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Part of the Nikola/Nigel series. Set between Dust From Their Shoes and New Worlds. Because I wanted James to have some fun with Prohibition and speakeasies too. *grins sheepishly* And then it became ... well. You'll see.
Title: Dangerous Games
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters/Pairings: James/Nikola/Nigel. Mostly gen-flavoured, though. For given values of 'gen', at least.
Summary: Set in 1925. James is called to New York to help with the case of an abnormal working for the outfit. An abnormal with a very familiar MO ...
Wordcount: 4564
Notes/Warnings: James wasn't going to be as ... forward, as he turned out. I sort of lost control of him a little bit. Heh. So did everybody else *grins*
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: Dangerous Games
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters/Pairings: James/Nikola/Nigel. Mostly gen-flavoured, though. For given values of 'gen', at least.
Summary: Set in 1925. James is called to New York to help with the case of an abnormal working for the outfit. An abnormal with a very familiar MO ...
Wordcount: 4564
Notes/Warnings: James wasn't going to be as ... forward, as he turned out. I sort of lost control of him a little bit. Heh. So did everybody else *grins*
Disclaimer: Not mine
Dangerous Games
The music was loud, echoing in the relatively small, underground space, tangling with the dull roar of conversation and the chink of glasses, the clatter of the dancers' feet on the boards. A sea of noise, lapping against the walls as if trying to wear them away, escape into the city above, and it was just loud enough to be almost soothing. To wash over his grasping senses in a soothing blur of sound, a single entity too muddled to be divided into its composite elements, removing all need for analysis. Simply existing. Simply there.
James rather liked it.
He leaned back in his booth, tucked flush against one of the load-bearing basement walls, some of the chill of the bricks seeping through the wood and tired velvet, through the warmth of the close air and the swirl of cigarette smoke. It was oddly nostalgic, and yet utterly foreign, this place. Too brash and noisy and new to quite match the more sedate atmospheres of the clubs back home. But close ... similar enough to lull, and make him perhaps more relaxed than he really ought to be, here.
He was looking for someone, of course. He always was, wasn't he? The world's greatest detective, always on the hunt. When he wasn't keeping the home fires burning for Helen at the Sanctuary, but they traded off on that, and really, he had no right to be bitter. Helen was never a woman to be caged by what people thought her role should be. Far from it.
This time, though, they were both away. This would have been Helen's call, had it come in at any other time than four days after she'd left for India, in search of a rare species of abnormal that was only getting rarer. James would have ignored it, in favour of the Sanctuary, coming as it did with a very high-handed and frankly rude request for assistance from the federal US government, were it not ... Were it not for the substance of the request. Were it not for the fact that they were searching for a man, an abnormal, that apparently on multiple occasions had been cornered by his pursuers, and simply ... vanished. Disappeared, into thin air.
James ... had felt a shudder pass through him, at that. And a sudden determination, regardless of duty or facts, to come to New York. To hunt this man down. For no better reason, perhaps, than to pay for reminding James of something he'd rather forget, but could never quite allow himself.
It wasn't John, of course. James had ascertained that with a few days of arriving, a few days of examining the reports. Not John. Of course not. The lack of mutilated bodies was rather a key indication, there. James had known, of course, that it wouldn't be. He had known.
No, this Chemist, whoever he was, was not the ghost that haunted James, that had driven him across the Atlantic on this wild goose chase. The man was far more ... sedate, in his criminal activities. A different kind of man entirely. Wanted for aiding and abetting the illegal sale of alcohol, for consorting with the more violent criminals the bootlegging trade threw up, but never violent himself. Actively non-violent, in fact. His only real claims to fame were the twin facts that no matter what the additive the government used, the man was capable of rendering industrial alcohol fit for human consumption, and that whenever it seemed he was cornered, left without escape, pinned in some little room or some dead-end alley ... by the time pursuit caught up with him, the man was gone. Vanished, without a sign.
James had investigated mundane means, of course. Really, people were far too quick to write things off as impossible when decent local knowledge and some sleight of hand could wriggle a man out of the tightest bolt-hole, and given the fact that none of the officers had ever actually seen the man vanish ... He'd made himself quite unpopular with that opinion, though he had done his best to be discrete about it. People, especially law enforcement, did not appreciate being called superstitious fools, even if only by implication.
But before long, after examining a number of the scenes, James had to admit they were right. At at least two locations, there really was no way out without being seen without, as they said, vanishing into thin air. Which was decidedly odd, as trace evidence at the latest scene indicated that the man, in the midst of his pursuit, had apparently simply walked out, his tracks in plain view under and over his pursuers. Walked out, and no-one the wiser, no-one seeing him leave.
James ... had smiled, then. Rather to the disgust of the local law enforcement, but he hadn't really cared. Because that ... oh, that meant James was suddenly in for a great deal of fun, with this job. Knowing something they didn't know ...
And thereafter ... well, he was here, after all. He had a legitimate abnormal cause to maintain interest in the case, and a degree of expertise that could be helpful in pinning the man down once he was found. And, of course, enough mundane expertise to go about starting finding the man, too, with help from a number of contacts in the Pinkerton agency who knew New York. Enough to start laying a trap. Or a number of traps.
Enough to set up a meeting, with James undercover as an up-and-coming supplier in desperate need of someone to render his stockpile drinkable. This meeting, in point of fact. Or rather, the one after this, the second meeting whereupon he'd lead the man into their trap, and no amount of vanishing would save him. This was just the preliminary introductions, in this little rathole speakeasy that had, for the moment, been unofficially declared unraidable until such a time as James' plan proved successful. Rather fortunately for the patrons involved, James thought, as he rather thought he recognised more than a few of them. By reputation only, of course.
