Hexed_ The Iron Druid Chronicles - Kevin Hearne [48]
The taxi driver decided we were a pretty odd couple and kept asking us questions. We told him we were martial arts experts in town for a convention, and he bought it. Said he was going to be a ninja once, but things didn’t work out the way he planned. We had him drop us off on the far side of the parking lot, as far as possible from the entrance flanked by a velvet rope. There was no bouncer at the door—an ominous sign. A techno dance mix pulsed into the night, promising dark blue lighting and gyrating bodies inside.
“You know they ain’t gonna let you inside with those things, right?” the taxi driver said as I got out and paid him.
“I think it might be anything goes in there right about now,” I replied. “Thanks for the ride. Keep safe.”
As he drove away and I coughed a couple of times from the exhaust, Laksha lifted an arm toward the entrance and said, “Shall we go take a look?”
“You don’t need to say any special incantations or sacrifice a stray cat or something first?”
“No.” She smirked at me and began to walk toward the club.
I followed her and spoke to her back. “Come on. No circles or pentagrams or candles or anything?” I knew Laksha felt confident about her ability to resist the Bacchants’ magic, but I didn’t know how she was protecting herself. Could her ruby necklace have all the defensive power of my amulet and more? I thought she’d need to prepare a ward of some kind, at least. For my part, there was no other defense than my amulet and a grim determination to think about baseball; otherwise, I might well fall into their frenzy.
“Sorry,” she said over her shoulder.
“Wait just a second,” I said as we arrived at the door. “I’m not sure I should go in. I could be vulnerable to their magic.”
Laksha turned and regarded me with a curious expression. “Cannot you control your body?”
“To some extent, yes. Is that your defense against them? Controlling your body?”
“Precisely. I have utter control over this body’s nervous system. In a sense I am outside of it; the input will arrive—these things called hormones and pheromones I have learned about—but I will refuse to allow the body to respond. It will not be aroused unless I wish it to be.”
“That’s all the Bacchants are using? Pheromones?” I had suspected this before, but I thought there must be more to it than that.
“I believe that is what they are doing, yes. Their magic targets the limbic system of the brain in a few people near them, and then these people’s bodies—the expression is “share the love,” I believe, with others nearby, and it spreads until everyone in an area is a slave to their sexual desires. Alcohol reduces one’s resistance, weakens inhibitions, makes it all happen faster. Then they feed on the pheromones and the energy of the group, drink them in, and become impossibly strong by it.”
“That makes sense.” I nodded. “Different from succubi. But it means I won’t have any defense at all. I’m not outside my nervous system in the way you describe.”
Laksha huffed in exasperation. “Fine. At least come in for a brief look around. I will escort you out once you begin touching yourself.”
“What? Hey, don’t let it go that far. That’s not right.”
A flicker of a smile played about Laksha’s lips, then it fled as she returned to the business at hand. “Leave the bats at the door. They’ll recognize them as a threat.”
“And not my sword?”
“It’s not a threat to them. You don’t want to pull them out of their ecstasy. It’ll turn to rage.”
Obeying with some reluctance, I followed her inside to the skull-pounding thump of techno bass beats and the multicolored strobe effect of sequenced lights on a rig high above the dance floor, which was to our left. The bar was to the right, with martini glasses hanging overhead and the premium liquors prominently displayed in front of a mirror. There were a few beers on tap, but since this was not the sort of clientele that drank anything so common, the bar did a blazing business in