CHAPTER 19: SPECTRE

  CYPRUS ALLEY—NOVEMBER 19th, 1992 | MORNING

  ?

  Leroy exhaled.

  Every song on 99.3, the Rat, had been lackluster. Too much Soundgarden. Chris Cornell had the voice of a damn angel, but in all of his years, Lery had learned that there was too much of a good thing. And of course, 107.1, the Smitten Mistress, was all static this far north on Cyrpus Alley. Cameron sat next to him in the passenger seat of his SUV, where he tried and failed to hide the distress on his face.

  “You’re an idiot,” Cameron said. “You know that? Absolutely fucking stupid. You didn’t hear the part where Ruby said he was well connected? That Donovan’s ties ran deep?”

  “I heard her.”

  “Then why, why, did you murder that guy in broad daylight? Did you see the look on his face when he told you to go to Spectre? That.. that shit-eating grin? He knew you’d kill him. And this? This is a setup. His last hoorah. And you know what, I’ll bet word travels fast here—”

  “It does.”

  “—and whoever this guy ran with probably had people, you know, lurkers, on the street, who scuttled over to Spectre to tell whoever runs that joint that you and I are coming. We’re fucked. We’re going to be fucked the moment we go inside those doors.”

  “Relax,” Leroy said.

  “How are we even going to get inside?” Cameron asked.

  Leroy missed when the kid was all intense and brooding. He’d graduated into his whining phase, and this conniption of his was beginning to give Leroy a headache. A cold beer might do him some good right now, but that would have to come later.

  "The front door, Kessler."

  Neon lights lay ahead on the opposite end of the cramped street. A pink and burgundy glow illuminated the sleek-fonted letters above an access door that read SPECTRE. Two bouncers stood at the front, but with the fog, it was difficult to make out their features. An unassuming entrance, but Leroy knew better than to judge a book by its cover, especially when he’d opened that book far too many times before. He’d forgotten what page he was on, but knew that he was less than welcome in Spectre, the crown jewel of Cyprus Alley—a nightclub that brought all of Brinehaven’s boroughs together in the spirit of hedonism and unforgettable nights.

  Drugs, drink, debauchery. You could have found all three of those things and plenty more inside Spectre. And the club didn’t discriminate, either. Business big wigs, university students from the Brinehaven College of the Arts, gangsters from the South End, clerks from Garland Heights, laborers from Dockside. It didn’t matter what you were, what you looked like, if you were accursed, a witch, a mesmer, or a mundy. Everyone knew that wherever you were from, the drive was worth it.

  Leroy turned the radio off.

  “Who's Melinda?” Cameron asked.

  The question cut deep.

  It stung; stung so bad that Leroy immediately reached over to the passenger seat and grabbed Cameron by the collar of his dusty black hoodie. Leroy had forgotten himself. Passion poured from the center of his being and outward into his face, animating the taciturn and knowing wrinkles on his face.

  It was an intensity so immediate and pronounced that Yaerzul’s whispers became clear and self-evident, manifesting in his mind as a single word. The symbol on the side of Leroy’s neck, normally a dim blue, was brilliant and blindingly radiant. With a free hand, Leroy covered the symbol on his neck.

  Good.

  In, out. Leroy centered himself with hefty breaths, and slowly loosened his cast-iron grip on Cameron. “Doesn’t matter.”

  You lie.

  “The room you put me in. It was her office, wasn’t it? See, for all those cardboard boxes you’ve got set up in there, you forgot to seal one off. I saw a uh, a paper. An essay or something. She was, what, a professor, over at Brinehaven College?”

  Leroy removed his keys from the ignition. “Yes. Get out. Let’s go.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Get out of the car, Kessler,” Leroy said. He exited the driver’s side and waited for Cameron to do the same, clenching his fist. Memories threatened to take over everything in his immediate view. He saw her face. Her pale, snow-white skin, that strawberry hair always set into a bun. Her cat-eyed glasses, her small nose. Those stupid blazers she always wore.

  Yes. Remember. Remember why you—

  Leroy slammed his fist into the side of his door, over and over and over again. The sigil on it rejected his advances, and he punched an invisible force that would not let him transform his anger into something more pronounced. He stared intensely at the watermarked logo that read MULDER & SON and cursed under his breath.

  Cameron rounded the corner at the tail end of Leroy’s outburst, hands shuffled into the pockets of his denim vest. “I strike a nerve?”

  “No,” Leroy lied. “Let’s go.”

  The damned kid had been looking for something like that in Leroy, and Leroy knew it. Something, anything, really, that would crack open Leroy’s hardened exterior. An access route. Leroy had shown Cameron two times over that he couldn’t beat him, couldn’t hurt him, but now he had access to a name that haunted him that he’d spent years trying to forget.

  “She die like Mercedes died? On a whim, without so much as a second thought? Like how you killed that guy just now?” Cameron asked, taking a step closer to Leroy, his voice laced with a fiery spite.

