Incubus Dreams (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 12)

72

There was a small open area just inside the drapes. A man was leaning against the far wall. He straightened up as we came through the curtain. He was wearing a muscle shirt, exercise pants, and white socks. The clothes were slightly different, but the socks gave it away. He was another dancer. There was more muscle under the shirt, and he had a body closer to the kind I expected from a stripper. "Need a hand?" he asked. It was exactly what the other dancer had asked. Coincidence, or code for something? Didn't know, wasn't sure I cared.

"No, thanks, we got it covered," Owen trilled. He clung to Nathaniel's arm, and Nathaniel let him.

I tried to help. I said, "Sorry, but I think I'm at my limit for men for the night. After three, don't they make you throw one back?"

The new guy laughed, shook his head, and motioned us toward a hallway that seemed to stretch the length of the club. Owen moved us all down that narrow corridor. There wasn't actually room for us to walk three abreast, so Nathaniel dropped ahead, and kept his arm around Owen. Owen must have taken that for a good sign, because he was suddenly draped around Nathaniel like some kind of tall, thin fashion accessory. Micah caught up with me, his arm sliding around my waist like I was his new security blanket. I guess I couldn't blame him, I wasn't exactly comfy myself.

There were small booths on either side, with curtains that could be drawn in front of them, though not everyone seemed to be bothering to pull curtains. Most of it was perfectly legal, a private lap dance. Rules for a lap dance are: The customer keeps their hands to themselves. The dancer does the touching, and even then, there are rules about what kind of touching can be done. Funny how living with a stripper and dating someone who owned a strip club had made me pay attention to things I never thought I'd want, or need, to know. But once you go in private, it's a negotiation between the dancer and customer. I don't mean just sex. Jason had one woman who wanted to lick the back of his knees, and was willing to pay fifty dollars for the privilege. Not my idea of fun, but not sexual, not legally. Or by most people's standards, at all.

I hadn't really thought how to find Ronnie once we were back here. Most of the booths were closed. I couldn't just start yelling her name without maybe getting Owen in trouble with this Dallas person. Shit.

But I didn't have to find Ronnie, I damn near tripped over her leg when it shot out from underneath a drape. I thought I knew the leg, but I was sure of the voice. "I fell down, God, I'm drunk." A man's voice murmured, and I think he was helping her to her feet.

I fought the urge to knock and said, "Ronnie, is that you?" Though I knew it was, sometimes you just have to say the stupid shit. Giggling was the only answer she offered. I took a deep breath and pulled the drape aside.

Ronnie was on her knees in the back of the booth. There was a flash of pale breasts, her shirt was up, and there was no bra in sight. A man was leaning over her breasts like he owned them. The dancers are allowed to touch, but not that much. If the management found out, he'd be booted out, or at least that was the theory.

"I'll wait down the hallway," Micah said.

I nodded. "Yeah."

Nathaniel took Owen by the arm and said, "I'll look after Micah." I was left alone with my friend and her friend.

Ronnie giggled and drew him up for a kiss. I don't think she realized that the curtain was open. If she'd been sober, I'd have turned on my heel and left her to it. She's over twenty-one, but she was drunk and depressed and confused and my friend. So I moved a little into the booth, close enough that she could see me over his shoulder.

She smiled up at me. "Anita, why are you here?"

"You called me to give you a ride home, remember?"

She frowned up at me, as if to say, no, she didn't remember.

The man who was on his knees in front of her turned and looked up at me. "You want to join us? I won't charge extra."

"I'll just bet you won't. Come on, Ronnie, let's go home."

"I don't want to go home. Not yet. I just found Dallas. We're having a private dance."

"I see that," I said, "but if you'd planned on doing private dancing, you shouldn't have called me. I need to get to bed, and so do you."

"But isn't he cute?" She put her hands on either side of his face and turned him to face me again. Truthfully, he was okay, but the face wasn't the show. He had the first body I'd seen since we got to the place that looked like a man's body and not that of a preadolescent boy. He had broad shoulders, nice waist, hips, muscles in his arms and legs that showed he lifted weights. The tattoo on his arm was a Marine tattoo. What was an ex marine doing in a place like this?

