I walked over to the bar, which resembled a shooting gallery you’d find at a carnival midway, complete with bull’s-eye targets and flying ducks. The bartender was a young huldu dressed in the straw boater, striped shirt, and red silk sleeve-garter of a sideshow barker.
“I’m from Canterbury Customs,” I said. “Councilman Cowpen is expecting me.”
The bartender cut his eyes to the darkest corner of the room. “The boss is, uh, in a meeting right now.” Cowpen was sitting in a red vinyl booth, talking to a shadowy figure whose back was to me. “Take a seat. He’ll be with you shortly.”
I glanced around the club. It was barely ten in the morning, but there were already a handful of patrons crowding the tip rail. No matter the hour, there was always someone ready to party on Duivel Street. The customers were watching a particularly pneumatic huldra in clear stripper heels wrap herself around a pole while using her cow tail to pluck the dollar bills from their hands. Back in their native Scandinavia, the huldrefolk were famous for their physical beauty, and the females of the species were especially notorious for luring human men into the woods for sex. Now they simply lured them into the champagne room.
As I sat down at one of the tables near the runway, a topless waitress wearing greasepaint on her face and a pair of red foam clown-nose pasties walked over to hand me a box of popcorn and take my drink order. I smiled politely and shook my head. She shrugged and went down to the foot of the runway, where a couple of tourists were flashing platinum cards.
Suddenly there was a loud thudding noise that had nothing to do with the music pumping from the sound system. I looked up to see Cowpen’s bull-tail thumping against the side of the booth he was sitting in as he talked to his guest.
“Thirty percent?” he exclaimed in angry disbelief. “Are you crazy? I’m already paying you guys fifteen for protection!”
“That’s the deal, Councilman,” the shadowy figure replied, his voice a throaty rumble.
“Look, your boss knows that I’ve always been amenable in the past. I’m sure we can negotiate a deal that’s fair to both sides. . . .”
“Marz ain’t lookin’ to be fair,” the other man said, cutting the strip club owner off before he could continue. “He’s lookin’ for thirty percent.”
“That’s outrageous!” the huldu exclaimed, this time slapping his tail onto the table for emphasis. “I refuse to pay it!”
“That’s too bad,” the Maladanti said as he slid out of the booth, tossing back his peach-colored Jheri curls. I recognized him as Gaza, the goon from the Stronghold who had shown Hexe the torture implements. My heart started to beat so fast it felt like it was standing still. “It was a nice place you had here.” With a quick flourish of his left hand, the Maladanti sent a ball of hellfire flying toward the bar, and then casually strolled to the door, like a championship bowler turning his back on a strike roll. He didn’t have to see the fireball land to know it was a direct hit.
The bartender leapt over the counter like a bullock jumping over a low fence as the hellfire struck the bull’s-eye mounted over the top shelf stock. It splashed on contact like a water balloon full of napalm, sending flames in every direction. Tongues of fire raced up walls, setting the ceiling drapery ablaze within a heartbeat.
The huldra in the plastic heels was still twirling about, her back arched and head thrown back, her long honey-blond hair streaming behind her like a banner, when she saw the fire race across the ceiling. She gave a weird, decidedly nonhuman bleat of alarm and lost her grip, which sent her flying off the runway, landing with a loud crash on the table beside me. Jolted free of their lust by the fear of death, the Big Top Club’s clientele cast aside their drinks and lap dancers and made a mad dash for the exits.
As the room rapidly filled with billows of acrid smoke and shouts of fear, I flashed back to the frantic chaos of the riot only a few months before. I knew it was important to stay as calm as possible and get out as soon as I could to avoid becoming lost in the choking fumes. I moved to help the dazed dancer back up onto her feet, even though she proved as wobbly on her six-inch plastic heels as a newborn calf.
As I guided the dancer toward the exit, I heard the bellow of an enraged bull, and saw Councilman Cowpen, his normally handsome features contorted into a masque of bestial fury, bound after the retreating Maladanti. The huldu grabbed Gaza, spinning the spellslinger around while wrapping his tail about his throat at the same time. Instead of struggling, Gaza merely made a gesture with his hand. As I exited the Big Top Club with my charge, I glanced over my shoulder in time to see Cowpen drop to the floor like a bag of wet cement.
Upon our escape from the burning building, a brace of huldren swarmed forward to claim their fellow dancer like a band of naked angels. I had to hand it to them—they did not seem the least bit embarrassed about standing in the middle of Duivel Street in nothing but their landing strips, surrounded by gawking tourists taking pictures with their cell phones.
“Where’s Bjorn?” one of the dancers asked, casting about anxiously for some sign of the councilman.
“He’s still inside,” I said, turning to look at the entrance to the club. Smoke was billowing from the clown’s mouth like the world’s worst case of heartburn. “The spellslinger who torched the place pulled a sleeper on him.”
Upon hearing this news, the bevy of huldren strippers started mooing like distraught cattle preparing to stampede. Although Councilman Cowpen was a sexist and a bigot, I could not find it in me to leave him to die in a fire. I stepped forward, waving at the strippers for silence.
“Calm down! I know where to find him, but I need someone to help me rescue him.”
The young bartender stepped forward. “I’ll go.”
Together, we ran back inside club, holding our breath against the curtain of smoke. Although fewer than three mere minutes had elapsed since Gaza first hurled the fireball, the interior of the club was almost unrecognizable, thanks to the flames and smoke. It seemed like an eternity as I sought for the place where I’d last seen Cowpen, but I finally spotted the huldu sprawled on the floor.
“Councilman Cowpen!” I shouted as I knelt beside him. “Wake up!”
“Pappa!” the bartender bellowed, grabbing what I now realized was his father by the shoulders. “You’ve got to get out of here!”
Cowpen managed to open one eye, which rolled about in its orbit like a greased ball bearing, but was otherwise unresponsive. To my surprise, the bartender lifted his father from the floor and tossed him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry as if he weighed no more than a bedroll. The moment we headed toward the dim glow of the fire exit sign, a huge chunk of burning canvas detached itself from the ceiling and crashed down on the spot we’d just vacated. We continued to push through the wall of smoke, and seconds later I was rewarded by a rush of fresh air into my aching lungs.
Upon seeing the bartender emerge from the burning building with the unconscious Bjorn thrown over his back, the dancer I had helped escape earlier gave voice to a strange, bovine cry and rushed forward to greet us. “Is he alive?” she asked, her tail switching anxiously back and forth.
“I think so, Mamma,” the bartender replied as he lowered his father onto the sidewalk. Cowpen’s limbs abruptly spasmed and he started to cough as Gaza’s sleeper spell finally began to wear off.
“Tyr—go see to your sisters,” the older dancer said, pointing to the gaggle of strippers staring worriedly in our direction. “The last thing we need right now is someone getting rustled.”