Devil's Gate: Elder Races, Book 3 (6 page)

The SUV creaked as the troll laid a hand on the roof and bent down to peer inside at them with small eyes and an incurious expression on his gray rock-like face. “Parking in our lot is three hundred a night,” the troll rumbled. “Cash only.”

Duncan’s eyebrows raised. “Their lot.” If any of them actually owned this piece of land, he was Pee-wee Herman.

“Three hundred dollars!” Seremela exclaimed, leaning forward. “A night?”

The troll gave her an indifferent glance. “You want to keep your car from being stolen? You want to keep your stuff, and all your tires too? That’ll be three hundred dollars. In advance. You don’t like it, lady, go park somewhere else, and good fucking luck with that, ’cause you’re gonna need it.”

For three hundred dollars a night, Duncan could get a room at one of the best hotels in San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in the world. He shook his head and shifted in his seat to pull out his wallet.

“Duncan!”
 
Seremela exclaimed telepathically. “
That’s highway robbery.”

“Of course it is,”
he said
. “The troll and his organization probably vandalize and steal from anyone who doesn’t use their parking lot. But if it keeps our supplies untouched and we can get away trouble free, it will be worth it.”

He pulled cash out of his wallet and offered it to the troll. The massive fingers closed over one end of the bills and tugged, but Duncan held on to them until the troll looked at him in exasperation. He said softly, “Anything happens, and I’m holding you personally responsible. Not anybody else. You, bucko.”

Maybe the troll finally took a good look at his face and recognized him. Trolls were Nightkind creatures too, and Duncan was, after all, extremely well known. Or maybe something in Duncan’s voice got to him. Whatever it was, the troll masticated his massive jaw as if he chewed on something sour, but he muttered, “Nuthin’s gonna happen.”

“Very good,” Duncan said. He let go of the cash and flicked two twenty dollar bills out of his wallet. “After we park, we’re going to need reliable information. Where?”

“Down Main Street, north side,” said the troll. “Look for the pharmacist. Name’s Wendell. He’d sell pics of his mother’s tits to the highest bidder. But they’d really be of his mother’s tits.” As Seremela stared, the troll lifted his rocky shoulders. “What can I say, guy’s got a code. Sort of.”

Duncan bit back a smile. “He your boss?”

“Yeah.” The troll patted the roof of the SUV, straightened and lumbered back a step. “Now git outta here.”

Duncan drove the SUV gently over the rough, pitted ground toward the end of one row of vehicles where a ghoul in an orange reflective vest stood, flashing them with a flashlight.

“I brought cash too,” Seremela said. “I’ll pay you back.”

“Let’s not worry about that right now,” Duncan said. “It’s unimportant. Let’s just focus on getting your niece.”

“Okay.” She stayed silent for a moment as he parked the SUV. Then she said, “Wendell.”

“The pornographer pharmacist,” Duncan said, deadpan.

“It’s not funny.”

“Of course it’s not,” he said.

A soft, odd noise escaped her. It sounded a lot like hot air hissing out of a tea kettle. He looked at her suffused face, found her looking back at him, and then they both burst out laughing again.

He pulled the emergency brake and killed the engine. “Let’s go see what Wendell has to say for himself.”

“Okay,” Seremela said, eyes dancing, “but if he tries to sell me a picture of his mother’s tits, I’m so out of there.”

Duncan laughed again. “Trust me, I’ll be right on your heels.”

They both sobered as they climbed out of the SUV. Duncan said, “The troll spoke the truth, but we should both keep a light pack with us just in case. This would not be a kind place to be stranded in without resources.”

She nodded, her expression turning grim. She had a large soft bag with a shoulder strap, and she rifled through the contents and shifted over a few items from her carry-on. The last thing she added was a bottle of water. Then she pulled the shoulder strap over her head, lifted her snakes out of the way and settled it firmly across her torso.