"Yeah, he's cute, now let's go." I reached for her arm. Dallas didn't touch me, or try to keep her by force, he was sneakier than that, and smarter, too. He buried his face in her chest and nibbled gently on the edge of her breast. Ronnie threw her head back and made a noise that I never wanted to hear my friend make while I was in the same room.

Micah called, not quite a yell, "Anita, what's taking so long?"

"Ronnie doesn't want to leave."

"Then, let's go." Something in his voice made me want to see what was happening with him.

"I'll be right back, don't do anything that you can get arrested for." Dallas gave me a look that said plainly he was going to try and do just the opposite, but it was the best I could do, unless I wanted to drag Ronnie out of the booth by her hair. I wanted to see why Micah's voice sounded the way it did.

Micah was very politely, but firmly, saying to an older gentleman, "Thank you, but no, we're waiting for a friend."

"I'll be your friend," the man said. He flashed a wad of bills about waist height, so you wouldn't see it from farther into the club. The bill that showed was a twenty, leaving the implication that it was a roll of twenties.

Micah shook his head.

The man peeled off two twenties.

"No," Micah said.

I was almost up to them, when the man peeled off two more twenties--eighty bucks--and held it up to Micah. "No one else is going to offer you more tonight."

"Oh, I don't know," I said, "I'm throwing in room and board, and sex with a girl." I put my arm around Micah's waist, and he did the same to me.

The man's eyes flicked to me, then back to Micah, then to me. "You're his friend?"

I nodded.

"You really were waiting for a friend," the man said.

"I did tell you that," Micah said.

The man frowned and started folding his money away. "I didn't think you meant this kind of friend."

"He did," I said, and gave him the smile that was bright and cheerful and never reached my eyes. I looked around for Nathaniel and found that I could barely see him around the backs of a couple that had him backed into a corner. He raised a hand, so I'd be sure to see him. Or maybe he was asking for help, like a drowning man.

I took Micah's hand and brought him with me. I think safety in numbers was our best bet. "Excuse me, boys and girls," I said.

The couple turned and looked at me. The man was tall and dark, the girl was a little taller than me and blond. She was wearing a halter dress that needed to be lined better. Her nipples were dark imprints against the pale fabric. I carefully kept my gaze above her waist, not even wanting to know if there were other dark imprints lower down. I don't mean to give the idea that they were cheap looking, they weren't. The girl was wearing a diamond in her engagement ring big enough to choke a puppy, and her bracelets were gold and more diamonds. Her makeup was artful, which meant she looked like she was wearing almost none but was actually wearing a lot. The man was dressed in a suit that had been tailored to his body and had probably come from the same shop that Micah and Nathaniel got theirs from. It had the look.

"I'm sorry, but we were talking to the gentleman first," the man said.

I took in a lot of air through my nose and let it out slow. The woman's perfume was powdery and expensive. "Actually, I was talking to him first, because I brought him here."

They gave each other surprised looks.

Nathaniel started trying to ease past them. "Sorry," he said, "I did tell you I came with somebody." When he was safely beside me, and I was holding both Micah's and Nathaniel's hands, I figured we were safe from any more propositions. Silly me.

The woman went up on tiptoe, and the man bent down so she could whisper. I didn't care anymore. I started trying to maneuver us back to Ronnie. The area was just a little narrow for three people to move easily.

"Wait," the woman said.

I turned back, because that's what you do when someone speaks to you.

"All three of you with us," she said.

I blinked at her, the long blink that gave me time to process information when I just didn't believe what I'd just heard. Once upon a time, I'd have asked her what she meant, but I'd grown up since then, and I knew the answer. "No," I said, and sort of pushed Micah in front of me and pulled Nathaniel behind. We came to an abrupt halt, because Nathaniel stopped moving.

