Page 58 of Spring's Arcana
It howled, the chain link rattled, and the crowd—familiar faces, mostly, it was a slow night of second-rate principalities and powers instead of actual divinities—gave vent to its approval. Some clapping, some cheers, one of Cashe’s cousins at the bar giving Dmitri a sour smile as if he suspected something, a few of Candy’s girls working the crowd with trays of cigarettes and other things. One, a brunette with a cheeky grin and a pile of viands on her tray, whizzed past on roller skates; there was the wrestler Nash at a tablesurrounded by gleaming disposables, his aging body splinted and oiled, obviously having taken a few rounds in the ring and gotten his fill of physical pain.
Good fuel, in most cases. Nash had probably ripped one of the manticore’s cousins into pieces. At least it wasn’t a sacrifice night.
“Get me a match.” Dmitri snatched a pack of crimson-banded hash smokes off a passing girl’s tray and nodded at a far shadowed corner, where a placeholder for the Rumbler drew back into gloom with a viperish slither.
He was everywhere a fight was, like Dima was everywhere hunger and light fingers lingered. But the Rumbler wasn’t the lord of justanyfight, no—merely the ones where the blood was paid for.
When it was personal, well. That was different.
“Oh, certainly, but we have nothing to match someone of your… status.” Prommo bobbed next to him like a fucking carnival toy as Dmitri strode for the Ring. “I’m afraid it won’t be, ah, to your usual standard, Mr. Konets, sir, but—”
“Then put four or five bastards in the Ring and let’sgo,” Dima snarled, tearing a smoke free, lighting it with a fingertip, and shrugging out of his torn, stained jacket. He let it fall—one of the girls would collect it—and his shirt tore free as well.
Cool air hit his torso, and the tattoos shifted. Hypersaturated koi swam across his ribs; the stars on his shoulders gave deep aching twinges; the onion-domed churches rose on his back. It was a pleasant sting, like a razor delicately caressing a sobbing rube’s throat. His boot-toes spat sparks and he shoved aside a clot of barbwire, relishing the slices along his forearms. They sealed instantly; he lunged and leapt, and the manticore splattered in a tide of caustic goop and acidic venom, its deathscreech a nailbiting falsetto like golden needles piercing every eardrum in range.
Other tattoos shifted, numbers in gothic script crawling up Dmitri’s neck, symbols clustering his heart. His nephews and uncles were busy tonight, probably feeling his fury in their own flesh. He wasn’t like the pale bastard crouching in Protestant holes; no, Dima took the willing of any stripe. They paid their toll in watches ripped from cooling wrists or cargos subtracted from listing ships, wallets takenat gunpoint and knife-edge, with easy patter and a charming smile or with dead dark emotionless glares.
All of them were his, and they served their loving uncle well. What need for a disdainful little rube divinity and her snotty little nose?
“I wasfightingthat,” the youth spat at him, bloodlust contorting his young face as he shifted into the form of a muscle-chunky blond youth with a string of B movies to his credit and probably a huge coke habit to pay for as well, clutching at stardom like the hungry rube he was.
“I’m better.” Dima’s smile stretched wide and white; he spread his arms. “Come and see, little boy.”
Prommo cursed, then began the fight-patter in his rolling baritone as the barbwire twitched, healing itself in fits and starts. Maybe the youngling in the Ring didn’t know who he was facing, or maybe it was simply berserker fury; he jolted forward, fists wrapped in dirty bandages coming up in an approximation of a savate stance, and Dima couldn’t help but laugh.
He hoped they had more cannon fodder thanthis. He was going to need it, the mood he was in.
GOOD ADVICE
Riding the elevator down to the lobby was easy, no sweat. Nat made it to the smoked-glass door of the bar before her nerve failed and she had to stop, taking a deep breath and hoping nobody inside was watching.
Then she pulled it open, decisively, and stepped through.
Hotel bars were apparently all the same, even when they serviced “divinities.” A scattering of drinkers—a platinum-haired woman in a violently glittering blue evening gown with a white fur stole over her shoulders, a trio of men in khaki with their shaven heads pressed together as they conferred, a lean copper-skinned man with a cowboy hat, its band starred with silver scallops, and others she didn’t dare look too closely at—paid no overt attention to her advent, and she strode for the long, mirror-polished bar like she did this every day.
The bartender was thankfully not like the butlers at Jay’s mansion, but he did glide behind the wooden edifice like he was attached to a rail. Probably a twin to the brass foot-railing on Nat’s side; she settled on a leather-cushioned stool and tried a smile.
“My lady Drozdova.” Under the bartender’s big dark walrus moustache lurked a tinny tenor, and his shaved cheeks gleamed. His eyes were polished brown marbles, glistening wetly as he blinked. “What will you have?”
“Vodka, neat,” Nat said.I even sound normal. Great.“Very cold. Can I order dinner here too?”
“Of course. One moment, please.” There was a muffled musical clanking, and the man—dressed like an old-timey saloonkeeper,right down to his bowler and the black bands over the elbows of his snow-white button-down, his white apron and his round, jolly heft—turned to the serious business of getting a customer a drink.
Behind the bar, ranks of bottles on glass shelves watched their own reflections in bright, water-clear mirrored tiles. They also—solemnly, silently—watched the patrons. Double-faced, like the god of doorways—oh, all the Greek and Roman mythology the sisters had grudgingly taught was bleakly hilarious now.
Was there a god of bars? Would it be a he or a she? Did they get lonely in the afternoon dead time when all food service workers moved purposefully through the lull, knowing the dinner rush would start soon?
There was a faint susurration. She expected Dmitri to come sauntering through the doors, the vast lobby a dreaming figment of its own polished self trapped behind a cascade of dark glass.
Instead, it was the beak-nosed man with the silver conchas on his hatband. He arrived just as the bartender set a thick snowy paper napkin down with a sweating, narrow glass of clear vodka atop it, a paper-thin lemon slice artfully twisted on the rim.
“Well, hello.” The man leaned against the bar, one elbow propped on its mirrorshine. The conchas glinted like Dima’s boot-toes, but this guy’s grin was only half predatory. The other half was sheer goodwill—a few crucial millimeters of difference, maybe in the laugh-lines around his eyes. “Did you enjoy the party?”
Nat could have pretended not to know what he was talking about. She returned her gaze to the vodka, wondering if getting drunk would solve anything about this whole insane situation.
Probably not.“You were at Jay’s.” It wasn’t even a bad guess, especially if she tried to sound bored and world-weary, like she did this all the time.
“I’m everywhere, and nowhere at once.” Intoned like a riddle while he shifted, some motion made to the round, mechanically grinning bartender. “Coffee, please.”
