ONE
Sebastian realized how cliché the whole scenario was. He kept grimacing while he stood there, leaning against the bar, running the tablets in his pants pocket through his fingers. The thumping bass of techno music pounded his skull in time with the flashing strobes attached to the iron grid in the ceiling. Couples dressed in black leather and fishnets slithered all over each other on the dance floor. Sebastian personally hated that he hadn’t come up with a more original place to do what he needed to do. However, he couldn’t discredit the obvious advantages to a place like this. He needed to be ignored. This was the flashiest crowd in Chicago at the moment and a good chance to disappear.
Sebastian had debated how to dress for this. He didn’t want to stick out in the crowd, but he’d drawn the line at leather and fishnets. He was dressed in simple black jeans and a t-shirt. It was hard enough to slip under the radar without flashy gear. Sebastian had been designed to attract attention. The Arrows were all tall, handsome, and shockingly beautiful. Mortals couldn’t get enough of them. Tonight he needed to be invisible, which wasn’t going to be easy.
Sebastian pulled his curly, dark hair into a stocking hat, which was fortunately “in” right now. He couldn’t think of a way to hide his bone structure without making himself stand out more, so he settled for large sunglasses to hide his eyes and part of his face. He was receiving cursory glances from both women and men, but nothing lasted long. Sebastian kept his eyes to his drink, forcing himself to bob to the ridiculous music pounding his head into submission.
Sebastian heard people say all the time you never find your true love in a bar. A select few were going to prove that saying wrong tonight.
If he managed not to screw it up.
It was just after midnight on a Friday, and the club was starting to fill up. It was the end of a long workday for most, and everyone was ready to unwind. Sebastian was counting on it. He watched out of the corner of his eye as patron after patron lined up at the bar. He got an idea as he saw people waiting on drinks. In a joint like this, it didn’t matter how many bartenders were on duty. The ratio of drinkers to bartenders always got out of hand, and people were starting to pile up around the bar. Pretty soon, they started lining up behind Sebastian’s bar stool, trying to flag down a drink with annoyed looks on their faces. Sebastian fumbled in his pocket for one of the tablets, his hands starting to get a little sweaty with the notion of what he was going to do. He took a swig of Killian’s to ease the dryness in his mouth. This needed to work. Sebastian didn’t want to think about the consequences of his plan going badly considering how many chips he had used up to get approval for it in the first place.
Sebastian held one of the tablets, about the size of a pencil eraser, in the palm that rested on the bar while he held his drink. He held it loosely so the sweat and heat clinging to his skin wouldn’t make it dissolve. If he had to wait too long, he would have to throw this one away and start again. Just as he was reminding himself not to chew his lip, the bartender clunked two drinks down on the bar in front of him and gestured behind Sebastian’s stool. Sebastian placed his beer back on the bar, picked up both drinks that were dark in color (perfect!), and passed them to the patrons behind him. As he did, he dropped the tablet from his palm into one of the drinks. A tall blonde guy with a Mohawk and three piercings in his left ear said, “Thanks, man,” as he passed the glass with the tablet in it to the short, black-haired girl standing next to him.
“No problem,” Sebastian grunted. There was a very tense moment when the girl raised her maroon colored eyebrows while sipping the drugged drink and cocked her head to one side with a look of serious concentration. Sebastian turned back to his beer, pretending not to be at all interested in them anymore, just another patron in the bar.
A few seconds later, he heard her say, “The drinks are always too weak here.” Sebastian exhaled almost audibly as he took a shaky sip of his own beer. He figured he was going to need to start drinking a lot more if he was going to start doing it this way. He’d have to see how the rest of the night went.
Sebastian didn’t drop any more tablets until almost an hour later. The crowd was really starting to get sloppy, and people weren’t noticing much anymore. That’s what he was counting on. He only placed tablets in dark colored drinks, afraid the light brown tabs would be more noticeable in drinks of any other color. He was really, really tempted to drop tabs in beer bottles because then they’d be completely hidden, but he knew he couldn’t chance it. Someone would be far more likely to notice a person touching the lip of a beer bottle then the edge of a glass. Sebastian dropped three more tabs within two hours. Two of them went to girls, and one to a young man with a fro and a neon t-shirt. Sebastian was definitely getting better at it anyway. He didn’t have the jitters anymore. He’d only had a couple beers because he couldn’t afford to get sloppy about it, but it helped calm his nerves.
At nearly three o’clock, people started to leave, and he knew he needed to drop the last tab and get out of there. Five people in five hours would be a serious improvement over the alternative. Sebastian was only momentarily worried the tabs wouldn’t work, but he saw the dark-haired girl from the first tab gazing into the eyes of Mohawk guy on the dance floor. Mohawk guy looked like he’d won the lottery, and she…well. Sebastian had done his job, and he hadn’t had to break any hearts to do it. Let the games begin.
The problem was there weren’t as many people at the bar as there had been earlier. People were no longer smashed up against the back of Sebastian’s bar stool trying to wave down disinterested bartenders. He didn’t want to waste a tablet. They were too time consuming to make, and the contents were semi-precious.
He moved to the edge of the dance floor instead, leaning against the rail that ran around the room. The air was thick and hazy with fog machine smoke. He found himself grateful smoking had finally been banned in Chicago bars, but his eyes were starting to sting anyway from the liquor, the fog machine, and the hour. Sebastian had been up all day trying to make these tablets, and he desperately needed sleep. He also couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten a meal. It was time to call it a night.
