Year of the Rat

Chapter 2

“You got the wrong address, kid. We didn’t call an exterminator.”

In the crimson nightclub, a haze of gritty cigarette smoke drifted into Cyrus’s face as he stared up at a muscled bartender. The guy was straight out of a seventies porno—cigarette hanging from his mouth, bushy hair on his arms, and a brown velour shirt. Cyrus was convinced someone had invented a time machine and stolen him from 1977.

Cyrus became intently aware of the steel sprayer strapped to his back. The forty-pound canister threatened to damn near drag him to the floor. Another reminder of his mission.

“I lugged this equipment all the way over here,” Cyrus said, patting the sprayer. “My boss is gonna kill me if I don’t use it.”

The bartender folded his arms. His giant biceps flexed under his shirt as he scissored his cigarette. “Not my problem,” he said, blowing another cloud in Cyrus’s direction. Smoking was supposed to be banned in Chicago bars, but paranormal nightclubs didn’t have to play by the rules.

The bartender was staring at Cyrus so hard, his eyes might as well have been lasers. Cyrus wondered what type of paranormal the guy was. It was never wise to ask. If Cyrus had to bet, he might have pegged the guy for a werewolf.

“Come on, man, work with me,” Cyrus said. He climbed onto a stool at a laminate bar whose surface was styled like a brown agate marble. His wool coat sleeve stuck on something sticky and he pulled it loose with a sound that reminded him of a bandage ripping.

“Ugh,” Cyrus said.

The bartender swiped a rag off a nearby tap, slapped it like a jock would slap a towel in a locker room, and tossed it to him. Cyrus’s stool squeaked as he reared back to catch it.

“It’s just Jack, kid,” the bartender said.

Cyrus dabbed his coat gingerly.

Cyrus and the bartender were the only people in the room. With no music playing and the lights at full red brightness, the club felt empty, wooden. Every sound was twice as loud, with a deafening echo.

Places like this looked better in the dark. For one, you didn’t have to concern yourself with the rats—because this place had a bunch of them. Second, there were all sorts of stains on the floor…

Cyrus swept his gaze across the neon sign behind the bar that said “JoJo” in bright pink letters, the brass, shimmering stripper pole in the corner of the room, and up the spiral staircase to a back office with black-tinted windows. He needed to get up there, but this bartender was going to be trouble. He noted the long metal VIP balcony over the wood dance floor, full of orange plush couches and skinny bar tables.

He turned to the bartender. “A nightclub like this has to have pests, right?”

The bartender still stared at him, unblinking.

“Even if we did, you think I’m going to hire a kid like you to take care of it?”

Cyrus wanted to punch the guy, but if he did that, he’d get himself thrown into the mirror behind the wall, or worse, into the street on his ass.

“I’m not a kid.”

“Show me your driver’s license and I’ll reconsider.”

“I don’t need one,” Cyrus said. “I take the L.”

He did have a driver’s license, but he had purposely left it at home. The last thing he wanted was for this guy to know who he was. Hell, he wasn’t even supposed to be at this shady paranormal nightclub. If Desmond and the Regulators found out what he was doing, he’d receive a stern warning.

“I’m with Danzanello Pest Control,” Cyrus said. “We’ve been around for one hundred years. Rats, bed bugs, roaches. You name it, we take care of it.”

“We don’t have any of those things,” the bartender said.

“Like hell you don’t,” Cyrus said.

Of course the guy was lying. Cyrus had been here an hour earlier as a rat, sniffing around. Not only did the place have a colony of hostile rats in the kitchen subfloor, but it also had spiders, ants, and a particularly bad infestation of German cockroaches behind the refrigerator. If the guy couldn’t see the pests, then he needed professional help.

“Tell you what,” Cyrus said. “I’ll prove to you how good our company is. I’ll treat your place for free. If you don’t see my traps full of creatures, then you can tell me I’m full of it. If I’m right, then promise me a meeting with your boss so we can talk about a treatment plan.”

The bartender puffed. “You’re persistent.”

“I’m honest,” Cyrus said. He patted his sprayer again. “I have to show my boss I’m worth keeping around.”

He stuck out his hand.

The bartender glanced at his watch. “We open in one hour. Do your thing and get out. Come back in two days and we’ll talk.”

Cyrus grinned. “Crazy good pest control, coming right up.”

It happened that summer. It was a typical Chicago summer. The air sweltered and your sweat clung to your skin. The blue skies reflected in triplicate off the glass panels of the skyscrapers downtown. You were happy to be alive, among the crowds of people and the sunshine and the sudden thunderstorms.

