Excerpt: The Lunar Heir Chronicles

Book Two: Scarlet

Wolf

“She did not know what a wicked animal he was, and was not afraid of him.”

Chapter One

The Parisian skyline was alive with neons and hovers, even in the middle of the night in the dead of winter. Scarlet stood with her back against the concrete wall of the Rouge, hands rubbing up and down her chilled arms and watching the blank, black sky. The lights from the city drowned out any stars above them, and the moon was just entering into its tenth phase and hung like a broken nail beyond the horizon.
She sighed and a puff of steam rose up in the air.
Inside the Rouge, the crowd was raucous, the music blaring. Scarlet had started her shift with a headache and now it was ten times worse. The fresh air, if downtown back-alley air could be considered fresh, seemed to be doing her good, but she doubted the effects would last more than a few irate moments back out on the floor.
A crash erupted from inside the room and Scarlet wistfully turned her head, imagining another fight breaking out, imagining another drunkard getting thrown onto the cheap wooden tables, imagining the crowd laughing at him.
The door to the kitchen opened, releasing the smell of grease and onions. Scarlet shut her eyes.
“Hey, Scarling, your boyfriend’s back.”
It was Sophie, who always talked in a fake accent that she’d picked up from watching old French movies made in the second era—how she understood what people were saying was beyond Scarlet—but she always talked normally to the other girls.
“You hear me?”
Heaving another long sigh, Scarlet opened her eyes and watched the steam dissipate. “What boyfriend?”
“The cute one with the crazy hair,” Sophie said, closing the door to the kitchen and propping herself against the wall next to Scarlet. “You doin’ all right?”
“I have a headache.”
“Sympathies.” Sophie took a couple sticks of gum from her front apron pocket, unwrapped one and popped it in her mouth, and offered the other to Cinder. When it was declined, she unwrapped and popped that one too. “Anyway, he was askin’ about you.”
“Who?”
“Your boyfriend.” Beginning to take on an air of exasperation, Sophie settled one hand upon her hip.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Oh come off it, Scarling. You know who I mean. The guy who’s been coming in all week, showing off all his latest bruises. The street fighter kid.”
Scarlet groaned. “Oh, him.”
“Well if you’re gonna be that way about it, I’ll go entertain him myself, if he’ll take a replacement. He’s beyond prime.”
“Is he beat up again?”
“He’s got a blackie on the leftie, but he’s still walkin’ straight and tall. I wonder what he does to the other poor chaps.”
The kitchen door swung open again and a fat voice yelled, “Scarlet!”
“I’m right here.” She pushed herself away from the wall to look at the manager, all sweat and double-chins. “I’m taking my break.”
“You have a request.” He jerked his thumb toward the kitchen. “Get in here and deal with him. I got a bad feeling about this jerk. I don’t want him causing trouble tonight.”
She nodded and slid the palms of her hands down her apron and walked past the manager. Behind her she could hear him starting to yell at Sophie but the sound quickly faded in the bustle of the Rouge. The kitchen was clinging and crashing with plates and pans and old-fashioned fire stoves hissing and oil crackling and cooks screaming at each other and at the waitresses and at the food.
She grabbed a pitcher of beer off a serving station as she passed by, predicting the onslaught of requests she would get from the tables out in the dining hall.
The Rouge was not a big place, but whoever had decorated it had had lofty ideas. It was supposed to mimic some famous brothel from the second era and was bedecked with peacock feathers, velvet draperies, gold-framed mirrors, and lush oriental carpets (fake, of course). But after decades of harsh treatment, the place had lost its grandeur and appeared now only dingy and drab, a remnant of what it could have been. The floors were sticky, the drapes were sullied, most of the mirrors were cracked. The tables had a mesh of mismatched, cheap chairs, replacements for those that frequently broke. And it all smelled of beer and sweat and fried foods, a scent that permeated the very walls and Scarlet believed would never go away, not if the building survived another two hundred years.
It was not a brothel, as its namesake had been. It was just a regular bar and eatery, its popularity stemming from the fact that it hired only luscious girls and served nothing that could be deemed even remotely healthy. The clientele was ninety percent men. On occasion, one of the server girls seemed to forget that they weren’t getting paid to entertain the customers beyond handing them drinks and food, and management encouraged this. It was part of the place’s allure—come and eat here and see if you can get lucky with your waitress.
