Prowlers: Wild Things

Prowlers: Wild Things Read Free

Book: Prowlers: Wild Things Read Free
Author: Christopher Golden
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Lotus? With all the other threats to our kind, would you make me an enemy?"
    Lao lifted his chin and took a long, audible breath. Jack watched the two huge men-who-were-not-men, and he felt the rhythm of the music below pounding into his chest, and he inhaled the rich aromas of mint and cinnamon and coffee and so many other things from below. With eyes narrowed, Lao studied him again.
    "What is your name?" the doorman demanded.
    If he speaks to you, answer immediately and truthfully , Bill had said. If you lie, or you become afraid, he'll smell it on you.
    "Jack Dwyer."
    When Lao raised his eyebrows in surprise, the tiger at his temple seemed to crouch as if it were about to strike. A sound came from his chest; a kind of rumble, either of contemplation or anger, Jack could not determine which. Then Lao leaned forward, practically bending over, to stare at him eye to eye.
    "You don't look like much, boy," the doorman grunted.
    Jack said nothing. He steeled himself, gazed back defiantly, and simply waited.
    "You know there are those downstairs who'd like to kill you just to prove you're not as dangerous as the whispers say you are."
    This time, Jack could not help a tiny flinch, not of fear but of surprise. He had no doubt, any time he was within any real proximity to Prowlers, that they would be happy to kill him. Most of them were savage. So that information was hardly news to him. But the idea that he was considered dangerous, that they whispered about him . . . that he had become some kind of bogeyman to these monsters who lurked in the shadows of the night . . .
    Jack found that he liked that. He liked it a lot.
    But he did not allow that pleasure to show, did not crack the tiniest smile.
    "He wants peace, Lao. Live and let live. Same as you do," Bill explained. "Nobody who comes to the Lotus has anything to fear from Jack, or from me. Come on, old friend. We're not here to start any trouble."
    A car passed by with pop music turned up loud, somehow out of place here. A short way up the street, a girl stepped out from the darkness of a recessed doorway and strode toward the car as it pulled to a stop. She wore a white shirt tied at the waist to bare her belly and a plaid skirt that would have looked like a school uniform if it had not been so short. She bent to speak softly to the man in the car and then walked around to climb into the passenger's side.
    The distraction caught Jack's attention for mere seconds. When he glanced back at Lao he realized that both the doorman and Bill were staring at him.
    "Is he brave or stupid?" Lao asked.
    Bill chuckled softly. "A little of both sometimes."
    Jack frowned, not liking this turn in the conversation.
    "You turned your back on me, boy. I might have had your life just now," Lao told him.
    "Not if you wanted to survive the night," Jack replied curtly, remembering too late Bill's admonition to keep silent.
    But Lao only smiled and nodded and stepped aside. "Go in, Guillaume. Remember this, though. If there is a mess, you will be the one to clean it up."
    "Agreed."
    With that, Bill led Jack further inside. The door closed behind them and Lao locked it with a metallic clank. The music grew louder the moment they began to descend the stairs and as they entered the club, the swirl of colored light seemed to mute and diffuse everything so that at first Jack could not see well at all. Slowly his eyes began to adjust.
    As they moved through the establishment, Jack found himself disappointed. Down the center of the club was a long oval bar that appeared to be constructed entirely of stainless steel. On one side was a small dance floor upon which several dozen gyrated slowly to techno-punk — or whatever the music was that pumped from the speakers. On the other side, tables and booths where clubgoers sat and drank, perhaps ate something off the traditional Chinese menu.
    Jack had expected something else entirely. He had read stories and heard things about some of the wilder clubs in

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