Behind the first row of ready regulars and the oddly angled one-eyed menaces of their black, stubby guns, a few handy-looking
types of men and a couple of women had dashed in from other directions, darted glances to the elevators and hurried deeper
into the apartment’s recesses through veils of door-hangings made out of plastic tape and beads. A smell of various half-cut
drugs spiralled lazily in their wakes, the luxurious perfume of indulgence rather than addiction. Lila placed five illegal
narcotics, amphetamines and the curious taint of mescaline and listened to the conversations going on across the rooms.
Meanwhile she held up her hands like a fainting southern belle waylaid by bandits. ‘I just want to talk to Shivaud.’ Trickles
of blood ran down her arms and dripped off her elbows. ‘And if maybe one of you has a wet wipe, that would be nice.’
Zal stood behind her at point position, face impassive under its pinto decoration of red from the dog and purplish-blue from
the bone demon. Neither of them looked armed. A couple of the men blinked and squinted, confused by the haze of darkness around Zal.
‘Who the hell are you?’ one in the middle said finally as they nerved themselves, waiting for someone with a clue to turn
up and tell them what to do.
‘I just want a portal and some conversation,’ Lila said, lowering her hands slowly and giving herself a little shake. Blood
pattered onto the marquetry floor. ‘You really should look for the wipes. That’s going to stain horribly if you leave it.’
There was a briefly hissed but very audible passing of ‘what-thefucks’ along the line but mercifully a woman in a tailored
suit with fetish boots and immaculately waxed black hair appeared from the plastic veils and strode forward with businesslike
predation in her expression, one hand tucking the tips of its fingers into the impossibly tiny pocket of her fitted tweed
jacket. She moved like a catwalk model and was as tall and thin as a pole. The precise line of her lipstick left no room for
compromises.
‘Phitti, Dedalon,’ she addressed the semicircle of guards with easy authority. ‘Cover the back.’ And there she stood, waiting
for them to slouch past her to their new, less interesting posts. None of them gave her a second look, which to Lila meant
only one thing.
‘Shivaud, I presume.’
The barest flicker of a wintry smile crossed the woman’s whitened face. She was beautiful at a short distance, the paint making
her more so, a kind of geisha but with a sadist’s mouth. ‘Most people assume I will be a man. I can usually put up my second
in my place while I play hostess in the background. Then again, most agents are men.’ She flicked a glance at Zal and lingered
on him for a moment. ‘And human.’ When her gaze came back to Lila she put her head to one side and offered the merest of social
smiles. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’
Lila showed her Agency credentials and this time Shivaud paused long enough to read them before standing back.
‘So?’
‘We’ve come to clear the road,’ Lila said.
Shivaud’s black lensed eyes narrowed slightly but she inclined her head with the grace of a lady and gestured behind her.
‘Come in then, and we can talk.’
On the other side of the bead curtains was a room filled with sofas and entertainment tech. They passed through it, trailed
at a distance by first one and then another of the more handy types Lila had seen before. Then they came into a red and gold
silk room with views over the strip towards the bay; clearly a demon’s lair. If the opulence and grandeur of the furnishings
hadn’t given it away – piling style on
style and packing in pirate chests full of concealed weapons – the people it contained would have.
It was a large room, separated into semicircular areas by lush waterfalls of satin in dark colours, offering multiple sightline
issues. Within the outer zones waterpipes and incense bowls simmered with the mixtures Lila had identified earlier – everything
from trip mixes to poisons. Bodies in various states of undress and consciousness lay around; the retinue of the favoured
passing the boring daylight hours of afternoon in their comas of choice. Demons were among them, of several lesser kinds,
but all this paled into insignificance as Lila and Zal were invited to the central area and its bordello of inflated pillows
and pasha rugs, animal hides liberally strewn around.
In the midst of this lay a succubus wearing a leather harness of narrow straps and about a thousand buckles, a chain choke
collar around her neck that was tied to a violet ribbon with a chewed end. Her face was uncommonly pretty and innocent looking,
her hair blonde and fluffy, simmering with pale tawny fire that made Zal suck his breath in. Her skin was the colour of wholewheat
toast and oiled to a lustrous shine that emphasised all of her humanly impossible curves and the scorpion tip of her tail.
