*Its not just electronic, it is linked back to something in the brothel, unlike the electronic bug it has an almost unlimited range though it will wear off in a few hours, still, longer than the bug is likely to last,* Cutter-Iffrit whispered, *It will track you whether or not you remove the electronic bug.*
Elgin mulled this over, he did not like the idea of giving away his identity. Cutter silently agreed with him. It was lucky that he had the Iffrit and his cell phone, the two were much better than any tablet or laptop, in five minutes he was walking towards a new destination.
-o-
Wu Tao, or Fenton Tao Wu as his driving license said, prowled the richly furnished parlor of his apartment in his formal coat, ankle length, heavy silk with real gold embroidery. He was upset but not quite sure about what. He stopped in the middle of the room and stared at his totem, a carving of white jade older than history.
In his eyes the totem glowed faintly, a green tinted white, and there was slow swirl of something looping inside. No one else saw the glow or the internal swirl. Right now the totem appeared to be about two feet high, a detail-less statue of a cloaked and hooded, faintly feminine figure. But if he looked away and then back it would be some other shape, still glowing white jade, still feminine, but it might be a foot high stone age totem, with bulging belly, sagging dugs and other details. It had never been the same shape twice since he had become the Keeper. No one else saw the changes, photos of the totem always showed a faintly detailed smiling goddess with a bulging belly, about eighteen inches high, the way he had seen it when he first arrived.
He had been the keeper of the statue for most of his life. He had been borne to a poor rural family he didn’t remember. He remembered some traveling troop of entertainers arriving at his village, making life fun for a few days, and then they had left. A few nights later he had found himself bound and gagged in the back of one of their rattle trap pony carts and he had never seen his home or family again.
For a year his home, along with a half dozen other ‘stolen boys’ had been an ancient hill fort in the desert interior and there he had been schooled in magic. Or at least tested for the aptitude and schooled in the basic mind discipline required. Tao had been a quick learner and he’d been rated highly, for what the masters wanted. None of the other boys had done as well, and two had simply vanished, one at a time, never to be mentioned again. At eight years old he’d found himself on his way to the US to be the helper of the last keeper.
The keeper had been old when Tao arrived, a little old man tottering around in his sub basement warren with his thousands of books and magazines. The old man had hated Tao from the beginning, because, unlike the dried up old stick, Toa had reveled in the debauchery that was the specialty of the Ugly Palace of Lonely Doves. The old man did what he did under protest. Every time a new girl was brought to be bound the old man looked like he would cry like a girl, Tao heard him being sick sometimes after a disposal and when he had to send out the hunting pack the old man would be useless for days afterward.
The old man had made himself suffer by living in a dirty dusty warren under the first basement, so he could not hear what went on above so clearly. The old man had held back on Tao’s training, he had made no bones about despising Tao, and Tao had reciprocated. The house master and the Madam had taken Tao under their wing, seeing in him a kindred spirit. What Tao had undergone under their tutelage could be called abuse of the most heinous and obscene kind, but he had given as much as he got from the very first.
At fifteen Tao had been sick of the old man’s constant harangues, of his dribbles of magical lore. But for all that the Keeper hated Tao he had hated his duties worse, and the Keeper had taught his apprentice the binding, and the opening, how to set the hunting pack loose. Only towards the end had the old one taught his apprentice the basics of the glamour that hid the house from eyes that would seek it in disapproval, and the wards that blew dust in the eyes of those who did not need to see.
There was always the one thing that he had kept back, had kept hidden, had hated almost more than anything else but would not teach Tao, his apprentice, the secret of the disposal.
A few months before his sixteenth birthday there was a very rare argument between the keeper and the house master. The group the house master hated more than any other was journalists, crusading journalists even more, and female crusading journalists worst of all. Ballie Briant had been the master’s worst nightmare. A lean half African, half Asian, American with the energy of a ferret and the nose of a bloodhound. How she learnt of the Palace’s existence was a mystery and how she had found out so much about it even more so, the woman had even been inside the Palace at least once. Ballie was always secretive, but when getting ready for her new ‘scoop’ she made a mistake, and word got back to the master.
