Nos Faux Ratu Ch. 01

"Idiot. We gotta wipe her memory first."

"Oh yeah."

"Just grab her and . . . wait a sec." The other man looked at his clipboard. "Hold on, I think this is the chick that Nessa is lookin' for. She left a note that if a tall, smokin' hot blond showed up that weren't Night Breed --"

"You just NOW thought to mention that?"

Jenna watched as the two huge men squabbled about whose fault this was and who was going to get in trouble with someone named Nessa. She considered leaving, but she saw that the wall had sealed up behind her and could not discern the mechanism to open it again. 'Wait, who said "smoking hot" again?' she thought.

"Sorry miss," Kobal said. "Didn't know you were on the VIP list."

"VIP list?" Jenna was confused.

"Yeah. Cresil here will show you to the VIP lounge."

"Lounge?"

"Are you sure this is the right chick?"

Jenna grabbed Kobal by the neck and lifted him off the ground. 'Damn, he's heavy,' she thought.

"Yeah, it's probably her. If not . . . well, we'll let Nessa handle it." Cresil grinned. He could imagine the boss "handling" this one.

Every part of Jenna's training told her that she should be calling for backup. She settled for inconspicuously activating her homing beacon. 'At least someone back at the TACCP will have a location, but that's it.'

Cresil looked like he was thinking to himself, then look at Jenna. "Might as well turn that off. No signals can get out of here."

She kept her face stoic. They were bluffing, or guessing, or maybe both. Cresil just shrugged and said, "Suit yourself. It's just gonna run the battery down."

Jenna, despite all the good advice that her brain was still giving her, followed the large man down the stairs. The music seemed to get exponentially louder once she reached the bottom of the stairs. She did not see evidence of or sense a dampening field, but that was the effect. At the bottom of the stairs, they passed through black curtains, and what was on the other side took her breath away.

There was a dance floor that seemed to stretch out for an entire city block. The floor and ceiling were glowing red, literally pulsing with an intimidating light. The music was unlike anything Jenna had ever listened to, not that she was much into it anyway. But nothing compared to what she saw between that eerie floor and ceiling. Apparently she had reached the edge of the map, because there were monsters there.

She saw costumed figures everywhere. Some were fairly human looked, while other revelers had gone all out, with strange appendages, fur, tails,wings, and any number of other additions.

"Welcome to Devil's Night," Cresil said, looking out over the dance floor. Several female, or at least Jenna assumed they were female, party goers rubbed up against her guide, though most of them just gave Jenna the wary eye. Cresil just waved them off, causing them to shrug and return to their rhythmic movements that, in many cases crossed the thinly veiled line between energetic and sexual.

"Halloween isn't for --"

"I know," Cresil shouted over the noise "Halloween and the day Devil's Night are a month away. Devil's Night is the name of the club."

"There's no such business with that name registered with the local office of the Chamber of Commerce," Jenna said. She had the list memorized.

"You're right. There ain't." He led her out to the center of the floor, clearing a path large enough that no one came in contact with her. There was a spiral staircase leading from the middle of the floor all the way up to a observation deck hanging from the ceiling, which was easily twenty feet above the ground. The room seemed to have black-tinted windows along all sides, so whoever was inside could see out but no one could see in. A larger man, who looked similar to Cresil and Kobal except for what looked like a mane of hair, stood guard at the bottom of the stairs.

"I think this is the lady that the boss was lookin' for."

The newcomer eyed her carefully. "She matches the description. Gotta say I'm impressed. We figgered she'd come a callin', but finding her way here in one night? You've got skills," he said, looking her over one more time. "Taker 'er on up."

"Ipos, I need to --"

"You need to take her up. I'm not leaving the Stairway to Heaven unguarded. Remember what happened the last time a bunch of these yahoos got up on the stairs and decided to go crowd diving?"

"Good point." He headed up the stairs, checking to make sure Jenna was still with him.

They emerged into a room that was as different from the one below as night was from day. The room was cool, a pleasant change from the inferno below. There were elegant blue and white couches that looked incredibly comfortable forming a circle around a glass tube in the middle of the room. There were also chairs overlooking the dance floor below, and a few raised platforms with long, metal poles reaching from the surface up to the ceiling. The room was also empty.

"Wait here," Cresil said. "I got a feelin' she'll be along shortly." He turned around and left.

