Authors: Craig Schaefer
“She lies without lying,” Caitlin said. “And he’s not bound here. He just doesn’t feel like leaving.”
“Everything she told us was true. It was just enough truth to fuck us over. I’m stuck, Cait. I can’t get any juice.”
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. “My kind don’t mesh well with sloth. This is bad. I think the man in the other room starved to death. He starved instead of getting out of bed.”
“I offered him Cheetos,” Pete said. He held up the bag and shook it at us. “Want some?”
“No, Pete,” I said. “We don’t want Cheetos. We want you to turn your powers down so we can get off this couch.”
He shrugged, not quite getting it. “So get off the couch. I’m not stopping you. Hey, Judge Judy is on! She’s the coolest.”
We watched fifteen minutes of “Judge Judy.” It seemed like the best thing to do. Everything else was too much work.
“I don’t know what she’s getting out of this,” Caitlin murmured. She looked paler than usual. “Even if Naavarasi could get away with murdering us by proxy, why do it at all?”
I shook my head. “She’s not. Remember how she wanted to recruit me for her little army? The collar she gave me, the ‘get out of death free’ card?”
“You mean the utter insult to
me
she gave you? Yes. Of course.”
“Naavarasi will come by in about a week, give or take a few days,” I said. “When I’m dehydrated, half starved to death, and delirious. Then it’ll be an offer I can’t refuse. She’ll claim my soul, banish Pete here, and set you free. I’ll be bound to her service, and you’ll be embarrassed in front of your court. It’s a win-win for her.”
“C’mon, guys!” Pete whined from his sofa. “Save it for the commercials, will ya? I haven’t seen this one yet.”
While the television droned on, I gnawed at the problem, struggling to think through the layers of gauze wrapped around my brain. We needed something to overpower the aura of sloth, something to counter it, to motivate us to move.
The show cut to commercials. I watched listlessly as a parade of women rubbed a new invigorating shampoo into their scalps, the camera lingering on as much of their wet bodies as it could get away with on daytime TV. One of the models gasped at the camera, her expression almost orgasmic as her shampoo’s thirteen essential vitamin supplements gave her hair new life and shine.
I got an idea.
“Hey, Cait.”
“Daniel?” she said, her voice exhausted.
“I was just thinking. About the first morning we woke up together. You remember that? When we showered together?”
Her lips curled in a faint smile. “Of course I do.”
“The steam curling around us in white clouds,” I said. “Our naked bodies sliding together, wet, slippery. The way your skin felt as I ran that bar of soap slowly along your hip.”
A faint touch of color tinted her cheek. She got what I was doing. I knew she would.
“I was surprised you could stand up,” she said, “after that night. I remember the way you gasped, the way your muscles tensed and you clawed at the sheets while I rode you, again and again and again.”
“Guys,” Pete whined, “c’mon, knock it off, would ya?”
I found the strength to reach out and take Caitlin’s hand. Her fingers squeezed mine, meeting with a faint electric spark.
“Remember that dinner at your place last week?” I said. “Both of us drunk on red wine, watching a John Hughes movie, making out on your leather couch like a couple of teenagers. Just all over each other, hungry for each other.”
Caitlin’s shoulders straightened. She sat up, leaning forward, turning to me with her eyes bright and her face flushed.
“I remember when I got your clothes off. The warmth of your body, pressed between mine and the black leather. Then you sank to your knees on the carpet and kissed your way up my inner thigh…”
Pete winced and covered his ears. “Guys!
Ew
. Come
on
!”
The lethargy drained away, replaced with something new. Heat. Need. A feedback loop of hunger that coursed between us, desire riding on a groundswell of magic.
“I want you,” I told her. “I want you so badly I can barely breathe. I
need
you.”
Caitlin stood up. She tugged at my hand.
“I have so many pleasures to show you,” she said, breathing fast. “So many sensations you haven’t even imagined yet. Just thinking about it makes me shiver.”
I looked up at her like a supplicant before a living goddess.
“Show me. Right now.”
She pulled me to my feet, and I slipped my free arm around her waist, wanting to embrace her, but there was no time. We moved together, cocooned in our lust, headed straight for the front door. Pete hurled a handful of Cheetos at us, but they all landed short, scattering across the filthy rug.
