Chicks Kick Butt - Rachel Caine, Kerrie Hughes (ed) Read online

  His club’s logo had been emblazoned on the matches I’d found in the hit man’s coat, so I decided to see if anything interesting was happening. It wasn’t. Of course, that in itself was interesting.

  The club usually did a pretty good business, despite being wedged between an acupuncturist and a cut-rate electronics store on a backstreet of Chinatown. Not tonight, though. The jazzy neon sign was dark and the usual bouncer-and-rope combo was missing from the front door.

  Instead, a large guy leaned against the dirty bricks, in the process of lighting a cigarette. The glow of the flame into his cupped palm highlighted a familiar craggy face. Zheng-ze, aka Scarface, Cheung’s right-hand vamp and a first-level master with power to burn.

  He and his boss were in the process of challenging for seats on the senate, the ruling body for vamps in North America. From what I’d heard, they’d been doing pretty good. I silently cursed and shifted a little closer to the Dumpster that was providing my cover. The fact that Scarface was standing guard duty cut down my chances of getting in by at least half.

  A moment later, he finished lighting up and relaxed against the wall. And grinned at me. I gave it up and crossed the road.

  “Haven’t you heard that stuff’ll kill you?” I asked as he took a long drag.

  He laughed it back out. “You look like shit,” he told me cheerfully, his eyes on the not-yet-faded bruises under the pancake I’d slathered on before leaving the house. “I heard you got yourself blown up.”

  “You heard wrong.” Although it had been pretty damn close.

  “Good. Once I get the Challenges outta the way, you and I gotta square off.” He showed me some big white teeth. “See who’s best.”

  “I know who’s best.”

  “That’s the spirit,” he said approvingly. “There’s no sport in it when they just give up and die.”

  I ignored that in favor of nodding at the building behind him. “So what’s going on?”

  I hadn’t really expected an answer, although I got one—sort of. “Lord Cheung’s trying to clean up his image. He’s jonesing for a senate seat bad and thinks some of his activities might not look too good if they’re brought up in the voting process.”

  “I thought combat decided the new senators.”

  “Combat narrows the field,” he corrected. “But once we’re through, we got to be confirmed. And your senators are going to be looking for any possible reason to turn us down.”

  “They’re not my senators,” I said flatly.

  The senate employed me to clean up its messes from time to time, but the fact that I occasionally proved useful hadn’t made me any more popular. The only one who might not hate me was Mircea, second in command to the consul, the senate’s leader. Most vamps treated him like he was scary with a little scary on top, which I’d always found puzzling. He sparked a confusing tangle of emotions in me, but fear had never been one of them.

  Of course, that might be because he was also my father.

  “Look, I don’t care who does or does not get on the senate,” I told Scarface. “I just want to know why your master sent a hit man after me.”

  “You’d have to ask him about that.”

  “Is he in there?” A brief nod. “Then get out of the way and I will.”

  He blew smoke at me.

  “I’m going in there,” I informed him.

  He dropped his cigarette to the stained concrete and ground it in with his toe. “I was hoping to wait until you recovered to beat you up,” he said regretfully. “It won’t be nearly as much fun this—” He broke off as I turned on my heel and headed down the sidewalk. “Hey! Where you going?”

  “The side exit.”

  His booming laughter followed me around the building.

  The short alleyway stopped after half a dozen yards, ending at another brick wall. Three steps went up to a door, steps that were occupied by another bored-looking vamp. He didn’t seem surprised to see me, having heard my conversation with his buddy out front, and he didn’t even stand up. I decided that was rude and started rooting around in my big black duffel bag.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked, amused. “Mace me?”

  “Good idea.”

  The heavy iron-headed mace caught him upside the head and sent him crashing through the rusted railing and into the river of slime flowing down the center of the alley. I didn’t wait around to see what mood he’d be in when he picked himself up. I threw open the door and sprinted inside, pausing only long enough to see that the sole source of light was on the balcony, one level up.

