Chapter 12 - Ain't no party like a H-club party!
Alex finds herself in a large, crowded room. She is dizzy, still rapt with rage and emotion she left in the Barry Grand kitchen, but Linny said this was important, so she does her best to concentrate. She hugs to the wall as a sudden swell of people bustle around her. The noise of so many raised voices; the drab surroundings of the building she finds herself in, the chapped brick, scratched walls; clink of glasses; and herds of vampires laughing, fangs and foulness bared, makes her feel sick. She tries to get hold of her bearings and moves towards the excitable mass of people in the well lit centre of the room. The light draws her towards it, like a moth to a flame, and she feels Linny pushing her too.
Alex is unable to see what it is that everyone is crowding around. "What the hell is this place?" she asks the angel at her shoulder. Eventually Alex is pushed and egged on by the crowd behind, from the gloomy, low-ceilinged area in which she began, and into a wide open space. Here the air is thick with cigarette smoke, and through the mele, Alex can see that the walls are a ramshackle mess of exposed brickwork and white tiles. The roof, high above, is rusted corrugated iron with a line of mostly broken windows under the eaves. She surmises that it must be some sort of warehouse.
"You really do take me to the most glamorous, Belinda," she mutters dryly.
The crowd is thirty vampires deep. Alex wonders what the collective noun for vampires; a murder? A hiss? A basement? Hal would know. Despite the surroundings everyone is smart, slick. The women are lithe, silken silhouettes, they wrap themselves around the dandy vamps at their elbows who clink beer bottles, wine and worse. It's a party.
Then she sees Cutler, drunk in the corner. Women loll at his breast. She recognises where in the past she has been sent; this is gangster Hal's territory. She looks for him, he can't be far away. He's the last thing she wants to see now. This Hal doesn't represent the past anymore. He's an outfit on a hanger by the door which her Hal is about to slip into. Nonetheless she cannot help but search. Where is he? She is drawn to what is going on in the centre of the room, passing invisibly through the crowd to get a better look. Is he there? What horrible point in his life does she have to see now? Something distracts her. To her left, she spots a man on a raised platform, marking numbers on a chalkboard, a shouting mob at his feet pass money up to him urgently as a beautiful woman, barely clothed, holds up a garish sign: "Forty-Five minutes to the full moon!"
Alex pushes forward, not sure she really wants to know what is going on, until she sees the wrought iron bars of a cage through a gap in the crowd. She realises, with a start, exactly what she has walked into.
"Shit. It's a fucking dog fight, isn't it?" She remembers Tom recounting just why McNair never, ever trusted vampires. It brings the anger back, a lump to her throat. "I don't want to see this," she declares to the ether. Hal did this? Hal was involved! Why does it not surprise her? What idiots they had both been. "This isn't helping, Belinda," she reports.
Everything she sees is just reaffirming that feeling that she has fallen in love with something foul. "Where is he, I'm going to smack his face and hope he feels it!" Well at least she wasn't crying anymore.
All Alex can think of is Tom and she can't bear to look. Whatever it is, however, it mercifully hasn't started yet. She retreats back towards the dimly lit walkway surrounding the arena, glad that it is almost completely deserted. Leaning back against the white tiled wall, for a moment, she notices the familiar blonde loitering near an open doorway at the other end of the aisle. She hangs against the proscenium frame like a voluptuous green curtain, oozing sex, watching the crowd. No one is openly watching her, but everyone is perfectly aware of her presence, especially the men. She shines like glory, a beacon in the darkness.
Colette.
"Watcha, Frenchie," Alex whines with distraction; thankful, at least, that there's no rumpy-pumpy going on this time. The french woman watches the crowd beyond, seemingly separate from it, uncaring, but Alex can tell that she is everything but that. She is, in fact, watching the room with cat-like care. She draws from a cigarette. Alex arrives next to her at the same time as two suited men approach from behind, nodding a greeting as they make to go through the door next to Colette. She stops them, sticking her long leg before them across the doorway, sliding herself subtly between them and the passage beyond.
"Attendez, Fergus. It cannot be time yet?" she says, coolly drawing their eyes up her body to her voice.
Alex presumes the man who responds is Fergus. His temper is blunt, scouse. He seems nonplussed by Colette's allure. "Dog's gonna start transforming soon. Gunna to get 'em in the cage early, otherwise things can get a bit hairy, if you know what I mean." He grins, clearly considering himself very funny. Colette does not laugh as he leers at her cleavage.
"Seigneur Harry is playing with the wolf. He is not to be disturbed," she clarifies. "Do you really want to spoil his party?"
"He won't care. He knows me and Dennis'll be coming to get it. Shift over, woman."
A voice trills from the crowd behind them, "Forty minutes until the full moon" A cheer roars out.
Fergus moves to step past Colette, but she stops him in his tracks by pressing her hand to his breast bone. She twists her fingers around his tie and adjusts it for him. Pulling it just a little too tight.
