a little less dandy, a little more take this spike to my heart

v

Mikey's information helped them a lot, especially some of the stuff he messaged them later, but even then he couldn't figure out what was going down. But however the night goes, the plan is this: split up, get info, find the guy in charge, attack if the guy turns out to be using the Church for evil and/or gangs, and drive off before they transform. And that's exactly what they're doing now.

Geoff drifts towards the overcrowded hotspot (which in hindsight is probably a dancefloor), Otto has gone in the area around the vacant stripper pole, and leaves Awsten with the bar.

Squeezing his way through the crowd, Awsten manages to find an empty neon pink stool resting in front of the bar.

"Hey!" the bartender shouts at Awsten to be heard. "You want anything?"

"Uh, yeah, I'll take a water or like, orange juice." Awsten shouts to back even louder.

The bartender raises a finger and goes into the door of kitchen. His dismissal leaves Awsten to scan the room in depth. Then he realizes he missed seeing a pretty obvious aspect of the room: it's scattered with differently designed crosses strung across the walls and most of them seem to light up with the other neon.

Awsten taps his earpiece to connect to the wires. "I think I can kinda see why this is a church now."

"Well duh," Geoff's voice is almost drowned out by the noise, but his point is made clear. "I can see that too, but something seems a little off about this place besides the crosses."

"What d'you mean?" From what he's been seeing so far, the entire place seems like a normal, yet shady club.

"I dunno, it's just that I've seen a bunch of people get weirdly tired? I know people pass out drunk sometimes, but I've seen maybe seven people faint so far. I don't really feel good about this place, especially 'cuz I smell a lotta humans here."

"Maybe they're just getting heat flashes or something? It might be the fever, but it's still fucking hot." Awsten scans the room to see anyone going down like Geoff said, but he finds nothing like that. "I dunno. Otto, did you see anything?"

The connection on Otto's part stays relatively silent until he checks in with a "Nothin' much."

A dull throbbing in the back of his head beats in sync with the blaring drums. Nethertheless, Awsten still felt obligated to respond somehow. "Yeah, see? You're such a fucking headcase sometimes, God. It's fine. It's fucking fine ." He's not sure if he sounds harsher than he needed to, but whatever.

The line goes quiet again, but feels a little longer this time. "Maybe so." Geoff responds, but it's piercing, judging like a dull blade to his throat.

Maybe Geoff wasn't controlling pre-transformation fever as well as he thought.

He's about to say something back about how he can't take a fucking joke, but the bartender comes back at the moment and Awsten has to turn off his wire.

"Here you go." the bartender slides the shot of orange juice towards Awsten. "Sorry 'bout the wait, we usually keep the more human drinks in the back."

"Thanks..." Awsten trails off because he doesn't actually know the bartender's name. He takes a sip of his glass and feels tiny fractions of the pounding in his head fade.

"Name's Brendon. So man, what brought you here?"

"Just some uh," He takes a gulp of the surprisingly good juice. "curiosity. Found one of the flyers here and I thought I'd check it out."

"Man, those must be the reason half the people here came. I mean, I've only known Gabe for a little, but he IMed me some crazy shit about some club idea."

So there were other ways of promoting the place and it came from the boss himself. From what Mikey had said, he sounded like a dumbass so whatever he's doing is impressive, especially if this many people could be able to find the location.

"What's so special about the place then? Like, besides the ad hype, what's really going down here?"

"That's a good question." Brendon takes a moment to think about it, sliding and mixing drinks to others as he does so. "I think it's more of the fact a bunch of different supernaturals aren't fighting when they're smushed together in one space. Like, I'm human, and I've served so many supernaturals here. But, if you're really interested in this place..."

"If I'm really interested then what?" Awsten asks, looking him in the eye.

Brendon leans over the bar, getting closer to Awsten and lowering his voice slightly. "There's this underground thing or whatever goes down in some other room here. I've only heard about it through eavesdropping some convos, so just a disclaimer if it's fake. The people who get to do it are random and I think it's this weird VIP thing the boss pulls, but who knows."

"Wow, that's," Awsten tries to think of the words to say. Interesting? A little unbelievable? Possibly the answer to this entire mystery? "wow."

"I know, right? Maybe that'll happen to you tonight, y'never know." Brendon smiles before someone noticeably angry beckons him at the other end of the bar. "It was nice to meet you, but apparently I have to work at my job."

Awsten waves him goodbye and connects back to the channel. "Hey, I found out shit."

No one picks up his signal. Well, great.

Awsten opens his mouth to ask if anyone's there, but a strong hand clenching his shoulder stops him.

"Just follow me and don't try fighting, got it?" the man attached to the hand grits out.

"Uh yeah, call you back later guys." Awsten disconnects from the channel to follow him into his certain doom.