  I heard a faint foot-scrape behind me and slammed the heavy old door in the vamp’s face. He cursed and staggered backward, and I took off across the dark dance floor. I reached the curving iron stairs to the balcony and took them two at a time.

  I was halfway up when the guard’s foot hit the bottom step—and then abruptly fell away. He was soon joined by the rest of Cheung’s men, but they bunched at the bottom, making no effort to follow me up. That didn’t make sense until I burst out onto the catwalk and realized two things: there was already a vamp up here and he didn’t need any help.

  He was standing in front of the manager’s office, halfway down the balcony. What he really looked like was anyone’s guess, of course, most of the older masters found it useful to present an attractive appearance. In this case, that meant bronze skin, high cheekbones, dark, almond-shaped eyes, and a hawklike nose with a proud tilt.

  I didn’t know Cheung’s background, but he looked like the kind of guy who should be wearing heavily embroidered silk or possibly warrior leathers. Something exotic and powerful, anyway. So he appeared a little out of place in a double-breasted pinstripe tailored so tight he could have cut paper on it.

  The elegance of the outfit made the large orange and black tiger tat prowling around his smooth olive skin that much more noticeable. Of course, the movement helped, too. I watched it stalk around the back of his hand before returning to the concealment of the shirtsleeve, tail slowly swishing. It was beautifully done—all long, sleek muscles under a rich blanket of fur, with watchful emerald eyes and an occasional flash of sharp white teeth.

  Its expression wasn’t so nice. At the moment, both tiger and man wore the same one—of barely concealed impatience. “I thought I had warned you off,” Cheung said, without preamble.

  “Was that what you were doing?” I moved forward, since it wasn’t like I could go back. “I guess the bullet grazing my ear must have confused me.”

  “The fact that it missed should have told you as much.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” I stopped a yard or so away, close enough to smell his cologne, far enough away to have a chance to reach my weapons. “Maybe next time you could shoot me an e-mail instead?”

  Cheung ignored that. “I know your father’s power, dhampir. I have no wish to return you to him in pieces. If you swear to cease interfering in my business, you may go.”

  “It would help if I knew what your business is,” I pointed out.

  Cheung’s eyes narrowed. “You do not?”

  “Would I be asking if I did?”

  His expression darkened, but he didn’t reply, possibly because the front doors took that moment to slam open, allowing a dozen more vamps to pour into the room. It was starting to look like Cheung didn’t have anybody on staff lower than master level; either that, or he’d left the riffraff at home. These radiated enough power to ruffle my hair, even this far away, which made it a little ridiculous that they were dragging one short, pudgy guy.

  He wasn’t halfway across the floor when I recognized him: Raymond, looking a little the worse for wear. He was trying to struggle but not managing it too well considering that neither of his feet was actually touching the floor. A tall vamp with Asian features but a pale blond buzz cut had him by the back of the neck, like an errant puppy.

  I crossed my arms and got a grip on the stake up my sleeve.

  Cheung noticed but didn’t do anything, other than roll his
eyes. He looked past me as Raymond was dragged up to us and forced to kneel. Or maybe his legs just gave out. He looked pretty damn terrified.

  “You appear to make enemies wherever you go, Raymond,” Cheung said, looking at him with a slight curl to his lip.

  “I g-guess I’m just lucky like that,” Raymond said. It sounded cocky, even with the stutter, and won him a cuff upside the head from the blond. But I didn’t think it had been meant that way. Raymond was at the stage of terror where the mouth is on autopilot because the brain has retreated somewhere inside the skull in order to gibber quietly. If he’d been a human, he’d have soiled himself by now.

  “Are you going to tell me what is going on?” I asked Cheung.

  “I believe I shall let Raymond do that,” he said, looking with distaste at his cowering subordinate.

  Ray looked from me to the boss and back again, but didn’t appear to find anything helpful. “Well?” I prompted.