Cyrus was supposed to be getting his life back on track. Dating women. Finding an apartment of his own. He had never wanted to be a rat shifter, but life among the paranormal wasn’t so bad after all. He was learning to live again.

But then his sister changed forever.

While he was fighting a nephilim who lost control and threatened to destroy Chicago, his sister Becca was possessed by a demon. In a split second, she was never the same.

The usually snarky Becca had lost her sparkle. Sure, she still bossed him around and made jokes at his expense, and she looked out for him like any big sister should, but she wasn"t the same. He couldn"t look at her without knowing that a demon had nestled itself inside her mind. It was always talking to her. He could tell by the tortured look in her eyes.

He blamed himself. If he hadn"t become a rat shifter, this would"ve never happened. He would"ve never put Becca in danger.

The winds of time changed; summer flashed into autumn; autumn decayed into winter. Snow fell from the sky in large drifts. The winds rolling off Lake Michigan made the air ten times colder than the forecast predicted. The streets took on a patina of ice and dirt-colored snow.

This was supposed to be a time of joy leading up to the holidays, the time of year when Cyrus had to think about Christmas presents. When he and Becca would eat holiday dinners at his mom’s. It was supposed to be the time of the year when he reflected on his life and looked forward to the coming year.

Now here he was, trying to save his sister. There was only one man in the city who could help him, and he owned this club. He was notoriously hard to get to.

As he stood on the street corner looking up at JoJo’s Dive, rubbing his hands together to keep warm, he told himself that if he got Becca into this, then he could get her out of it. He had to.

JoJo’s was a rundown, skinny nightclub between two vacant buildings. With so many of the buildings in urban Chicago, you never had any idea what the vacant spaces used to be. The first-floor windows of the vacants were covered with brown paper. That made the neon lights of JoJo’s Dive stand out.

An electric hum drew his eyes upward to the second story. A tall neon sign of a woman drinking from a martini glass, all legs and red lipstick, flashed pink on the second and third floors. The exterior of the bar was covered in V-shaped wood bars that reminded Cyrus of a display at a picture frame shop. The building was straight out of the nineteen seventies. Normally, he wouldn"t be caught dead in a place like this. He was already on the wrong side of town.

But he had a mission. Becca was depending on him.

A frosty wind tore through him, making him shiver and pull his wool coat closer.

He pulled out the wand from his spray pack and adjusted it to a shower spray, then sprayed the exterior of the first floor where the sidewalk met the foundation. He noticed a long c***k in the foundation near the kitchen. He made a mental note and didn’t spray the area around the hole.

But he wasn’t really spraying. Not in any amount that would deter a real pest. He had filled the pack with water. It was just subterfuge so he could pay attention.

Thank God Fontanelli let him borrow his equipment for the day. One of the perks of working in pest control was that ol’ Font let him treat his mom’s and sister’s places. He definitely wouldn’t have been upset at Cyrus treating this shady nightclub. Font would have seen dollar signs before he even walked in the front door.

But Cyrus couldn’t use the Fontanelli name. It would put Font in danger. He came up with the name Danzanello—thoroughly Italian, thoroughly unique, and not likely to raise any suspicion.

Cyrus stopped for a moment at the wooden front door. A quick creak made him jump back just before the door swung open.

A blur of fur click-clacked past him. He smelled her before he saw her—cigarette smoke and roses.

A tall blonde woman in her twenties with hair cut to her shoulders, star-shaped sunglasses, and pink platform shoes. A mink fur draped her frame and hung down to her knees. If she had whiskers and a tail, she could have made for a convincing extra in the Cats musical.

CatsWhoever she was, she almost took his face off at the rate she rushed out of the club.

Cyrus kept spraying and kept her in his peripheral vision.

The woman stood on the corner and sighed, walking back and forth. She sighed and let out a quiet grunt of displeasure. Something told Cyrus it wasn’t the cold that was bothering her.

A cloud of cigarette smoke drifted into Cyrus’s nostrils and he coughed just as a horn blared.

A stretch limousine eased around the corner and slid down the street like it owned it. Looked like an old Lincoln from the seventies, the kind he’d seen in movies. Tinted windows. Gold dollar sign hood ornament. Reflective chrome grill. They sure didn’t make limos like that anymore. Around downtown Chicago, it was more common to see stretch Hummers or Cadillacs—not vintage vehicles.

The limo pulled to the side of the road and slowed to a stop in front of the woman, who stood with a hand on a hip, puffing smoke that hung overhead like a thundercloud.

The limo driver, dressed in a black chauffeur uniform, rushed out and opened the rear door.

This was the moment Cyrus had been waiting for. His chance to finally see the elusive JoJo Skaggs, the only man who could help Becca.

Cyrus’s jaw dropped as the door opened.