Smiling faintly, leaning back in his shabby booth, letting the raucous, gentle sounds of jazz wash over him, cradling his glass of highly illegal brandy, James settled in to wait, and enjoy the hunt. He hadn't had the chance to be a proper detective in some years, caught up in the day-to-day running of the Sanctuary. He was quite looking forward to having some proper fun.
And then, right on cue, a voice sounded at his elbow, pitched above the noise, rich and purring and vastly amused, and James hurriedly smothered his anticipatory smile.
"Why, James! Here on business, or are you just looking for love in all the wrong places?"
"Nikola," he returned, amiably, watching the vampire slither sideways around him into the other side of the booth. Youthful, grinning, with none of the greying pallor of the man supposedly sitting up in a hotel room some miles away, under the watchful eye of the government. Nikola, fresh-faced and dapper as he'd been twenty years ago, and smiling that smug, I-know-something-you-don't-know smile that James so remembered. "If I were trawling for rough trade, you would hardly be my first choice."
Nikola brought his hand up to his heart, still grinning, affecting mock hurt. "James! You wound me. And here I was going to ask you to dance."
James laughed. Couldn't quite help it. "Really," he drawled, and shook his head, feeling his smile turn a little rueful, letting it. "Don't you think I'm indulging in enough illegality as it is?" He raised his brandy-glass in ironic toast, in equal parts dare and demur. Nikola smiled like a sphinx.
"Ah, but that's the beauty of it," he murmured, reaching out to run his fingertip lightly over the rim of James' glass. "In here, everyone's already flouting the law. No-one to rat on anyone else, while we're all in the hole together." A flash of his eyes, that dark, dangerous gleam, that mischievous spark of his matched only by Helen's. James felt something tighten readily in himself in response, and couldn't quite regret it. "And no-one to know who you are, either. Really, James, when will you have a better chance?"
James smiled faintly. "When a third of the patrons in here aren't Pinkertons trying to watch my back," he said, lightly and airily, and near-laughed at the flicker in Nikola's eyes, the momentary shuttering. "But you knew that, didn't you, Nikola? You really are an unconscionable tease. Or were you simply trying to make me admit it?"
Nikola pouted for a moment, then shrugged, grinning. "A little bit of both, I suppose," he allowed. "You know, you didn't have to spoil my fun so soon. I had a lot more material I could have gotten through."
James grinned at him. "I'm sure," he murmured, watching the swirl of his brandy idly. "You do know why I'm here, then. Oh, Nikola." Reproach, rich and deep and about as real as the vampire's earlier hurt. "Getting involved with the outfit. Tsk."
Nikola laughed, leaning back against the walls of the booth, unconsciously (or so it seemed, at least) putting himself on display, all the neat, waist-coated lines of him. No jacket, here. He'd been here a while, left it off. Shirtsleeves and waistcoat, the cloth at his throat more a loose necktie than a cravat, the gleam of his watchchain a nice catch for the eyes. James took a moment to hum approvingly. Game or no, he had to credit the man with style. Under other circumstances ... well, he might not have been quite as adverse to Nikola's offer, even if the vampire was never quite what you could call 'rough trade'. They'd pretended to worse, in their time, and it had been quite ... enjoyable.
"Oh, you know me," Nikola grinned. "Where the wine goes, I follow. Always have. And I'm not involved, as such. Just ... a happy customer more than willing to grant a favour now and again." That lazy, deadly smile of his. "Not like the man you really want to talk to. Who is, I do have to admit, most definitely involved, and not the least ashamed of it."
"Hmm," James mused, smiling slow and sharklike himself. "No, he wouldn't be. He wasn't often ashamed of much." He stifled a grin at the flare of genuine worry that got, hid the smile in the wry curl of his lip. "Criminals rarely are, of course."
"Of course," Nikola echoed, but faintly. More worried than playing, now. More suspicious, afraid now that James knew more than he was letting on. Worried that James had come here regardless, if that was the case, and brought the Pinkertons in tow. Worried at what that might mean. Near-protective, and James almost frowned, at that. Almost surrendered the twinge of hurt in his chest. But he knew. He knew far more than Nikola thought he did, even now, and he did understand. Not enough to stop the game, of course, but perhaps enough to be gentler.
Besides. He was having far too much fun to stop just yet.
"Perhaps I ought to meet this man," he offered casually. "It is why I'm here, after all. Perhaps I ought to meet this friend of yours, Nikola. See ... what he has to say for himself?"
"Yes, perhaps you should," the vampire said, softly. Musingly, as he looked out over the bustling room, out over the eyes that flickered towards them for moments at a time, and flickered away again. Men and women, scattered here or there, watching James' back. Because James was undercover in a dangerous game to catch a member of the outfit, wasn't he? Because James was walking into danger.
So they thought, anyway. And were right, perhaps, when Nikola was involved. James had ears in a number of interesting places back home. He'd heard some strange things in his time. About a ship in 1919, for example, and a number of operatives who'd simply ... disappeared, lost in search of their quarry. It had been the tail-end of the war, of course. That kind of thing did happen. But it had been interesting, seeing who else had been on that ship, and considering that people were being very close-mouthed about who said operatives' quarry had been ...
"Shall we go, then?" he asked, quietly, putting down his glass with a soft chink onto the table, and watching Nikola with warm, careful eyes. Letting the game slip, a little, letting the mood turn towards the serious. "I presume you've a way to get me to him without us being seen and followed by all and sundry?"
That got a glimmer of a smile, a flash of that old, smug smirk. "My dear James. Who do you think I am?" A broadening of the grin, a sly turn of his hands. "More to the point, where do you think we are? This is a speakeasy, after all. One way in, five or six out and about ..."