  He swallowed. “Uh. I might have, you know, mentioned that, uh, that the senate had appointed you as my, um.” He stopped, looking at me pitifully. His usually beady blue eyes were suddenly large and soulful, like the aforementioned puppy’s.

  Or an albino rat.

  “Your what?” I demanded.

  “My bodyguard?”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose and thought about saving everyone a lot of trouble and staking Ray right here. But I doubted he’d told the senate all he knew yet. And without his information, we had pretty much a zero chance of shutting down the smuggling ring he’d been running. Not to mention that the little guy had done me a few pretty big favors recently.

  I was going to have to figure a way to get him out of this.

  I could always stake him later.

  “Then he was lying,” Cheung said, looking satisfied.

  I glared at Ray, whose eyes were still doing the huge and pleading thing. He clearly thought this was it. It didn’t help that I was pretty sure he was right.

  I sighed and accepted the inevitable. “Not exactly.”

  Cheung’s forehead creased slightly. “You are assuming responsibility for him?”

  “I am saying I already have it.” I reached down and jerked Ray over to me by his collar. His eyes bugged out a little, but he didn’t protest. If nothing else, that told me how serious this was. He usually whined nonstop. “He’s mine.”

  “Yours?” One dark eyebrow rose. “You did not sire him. By vampire law, he is my property to do with as I wish. And I doubt the senate will flout thousands of years of tradition, even to save the life of their favorite … what is the word? Canary?”

  “Your vocab’s a little out of date,” I said sourly. “And that’s not how I remember it.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The last time you, me, and Ray were all together, you gave him to me.”

  The crease grew into a frown. “I did nothing of the kind.”

  “In exchange for me helping to cover up the fact that you’d kidnapped a senator’s brother, threatened him with death, and trashed his new and very expensive car. Ring any bells?”

  “There was no formal transfer made. You misinterpreted a casual remark.”

  I had done no such thing, and he damn well knew it. “I guess we can let the senate decide that.” They’d have to support Ray, like it or not, or lose all that lovely information he still had locked in his fat little head.

  Scarface came up the stairs and Cheung glanced at him. “Careful,” he told him, looking at me narrowly. “She is dhampir. I don’t know what she can pick up.”

  Not a hell of a lot, I didn’t say. Vampire mind-speak had never been my forte. Especially not if it was in Cantonese.

  But Mircea had spent some time in the East, and for all they knew, so had I. I decided to capitalize on the moment. “May I speak to Ray privately?”

  Cheung hesitated for a moment, but then he nodded, probably wanting his own private confab. I didn’t give him time to change his mind, but dragged Ray through the door into the office and slammed it shut with my foot. “Are we private?” I demanded.

  He sighed morosely. “There’s a privacy spell on the room; they can’t hear us. Not that it matters. They’re going to kill me.”

  “You should be more worried about me at the moment,” I hissed. “Why the hell did you tell Cheung I was your bodyguard?”

  “Well, you should have been,” he said spitefully, suddenly growing some backbone. “Or somebody shoulda been. What did you think was gonna happen, as soon as I started spilling my guts? The master was gonna give me a medal?”

  “He knew I was going to take you in. He had to expect—”

  “What he expected was that I’d die before the senate could question me. I was a little under the weather, if you remember?”

  The sarcasm was understandable. Ray had been sans a head at the time Cheung and I had cut our deal, and the body parts he’d had left had been pretty beat-up. Vampires are sturdy, but what he’d been through would have killed many at a higher power level than he was ever likely to reach. Cheung’s conclusion had been reasonable.

  But Ray was tougher than he looked, and he’d had some supernatural help Cheung hadn’t known about. He’d not only lived, but once all his parts were reattached, he’d sung like … well, like a canary. And what a song it had been.

  “Why didn’t you ask the senate protect you?” I demanded. “You’ve given them enough information already to shut down half the illegal smuggling in Manhattan.”

