“Let’s go and see if we kin speak some sense t’ your pal, Mr. Monk. I make no promises. Of all the drugs that befuddle a man’s senses, love is by far the strongest.”
“Stronger even than, dare I say, sex?” Monk inquired as the room cleared precipitously before them.
Malone stared solemnly down at the driver. “We have yet to ascertain under which particular affliction your friend reposes. Does he say nothing of his circumstances?”
“I’ve not seen him in weeks, sir, and despite my most sincere efforts have succeeded in drawing no closer than the door to the rooms where he now resides. I did not see him, and could hear him shouting but one thing over and over before I was summarily ejected. ‘Holy jingle!’ he kept bawling. ‘Holy jingle!’ ”
“Interesting,” declared Malone as the two men, one traveling in the umbra of the other, exited the bar. “If naught else, we can believe that whatever has inveigled him is nothing if not costly.”
* * *
—
The building to which Monk brought him in the open buckboard was one of the more substantial structures in Carson City. Several stories tall, it was fashioned of local stone and boasted fine glass windows imported from San Francisco.
San Francisco. It called to Malone. For a scion of the mountains and the plains, he was inordinately fond of the occasional draft of salt air. Soon enough, he promised himself. Tilting back his head, he let his eyes rove the numerous windows, eventually settling on one on the topmost floor. Light from oil lamps within, the hue of soft butter, lit the rectangular opening. He nodded knowingly.
“That one. There.”
Mouth agape, Monk stared up at him. “Now, how could you know that, Mr. Malone? You’ve never been here before.”
Nearly buried beneath an incautious bramble of rabid, unkempt whiskers, a prodigious nose contorted. “I kin smell jasmine. And lotus essence, sandalwood, and other emollients most foreign to this part o’ the world.”
Frowning, the driver inhaled deeply. “All I can smell is street muck and night soil.”
Malone grinned. “I once spent some time in Paris sojournin’ with a master parfumerie and have retained a bit o’ that knowledge.” He started forward.
Monk contemplated the swaying, rolling gait of the giant before him and tried to imagine a connection between the mountain man and the tiny crystal bottles of mostly floral scent he had occasionally seen in rooms occupied by ladies of the evening. Failing quite thoroughly in the attempt, he set the unresolved contradiction aside and followed grimly in the big man’s wake.
Not all the way, though. He was stopped inside by the redoubtable Bigfoot Terry, the madam of the house, who was quick to inquire as to their purpose in visiting. The question was rhetorical, as her establishment dispensed one class of goods and one kind only. “The best in Nevada,” as the hefty owner was oft heard to declare. She glanced only briefly at Monk, her attention immediately drawn to his companion, her Carolina accent as thick as her thighs.
“Ah declare, suh, you strike me as a man in need of some serious service.” Blue eyes twinkled amusedly. “The question is, can a sizable but rough-hewn bumpkin like yourself afford the finery for which my establishment is famed?”
Malone was not looking at her, his gaze drawn instead to the wide walnut stairway that cleaved the back of the parlor as opposed to cleavage of a more neighboring but no less sturdy kind. Brushing past her without a word, he headed directly for the stairs.
Startled by his indifference, the proprietress seemed about to summon forth the men of unpleasant mien whom she kept on retainer to cope with just such discourtesy. Monk hastened to forestall her.
“I will pay for my friend. Despite your assessment, it is hoped his visit will be brief, and accounted accordingly.”
Adjusting the feathers that encircled her shoulders and neck like the boa for which the adornment was named, the madam calmed herself. Her attention turned to the smaller and more voluble visitor. “Fair enough.” She proceeded to name the figure for a standard visit. Monk nodded his understanding and reached into a pocket.
“I am at present a mite short of coin, but I have this watch….”
* * *
—
The chamber was at the end of the hall on the top floor. As he passed the intervening rooms, Malone listened for the sounds of commerce. There were none to be heard. Did Madam Terry reserve this entire floor for one employee because she was special? he wondered. Or could it be that her fellow courtesans were fearful of working in the stranger’s vicinity? Did they perhaps shun her because she was Chinese? He already suspected that there were things at work here that transcended love and sex, and that was saying something.
To any other inhabitant of Carson City, the smells that emerged from beneath the solid wooden door would have reeked of exoticism. Malone, however, was familiar with them, being as he was rather more widely traveled than anyone save his horse suspected. Inhaling their familiarity, he identified one fragrance after another. Shanghai and Hong Kong, Kuching and Singapore, Calcutta and even Lhasa. No wonder this woman had so thoroughly enchanted the man called John Barrel. She had taste. She had reach.
It was time to find out what else she had.
He knocked. Softly at first and then, when ignored, harder. A voice from the other side mewed, “Come in—it is not locked.” Turning the knob, he pushed against the wood and entered Paradise.
Or so it would have seemed to the unsophisticated, uninitiated miners and drovers and businessmen likely to frequent such an establishment. Heavy carpets on the floor were cartographies of interwoven patterns: lanterns and birds, dragons and Chinese characters, all rendered in finely wrought wool. Tables sculpted from dark wood supported oil-filled lamps and incense burners. In one corner, a pair of ceramic Ming lions glared ferociously. A rainbow waterfall of glass beads separated one room from another. Densely arrayed on the walls were paintings rendered in pale watercolor, in fine ink, in bird feathers and butterfly wings. The room was aswirl with luxury.