"Then shall we?" James asked, standing with a small smile, and offering an arm down to the vampire. Offering an arm to Nikola as if it were nothing but a game, as if they were here for no more sinister purpose than to drink together, and smiling faintly when his old friend took it with a grin, and that dangerous flash back in his eyes. "Lay on, MacDuff."
"Oh, James," Nikola huffed, grinning as he tugged them first to the bar, sliding fluidly around the cluster of patrons there, losing them like a pair of fish in a shoal until he could duck into the cramped corridor behind the bar. "Really?"
"Well, it's a classic for a reason, you know," James smiled in his turn, and watched with some interest as Nikola fiddled hurriedly with a thin metal rod hung on a hook in the wall, poking it into a minute hole in what looked for all the world like brickwork, and grinning when something went softly kachunk, and the supposed wall cracked open, now a door. James smiled in bemusement. Speakeasies were certainly getting inventive, he thought, as Nikola flashed him a white smile, and tugged him into the dimness before any of the agents behind them could angle their way around the bar, and see where they'd gone to.
When this was done, James was going to have to be visibly upset with said agents. Letting him be taken by an unknown person during an undercover operation. For shame. All according to James' own plans, of course, but it wasn't as though they needed to know that. He'd never been all that fond of the Pinkertons.
"You know," he said conversationally, as Nikola led them along a winding passage past a variety of storerooms and cellars, and a number of branching passages that James felt sure linked to the outside world. A small warren of bolt-holes. "I only ever end up doing this sort of thing when one of you are involved. When I'm at the Sanctuary, I'm always entirely respectable."
Nikola laughed, a rushed, breathless sound, and he grinned whitely in the flicker of electric lamps, an alien, mischievous spirit at James' side. "Oh, well then. Why didn't you say so, James? We must get you involved more often!"
"Mmm," James murmured, noncommittally, as they finally appeared to run out of passage, fetching up in a small room somewhere alongside the main room of the speakeasy, if the sounds coming through the slat-and-plaster wall to the left were anything to go by. He thought they may have curled around the outside of the room, possibly passing through a number of the neighbouring cellars in the process, and fetched up between the wooden walls of the speakeasy and the chill foundation walls of the next building. The space was ... dank, and dimmer than the earlier passages had been, narrow and cold and something that would very, very easily be overlooked by anyone searching the place, even if they knew it. A secret within a secret.
He smiled, at that. Oh yes. He really should play these little games more often. He was having far too much fun, here.
"Want to meet the Chemist?" Nikola asked him, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet, arms crossed and grinning. James didn't bother to hide his smile, this time. Didn't bother to hide the amused, indulgent grin.
"Oh, by all means," he allowed, smiling around a little bow as he gestured for Nikola to lead on. "Let's meet the gentleman, shall we?"
"You don't have to be so bloody smug about it," the second voice echoed, disembodied, a phantom in the empty dimness beneath the faint electric lights, and James grinned. Hard and fierce, in vindicated delight, and he watched the twitch in Nikola's hands, watched the aborted motion as the vampire half-reached for claws. James laughed, and turned to the shadows at the back of the room.
"Hello Nigel," he said, and watched as air clothed itself in pale flesh from the shadows. Watched as empty air became a man, a vanishing act in reverse, and one James had recognised from the first moment of tracing the man's footsteps in and out of blind alleys, one he'd known, in the back of his mind, from the moment local enforcement had taken him to the scene. Not John. Never John. But a phantom from the past nonetheless.
"Hello, James," the thief-turned-chemist muttered, crossing his arms belligerently. Not at all welcoming. "I'd say it's good to see you again, but under the circumstances ..."
"It's good to see you too," James murmured, smiling faintly again. He shouldn't. They were more than a little suspicious, the both of them. Both more than a little wary, and James did know why. He did. And knew, too, why it was perhaps more than a little dangerous to be taunting them like this, when he'd come here with their enemies, and they both knew it. But ... He couldn't help it. He really couldn't. It had been so very, very long since he'd been able to play this sort of game.
"Pinkertons are still outside," Nikola offered, with that slitted little grin of his, that darkling glimmer. "He let himself be stolen away easily enough, though. Quite wicked of our James, to leave all those poor agents scrambling around." He flashed James a bright smile, a grinning appreciation of the game. "Quite wicked."
"Not at all," James demurred, sketching half of a little bow. Not at all. Not yet, anyway. They hadn't seen anything wicked yet. "Their look-out, I'm afraid. If they can't keep up with me, there's no help for it."
"You're having far too much fun with this," Nigel accused softly, padding closer, utterly uncaring of his nakedness. Nigel had lost any self-consciousness about his abilities and their costs a long time ago, James thought. He could understand why. And, to be fair, the man had little to be self-conscious about. Propriety aside, anyway. "The pair of you may be having a fine time of it, but I'll remind you this is my life, here! My bloody job the bastards are closing in on."
"Yes," James said. Soft, heavy. "Working with the outfit, Nigel. Working with some of the most violent criminals this side of the Atlantic." He paused, let it hang heavy and faintly accusing. "Somewhat of a step from your usual solo antics, don't you think?"
"Oh, he does a little of that still, too," Nikola commented, breezily, with that hard edge to his smile. "Speakeasies make for good places to find fences, you know."
"Yes, thank you, Nikola," Nigel cut in, glaring at him for a minute before turning back to James. Before looking, for one quick moment, vaguely ashamed. Vaguely ashamed, and very defiant. "It's not for the outfit, James. It's not because of that. You know that."