Scarlet didn’t do this, though. She flirted, sure, and she enjoyed the massive, hopeful tips she got from it, but she didn’t follow the men home and she didn’t let them follow her.
Because of this, she was on the low end of management’s favorites list.
Even amidst the jovial, squirming, half-drunken crowd, she spotted the fighter immediately. Maybe because he was the only one not moving, the only still, quiet thing in the room. He sat at the bar, tense and holding a beer but not drinking it, staring unseeing at the dingy wooden counter. His brown hair fell in messy clumps before his eyes, one of which—the left—was swollen with a fresh bruise, as Sophie had warned. There was also a new cut on his lower lip, glimmering bright but not bleeding. The rest of the scars and bruises that littered his face and bare arms were old. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week.
“What’s a man got to do to get a little service around here?”
She turned to the gruff, laughing voice just as hand of pudgy fingers grasped her thigh.
She didn’t yelp, or even start from surprise, just calmly sidestepped from the grip and turned to glare with half-curled lips at the man, a brutish regular that made her skin crawl but tipped well.
“You’re going to have to behave better if you want a piece of this,” she said, waving the beer pitcher at him but letting the innuendo stand.
“Aw, Scarlet, you know I want more than just a piece,” he said, loud enough that all his equally obnoxious friends at the table could hear him. They laughed in appreciation.
“Well then I expect you to act like a saint for the rest of the evening,” she said and filled all the half-empty glasses on the table to their brims. The group continued to make teasing jokes at her but she’d already tuned them out.
She turned away from their table, and then jumped to see that the strange man had appeared directly before her and was looking down at her with peculiar, sharp green eyes. He reached up and grabbed the pitcher when she nearly dropped it from surprise, holding its base until her grip tightened again on the handle, and never looking away from her eyes.
“Was he bothering you?” he asked in a low voice, barely heard above the restaurant’s chaos.
But the intensity of his stare had knocked the wind from her and she could only stare back at him, silent and stunned.
His head tilted a tiny bit, his brow beginning to crease, and in another moment he had slunk back from her. The difference was mere inches, and yet suddenly it felt that restricted thought rushed back into her head and she inhaled a sharp breath.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Why don’t you go sit down and I’ll bring you a drink?” she said.
He craned his neck to peer past her shoulder and his eyes narrowed toward the table of men.
“What the hell’s your problem?” she heard one of the men asked, she guessed the man that had grabbed her.
Before her stranger could respond, she placed a hand firmly on his chest, feeling rock beneath his thin shirt. “Go sit,” she said. When she added, “Please,” he straightened his posture and returned to the bar.
The man at the table said, “You got yourself an admirer there, Darling?”
She glanced back at him and raised a warning finger. “Saint,” she said.
The stranger did not need a beer, as the one on the bar before him was still full, possibly even untouched, so instead of bringing him a drink, Scarlet made her way behind the counter, glad for a solid boundary between them. When she’d sidestepped the busy bartenders and made her way to stand before his sullen face, she flipped her long red hair off her shoulder and leaned over the counter and batted her lashes at him.
He just looked at her, one hand still clasped around the condensation-slicked glass.
“What can I get for you?” she asked, grinning, trying to pretend that the whole scene in which he’d surprised her and held her momentarily captivated had never happened.
He said nothing, just stared.
“Are you hungry?”
“No,” he said.
“How’s your beer?”
His emerald gaze fell to the glass as if he’d forgotten it was there. “Fine.”
“Have you even tasted it?”
“No.”
Scarlet pushed herself off the counter, holding onto the edge with both hands and narrowing her eyes at the man. “My boss said you’d asked for me.”
He blinked up at her, and slowly shook his head. “I just asked if you were here tonight.”
“Well I am,” she said. “And I’m working. So if you’re not going to order anything, then I have other customers to attend to.”
He seemed confused by her irritation. A moment passed and, without looking away from her, he raised the glass of beer to his lips and drank. And drank, and drank, only releasing his stare from her when his head had to tip all the way back to down the last of the beer.
