Jess
As soon as the front entrance of Siren’s shut behind me, it was like I’d stepped into another world completely. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as if some deep-seated part of me knew I’d just entered a place I had no business being.
A long hall stretched ahead of me, lit only by a neon sign mounted over the door on the other end, painting everything in a dull red. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” it read. A quote fromParadise Lost.
It was just a stupid sign, put there to enforce the fantasy that this was a club truly owned by the devil. But when I read it, the words rang in my head like a warning. Not a novelty.
Melanie had picked this place, but only because I’d begged her to get drinks with me here ever since it opened weeks ago. I was sure she finally caved because she was fighting with Gabe, a close friend of ours who she was madly in love with.
He’d always been protective of her, and he was very adamant that neither of us come here. I’d just brush it off as him being superstitious, one of those people who actually bought into the whole devil thing. But as I walked down the hallway, unease began to knot my belly.
A small voice in the back of my head—my sanity, no doubt—told me to turn back, but reckless me pushed me forward.
Keep going, just a little further, she whined in my ear, practically begging me not to turn back.
Of course, I listened to her. This was the weekend. The weekend was when I was released from the shackles of responsibility, where I could pretend that there weren’t stacks of bills to pay on my counter, people to take care of, and a demanding job that wore me ragged. If I turned back, I would be going back to face all those things. I refused to let that side of me, the cautious, stressed giver, make me a prisoner. Besides, this was the thing I craved the most, the unknown, chaos,light.
The bouncer’s words pinged around in my head, tormenting me because I knew just how true they were.
“Don’t worry, Little Moth.You’ll find the destruction you crave inside.”
It’s not like I had a death wish. I just craved things that made me feel alive. Even though sometimes those things weren’t always the best for me.
I’d graduated college a couple of years ago, but on the weekends, I was still that crazy party girl, because unlike the rest of me, she was truly free.
Melanie called me an adrenaline junkie. It’s not like I was jumping out of planes or doing drugs or anything. But I did love to drink. I loved to go places I wasn’t allowed, and I liked to drive real fast on dark, deserted roads at night and scream…
And now, apparently, I liked to wander into Seattle’s supernatural underworld.
Friday nights were made for bad ideas.
Friday nights were for letting Reckless Jess off her leash.
I just hoped I hadn’t made a mistake in convincing Mel that coming here was asafe, bad idea.
When I opened the door at the end of the hall, the pulse of the music grew louder, the scent of brimstone coiled with the sweet tang of sugary alcohol, and the heady scent of sex all rushed me at once.
At first, all the chaos was disorienting. The main floor of the club was dark, illuminated only by red and pink LED strip lighting. A perfect blend of old and new. The stone walls of the church were exposed, along with all the stained glass windows, bathing the club’s modern black furniture in splashes of rainbow light. The main stage sat to the left, and to the right, the floor descended into a lounge pit blocked off from the rest of the club with a curtain of beads. A light above the pit labeled it as “The Sinner’s Den,” probably where private lap dances were given. And dead ahead of me was the bar. I’d never seen such a collection of alcohol. Shelves upon shelves were filled with glass bottles of various sizes and colors, all the way up to the ceiling. It looked more like a collection of a witch’s potions than anything else.
The entire atmosphere was eccentric as all get out, brimming with a sort of energy that had me excited and uneasy all at once. But the staff were an exception to that. They just seemed…normal. The dancers, “Satan’s Succubi,” while beautiful, looked like any other kind of exotic dancer. No tail, no wings, no gigantic cartoon boobs. They didn’t even have horns unless you counted the plastic ones they wore on their head. While the horns were cheesy, everything else they wore looked expensive. Silk stockings and garters, crystal-encrusted pasties, fur-lined harnesses, and all sorts of other accessories adorned their writhing bodies. It looked like they had all raided a luxury French kink shop.
I’d expected the staff to be the most bizarre part of Siren’s experience, but instead, it was its clientele that caused me to be uneasy.
While I was sure everyone here was some kind of supernatural creature, a cluster of rowdy men sitting down by the main stage drew my attention. They were the only group that I could put a name to. Wolf shifters.
Everyone in the King and Pierce County areas, human or otherwise, knew about the Tacoma Shifter Pack, a slimy biker gang. They hadn’t been much of a problem since they usually stuck to the Tacoma Hills Trailer Park where they were based, but now that Siren’s served as a watering hole for the supernatural, the notorious gang made frequent trips into the city.
They didn’t have to shift for you to know when you were looking at one, either. The members all wore black leather jackets with the pack’s logo—a wolf howling at the moon—stitched onto the lapel.
Shit, there were a lot of them in here. At least a half dozen. Luckily they seemed completely distracted by the dancer currently on stage and didn’t so much as throw a glance my way.
I needed a drink desperately but decided to wait for Melanie.What is taking her so long?I sat down at an empty table in an empty corner of the club and pulled out my phone to text her when a familiar face approached in front of me.
“Mel, there you are!”
My friend stumbled over to my table, an exhausted swagger to her step like she’d been trapped on a shotty amusement park ride for an hour. The tight black club dress that clung to her curvy figure was soaking wet, and her mahogany hair was a mess, with the back, in particular, bunched and covered in grass stains.
“Oh. My. God. You had sex!”
