Chapter Six – Ryder

 

“Who’s the tall drink of water?” Stephanie’s relief from down the street asked over the roar of the crowd, her eyes traveling up and down my body like she was a butcher checking over a side of beef. Her mane of bottle-red hair, teased out with so much hairspray and gel it was a clear walking fire hazard all on its own, exploded from her head in a violent plume. “Said you were taking out the trash, not bringing home the sugar!”

Suddenly feeling very awkward at the short, middle-aged woman’s brashness, I just scratched the back of my head. “Ryder Will—”

“This old lech is Heather, Ryder. Now, ignore her, and get into that crowd,” Stephanie said with a laugh as she stepped behind the bar. “Need you to keep an eye on everything.”

“Need me to bus the tables while I’m at it?”

“Can’t hurt! Anything you can do right now is going to be a help.”

I turned away from her, faced the crowd of ghouls and slutty cats, witches and goblins, and every other thing you could imagine being a costume. They were a wall of theatrical flesh.

“Ryder!” Stephanie shouted from behind me, causing me to spin around on my heel just in time to catch a damp towel in the face. Both women laughed as, eyes wide, I grabbed the cloth and tossed it over a shoulder. “Don’t forget to wipe down those tables if you can!”

“Got it!” I said before turning back to the mishmash of humanity behind me. God, what was I thinking? Volunteering for this kind of thing? I took a deep, settling breath, one meant to remind me that I was a trained Special Forces soldier. That I had fought all manner of creatures in the night for this great country. That I could eat people like this for breakfast if I really wanted.

It didn’t help.

“Right,” I said to myself. “Once more unto the breach, Ryder.” And then, I was in the thick of it. A crush of bodies around me as I struggled through like an icebreaker making for the Arctic Circle. Struggling, wiggling.

Despite the cool temperature outside, the bodies and faces of the people inside Stan & Sons dripped with sweat, sending multicolored rivulets of grease paint down onto their costumes. The stench of alcohol and smoke hung heavy in the air, pushing into my shifter nose, wrinkling it. My own wish was that, somehow, this would get me closer to the truth of what was going on in this town.

And, of course, get me closer to Stephanie.

I shook my head as I got closer to the door. What was I doing? Why would a woman like Stephanie want me, anyways? She had a life here. A business. Friends, maybe even family. Hell, she probably had a boyfriend who was stuck working somewhere else tonight. There was no way a woman as beautiful as she was, and tough enough to pick up a vodka bottle like that when in a corner, could be single.

Behind me, a roaring voice cut through the rumble of the crowd. “Coming through! Outta the way!” Heather, coming up like a plow through the snowy crush of people, shouted with her eyes dead set on me. “Make way!” The crowd parted around her like the waters of a pond rippling away from an unexpected giant of a rock. Costumed revelers bounced into each other as she careened through the crowd, using her shoulders and arms to shove people out of her path.

“You gotta be forceful!” she called as she grabbed a fistful of my shirt’s front and yanked me along behind her. Damn, she was stronger than she looked. “Let these bitches know you mean business!” She drove onward, dragging me in her wake to the front of the bar. “Come on! You’re a big guy, show ’em what you got! Coming through!”

Just like that, we were up at the front of the bar, and she was patting down the front of my shirt as she grinned up at me with a set of deteriorating teeth.

“Jesus,” I said, looking back at the crowd. “You leaving?”

“Got to! Round Table’s just as bad as here, probably worse by now.”

“It’s gonna be like this all night, isn’t it?”

“Oh yeah!” she roared, fists planted on ample hips. “This is gonna be a real shit show, tonight! You still sure about doing this?”

I nodded as I turned back to her. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

She threw her head back and cackled like a mad woman, giving me a good view of her crumbling dental work. “Well, suit yourself. If I were you, I’d keep on driving! Whole weekend’s going to be like this!”

I chuckled a little, despite the sinking feeling in my stomach. I had no idea what I’d signed on for.

“But, hey,” she said, poking me in a pectoral muscle with a nicotine-yellow finger, “you keep her safe, all right? Crowds like this can get rowdy, and I don’t want that sweet girl hurt!”

