by R. L. King
On the far side of the bar, obscured from where they’d been sitting by the seething crowd, was a door with an unobtrusive No Admittance sign. Like the rest of the place it was painted black, and it looked like it led to the kind of hallway you’d go down to get to the restrooms. The only thing that indicated that it might have other purposes were the two beefy, tattooed guys dressed in tight leather pants and harnesses that showed off their impressive physiques. They lounged on either side of the door, drinks in their hands, doing their best to look like a couple of club patrons who’d simply decided to hang out here for a while and watch the show.
Stone stopped Verity and Jason as they drew up to the bar. “Order us something,” he muttered under his breath to Jason. “I want to get a read on them.”
Jason moved over to the bar, Verity following closely; it was crowded, but they were able to worm their way in. He ordered a beer for himself and a Guinness for Stone; Verity looked like she was going to try ordering something alcoholic, but at Jason’s glance decided it wasn’t worth the effort and instead got a sparkling cider. By the time they escaped the crowd and got back to Stone, he appeared to have finished whatever he was trying to do. “Anything?” Jason asked, handing him the Guinness.
Stone nodded. “The one on the right appears to be Evil, though I can’t quite be sure. At least one of them is, for certain. They’re too close together for precise evaluation. We need to be careful.”
“Could you tell if they like girls or boys?” Verity asked.
Stone looked surprised. “Erm—why?” When she didn’t answer right away, he shrugged. “I think they’re straight. At least judging by the leers they gave two scantily clad young ladies I saw trying to get in, while completely ignoring their male companions.”
She grinned. “Let me handle this, then.” she said. “Just follow me and play along.” She looped her arm through Stone’s and began moving toward the guards.
As the three of them approached, the guards casually moved toward each other to block the door. “Hey, you two,” Verity said with her best wolfish grin.
The two men looked her up and down. “Haven’t seen you around here before,” the left one said.
“I’m new in town, and looking for a little action,” she said. Her expression suggested what sort of action she was looking for quite effectively.
The other guard indicated Stone and Jason. “Who are these two?”
She smiled, squeezing Stone’s arm. “He’s my…date. And he,” she added, pointing at Jason, “is my bodyguard. He makes sure everybody plays nice, you know?”
Jason pulled himself up to his full height, moved a little closer to Verity, and glared at the guards. This was a role he could play with ease.
“So, what do you say?” she asked them, reaching out to tweak the closest one’s nose, then let her finger continue halfway down his chest. “You gonna let us in so we can liven the place up a bit?”
The two guards looked at each other for a moment, then the one she’d tweaked shrugged. “Sure, why not? You’re gonna have to pay for your friends, though. Twenty bucks cover, each.” He leered. “Or you can leave them here and go on in yourself…”
“Oh, that’s quite all right,” Verity said. “I like having them around. Pay the man, will you?” she said to Stone.
“Of course,” he murmured, handing over the money. The guards stepped aside.
“Oh, look,” Jason said when they were safely past and the door swung shut behind them. “A pretend basement this time. This is really getting to be a theme.”
Stone grinned. “Well, it is San Francisco,” he pointed out. “Not too many real basements around here, what with the earthquakes and all. They have to make do.”
Ahead was a short hallway lined in more band posters and ending with a staircase down. The music was a lot quieter here, but there was an odd odor in the air: a mixture of vinyl, body oil, sweat, and what smelled like incense. Jason was getting a bad feeling about this, but there was nothing to be done about it except to follow Verity and Stone down the stairs. The main source of his concern was the fact that if this really was the only public entrance to the dungeons, then the door above them was the only exit from this place they knew about. He never liked going anywhere dangerous that only had one exit. Once again he wished he’d been able to obtain a pistol, though he had to admit that getting it inside this place would have been difficult unless Stone had more magic tricks up his sleeve than he was admitting.
At the foot of the stairs was a wide doorway that opened out onto a large space that had been divided into smaller rooms by barriers that reminded Jason of the ones at the hospital, except these were taller, more substantial, and painted black. The music was louder in here, but different: still dark, but more ambient and instrumental, with a hypnotic, driving beat. Occasionally a moan, laugh, or some other sound of pleasure or pain rose above it. The walls were black too, with flashes of neon scattered around for effect. The ceiling was dotted with strobes and black lights. The whole effect was disorienting, eerie, and very strange. “Where the hell do we start?” he asked.
“Let’s look around a bit,” Stone said, stepping aside to allow a couple to move past them. The man was naked except for a tiny thong, sandals, a ball gag, and a dog collar; the woman was dressed similarly to Verity. She held the end of a leash attached to the man’s collar and was pulling him along. Neither one acknowledged Stone and the others, but the man looked utterly blissful.
To their right was a large table covered in safe-sex literature, boxes of condoms, small individually wrapped disinfectant towelettes, and rubber and latex gloves. A poster above the table depicted a couple of indeterminate genders engaged in enthusiastic sex and read in large purple letters: Play Hard! Play Safe!