  “I did!” he said indignantly. “But this challenge mess is all anyone can think about. And I don’t think they believed the master would move against me, not with him vying for a senate seat and all. He’s supposed to be on his best behavior.”

  “Yes, he is,” I said hopefully. “Maybe we can use that. He’s risking a lot.”

  “He’s risking nothing! When I disappear, the senate might suspect him, sure. But I also could have lost my nerve and run. I thought about it, you know. I got a lot of contacts among the fey, and they can hide anybody. If they didn’t creep me out so damn much … Anyway, without proof, they can’t move against him. And since Lord Cheung is my master, nobody else can trace me.” He slumped onto the edge of the desk. “I’m toast.”

  I thumped him. “And thanks to you, so am I! I’m the only one who can tell the senate you didn’t go on an extended vacation!”

  “Then I guess you better figure us a way out of this,” he told me resentfully, rubbing the side of his head.

  I’d have thumped him again, but I didn’t have time. I glanced around, but things weren’t looking promising. As I’d already noticed, there was no phone, and mine was still in pieces. There was only one door in or out, and the only window was merely a paler square of brick in the wall behind the desk. Ray’s place wasn’t exactly up to fire code, having been designed for the convenience of the vampire owner and staff, not ease of egress.

  “I don’t suppose they left you a phone?” He just looked at me. Of course not. And his penny-pinching ways had led to him skipping the usual magical escape routes.

  “I bet you wish you’d invested in a few emergency exits now,” I said harshly.

  “You don’t need ’em when you got a portal,” Ray commented, and my eyes jerked to the blank stretch of wall across from the door.

  “That’s right. You have a portal,” I said, brightening.

  “Had. The senate’s goons were here yesterday. I guess they wanted to plug my link to Faerie before they started on the smaller stuff.”

  Typical.

  “Then the only exits are in the main room?”

  Ray nodded bleakly. I stared at the door and faced reality. As usual, my duffel contained a few surprises, but no way was I carving a path through all that. Not on my best day, which this definitely wasn’t.

  I was going to have to come up with something else.

  The door opened and Lord Cheung leaned against the sill, looking considerably more upbeat. “I have been reminded that, in a case o
f disputed ownership, a duel is the common remedy.”

  I stared over Cheung’s shoulder at Scarface’s smug grin. I didn’t have to ask who had done the reminding. He’d just seen me walk away from a challenge outside. I was in no shape to duel a kitten right now, much less a first-level master, and he damned well knew it.

  “That’s not going to get us anywhere,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “If you leave me alive, I’ll tell the senate you killed Ray, ruining your chances at a seat. And if you kill me, Mircea will return the favor, for pride if nothing else. Then we’re all dead.”

  Cheung’s face gave nothing away, but I didn’t need expressions to know what he was thinking. Mircea could take revenge only if he knew Cheung was responsible for my death, which he might never find out. But then, Cheung couldn’t know who I might have told where I was going. Or, for that matter, what kind of a bond Mircea and I had.

  In the end, he decided not to risk it. “You have a better solution?”

  “Yeah. You want Ray; so do I. So we’ll gamble for him.”

  “You wish to flip a coin?” The sarcasm was palpable.

  “Coin tosses can be rigged. I’d prefer something where we both have an even shot, where no one gets dead, and where the outcome is sure.”

  “What, then?” Cheung asked, looking wary.

  So I told him.

  * * *

  “Okay,” Ray said, coming in from the storeroom flanked by two babysitters. “This is the lot; this is all I got.”

  He carried a cardboard box over to one of the club’s small tables, which had been placed in the middle of the dance floor. Cheung had chosen the location, I guess to give his boys a chance to crowd around and see him kick my ass. Ray pushed through the throng, but then just stood there, the glass bottles inside the box chiming against each other because his hands were shaking.

  “Put it down,” Cheung told him impatiently.

  “Th-there’s not room on the table.”