1
A werewolf and a vampire walk into a bar.
A setup with no real payoff, a joke with no punchline, mainly because it wasn’t much of a laughing matter. I was the vampire in question – Sterling, as in silver, pleasure to meet you – and the bar was the only one for miles around. We’d been driving for hours through what had felt like trees, and trees, and more trees.
Silveropolis, California was the kind of town where you could get lost in the woods and no one would ever find you. Just the right place for ritual murder, the very thing we’d been sent to investigate. Because who do you send when the humans can’t find the dead? That’s right: two guys with heightened senses, anger problems, and blood issues. I kid, though. Vampirism never felt like an issue for me. As far as I was concerned, it was a bloody gift.
Too bad the bloody gift couldn’t make me any less achy or cranky, though. My legs were stiff from all the driving. I was running out of cigarettes. Also, I was starving.
But we had to keep it subtle. No sense lifting the veil. Outing yourself to normals is risky business, small town or no. I didn’t want to be catching any heat from any side, not from our leaders, and certainly not from arcane authorities. Damn magic cops.
I sucked on my teeth, taking in the locals, making no effort to hide my disdain. The place smelled like old, stale tobacco had seeped into the floor and walls. Vile, in short. And I’m a smoker. It usually takes a little more than ashtray smell to turn me off, but I had to look at the locals, too.
“Sterling,” said the werewolf, nudging me with his elbow. “Will you not put on that face?”
I frowned at him. “What face?”
“The one that’s going to get us beaten the fuck up.”
I could barely hear him over the garbled music streaming from the ancient jukebox, its busted neon and the blinking lights from two pinball machines in the corner the only real illumination in the place. Not unless you counted the large sign above the bar that loudly announced “Beer on tap,” or the very tasteful poster of a topless cowgirl next to it.
“Oh, now I see why they call this place Jugs.” I gestured around with one finger. “Don’t see any ladies in the place, though.”
The bartender was shaped like two kegs of beer stacked on top of each other, someone who probably got into a lot of fights in his youth and probably still did. Probably.
“Can we help you gentlemen?”
Gil – the werewolf, presently in the shape of a handsome, hirsute Latino man – cleared his throat. “We’re just looking to get some help with directions is all.” I thought I caught a bit of a twang in his accent all of a sudden, my good buddy, code-switching for the win.
Quiet laughter went up around Jugs from the half dozen patrons encrusting its counter. It was the kind of laughter that generally preceded the words “We don’t take kindly to your type around here.” I rolled my eyes. How the fuck had we walked into such a stereotype?
“You look like city boys to me,” the bartender answered, his mouth tight set under an impressive mustache. He wiped a towel over a dry spot of nothing disinterestedly. “Can use your apps and find wherever it is you’re headed.”
“Not on them,” I said, hands stuck in the front pockets of my leather jacket. “It’s why we’re asking.”
Whatever distrust and dislike the bartender and his regulars held for us went up a couple of notches as they turned to the sound of my voice. I bit down on the inside of my lip to keep from smiling. That’s the problem with being undead, see? You learn to stop being scared of anything.
I held my hands up, grinning, to show that I wasn’t armed. “Hey, just being honest.”
Gil pressed his thumb against his temple. He was going to give me such a talking-to once we got out of the place. Whether we were going to leave behind a bunch of broken furniture and a trail of jacked-up bodies, though, was all up to the guys at the bar.
“We’re looking for the Everett House,” Gil said, keeping his voice as even as possible. “That’s all we need. Place is probably so old and out of the way that nobody bothered to put it on a map.”
A younger man with a mop of dirty blond hair slapped his knee and laughed. “You mean the Everett Hut. Did you boys buy the place? You just bought yourself a nice little pile of twigs.”
“Just in town for business,” Gil said, exchanging a quick, dark glance with me. So our temporary residence was common knowledge to the yokels. Sorry, locals. We’d have to install some good old arcane security, then, lay down some wards.
A burlier guy up front got off his stool and folded his arms, standing with his legs astride. “You boys aren’t together, are you?”
I lurched forward, but Gil caught me by the scruff of my jacket. I was fast as hell, but we’d known each other long enough that he could predict just where and when I was likeliest to fly off the handle.
“He’s got a girlfriend,” I said, staring the man down. “And so what if we were?”
The bartender put down his towel, reaching under the counter for something. “Hey, now, he doesn’t mean no harm. You boys came to ask a question. He got to ask one in turn. Everett House is half a mile down the road and to your left. Signpost along the way. Can’t miss it.” He placed something long and cylindrical on the counter. Lead pipe. Nice. “And now that everybody’s got their answers, I think it’s time for you boys to go.”
“Gladly,” I said, shaking Gil off my back, giving the gentlemen one last glance over my shoulder as I strode for the doors. Double, swinging, like a saloon. “Fucking stereotypes,” I grumbled to myself.
I zipped up my jacket as we stepped into the colder night air. The cold didn’t bother me very much, but I’d learned my lesson early on. Vampires have consistently low body temperature, and there’s always the risk of freezing solid in less hospitable situations, especially when we haven’t fed. Think rigor mortis. Moscow, 1973. They had to thaw me out in a jacuzzi. Long story.
; My boots crunched in a carpet of dry leaves as I made a beeline back for the car, but I stumbled when Gil shoved one huge hand against my shoulder. I bared my teeth at him, hissing on reflex. Guy was one of my best buddies, but old habits, you know?
“What the fuck was that all about?” he growled. “The Everett House is a pile of shit, but it’s basically a landmark. They know where to find us. You wanna get staked while you’re sleeping? Because I’m not watching over your sorry corpse.”
“They were assholes.” I kicked at a clump of leaves, sulking. “And also I’m hungry.”
He wagged one thick finger in my face, his eyebrows connecting in an angry V in the middle of his forehead. “I told you to have a snack before we left, but you were a little baby about it, so here we are. You need to learn to play nice, Sterling. Where were you planning to find your next meal?”
I stuck my fingers in my jacket pockets, staring at the ground. “I brought some bottles, drained a couple of my thralls before we left.”
“Great. And how long is that going to last you? We’ll be here for several weeks at least. Months, if we’re unlucky. You’re going to have to find thralls in the local community, and you preening and making a target of yourself is not going to make that any easier.”
I wrinkled my nose. It was slightly annoying how Gil was pretty much spot on about our situation. You’d never guess that the guy who transformed on full moons and had to be restrained to prevent killing sprees would be the sensible one in our dynamic.
“You’re right,” I mumbled.
Gil waved his hand at the sign above Jugs. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you ended up having to use one of those guys as a juice box.”
I shrugged. “The blond one wasn’t so bad-looking.”