"Do I?" he asked, mildly enough. Ignoring the menace slowly coiling in Nikola as the vampire leaned against the wall towards the speakeasy, a neat, precise figure under the faint electric lights, wrapped in the distant sounds of music. If Nigel had been in this for the outfit, if he had been in this for the racketeers and the bootleggers and the criminal empires that sprang up around them, then he couldn't have asked for a more fearsome enforcer than the old friend whose civilian identity sat aged and frail high in a hotel, far from these underground spaces and the people crammed inside them. But Nigel ... Nigel, so pale and defiant, naked and uncaring, looking at James ... No, that was not Nigel's aim. James did know that. He did.
But the game wasn't over yet. And he could string them along a little longer, he thought. Nikola, as deadly as the man sometimes seemed ... Nikola had never been violent towards a friend. Nikola had never used that fearsome strength against anyone he cared about. And James thought he was still enough of a friend for that to hold.
"I needed a job, somewhere where the government couldn't see me," Nigel said softly. Watching James, wary and suspicious and careful, defiant, but not afraid. Not of him. Never of him. "I needed a job, and there's good work for a chemist down here. Good work, and work that saves lives, too. They needed somebody, James. The things the government has been putting in the stock ... it's outright poisoning. It's bloody poisoning your own people, and the outfit wasn't going to care, so long as it got sold somehow. They needed someone to clean it up, so people didn't get sick, and I needed a job, and the anonymity. Worked out for all of us, didn't it?"
"I'm sure it did," James said, but he was letting himself visibly soften, now. He had to. There was something so stark about Nigel sometimes. Perhaps the nakedness of him. More than just physical. There was an honesty to the man, an internal straightforwardness that matched his apparent external openness. It made him ... something to be admired, for James, something to be appreciated for the simplicity of him, in the ever-layered world James lived in. "Still breaking the law, though. Nigel."
"It's a rum bloody law!" Nigel burst out, agitated, then grimaced faintly. "Pardon the phrasing." Though he had a point.
"Want to have that dance now, James?" Nikola asked softly, from beside them. Soft and quiet, and his smile was almost gentle as he looked at James. Almost gentle, for all that he was hunting James, as surely as if they had been chasing. "No-one here to see. No-one here to report you." He smiled, gestured behind him to the slat wall, and the sounds of music still spooling through it. "I like this song. Perfect for dancing to, don't you think?"
And James laughed. Soft and dark, tired and fierce and amused. Turning at bay for something that was not a threat, but a point, softly and surely made. Because they all knew, didn't they? They Five. They all knew.
"Some laws aren't worth upholding," Nigel added softly, watching them. Still vaguely ashamed, glancing at Nikola in something close to censure, but defiant. Sure. "You know that, James. Of all of us. You know that." A little smile, a faint grimace. "Though, please, forgive him the way he pointed it out. Nikola's never been the most subtle of us ..."
"No, he has not," James agreed, still smiling faintly, and turned to the vampire where he leaned against the wall. Turned to Nikola, who watched them with glittering eyes, and would move as surely to protect James as he did now for Nigel. James knew that. He believed that.
So it was easy, in its way, to reach out. To gather hands that wanted to be claws, to settle them about himself as if they were, for one moment, about to dance. Smiling up into Nikola's suddenly wary features, into his suddenly bewildered eyes, and leaning in to press his lips to the curve of the vampire's throat, above that necktie, above that shirt. To rub his beard softly over Nikola's skin, and mouth gently at his throat, in a way that made the vampire shudder. To hold him, press him against the wall for one pointed moment, while Nikola's hands fluttered uncertainly at his back, while Nigel watched them curiously, warily.
"I know the laws I break, Nikola," James murmured into the curve of the vampire's shoulder. Gently. "I know why. I always have."
"So do we," Nigel whispered softly, ghosting close to stand behind them, to rest naked hands on James' hips, to join the three of them for a moment. And oh, it had been so long, James thought. So very long, since he could play these games, since he could play the detective, the friend, the spy, the lover, the taskmaster. So long, since they were Five, and all this danger had been at his fingertips. "Believe us, James. We know why."
James laughed. Very quietly, very softly. Breathing over Nikola's skin, feeling the trembles there. "I know," he said, so rich, so dark. Laughing in parts with them and at them. "I know, Nigel. I knew the moment I realised it was you they were looking for." A slow, wicked curve of his lips, and he couldn't keep the dark bubble of joy from his voice, the vicious triumph.
"Which is why, for the past few weeks, I've been arranging for a member of the local police force to find their way into a certain trap that's been laid for the Chemist. An officer I've every reason to believe has sold out to the outfit and caused the death of a number of men, and therefore no particular reason to care that I'm framing them. Because it occurred to me, you see. That a man might escape the situations you escaped by being invisible, or ... by being indistinguishable from the pursuers. The Chemist walked away from those bolt-holes. So did he. And I don't think anyone will look too closely in all the furor to be able to tell the difference. The evidence against him, both real and ... suggested ... is compelling."
They went still. Froze, with him poised between them, Nikola before him, under his hands, Nigel at his back, his hands knotting in the material of James' waistcoat in pure shock, his grip spasming tighter. They froze, barely breathing as they realised what he was saying, as they realised what he'd known, how long he'd known, what he'd done. What he was capable of doing. For them.
Nikola wasn't the only one who could be protective. And as James had said. He knew a lot more than anyone thought he did. He always had.
"You are ..." Nigel breathed, shocked and fervent in the dimness. "You're bloody beautiful, mate." Wonder in his voice, shocked awe. James smiled into Nikola's throat, for a second, for a moment, before a pale, strong hand caught his chin. Before Nikola reached out, tugging both he and Nigel forward with one hand, raising James' chin with the other. Grinning down at him, black and amazed and glittering with that mischief, that danger, that was so utterly Nikola.