Of course he had gone to the Keeper in a rage, and beaten out of the old man an admission that he had ‘seen’ Ballie for months as a threat, but had hidden it, knowing the measures the master would take. The house master had beaten the old man half to death before commanding Tao to send the hunting pack to pick up Ballie.
Tao had hidden after carrying out the house masters instructions, knowing that in his rage the huge thug might beat him on general principle. He’d found a hiding place in the rafters not far from the figurine of the goddess, the totem they drew magic from. From his hiding spot he could see the back half of the room.
So it was that he had been there when the hunting pack had dragged a bloodied and bruised but still defiant Ballie Briant down to the basement. There they had stripped her naked and left her huddled on the floor in front of the house master and the old keeper.
That day Tao had found out that humans can withstand torture, powerful drugs, and the equivalents in magic, used to try and pry the truth out, if they are stubborn enough, but the cost to body and soul were horrific..
At the very end, the house master had dragged the bloody rag doll of Ballie Briant to the back of the main room, into the odd ceramic tiled shower room and left the woman in a bleeding pile in one corner.
“Dispose of her.” Had been his order as he stalked, thwarted, up the basement steps.
The old man had gone to a chest that Tao had never seen opened before and opened it. Had taken out what looked like a spear, with a blunt tip. From another section of the case he had opened another small box and extracted something small and green, which fitted on the end of the little spear giving it a sharp green tip.
As the keeper had approached the naked Ballie, the woman had looked up with the one eye that could still open, “Old man, why you doing this? You hate this, why keep on?” She lifted a hand in supplication. “I’ll help you if you help me, get the police here and that bastard will never see the light of day again.”
He kept shuffling forward as he spoke, almost intoned, “I am too steeped in evil to be saved, and I know nothing but what I know. Beyond this basement is a world unknown. All I have is my books and my goddess. May she receive your soul gently.”
Ballie made one last try, her hand trying to slap the spear aside, but the old man had done this so terribly many times before, he dodged the strike and pressed the tip against the woman’s bare chest and then stepped back.
The journalist had looked down at the green dot on her chest, “Why that didn’t ev....” and she slumped over, dead. The keeper pulled back, slammed the door closed and flipped up a valve. Tao had heard that sequence before, from down below.
The old man had stood in front of the shower door listening to the hiss of the water for a while then he had turned and returned the spear to its chest but left it open. Then he had looked up directly at Tao. “You can come down now rat. I have a lesson for you.” The old man’s voice had been stronger than it had been in a long while, even though the bruises of the earlier beating were making themselves seen and there was dried blood on his brow, lips and beard.
Tao had dropped neatly to the floor, some of the
girls were gymnasts, there was even a little gymnasium at the back of the Palace and he practiced there and got them to show him how to do it.
“It’s a pretty rat, but a rat nonetheless.” The old man smiled, showing a bloody mouth with a newly missing tooth. “You’ve always wanted to know the secret of the disposal, well there you have it rat. It’s not magic, or at least not directly. The Green Fang is almost certainly magical in some way but it does not take magic to use it.”
“It’s just a quick poison, why is it called the disposal old man?” Tao waved at the shower, “That’s just water, cold water, and there’s no pit under it, the drain goes to the old sewer. What do you do with the bodies.”
The old man grinned like a bloody deaths head and stepped back to the door, “See for yourself rat.”
It was the one time in his life that Tao remembered screaming in horror. The slumping, melting thing in the chamber still looked far too human even if the very bones were beginning to turn to jelly the hair and skin was mostly liquefied and gone leaving raw meat, tendons and bulging organs. The stench was not of rot, but of something far, far worse. The old keeper was gagging by the time he slammed the door closed again.
“So rat, that is the fate of most of us who exist in this decaying pile of parasitic crap in the center of the city that never sleeps.”
