Hostile Takeover
Cal Petrenko was a very wealthy man.

Six years after retiring from the ring, where he'd been a heavweight boxer, he had his fingers in a lot of pies. He started out predictably enough. He married his manager, a hell cat named Carlotta who had him by the purse strings and the balls. She was a shrewd businesswoman, and before long Cal's money was invested in a casino, a topless bar, and a string of high-profile prize fights. When the money started pouring in, Cal decided it was time to branch out and run a small fight circuit of their own. Not just any fight circuit. They went a step past knock-outs; they went to the death. They went a step past amateur boxers; they used demons, and Carlotta knew how to find them because she was a half-breed. They kidnapped humans and hedged their lives on the outcomes of the fights. It was a modern-day Roman Coliseum with a twist, operating right beneath the noses of authorities.

One year later, the Ring's reputation had grown. Hundreds of people showed up to watch the gruesome matches. Carlotta ran the money behind the scenes, and Cal took on the revered (if unpopular) role of the Overseer, his true identity mostly unknown. He hired security to guard him and his wife full-time, in order to prevent retaliations and keep public events under control.

Lucky for Darian, security could be bought.

The Dealmaker stood behind the small restaurant, waiting impatiently for things to get underway. The Petrenkos were over an hour late getting to dinner, a matter of serious annoyance. Once Cal and his wife were seated, a member of their security detail was supposed to step out back to meet him. If Darian delivered the right sum of money, security would conveniently leave the couple vulnerable to attack. So far, no security.

He fiddled with his shirt collar and paced behind the kitchen.

Grace wanted to tell Darian to stand still, that his pacing was nudging her towards a full-on bad mood, but instead she kept her mouth shut and checked her shotgun for the fourth - fifth? - time to make sure it was loaded. Let the Dealmaker stew; if it made things go quicker once they got underway, so much the better. Meanwhile, she'd bide her time.

She'd been very quiet for most of the night, a hard knot of tension in the small of her back. If the demon noticed it, she had no idea, and less inclination to discuss it. She liked Darian as much as she was capable of liking someone, but some things no one but another vampire would understand. Her mood was going to expedite things once they finally got rolling, though, because she really wanted to kill something. Someone. Anyone.

The kitchen door creaked open approximately three inches, then swung open more fully. Grace half-pointed her weapon in that direction, then made a reasonably coherent noise that comprised Darian's name. It looked like their number was up.

Until a dishwasher came out with a trashbag. The kid looked about nineteen. His apron was covered in spaghetti sauce. "Um... can I help--?"

"No, you can't." Darian had stepped into the young man's line of sight, effectively blocking the view of Grace's shotgun. Now taking the dishwasher by the shoulders, he steered him in a half-circle and nudged him towards the door. "We came out here for some privacy," he hinted, figuring it was a reasonable excuse for being behind a restaurant, if you were a nineteen year old employee who probably took smoke breaks back there and god knew what else.

"But what about the trash?"

"I'll take it." Darian commandeered the bag, only to unceremoniously drop it the instant the door closed. "Let's hope he keeps his mouth shut." Turning more fully towards Grace, he eyed the firearm. "Do you really need to stand there with it locked and loaded? We're not shooting security unless we have to."

Grace forced a tight-lipped smile, reminded herself again that she was in public, and slouched against the brick wall, the shotgun coming to rest beside her. Count to five, girl, and then count to five again, she told herself. "I wasn't plannin' to shoot the kid, Darian," she told the demon. "It'd be a waste of bullets."

She released the weapon and fumbled around in her pockets for a smoke, only to remember that she had left her last pack in the car. Which was six blocks away. Fuck it, she didn't need a cigarette anyway, she just felt like she had to have one to keep from crawling out of her skin. That time, she counted to ten.

Why the hell was it so hard to find one reliable human these days?

True that he too was annoyed by the delay, and pacing had done little to alleviate it. But he wasn't aiming firearms at doors. "What's eating you, Grace?" Not that he was particularly one to care about whatever personal problems chewed up other people. But Grace was his partner tonight, and if she went off half-cocked, so to speak, he was likely to end up with a gaping hole in his torso. It wasn't on his top five list of things to do over the weekend.