Jason took a deep breath. This wasn’t going to be easy. He’d been to strip clubs many times before, and always enjoyed them; he’d even once spent the night with what he jokingly called “commercial affection” when he’d been at a particularly low point in his love life. But this—he shuddered a little. “You can’t get any kind of good read down here, can you?” he asked Stone.
The mage shook his head. “No, not where we are. There are definitely Evil here, but no way to tell where or who. Come on. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can get out of here.”
Oddly, it made Jason feel a little better that Stone didn’t seem to be enjoying himself here either. Even Verity was looking a little freaked out—he imagined that whatever idea she had about how these places were supposed to work didn’t match up with the reality. “The floor is sticky,” she said, wrinkling her nose and picking up one of her Doc Marten-clad feet as if she’d stepped in a pile of dog leavings.
“Come on,” Stone said grimly, and started off to the left. The other two hastened to follow him.
For the next twenty minutes, all three of them got a crash course in a subject they all would have preferred to avoid. As it turned out, the dividers were there to delineate spaces both small and large. The small ones, equipped with beds that were little more than stained mattresses on cheap frames, had black curtains covering their entrances, and were obviously meant to be used by groups of two or three people. The larger ones, which ranged in size from a medium-sized room to a large garage, were set up for various “scenes”: one contained a wooden rack with leather straps, and an assortment of whips and floggers neatly arranged on a table along one side; one was set up like a medical office with a surgical bed, a collection of wicked-looking instruments on a tray and a glaring overhead light; another was, with the help of fairly artful painting on the barrier walls, designed to look like a prison cell, and contained a large metal cage in the back occupied by a naked man who appeared to have been left there alone.
Stone moved staunchly along, occasionally stopping for a discreet consultation of his magical detector. For the most part, none of the dungeon’s denizens seemed to mind the presence of others; only one couple glared at them with an angry “Fuck off!” when
they glanced into their open cubicle. The others either ignored them or, in some cases, seemed glad for the audience. One woman who was obviously an exhibitionist perked right up and put on a show for them as they went by, draping herself around her leather-clad “mistress” with great enthusiasm. An attractive, middle-aged man dressed in a quasi-military uniform similar to Stone’s offered the mage a proposition that he politely declined, whereupon the man smiled ruefully, bowed, and faded off into the darkness.
At one point, much to their consternation, they developed a fan club: three small, thin men in briefs and flip-flop sandals spotted them and began following them around, making all sorts of inappropriate comments and invitations with wide, cheerful smiles. They didn’t seem to discriminate on their choice of partners, directing their invitations to all three equally. Jason was a few seconds from informing them that if they got near Verity again he was going to punch their teeth in one at a time when they spotted a blond, shirtless man in short shorts and immediately hurried off to follow him, waving jaunty goodbyes at Stone, Jason, and Verity.
“You getting anything now?” Jason asked again as he watched them go. The urge to take a shower, preferably in disinfectant, was growing by the minute.
“No…” Stone looked confused. “This is…odd.”
“What? Everything’s odd in here.”
“No, no. That’s not what I mean.” He held up his detector. “I’m getting readings, but they’re faint. As—strange as this is here for us, these people are clearly enjoying themselves. Even the chap who was getting his bare bum whipped so enthusiastically by that large woman—didn’t you notice? He looked like he was having the time of his life, and so did she. I can’t say for sure, but I would be very surprised if any of the participants here were Evil, nor many of the spectators.”
“Yeah,” Verity added, nodding. “I see what you mean. We haven’t seen anybody like that kid at the haunted house, just standing around watching and getting his jollies—and even if people were watching, nobody’s really getting hurt. Not permanently, anyway. Do the Evil still get off on pain if the person enjoys it?”
“Could we be in the wrong place?” Jason looked concerned now. “What about Marilee and her cart? I mean, I guess everybody misses sometimes, but—”
Stone wasn’t listening. He appeared to be deep in thought, staring at but obviously not seeing a lurid poster for a band called Dark Desires on the wall in front of him. Finally he shook his head, as if trying to rid it of cobwebs. “I don’t understand this,” he said. “There are definitely Evil here—I’m getting readings, and I’ve no reason to doubt them. But the concentration—it’s not as high as we were led to expect.”
Verity started to say something, then held up as two women, their arms draped around each other’s shoulders and passing a joint back and forth, moved past them. When they were gone, she said slowly, “Well…the Evil do get off on any kind of emotions, right? Not just the bad ones. They just like the bad ones better. But it’s kind of hard to make a place where there are bad emotions all the time. We tried to think of one before, and the best we could come up with was a haunted house.”
“Or some sort of asylum or prison,” Stone agreed. “But what are you getting at?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know exactly. I was just thinking—maybe this place is kind of like—broccoli or something.”
Stone and Jason both stared at her like she’d sprouted antennae. “What?” they asked in near-unison.
She grinned sheepishly. “Sorry, sorry. Sometimes my shorthand only makes sense to me. What I mean is that if they need strong emotions to live and it’s sometimes hard to get the bad ones they really like—then maybe the kind they get here are something they need, even though they don’t like it as much. You know, like eating your broccoli when you don’t have any candy bars.”
