bonuses he promises the builders for completing their work on time. The Filthy Ecstasy club soon becomes the Demon Ecstasy club. A little obvious maybe, but Lucas renames the club because he likes the irony of it. Plus, the club needed a name change. Demon Ecstasy club is as good as any. As well as the interior overhaul, Lucas also cuts more than fifty percent of the original staff, hiring in his own staff with the help of Janice, who is now the manager of the club and loving it. Lucas even hires a few werewolves to do security. They don’t mind working for a demon as long as the money is right, and werewolves make good attack dogs when needed.
Outside of the club, Lucas has been subtly extending his influence throughout the streets of the city. He spends many days going around recruiting spies and paying people to be his eyes and ears around the city. Most of the people he approaches agree to work for him after he reaches into their minds and makes them compliant through some gentle persuasion. He also promises to pay them well for their information, giving each recruit five hundred dollars from the get go. No one he offers the money to turns it down.
Lucas approaches both humans and non-humans to be his spies. Eventually, when he secures himself against his mortal enemy Grand Duke Leonard, Lucas will expand his business interests in the human arena, so he will need information on the humans he inevitably will do business with. As for the non-human recruits, he needs them to firstly wire him off about any Hellwrathian activity in the area, or any activity related to Leonard and the Grand Duke’s personal guards, who were always on the hunt for Lucas. The spies will also feed him whatever information he needs on other non-humans.
He sits now in his newly renovated office upstairs in the Demon Ecstasy club, standing by the wide plate glass window, looking down at the busy activity below. There are now three stages in the club, one larger center stage and a smaller stage either side. The center stage is reserved for only the most special of girls, a few of whom are non-human girls that he hired in. Like the girl on stage now, mesmerizing the crowd with her act. The girl is tall, dark haired, finely built. She is also a vampire. On stage now, she is draining the blood from a chicken, allowing the crimson fluid to drip down her succulent body, baring her fangs at the crowd of men who stand transfixed in a state of wanton desire. The men in the crowd (most of them anyway) think they are just watching an act. A few know better. Regardless, everyone is turned on and entertained and happy. That’s all Lucas cares about.
Smiling, Lucas goes and sits down on the brand new red leather couch in his office. He takes out his phone and dials a number that one of his newly hired contacts gave him earlier that day. It is the fourth time he has called the number in the last twenty minutes, getting no answer the first three times. Then, on the fourth attempt, the person he has been trying to call picks up.
“Whoever this is, it better be fucking good to ring me four times in a row.”
“Frank Swanson?” Lucas asks.
“Who wants to know?”
“You’re a hard man to track down, Frank.”
“Who is this?”
“Someone in need of your particular skill set.”
“Oh yeah? What skill set would that be then?”
“I have a bit of a demon problem. I’m told you’re the best man to sort that out.”
There is a snorting sound down the phone, then silence.
“You still there, Frank?”
“Tell me where to meet you,” Frank says finally.
It has come to Lucas’ attention that a group of demons in the city have a certain item that Lucas needs. The very item in fact, that brought him to Mercy City in the first place. Said demons are currently conducting soul-stealing rituals on humans around the city. The demons kidnap an unsuspecting human, perform the ritual to steal the human’s soul and then release the human again. The
Learning to Kill: Stories