The next morning the old man had sent Tao to ‘neaten’ the stall. He turned the water off and gingerly opened the door. There was no residual smell, no residual anything, except for a few pieces of metal in the corner where Ballie had died. Tao had crouched down to look. The ceramic, metal and enamel of a bridge and the metal of two fillings, a shining metal surgical pin that had been used to heal some bone break, one plastic sack with some kind of liquid inside. A breast implant he realized at last. The only things left of Ballie were those parts that had not been ‘natural.’
Tao had carefully picked up the seven items that had once been part of Ballie and put them in a small box as a memento.
Later that day he had opened the Green Fang box, inside were eight items. A small crossbow and two tiny quarrels, their tips ready for fangs. A sword, a saber but with a place at the tip for a fang. A dagger with place for a fang in a recess in the hilt, the shield spring loaded so if you drove the pommel into your opponent they would get the fang. The spear like weapon the old man had used and the box with the Green Fangs themselves. The box opened to show a felt lined interior, the fangs in individual slots, they looked artificial at first, deep green cones with tips that seemed to fade to black, about the size of medium almonds. The only thing that showed their natural origin was a faint veining of red in the green.
That evening old man had gone upstairs to the bar and come back with a huge margarita with salt crystals on the rim. He had eaten his usual sparse meal of rice and fish soup with some vegetables, sipping the margarita all the while. He watched Tao over the rim with eyes that seemed to look through the apprentice and into some far distant land.
“Rat,” the old man’s voice had been soft, mocking, “You are well fitted for this place. I never was. The keeper I apprenticed with was like you, he reveled in the debauchery, degradation and death that this place embodies. When I first learnt what this place was I tried to run away, but there was no escaping the keeper. When I was older I tried to help the girls, but they came and they went or they died just the same, I just made their time worse by giving them a little bit of hope. Older yet and I conceived an infatuation with one of the femmes de hotel, one of the beauties who go to the men instead of serving them here. I tried to make her run away with me. She told the House master and laughed as I was beaten. A year later she tried to escape with one of her beau’s. The hunting pack brought her back, stripped her of all her finery and pushed her into the stall. She was sobbing, begging for her life, pleading with the master, the keeper, with me. And she was so surprised when I pushed in the fang. I screamed and screamed and screamed until I coughed up blood as I watched her melt away and flush down the drain.”
The old keeper’s face had never lost its slight smile as he told the tale. Tao had a hard time understanding what the old man was trying to say and the old man saw how little Tao understood and his smile had grown slightly.
The old keeper had taken a last sip, licked a last crystal of salt off the rim with a wistful smile then gotten up from the table with a faint wobble, he’d drunk most of the margarita by then. “Woo, oh that’s just about right.” He steadied himself, grinned at Tao, “Well rat, I would wish down curses on your head and destroy you and this place if I could but I am a tool first and a tool always.” He’d walked towards the stall, he’d shrugged his skinny shoulders and suddenly he was naked except for the fanged dagger. He’d stepped into the stall, smiled at Tao, “Rot in hell rat,” and pressed the hilt against his chest. He’d collapsed, dead the next second.
The corpse was already beginning to liquefy before Tao reached the stall door. All he could do was slam it shut and turn on the water to flush the old man away. There had been no mementos in the stall for Tao to keep. So Tao had gotten rid of everything that the old man had ever treasured...except of course the totem, the old man’s goddess.
Fenton-Tao rubbed his face, why had that old memory come back he wondered....
There was a knock at the door, “Come.”
The exquisite little greeter in her sheer silk over jacket and harem pants opened the door and bowed, “Lord the Mistress of the house and your Runner.” She bowed herself out.
Deborah O’Hara or Debohorror was a dominatrix and looked the part, almost six foot in stocking feet, she was impressive on her preferred platform heels, not particularly pretty, she was striking, particularly with metallic red hair cut in a modified pageboy. Right now she was dressed as what she was, a businesswoman, the house mistress, Fenton’s second in command. She looked tired, but then it was nearly the end of the Palace’s long ‘business day.’
“Damn it Fenton, that monster Franks killed another of my girls,” she was white lipped. The evidence of the crime was brought in on a stained sheet and silently carried to the stall and rolled onto the tiles like a piece of meat instead of a blonde girl who had never seen her twentieth birthday.
