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The winding passage opened into a small courtyard where a fountain, backlit with red lights, spilled into a dark waterfall. The orange neon sign over the leather-studded door read The Dungeon. A broad-chested man with a shaved head and a tattoo of a spider above his ear was standing next to the door. He wasn’t blocking it, per se, but he gave the clear indication getting in would be entirely at his discretion.
Wilder, wisely, stayed silent.
I walked up to the bouncer, whose sunglasses blocked my view of his eyes, and threw my shoulders back in an effort to not look like I was half his size.
“ID?” he grumbled.
I did have ID saying I was a twenty-one-year-old organ donor. Not that anyone wanted werewolf organs these days. Even before my birthday I had a charm to make that ID say I was of legal age. Actually with the charm I could make my ID believably say just about anything. Problem was, it wasn’t going to help me here the way it had at some of the better dive bars in town.
This guy wasn’t looking for my driver’s license.
“McQueen pack,” I announced.
He snorted through his nostrils, reminding me of a bull preparing to charge. “Chicka, every dog in town knows who the Big Daddy is. You have any idea how many folks come here each night and say McQueen pack to me? If you’re going to fake me out, you’re going to need to try harder.” He glanced over my shoulder to Wilder. “You gonna say the same thing, little bro?”
Wilder must have realized what the guy was after. “I was actually the protégée to Paul Talbot, the Alpha of the Talbot pack in Shreveport, up until a month or so ago. Now I’m back under the oath of the McQueen pack proper.”
The guard was befuddled by Wilder’s response. He clearly hadn’t been expecting a real answer. I, for one, was tickled to learn this tidbit about Wilder’s past. If he’d really been under the wing of an Alpha, my guess had been spot-on. He was being groomed to take over another pack.
Verrrrry interesting.
The bouncer returned his attention to me, giving me another once-over. To be honest, with all the press surrounding me over the last couple of years, I was surprised he didn’t recognize me. Not that I was a celebrity by any stretch of the imagination, but I was well-known in certain circles. The kind of circles this big fella ought to be a part
of.
“McQueen, you said?”
I pulled out my wallet and showed him my ID, the more traditional variety. “I did say McQueen.”
He lowered his sunglasses, showing me a quick glimpse of his snakelike eyes. Once he was done confirming my name, he handed the card back to me. “Sorry, miss. You know how it is. Tourists think they can come here and flirt with disaster, go home with a story. After a couple folks got into more trouble than they could handle, we had to start being more careful.”
“Of course.”
There was a time a wolf could have walked into this bar without getting a second look. Times had changed. A lot of things were different now, not just the club scene.
I tried to pretend I was okay with how different the world was now, but frankly I hated losing the secret part of myself. It made people think they knew me, when really they were totally clueless.
“No need to apologize,” I told the guard. “Better to be safe than sued.”
With his glasses back on he looked normal enough.
But didn’t we all in our sheep’s clothing?
He stepped to the side and gestured to the door. “Welcome to The Dungeon, Miss McQueen.”
No need to tell him this was hardly my first visit. It didn’t matter. First or five hundredth, you never knew what you were going to get when you went inside.
I paused before entering. “Is Cain in?”
The bouncer hesitated. “He is.”
“Has his rate gone up?”
This made the big man laugh. “You know it doesn’t matter. Whatever he charges you, you’ll pay. If you’re asking for Cain, you need Cain.”
I gritted my teeth and nodded. Sad, but true.
Cain might mean the difference between Hank living or dying, and when it came to saving a member of my pack, I wasn’t going to quibble over the price tag.