Duncan’s bag of essentials, with the weapons, money and sun protections, was a leather backpack. He pulled out a Beretta 9mm and a five inch hunting knife on a belt. After strapping the pack to his back, he buckled on the knife belt and tucked the gun into the waist of his jeans, making sure the butt was well visible.

Seremela’s gaze lingered at his waist when he turned to her, but she said nothing about the weapons. She did not carry an obvious weapon, but he noticed that she did not tie back her snakes. Usually she bound them back loosely with a simple scarf at the base of her neck, as though they were dreadlocks. That allowed them to move around but limited their range of reach. Without them restricted in any way, she looked wilder, more feral and exceedingly deadly.

He heartily approved. He asked, “Okay?”

She nodded again. Face calm, eyes sharp. Gods, this woman was hotter than Death Valley in July.

He couldn’t resist touching her again. He cupped her cheek and rubbed his thumb gently along the soft, plush arc of her lips. Her expression softened, and the look she gave him was filled with equal parts tenderness and amazement. He wanted to ask her what caused her to look so surprised when he touched her with affection. He wanted to kiss her slowly and savor that first, intimate taste of her.

Hunger hissed along his nerve endings and turned aggressive. Her mouth would be so soft, the tender flesh giving way under his. He wanted to coax her lips apart and enter her with his tongue, and just the thought of deepening the kiss was so sexual his groin tightened.

Someone shouted nearby, splintering the moment. Frowning, he glanced around at the dust filled parking lot then he offered Seremela his hand. She took it.

“After this is over and we get back to Miami,” he asked, “where are we going to go for our first date?”

Half a dozen of her snakes rose up to stare at him, and the nictating membranes snapped shut over Seremela’s eyes. Then opened. Then shut. And opened. She blinked rapidly and it stopped. “First date?”

He wondered what that meant. Perhaps she got sand in her eyes. He asked, “Will you go out with me when we get back? I like the opera. But I like rock concerts too, and I’m a sucker for a good movie.”

Her delighted smile was truly one of the loveliest expressions he had ever seen on her face. “Yes,” she said. “I like all of that too, but I especially like the opera.”

“Perfect,” he said with satisfaction. “It’ll give us something to look forward to.”

At the time, he had no idea how much that would matter.

Hand-in-hand, together they walked into Devil’s Gate.

It was everything he had expected, and more: dirty, stinky, unpredictable and overcrowded. The night was windless, and smoke from campfires hung in the air, thick with the scent of cigarette smoke, cooking meat and onions.

The scene threw him into a cascade of memories. He remembered how incredulous he felt when he found out that his legal work had come to Carling’s attention. She had still been Queen of the Nightkind then, and she courted him with the wily patience of a professional politician and all the wisdom of a seasoned courtesan, until they had reached an agreement, about business and about other things.

His last meal before she changed him had been a sixteen ounce porterhouse steak, medium rare, with fried potatoes, apple pie and cheddar cheese, and a Guinness.

He remembered each detail as if it were yesterday. The meat had been so juicy and tender, he could cut it with his fork, and the potatoes had been crisp, salty with butter and a rich golden brown. The apple pie had been both tart and sweet, the tang of the sharp cheddar its perfect complement, and damn, that Guinness had been frothy and yeasty, like a satisfying novel for the taste buds, telling its dark, full-bodied and soul-nourishing story with every swallow. He had eaten until he thought he would burst.

Even though he still dreamed about that meal, the real thing would turn his stomach now, and while the present day camp brought back vivid memories, there were plenty of differences too.

The hellish red glows from the flames were interspersed with the cold, thin illumination from LED camping lanterns. Different kinds of music clashed, most of it blaring from boom boxes, but the sound of a few instruments, a guitar, a fiddle and drums, carried the piercing, startling sweetness of live passion.

Painted prostitutes, both men and women, walked the “streets” between the tents, campers and a few mobile office buildings. Humans, Elves and Light Fae, Demonkind and Wyr, and of course, the Nightkind were out in force. Vampyres prowled the area, smiling white smiles, drawn by the lawlessness and the lure of so much living blood packed into one space. Duncan backed them off silently with a glittering look. The Vampyres took one look at his hard face and melted into the crowd.

