On the Trail of Darkness Read online

  If only she believed that. But no. The lure of drugs and money had changed her seventeen-year-old brother from a sweet, lovable boy into a surly thug. Mama wouldn’t recognize him as the little one who’d given her so much pride and love.

  In the jail’s reception area, Marisa took a seat. The place had a stale smell, a pungent mixture of unwashed bodies and untended toilets. She saw a well-dressed blonde huddled in a plastic chair next to the metal door where prisoners would come out, looking out of place here and uneasy in the company of tired-looking Latinos, blacks and a few Anglos who looked to be down on their luck. Some sat quietly, their eyes showing pain . . . resignation. Others spoke loudly, angrily, gesturing with their hands as they spoke in a multicultural patois of Spanish, French, and other languages, with a smattering of English splashed in now and then. It was clear that no one was glad to be here.

  Of course, the only reason for anyone to be here this time of day was to collect a loved one who’d fallen afoul of the law in a section of Miami where violence was a way of life. Marisa shifted her gaze toward the door as it opened with a brassy-sounding clank.

  The blonde got up, only to take her place again as a burly black man was first to come through the door. He glanced around, apparently disappointed that there was no one waiting to meet him, before shrugging and heading out into the waning sunlight. A ragged-looking kid grinned when he spotted a harried-looking woman with a fussy toddler on her lap, and the blonde finally managed a smile when a redheaded teenager came through the door, a relieved expression on his bruised, dirt-streaked face.

  Raul followed, looking like the drug-dealing thug he’d become. His overly long, stringy black hair made his face look even thinner than usual, but a few hours in the lockup apparently hadn’t cleared the I don’t give a shit look from his deep-set eyes or softened the tough-guy set of his thin lips. A healed scar, the souvenir of a street fight a few weeks earlier, stood out pale and forbidding against his deeply tanned cheek, calling attention to an ebony wood plug that stretched his left earlobe grotesquely.

  Adding to his disreputable look were high-top sneakers, baggy jeans pulled low to show his patterned boxers, and a black T-shirt advertising a local Latino salsa group in shocking lime-green neon lettering. The tight shirt emphasized his unhealthy pallor and the fact he was hardly more than skin and bones. Sometimes, like now, Marisa was glad Mama and Papa weren’t alive to see what their baby boy had become in four short years.

  “What took ya so long, hermana?”

  Marisa clenched her fists as Raul sauntered up to her, as though he had not a worry in the world. Sometimes it was all she could do to keep herself from slapping that smirk off her brother’s face, but then she remembered the promise she’d made to their dying mama.

  That promise had been made as her mama’s lifeblood drained from her body, the last words that sweet woman had ever spoken. Marisa would take care of Raul if it killed her, which it damn near might. “I don’t keep the kind of money around that I had to give Hugo to secure your bond. Next time you just may have to stay in jail.”

  “Gracias.” Raul’s expression sobered. “Cops got the patron’s package,” he whispered after looking around, as though he was expecting somebody to come grab him the minute they stepped outside the building. “I gotta score some more or I’m gonna be in real trouble.”

  You aren’t in real trouble now? Marisa thought as she crossed the street. “You have to go sign your bond paperwork,” she reminded him. “Then you’re going straight home, where you’re going to stay until . . .” How, by all the saints, was she going to get Raul out of this latest mess he’d found himself in? Was it even possible? He’d have to make do with the public defender, because she had no way of coming up with a decent lawyer’s fee. “Until you can manage to talk yourself into a youthful offender program.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I ain’t goin’ to no boot camp out in the ’Glades. Carlos from across the street said the mosquitoes and water moccasins will likely get you if the carceleros don’t snuff you out first. Nobody’s gonna lock me up with a bunch of stinkin’ Haitians from Liberty City.”

  “Mind your mouth.” Wishing she hadn’t promised to see after Raul, Marisa followed him inside Hugo’s office and watched him sign the bondsman’s paperwork.