There was movement behind the beaded curtain. The shape of a woman eased into the room, the smoke parting around her like a diaphanous veil. Malone had seen much in his time, but the sight made him draw in his breath.
This was not going to be easy.
Glistening black hair was drawn tightly back into a single braid. Her face was as blemish-free and pure as a bowl of cream, save for the double crimson slash of her lips, which were as red as the wound from a cavalryman’s saber. Packed into the glittering sequined cheongsam she wore were breasts more substantial than might have been anticipated, a narrow waist, and hips whose curves would have troubled Newton. When she smiled, the whole room seemed to sigh.
“What have we here?” She approached him. He held his ground as one hand reached out to stroke his arm. “I sense need bottled as tight as hundred-year-old brandy, and just as hot. Relax to me and I will release it.”
He swallowed. Safer to be facing a troll in the Arctic or a shark in the sea, he thought. Monk was right to be worried about his friend.
At that moment, a moan came from a back room. It was weak, yet not an expression of pain. Back there, out of sight, a man was dying slowly. But not painfully. Malone nodded in its direction.
“You are entertainin’, if thet’s the right word, a guest name o’ John Barrel. He has been here a long time. Too long. You speak o’ need. Well, his friend needs him…now and right quick.”
A second hand reached out to slip between the mountain man’s right arm and his waist. Fingers dug in hard, clutching, trying to penetrate the thick buckskin. The lacquered nails did not break.
“But I need him, too. I need him more.”
Malone frowned. “His friend needs him to ride shotgun. What d’you need him to ride?”
The irresistible lips parted, eyelids fluttered, and there came a whisper that was part
pure physicality and entirely feral. “He is a fine young man, healthy and strong. Being Occidental, you will not understand, but I need what moves him. Call it a life-force. Say it is an Oriental obsession.”
Malone shook his head to clear it. The room, the incense, the nearness of his hostess were making him dizzy. Hips were moving against him with a strength that would have impressed the Krupps. Resistance was not futile, but it was becoming increasingly difficult. He struggled to keep his senses about him.
“I thought you only worked fer money. Life-force is a demonic obsession that spans all continents. ’Tis something far from exclusively Asian.”
A growl escaped her throat as she stepped back from him. He was quite certain it was a growl—low but not heavy. “Who are you, to speak of such things, far less to know of them?”
“A traveler. One with needs less immorally acquisitive than your own.”
“Do not judge me, master of stinks!” Regaining her poise, she replayed her smile. “You want to free the youth? Very well. I will trade you.”
The mountain man hesitated. “What could I possibly have that you would want?”
When she smiled this time, sharp points seemed to flash briefly from the tips of her teeth. “You. I will trade John Barrel’s life-force for yours. Come and lie with me and I will take what I need. You will feel no pain.” As she turned to walk away from him, the oceanic roll of her backside caused his eyes to water as if they had been doused with pepper. She looked back over her shoulder, her inviting smile at once coquettish and carnivorous. “Come, big handsome devil. Are you afraid?”
“Let Barrel go first.”
She shrugged. “Will you then run out on me? I think not.” Obsidian eyes flashed. “You are intrigued. Of course you are. Having set eyes on me, you have no choice.”
* * *
—
It took Hank Monk plus one of Bigfoot Terry’s men to get John Barrel out of the building. Monk was shocked when he saw his friend. Normally stout and muscular, the shotgun rider had been reduced to a shrunken shell of himself. It was as if someone had stuck a straw into his body and sucked out half the juice.
“A steak.” Monk spoke worriedly as the madam’s man helped load Barrel into the back of the buckboard. “Two steaks. With potatoes, and bread, and ale. We’ll have you fixed up right quick, John. Be back on your feet in a day or two.” Climbing up onto the front of the buckboard, Monk took up the reins and set it in motion. Lying in the open bed behind him, his companion moaned, his voice barely audible.
“Holy…jingle…”
“No need to worry about money now, John. Don’t let such things worry you. We’ll soon have you right.”
As they passed the far end of the building, Monk glanced upward. The light from a window on the top floor was flickering oddly. He chucked the reins a little harder, urging the team to a faster pace.
* * *
—
If the greeting room was overflowing with objets d’art and seductive smells, the bedroom into which Malone found himself escorted redefined opulence. A beveled mirror on the ceiling reflected a rumpled bed that had been made up with sheets of French silk trimmed with Irish lace. Embroidered pillows rode the plush mattress like manatees on a rippled silver sea. Lamps glimmered while cherubs sculpted of wood and gilt parasitized the walls. Everywhere was crystal and smoke.
Then his hostess dropped her cheongsam, and everything else vanished from view.
“Too late now,” she murmured. In her perfect nakedness, she turned and waved a hand, whispering something in Chinese so ancient only a few of the most eminent scholars of the Forbidden City would have understood.
