Raving Moon, Lords of the Night Book One

Chapter 4: Thrones

All of the Praetorian, throne officers of lieutenant rank and higher, were ordered back to HQ, derailing our plans to visit The Doc and ensure Carl received the treatment he deserved. Instead, Wheeler drove us up the west side thruway to the Tartarus business district. Throne HQ sat beneath a two block underground parking complex catering to Gorgon City's rich and powerful money movers. Above were the stock exchange, bank offices, and the main offices of three of the country's biggest media companies. The Vampire Council owned stock in all of them. In most large cities one merely needed to follow the money, and they'd find our leaders.

Wheeler parked beside a long line of identical vehicles.

"So my partner is down there interrogating the gremlins behind the autobody shop," Wheeler continued his story, "and I'm on the roof waiting for them to run. About then, I hear something strange. I look back towards the street, see a flash, and three cars fall apart completely: nuts, bolts, gears, wheels, bumpers. Everything. Turns out, while we were looking for the right gremlin gang, the thief was really an over-dweller calling himself Puck."

Gates groaned. "She'd clearly heard the story before.

"Was it actually Puck or just a demigod?" I asked.

"Your guess is as good as mine. We apprehended and secured him in the back of our van. We were halfway across the bridge when we were blinded by a bright light. I swerved and the steering wheel came off in my hands. We crashed in a shower of metal and oil. When I could see again we were stranded on the bridge and he was nowhere to be found."

We laughed as we climbed out of the van.

"Did you ever catch him?"

"Never saw him again... but I learned why we give over-dwellers citations instead of trying to arrest them."

A small smirk crawl across Gates' face. In the 1920s the over-dwellers, Jambhala and Plutus, got into a land dispute, and Gorgon's economy was caught in the middle. The over-dwellers were fickle, as were the times. I smirked too. Carl loved the 20s. Back then, Gates was still willing to wear a dress.

In my opinion, America didn't become tolerable until the 70s.

The three of us walked through the expansive parking lot until we reached emergency exit K. If anyone ever wondered why this exit and five others like it required a security code, I'd never heard about it. We gained access and entered a dimly lit staircase. On the landing a few floors down sat a leering gargoyle, a massive maul clutched in its talons. I didn't see it move, but I could feel it's gaze upon us as we continued down. A second gargoyle turned as we approached, the swiveling of his neck sounding like a stone scraping across gravel.

At the bottom of the staircase sat a pair of reinforced titanium doors. I used my code to get us in as surveillance systems recorded our coming and going. Beyond was Throne HQ. A short hall brought us to a waiting area where a young lycanthrope with a violent pink mohawk blasted music and drummed on the wall. An elven mother coddled her bruised child, reminding me that I needed to seek out one of the guardians of the bogo rifts, and a pair of vampires argued with a small grayish gremlin near the restrooms.

"Wheeler, deal with that before there's trouble."

On cue, one of the vampires kicked the gremlin to the floor. The little grey man roared as his body tripled in size, changing from a gangly twerp to a hulking primate. Thrones spilled into the room as the enraged gremlin snatched a vampire in each hand and smashed them together. Tasers were employed as well as batons. We ushered the innocent bystanders away from the growing brawl. Once we were sure the situation was being handled, Gates and I went through the security checkpoint and into the main offices.