“Fine!” he pouted. “You guys suck. Don’t come back if you’re not here to watch TV. And if you do, bring some corn chips and some Coke, okay? Make sure it’s diet. Hello? Guys? Are you even listening to me?”
W
e half ran down the walkway, barely pausing to slam the door closed behind us. The fresh desert air, arid and pure, washed away the filth and the stench and left me feeling cleaner than I’d felt in weeks. Caitlin hauled the car door open and grabbed me by the arm, shoving me into the backseat. She pressed me against the hot vinyl and straddled my lap, stealing my breath with a ferocious kiss.
“Cait,” I gasped. “Someone could see—”
She clamped her hand over my mouth. Her other hand worked at my belt buckle, yanking at the clasp.
“Shut up. The only thing I want to hear out of your mouth in the next ten minutes,” she hissed, “is you screaming my name. Anything else is
not interesting
.”
I squirmed out of my pants, fabric pooling around my shoes, while she hiked up her skirt. Then she grabbed my lapels and tugged, sending the top two buttons of my shirt flying, pressing her sharp teeth to my bared throat and growling like a wolf as she lowered herself onto me.
I lost track of time and everything else with it, everything but the feel of her body against mine and the scent of her skin. Finally we just clung to one another, shuddering, wet and disheveled, our hearts racing together.
“I liked that,” she whispered, caressing my cheek.
“Feeling’s mutual,” I said. “But now we’ve got a serious problem.”
She nodded. Her dreamy smile faded. “Naavarasi.”
“No,” I said. “Problem is I think my legs are asleep.”
Somehow we got ourselves looking more or less presentable and accomplished the long and awkward migration to the front seats of the car. I drove Caitlin back home to her penthouse at the Taipei Tower. She leaned in to kiss my cheek.
“Winter,” she said, “tonight. We’ll have a stern talk with our esteemed visitor.”
“I’ll meet you there. Right now I need to get a little work done on Pixie’s problem.”
That was my second stop. First stop was Bentley and Corman’s cluttered apartment over the Scrivener’s Nook for a new shirt and a quick shower. I was glad nobody was home.
I kept ties with a few contacts on the street. Some I met working for Nicky Agnelli, some I crossed paths with in my days of busking for change on Fremont Street. I had a reputation as a man who could be useful to know.
One of those contacts was Laika. She was six foot one, wore her blond hair in cornrows, and said she was descended from Russian aristocracy. I thought the accent was a put-on. Three in the afternoon and she was already out on the stroll, poured into a purple PVC halter dress and smoking a cigarette on the corner of a dead-end street.
Lots of tourists come to town thinking prostitution is legal in Nevada. They’re half-right: it’s legal in twelve counties, but not one of them is anywhere within a hundred miles of the Vegas city limits. You take a limo out to the ranches if you want a certified disease-free pro, assuming you’ve got the cash to afford her. In the city it’s the same old street game, all risk and barely any reward. Like chutes and ladders, but the chute probably looks like a pimp’s fist or a heroin needle.
The ladders don’t go anywhere, either.
I rumbled the Barracuda up to the corner and shifted into park. Laika came over and leaned in the open passenger-side window, shifting her body to draw my gaze toward her cleavage and away from the tracks on her arm. I picked a third option and looked her in the eye.
“Moving up in the world,” she said, laying the Russian accent on thick. She dropped her cigarette to the street and snuffed it under a stiletto heel. “Where’d you get the car?”
“Favor from a friend. Speaking of, you hear anything weird on the street lately? People dropping off the radar more than usual?”
She flicked an uneasy glance back over her shoulder. “You’re asking me about weird stuff? You’re the magic man, everybody knows that. But yeah. Two of Half-Cap’s girls? They haven’t been around. I talked to Mindy, you know, the one with the teddy bear and the pigtails. She says they both split on the same night. Left their clothes behind and even a little bankroll they’d stashed that Half-Cap didn’t know about.”
Which means they didn’t leave town voluntarily
, I thought. I tugged my phone out of my pocket and tapped my way to Pixie’s photos.
“How about these guys? They might be squatting around here. Any of ’em look familiar?”
While Laika took my phone and gave the screen a close look, I caught movement in the driver’s-side mirror. A sweaty slab of meat with fresh razor nicks decorating his bald scalp stormed toward the car like a bull on meth. He slapped his knuckles against my door, hard enough to make the metal jolt.
