cue ball, its curvature painted with bluish veins. After enough time in the industry, I had learned to spot vamps from miles away. These days, Anchorage was infested with them.
They weren’t all locals, either. My first good look at a guy from my own neck of the woods sent an electric shock of surprise down my spine. Of course, I remembered that one of the dead had been a Seattle vamp, but until the moment I saw another, I’d assumed he was an outlier, maybe some vagabond wanderer outcast by his clan. It happened sometimes. Now, however, things looked different. And as the night wore on into the wee hours of the next morning, I counted more and more Pacific Northwestern ghouls roaming the streets.
It was obvious that Seattle’s vamp outfit had an away team deployed—to the very place I had been called to, no less. Thinking there was no way these events could be the world’s biggest coincidence, I made an extra effort to be unassuming, just in case one of them should recognize me. In Alaska I was a nobody, but my name had begun to make the rounds down south. I knew the vamps in the Emerald City whispered about me.
What the hell were they doing two thousand miles north, trudging into shabby dives out of the slushy, miserable cold? Seattle had plenty of gray days and half-frozen nights; the weather wasn’t worth traveling for. Yet, there they were, congregating in scummy droves. Their words, spoken low and often directly into each other’s ears, were nothing but a murmur in the distance to me. But every now and then, I got lucky and caught a word or two.
“Clanmaster…disgrace…remove him.” This statement was met by a solemn nod of every head bowed around the table.
I studied the surface of my drink, which I’d been nursing at a snail’s pace for the last forty minutes. Were they talking about Orion?
“…missing…dead.”
The hair stood up on the back of my neck. They had to be talking about the owner of the hand I’d spotted disappearing into the inlet. Unless it was a brand new, undiscovered body. Leaning forward slightly, I gripped the sides of my glass hard. My fingertips and knuckles went white. If this thread of conversation ended in a viable lead, it would be my lucky day.
But luck wasn’t on my side. My focus on the vamp gathering was interrupted by the arrival of a secondary figure striding into the barroom. Tall and brawny, the man looked like he could snap three vampires in half at once. A full beard cloaked his face, and through the open collar of his dirty work shirt, I saw coarse tufts of chest hair exploding outward.
The whiff of salty fish stench following him into the space sealed the deal. The guy was undoubtedly a shifter—and I suspected he worked for Mr. Zhao, at that. His entrance made the air crackle with brand new tension, even as he did nothing except stand there and scan the room. The moment his flinty gaze landed on the table of vamps, he glanced back over his shoulder and whistled, jerking his head.
What followed was a veritable parade of people I could only assume were his brethren. The men came in all shapes and sizes, but they had their aggressive hairiness in common. All moved with the sauntering, self-assured gait of a genuine bear, ignoring the curious glances of other patrons. And they all stank like the daily catch.
I sucked in my breath, shifting in my seat.
My ability to sense danger, inherent in any good slayer, was going off like fireworks in my head. There had been meetings before, but never so well-attended in a place like this. My gut told me something was getting ready to go down.
The first shifter laid a meaty hand on the tabletop between the vamps. He leaned in conspiratorially, as if a man of his size could do anything on the down-low. Nor did he really have any concept of a whisper; where I had strained to hear the vampires talking, his husky voice came across loud and clear.
“Any sign of him?”
The vamp, clearly annoyed by his companion’s indiscretion, shook his head and motioned for him to be quiet. Offended, the shifter grunted and turned away. He and his men took up residence at the nearest empty table and proceeded about the business of getting hammered. Some ordered strong spirits, but the vast majority seemed to prefer the economical approach—veritable gallons of