“I hope it wasn’t one of our earners?” Tao replied calmly.
“He’s brain dead, not me Fenton, it was one of the Chechen chits from Boris’s latest container.”
Tao sniffed, he’d threatened to dispose of Boris if he ever delivered such a clutch of ugly, face, pocked foundlings again. No loss there. “Franks is an important customer Debs, and he pays for his play.”
“He’s a monster, none of the girls will go with him voluntarily, I had to drug this one.”
“Then drug them.” Fenton gave the house mistress a straight look, and her full lips pressed together hard, which emphasized the lines her thick makeup tried to hide.
Nguyn, Tao’s runner, or head of security, lounged against the door frame, “Not much to report, we did have an odd one, a big round eyes, in cowboy get up mind you, wandered past, first time I’ve seen a pedestrian on Fong Drive in pretty much forever.”
Tao spun, “When?”
“About one thirty. We braced him and put a trace on him. He seemed a bit confused, maybe drunk but he wasn’t really tottering.” The younger man shrugged.
That wasn’t when the totem had begun to ‘feel’ strange, but it might be about the time the strangeness had begun to relax.
“Hey Fenton, like what you did with big belly gal there.” Deb said, pulling out a cigarette and lighting up.
Tao turned to look at the totem, to his eyes it glowed as usual, this time it was a naked dancer, head thrown back, arms wide, legs caught in mid kick, for all its detail-less smoothness it was incredibly expressive and wildly free. “Ah, what Deb?” He turned back with an enquiring smile.
She looked at him as if he was crazy, “All lit up like that, you got a little lava lamp stuck up her ass or some
thing?”
“Oh the lighting, its been there all along, I just got around to fixing it,” Tao lied easily.
Nguyn was frowning, his eyes flicking from totem to Tao to Deb, it was fairly obvious that he didn’t see any glow emanating from the figurine. The old Keeper had warned him that his ‘goddess’ loved women more than men and to never let a woman touch it.
Tao turned away from his two senior managers and walked to the chest by the stall. He pulled out the spear and one of the fangs, applied it to the already dead girl without looking at her, shut the door and turned on the water. He put the spear back and locked the chest.
When he looked at the totem it was looking back at him, a kneeling mother with a babe suckling at her breast, the detail-less face still seemed to be staring straight at him, determined as ever to carry on, whatever the burden.
“Guy, get the others, I want to talk to your cowboy.” Tao began to run the lines of the pack summoning through his head.
“Bit late, people will start to be moving in a couple of hours”
“Now Guy, just be quick.” He turned away muttered the first passage of the raising, letting the words guide his mind through the flow.
Deb had turned and left at the first touch of rising magic, Tao had noticed she was sensitive before, but it was getting stronger, maybe it was long term exposure to him? He’d have to explore that possibility.
-o-
Elgin lay on the bed fully clothed except for his jacket and boots and watched the TV on the wall. The room in the down market hotel, just above what might be called a flop house, had been about what he expected, dingy, not exactly dirty, but not clean, the wallpaper faintly gray and distinctly faded where sunlight had hit it for too many years, the carpet a lot grayer than it had looked when new, where there weren’t cigarette burns, odd discolorations and the occasional slab of ground in chewing gum.
It had probably been a good thing that no one had barged into the room for the first half hour of his occupancy, they would have left screaming, sure that some demonic fungus had spawned here and was getting ready for world conquest. But once the nanites had finished the room was transformed. Mostly back to what it might have looked like when it was new and well cared for, creams and light teal, gleaming gold finished fittings and highly polished light oak furniture, though the big flat panel TV on the wall that had replaced the incredibly old vacuum tube model on a dresser, would have been a revelation to the original staff.
Among other things Elgin debated before he drifted off to sleep was whether he would leave the room like this or return it to its original near filth.