I knew what I was going to see before I turned back. I was half right, the man had grabbed Nathaniel's arm. I'd thought it would be the woman. Again, silly me.

I moved up beside Nathaniel. "Let go of him, now," and I put a lot of force in the "now."

He dropped Nathaniel's arm. "My wife really likes your friend."

"I'm happy for her, but it's not my problem. Don't touch him again. Don't touch any of us again, is that clear?"

"You're here for the same thing we are," he said, "let's go back to our place. We've got a bathtub big enough for all of us." He stepped a little closer to us. "I just know that you'll look even better out of your clothes than you do in them."

I gave him the look, the one that makes bad guys flinch at twenty paces and the weaker ones run for their mommies.

His wife was smarter than he was, she pulled on his arm, and said, "Honey, I don't think they want to play."

"Listen to your wife, she's the smart one." I thought that was a nice parting shot, and we turned to go, and again, Nathaniel stopped moving. I turned back and found that the man had grabbed Nathaniel's braid. That was it, no more nice.

I brought my badge out and shoved it at his face. He had to back up to look at the badge, as if he should have been wearing glasses but wasn't. But it made him let go of Nathaniel's hair.

He laughed. "I've got one at home. If you want to play cops and robbers, we're into that."

I had the badge in my left hand, so I had to use just my fingertips of the same hand to spread my jacket wide enough that I showed him the gun in its shoulder holster. "You got one of these?" I asked.

The woman was pulling at his arm. "Don't, honey, I think she's for real."

He glared down at me. "Who are you?"

"Federal Marshal Anita Blake, asshole, back it up and leave us alone."

The look on his face said, clearly, he didn't believe me. Maybe he was one of those men who just didn't believe women in authority, or maybe he just wanted to see Nathaniel's hair spread all over his bed so badly, that he didn't want to believe it. I'd been willing to buy that it was his wife that liked Nathaniel, right up to the point where he'd been the one that grabbed his arm, touched his hair. His wife might like Nathaniel, who wouldn't? But it wasn't her who had a serious hard-on about it.

I let my jacket fall back into place and used my body to sort of push Nathaniel between Micah and me. No way was I leaving him at the end of the line by Mr. Touchie. I put the badge up and started moving us down the narrow hallway, but I moved sort of backward, so I could keep an eye on the couple. Alright, on one half of the couple.

The wife was pulling at his arm trying to get him to move away. He jerked away from her and just kept looking at me. It was not a friendly look. In fact, there was enough heat in his eyes to cross that line to hate. I hadn't done anything to make him hate me, except tell him no. There are men that see no as the ultimate insult, but usually it takes more than a rejection during a bar pickup attempt to get this level of reaction. I kept my attention on him until we were swallowed by one of the curtains that hid the deeper rooms.

"That was just creepy," I said.

"I know him," Nathaniel said in a small voice.

I looked at him. "How?"

He licked his lips, and his eyes looked haunted. "When I was on the streets. He used to pick up the older boys, the ones that were almost too old for the trade."

"Too old?" I asked.

"Most of the men that came down there weren't looking for men, Anita. They wanted boys. Once you looked too grown-up you had to move where you worked. A different clientele." He said the last with a bitter little twist of his mouth. "He's older now, and he didn't recognize me, but I remember him. I remember one of the older boys warned me about him."

"Warned you?"

Nathaniel nodded. "Yeah."

"Did he hurt them?"

"Not yet, but sometimes everyone gets a feeling about a customer. He can ask for really standard stuff, but after awhile everyone just gets creeped. It's like you can smell the sickness on them, like you just know that it's only a matter of time before they hurt someone."

I touched his face, and he looked at me, and his eyes held that sadness that he'd come to me with. That look that said he'd seen it all, done it all, and it had destroyed something inside him. I put my hands on either side of his face and kissed him gently. It helped chase some of that lostness away, but not all of it. Some of it clung around the edges.

Micah made a sound. "Anita, she's your friend, but..."