"Yes," the vampire purred, caught between James and the wall, and the world beyond it, grinning fiercely at James for a moment before he kissed him, before he leaned in and purred into James' mouth. "Yes, James. You are beautiful."
New York, James decided absently, pressed between them, was definitely worth the trip. Oh yes. Most definitely.
Continued in New Worlds.
A/N: Not sure how much this counts for 'research', but I had a lot of fun watching this feature on the speakeasies for Chicago and New York. The rod-and-wall thing, for example, I borrowed from New York's 21 club. *grins*
The music was loud, echoing in the relatively small, underground space, tangling with the dull roar of conversation and the chink of glasses, the clatter of the dancers' feet on the boards. A sea of noise, lapping against the walls as if trying to wear them away, escape into the city above, and it was just loud enough to be almost soothing. To wash over his grasping senses in a soothing blur of sound, a single entity too muddled to be divided into its composite elements, removing all need for analysis. Simply existing. Simply there.
James rather liked it.
He leaned back in his booth, tucked flush against one of the load-bearing basement walls, some of the chill of the bricks seeping through the wood and tired velvet, through the warmth of the close air and the swirl of cigarette smoke. It was oddly nostalgic, and yet utterly foreign, this place. Too brash and noisy and new to quite match the more sedate atmospheres of the clubs back home. But close ... similar enough to lull, and make him perhaps more relaxed than he really ought to be, here.
He was looking for someone, of course. He always was, wasn't he? The world's greatest detective, always on the hunt. When he wasn't keeping the home fires burning for Helen at the Sanctuary, but they traded off on that, and really, he had no right to be bitter. Helen was never a woman to be caged by what people thought her role should be. Far from it.
This time, though, they were both away. This would have been Helen's call, had it come in at any other time than four days after she'd left for India, in search of a rare species of abnormal that was only getting rarer. James would have ignored it, in favour of the Sanctuary, coming as it did with a very high-handed and frankly rude request for assistance from the federal US government, were it not ... Were it not for the substance of the request. Were it not for the fact that they were searching for a man, an abnormal, that apparently on multiple occasions had been cornered by his pursuers, and simply ... vanished. Disappeared, into thin air.
James ... had felt a shudder pass through him, at that. And a sudden determination, regardless of duty or facts, to come to New York. To hunt this man down. For no better reason, perhaps, than to pay for reminding James of something he'd rather forget, but could never quite allow himself.
It wasn't John, of course. James had ascertained that with a few days of arriving, a few days of examining the reports. Not John. Of course not. The lack of mutilated bodies was rather a key indication, there. James had known, of course, that it wouldn't be. He had known.
No, this Chemist, whoever he was, was not the ghost that haunted James, that had driven him across the Atlantic on this wild goose chase. The man was far more ... sedate, in his criminal activities. A different kind of man entirely. Wanted for aiding and abetting the illegal sale of alcohol, for consorting with the more violent criminals the bootlegging trade threw up, but never violent himself. Actively non-violent, in fact. His only real claims to fame were the twin facts that no matter what the additive the government used, the man was capable of rendering industrial alcohol fit for human consumption, and that whenever it seemed he was cornered, left without escape, pinned in some little room or some dead-end alley ... by the time pursuit caught up with him, the man was gone. Vanished, without a sign.
James had investigated mundane means, of course. Really, people were far too quick to write things off as impossible when decent local knowledge and some sleight of hand could wriggle a man out of the tightest bolt-hole, and given the fact that none of the officers had ever actually seen the man vanish ... He'd made himself quite unpopular with that opinion, though he had done his best to be discrete about it. People, especially law enforcement, did not appreciate being called superstitious fools, even if only by implication.
But before long, after examining a number of the scenes, James had to admit they were right. At at least two locations, there really was no way out without being seen without, as they said, vanishing into thin air. Which was decidedly odd, as trace evidence at the latest scene indicated that the man, in the midst of his pursuit, had apparently simply walked out, his tracks in plain view under and over his pursuers. Walked out, and no-one the wiser, no-one seeing him leave.
James ... had smiled, then. Rather to the disgust of the local law enforcement, but he hadn't really cared. Because that ... oh, that meant James was suddenly in for a great deal of fun, with this job. Knowing something they didn't know ...
And thereafter ... well, he was here, after all. He had a legitimate abnormal cause to maintain interest in the case, and a degree of expertise that could be helpful in pinning the man down once he was found. And, of course, enough mundane expertise to go about starting finding the man, too, with help from a number of contacts in the Pinkerton agency who knew New York. Enough to start laying a trap. Or a number of traps.
Enough to set up a meeting, with James undercover as an up-and-coming supplier in desperate need of someone to render his stockpile drinkable. This meeting, in point of fact. Or rather, the one after this, the second meeting whereupon he'd lead the man into their trap, and no amount of vanishing would save him. This was just the preliminary introductions, in this little rathole speakeasy that had, for the moment, been unofficially declared unraidable until such a time as James' plan proved successful. Rather fortunately for the patrons involved, James thought, as he rather thought he recognised more than a few of them. By reputation only, of course.
Smiling faintly, leaning back in his shabby booth, letting the raucous, gentle sounds of jazz wash over him, cradling his glass of highly illegal brandy, James settled in to wait, and enjoy the hunt. He hadn't had the chance to be a proper detective in some years, caught up in the day-to-day running of the Sanctuary. He was quite looking forward to having some proper fun.
And then, right on cue, a voice sounded at his elbow, pitched above the noise, rich and purring and vastly amused, and James hurriedly smothered his anticipatory smile.
"Why, James! Here on business, or are you just looking for love in all the wrong places?"