  Leroy grabbed him by the collar, again, and this time slammed him into the side of the SUV. The sigils held, and Cameron hovered a few inches away from the metal of the car itself, pressed against a kinetic barrier that only activated against strenuous forces. Leroy hoped it hurt just the same.

  “Let me remind you of something, Kessler. These rings that we wear, the ones we’re blood-bound to, they won’t let you do a damn thing to me. But that isn’t true for me. I can hurt you whenever I want to. However I want to. Let me be very, very fucking clear. You don’t talk about Melinda. Ever. Do you understand?”

  Cameron furrowed his brows and gave Leroy that look of defiance he’d grown all too familiar with by now.

  “Tell me you understand, Kessler.”

  “Yeah. I understand.”

  Leroy loosened his grip. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You see that?”

  “The bouncers. Yeah.”

  Leroy nodded. “That’ll be quick and easy. All we need to—”

  “How do you know?” Cameron asked.

  “What?”

  "Donovan Mayfield wasn’t easy, and for all we know, those guys could be hopped up on ether too," Cameron said.

  “Strong and angry is ether’s MO. Those two are standing there like statues. Look. This isn’t my first time in Spectre, and if I can tell you anything for certain, Kessler, it’s that the real security is on the inside. Come on. Whoever these two are won't be a problem.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  Leroy looked both ways before crossing the street and stepped and heard Cameron follow, only for Cameron cross in front of Leroy. The kid placed a single hand on his chest to stop him. Leroy looked down at it, his brown eyes boring into the kid’s face like a drill ready to be pressed into a nail.

  “And then? We, what, just ask him about ether?” Cameron asked.

  “Yes,” Leroy said plainly. "Whether or not Donovan sent us here to die makes little difference. Marcus Velvet has an answer for most questions."

  “No,” Cameron said, exhaling. “No, no, no. We do that, we get shot on the spot, or, fuck, I don’t know—swarmed by the real security that you said was inside.”

  At least he was thinking for once. It was an improvement. For the time he’d known Cameron, he was the kind of kid who punched first and asked questions later—if he even asked questions at all. Sometimes, however, that wasn't such a bad thing. It was about if and when you decided to take that approach, but most times, Cameron missed the mark. Did it at the wrong time in the wrong place. It was a telltale sign of what Leroy liked to call YARD Syndrome: a young, angry, reckless dipshit. The only cure was time. With age, it would go into remission, with a slight possibility of re-emerging when one’s patience was truly tried. Leroy should know. Cameron’s prying nearly brought it back out in him.

  "We'll have to face them either way, Kessler, and when we win, that's our bargaining power. We hold Marcus at gunpoint, we get our answers straight. If we don't, and we lose? He won't kill us. But we will owe him a favor—which some might argue is a fate worse than dying."

  Cameron had nothing further to say, and they inched closer and closer to the front doors of the establishment.

  No line. Just a dim neon glow from the SPECTRE sign.

  Now that they’d wafted through the fog, Leroy could see that one of them was tall and lanky and had a pistol tucked into his front belt. Gray skin, black and beady eyes, with two large and oversized front teeth like that of a gopher’s. An accursed. He wore an all black suit, with short and scraggily hair.

  Next to him was a woman with a very large gun on her back. Semi-automatic: an AR-15. The sleeves of her blazer were rolled up, revealing tattoos in Spanish that Leroy didn’t recognize. She was easily in her mid-forties, but wore her wrinkles well.

  A huff escaped Leroy’s nose. These two were different from the ones Leroy had remembered.

  “What happened to Driscoll and Mitch?” Leroy asked.

  Better that they weren't there. Easier. He hoped that for old time's sake, the two had retired after Leroy's last visit to the club.

  The two bouncers exchanged a glance, and the woman was the first to speak. “What’s it to you?”

  “Curious, is all,” Leroy admitted.

  The gray-skinned accursed flashed an earnest smile. “Killed the cat. Curiosity killed the cat."

  “Yeah, nice one,” Cameron said, sneering.

  “Thanks,” the accursed said, smiling. Leroy turned to Cameron. Clearly, the kid didn’t expect such a response.

  “Need to get in,” Leroy said.

  “Well, if you’ve been here before, you should know its open entry,” the woman said. “Don’t know why you’re still here.”

  The accursed opened the door for them and Leroy tipped his hat. Turned out it was quick and easy; quicker and easier than he expected.

  ?

  If he hadn’t been there before, Leroy would’ve been in awe.

  Two steps into Spectre and your eyes would sting just as much as your ears would have rung—and the sheer size of it all was the sort of thing that only existed in rumors. Before Cyprus Alley became Cyprus Alley, however many years, decades, or millennia ago that was, it had one thing that kept its residents paid and fed just enough to go back to work.

  A steel mill, or, what used to be one.