The tent city was a melting pot with the burner turned on high. At any minute he expected a fight to break out, and he wasn’t disappointed. They had to sidestep two brawls as they navigated to “main street,” the largest pathway that lay between camps.

He didn’t pretend to himself that he was the only reason they remained unmolested. People took one look at Seremela, with her set expression, sharp gaze and snakes raised and wary, and they gave both of them a wide berth. When a drunk stumbled into her path and startled her, all her snakes whipped around and hissed at him, scaring him so badly he pissed himself as he ran away.

Duncan murmured to Seremela, “The California Gold Rush was so much more charming than this. I’m sure it was.”

She glanced at him sardonically. “And I’m sure you have swamp land in Florida you’d like to sell me.”

He grinned and said to a tired looking, sunburned human, “We’re looking for the pharmacy. Do you know where it is?”

The human’s gaze passed over him and lingered on Seremela. “Five or six camps down,” she said. “It’s one of the fancy ones. Hard to miss.”

“Thanks.”

“Wonder what she means by fancy,” Seremela muttered.

They discovered the answer to that soon enough as they found one of the few mobile buildings several campsites down. A simple sign that said “Wendell’s” hung outside the door. The pale, cold light of LED lamps glowed through the window, and the door was propped open to the night air. Wendell’s was open for business.

Normally Duncan always invited a lady to go first through the door, but normal wasn’t a definition that applied to this place. He stepped in first and looked around quickly, one hand on his gun. Inside, the mobile building was crowded with metal shelves filled with merchandise, anything from canned goods, tampons, toothpaste, aspirin and other pain relievers, and first aid supplies to other, more potent supplies.

Duncan’s sharp glance took in the bottles of OxyContin, Percocet and Demerol in a glass, locked cabinet behind a counter. He had no doubt that the right price, not a prescription, would be the key that would open up that cabinet. It also had a shelf of baggies filled with marijuana, some rolled and some loose, and a couple of shelves filled with dark brown tincture bottles, homeopathic concoctions that glinted with sparks of magic.

There were other people in the building. A few were obviously shoppers who took one look at Duncan and Seremela and then slipped out the open door. Duncan kept track of them until the last had left, but the main part of his attention was focused on the two people behind the counter.

One of them was a tall, dangerous looking Light Fae male, his curly blond hair shaved close to his skull, which made his pointed ears seem even longer. He wore two shoulder gun holsters over a tank top that bared a lot of golden brown skin. He watched Seremela with a flat, unfriendly gaze, resting a hand on one of his guns.

Duncan’s jaw tightened. He did not like the sight of that. He turned his attention to the other person behind the counter, a short, slight human male with sharp eyes and a rather plain, aesthetic face. The male was easily the most intelligent person Duncan had laid eyes on since they arrived.

He said, “You must be Wendell.”

“You’re a quick one,” said Wendell. “Hence the sign outside my door.” He opened the foil wrap on a piece of Nicorette gum and popped it in his mouth, while his gaze took in everything about Duncan in one glance. “I recognize you. I know who you are.” He turned and dissected Seremela appearance. “You got here just in time for the execution, but I’m afraid bringing a lawyer even as famous as he is won’t do you any good.”

Everything inside Duncan went cold and quiet when the other man said execution.

Seremela looked at the pharmacist blankly. “Excuse me?”

Wendell’s thin eyebrows rose. “You’re here about the Tarot reader, aren’t you? The one who offed Thruvial.”

If anything, Seremela looked even more confused and disturbed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Eh, my mistake,” Wendell said, shrugging. “I thought since you were a medusa that was why you were here. Guess I’m as guilty of racial profiling as anybody else.”

Duncan took a step forward, and the Light Fae muscle matched him step for step. He ignored the other male and said to the pharmacist, “Do you know how many medusae are here in Devil’s Gate?”