This was red with blood and her victim lay in front of her – a naked man, not more than twenty-five, nearly as pretty as she
was with his long brown hair scattered around. His waxed chest and abdomen were striped with whip marks turning purple and
his neck was punctured in several places with the full stops of the scorpion stinger, though he still breathed and his glassy
eyes were open.
The succubus was trimming a red apple with a tiny silver knife and had laid the peelings out around his half-erect penis in
a kind of pattern. She looked up from this as Shivaud led Lila and Zal into the room and, in a matter of fact kind of way
stuck out her foot-long pointed tongue and licked the length of it. The man stirred and moaned – an ecstatic sound that contained
a painful pitch in it.
Lila could pick up venom traces from the air. It was everywhere. She analysed it and discovered not only the enhancing factors
for pushed nervous systems but magical coils whose purpose she could only guess at. The boy on the floor wasn’t giving anything
much away.
Shivaud strode to her place atop the only chair in the room – a straightbacked wooden Shaker style – and sat down primly,
indicating that Zal and Lila could try pleasing themselves. The succubus
turned her eyes to Zal and smouldered openly at him, her lips visibly swelling and reddening as she let them part in a pout
and batted her eyelashes.
Shivaud all but ignored her entirely although she made introductions. ‘This is Roxa. Roxa get a grip, these aren’t the usual
pieces of shit.’ She dug one sharp stiletto heel into the succubus’s perfectly circular buttock and the demon lashed her tail,
jetting a fine mist of venom in an arc away from them while she turned her attention to Lila and smiled sweetly with her corrupted
schoolgirl’s face.
Lila ignored her and said to Shivaud, ‘Your missing person is of interest to me.’
‘She’s of interest to
me
,’ Shivaud said, and the succubus stiffened slightly at the words although she relaxed almost immediately after. ‘Give her
back and you can drive free as the birds.’
‘Interesting choice of words,’ Lila said, and then carried on seamlessly as she dismissed all possible seating areas. ‘I
want to know who and what she is to you that’s worth incurring such enormous civil fines. By now you must be on your third
mortgage.’ They both knew the city didn’t have the balls to collect damages out of Cedars lest there be a retaliatory explosion
of violence that would ruin the tourist trade on the shore, but equally the gang law knew that everything had a price. Shivaud
was daring a great deal.
In the meantime Zal had come forward and was standing with the naked man’s head at his feet, looking down on the succubus
as she preened up at him from her belly-down position, lifting herself high to show off her breasts and arching her back.
Her tail curled and quivered delicately, almost in his eyeline. He admired her with his expression and she gave a long, strange
quiver that ran the length of her entire body like a belly dancer’s shimmy. Lila watched with one eye while keeping the leader
her main focus. Demon standoffs were strange to see, especially when the demons concerned were so different in character.
She felt mildly threatened by Roxa, whose charms were blindingly obvious, but was also contemptuous because this upstart wasn’t
a patch on Sorcha, Zal’s demon sister. Then again Sorcha had had class; the burning diva wouldn’t stoop to seduction as a
weapon, for her it had been a given and would have lacked sport. But at the same time Lila felt mildly aroused by the scene
and knew it would be double if she looked at Zal, and that would confuse her as much as Shivaud no doubt intended. The humans
of the western world had developed a
great deal but their culture was medieval in its attitudes to sex, hence the mighty industry of the Bay coast and the success
of this sort of tactic. Though it probably would have been successful regardless since the succy’s venom was laced with pheromones
strong enough to interest rocks. Lila had a hard time finding a way to get the stuff out of her system. She wondered what
Shivaud used and then, on examining the woman’s immaculate burlesque façade from cool stare to steel-boned corset, thought
perhaps she had adapted to it. Zal must also be thinking of Sorcha, and it was hard to see how that might go. It didn’t seem
as though this Roxa recognised him at all, so that was one card in his favour.
Finally Shivaud said, ‘The Motley is not only a business, it is a refuge for many, adults and children. They are my flock.
In return for their feeding and care, protection, I ask only loyalty and, if they are able to help me, for their favours.’
‘So the one who is missing was able to do big favours?’
‘Society detests powerful changelings. I welcome all.’