At the mere mention of Stephanie’s safety, my shoulders seemed to go back, and my chest puffed out a little. I nodded. “You got it, Heather.”

Then, suddenly, her finger was replaced by her whole clutching hand, and she was grabbing the front of my collar. “I’m serious,” she growled, her smoky breath filling my nose as she stood up on her tiptoes while simultaneously yanking me nearly down to her level.

Rather than grabbing her hand and breaking her wrist with a quick twist, I just put both hands up and gave her a shocked nod. “Yes, ma’am.”

Evidently, this was the proper response, because she gave me a curt nod right back as she released me from her grasp. “Good!” And, just like that, her whole demeanor seemed to change, and she was back to that fun-loving lecher of a woman as her hand traveled over my chest for a moment before heading out the door, shouting back over her shoulder as she went, “Y’all be good, now!”

Somehow, despite the roar of the crowd filling the cramped bar to the brim, it seemed almost quiet with her passing. I turned back to the place, nodded to myself, and waded in.

“Coming through!” I bellowed, as I, more politely than Heather had, worked my way through the crowd to collect empty glasses, bottles, and plastic cups. I stacked them high as I pushed through the crush of humanity and made my way back and forth to the bar.

“Look at you,” said one young lady as I wormed past her, her hand nearly grazing the inside of my thigh.

Politely, I ignored her. I just took her empty Smirnoff Ice from her hand and bobbed away. How the hell did women put up with this kind of shit every night?

“What’s your problem, buddy?” asked another guy in a frat boy tone of voice as I came up in front of him.

“Nothing,” I said as I glanced at his near empty bottle of beer. “I work here. You gonna finish that?”

And so it went for the next hour or so, as I ferried trash back and forth. As I kicked out the occasional drunk, as I cleaned up drinks and spills. As I collected more empties, deposited them in the ever-filling trashcan behind the bar. Finally, though, I had to take a quick breather behind the bar and grab a bottle of water from the underbar’s fridge. The claustrophobia wasn’t quite as intense back there, with the heavy wooden counter between us and the patrons.

“How you holding up?” Stephanie asked, her voice clear and high above the bar noise as she gave a weak pour of well bourbon over a pile of ice nestled in the bottom of a plastic cup. She’d switched entirely to those, I’d noticed. “You good?”

“Trying to get used to all the people,” I replied. “Ever been this busy before?”

“Close, but not quite this bad.” She turned and filled the mixed drink with cola from her soda gun, put it down in front of a customer, and took the next five orders. As she was popping the top of the first beer with that practiced grace of hers, a commotion began to form in the middle of the bar, off towards the front.

“Get the hell off me!” yelled a guy in a deep baritone. “Fuck off!”

“Screw you! Look at me! Don’t look at her; look at me!”

“I wasn’t doing anything, man!”

Without Stephanie and I even exchanging glances, I was out from behind the bar and shoving into the crowd. Every muscle in my body bent to the effort as I dove in, bulldozing myself a path. “Out of the way!” I roared, making Heather look polite as I swept my way clear. “Now!”

Above the heads of the crowd, I saw the fight circle formed, but no one stood in the middle. Instead, people were bending in like the edges of a sinkhole, shouting and cheering and jeering with their bawling voices and pumping fists.

Gritting my teeth, I bent forward and launched myself ahead, scattering the mass of men and women like bowling pins. I broke through to the other side, came out in the center.

And what I saw made me suck in a sharp breath. “What in the fuck?”

Four people, costumed as clowns or jesters, had fallen on one giant of a man. One girl, her hair tied into pink and blue pigtails, was on his chest, her knees pinning his shoulders to the ground. And she was whaling on his face, one punch after another. Behind her, her three friends were on his stomach and legs, giggling like hyenas as they held him in place.

“Off!” I roared, grabbing the girl punching him around the waist. She couldn’t have weighed more than a buck-ten, but she kicked and screamed as I raised her from his chest.

Immediately, she went for my eyes, her rainbow nails like claws. “Son of a bitch!”