"I hate to see you so worried, Fergus, but trust me there's no need to rush. There is still time before you need to worry. Let Seigneur Harry have his fun. You know how he gets when his instructions are ignored. Why don't I go downstairs and remind him of the time for you, hm?" Alex watches with amusement as Colette makes her point by subtly puffing out her chest to expose more of her breasts. She draws her long fingers down his sideburns and pinches his chin coyly, drawing his gaze down just enough. The snug, dangerously low-cut emerald green dress does its job perfectly. She flutters her eyelashes at him almost brazenly. "He will respond better to me, don't you think?" she assures him. "We don't want his mood to spoil the party do we?"
"Fuck it, fine, but if it starts transforming while we're still bloody moving it, I'll be right pissed off. I'll want a freebie next time I call, Colette." He drops the bunch of keys into her cleavage with a grin and a wink. Then he, and his silent associate, make their way back towards the crowd. "Hurry up."
As the men move away Alex hears Fergus mutter, "I fucking hope it goes off on one now. Eheh, Woof!"
Alex rolls her eyes. "Your friends were serious shits, Hal!" she sighs and returns to Colette, "You should have kneed him in the knackers, love." She has to give the woman credit. Colette certainly knows how to divert attention when she wants to!
The ghost catches the blonde's relieved expression before she hurries through the doorway, through which Alex follows, sure that this must be what she is here to see.
They walk to the end of the narrow corridor where Colette unlocks a heavy steel door. Alex can't help but notice that Colette's hands are shaking. What's going on? She hears voices down below, impassioned and muffled conversation. "I swear to God if he's torturing a fucking werewolf down there, Linny, I'm done. End of the Affair."
They descend a long, steel staircase. Colette's footsteps echo metallically throughout the passage. Alex is convinced she's trying to be as loud as possible. Eventually they enter a dank, crudely lit basement full of empty rooms and passageways.
"Yup," Alex concludes, "It's definitely a 'basement' of Vampires."
Hal pokes his head around one of the rotting doorframes suddenly, causing Alex to jump.
He seems visibly relieved to see Colette, but something is different about him. His glance is skittish, concerned with the crowd above.
"What the hell are you doing down here?" he demands sourly. He looks a total mess, undeniably handsome with the whole shirt, braces, unfastened bow tie combo, but Alex can see how flustered he is. It's hard to believe this is the same man she saw in Colette's office before. He has shed a few layers of cool since then. True, he wasn't exactly a vision of calm collectedness in the last vision, far from it, but now the fear is evident. She recognises this Hal. Her rage at the man in the rain washes away as soon as she sees him.
"I came to remind you of the time, mon Seigneur. Is everything alright?" Colette asks, seemingly herself again after her earlier nerves.
Hal looks behind him.
Alex frowns. Something is clearly wrong. "What's he done. Shit, did he kill it?"
Hal stares at Colette for a long few seconds before answering, he claws at his teeth with his tongue. That's normally a bad sign. Alex tries to get a glimpse but then Hal straightens, something like control comes over him.
"We've played our roles well over the years, Colette, haven't we," he says with a smile. "You're almost as good as me at keeping up the pretence, but I know how good you are at reading people, so I'll assume you know me quite well by now."
Colette does not answer. She simply smiles, "I do not know what you mean, mon Seigneur," she is obviously lying.
"You must have noticed a change in me," he encourages, until his bravado fails. He looks down at the floor as if he is ashamed, scuffing his shoes in the dust.
"Oui, mon Seigneur. I have," she answers calmly.
Hal looks back, clearly surprised at her honesty. "Can I trust you?" he says, but it's not as if he is asking her, but himself.
"Always," she says.
He looks at her, almost into her. He doesn't believe her.
Colette does not blink when she responds, letting him appreciate the honesty in her eyes. "You know, I've become so good at showing people what they want to see, I have no idea who I am any more? Sometimes I think perhaps you are the only one to understand that? Am I right?" she asks.
Hal doesn't seem to know how to respond.
"The thing is, I think have finally found a lover I can be myself with."
He shakes his head in shock. "Colette...I..." he begins.
"Not you," she clarifies, "At least, not in the same way. You can trust me, Hal, because I wouldn't know this person if it had not been for you. After everything you have done for me, I owe you. Ça va?"
Hal clearly decides he can trust her.
"I need..." he falters. "I need your help."
"Then you can have it...Hal," Colette's response is simple but contains everything he needs, it is personal, caring, and the truth. Alex totally likes Colette.
"Come on!" Alex air pumps when she see's him relax. "Get in."
There's a roar from the next room. Alex is familiar with the sound. It's the sound of a werewolf beginning to transform.
"Damnit!" Hal's tone becomes frenetic, when he hears it too. "We have to go, now. We've not much time!" Something about his demeanour leads Alex to believe that it isn't the wolf's transformation that is forcing him to act quickly, but something about the opportunity, the mood he is in, that if he doesn't take advantage of it now, he may never have another option.
"We?" Colette asks.
A cheer trickles down into the darkness from above. Thirty-five minutes? A cry of pain calls out again from the room behind them.
Hearing it, Hal swears, "Shit!" He looks back at Colette, flustered, as if he suddenly doesn't know how to explain. "There's no time to explain. I'm taking the werewolf, Leo. We're leaving!"
A/N: KatyNewt and I have had a lot of fun with this and the next chapter. We hope you enjoy. Don't forget to drop a review. More to follow.