  “You got ’til midnight Friday to get the boss his money. All five thousand,” Marisa overheard Hugo tell her brother as they were walking out. “He sent word he ain’t playin’ with the likes of a punk-kid street dealer who can’t manage to keep his eyes out for the man.”

  Five thousand dollars? Trying not to panic, Marisa got in the car, which wasn’t worth even half that on its best day, and listened to the engine sputter before it turned over and started. She wished she dared to swat the smart-ass out of her brother, who slumped against the passenger door, a picture of studied tough-guy attitude and false bravado.

  • • •

  “All we got to eat in this dump’s some leftover frijoles negro and half a pot of rice.” Raul’s petulant voice, cracking a little between little-boy soprano and grown-up tenor, raked on Marisa’s already frazzled nerves. “Not even a soda to wash it down with.”

  “Be glad you’ve got anything at all,” she snapped, yelling over the blare of the TV and the familiar sound of sirens wailing on the street outside. “You stay inside, comprende? I got work tonight. Don’t call me, whining that you need bail money again. The well’s gone dry.”

  “I ain’t goin’ nowhere but to bed, not ’til you come up with the five grand I’ve got to pay for the stuff the cops snatched off me. You heard Hugo. He said the patron wants it by Friday.”

  It might as well be five million. Marisa would have about as good a chance of coming up with that as she would five thousand—what amounted to at least ten good nights working at the club. She glanced into the living room to see Raul stretched out on the sagging sofa-bed where he slept—on nights he wasn’t out in the streets.

  She tucked two freshly washed costumes—sleazy “lingerie” to titillate the customers and a selection of scarves she used in her solo act—into her gym bag, on top of two pairs of platform stilettos and the battered cosmetic case that held her stage makeup. “I’m going now, and the last thing I need today is another call sayin’ you’re in jail again.”

  “Quit nagging at me. You know, you ain’t much to be proud of either, strippin’ for a living. Go shake your booty, though. I gotta have that money.”

  I gotta have that money.

  There’s only one way I know of to make that much money in two days. Raul’s plaintive whining rang in Marisa’s ears, making her want to scream as she drove across the bridge onto Miami Beach. She took a right toward the huge pink monstrosity of a hotel across the street from the club where she danced—a job she wasn’t particularly proud of but which paid the rent on the apartment she and her brother called home.

  No way would she be able to quit and get a day job anytime soon, not with her brother getting ever more deeply into trouble. She’d go to the neighborhood boss herself tomorrow. Perhaps she could make a deal to reimburse him for Raul’s loss a little at a time.

  Fat chance. Hugo the bondsman hadn’t sounded as if he thought the patron was likely to be patient. No, Marisa knew that wasn’t going to work, no matter how nicely she begged, or even if she played the poor little orphan girl trying to save her baby brother. Finding a parking spot in the alley behind the club, she grabbed her gym bag and headed for the back door.

  • • •

  Claude watched a beat-up compact car disappear into the alley behind the strip club, then returned his attention to the neon dancer gyrating around a pole on the marquee. The way her hips undulated reminded him of a certain woman he’d enjoyed in Paris. And that made him think of sex.

  Claude ached. It had been too long—much too long—since he’d had a woman. Otherwise he wouldn’t be suffering a painful arousal from doing nothing more than staring at a neon stripper. He scanned the deserted beach once more befor
e he let his gaze drift back to the sign.

  What the fuck? Angry voices floated into Claude’s hypersensitive vampire ears. Strolling casually, he crossed the highway toward the club—and the apparent shakedown taking place in the alley where that car had just disappeared. When he strained his eyes, he made out the silhouettes of two men and a furious-looking woman. Shit. It looked as though the men were threatening the little spitfire, who, from the sound of her voice and the way she had a hand raised up over her head, was giving back as good as she got—verbally, at least.

  She was no match physically for one, let alone two grown men who must each have outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds. Incensed that the bastards dared gang up on a lone woman, Claude headed for them. He’d save the woman, and at the same time work out his frustration by kicking some mortal ass.

  “Bloodsuckers!” she spat out, terror evident in her voice despite her loud defiance. When she shook her fist at the larger of her tormentors, he laughed, said something in rapid Spanish, and turned away.

