Her Beautiful Monster

by Adi Tantimedh

  He hung up.

  “What?” I said to Julia as she looked at me.

  “I think you should have a bit more faith,” she said.

  “I like to think being practical is better than having faith,” I said.

  “We always find a way out of these binds,” Julia said. “I’m not worried. If anything, I’m excited to see how you do it.”

  “Me? You’re giving me far too much credit, love,” I said. “But I appreciate the thought.”

  “Do the gods have any suggestions?” she asked.

  “Please don’t start about the gods,” I said and winced.

  I looked around. Yes, they were all milling about in here with us, lounging around in the chairs, looking in the wardrobe, and watching us intently.

  “What’s this?” Julia opened another wardrobe, which was painted red and black, making it stand out from the standard cupboard with the normal clothes and shoes.

  Inside were some leather corsets, stockings, cat-o’-nine-tails, chains, fur-lined handcuffs, vinyl boots—all for women. Julia shook her head and laughed.

  “So Ross’s tastes are on the usual naughty schoolboy side after all,” I said.

  “Well, we might as well enjoy it since we’re going to be stuck here a few hours,” Julia said, picking up an expensive leather corset.

  My smartphone rang.

  “Marcie,” I said, answering.

  “Talk to me,” Marcie said.

  FIFTEEN

  I gave Marcie the rundown on what had happened in the last few hours, without the bit about the gods, of course.

  “Okay, I knew about this,” she said. “It was in one of the briefings. Roger kind of knew about it, too, but it was never supposed to be a Golden Sentinels job. The LA office just happened to know about it because Gossamer Rand Ross told Chuck about it before he left town to go shoot his movie.”

  “So this is a CIA–Golden Sentinels thing?” I asked.

  “Kind of,” she said. “Golden Sentinels isn’t the go-to for running guns. Ross just volunteered to give us a hand with this to earn brownie points and have a story to tell. Total coincidence that he’s a client of Golden Sentinels, really. The firm was never going to get involved.”

  “Why is a Hollywood director playing amateur spook to hold guns for you lot?” I said. “So why don’t you—I mean, they—send some proper agents to deal with it?” I asked.

  “Ravi,” Marcie said slowly. “Contrary to what all those dumb movies and TV shows have you believing, it is illegal for the CIA to carry out any operations on American soil. The Company’s jurisdiction is strictly overseas.”

  “That explains why you like being in London so much. You get to do all your crazy shit there.”

  “Right, so what the Company does is subcontract to proxies. Like, you know, Golden Sentinels or Interzone or whatever security company we have on the books.”

  “What I don’t get is why the guns, which are going to a bunch of US-backed rebels overseas, are here in the US? Shouldn’t they be shifted all over foreign soil?”

  “They will be, but they have to start from somewhere,” Marcie said. “And those are some of the latest state-of-the-art arms hot off the factory floor and only available to the military. The type of guns that the NRA and all the gun nuts dream of, that are only rumors right now. They’re not even in the gun magazines yet, but they talk about them on social media and message boards where they all have orgasms over them. You’re not going to find them over the counter at Walmart or a gun store or even those gun shows in the Deep South.”

  “That’s just great,” I said. “So how do I get out of this situation with those arseholes outside who will probably just shoot me and Julia and make it look like a home invasion, and the police won’t even know these guns were ever here?”

  “I put in a call for backup,” Marcie said. “They’re on their way.”

  “Who?” I said. “Who’s the backup? These are serious bastards out there, with guns.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry,” Marcie said with a chuckle. “I picked some serious bastards of our own. They’re more than qualified. You’ve met them.”

  “What? Who could it be?”

  “Who do you think? How many ‘qualified’ people have you met on the job?”

  It finally clicked.

  “Oh, no.”

  “Don’t be an ingrate, Ravi. Turns out a couple of them were in town on another job for the Company,” Marcie said. “Mostly a babysitting gig for Somebody Important. They can spare a couple of people to come pick you guys up.”

