Bathe In Fire - Shadows of the Night 2

Chapter 14

Hi!

You keep asking for him - so you'll get to read about him. Anna will have to face a certain someone she's been trying to avoid in this one. Guess you have no trouble figuring out who I'm talking about... ;-) Let me know what you think!!!! Thanks for reading, it's great posting again!

Lara

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Chapter 14

I managed to get there before two am. The Club was at the end of the Crimson District and frequented mostly by humans. My entrance was framed by the very same peculiar sound I had perceived through the phone. The atmosphere was subdued, if not depressive. The low ceiling was like a confining cage, like a shadow looming over the humans swaying in eerie movements underneath. Visible clouds of smoke veiled the whole room, white-see-through nebulas that were only broken randomly by the green beams of the pathetic light show.

I squeezed through the mostly drunk or drugged crowd, trying to blend in. I had been in there before and it had been just the same. An unreal world ruled by drugs and the scent of tainted escapism. Insanity. Delirium. Smoke. To the TF3's knowledge the club was only a hot spot for 'usual drugs,' like LSD. This fell into the jurisdiction of the human police. Nothing we could do about it.

I went up straight to the counter. When it was my turn to be served, I waved the bartender closer to me and showed him a picture of Ryan. It took two ten dollar notes to finally make him talk. He said he remembered Ryan because he got into a brutal fight one night ago. He said it happened just before they closed down. Obviously a group of five young men had some sort of disagreement with Ryan. He also told me that Ryan beat the shit out of them in front of the whole club.

Since he was a shape shifter there was no surprise in that. The bartender and the onlookers had probably been unaware of the fact. Anyway, the bartender maintained he didn't know the identity of Ryan's opponents.

I frowned. I didn't like the sound of it, not at all. I was already about to turn away when the bartender added another tidbit of information. Namely that he had seen Ryan talking to some characters well known in the drug scene, repeatedly.

Praying that my suspicions were wrong, I asked whether he knew Jerome, Ryan's mysterious new buddy. He pointed to the far corner on the other side of the club. A group of young men at a huge table. Judging from their facial expressions they thought themselves big bad boys and acted the part. The bartender pointed out the one in the middle. Jerome. I thanked him and turned on my heel.

While I was walking up to the group, I eyed Jerome inconspicuously. He was sitting in an awkward position, head half thrown back, half inclined to the side. The dude was tall and lanky. One arm was slung around a small brunette that I had obviously failed to notice before. The black leather coat he was wearing was the first thing I noticed, and I caught myself wondering whether it was a coincidence that Verne, a drug dealer involved in the attempted assassination of the Cellini family, had been wearing just the same kind of thing.

That was before my eyes fastened onto the tattoo that reached up to his neck. The black ink seemed to creep out of his neckline – high enough that I could make out its shape even from the distance. A snake, probably a cobra, its fangs ending just a few inches under his ear. Added to that a pierced nose and lip and a mean glint in his brown eyes. Yeah, Jerome looked every inch like a drug dealer.

I shook my head and pushed myself through the crowd. The dark, oppressive atmosphere of the club was intense enough to have a few black clad Satanists stalking the empty spaces beside the crammed dance floor. For me it made the task of approaching the group one hell of an elbowing marathon.