Darian saw the hands fumbling. He went over to her and reached inside his open jacket. Out came a cigarette of acceptable brand and a lighter. "Magic pockets," he reminded her, his tone dry.

Around the restaurant's corner, a pair of brakes squealed and a few car doors opened and shut. If it was the happy couple, at least they'd arrived. It did mean a few short minutes before Darian and Grace got the cue,

The vampire gave her partner a look, then went ahead and lit up. Did he know about the feds yet? She tried to conjure up the image of some agent with a badge button-holing Darian for anything, and that only made her wonder if medical benefits covered someone getting their arms ripped off. Probably not. Insurance companies could be so picky.

"I'm havin' a little personal situation," she said finally, exhaling a cloud of smoke. "Can't get my old man to see reason about the G men skulking around the city. Don't suppose you've seen some J. Edgar Hoover wannabes lingering where you'd rather they didn't?"

The sound of car doors slamming on the street outside made Grace's shoulders bunch up, and she looked at the shotgun without picking it up. In a minute or two, but not now.

She looked up at Darian where he was still standing close to her. "You about ready to do this thing?"

For about the hundredth time since meeting her, Darian wondered why she fired two questions at once, neither one having anything to do with the other. It was conversational multitasking. Or ADHD. There probably wasn't enough Ritalin in the local drug store to make a dent in Grace's condition.

"Yes, I'm ready." His state of readiness didn't look any different from his state of unreadiness, except for a minor adjustment of his collar. Darian preferred to use his hands, though he had been known to improvise. A baseball bat, a hack saw, a soldering gun, a butane torch. In the event he had to go mano y mano with Cal Petrenko, retired heavyweight, he figured close-range toys weren't his best bet. If Grace didn't take him out from a distance, he'd be better off going for the knockout.

"I haven't seen any Federal Agents," he informed her. "But I have heard they're around. It's likely that if they saw me, they mistook me for a work colleague." The suited, Men In Black cliche' did seem to hold up outside film, and that was the closest Darian would come to making fun of himself. "Perhaps your lovin' man's about as intelligent as he looks." He wagged his brows at her, unwilling to resist the pot shot, and then redirected his attention to the sound of footsteps inside the kitchen. "Did I mention Carlotta Petrenko has a Scorpion tail?"

The jibe was what Grace needed to make her set aside her tension, and she let out a dry 'ha ha' sound in a so-funny-I-forgot-to-laugh way as the footsteps got closer. She hadn't expected Darian to understand, but it was nice to know his sarcasm could shore her up in its own acerbic way. This was business time, anyway. Time to concentrate.

"I met another Russian broad who had a tail not too long back," she remarked. "Probably not the same person, though. The world's not that small." She dropped the cigarette to the pavement half-smoked, put it out with her boot.

The back door of the restaurant creaked open again, and this time some thick-necked dude in a poorly-fitted jacket poked his head into the alley. Grace picked up the shotgun, tucked it against her side. As unobtrusive as she was likely to get. Neckless looked at her, then over at the Dealmaker. "Are you Darian?"

Darian had been about to ask if the Russian sang Madonna, by any chance, but the door severed the conversation.

"That depends. Are you finished wasting our time?" The point was clear. Darian did not like to wait. He reached down and picked up a small case that had either gone unnoticed before, or hadn't been there until the Dealmaker wanted it to be. He manipulated the locks and gave the security guard a visual estimation of how much cash was inside.

The way Neckless (aka Ronald) inched forward and peered at it indicated that he was definitely interested. "Mr. and Mrs. Petrenko are in the back." He thumbed over his shoulder. "Shouldn't be too much trouble getting to 'em." The muscles in his neck worked to swallow as he noticed the size of Grace's gun. "I hope you got good aim," he said. Ronald didn't have any scruples about selling out to the highest bidder, even if it meant they got killed. He'd seen the Petrenkos kill off plenty of good people for profit. It was just about time what went around came around. He only hoped to god Darian and Grace didn't fuck it up, because if they did, heads would roll and his would be one of the first.

