Wolf and Jeff each picked a room a few doors apart, and Ben chose one in the middle. The doors were locked, but the locks were simple and easy to defeat. Once they were open, the three men parted without a word, knowing that the next time they saw one another, they would each have killed an unarmed man. Quick, silent and brutal. All three of them were trained experts in that art. It didn’t mean they enjoyed it.

Ben quietly shut himself inside. The dressing room was a small cubicle, about eight feet square, bare and utilitarian with a little side table, a wooden stool, a mirror, a bare-bulb light with a pull cord and a slim steel wall locker like the ones in military barracks. The lightbulb was dim and crusted with dead insects. Hardly the level of high-class luxury or cleanliness that Ben supposed the average VIP Pandemonium Club member would normally be used to. But then again, the typical five-star hotel or posh private club probably didn’t offer such men the kind of thrills they most craved, deep down in their sordid little hearts. Men who had already sold their souls in return for the dark and terrible pleasures that only their occult masters could give them. Men who were already dead inside.

Now that he thought about it, maybe Ben didn’t really have too many scruples about ripping the life out of one of these animals. He turned off the light and sat on the stool in the darkness, waiting.

He hadn’t had to wait for very long. A few minutes later he heard the sound of approaching footsteps and voices. Someone laughed. A key rattled in the door next to Ben’s, and he heard the door swing open. Like a game of Russian roulette, the man next door had drawn an empty chamber. A moment later, more footsteps came right up to Ben’s door, and there was the scrape of a key in the lock. Ben slipped off the stool and moved into the corner of the booth so that he’d be hidden behind the inward-opening door when the man came in.

The door opened. The footsteps came inside. The light clicked on. The door began to close. The dressing room belonged to a pudgy little man in his early fifties, with a balding head and a sack of a belly, still clutching the key to his dressing room. He was smiling to himself, but the smile quickly vanished as Ben appeared behind the door, closed it and then stepped forward and wrapped an arm around the man’s throat with his other hand clamped over his face.

Three seconds later, the pudgy little man was slumping to the floor with a broken neck. Quick, silent and brutal. Ben wouldn’t be losing any sleep over it, that was for sure.