  “You’ve had it, asshole.” Claude took to the air now, determined to punish the attackers, but by the time he reached the alley they’d disappeared, and the woman herself had vanished through the stage door to the club. Claude cursed fluently, hated the weakness that must still be lingering after his encounter with Reynard. Fuck, he should have been able to overtake the two mortals without breaking a sweat.

  He recalled what the woman had called them and let out a chuckle.

  Bloodsuckers the two men might very well be, but he was satisfied that neither of them was a vampire—Reynard or anyone else of the vampire persuasion. From the snippets of conversation he had understood, he gathered some drug deal must have gone sour—and that the men were shaking down the woman.

  Vampires, even villains like the Reynards, didn’t sink so low as to deal in the stuff that enslaved so many mortals. Too bad Claude couldn’t translate faster. He might have learned where they were going, followed them, and meted out some vampire justice. He shrugged, making a mental note that he needed to improve his Spanish, particularly if his elders were going to keep sending him to places like this, where various dialects of Spanish seemed more commonly spoken than the English he’d always associated with North America.

  As much as he’d have loved to chase them down, Claude reminded himself he was here on a mission to find and destroy the Fox before the evil vampire struck again. Scanning the beach and the sidewalks outside the clubs for any sign of his prey and finding nothing, he made his way inside the Strip. If Reynard was there, they’d fight. If not, he’d enjoy an hour’s entertainment before resuming his vigil. Perhaps he’d even see the woman from the alleyway, talk with her, find out how he might help . . .

  Chapter Two

  “Five grand, pretty lady. Your brother cheated the patron. Pay up or the little cocksucker dies.”

  “B-but I don’t have that much.”

  “Get it, or Raul dies.”

  Marisa shuddered when she remembered how the larger of the patron’s messengers had slashed his finger across his throat, at the same time shooting a condescending grin her way. “I give you two days. Forty-eight hours. We see you here, same time Friday.” As quickly as they’d come, the two thugs who did the drug lord’s dirty work evaporated into the blackness of the night. But she had no doubt they would be back as they said they would.

  Marisa shivered in the dingy dressing room at the Strip. The air conditioning blew cold, but she doubted that had much to do with her feeling chilled. She’d felt the same outside, despite the damp warmth of the summer night.

  God, but she hated drugs, had done her best to talk Raul out of using them. She’d warned him against getting caught up in the circle of using and dealing, selling coke in order to feed his growing habit. More and more using, more and more dealing, until the cops or the drug got you and destroyed your life. She may as well have saved her breath.

  Worse, she hated the thought of having to reimburse the patron for the cocaine the police had confiscated when they caught her brother selling. It wasn’t my coke. It shouldn’t be my problem. But it was Raul’s problem, and if she didn’t pay his debt, her young brother would die. It didn’t matter that she’d had nothing to do with those drugs or with Raul’s business. All that concerned the drug lord was getting back the money represented by the cocaine her brother had lost.

  Dios. There’s only one way I can get that much cash that fast.

  No! She’d sworn on her mother’s grave that she’d never sell her body. But she couldn’t see any other way. Much as she hated Raul for getting them into this mess, she knew Mama wouldn’t have wanted her baby boy to die. She didn’t want her brother to die. And the man Raul had gotten himself indebted to was known for making good on his threats.

  She had about a thousand left in savings. Maybe if she worked double shifts both days . . . No, she was dreaming. If business was good she might earn a thousand, even two, giving lap dances to the customers. No chance she could earn all she needed in the Strip, not in time to pay off the patron and save Raul’s life.

  Whatever happened to the avenging angels, gargoyles, and other fanciful creatures her mother had read stories to her about all those years ago? The ones with supernatural powers who would swoop down from above and destroy the evil people here on earth? Then she remembered. Those avengers, even the fearsome ones like gargoyles and vampires, only saved good boys and girls. And as she looked at her face, painted in a garish whore’s makeup, she knew she was far from that. That decided it. She clenched her jaw.