“Verity, you’re weird,” Jason told her.
“Indeed,” Stone agreed. “But she has a point. Perhaps what they’ve got set up here is a place where they can get a fairly constant influx of emotional sustenance—not what they prefer, certainly, but enough to keep them going until they can get what they prefer.”
“So does that leave us back at square one?” Jason asked, hoping very much that it didn’t. He wasn’t sure how much more of this kind of detective work he could stand.
“Not necessarily,” Stone said, pulling out the detector. “We just need to figure out where the Evil activity is coming from, if not here.”
“Some sort of secret part of this building?” Verity asked.
“Possibly,” Stone said. “Let’s spend a bit more time investigating this area down here. Look for any unmarked doors, areas that don’t seem to get a lot of traffic—anything that looks out of the ordinary.” At Jason’s eye-roll, he grinned. “All right, more out of the ordinary than just about everything else ’round here. Better?”
Jason didn’t answer that.
“I’m going to try something,” Stone told them. “I didn’t want to do it before because it has its own problems associated with it, and I didn’t think we needed it before, but I think we do now.”
“What’s that?” Verity looked interested.
“Come on,” he said, gesturing toward an empty cubicle. They moved behind the black curtain and he closed it behind them. “I have a spell—it’s a concealment spell, but not invisibility per se.”
“You can make people invisible?” Jason asked.
“I can, but it requires a lot of energy and it’s almost never practical for anything more than a few seconds. No, this is more like a misdirection than true invisibility. Somewhat akin to what the Forgotten can do to make people not notice buildings. It’s essentially a stronger version of the concealment spell I’ve been doing on the car for a while now. Surprisingly, it’s a lot harder to do it on people than it is on cars. People rarely notice cars anyway, unless they’re looking for a specific one.”
Verity cocked her head. “You mean you can make it so people don’t see us, even though we’re not invisible?”
“Essentially. It’s risky, especially in crowds, because it doesn’t make us incorporeal. If someone runs into us, or we speak right next to them, they’ll still notice us. But it will help us fade into the background a bit and perhaps make it so we can see things that we might not see if people were aware of us.”
Jason gave him a look. “Al…I can think of at least a dozen times in the past few days where that would have come in really handy. Why didn’t you tell me you could do this before?”
“Because a few days ago I didn’t have the items I’ve been building, and it’s damned tiring to keep even a simple spell like that going if I have to power it myself—especially if it’s covering more than one person.” He raised an eyebrow. “Jason, before I met you and got caught up in your little web of insanity, I was making a good go at just being a university professor. My magic’s been more of the experimental variety the last few years. Last time I tried being an action hero, people died. So I don’t exactly get much call for using that kind of spell these days.”
“Let’s try it now,” Verity said. “What do we have to do?”
“Stay close to me, and whatever you do, stay out of people’s way. Stay close to the walls, and if a large group is coming, duck into one of the cubicles until they pass by.” Gesturing, he chivvied the two of them into standing next to each other, then moved in front of them. He held up his hand and moved it slowly over all three of them. Jason noticed that the blocky purple ring he wore glowed slightly. In a few seconds, he lowered his hand. “There, that’s done.”
“I don’t feel any different,” Verity said, holding up her hand as if expecting not to be able to see it.
“Well, you wouldn’t, would you?” Stone said. “Trust me, though, it’s working. Remember, stay close. You don’t have to be touching, but don’t move more than a couple of feet away. Let’s go.”
They walked out of the cubicle into the still-unoccupied hallway and set off. “Let’s
investigate as much of the area we haven’t already seen as we can,” Stone muttered. “I’m convinced there’s something down here we’re not seeing.”
“Wait a sec…” Jason said, stopping. Stone, in front, had to stop fast to avoid moving the spell effect away from him.
“Don’t do that,” he said irritably. “Didn’t you hear what I just said?”
“No, this is important,” Jason insisted. “You said ‘something down here we’re not seeing.’”
“Yes, and—?”
“Well, what if you’re not the only mage here? We know they’ve got at least one good one, or they did anyway, before Verity evicted him. Who’s to say he hasn’t been re-occupied?”
Stone stared at him. “You know, I didn’t even—”
“—think of that,” Jason finished. “Yeah. I didn’t either, ’til you said that. But remember that door in that restaurant? The one with the gateway? Or you and your crypt? What if there’s a hidden door around here somewhere?”
“Unlikely,” Stone said slowly. “But possible.”
“Why unlikely?”
“Because that sort of thing is white magic, not black. Remember I told you permanent magic isn’t something black mages do? It’s one of their biggest weaknesses. That kind of concealment magic is permanent, or at least long-term.”
“So, you’re saying they can’t do it, or just that it would be hard?”
Stone thought about that for several long seconds. “It wouldn’t be completely impossible,” he said at last. “But it would require an immense amount of effort. The way their magic works, they probably would have had to kill at least one person to get the power to even begin it, plus put their mage—or mages—at some personal risk. So, they would likely save it for something they wanted to conceal very much.”