I did not envy any White Hats who might try getting in her way if it came down to that.
“Thanks,” Sara muttered, opening her door and stepping out with the kind of swift grace that bespoke her discomfort. She could move fast when she had good reason.
Following her out, I ran a nervous hand through my hair, brushing some stray curls out of my face as I took in the club. It didn’t look like much: a rundown hole-in-the-wall with a flickering neon sign and some incongruously cheerful country-and-western music spilling out to mingle with the sounds of traffic on the night air. I might not have thought anything of The Brand except that it had a white neon cowboy hat flashing under the name. To advertise their presence so obviously, either these guys had bigger balls than the hunters in New York or they were horrifically stupid.
I was willing to bet on the latter, though I kept that thought to myself.
A guy in a wifebeater, jeans, scuffed cowboy boots, and a leather vest leaned against the wall next to the entrance. He watched us approach with interest.
“Hola. ¿Cómo está?”
“Muy bien, gracias,” Sara replied. “Me llamo Sara.”
He gave her a wide grin, his teeth a white slash against dark skin. “Mucho gusto. Encantado. Me llamo Jesus.” He glanced at me, then abruptly shifted to English with only the barest trace of an accent. “I take it you two aren’t from around here.”
Sara shook her head. “In town on a visit. We’re here for business.”
“Who are you here to see?”
She looked at me, and I shrugged before pointing a single finger at the sign over our heads. “I guess that depends on whether your sign is advertising a certain type of business.”
Jesus frowned and pushed off the wall. “You two shouldn’t involve yourselves in White Hat business. It’s not a game.”
“We never said it was,” I replied. He towered over me, but I held my ground, tilting my head back to meet and hold his gaze. My nose was about level with the shoulder holster not very well hidden by his vest. “There’s something bad going on in this town. We thought some of your people might know who’s behind it.”
“What kind of bad? What are you talking about?”
I didn’t give an inch, not even when his chest brushed up against mine. “Someone’s using a forbidden type of magic. Messing with the dead. Who might know about that?”
He stared down at me, dark brown eyes crinkling at the corners as they narrowed, his frown deepening. Eventually, he turned his head away and spat. “Sí. Los muertos and the brujo—I have heard of this magic. Go into the back room and speak with the man in the red jacket. He might know who is behind it.”
Though I didn’t understand it all, I was glad he was giving us a pass. I gave a last glance to the car, dark and mostly hidden in the shadows at the back of the lot, before moving inside.
Once my eyes adjusted to the darkness beyond the front door, I took in all there was to see. The place looked like a real rat trap. The scarred bar was being manned by a guy who looked like he could most likely wipe the floor with anyone, human or no, who tried to mess with the patrons. A couple of guys in biker leathers gave us bleary-eyed leers over their shoulders, as we edged past the bar and a stage taking up a good portion of the floor to an unmarked door that presumably led to where the White Hats gathered.
Nobody said anything or tried to stop us, but it was a bit strange to have the suspicious stares of everyone in the room on us while Shania Twain poured out of the stage speakers. It didn’t seem like the right kind of music for a place like this, but then again, it wasn’t my place to be pointing out the inconsistencies.
Sara led the way into the back room, which, unlike the bar, was comfortable. Overstuffed chairs and couches were spread in a loose circle around the room, laptops and other gadgets mixed with the papers and guns spread over the low table in the middle of the room.
About half a dozen of those seats were occupied, and the people sitting in them looked up sharply on our entrance, two or three of them reaching for guns as Sara and I both raised our hands and jerked back.
“Don’t shoot! We’re unarmed!”
Though the guns had drawn my attention before I could register any details about the hunters, the flash of red as one of the men stood up caught my eye. “Shiarra? What the hell are you doing here?”
My mouth dropped open. “Devon? What the—wait, what are you doing here?”
He laughed and stepped around the table, waving at the other hunters to put their weapons away before sweeping me up in a tight hug. I was too shocked to do anything to reciprocate right away, and he’d done a pretty good job of pinning my arms.
“I thought you were dead! After what happened to Jack and the rest—”
“No way,” I squeaked out, short of air thanks to his grip. “I thought maybe you were dead since you—”
“—and all those werewolves! And the stuff in the paper, and—”
“Yo! My man, you mind letting her loose long enough for me to say hello, too?”
I grinned up at Tiny, who had slipped behind Devon while we were babbling at each other. Almost the moment Devon let me go, Tiny swept me up in a hug that made my feet leave the ground and ribs twinge in protest. Meanwhile Devon greeted Sara with a bit more decorum, shaking her hand.
The two hunters had disappeared sometime after I allowed Royce to bind me to him by blood. They hadn’t liked the idea, though they both had known that I didn’t have much of a choice at the time. It was either take the vampire’s blood, or risk being called to that psychotic prick, Max Carlyle, against my will. Max had slipped me some of his own blood during one of my bouts of unconsciousness as his prisoner. Thanks to being bitten against my will, unconsciousness had been frequent enough that I sometimes wondered if all my bad decisions of late had stemmed from brain damage related to lack of oxygen from the blood loss.
Planting a wet kiss on my cheek, Tiny squeezed all the air out of my lungs and then set me back on my feet, careful to help me catch my balance before he let me go. Devon clapped me lightly on the back, facing the rest of the room. “Guys, you’ll never believe who this is. You remember the chick I told you about who was working with Jack and that leech in New York?”
The other people in the room gave tentative waves, though they looked more bemused than unwelcoming. I was sure my expression betrayed just how baffled I was, too. Devon and Tiny had never told me where they were going, and this was one of the last places I had expected to run into them.
Trinity was waiting for Sara and me outside. We couldn’t afford to dawdle. As much as I wanted to catch up with the hunters, I didn’t think it would be wise to let Clyde know I had ties to them, or vice versa.
“It’s really great to see you two, but we don’t have a lot of time. We’re actually here on a job, and we have a couple of other places we need to check out tonight, too.”
Devon and Tiny exchanged a look I couldn’t quite decipher before Tiny answered me. “Let me guess. Something to do with Clyde Seabreeze and the vampires who have been showing up dead, and the zombies shuffling around town?”
Sara coughed. “Well, yes. Should we even bother asking how you know?”
Tiny gave a derisive snort, pulling away to collapse into one of the bigger couches, sending up a puff of dust. “It’s our job to know. There’s some new big bad in town, and he doesn’t play by the same rules as the others.”