“Hey!” he snapped. “You buying, or you
leaving
?”
I fished a couple of tens out of my wallet and held them curled between my index and middle fingers, holding them up so he could see before I passed them over to Laika. She made the bills disappear.
“Buying,” I said. “Now piss off.”
He leaned in, squinting at me. “The fuck you just say to me?”
I slouched back. “You pay twenty percent in rent to Nicky Agnelli to let your girls work this stroll. Two years ago, you were paying twenty-five to Carl DuQueene. That’s a five percent improvement in profits.”
His brow furrowed.
“You remember how they found Carl DuQueene’s body?” I said casually.
Now he nodded, real slow. His left eye twitched, just a little. Like he was remembering a nightmare.
“Well,” I said, “I’m the reason why. So I want you to look me in the eye and say, ‘Thank you, sir, for the five percent.’ And don’t ever touch my fucking car again.”
He backed away, looking at me like he’d just met the devil. I smiled, nice and easy, until he’d scurried off back to his rathole.
Laika handed my phone back.
“Sorry,” she said. “I got nothing to tell you. No familiar faces.”
“Thanks for trying. Keep the twenty. Hey, how about the other way around? Any strangers hanging out, people who don’t fit in?”
“We’re all strangers out here,” she said, then held up an acrylic fingernail painted in eggshell blue. “Wait a second. There was a guy last week, going up and down the stroll. Said he was with some mission, wanted to get us off the streets, offered us shelter if we needed it. All that save-the-world stuff. I know he was talking to Half-Cap’s girls till he chased the guy off. He gave me his card, but I tossed that thing away. Sorry.”
“It’s something,” I said. “Maybe ask around, see if any of the other girls remember anything. Give me a call if they do.”
I left her on the street corner. In the rearview mirror I saw a battered old Nissan pull up to the curb in my wake, another eager customer. The wheels of commerce never stopped rolling.
• • •
You wouldn’t know Winter was a nightclub if it wasn’t for the line snaking down the block and the faint thudding of bass echoing behind the slate black doors. There was no advertising or big marquee, just a tiny brass plate and a small sloping arrow in blue neon fixed to the bricks outside.
Freshly scrubbed and shaved, wearing a navy blazer to cut the evening chill, I skipped the line and walked right up to the bouncers out front. One waved me over, lifted the blue velvet rope, and ushered me inside.
I was on The List. Given that Winter was owned and operated by agents of hell—specifically, Prince Sitri and his Court of Jade Tears—I wasn’t sure if that was an achievement to be proud of.
Fractal snowflakes whirled and exploded in showers of ivory and blue on LED wall screens, bouncing to the rhythm from the pulsing sound system. The packed dance floor writhed and shook in the shadow of a glass DJ booth dangling overhead from titanium cables. I stuck to the edge of the crowd and skirted around to a side passage lit in icy neon.
Past a few twists and turns, the music quickly fading to a muffled heartbeat, the hall ended in a solid metal door. A man in a black leather apron barred the way, his features shrouded in a gas mask with tinted lenses. A rusty machete hung from his belt. As I approached, he leaned over and tapped a code into a wall panel. The door clicked and swung open for me.
There were three levels to Winter, that I knew of. Anyone could get into the club up top—well, anyone who could pass muster with the doormen. The second floor, the honeycomb labyrinth with nested rooms done up in black leather and gold neon, was given to more intimate pursuits than wild dancing and fifteen-dollar cocktails. Pursuits largely involving things like handcuffs and the bite of a whip. Access to the “hive” was strictly by invitation only. Not everyone down here was working for Sitri’s court—most of them didn’t even know who really ran the place—but it was where you met the more interesting regulars.
The third level was where the Conduit lived. That was the creature who could open a pipeline straight to hell if you were unlucky enough to need one. I’d been down there twice, and twice was plenty.
Instead of getting myself lost, I stayed by the stairs and called Caitlin. She came out to greet me, and I squinted at her.
“How do I know it’s really you?” I said, only half joking.
She rolled her eyes and took my hand, leading me through the honeycomb maze.
“Probably,” she said, “because she knows if she ever pulls a stunt like that again, she’ll be going back to Denver without her teeth. And she might anyway. The night is still young.”