He set the glass down, creamy foam coating the sides, and licked his lips. “I’d like to order another beer, please.”
Scarlet drew away from the bar and wiped her hands down the front of her apron again. “Sure thing,” she said, quiet and uncertain.
She took his glass and turned away. She didn’t know what brand he’d been drinking and doubted he cared much. There were taps all along the bar; she could have refilled it without moving an inch, but she went all the way down to the end, to the very last tap, and filled the glass as slowly as the pourer would allow it. Someone at the bar barked something obscene at her, but she ignored it. The bartenders pushed and brushed past her, but she ignored them. Her headache was gone, and the noise and music of the small shack seemed to have faded into the far regions of her conscious. She was in a daze, seeing only stark green eyes.
She returned to the man and set the beer before him, forcing herself to act composed. “Anything else?” she said, leaning over the bar again.
“I could crush his hand,” he said.
She blinked. He drew the glass of beer closer to himself but didn’t drink. “What?”
“So he would never touch you again.”
“You mean the guy at the table?”
“Yes.”
She cast a sideways look at the man who had grabbed her thigh. He had Sophie perched on one knee. She was giggling and kept saying “ooh la la” over and over in her strange accent.
“Leave him alone,” Scarlet said, turning her attention back to the stranger. “He’s harmless.” After a pause in which the man looked grumpy and rejected, she added, “You’re the one that’s starting to scare me.”
Surprise flittered in his gaze again. “I wouldn’t hurt you.”
“Yeah, well I don’t want you hurting my customers either.” She jabbed her warning finger, something of her trademark which had earned her the name “Mistress Scarlet” among some customers. “Do you understand me?”
Before he could answer, Scarlet heard Sophie’s shrill squeal followed by “Non! Non, s'il vous plait!”
She looked toward the table. Sophie was sitting on the table now, half bent backwards as the same man leered over her. It was clear that she was trying to push him away while maintain a look of flirtation and willingness, but there was a spark of fear in her eye. Her already low-cut blouse had lost a button at the top and the man was attempting to wriggle one of his fat hands into the gap. His friends were all laughing. One of them reached for her knee. She squealed but could not back away. “Non! Stop!”
Scarlet glanced back at the kitchen, expecting the owner to come out and stop the business. Was he even still back there? Could he hear Sophie’s panicked cries over all the noise?
Then Sophie screamed.
Scarlet turned back to her. Sophie was wide-eyed and had her knees curled up to her chest, her arms wrapped protectively around them.
The man who had assaulted her was being held six inches off the ground by Scarlet’s stranger, who had a single hand at the man’s neck. The stranger looked calm—even expressionless—but his victim was red and sputtering, his thick fingers scratching at his opponent’s wrist.
Scarlet’s jaw fell. He was a big man. She was sure he weighed well over two hundred pounds, maybe even two hundred and fifty. And yet the stranger held him like a doll.
“You will not touch her, nor any of these girls, again,” the stranger said in his quiet, even tone. Scarlet realized that she could hear him only because the chattering and laughing had ceased as everyone in the restaurant turned to watch the spectacle.
“What is this? What is the meaning of this?” the owner bellowed, appearing from somewhere in the crowd. “What the hell are you doing? Put him down!”
The stranger waited, unmoving, however, until the man began to take on a sickly shade of blue, before slowly setting his feet to the dingy carpet. The man slumped over, gasping and trembling.
“What is the meaning of this?” the owner said, reddened in his own face.
The stranger didn’t look at him, but rather cast his green gaze at Sophie, still curled up on the table, and held out a hand to her. She took it with wide eyes and he helped her down from the table with a nod, before finally turning his gaze to the owner. “This man was assaulting one of the waitresses.”
“We were playing,” the customer choked out. “Sophie and I play like that sometimes. Just a joke.”
The owner’s eyes narrowed and he crossed his arms over his barrel chest. Without looking at Sophie, he jerked his head toward the door. “Get the hell out of my bar.”
There was a hesitation, and the stranger said, “I have not paid for my beers.”
“I said get the hell out!”
Scarlet half expected the stranger to punch her boss, but his limbs remained straight and relaxed. Slowly he turned to Sophie. “Are you all right?”
“Oui, monsieur,” she murmured back at him.
Scarlet was grateful that he did not look at her as he slunk through the crowd to the exit. His expression reminded her of a scolded dog.