Lila looked down at the naked, semi-comatose man. The wounds in his neck had swollen shut and around them a network of purple
stains had spread under the skin. ‘Interesting welcome.’
Shivaud’s icy smile appeared, her voice doelike with serenity. ‘This is a much prized reward, not a punishment, though maybe
it is a punishment that is its own reward.’
Roxa pouted prettily and put out her tongue. It was really obscenely long, like a flattened snake, and towards the back Lila
saw tiny barbs at its sides. The forepart was lusciously pink with a strawberry pattern of receptors shining as the demon
gave another lick to her prize – a curiously loving and tender gesture that reminded Lila of the way she’d seen a leopard
once adoringly lick the exposed bone of half an eviscerated antelope that it had dragged up into a tree. The succubus kept
her hypnotising stare on Zal, and in return Zal folded his arms across his chest and looked down on her from his great height,
stonefaced, although other parts of his body were responding quite differently. Roxa smiled with angelic slowness and a faint
rosy blush spread over both sets of her cheeks. Her tail tip swayed slowly back and forth, the length of it making lazy S
shapes above her. Zal’s hair changed colour from muddy-blond to corn-yellow as all traces of his shadow body sank beneath
his skin. Roxa blinked with pleasure. Lila could not tell if Zal had won or lost that point.
She decided to get to her own point without delay. ‘I spoke to your seer. She doesn’t intend to come back. Nobody has any
business forcing her where she doesn’t want to go.’
‘She is not a citizen on the hub,’ Shivaud said. ‘I think that Otopia Security will be more than content to force her to be
registered or else deported.’
‘If we do that then it will be the last you’ll see of her.’
‘Perhaps. You forget that people have families of blood or of kindness, and families must be looked after.’ The dark stare
of her made-up eyes was arrow-straight now and speared Lila’s slight flinch. ‘Is that all you came to say?’
‘I want her name,’ Lila said. ‘And a portal to Demonia.’
‘She calls herself Oubliette,’ Shivaud said. ‘Of course it isn’t her real name. I don’t know what that is.’ Her mouth had
gone tight with anger, creating sudden fine lines in her taut mask. Her gaze flickered over the blood on Lila and the gore
on Zal as he slowly shed his coat behind him and began to unbutton his shirt. That got her full attention.
Zal pulled the shirttails out of his trousers and dropped the whole thing with two fluid moves. The tide line at his collar
where the drying film of blood marked a perfect V against his skin was almost comical. Lila, Shivaud and Roxa all let out
exactly the same small sigh at the same moment and Lila had to fight a quiver in her lips lest she start laughing.
There was a sound like dispersed gasoline catching fire and Lila saw the demon flare brighten across Zal’s back a moment before
his shoulders erupted in seething yellow flame.
‘Mind the drapery, darling,’ Shivaud murmured, lifting one hand to adjust the immaculate line of her fringe over her eyebrows.
The flames’ initial surge towards winghood fell back and quickly spread along his exposed skin, including his face. Where
the small tongues of fire licked they burnt the filth off him, becoming green for a moment, then red, then bright, near white
though he was clearly unharmed. They died back to a soft ripple of low light burn but they did not go out. His hair lightened,
bleached into sunshine and then into near whiteness beneath the flames’ caress.
One of Roxa’s eyebrows moved up a single notch.
‘I suppose you will not tell me where you met her? And you want to use my portal for free,’ Shivaud asked, though it was more
of a statement.
Lila didn’t know if she were a better judge of a demon fight or not but she felt that Shivaud was either conducting a plot
for their massacre by invisible means – not unreasonable given the number of telepaths reported in Cedars – or else she figured
herself outgunned.
At their feet Roxa slowly levered herself up to her hands and knees. With coy catlike moves she came forward to Zal, over
the body of the lucky reward guy, until her face was inches from his thighs at which point she sat back on her heels and gave
him the full benefit of her frontal aspect, tilting her head back to bare her throat completely, head to one side, eyes half
closed, hands softly relaxed and resting palm up on her thighs. Her tail swept across the body behind her, conforming to its
shapes as it slid along. The man behind her made a soft moaning sound and a tear came from one eye, though otherwise he didn’t
or couldn’t move.