  “You say I already know them?” I said.

  “Yup, so you won’t be dealing with strangers here.”

  That didn’t particularly make me feel better.

  “So just sit tight, wait it out till your backup gets there,” Marcie said.

  “Then what?”

  “They pick you guys and the guns up, drive the guns to a safe house in North Hollywood, San Fernando Valley, which isn’t that far from where you are.”

  “So once we get to the safe house and drop off the guns, Julia and I can leave?” I asked.

  “That’s the idea.”

  “Hang on,” I said. “Might these guns be connected to that babysitting assignment our ‘friends’ are dealing with? That seems too much of a coincidence. Am I going to get drawn deeper and deeper into this mess?”

  “Just stay in the panic room and sit tight.”

  “Easy as that?”

  “Easy as that.”

  “Except for the fact that there’s a brush fire spreading across the hills towards us, and traffic is completely jammed on all the highways in Los Angeles,” I said.

  “How many times have we brought up the traffic now?” Julia said in the background. “I swear this is all everyone talks about here in Los Angeles.”

  “You can’t say you’re not getting the full Crazy America Experience, Ravi,” Marcie said, amused, which pissed me off.

  “Thanks, Marcie. I’ve always wanted to experience a different type of apocalypse in a different culture.”

  “Chill, Ravi,” Marcie said. “You’re not alone in this. We got your back. Call me if you need anything.”

  She hung up.

  “So what shall we do next?” Julia said, her voice oddly low and smoky.

  I looked at her for the first time since I’d been on the phone. While I’d been talking, Julia had changed out of her clothes and helped herself to the dominatrix gear from Gossamer’s S&M wardrobe. Black leather corset. Black lace knickers. Thigh-high boots with six-inch heels.

  “Um,” I said.

  “You look like a deer in the headlights,” she said.

  “What is this?” I stammered.

  “I got bored,” she said. “We’re going to be stuck in here for a bit. Might as well find something to amuse ourselves with.”

  “But we have men outside who want to kill us,” I said.

  “All the better reason to have a fuck,” she said. “To remind ourselves we’re alive.”

  “Julia, this is your addiction talking—”

  “Ravi, I’m trying to initiate some kinky sex with the man I love, not some sweaty arsehole in a bar.” She picked up the cat-o’-nine-tails and smacked it loudly against her hand. “Now, how does Daddy like it?”

  “Oh my God, Julia, this is getting too Freudian to turn me on!”

  “So how would you like it, then? Would you like a spanking?”

  “No, thank you.”

  She pushed me back on the bed and straddled me.

  “Shall we keep it vanilla, then?” she said.

  “Julia—”

  She shut me up with a long, slow kiss.

  I admit it calmed me down.

  “Feeling better?” she asked. “You’ve been getting more and more wound up since Dix.”

  “All right,” I sighed. “We can stay trapped in here, but if the fire reaches these hills and engulfs this house, we could burn to death or suffocate in here. That’s i
f those bastards outside don’t find a way of getting in here and shooting us.”

  “I thought these panic rooms were supposed to withstand explosives and fires,” Julia said.

  “There’s a possibility that a fire outside could turn this room into a furnace and we’ll be broiled like eggs,” I said. “Or those arseholes could find the ventilation system and pump in poisonous gas. Or the fire could melt the foundations of the house and either we get buried under it or the house falls down the hills, taking us with it.”

  “Ravi, you’re panicking.”

  “I’m not panicking, just thinking out loud.”

  She laughed.

  “If we’re going to die here, I’m glad we’re together,” Julia said.

  “I’m beginning to think we might make it out of here,” I said. “All because you’re on top of me.”

  “Ravi, shut up and enjoy the sense of danger,” she said, and kissed me again.