I tossed her aside into the crowd, and she wheeled back on me, giving me my first good look at her face. At the black and white harlequin makeup, with the black diamond covering her eye. But the thick paint wasn’t what gave me pause. No, it was the eyes the ebony geometric shape had been painted over.

It was a cat eye, perfectly matching the other paint-free one. Iridescent and green, they shifted for a split second in the dim light of the bar, shining out at me like a wild animal’s.

“Holy shit,” I whispered, taking a step towards her as my fists relaxed in surprise. “What in the hell?”

Someone must have opened the front door, because a cold breeze blew through the bar, sending a shiver down my spine as I looked into her eyes. As I stared into the depths of those shimmering orbs.

And then it was gone, and she slumped a little, falling back into the crowd. Arms came up around her waist, catching her before she could fall to the barroom floor.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. What the hell was that? What the hell had been wrong with her eyes? It wasn’t like anything I’d seen in all the places I’d traveled, or any of the supernatural phenomena I’d studied. Shifter eyes didn’t work that way, where only parts of us changed. And demonic possessions didn’t change them.

What was going on here? What had I just witnessed? And how was it connected to the woman I’d hit on the highway?

Behind me, still on the ground, the guy on the floor groaned and coughed. I turned back in time to see the harlequin’s friends clamoring up from him, confusion painting their faces as surely as black and white had painted the face of their friend. The victim in all this tried to get up, leaning over to the side as his cough continued. His face, though bloody, didn’t look too bad. She might have been rabid and fierce in her attack, but she still couldn’t throw a punch. He was really just lucky she hadn’t gotten those nails of hers into his face. She’d have flayed him alive.

But what the hell had I just seen? Why had her eyes changed that way? What was going on here?

The room began to quiet from the roar, and the undercurrent of some old 70s tune was finally able to break through to the surface. The place had been so loud all night, even I hadn’t been able to hear it before the fight.

“Hey!” I said, closing the gap between me and the harlequin girl in one step, my voice a cannon in the near silence of the place. “What the fuck was that?” I asked as I pointed back at the man bleeding on the floor of Stan & Sons.

She flinched, her big, confused, but ultimately human eyes fixed on mine.

“What did he do to provoke you? Anything?”

“I-I-I don’t know,” she began, her mouth hanging open as she looked from me to her bloody, bruised knuckles, and back again. “I don’t know! We were just talking, and…and I can’t remember!” And then the tears came. Big, sobbing, blubbering tears. But genuine, as far as I could tell. “I don’t know!”

I swallowed hard, immediately regretting my barking. I leaned down closer. “Did he cop a feel or something, ma’am?” I asked, much more quietly than before. “Look, it’s a crazy night, lots of alcohol. Did he do something? Anything?”

Eyes squeezed tight, tears streaming down her cheeks, she just shook her head. “I don’t know! I told you, I don’t know! I don’t remember what happened!”

The man groaned again and drew my attention to him, coughing up a splatter of blood into his hand as he braced himself on the hardwood floor.

I breathed sharply through my nose as I looked back at her, at the tears coursing down her face. I believed her. Either she was an Oscar-winning actress, completely unknown and hidden in the wild, or she was telling the straight-up truth.

And believe me, I could smell a lie.

“All right,” I said with a nod. “All right. Stick around for a little while, okay? While we figure out what’s going on?”

Behind me, the guy coughed again, gave a low moan. I turned away from the harlequin girl and began to push back the small crowd forming around him. “Give him some air, everyone.”

Stephanie came out through the crowd, gave me a questioning look. She was as confused as I was about this whole thing.

“You okay, buddy?” I asked as I took a knee next to the victim, putting a hand on his shoulder to keep him down. Meanwhile, Stephanie was already in damage control mode, busy keeping the crowd back. “Just lie back down, buddy. You feeling okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I think so. Fucking bitch, man, she just sprang on me without any kind of warning. The hell, man?”

I ignored his comment, at least for now, and looked him over. I’d had some training in field medicine while I was in the service. Not enough to be a medic, but enough to help with first aid. “You nauseous or anything? Headache?”

