Strip Seize

Chapter One

On the west side of Potomac City, down by the docks where you'd never see an on-duty lawman, sandwiched between a laundromat and an illegal amulet store, sat a club called the Beasties. This club was not special. In fact, the most remarkable part about the lower-class establishment was how truly unassuming it was.

Uptown, you'd find up-scale burlesques and nightclubs with siren's smoky voices drifting out onto the streets. Humans and extra-normals, more cash lining their pockets than the Beasties would see in ten years, waited in line for a glimpse of the high ceilings, marble dance floors and the women on display.

In the Fang Quarter, small, sit-down restaurants were more the norm. A vampire just getting off his hospital shift could come with a friend or lover, drink a nice glass of wine, and wait for their order to bend over the table and expose a supple neck.

Witches, on the other hand, you wouldn't find in any fang-business. After closing up shop or clocking out, many brewed potions at home or met in one of Potomac's many studios, a place for practicing meditation, exchanging spells, and finding a companion—for the night, anyway.

Yes, throughout Potomac City, you could find businesses that catered to each type of citizen: werewolves, centaurs, imps, zombies, and even ghosts. But you'd be hard pressed to find one that catered to all of the above.

At the Beasties, it wasn't uncommon to find a human sharing a freshly brewed potion with the same goblin that did his taxes. Ogres and Elves shared a table near the front, eyes glued to the women on stage as lingerie fell to the sweat-dampened floor.

A forest faerie with large antlers and a second-hand suit worked behind the bar, not even blinking when a vampire in a crinkled dress asked for a fresh vial—human male blood was her preference.

While a woman with fake blond hair took the stage, relieving her co-worker, a string band filled with slightly tipsy satyrs started up again, the music fast-passed and a little off-key. The girl who'd just finished stripping left with her clothes in hand, heading back behind the scenes to a dressing room that was ten degrees hotter than the club, smoke hanging heavy in the air.

"Ollie," Mack, the manager said to a russet skinned woman with chin-length, dark, wavy hair and not much besides stockings on. The large, single eye in the center of his head said "cyclops;" his attitude said "asshole."

"The gents will go crazy if you wear this," he said, shaking a Native American headdress at her. A feather drifted from the top of the prop to their shoes.

"I'll go crazy if you don't get that out of my face," Ollie said, turning back towards the smeared mirror, so she could carefully apply a scandalous color of red to her mouth.

"How is this different than wearing the grass skirt last week?" He was getting dangerously close to invading her personal space.

"I'm not Hawaiian," she said.

Mack's infamous temper snapped, and he threw the headdress at the window, knocking over a couple of jars of hair product and an amulet spelled to keep away rats. Storming off, he muttered under his breath that she was barely Indian either, though he might not have used as flattering a term.

"Ignore him," the Elvish woman who shared Ollie's station said, rolling a stocking up one, ridiculously long leg. "The boss is out there tonight, and he just doesn't wanna look like a dewdropper."

Ollie wiped at the corner of her blood red mouth and snorted. "Maybe he should do a little more work on the other 364 days a year the owner's not in the crowd."

It's hard to hide anger from a centuries-old elf, but the seven-foot woman went back to dressing and left Ollie to wrap a shawl made of fake werewolf fur around her scantily-clad body. The lack of clothing in a place like this might have made another woman uncomfortable.