"Good enough," Darian put in for her. "How many of you are with us?" The demon wanted to know if they'd have to take out more than Cal and Carlotta. Would there be loyalists, too?

Ronald said, "With all due respect, none of us 're with you until you do the job. We're just stayin' out of the way. There's one guy, we didn't let in on it. He's the one with the tattoo." Ronald rubbed his face. "He sticks close to Carlotta.".

Grace wished she had that special-order gun from Joseph, but this would do. If this gig went off the way it should, she could buy a gun for every day of the week and two for the weekends. The vampire looked Neckless over, then dismissed him from her ponderings.

"I'm ready to go if you are."

Darian shut the case, its complicated locks moving back into the engaged position. He gave the vampire a nod and told Ronald, "This will be messy," both because he anticipated trouble and also because he found it invigorating. With the door to the kitchen held open, Darian stepped inside and set the case in a corner. "If that leaves before we're finished, disembowelment would've been kind." The security guard nodded his understanding.

It was a straight shot from the kitchen door to the back of the restaurant. Darian led the way into the dining area and, stopping at the threshold, he scanned it. The decor was dark and lit mostly by wall lamps and candles. Two or three couples were having meals. Three other members of the Petrenkos' security team averted their eyes from the intrusion. That left the guy with an intricate, black tattoo of a wing down one side of his face, standing just behind black-haired Carlotta, who wore a dress that hid her less human parts, and her thick-bodied husband Cal. They were having drinks. A basket of bread was on the table.

The Dealmaker threw his voice to Grace. "Look left. Don't aim for the guard."

His fingers skimmed across the tablecloth of the nearest place setting, searching for something and settling on a sharpened seafood fork. He measured its weight in his hand, letting some internal clock run down in his head. Darian started to move. His stride went at a clip along the perimeter of the room, and it was enough to draw Black Wing's attention to the fast-moving man in the suit, instead of the figure at the kitchen door. To make things more distracting, the Dealmaker shimmered out of sight, only to reappear an instant later directly in front of the guard. No time had lapsed in between. It was as if he had taken a worm hole from one side of the room to the other.

In an upward jerk, Darian shoved the tines of the fork into Black Wing's throat.

A woman at another table saw the stabbing happen, and she screamed as blood gouted from Black Wing's neck. He let out a liquid-centered gurgle as he grabbed for the fork protruding from his flesh, and Grace jacked a shell into the shotgun's firing chamber before squeezing off the first round. The blast clipped Carlotta, and the half-breed dove for the floor as wood splintered and plates broke. The vampire sprinted forwards, her strong legs eating up the distance, and she kicked the upended table out of her way, jacking another shell into place.

The other woman was scrabbling for her own weapon, what looked like a nine millimeter, and Grace shot her in the lower abdomen as the turncoat security team ducked and covered. Wood splinters flew about three inches from her left eye, and she narrowly missed catching a bullet in the back as Cal Petrenko opened up on her with a .38.

"Carlotta!" the husband bellowed over the echoes of the shotgun blast, and Grace found cover behind a stone pillar while she reloaded. She hadn't had a full-on gunfight in a while. It was almost enough to make her wish it would last for a while.

Counting the seconds between shots, the vampire breathed deep. Taking it all in before her next round.

Even though Black Wing grabbed at the stem of the fork, he had enough common sense not to yank it out. Little spurts of blood fired out of him, but nowhere near what would've emerged had he unstopped the gap. He wasn't in fighting condition, but his massive body weight barreled through the debris of the dinner table. He powered into Darian and took them both to the floor, the demon landing underneath. As unhappy as Darian was to be on the bottom, the bodyguard wasn't half-bad as a bullet shield.

He engaged in a tug-of-war for the fork, muscles straining and veining to pull down when his elbows were trapped against the floor. Darian head-butted Black Wing. It created enough force to dislodge the man's red, sticky fingers from the weapon. Darian tore it out, shredding flesh and tissue and unleashing a miniature geiser of blood. It pelted his face and hair. He rolled the bodyguard off, clambering over the mass of broken furniture to make a grab for Cal.

