hallway outside the club, he entered the darkened alcove that held a perpetually out-of-order phone. At least, out of order for those who didn’t know how to use it.
Without lifting the handset, Gabriel checked to make sure there were no eteri from the strip club wandering around then punched in four digits on the base. After a two-second lull, the rumble of well-oiled pistons warned him the back wall was about to swing open. When it did, a rush of air blew out and Gabriel stepped into the holding room, the wall shutting behind him as an overhead light came on. One by one, more lights clicked on down the descending hallway.
Sliding out of his leather duster, he hung it and the arsenal it held in one of the empty lockers lining the wall.
From his right boot, he pulled his pugio, the short silver dagger he’d inherited from his dad, and put it in his coat pocket. In his jeans and t-shirt, he’d stand out some. But everyone who came to DownBelow thought they knew who and what he was—just another Etruscan descendent with a little inherent power, an Enu who worked construction for an eteri firm out of Philadelphia.
Last, he took off his boots and socks and let his bare feet settle into the dirt floor, soaking in the undiluted power of the ley line running beneath the city. Above, in the concrete streets and brick buildings, magic still flowed strong enough to make Reading one of the most powerful old cities in North America.
But down here, in the earth itself…Goddess, it was like injecting pure heroin into his veins. And, yeah, he’d been there, done that, in that dark period after the deaths of his dad and brother.
But magic wouldn’t give him the problems drugs would.
He stood for a few seconds, eyes closed, letting the power seep into his body, mingle with the arus in his blood. Let it cleanse some of the anger that’d been building the past week. Sweating out the alcohol would take a little more time, but it’d take a lot more than five or six liters over three days to seriously affect him.
The disappointment would take longer to dissipate and that was the real bitch. He’d thought for sure he’d had a decent lead this time. Dario, that bastard, had eluded him again.
He shook his head. He’d deal with that later.
Tonight, he’d let himself get blown away by the band, maybe get laid before going to ritual. Yeah, getting laid would go a long way toward clearing his head.
Opening his eyes, he realized he heard music. The steel door at the end of the tunnel muffled most of it, as did the dampening spells covering every inch of the ceiling, walls and floor.
Still, he could feel it in his bones, his blood beginning to pound in rhythm. Queen, maybe, though it wasn’t anything he recognized, and his dad had loved the band.
By the time he reached the door, they’d moved onto something else, something with a slower beat that made him think about sex. Now that he’d started thinking about it, he couldn’t stop. And since he couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten laid, he figured it was too long.
There were bound to be a few willing female lucani. After a night at DownBelow with the band, they’d be aching for it and most knew he’d be good for a few hours, at least.
Laying his left hand against the bare steel, he gave a shove with more than just raw force. He put a little power in it, making the metal warm to the touch. A lock appeared in the center of the rectangular door. Pulling out the silver key he always wore around his neck, he inserted it in the keyhole. The key had been made by his mother and blessed by Laran, the Etruscan God of War. Laran would be at the ritual tonight. And He’d probably be pissed off at Gabriel for missing the last one.
Something else to worry about later.
Right now, he pushed through the door and into the dizzying rush of DownBelow.
* * * *
“Leo, honey, you having a good time?” Shea asked.
Leo’s head whipped around as he sat at the back of the wooden stage, mostly hidden from the crowd behind the drum kit. The band was between songs but gearing up to go again.
Though he never smiled—not once, not since she’d carried him out of their parents’ house sobbing, before he’d set the entire place on fire with the touch of his hands—he did have one expression that indicated maybe, just maybe, he might smile one day.
His dark eyes widened as he nodded, excitement radiating from him like heat. A set of bongos lay on his lap. Probably Tessa’s, the band’s percussionist.
“Hey, Shea.” A small brunette with bright green eyes bounced across the stage. She wore a short, pink dress that looked like a pair of baby doll pajamas Shea had had as a child. With her wavy, chestnut hair, pointed features and petite frame, Dilby managed to pull it off without looking like a pornographic Shirley Temple. “You’re done for the night?”
“Hey, Dilby, thanks for bringing Leo down. I’m sure he was bored stiff in the dressing room.”
The girl smiled, the expression making her look almost as young as Leo. Shea had no idea how old Dilby really was. Or what she was. She wasn’t Enu. Or rather, she didn’t feel Enu to Shea. She was probably Fata, though her ears weren’t pointed like the linchetti and she didn’t have a folletta’s wings. Her legs were regular human legs, unlike a salbinelli’s goat legs. She was probably gianes, a female wood elf.