  Since then, Cyprus Alley had grown three times over, and the apartments and blocks of buildings spread like virus, consuming everything in view. All of that was to say that from the outside, there was no way anyone would know what they would be walking into when they entered Spectre.

  Most of its industrial fixtures stayed: exposed steel beams, a massive and vaulted ceiling, layers of metal access stairwells and catwalks. What had been removed was the machines, the grease, the oil. In its place were countless lights, flashing reds and purples and blues, and a surround sound system that was as vast as the club itself.

  Far, far from Leroy and Cameron was the back wall of the club, a central stage used by the night’s current entertainment. Some sort of DJ, playing music that made Leroy frown. “What the hell is that horrible damned music?”

  “Everybody is in the Place,” Cameron clarified. “By a group called Prodigy! But it’s a remix, I think!”

  “Sounds like shit—.. Christ, Kessler! Why the hell are you yelling in my ear?!”

  “Because it’s loud!”

  He wasn’t wrong. Smartly dressed men and women in cocktail dresses occupied the central landing that one would see upon entering Spectre. One set of metal stairs below was the dancefloor; wide and as packed as one might imagine. The place was as massive as Leroy had remembered. A maze of music, sweat, and bad decisions.

  Leroy glanced up.

  On the second level was a bar situated on a large balcony. Four rows of catwalks stretched to the opposite end of the nightclub, secured by railings. Plenty of places to idle and look down. Last time Leroy was here, he remembered seeing people kissing and touching up on each other, too shameless and drunk to care if anyone happened to be looking.

  And on the third level was what looked to be a larger, inner-warehouse loft. In the days of the steel mill, this would’ve been the central office space for the pencil pushers and the big shots, Leroy figured, but now? A VIP lounge, accessible only by a steep set of metal stairs on the second level. That was where they needed to go.

  “Come on!” Leroy shouted, making his way up the second set of stairs.

  Cameron’s prediction had yet to come true, but earlier, the kid had brought up a good point. If Donovan Mayfield was somehow connected to these people—and Leroy suspected he was—then it was some miracle that they’d made it past the door. No, not a miracle. It was a matter of timing. As they brushed through rows of people en route to the second level, Leroy glanced over his shoulder and looked back towards the entrance. Nothing yet.

  “You go up first,” Leroy said. He grabbed Cameron by the arm and pulled him forward.

  “What? Why?”

  “Because. Once we get to the VIP lounge—”

  “Oh, right. The real security. And you want me to be the first to knock in case someone decides to shoot first and ask questions later, is that it?”

  Leroy nodded with a wry smile. “Hook, line and sinker, Kessler. The people waiting for us inside aren't what you are probably used to. The only way we win this is if we go in guns blazing, and get it over with quickly.”

  “Uh-huh. You ah, notice anything, Leroy? I don’t have my shell on.”

  “So put it on,” Leroy said, pushing him forward up a step.

  Cameron grimaced. “Now?”

  “Now.”

  Not far ahead was another bouncer, a portly man, standing at the VIP lounge with a pair of sunglasses on.

  Cameron stopped halfway up the stairwell and grabbed hold of the railings to either side of him.

  Then came the scarlet, which poured out of the hexling like a small flood. Eyes, ears, mouth, nose. The usual business. It might’ve drawn attention of the bouncer, if not for the fact that the energy blended in perfectly with the surrounding neon lights, which strobed around and danced across everything in a sporadic, chaotic fashion.

  A sick, twisted display that was as brief as it was impressive. Waxy, bone-colored armor covered his skin in the places where it showed, and Leroy pulled Cameron’s hoodie over his head.

  Visibility was already low, but better to have further insurance when they made it at the door to the lounge.

  With a hand pressed to Cameron’s back, he guided him up. They weren’t inside the VIP lounge proper, which meant this still wasn’t the real security. Just some thirty-something who needed to go on a diet.

  “Ey’, ey’, ey’, wooooah! You got a VIP pass, guy?” he shouted, waving both hands in front of Cameron and Leroy.

  Leroy opened his mouth, but before he could even think to say anything, Cameron punched the guy square in the gut.

  The crack was audible.

  Loud, even, with the kind of noise that briefly made itself known through the blaring music. He was sent through the wall, forced to lie in a bed of cracked wood and splinters.

  Leroy brushed past Cameron into the VIP lounge, where the gaudy, carpeted floors and semi-circle booths awaited them. Flashing lights seemed dim against the tinted viewing glass of the lounge, which overlooked the dancefloor and the DJ. Patrons stared in awe at the sudden breaking of the door and the unconscious bouncer that lay among the splintered wood. Halfway through pouring her cocktail, a bartender dropped the metal mixing cup.

  Sat along the bar weren’t patrons, but three people who stood out like sore thumbs.

  "The real security. That's them?" Cameron asked.

  LEROY WATERS

  CAMERON KESSLER

  ???

  ???

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