Jenna was rarely dumbfounded, but she had achieve that state. 'What the hell is going on?' she thought. 'I . . . this is not how I anticipated this happening. There was supposed to be a fight and --' She paused when she realized that she really had no idea how this had happened. Her identity had been uncovered, and now she was standing in a room that looked like a winter wonderland over a dance club packed with costumed weirdos.

The glass tube in the center of the room started to glow, and a disc descended from on high. Apparently, the tube was a grav-lift. There were two people on the platform, who exited into the room and looked at Jenna. She in turn took a defensive posture.

"Oh calm down ya ninny," the young, short blond woman said. She looked solidly built, but not unattractively so. She had the look of someone who worked a hard job for a living and was unlikely to take guff from anyone. The man next to her was in his mid to late forties, but had the physique and eyes of a much younger man.

"Nessa was right," the man said. "She is good."

"Of course she was," the woman mumbled. "Just glad she called off the bet."

"What bet?"

"Uhm . . . never you mind. Crap," the woman said, looking at Jenna, "you got any idea how much trouble you've caused?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Jenna replied stiffly. "I came looking for someone who is apparently not here, just to gain some information. So unless you are willing to tell me where I can find the redheaded woman, I suggest --" Jenna took a step forward, and the other two reacted.

The man reacted in a way that Jenna understood, pulling a laser pistol out from behind his back and training it on the interloper. The woman, on the other hand, did something . . . new. She started to float. That, and she inhaled deeply and held it, looking as if she were getting ready to yell.

"Now why don't you just have a seat," the man said, "and we'll just wait for Lady Nessa."

Jenna's hands slowly moved away from her sidearms. She had no reason to hurt either of these people. She needed the other woman, and these two apparently knew her. She was going to sit down, but realized that there was no real way of doing so with her back to a wall. Everything was exposed.

The man noticed how Jenna was looking around, and turned one of the chairs around and pushed it up against a section of the glass. "No one's coming through this way," he told her.

"I'll stand," Jenna replied, annoyed that she had been so easily read.

He shrugged, and sat in the chair himself. "My name is Avery, by the way. And the scowling lady over there --"

"I can introduce my own damn self," she growled.

"-- is Anabella," Avery finished.

"Okay," Jenna replied. "How is she doing the floating thing?" She was scanning for wires or disturbances caused by jet propulsion or anti-grav lifts, but she was not seeing anything.

"She just floats. Listen, why don't we wait for the boss to show up and --"

"She's your boss," Annabel said moodily. "I just work here because of the benefits."

"You work here because the option is being stuck near a well in Musselburgh for eternity."

Annabel looked like she wanted to protest, but came up with nothing. She descended to the ground and sat in a chair opposite Avery.

Jenna finished surveying the room and felt tactically comfortable. She was beginning to believe the doorman's warning about her beacon not being able to penetrate whatever shields this place had. It also occurred to her that it was be more strategically sound to withdraw and contact Death and the Fool. The Nightwalkers should easily be able to clear out a den of costumed weirdos. Of course, she still was not sure what anyone here had technically done wrong except run an unlicensed business that apparently dealt in contraband materials.

She stood up and walked towards the door.

"And where do you think you're goin'?" Annabel said, both she and Avery rising to their feet.

"Away. I'm not even sure why I came here --"

"You came here," Avery said, reaching behind his back and pulling his gun again, "because whatever bizarre undercover status you have as a fake vampire commando is blown and you want to know where this is all heading. Quite frankly, so am I."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Jenna said calmly. Her right hand was poised to grab her laser pistol and put a blast through both her opponents' foreheads. "I was accosted by a woman in a restaurant and wanted to find out why."

"Uh huh. And you came in para-military gear, armed to the teeth? Which I'm betting are pointed."

Jenna opened her mouth, her fangs safely retracted. "No. Normal."

"Ma'am, I'm not making the mistake of thinking you're stupid. You couldn't be dumb and have found this place. Kind of curious as to how, by-the-by."

"Lucky." Jenna moved towards the door. She heard Avery's weapon start to hum.

"Can't let you leave," he said, keeping her dead-to-rights while Anabella flanked. "You and your vampire wannabe friends are causing problems that we just can't have."