"Nikola," he returned, amiably, watching the vampire slither sideways around him into the other side of the booth. Youthful, grinning, with none of the greying pallor of the man supposedly sitting up in a hotel room some miles away, under the watchful eye of the government. Nikola, fresh-faced and dapper as he'd been twenty years ago, and smiling that smug, I-know-something-you-don't-know smile that James so remembered. "If I were trawling for rough trade, you would hardly be my first choice."
Nikola brought his hand up to his heart, still grinning, affecting mock hurt. "James! You wound me. And here I was going to ask you to dance."
James laughed. Couldn't quite help it. "Really," he drawled, and shook his head, feeling his smile turn a little rueful, letting it. "Don't you think I'm indulging in enough illegality as it is?" He raised his brandy-glass in ironic toast, in equal parts dare and demur. Nikola smiled like a sphinx.
"Ah, but that's the beauty of it," he murmured, reaching out to run his fingertip lightly over the rim of James' glass. "In here, everyone's already flouting the law. No-one to rat on anyone else, while we're all in the hole together." A flash of his eyes, that dark, dangerous gleam, that mischievous spark of his matched only by Helen's. James felt something tighten readily in himself in response, and couldn't quite regret it. "And no-one to know who you are, either. Really, James, when will you have a better chance?"
James smiled faintly. "When a third of the patrons in here aren't Pinkertons trying to watch my back," he said, lightly and airily, and near-laughed at the flicker in Nikola's eyes, the momentary shuttering. "But you knew that, didn't you, Nikola? You really are an unconscionable tease. Or were you simply trying to make me admit it?"
Nikola pouted for a moment, then shrugged, grinning. "A little bit of both, I suppose," he allowed. "You know, you didn't have to spoil my fun so soon. I had a lot more material I could have gotten through."
James grinned at him. "I'm sure," he murmured, watching the swirl of his brandy idly. "You do know why I'm here, then. Oh, Nikola." Reproach, rich and deep and about as real as the vampire's earlier hurt. "Getting involved with the outfit. Tsk."
Nikola laughed, leaning back against the walls of the booth, unconsciously (or so it seemed, at least) putting himself on display, all the neat, waist-coated lines of him. No jacket, here. He'd been here a while, left it off. Shirtsleeves and waistcoat, the cloth at his throat more a loose necktie than a cravat, the gleam of his watchchain a nice catch for the eyes. James took a moment to hum approvingly. Game or no, he had to credit the man with style. Under other circumstances ... well, he might not have been quite as adverse to Nikola's offer, even if the vampire was never quite what you could call 'rough trade'. They'd pretended to worse, in their time, and it had been quite ... enjoyable.
"Oh, you know me," Nikola grinned. "Where the wine goes, I follow. Always have. And I'm not involved, as such. Just ... a happy customer more than willing to grant a favour now and again." That lazy, deadly smile of his. "Not like the man you really want to talk to. Who is, I do have to admit, most definitely involved, and not the least ashamed of it."
"Hmm," James mused, smiling slow and sharklike himself. "No, he wouldn't be. He wasn't often ashamed of much." He stifled a grin at the flare of genuine worry that got, hid the smile in the wry curl of his lip. "Criminals rarely are, of course."
"Of course," Nikola echoed, but faintly. More worried than playing, now. More suspicious, afraid now that James knew more than he was letting on. Worried that James had come here regardless, if that was the case, and brought the Pinkertons in tow. Worried at what that might mean. Near-protective, and James almost frowned, at that. Almost surrendered the twinge of hurt in his chest. But he knew. He knew far more than Nikola thought he did, even now, and he did understand. Not enough to stop the game, of course, but perhaps enough to be gentler.
Besides. He was having far too much fun to stop just yet.
"Perhaps I ought to meet this man," he offered casually. "It is why I'm here, after all. Perhaps I ought to meet this friend of yours, Nikola. See ... what he has to say for himself?"
"Yes, perhaps you should," the vampire said, softly. Musingly, as he looked out over the bustling room, out over the eyes that flickered towards them for moments at a time, and flickered away again. Men and women, scattered here or there, watching James' back. Because James was undercover in a dangerous game to catch a member of the outfit, wasn't he? Because James was walking into danger.
So they thought, anyway. And were right, perhaps, when Nikola was involved. James had ears in a number of interesting places back home. He'd heard some strange things in his time. About a ship in 1919, for example, and a number of operatives who'd simply ... disappeared, lost in search of their quarry. It had been the tail-end of the war, of course. That kind of thing did happen. But it had been interesting, seeing who else had been on that ship, and considering that people were being very close-mouthed about who said operatives' quarry had been ...
"Shall we go, then?" he asked, quietly, putting down his glass with a soft chink onto the table, and watching Nikola with warm, careful eyes. Letting the game slip, a little, letting the mood turn towards the serious. "I presume you've a way to get me to him without us being seen and followed by all and sundry?"
That got a glimmer of a smile, a flash of that old, smug smirk. "My dear James. Who do you think I am?" A broadening of the grin, a sly turn of his hands. "More to the point, where do you think we are? This is a speakeasy, after all. One way in, five or six out and about ..."
"Then shall we?" James asked, standing with a small smile, and offering an arm down to the vampire. Offering an arm to Nikola as if it were nothing but a game, as if they were here for no more sinister purpose than to drink together, and smiling faintly when his old friend took it with a grin, and that dangerous flash back in his eyes. "Lay on, MacDuff."
"Oh, James," Nikola huffed, grinning as he tugged them first to the bar, sliding fluidly around the cluster of patrons there, losing them like a pair of fish in a shoal until he could duck into the cramped corridor behind the bar. "Really?"