Still, Shea never asked because she never wanted to answer the same question.
“No problem,” Dilby said. “Tessa’s out of town so we’re hurting for percussion. And Leo, my man,” she flashed a smile at the boy, who stared back with adoring eyes, “is a rock god, aren’t you, hon?”
Leo nodded again and, for a few brief seconds, Shea held her breath. She willed him to speak, to say something. Anything. Blessed Goddess, the kid hadn’t said more than a hundred words since he’d seen their parents lying in pools of blood. His screams for them still reverberated in her nightmares.
Of course, he didn’t say a word, and she and Dilby sighed in unison. When they left, Dilby was the person Shea would miss most.
As if she’d read her mind, Dilby flashed a rueful smile, ruffled Leo’s inky black hair and headed back to center stage. The guitarist, a guy named Caeles who looked to be about twenty and had the pointed ears of a linchetto peaking out from beneath curly brown hair, started to pick out the opening notes to My Chemical Romance’s “Dead,” and the crowd began to writhe.
Leo picked up the beat without hesitation, little hands smacking the skins. He nodded to Shea before closing his eyes to concentrate.
“I’ll be right up here,” she said, though he probably hadn’t heard her. That was okay. He knew she’d be there if he needed her.
Walking up a few rows into the mostly empty seats facing the back of the band, Shea sat on the warm stone, heated from below. From her vantage point, she could see the entire club.
Who would ever guess that beneath this city was a perfectly formed amphitheater? Though tiny in comparison to the architectural wonders built by the ancient Romans in Europe, Africa and Asia, just the fact of its existence was amazing.
Ten circular rows of stone seating encompassed the arena where the band played and the audience danced. Some nights, especially during the spring and summer, the arena held the circensis, the games. She and Leo had actually attended a couple since moving here.
Though she’d been careful to keep to the fringes of society, only occasionally going to temple and making no friends with the exception of Dilby, she couldn’t resist the circensis.
As a kid, she’d loved to listen to her dad talk about the times he’d taken part in the Reading games as a teenager. Right here, on this floor, their dad had won many times, whether he’d fought with his bare knuckles or weapons. He’d lost a few times, too, and Shea thanked the Gods they no longer fought to the death, as they had in ancient times.
Still, the Etruscans maintained their hunger for blood and violence. Shea believed that appetite worked in their favor, gave them an edge to survive.
Even though they’d hidden their culture to protect themselves, the Etruscans worshipped in temple every week. They made sacrifices to their flesh-and-blood deities, like Nortia, Goddess of the Fate, and Tivr, God of the Moon. Those deities lived among them, their existence a carefully guarded secret from the eteri.
But as much as the Etruscans liked a good fight, good sex ranked above it.
The band’s strega, Gemma, stood on the opposite end of the stage from Leo. Another tiny brunette with pixie features and hair straight to her ass, Gemma chanted in Etruscan, weaving a strong euphoria spell that had enticed a few couples into the stands already. Bodies pressed tight, the couples’ hands roamed, mouths locked. No embarrassment at their public display.
Though Shea had never gotten down and dirty with anyone, she considered sex a natural part of life. Most eteri had a skewed sense of sex, considered it dirty or immoral, to be hidden away in dark rooms.
She didn’t understand that, especially as the beat of the music and the spell encouraged her body to move. She was halfway to the arena floor before she realized she’d gotten up.
One dance, she reasoned. If she stayed to the left of the stage, she’d be able to keep an eye on Leo and dance out some of her frustration.
Just as she hit the floor, Dilby and the band lit into “Love to Love You, Baby,” and the trancelike beat seduced her. Since she didn’t want to stand out, she approached a group of single females she’d seen here before. Though she didn’t know their names, they welcomed her into their circle with nods and quick smiles.
But the women’s attentions immediately refocused on the single men watching the action from the perimeter. Waiting. Everyone was looking for a partner tonight, someone to connect with, someone to make magic with.
Behind her, a male body pressed against hers. Hard and hot, he plastered himself to her, hands on her hips as he picked up her rhythm. He was fully aroused, his sex a stiff rod rubbing against her ass.
Goddess, his hands made her blood heat as they cruised from her hips up her sides to her breasts, cupping them, testing their weight. So firm. So hot. He wanted her. She felt his desire in the pulsing of his cock, in the thrust of his hips against her ass.