Guns appeared in both of Jenna's hands, one trained on each opponent. "There's no such thing as vampires," she said, ready for the upcoming battle.

"Au contraire," came a satiny voice from behind her, "they do. And therein lies the problem."

Jenna swung around found herself face to face with the stunning redhead from the previous night. One gun pointed at the newcomer, while the other covered Avery. The woman Anabella was unarmed, therefore was the least of the threats.

"She's good," Nessa purred.

Jenna was a bit flustered. First, the way the redhead was looking at her was just not professional. Second, how had the woman come in completely unnoticed? Jenna had the sharpest, most honed senses of any human being walking the planet, and she had not detected a sound. "You."

"Pleasure to see you again," the woman said, a saucy smile on her face. "Though I don't believe I caught your name."

"Leaving," Jenna said. This woman was not armed, but Jenna would not be so foolish as to assume she was "safe."

"Oh, I'm afraid not. Why don't you take that coat off and make yourself comfortable? You and I have much to discuss."

There was a moment of perfect silence as everyone predicted everyone else's next move. Jenna was outnumbered three to one. In the end, that did not matter.

Jenna, the civilian part of the woman, went into remission and the Empress emerged. She jumped up in the air and spun around, a kick aimed at the redhead's face while the lasers fired warning shots at the other two. Avery dodged behind a sofa and Anabella floated up to the ceiling, managing to look insanely pissed off.

The redhead vanished. The Empress's kick wound up passing through a cloud of red mist that had mysteriously appeared where the woman had been standing. By the time the Empress landed, the mist had coalesced back into a beautiful woman.

"That's not possible," she muttered.

Nessa's mirth seemed to have diminished somewhat. "You've come into my club and fired on my friends. I find that quite rude." Faster than the interloper could blink, Nessa buried her shoulder into her opponent's chest and drove her across the room, colliding with the shatter-proof glass with a resounding "thwump."

'Fuck that hurt,' Jenna thought, but she was far from out of it. Her back against the wall, she pulled her feet up and kicked against the shorter woman. This time, she connected and the redhead went tumbling back into the room. The woman rolled backwards and then popped up to her feet. Jenna shot both lasers straight forward, but the redhead turned to mist again and that cloud of red moved forward. 'Not possible!' Jenna thought. What kind of genetic experiment had brought THAT about?

The Empress jumped up and over the cloud, then made a break for the door. A pulse from a stun-gun shot past her, but she heard it coming and rolled to avoid it.

"She's fast!" Avery shouted.

Anabella appeared in front of the Empress before she could reach the door. "You asked for this," the woman growled. She then let out a scream . . . oh, what a scream. The sound waves blasted the Empress all the way back across the room, where she impacted the glass so hard that it actually cracked just a little bit. Jenna's head bounced against the surface, giving her a throbbing headache and taking away all sense of balance.

Jenna stumbled forward again, her pistols firing blindly as she tried to buy herself some breathing space. The blast went harmlessly through the cloud, which quickly coalesced back into the redheaded woman. That woman knocked the guns from Jenna's hands, then blocked the somewhat feeble punch and kick that came her way.

The Empress could scarcely believe that she had been bested so quickly and so easily. They were going to kill her and there was nothing she could do but die fighting. In her mind, there were worse things than dying. She had survived some of them already. But her worldly affairs were in order, and she could only regret that there was one person she would never see again.

She took another swing, which sailed over her opponent's head, and she found herself with one arm pinned behind her back and an arm around her throat. All she could feel was the pounding of her skull, and all she could taste was her own blood as it dribbled down her throat, and all she could smell was smoke and whiskey.

The Empress made one last attempt to escape, throwing her head back and catching her captor in the forehead. She took some small pleasure at the yelp of pain and surprise, but the arm around her neck stayed firm, and the Empress began to lose consciousness. She tried to spin and drive the redhead into the wall, but Avery moved forward and grabbed her feet, lifting them off the ground and denying the Empress any leverage.

"Good grief," he said as Jenna's sight turned black. "She's a handful."

Nessa watched as her captive went out and felt her consciousness slipping away. Even bloodied and disheveled, the girl's face rivaled that of any angel ever depicted by any artist. "She certainly is," Nessa said, releasing her grip before permanent damage was done. She kissed the woman on the forehead. "She certainly is."

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To be continued . . .