"Well, it's a classic for a reason, you know," James smiled in his turn, and watched with some interest as Nikola fiddled hurriedly with a thin metal rod hung on a hook in the wall, poking it into a minute hole in what looked for all the world like brickwork, and grinning when something went softly kachunk, and the supposed wall cracked open, now a door. James smiled in bemusement. Speakeasies were certainly getting inventive, he thought, as Nikola flashed him a white smile, and tugged him into the dimness before any of the agents behind them could angle their way around the bar, and see where they'd gone to.
When this was done, James was going to have to be visibly upset with said agents. Letting him be taken by an unknown person during an undercover operation. For shame. All according to James' own plans, of course, but it wasn't as though they needed to know that. He'd never been all that fond of the Pinkertons.
"You know," he said conversationally, as Nikola led them along a winding passage past a variety of storerooms and cellars, and a number of branching passages that James felt sure linked to the outside world. A small warren of bolt-holes. "I only ever end up doing this sort of thing when one of you are involved. When I'm at the Sanctuary, I'm always entirely respectable."
Nikola laughed, a rushed, breathless sound, and he grinned whitely in the flicker of electric lamps, an alien, mischievous spirit at James' side. "Oh, well then. Why didn't you say so, James? We must get you involved more often!"
"Mmm," James murmured, noncommittally, as they finally appeared to run out of passage, fetching up in a small room somewhere alongside the main room of the speakeasy, if the sounds coming through the slat-and-plaster wall to the left were anything to go by. He thought they may have curled around the outside of the room, possibly passing through a number of the neighbouring cellars in the process, and fetched up between the wooden walls of the speakeasy and the chill foundation walls of the next building. The space was ... dank, and dimmer than the earlier passages had been, narrow and cold and something that would very, very easily be overlooked by anyone searching the place, even if they knew it. A secret within a secret.
He smiled, at that. Oh yes. He really should play these little games more often. He was having far too much fun, here.
"Want to meet the Chemist?" Nikola asked him, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet, arms crossed and grinning. James didn't bother to hide his smile, this time. Didn't bother to hide the amused, indulgent grin.
"Oh, by all means," he allowed, smiling around a little bow as he gestured for Nikola to lead on. "Let's meet the gentleman, shall we?"
"You don't have to be so bloody smug about it," the second voice echoed, disembodied, a phantom in the empty dimness beneath the faint electric lights, and James grinned. Hard and fierce, in vindicated delight, and he watched the twitch in Nikola's hands, watched the aborted motion as the vampire half-reached for claws. James laughed, and turned to the shadows at the back of the room.
"Hello Nigel," he said, and watched as air clothed itself in pale flesh from the shadows. Watched as empty air became a man, a vanishing act in reverse, and one James had recognised from the first moment of tracing the man's footsteps in and out of blind alleys, one he'd known, in the back of his mind, from the moment local enforcement had taken him to the scene. Not John. Never John. But a phantom from the past nonetheless.
"Hello, James," the thief-turned-chemist muttered, crossing his arms belligerently. Not at all welcoming. "I'd say it's good to see you again, but under the circumstances ..."
"It's good to see you too," James murmured, smiling faintly again. He shouldn't. They were more than a little suspicious, the both of them. Both more than a little wary, and James did know why. He did. And knew, too, why it was perhaps more than a little dangerous to be taunting them like this, when he'd come here with their enemies, and they both knew it. But ... He couldn't help it. He really couldn't. It had been so very, very long since he'd been able to play this sort of game.
"Pinkertons are still outside," Nikola offered, with that slitted little grin of his, that darkling glimmer. "He let himself be stolen away easily enough, though. Quite wicked of our James, to leave all those poor agents scrambling around." He flashed James a bright smile, a grinning appreciation of the game. "Quite wicked."
"Not at all," James demurred, sketching half of a little bow. Not at all. Not yet, anyway. They hadn't seen anything wicked yet. "Their look-out, I'm afraid. If they can't keep up with me, there's no help for it."
"You're having far too much fun with this," Nigel accused softly, padding closer, utterly uncaring of his nakedness. Nigel had lost any self-consciousness about his abilities and their costs a long time ago, James thought. He could understand why. And, to be fair, the man had little to be self-conscious about. Propriety aside, anyway. "The pair of you may be having a fine time of it, but I'll remind you this is my life, here! My bloody job the bastards are closing in on."
"Yes," James said. Soft, heavy. "Working with the outfit, Nigel. Working with some of the most violent criminals this side of the Atlantic." He paused, let it hang heavy and faintly accusing. "Somewhat of a step from your usual solo antics, don't you think?"
"Oh, he does a little of that still, too," Nikola commented, breezily, with that hard edge to his smile. "Speakeasies make for good places to find fences, you know."
"Yes, thank you, Nikola," Nigel cut in, glaring at him for a minute before turning back to James. Before looking, for one quick moment, vaguely ashamed. Vaguely ashamed, and very defiant. "It's not for the outfit, James. It's not because of that. You know that."
"Do I?" he asked, mildly enough. Ignoring the menace slowly coiling in Nikola as the vampire leaned against the wall towards the speakeasy, a neat, precise figure under the faint electric lights, wrapped in the distant sounds of music. If Nigel had been in this for the outfit, if he had been in this for the racketeers and the bootleggers and the criminal empires that sprang up around them, then he couldn't have asked for a more fearsome enforcer than the old friend whose civilian identity sat aged and frail high in a hotel, far from these underground spaces and the people crammed inside them. But Nigel ... Nigel, so pale and defiant, naked and uncaring, looking at James ... No, that was not Nigel's aim. James did know that. He did.