I turned and found that Dallas the dancer was on the floor with Ronnie on top of him. She was still dressed from the waist down, but he wasn't. Her shirt was unbuttoned, and if she'd started the night with a bra, it was gone now.

I'd had enough. Enough of strangers pawing my boyfriends. Enough of Ronnie dragging our asses down here. Enough of her self-destructive indulgence. I got enough of that kind of shit from Richard, I didn't need it from her.

"Veronica Marie Simms," I said.

She blinked up at the voice and the sound of all three of her names. "Who are you, my mother?"

I grabbed the belt of her jeans and lifted her bodily off of the man. It startled her, and me, because I didn't have to fight to lift her. She was bigger than I was, taller, just bigger, and I lifted her like she weighed nothing. I got her stumbling to her feet.

Dallas said, "Hey, we weren't finished."

I showed him my badge. "Yeah, you were." I kept the badge in my left hand and threw Ronnie over my shoulder. I had to bounce her once up in the air to get her settled better, then we were fine. I walked down the hallway, Nathaniel got the curtain and followed us, Micah brought up the rear.

She didn't struggle, but she argued, "Anita, put me down!"

The creepy couple was not waiting for us in the little area in front of the rooms. I was glad. I had my badge out, but I'd have to throw Ronnie on the floor to go for my gun. I scanned the room as we entered it, and the couple was nowhere in sight. Even better.

"Anita, I am not a fucking child. Put me down!"

The bouncer came our way, and I flashed my badge at him. He held his hands up, as if to say, no trouble here. We kept walking for the door. The music was still blaring loud enough that it hurt my skull, but the people noise died down as they watched us pass. I don't know if it was the badge, the fact that a girl was carrying a girl, the fact that Ronnie was probably flashing breast to the entire room, or everybody was mourning the fact that I was taking the two best looking men in the room with me. Whatever, we walked in a strange well of stillness, as everyone stopped dancing, stopped talking, stopped drinking, stopped and watched us.

I had to use my badge hand to help steady Ronnie as I went up the steps to the platform in front of the door, but we made it just fine. Nathaniel went ahead and got the door that led into the cloakroom. Micah went through the door and hurried in front of me to get the outside door. We went out into the cool autumn air. The door shut behind us, and the silence left my ears ringing.

"Put me the fuck down." This time she struggled, not well, not like she could have, but I'd lost patience. She wanted down, I put her down. I dumped her on the gravel on her ass.

I think she might have yelled at me, but a funny look crossed her face, and she was suddenly scrambling to her feet and running, stumbling toward the grassy field that edged the parking area. She fell onto all fours and started to retch.

"Shit," I said, softly and with feeling. I started walking toward her, and the men came at my back. I motioned them to stay by the last line of cars, as I waded out into the grass to Ronnie. The dry autumn grass made that whish-whish sound against my jeans.

Ronnie was still on all fours. The sour sweet smell of vomit reached me before I reached her. She had to be my friend, because I went to her, and I swept her hair back from her face and held it like you do a child. Only true friendship would have kept me there while she threw up everything she'd drunk that night.

I was trying to think of something else, anything else, while I stood there. I'm not good around people who are throwing up. Something about the sound of it and the smell of it leaves me fighting not to throw up, too. I looked out across the field, trying to find something else to think about. Nothing was interesting enough, until I looked almost straight out from where I was standing. At first I thought it was a deadfall, a tree, but my eyes made more sense out of it, and I realized it was a person. A pale line of arm, one hand pointing skyward, as if it was propped on something I couldn't see. It didn't have to be a dead body. Someone could have come out here and passed out.

I looked back at Micah and Nathaniel, I motioned them over. Ronnie was starting to slow down. She'd reached the dry heaves, at least.

"Stay with her." I knew that by walking up to it, I might be destroying evidence, but I also knew that it could be a mannequin, or someone passed out. I had to be sure before I called in the cavalry. What did it say about my life that I thought dead, murder, before anything else? That I'd worked on homicides too long.