Damn, it’d be so easy to turn, to wrap her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his waist and let him carry her off into the stands. Let him take her mind off everything and—
The voices buzzed through her mental barrier, making her temples ache with the effort to ignore them. But she lost her rhythm and stepped out of the man’s hold. Damn it, she had to get off the dance floor before she embarrassed herself.
Without saying a word, she stumbled away, back up the risers, sinking into a seat, wanting to sink into the stone and away. Just away from this all.
Not fair. So not fair.
Tears threatened but she’d be damned if she’d let them fall. Couldn’t give in because she was afraid if she started, she wouldn’t stop. The fucking voices. Sure, they provided an early warning system for danger, but obviously they didn’t want her to have any fun. They wanted to keep her alone. A virgin.
With a shiver, she forced her attention back to Leo, still seated at the back, little hands hitting the drums. So small. So vulnerable.
Vaffanculo, was she nuts? Of course she couldn’t hook up with anyone. Who would protect Leo while she went off and got laid?
She let her gaze travel the room, looking for anyone who might be looking at him a little too long, who paid a little too much attention to him. All she saw were people having a good time.
Several more couples and one—no, two threesomes had joined the others in the stands. Luckily all were still clothed, but she and Leo needed to leave at the next break. The rest of the band would play for at least another hour, possibly two. Until those audience members who’d stayed reached their climaxes.
Sex magic fueled the wards that kept DownBelow concealed from the outside world. Harry considered it a fair trade since he charged no admission fee to see the band.
While the band members made decent livings as session musicians for the eteri, they were bigger than The Beatles to the Etruscans. She often wondered how they managed to balance those two worlds and keep their sanity and their secrets.
She nearly hadn’t. She’d almost run back to her parents after the first disastrous six months she’d spent on her own. Sneaking away from her home had been easier than she’d expected. After her encounter with the hiker, she’d been determined to see what other secrets the rest of the world held.
Her mom had refused to discuss even the possibility of her leaving. Her dad…well, her dad had stepped up her training. As if he’d known she’d found a way to sneak past the perimeter wards and walk to the town she’d discovered in the neighboring valley. As if he’d known, one night, after a particularly bitter fight with her mom when she was seventeen, she’d pack a bag, steal some money and run.
At the town, she’d gone to the bus depot and bought a ticket, headed for Philadelphia.
She was going to be a ballerina. She would dance on famous stages around the world and fall madly in love with a man who would not want to lock her in a home in a forest.
She would not give up her life to be a member of an ancient boschetta dedicated to the Goddess Menrva. Hell, she couldn’t even work a spell without her brother’s help and the constant threat of a migraine.
Heart pounding as she sat in that smelly bus, her eyes had widened as the cities became bigger and dirtier. When she’d finally stepped off the bus in Philadelphia, she’d cowered in the bus station bathroom for an hour. There were too many people, too many cars, too much noise. And in her head, the voices whimpered in fear.
Goddess save her, she’d been an idiot. She should’ve gone home then. Maybe if she had, things would be different. Maybe her parents would be alive.
And she and Leo definitely wouldn’t need the dubious services of the man who’d just walked into the club through the front entrance.
She’d seen Mr. Brown from the stage, but now that he was this close… Damn, he was gorgeous—if you liked guys who looked like they spent the better part of their lives bench-pressing cars.
Obviously she did, because her libido came to life on a wave of heat that flooded her body from scalp to toes and every place in between. Her breasts tightened, the nipples pebbling into hard points, and her sex clenched with a ferocity that shook her.
What was wrong with her? She hadn’t had such a strong reaction to the guy she’d been dancing with earlier. Was this a belated reaction to that? Or a reaction to the euphoria spell Gemma wove to lure the patrons into sex?
Unlike everyone else here, Mr. Brown—she really doubted that was his name—wore jeans and a black t-shirt, though he was barefoot like everyone else. His dark hair hung in thick, layered lengths past wide shoulders. His broad brow, high cheekbones and square jaw covered by a closely trimmed beard proclaimed his Mediterranean heritage.
And those dark eyes constantly scanned the crowd. From his intent expression, she got the sense he never let his guard down. That was a good thing. In that way, Mr. Brown reminded her of her dad.
Still…she wasn’t ready to hand over Leo’s safety to a man she didn’t know enough about. Even if he was grigori.