“Why not?”
“Because of the Guardians,” Abelard whispered from her side. “The, ah, gargoyles. They were still around.”
“Ah,” Tara said without understanding.
Cat lowered her head in thought, and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. The Pleasure Quarters surged around them. Then, with startling speed, she looked up, and said, “He’ll be at the Xiltanda.”
She set off through the crowd with a purposeful stride. Tara and Abelard exchanged quick, nervous glances, and followed her.
*
The rooftops of a great city present a panorama unlike anything in the world. A range of giant gumdrop karst formations may impress, a deep canyon awe, and a jungle canopy stun into silence, but cities alone are the product of human hands and human tools, human blood and human will. They come into being through worship, or not at all.
Too few see a metropolis from its peak. Those who do are a strange mix of the city’s angels and its demons, those who hold the strings and those who never rose far enough to have strings tied around them. A penthouse apartment has much the same view as a cardboard box on a tenement roof. The resident of each drinks his wine and calls the other a fool, and seldom is either certain in his laughter.
Both the skeleton in the black suit and the round bedraggled man with his paper-wrapped bottle of rotgut watch the city, and they do not change it as much as it changes them.
Something moved across the rooftops. It had many bodies but one heart, many mouths but one breath, many names but one truth. It leapt in shadow from building to building, gliding on spread granite wings. Dim lights from the distant street illuminated the sculptures of its form.
The Flight returned in glory to the rooftops of its birth, which it once ruled until cast out by traitors and blasphemers. Its talons marked passing buildings with harsh, glorious poems of praise, exhortations to the moon that fools below thought dead.
The Flight’s teeth were sharp, its backs strong, and its movements swift.
The Flight heard its brother’s howl of pain and captivity. It heard, and answered:
We are coming.
*
The Xiltanda, Cat explained on the way, was a nightclub that took its name from a Quechal word for hell. Not any hell, either: Xiltanda was one of the old-fashioned hells, a hell of many chambers and many punishments, of rings and layers and ranks and files. Before the end of the God Wars, when the night culture in Alt Coulumb—vampires, Craftsmen, and the like—had been underground, they built the Xiltanda as their first great foray into respectability. And as hell had many levels, so, too, did this club, from the ground floor of black marble and chandeliers to the higher realms where there were chains and straps and hooks and padded walls to deaden screams.
There were lower levels, too. Few knew what transpired there. Rumors told of deep mysteries of Craft and thaumaturgy, of human sacrifices and infernal pacts made while smoking cigars in rooms upholstered in green leather.
“It’s gone members-only in the last decade,” Cat said over her shoulder. “But if your friend was in town forty years ago, he’s probably a member. It’s classy, comfortable. Exactly where I’d want to spend time after a long ocean trip.”
“I don’t know.” Tara couldn’t imagine Raz among cool marble and shining lamps. “It doesn’t sound like his type of place.”
“Even if it’s not usually, it’s one of the few clubs he’d remember,” Abelard put in. “The city’s changed a lot in forty years. Even the gods were different back then.”
They found Club Xiltanda on the main drag, an imposing building in mock Quechal style. Giant sculpted faces leered from the stonework at passersby. Most structures in the Pleasure Quarters were horribly talon-scarred, but if there were any gargoyle marks on the Xiltanda’s artfully crumbling, faux-ancient walls, Tara could not see them.
Two waterfalls flowed from the roof to flank the entrance, which was guarded by a large, bare-chested man. Torches everywhere cast smoky light and shadows. Music emanated from within the building, a swing band playing something brassy in four-four time.
Tara sought among the crowd, and to her surprise identified a familiar figure approaching the front gate: Raz Pelham, still wearing his white uniform, sleeves rolled up, cap pushed back on his head. He produced something small from his sleeve, a membership card maybe, and the bouncer stood aside to let him pass.
“Raz!” she shouted, but her voice was lost in the din. She rushed through the crowd, plowing past a clucking coterie of parasol-twirling society girls and nearly overturning a cigarette vendor. “Raz!” He didn’t pause. Weren’t vampires supposed to have exceptional hearing? “Captain Pelham!”
The crowd near the entrance was thick and sluggish, sporting bad leathers and worse attitudes. Tara shouldered her way to the front of the line as the doors closed behind Raz. From all sides she felt the harsh stares of the drunk and disdainful, but it was easier to press on than fight her way out. A thrashing moment later, she stood before the bouncer, who regarded her and the disgruntled crowd in her wake with detached amusement.
“You got a card?” he asked.
“I’m looking for Captain Pelham. The man that just went in there.”
“Wasn’t any man just passed through this door.”
“Vampire. Whatever you want to call him. I’m a friend of his.”
He held out his hand for her card.
The club had been built forty years ago, about the time of the Seril case. Ms. Kevarian was almost certainly a member. Her name could gain Tara access, but also lift the veil of secrecy around their presence in Alt Coulumb. There were other ways into a club. She might as well try them.
“Look, I’m not a member. I just want to talk to him.”
“No card, no entrance. That’s the rule.” He crossed his formidable arms over his chest.
There was an added weight behind that word “rule,” and when she blinked she saw its source. Someone had woven Craft through this man’s body and brain, granting him strength and speed and protection from simple weapons so long as he obeyed the terms of his contract. To admit a nonmember would weaken him, and cause considerable pain.
She could break that Craft with her own power, or modify it to render the bouncer a kitten in her hand. A mere activation of the glyphs woven into her fingertips, a stroke on the side of his neck. She thought back to her fall from the school, and her throat tightened. No. She would not do those things. There had to be another way.
She was still thinking when she heard Cat’s relentless drawl behind her. “Open the door, Bill.”
Tara swung her head about. Cat waded through the press of the crowd. Her black leather skirt and her thin sheen of sweat glistened in the torchlight. Tara’s eyes flicked to the scars at her throat, camouflaged but not quite concealed by her black silk scarf.
“Ms. Elle,” Bill said. “You haven’t been by in a while.”
She placed her hands on her hips. Tara stepped aside to let her work. “I haven’t had a reason to come. You’ve been glad of that, haven’t you, Bill?”
Bill glanced left, right, looking for someone to tell him what to do. Cat had power here, apparently. Tara looked to Abelard for an explanation, but he was still forcing himself through the crowd. “You’re always welcome, Cat.”
“Don’t give me any crap.” Her voice was smooth and dangerous. “I’ve two kids looking for a quick nip, and a hungry old man inside who wants a meal with personality. If you don’t get out of my way I’ll make sure the Xiltanda doesn’t stay open a full night for weeks.”