I walked through the dry grass, and I was moving slower, watching where I put my feet. The grass didn't make a sound against my jeans, because I was creeping along. If there was a weapon anywhere I didn't want to step on it.

The more I saw of the body, the more I thought, dead. The skin had that paleness in the distant halogen lights and the cold light of the stars. It was a man, lying on his back, with that one arm propped up against a dead tree branch. If the hand hadn't been propped up, I might not have seen it so quickly. Like the girl's hair at the first scene, someone had taken a little extra effort to say, hey, look at me. Yeah, it was a man instead of a woman, but he was wearing a leopard skin thong that had been pulled aside so we wouldn't miss the fact that he was shaved, very shaved. The chances of him not being a stripper that worked at Incubus Dreams were almost nil. Vegas wouldn't take those odds.

The fang marks on his neck were black against his skin. More at the bend of his arm, his wrist. I didn't touch him to move his head to see if he had matching marks on the other side of his neck. I didn't move his legs and see if they'd marked him low. I just squatted down beside him, trying not to touch the ground any more than I had to, and touched his arm. Yeah, I'd like to say I was searching for a pulse, but that wasn't really it. He was cold to the touch, but his arm moved when I pressed, oh so gently. Rigor had either not set in, or it had come and gone. Different things can affect that, but I was betting that he'd died earlier tonight. That they'd been killing him while we questioned Jonah Cooper at the Church of Eternal Life. Looking at the dead man, boy almost, he looked so young, I didn't feel so bad about killing Cooper. Funny.

I stood up and fished in my jacket pocket for my cell phone. I dialed a number I knew by heart.

"Zerbrowski here."

"I hope you're not at home," I said.

"Why?" and he sounded positively suspicious.

"Because I'm over the river and through the strip clubs, looking at another damn body."

"No one notified us."

"I'm notifying you."

"Are you telling me that you found the body?" he asked.

"Yep."

"Tell me what happened."

I told him a short version. I didn't leave out that the bartender had told Ronnie to get a ride home, just that she was shit-faced about breaking up with Louie. I left out the creepy couple, but that was it.

"Shit," he said, "I've got to call this in. The Staties or the local sheriff are going to get there before we do. The sheriff didn't like you much."

"I remember," I said.

I could almost feel him thinking on his end of the phone. "I'd almost say send your people home, but we'll need them to corroborate your story."

"You don't believe me?"

"I do, but I won't be first on the scene, Anita. Do you understand?"

"I think so, I'm going to need an alibi to explain how I just happened to find the next murder victim when they've got people patrolling all the clubs. They're going to think that someone tipped me to it."

"Yeah," he said.

"You believe me, Zerbrowski."

"Yeah, but I know you. If any woman could go out to a strip club trolling for guys and accidentally find a murder victim, it's you."

"I was not trolling for guys," I said.

"Oh, yeah, I'll be sure and tell all the guys here at RPIT that you were just doing a favor for a friend."

"You bastard, don't tease me about this."

"Would I do that?"

"Fuck you, Zerbrowski."

"I'd say yes, but what would Katie say?" His voice got serious all of a sudden. "I'll put the call in, tell them that one of our people is on the scene, but if the sheriff gets there first, be nice."

"I'm always nice," I said.

He laughed. "Yeah, and hell is cool in the summertime. Just try to behave until we can get there to back you up."

"I'll behave, if he does," I said.

"Great. I'll be there as soon as I can, Anita."

"I know you will."

"Long damn night," he said.

"Yeah," I said.

He hung up. I hung up and started walking. I heard sirens before I even made it back to the parking area. I had time to give Nathaniel and Micah a thumbnail sketch of what had happened and what was about to happen. Ronnie was sitting on the ground, moaning and holding her head. I'm not sure she would have heard me even if I'd tried to talk to her. Then cars squealed into the gravel parking lot, and in the lead car was Sheriff Melvin Christopher. There wasn't a state cop in sight. Perfect.