-o-
Alpha, known most of the time as Ho-Wu Nguyn or Guy to most who knew him, moved with the loose limbed grace of a dancer, his mind a kaleidoscope of images and sensations, almost as if he had eight pairs of eyes, ears, nostrils, instead of just one. The Alpha reveled in the sensation, in the utterly sublime now, no distractions of self, future, or past, however hard his quarry ran or fought, he always felt rested. The dingy hall flowed back around him and the door he was waiting for appeared.
The door had an old mechanical lock, no matter, the tool worked on any lock. He pressed the glistening black sphere against the lock and heard the soft click. He was a little surprised when a quick check showed that the security latch hadn’t been flipped into action. The cowboy was a real country bumpkin. His nose twitched, the air in the room was warm and it smelt odd, and the light he could see inside had an odd quality. But the Alpha was not one for introspection, he pressed in, striding past the closet sized bathroom, his backup on his heels.
The cowboy jerked up and quick began a quick roll, when Guy’s tazer hit him, turning the roll into a spastic thrash. Then Roj was on him with the contact tazer and its built in tranquilizer.
It was then that Alpha looked around at the room and blinked, it was utterly out of place here, neat, clean, sparkling new, the low energy light fixtures providing a warm glow and the air fresh and smelling faintly crisp. It was wrong but Guy the Alpha wasn’t interested in things outside his pack and its needs, the pack master had ordered the cowboy be brought back to the palace, that was what mattered.
Roj slung the unconscious man over his shoulder as if he weighed nothing, Guy swept the room picking up jacket, boots, wallet and cell phone, carefully pulling the battery out of the phone before pocketing it. He switched the lights off as he stepped out into the dingy gray and faintly moldy smelling hall. The two pack members outside told him it was still clear, the pair in the lobby had made sure the manager wasn’t paying attention to the video feeds from the upper floors and the two on the stairwells had disabled the cables to this floor.
By the time Guy and Roj reached the ground floor the nondescript midsized car was waiting for them. The first car was already driving slowly back, the follower pulled out a few hundred feet behind Guy’s vehicle. The pack was always cautious, but they had carried out this operation a thousand times before, and just like every other time, they left no physical trace of their presence other than by what was missing.
By the time they reached the palace their prisoner was awake but silent. Guy had a creepy feeling that the cowboy was almost amused, he also felt faintly itchy as well, which made him irritable. The small convoy all turned into the old factory building across the alley from the Palace and parked. Roj was not gentle hauling their cuffed and manacled prisoner out of the back seat of the dirty brown car. They went to the hatch that opened to reveal the stairs down to the tunnel that crossed to the Palace.
At the far end of the dank and dark tunnel a heavy steel door with a brick facing swung in giving them access to the foyer to the masters rooms. There one of the master’s little receptionists was waiting, big sad eyes and emaciated body barely hidden by the sheer silk jacket over the pantaloons. “The master has retired for the night, the prisoner is to be put in the hole and then you are freed of the master’s enchantment.” She rushed through the words and tapped a big Tibetan cylinder bell with a leather headed hammer. The sound seemed to ring down to Guy’s bones.
Roj pulled the unresisting cowboy back into the tunnel, and then down the low, stinking brick tunnel slanting down. There instead of fighting with the cowboy about what came next Roj simply taz-tranked him again.
-o-
Elgin woke up irritated, his head ached, he could feel the sore spots where he’d been tazer-tranqued and he could feel several areas of abrasion bruising he could not account for. The world beyond his closed eyelids was dark, there was an odd dullness to the air he breathed in, but someone had laid him on something like a feather bed.
*Stop feeling sorry for yourself, you knew you weren’t in any danger.* Cutter-Iffrit chuckled into the back of his mind. *And you could not be more wrong.*
He opened his eyes fully and found it was utterly dark, the air he was breathing was cold, damp and rank, his body was cool and he could sense the rough cut lumber he was lying on, lumber that was soaked with the water that covered the stone and dirt floor of the brick cavern he was being held in.
*They took my clothes!* Elgin almost shrieked that out loud, “You bastards let them knock me out and they stripped me!?* He struggled to sit up, the odd feeling of being wrapped in a down sleeping bag continued, he could sense he was almost touching the damp, rotting wood, almost but not quite.