Page 29 of Branding the Bat

He hung upside down and thought about Trevor and tried to hate him even as it broke his heart.

***

The phone call came at two in the morning.

Sero was still in the closet, still in bat form, when his phone buzzed on the bedroom floor. He shifted, the change instantaneous, his human body unfolding from the small dark space with the disoriented clumsiness of someone waking from a dream. He grabbed the phone.

Amani.

"Are you home?" Amani's voice was tight. Not the usual warmth, not the teasing. Urgent and controlled.

"Yes. What's wrong?"

"The Grizzly's people just came to the club. Two sharks. They walked in during closing and asked about Trevor. Asked who he'd been spending time with. Asked—" Amani paused. Sero heard him breathe. "They asked about the bat."

Sero's hands were steady, because his hands were always steady, because bats processed fear the same way they processed pain, as information rather than emergency. But inside the steadiness, his heart was hammering.

"They know about me."

"They know Trevor's been booking rooms with someone. Bethany's records are private, but the sharks don't need records. They've been watching the building. They described you, Sero. Short, dark hair, comes on Wednesdays. They know what you look like."

Sero sat on the edge of his bed. The Strip light painted his bare legs in alternating stripes of color.

"What do they want?" he asked.

"They want the source. Whatever Trevor's been making from you, they think it's the good stuff. Trevor's been stalling, sending inferior product, and the Grizzly's done being patient."

"So, they're going to come for me."

"I don't know. Maybe. The Grizzly's a regular at the Playground. You know what that place is?"

Sero knew. Everyone in the shifter community knew about the Playground, even if most had never been there. A warehouse in the desert, thirty minutes from Vegas, fifteen on paved road, fifteen on dirt. Expensive cars in the lot. Heavy chains inside. No consent, no safe words, no rules except the ones the people with money made up as they went. It was the anti-KK. The place that existed because some shifters believed power was something you took rather than something that was given.

"I need you to come to the club," Amani said. "Tonight. Right now. My mother has security here, real security. You'll be safe until we figure out what to do."

"Have you called Trevor?"

A pause. "No."

"Call him."

"Sero—"

"I know what he did. I know what he is. Call him anyway. He's the only one who understands the Grizzly's operation, and if the sharks are coming for me, Trevor's the one who knows how they think." Sero pulled on jeans, a shirt, shoes. His hands moved with the calm efficiency of someone dealing cards, automatic, practiced, steady even when the count was bad. "I'll be there in ten minutes."

"I'll be behind the bar."

"At two in the morning?"

"I'm always behind the bar." The ghost of a smile shone in Amani's voice. "Hurry."

Sero hung up. He stood in his apartment, the apartment he'd cleaned that morning because he was happy, the apartment with the persimmons in the fruit drawer and the closet where he hung when the world was too much, and felt the shape of his life shift around him.

Three weeks ago, he'd been a blackjack dealer who went to a kink club twice a month and ate fruit alone in the dark. Without his knowledge, he’d become a man whose body produced liquid gold, whose trust had been distilled and almost sold, and whose existence had attracted the attention of creatures who didn't recognize the word no.

He locked the door behind him and walked to Kinky Kritters in the dark.

The warehouse district was quiet. The streetlights cast long yellow pools on the asphalt. Somewhere in the distance, a carengine revved and faded. Sero walked quickly, his bat senses sharp, echolocation pinging off buildings and parked cars, his ears tracking every sound within a block radius. He smelled salt water once, faintly, carried on the warm night air. It could have been nothing. It could have been the desert playing tricks.