But Carlotta was down, not out. Whip-like and curled, her tail emerged from the folds of her dress and slapped against Darian's legs. He had been half-right. There was a stinging function, if she could get the point sunk in, but the tail moved with much more flexibility than a scorpion's. It struck like a leather belt, welting the skin underneath his pants.

Darian made a hissing noise and made a grab for the flagellating tail.

Grace was listening for the sound of footsteps on broken crockery, and she put the second shell into the shotgun without looking at what she was doing. It wasn't going to take Petrenko long to realize he and the missus had been sold out, which might mean casualties among the bodyguards. Better for her, though, because if he was shooting at them that meant he couldn't shoot at her. She counted to five in a hurry, poked her head out enough to catch sight of him, then squeezed the trigger and blew a hole in the wall.

She could hear but not see Darian, and she sidled around the opposite side of the pillar. Petrenko was large and heavy-set, his boxer's weight running to flab over a hard layer of muscle, and she saw his wide-set bottom protruding from his hiding place behind a huge potted fern.

The shotgun was brought to bear. If she was lucky, she could catch his spine and render him helpless. The gun went off deafeningly, and the big man screamed as wooden shrapnel raked across his back and shoulders. Grace was already reloading even as she started moving. He was trying to crab-walk out of sight, the handgun clutched in one meaty fist.

She caught up to him, but he wasn't so slow-moving that he couldn't still defend himself. He rolled onto his injured back and the gun went off. The bullet tore into Grace's shoulder at close range, punching out on the other side in a bloody exit wound.

"You motherfucker..."

The next round took off half of Petrenko's face, splattering blood and brain matter in a wide arc around his head. Grace shot him again because she felt like it, the smell of cordite hanging heavy in the air as she stood over her fresh kill. Well, at least she wouldn't have to fart around later trying to dig the bullet out.

Why did getting shot always burn?

Around them, the restaurant was in chaos as patrons and staff tripped over one another, all heading for the exit.

Darian's arm collided with the hybrid's tail and the whole thing wrapped around, like a swinging chain. It kept it mostly immobilized, so the tip couldn't go for the center of his chest. But Carlotta's stinger did plant itself in Darian's bicep. Almost immediately, the muscle began to burn as poison seeped into it. Darian thrashed on instinct, but the jerks made the pain worse. Then numbness crawled down his arm. Infuriated, Darian grabbed the tail with his good hand, gritted his teeth together, and tugged.

The whole tail was ripped from the base of Carlotta's spine. Darian unwound it from his arm and pulled the stinger out.

"Shit." Carlotta was mostly done for, but he walked over and kicked her face anyway. Stripping his coat off, Darian looked around for Grace.

Chaos had erupted as the other patrons continued to flee from the restaurant, and Grace stalked like a revenant through the mini-stampede, the shotgun hanging loose in her grasp. There was blood dripping down her left shoulder blade, but other than that she felt fabulous. Nothing like putting on a little ultra-violence to chase away the doldrums.

"Darian." She caught up with the Dealmaker midstride, looked up at him critically. "That need looking after?" she asked, indicating his arm. You never knew with half-breeds, their genetic make-up was iffy at best. "Think we can make it out of here before they call in the SWAT team?"

"It's fine," he answered, resisting the urge to flex his arm up and down. A pack of ice would help, but until the poison wore off in a few hours, his arm was relatively useless. "We'll go out the back." Darian looked her over, noticing the gunshot wound. She was up on her feet, so he concluded she was fine. Grace probably wouldn't appreciate him verbally confirming it.

At the kitchen door, Ronald waited. The briefcase was next to him on the ground, untouched. "Are we on for next week, Mr. Darian?" He was asking about the next Ring tournament.

The Dealmaker nodded his yes. "And I think boss will be fine. But you'd better ask Grace. She might prefer Mrs. McCallister." On his way out the door, he couldn't resist another crack.

"A sense of humor." Grace's voice was reflective, possibly too low for Darian to over-hear. So this was what it would be like to be in business with Darian. Maybe she should start calling him 'Mr. Richards'. Just to keep him on his toes.

High times were going to be had by all, that was for sure.