  We fell onto each other and out of our clothes. There was a desperation here, born from the drink and the prospect that we might not survive this. A fire was going to rage over the city and there were people outside with guns who were after us. Under the glare of the TV screens, we tangled and tumbled, a mishmash of limbs, our lips melding. She licked and clawed and sucked at me as time dropped away from us.

  We ignored the men on the screens, still running around the inside and outside of the house trying to find the guns that were in here with us.

  If you ever thought an English Rose in bondage gear was a thrill, getting her out of it was even better.

  SIXTEEN

  From Olivia’s recordings:

  “I was still in intel-gathering mode. I needed names, and I wasn’t ready to approach Brother Bull in Wan Chai just yet. I still had to keep up appearances, after all, so I killed a few birds with one stone. I agreed to spend time with my mum. I went shopping with her, had lunch with her at the Yacht Club, all those places that were the usual haunts of Ladies Who Lunch. My mum showed me off to her friends, the gossipy aunties who asked why I wasn’t married yet, what kind of work I’d been doing in London, when I was coming back to Hong Kong, offered to fix me up with their sons. Thankfully I could say Benjamin was my boyfriend, a brilliant techie and inventor in London who’s going to start up his own company any day now. Mum also introduced me to the new women in her circle, the ones from the Mainland who were married to the tycoons and politicians on the way up in China. Mum and her friends slagged them off behind their backs, as snobby Hongkies were wont to do. Mum thought they were crass and had bad taste, spending money for the sake of it and making awful fashion choices. I made note of their names, especially the politicos’ wives. I spoke Mandarin better than most Hongkies, so I could speak to them and agreed to hang out with them. We would go shopping together and work out together at the gym, all the better for me to get the lowdown on them and their husbands. I got the distinct feeling they were spending quite a bit more money than their husbands, as government officials, were supposed to earn. They definitely all went to the same plastic surgeon, since they all had the same nose job and the same cheekbones and eyes. But I wasn’t going to judge.

  “I find Hong Kong these days a bit depressing. The old haunts of my childhood, the shops, the cheap coffee shops and restaurants, were disappearing because Mainland billionaires were buying up property all over town and pushing them out with higher rents or demolishing them to make way for new luxury flats that the locals couldn’t even afford. The locals bloody hated the tourists from the Mainland who came across the border to buy designer goods. One thing about being a former British colony was that Hongkies had long been conditioned to stand in line for buses, food, and services, possibly the last vestiges of Britishness that we still possessed that the Mainland Chinese did not. That, and our preference for democratic rights. You could tell who the Mainlanders were by the way they cut through a queue, which often resulted in rows. As if Hongkies didn’t have enough to complain about already. I had come home to a culture war between Hong Kong and China. It wasn’t just that Hongkies feared the Mainland strengthening political rule over Hong Kong, it was also that they were afraid of losing their cultural identity, what made them Hong Kong, which is a vastly different culture from the Mainland’s, a different worldview, a different attitude. Hongkies were afraid of getting absorbed into China. I couldn’t feel smug that being in London would keep me out of all this. China was starting to make inroads into the UK, after all, what with companies’ property being bought up, and the British government only too eager to welcome any influx of extra cash into the country. We’re all too bloody connected now, no matter what country we’re in. This only reinforced my belief in keeping to the shadows, never getting caught doing what I do, which is pulling people’s secrets.

  “Just the first week of lunches, spin classes, yoga, and CrossFit at the gym with my new friends yielded some interesting clues. Hua’s husband was a bigwig in the Ministry of Agriculture. Bee’s husband was in Public Morals, and he was in Hong Kong keeping an eye on what kinds of content they have here that was prohibited in the Mainland but might be smuggled or digitally pirated for Mainlanders to consume. Fay worked in property, but her husband was an investment banker who commuted back and forth across the border. Ling’s husband was in the Ministry of Land and Resources.