But the game wasn't over yet. And he could string them along a little longer, he thought. Nikola, as deadly as the man sometimes seemed ... Nikola had never been violent towards a friend. Nikola had never used that fearsome strength against anyone he cared about. And James thought he was still enough of a friend for that to hold.
"I needed a job, somewhere where the government couldn't see me," Nigel said softly. Watching James, wary and suspicious and careful, defiant, but not afraid. Not of him. Never of him. "I needed a job, and there's good work for a chemist down here. Good work, and work that saves lives, too. They needed somebody, James. The things the government has been putting in the stock ... it's outright poisoning. It's bloody poisoning your own people, and the outfit wasn't going to care, so long as it got sold somehow. They needed someone to clean it up, so people didn't get sick, and I needed a job, and the anonymity. Worked out for all of us, didn't it?"
"I'm sure it did," James said, but he was letting himself visibly soften, now. He had to. There was something so stark about Nigel sometimes. Perhaps the nakedness of him. More than just physical. There was an honesty to the man, an internal straightforwardness that matched his apparent external openness. It made him ... something to be admired, for James, something to be appreciated for the simplicity of him, in the ever-layered world James lived in. "Still breaking the law, though. Nigel."
"It's a rum bloody law!" Nigel burst out, agitated, then grimaced faintly. "Pardon the phrasing." Though he had a point.
"Want to have that dance now, James?" Nikola asked softly, from beside them. Soft and quiet, and his smile was almost gentle as he looked at James. Almost gentle, for all that he was hunting James, as surely as if they had been chasing. "No-one here to see. No-one here to report you." He smiled, gestured behind him to the slat wall, and the sounds of music still spooling through it. "I like this song. Perfect for dancing to, don't you think?"
And James laughed. Soft and dark, tired and fierce and amused. Turning at bay for something that was not a threat, but a point, softly and surely made. Because they all knew, didn't they? They Five. They all knew.
"Some laws aren't worth upholding," Nigel added softly, watching them. Still vaguely ashamed, glancing at Nikola in something close to censure, but defiant. Sure. "You know that, James. Of all of us. You know that." A little smile, a faint grimace. "Though, please, forgive him the way he pointed it out. Nikola's never been the most subtle of us ..."
"No, he has not," James agreed, still smiling faintly, and turned to the vampire where he leaned against the wall. Turned to Nikola, who watched them with glittering eyes, and would move as surely to protect James as he did now for Nigel. James knew that. He believed that.
So it was easy, in its way, to reach out. To gather hands that wanted to be claws, to settle them about himself as if they were, for one moment, about to dance. Smiling up into Nikola's suddenly wary features, into his suddenly bewildered eyes, and leaning in to press his lips to the curve of the vampire's throat, above that necktie, above that shirt. To rub his beard softly over Nikola's skin, and mouth gently at his throat, in a way that made the vampire shudder. To hold him, press him against the wall for one pointed moment, while Nikola's hands fluttered uncertainly at his back, while Nigel watched them curiously, warily.
"I know the laws I break, Nikola," James murmured into the curve of the vampire's shoulder. Gently. "I know why. I always have."
"So do we," Nigel whispered softly, ghosting close to stand behind them, to rest naked hands on James' hips, to join the three of them for a moment. And oh, it had been so long, James thought. So very long, since he could play these games, since he could play the detective, the friend, the spy, the lover, the taskmaster. So long, since they were Five, and all this danger had been at his fingertips. "Believe us, James. We know why."
James laughed. Very quietly, very softly. Breathing over Nikola's skin, feeling the trembles there. "I know," he said, so rich, so dark. Laughing in parts with them and at them. "I know, Nigel. I knew the moment I realised it was you they were looking for." A slow, wicked curve of his lips, and he couldn't keep the dark bubble of joy from his voice, the vicious triumph.
"Which is why, for the past few weeks, I've been arranging for a member of the local police force to find their way into a certain trap that's been laid for the Chemist. An officer I've every reason to believe has sold out to the outfit and caused the death of a number of men, and therefore no particular reason to care that I'm framing them. Because it occurred to me, you see. That a man might escape the situations you escaped by being invisible, or ... by being indistinguishable from the pursuers. The Chemist walked away from those bolt-holes. So did he. And I don't think anyone will look too closely in all the furor to be able to tell the difference. The evidence against him, both real and ... suggested ... is compelling."
They went still. Froze, with him poised between them, Nikola before him, under his hands, Nigel at his back, his hands knotting in the material of James' waistcoat in pure shock, his grip spasming tighter. They froze, barely breathing as they realised what he was saying, as they realised what he'd known, how long he'd known, what he'd done. What he was capable of doing. For them.
Nikola wasn't the only one who could be protective. And as James had said. He knew a lot more than anyone thought he did. He always had.
"You are ..." Nigel breathed, shocked and fervent in the dimness. "You're bloody beautiful, mate." Wonder in his voice, shocked awe. James smiled into Nikola's throat, for a second, for a moment, before a pale, strong hand caught his chin. Before Nikola reached out, tugging both he and Nigel forward with one hand, raising James' chin with the other. Grinning down at him, black and amazed and glittering with that mischief, that danger, that was so utterly Nikola.
"Yes," the vampire purred, caught between James and the wall, and the world beyond it, grinning fiercely at James for a moment before he kissed him, before he leaned in and purred into James' mouth. "Yes, James. You are beautiful."
New York, James decided absently, pressed between them, was definitely worth the trip. Oh yes. Most definitely.
Continued in New Worlds.
A/N: Not sure how much this counts for 'research', but I had a lot of fun watching this feature on the speakeasies for Chicago and New York. The rod-and-wall thing, for example, I borrowed from New York's 21 club. *grins*