Sebastian glanced over the crowd from behind his sunglasses, making sure his actions would go unnoticed before he dropped the last tab into a full beer bottle. As he dropped the tablet, he glanced behind him into the accusatory face of a woman on the other side of the rail. Shit.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Sebastian just raised an eyebrow, his arms folding nonchalantly against his chest, where his heart was threatening to jack-hammer through. “Problem?”
The woman stomped around the railing to Sebastian wearing six-inch heeled boots, which made her right at eye level. Her strawberry blonde hair was pulled up into a high pony tail on her head. The huge silver hoops in her ears swung with each step. She was thin, almost bony, but her attitude was that of a body builder. He had no doubt he was in for it now.
She walked right up into his face. Her hazel eyes pinned him as she grabbed the front of his shirt in her left hand. “Do you think it’s funny?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Sebastian said evenly, trying to sound insulted instead of panicky.
Her eyes, outlined in smoky eye shadow, widened as she cocked her head to one side. “Oh, you think you’re cute don’t you? What planet do you people come from?”
Sebastian was losing patience now. Too much was riding on this for some goth chick in a club to fuck it up. “Listen, lady. Either tell me what the hell your problem is or go away. I’m not interested.”
“Oh, really?” She gave him a little shove as her voice started to rise. “Only interested in the drugged up ones, huh?” She leaned in close. “You make me sick.”
Right as Sebastian decided the best thing to do was make a run for it, the best possible thing happened.
Russell appeared from nowhere. He walked up to the red-head and put an arm around her waist. Sebastian noticed Russell was dressed to fit in and had to keep himself from smirking at the leather jeans and tight-fitting shirt. All humor was lost, however, when Sebastian saw Russell making the same look at his own sunglasses and hat.
Russell leaned down to gaze into the eyes of his date as he asked, “What’s up, Alex?”
To Alex’s credit, she didn’t seem to be at all derailed by Russell’s devil-may-care good looks. She continued to leer at Sebastian threateningly, only glancing at Russell. “I just caught this asshole slipping a roofie into someone’s drink.”
Russell looked down at Alex briefly before glancing up at Sebastian. “That right, buddy?”
Sebastian shrugged one shoulder, seeing how they were going to play this. “I don’t know what she’s talking about. I just sat my beer down here, and she comes stomping up and getting all bitchy. Has she been drinking?”
Russell just snickered, as if he didn’t give a shit, and turned back to look at Alex. “You probably just misunderstood, babe.” Alex shoved off Russell’s hand as he reached over to calm her down.
“I know what I saw,” Alex said, crossing her arms over her chest.
Sebastian picked up the beer from the rail and looked Alex in the eye. “Whatever. I don’t feel like dancing after all.” He kept his eyes on hers as he took a deep swig from the bottle, hoping the owner of it wasn’t going to choose this moment to come looking for a drink. He turned, his eyes meeting Russell’s briefly as he strode toward the door. Sebastian dropped the beer in the trash on the way out of the noisy venue, escaping to the street.
Holy shit. Sebastian was immediately relieved by clear air of the summer night, the noise of the traffic and trains much more welcome than the pounding bass of club music. He walked to the end of the block and turned the corner so he could lean against the wall of the store building and collect himself. He yanked off the hat and glasses, tossing them into the doorway of the closed shop.
“Hey!”
Sebastian nearly pissed down his own leg as he turned, ready to kick the shit out of whoever was there. “Russell! Damn it!” Sebastian punched Russell’s arm, his heart in his throat. Russell immediately started laughing while Sebastian groaned. “You trying to kill me?”
“No, I’m trying to keep you out of jail. Mom would kill us both if you wound up in there again.”
Sebastian shook his head, leaning back against the wall. Russell leaned there with him, waiting. Sebastian saw Russell reach for his smokes before he remembered there was no front pocket on the tight fitting shirt.
“Nice costume.” Sebastian snickered.
“Well, you too, asswipe. Were you trying to impersonate the unibomber? You couldn’t have looked more suspicious. Hell, a cop would have tried to pick you up for something if Alex hadn’t busted you first.”
“Where’s she at?”
“I left her at the bar. She came with friends. I told her I was gonna split.”
Sebastian groaned as he realized what he had done. “Oh, Russell. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s alright. We’ll get her another time. She needs it bad too. Pissed off at the world in general.”
Russell tapped Sebastian’s arm as he turned to start walking to the red line. “Come on, man,” he said. “I could use a smoke.” They cut across the street to the alley at the other side. Russell was rambling on about what Sebastian missed at Temple that day, but stopped mid-sentence as Sebastian yanked him to the wall at the mouth of the alley, shutting him up. Russell jumped and was ready to start yelling until he saw Sebastian’s face. Russell looked around the corner into the dark alleyway, where Sebastian gazed. “Fuck,” he whispered. “That’s not…is that…?” Russell turned and vomited into the street.
On the ground, blood crusted the pavement under Sebastian as it dripped out of the alley. Battling his own nausea, Sebastian gazed into the face of Jeremy, another Golden Arrow, who was on the ground less than ten feet into the alley, staring lifelessly into the night.