  “The wives did love their designer clothes, and spent a lot of money on the latest Gucci, Christian Dior, Versace. As long as they stuck with the matching dress suits, they were fine. It was when they tried to mix and combine different tops and dresses that they tended to come a cropper. That and their tendency to wear the chintziest jewelry with it. Nothing spelled ‘Mainland Nouveau Riche’ like fashion faux pas such as these. And they were definitely spending more than a top official’s salary could keep up with. I gained favor with the wives by helping them with their fashion choices. That put me in their good books. I was their Hong Kong bestie who helped them navigate the waters of Hongkie society. I was sure they would dump me if someone better came along, but nobody knew the highways and byways of fashion and shopping better than I.

  “Back in my room, I consulted Derek’s book. They and their husbands were probably the ones depicted there, which might have implicated their colleagues and bosses as well. The book was a compilation of rumor and gossip, a compendium of tabloid journalism with a bit of investigative vigor. I imagined the book must have caused a bit of a stir when word of it got to the Mainland. No one there could buy it unless they crossed over into Hong Kong, and only if they knew to look for it in the shops. The Mainland government certainly didn’t want it smuggled in. Someone over there must have gotten pissed off enough about it to order Derek’s presence across the border to aid in their inquiries, or make a confession about his corruption of public morals. How long before they got enough out of him, before he finally confessed to what they wanted, then trotted out in front of the TV cameras to read the confession out loud before they let him go? It was my job to make sure that happened sooner rather than later.

  “Once I had enough names, I could begin to compile a list, and compare that list to the characters mentioned in the book Derek had published. That might give me a clue to who had decided to have him snatched and taken across the border for interrogation. I needed to suss out what game they were running, what they really wanted. Without them detecting my presence in any of this. I don’t want to get picked up and taken across the border to be interrogated in an unnamed facility. It would do my beauty regimen no good at all.

  “Right then, that’s enough for tonight. Time for bed.”

  SEVENTEEN

  After the third time we made love, Julia and I lay exhausted together on the bed. The endorphins must have settled us into a contented stupor.

  “Ravi?” Julia said, stirring.

  “Hmm?”

  “Look at the screens.”

  “What is it?”

  “I think all those men are dead.”

  “What?”

  I
looked at the monitors. On all six screens, the men in the ski masks lay sprawled and broken by the door, the fence, the garden, next to the pool. Julia and I seemed to have fucked our way through a shoot-out without noticing it. Probably just as well. The gods hadn’t been in here with us. I saw that Kali, Rudra, Vishnu, and Ganesha were all milling around the dead bodies, chilling and looking on as if admiring artwork at a gallery opening. Then I realized that Lakshmi, goddess of wealth and happiness, was in here with us. She seemed to enjoy hanging out in the panic room. She smiled and winked at me, gave me the thumbs-up. Yeah, thanks. I really needed to have her here to show me the fantasy of hanging around wealth. As far as I was concerned, she was still a projection of my unconscious. That made them all manageable to me.

  A familiar monster stood over the one by the pool, black mist of bloodlust wafting off him as he holstered his semiautomatic pistol and dragged the dead man by the leg out of shot. His name was Jarrod. Our rescuers were a team of four—Kevlar vests, casual back T-shirts, ammo belts and khakis, and dark glasses, your standard PMC attire. The other two men I hadn’t met before, one a Latino, the other a redhead with a large, exuberant beard.

  The men all had the dark, shadowy skin and blazing red eyes of Rakshasas. Of course they would be the demonic entities from Hindu mythology. I had to blink to see them as human again. The woman never took on a demon’s skin, but Kali stood behind her like a watchful parent.

  The woman holstered her pistol and approached the entrance of the panic room. She looked up at the camera and smiled.

  Ariel.

  She removed her aviator glasses and waved cheerfully.

  “Come on out, guys,” she said. “All clear.”

  EIGHTEEN

  By the time we came out of the panic room, Julia had changed back into her own shirt and jeans.

  “So you were gettin’ it on in there while we were cleaning up out here?” Ariel asked, smiling. “Good call! Cool juxtaposition of sex and death here.”