Full Boar

Chapter 1: A Night Out at the Club

Most people wouldn't charge into a vampire's den, but then again, Mason Slate was not considered most people. He wasn't even considered people.

From the outside, it looked like a nightclub in one of the many dockside buildings in Fishtown, right by the river, sandwiched between an abandoned warehouse, and right across the street from some new Italian restaurant. That smell was enough to rumble Mason's stomach. But enough of the restaurant. Mason was here on a mission, and it didn't involve alfredo.

The nightclub itself was your standard fare. Lurid neon lights spelling out some indecipherable name, tinted windows with just a hint of motion behind them, a big burly dude in a T-shirt noticeably (and, Mason suggested, intentionally) too tight for him checking the IDs of all the visitors in the queue. Normal stuff, and Mason already had a ruse to get in.

He pushed past a trio of anxious college students. "Hey!" one of them said, but Mason ignored her. Instead he approached the bouncer.

The man looked up. "If you want to get in, you better get to the back on the line." His expression was controlled, a bit blank.

Mason instead fished out a secondary wallet. "Sorry, no can do." He flipped open the wallet, making sure his finger lay over the Mark of Masking he had scrawled on the inside fold. "Health Inspector, doing a spot check. You gotta let me in." Where he saw a used-up gift card for Barnes and Noble, the bouncer saw a very official-looking ID, complete with the unfakable holographic stamp.

"I... I'm gonna have to—"

"You could... or I could let your boss know that you're the reason we're gonna have to shut your place down." That finally got a reaction out of him. "If need be, I'll cite the statutes, chapter and verse."

"No, just... go in," he said, and Mason pushed past him before he even finished.

Flesh. That was what greeted him beyond the nightclub's doors. Flesh, bared and vulnerable, flushed with life, with motion, with vitality. Flesh, begging for Mason to pounce, to let his guard down, to let go.

He didn't, of course. Mason was a Watchdog, and what good was a Watchdog who bit the ones who he had to protect?

The nightclub was set up around the dance floor, now a mess of swaying bodies and strobe lights. Music filled the area, music that Mason didn't hear so much as feel in his bones, pulsing and thudding like a heartbeat. Across the sea of frenzied limbs and glowstick bracelets a bartender mixed a drink at a black-glass and chrome bar, violet lights making the bottles behind him seem like potions of witch-brews. Hell, with what this particular vamp was into, it wouldn't have shocked Mason if they were actually laced with a witch's potion or a shtriga's blood. To the left, a bunch of lounge chairs circled more of those modernist black glass and chrome tables, and to the right the DJ was getting into the music. A stairway behind him, lit with purple LED lights, gave access to a mezzanine where a bunch more tables sat. That would be where the owner was.

The owner who happened to be a vampire. That was the complication.

So instead Mason made his way to the bar. "Whiskey neat," he ordered, flashing not the fake badge but a far more convincing set of credentials, the kind with Andrew Jackson's face on them. The bartender took it, and a minute later Mason had himself a drink. He sniffed it, prepared himself for whatever spells might hit him, and downed the drink.

He had been trained to resist spells, but he didn't need to. No venom, no potion, nothing. Just some good whiskey. It probably would be out of his system by the time he got to the stairs. Being a werebeast had its drawbacks —the Beast pawing at his mind, begging for release— but giving a ridiculous tolerance for alcohol came in handy.