“A little bit of a headache, yeah. But not too bad.”

I squeezed his shoulder as I leaned down, got a look into his eyes. “Seeing all right?” I was looking for more than just symptoms of a concussion. I also wanted—no, needed—to see if he had that same iridescent brightening to his eyes that the young woman with the crazy pigtails had had for that moment while she’d been on top of him. That her friends had probably had, too. I even smelled deeply, tried to get a whiff of something. Anything. But, instead, I got the exact opposite. “Blurry vision or anything?”

He nodded, his perfectly normal, human eyes staring right into mine. “Nah, I’m fine. Okay? I can see just fine.”

“Want us to call an ambulance or anything?” I asked. “Not sure how long it’d take to get here, but I can get you one.”

He frowned as he reached up and brushed my hand from his shoulder. “Think I wanna get a fucking hospital bill because some girl and her bitch friends beat me up for not buying them a drink?”

I almost recoiled at the words. “Seriously? For not buying them a drink?”

“Fucking heard me, man. They came up, we started talking about those cat eye contacts of hers, and then she tells me to buy her a drink. And I just laughed, you know, told ’em I had a girlfriend back home, wasn’t looking for anything. And then, wham, her and her friends are on me like a pack of cats.”

“Pack’s called a glaring, or a destruction. But only when they’re feral.”

He gave me a sideways look, and I just shrugged. I figured if you’re going to call something by a name, you should be accurate with the name. They have power, after all.

“Cat’s eyes contacts?” Stephanie asked in a shaky voice as she dropped to her knees next to us.

“Yeah, really, really real-looking, too. Like, crazy real.”

I glanced over at her just in time to see the color drain from her face.

“Well,” I said with what I thought was a reassuring chuckle as I glanced at Stephanie, “she must have taken them out already. Because her eyes looked completely normal when I got here.”

Somehow, her face went even paler. Clearly, my reassuring words hadn’t been reassuring at all.

“Can you guys just let me up now?” the victim asked, still shaking his head. “I got friends who can take care of me, okay? No way I’m missing Maneki Neko tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” I said, going to stand as I offered him a hand. “You seem fine, buddy. No real trauma.”

Stephanie stayed kneeling on the ground for a long moment, even as I got the guy back on his feet and dusted off.

“You okay?” I asked her, offering her my hand as the guy disappeared back into the crowd. “You look as screwed up as that guy.”

She shook her head, gave a little wave of her hand, and went to rise on her own. “Nah, I’m fine. Just, this is crazy, you know? Never had a fight during the festival before.”

“Never had a festival this big, either,” I said, trying to sound upbeat, even as my thoughts wandered back to the alley, to Assholus Maximus and his girl almost cornering her in the dark. “Probably just a one-off thing. You said it was mostly families before, right? Kind of got what you might call a different demographic, this year.”

She folded her arms over her chest, looked like she was about to say something just before giving a little shake of her head. “Know what? You’re probably right. It’s probably nothing. Ready to get back into it?”

“Shouldn’t we get the girls who started this fight?”

She looked around, even as the crowd began to push back in on us. “It’s late already, Ryder. You see them around at all?”

I stood on the tips of my toes, peering around over the rowdy bunch of partygoers. She was right; they were long gone. Probably mortified by whatever had gotten into them and forced them to attack that guy.

Because that’s what it was. They’d been forced. I had no doubt in my mind. And not because I had some stupid, idealistic view of women, and that they could do no harm. My boss, Kris, was one of the baddest, strongest women I’d ever met. Dragon or not, woman or not, she could fight and defend herself just as well as any man I’d met. No, this was deeper than that. You couldn’t fake that kind of confusion, or tell those kinds of lies, or cry those kinds of tears without being completely unsure of what had happened.

“Come on,” Stephanie said, touching my arm lightly as the crowd began to push back to the bar, “we still got at least another hour before we start to close up shop. Better get to it.”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling that old familiar sensation of the mission settling on your shoulders. That feeling of more pressing matters pushing aside your current worries and concerns. “Let’s get to it.”

We had a bar to run, after all. And only another hour or so left to go.