Aromatic smoke swirled and danced. An unsourced sigh at once cosmetic and cosmic filled the bedchamber. Whisked away by a zephyr, the bedsheets were replaced by new and fresh ones that smelled of roses newly plucked. As she moved toward the bed, the walls rippled around Malone. Unbidden, he found himself starting to remove his own clothes. Given the number of layers and the quantity of grease and other dried fluids they had absorbed, this was a considerable process.
She did not so much lie down on the silk sheets as spread herself across them like honey on lavash. Utterly unabashed, she turned to face him. One hand gestured and he found himself drawn toward her. He did not remember walking, just floating an inch or so above the floor. Wisps of incense-laden smoke massaged his body as he traveled, cleansing him more thoroughly than any bath, perfuming him as the Aztecs would a particularly important sacrifice.
“You will sustain me far longer than that youngster John Barrel,” she murmured. “You will renew me for many months, perhaps even years, until all has been used up. And you will enjoy every moment of it.”
He felt himself rising up over the bed, over her. Then he was sinking, the great mass of him descending as gently as an autumn leaf, until he became one with her.
She howled.
* * *
—
Blocks away, the door of a stable stall shattered when its occupant burst through the barrier as if it were made of cardboard. The nightwatch stableboy barely managed to fling himself aside as Worthless turned the main doors to kindling. Pounding through the streets, the fiery-eyed runaway scattered late night drunks and sober pedestrians alike.
Very soon, the stallion found himself outside a singular stone structure from whose topmost floor lamplight danced and twitched as if imbued with a life of its own. Whinnying and rearing, sending ordinary horses stampeding in panic from where they had been tied, Worthless stomped back and forth in front of the building. When two men managed to get a lariat around him, one twitch of the muscular neck sent both of them flying into a nearby water trough. Raising a rifle, a third prepared to bring the maddened mount down. One look from his intended target caused the visiting rancher to drop his weapon and sprint for the nearest available doorway.
In front of the furiously pacing horse, men and women were spilling from the building’s main entrance. Though some wore few articles of clothing and others none at all, their nakedness was not of as much concern as escaping a heretofore solid structure that seemed on the verge of collapsing. Indeed, as they gathered themselves in the street, a few turned to marvel at the quivering multistory building. Given the range of motion in which the outer walls were presently engaged, it struck all as impossible that they were not crumbling before their stunned eyes. Yet though it shivered and shook like a gelatin mold placed atop a steam engine, the building did not collapse.
Despite the grinding and rumbling of shaken stone, another sound could be heard. It was a roaring, a shrieking, a howling scree as if a pack of demons was being tormented in ways unimaginable to mere human beings. It was the sound of an evil spirit being hoisted by its own petard.
Or in this case, that of Amos Malone.
* * *
—
The bed, with its luscious silks and enveloping pillows and hand-wrought steel springs, was slowly disintegrating beneath its present occupants. The room was, quite literally, heaving in time to their synchronized movements. Locked against each other, they were unaware of their physical surroundings. Engaged in oneness, they became the universe while the real one disappeared. It was the totality of tao.
Beneath the immensity of Malone, the courtesan’s eyes widened.
“Not possible! It is not possible! How can you…?”
He moved suddenly, a certain way, and her eyes closed. Her nails dug at his back, much as those of an animal might dig at the ground searching for prey. She whined, she whimpered, she threw back her head and bayed. As she did so, her mouth opened wide. Determined, resolute, Malone kept moving even as an ethereal redness began to emerge from between her lips.
“I know the way,” he muttered even as he strove to maintain the effort. “I know the places to touch, the moves to make. You are done in this time and place, vixen. Be off with
you, says I! Take yourself elsewhere and find another to feed upon. I’m Amos Malone, and I’m afraid I got to hang onto all the life-force I’ve got. Might need it later.” With that he thrust his hips forward as hard as he could, in a most distinctive, ancient, and thrice-forgotten manner.
“Holy jingle,” Barrel had kept mumbling, over and over. Not being conversant with old Mandarin, the driver’s enunciation had been only an approximation. But from the man’s semi-coherent sputtering Malone had been able to divine the correct pronunciation—and its true meaning.
“Huli jing!” poor Barrel had been trying to say. It was not an exclamation, but a warning.
The courtesan’s mouth opened wider still. Wider than humanly possible. Around them, the overheated air shuddered as the Huli jing spirit was expelled from the human woman’s body. Hovering in the air by the head of the bed, the nine-tailed fox-shaped apparition spun and whirled helplessly, bereft now of its human host. It snapped at him once, barking half in anger, half in amusement, almost biting his nose. In the far corner of the room, atop his pile of discarded clothes, Malone’s wolf’s-head cap snarled, and its eyes glowed red with fury at the sight of its hereditary enemy.
The Huli jing growled a last time, whipped its nine tails once across Malone’s face, and was gone.
Malone collapsed.
The air in the room grew still. Walls ceased their shaking and behaved once more with the discipline of stone. Crystal ceased singing and the flames in the oil lamps calmed themselves. Outside on the street, a manic horse quieted, huffed, and ambled over to a recently vacated water trough to drink long, heavy, and noisily. Beneath an utterly exhausted Malone, black eyes flickered, focused, and gazed up at him in wonder.