  There was only one way she could make the remaining four thousand dollars in two days and nights. Her throat tightened at the prospect of picking some johns and doing whatever it took to please them. Surely it was dread.

  It has to be dread making you tighten clear down to your core. This isn’t about sex, it’s about necessity. About money.

  So . . . she’d become the puta she’d promised Mama she’d never be—but then, she’d also promised Mama she’d take care of Raul. Perhaps she’d have to keep on hooking, because if there was one thing her boss at the Strip wouldn’t put up with, it was having his dancers soliciting the customers for sex. If he found out, she wouldn’t have a job. Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back. It did no good to grieve over something that hadn’t happened yet, might not happen at all.

  Even if she had to make a permanent living as a whore, it wasn’t as if she’d be the only girl from the barrio who’d given up on the idea of making it inside the law, let alone in keeping with the morality the priests talked about in the confessional.

  Marisa shrugged out of her robe in the shadows of the stage curtains and tried to push away the fear that still quivered in her belly. She’d figure it out. But first she had to do this job.

  “Get your ass out there, baby. You’re on,” the stage manager whispered, punctuating his order with a smart slap on her nearly naked butt as the opening strains of her signature salsa music blared through the club’s speakers.

  It was time. As she’d done a hundred times before, Marisa strutted into the spotlight and began to gyrate to the distinctive Latin beat. She smiled, enticing the crowd, getting into the beat, twirling the tassels on her pasties, enjoying the mild arousal that came from feeling the erotic brush of silk on the bare skin of her rib cage, her belly. Like a lover’s touch, almost . . . enticing her, as if she were stripping for a special man, dancing only for him in his garden or out on the beach where moonlit waves undulated behind her. For a few moments she forgot the hundred or so pairs of lascivious eyes that glowed eerily through the multicolored floodlights pulsating all around her. As she did each time she performed, she managed to escape the club’s sleazy surroundings for the erotic fantasyland of her mind.

  But she couldn’t set aside her woes for long or forget what she had to do. It wasn’t that she didn’t like sex. She did. She’d dreamed of a white knight finding her, sweeping her off her feet, taking her to a world where there wa
s no poverty, no patron, nothing but indulging the senses, celebrating the beauty in each other. But this wasn’t about fulfilling fantasies or even about pleasure. It was about surviving alone, clawing her way out of the Cuban barrio, dragging Raul along for the ride. About using her body to buy her way to freedom, respectability. Strutting around the stage, Marisa eyed the crowd of customers and settled on a dark, dangerous-looking man whose gaze seared her with its intensity. She sensed something about him, felt an erotic charge in the air unlike any she’d felt with other customers on other nights. If she had her way, he’d be her very first john.

  • • •

  When the dancer came onstage, Claude clenched his glass of cola. Blood slammed into his groin, leaving him dizzy. As dizzy as he’d have been if he’d tried to handle something heavily alcoholic instead of the beer or soft drink he’d always been able to enjoy without ill effect. Was the sultry creature who exuded sexual invitation the same one he’d seen at the back entrance earlier, trembling while the two bullies had issued her some sort of ultimatum? It had been too dark for him to see her clearly, but she was about the right height. Tiny, like the woman outside. She wouldn’t even come up to his shoulder.

  For such a little thing, this dancer packed one hell of an erotic punch. His fingers itched to dig into that tousled mane of ebony, find all the erogenous places there . . . to trace the pulsating vein in her throat. He’d tug at the reddened, pierced nipples poking impudently through gold shields that lent their glow to satiny golden skin, and then move lower to find her core, which even now filled his nostrils with the heady scent of arousal.

  Other customers smelled it too. He could tell by the slackening in their jaws, the shifting of legs to accommodate sudden arousal. It made no sense, yet Claude couldn’t help wanting to chase them away. Not just the customers, but the men who had been threatening her out in the alley. They’d wanted something, they’d wanted it now, and they hadn’t been inclined to take no for an answer. He’d understood that much of the conversation, smelled the fear, and sensed the terror she’d been trying so hard to hide. This was the same woman.