Hell's Rayne (Book 1)

Chapter 2

 We pulled up outside of the club about fifteen minutes after I'd stepped into the car. It wasn't really that far away from the flat I had rented, hence my choice of accommodation, and I could easily have walked had I allowed myself a little more time but Rosa had offered to be my lift to work from the night I started as I was on her route. The club was tucked away down a tangle of dark and dank alleys in the so-called 'red light district' and it always took a lot longer than it should have to get there.

The roads were so often blocked by cars and men trolling for prostitutes; it was difficult not to mow several of them down as Rosa tried to navigate her little car through the blockade. She certainly has a way with words too, never afraid to stick her head out of the window and yell at them to move their arses. It's funny, they never seem to complain, nor have any kind of witty or abusive retort to throw back at her. The be-suited business men look so horrified having attention suddenly drawn to them that they hurry away in their sleek company cars, leaving tyre tread marks on the road behind them. The rejected prostitutes would glare daggers at us as we passed, angry at having lost out on a nice chunk of their nightly earnings, but we paid them no mind; we had our own jobs to get to.

 The neon light that advertised the clubs location hummed incessantly, like a swarm of wasps were lurking somewhere in the dark, as it flickered on and off. Occasionally it ignited the narrow street with an eerie red glow before plunging it back into pitch darkness – it was a wonder the place ever attracted any business, the broken sign was the only marker of its location, not a poster or even a roped queuing area in sight and the entrance was a single steel door set in a wide stretch of concrete wall. It didn't exactly scream 'strip club' at you.

 I stepped out into the dark street, the sign made a pathetic attempt at glowing then cut back out with an electric buzz; the humming stopped and I could only conclude that it was completely dead. The dark didn't really bother me, Hell is a pretty dark place as I'm sure you can imagine, not a whole lot in the way of natural daylight – so good night vision is one of the perks of these demon eyes of mine. I slammed the car door, perhaps a little too hard just to ensure it stayed closed, and stepped up onto the curb to stand beside the steel door and wait for Rosa.

She, it seemed, was having less luck with the lack of light. After killing the cars engine and swinging her legs out of the door she promptly tripped over the curb.

“Shit!” She cursed, stumbling up beside me and rubbing a hand over the shin she had scraped on the ground. A groan escaped her lips and she cursed again. “I've laddered my damn stockings. Wish they'd fork out some cash and just fix that fucking light already.”

 I just about held back a snort of laughter. Every night she did the same thing; you'd have thought, by now, she'd know where the curb was.

 “Yeah, well, from what I've heard about Angelo, since I've been here, he thinks it's a crime to pay his staff. Think he'd really pay out to have something in this shit-hole fixed?” I asked.

 Angelo was the owner of the club, I'd met him once during my 'interview' for the bar job. A brief, five minute affair where he'd enquired whether I knew how to pull a pint and informed me that I'd be working every inhospitable hour possible for minimum wage. The terms didn't bother me, I only needed the job as a cover so I could do my real job, but it wasn't surprising that there were no other candidates willing to take on the position, or why anybody was willing to work for that guy. Times hadn't become that hard, surely.

 “Sad, but true.” Rosa sighed. “If I didn't actually need paying so badly, I'd have called environmental Health about this place ages ago.”

 “Ha, he wouldn't stand a chance if you did.” I barked out, laughing at the thought. “I'm, honestly, still amazed that anyone is actually willing to drink here. Anybody caught botulism from this place yet?”