“Yes,” Claudia admitted. “But not like this. Not with the same man over and over again. I mean, I never see his face, but I know it’s the same man. He has the same power—that’s how I can tell. We’re in a house somewhere… definitely in L.A., up in the hills. He calls it his city of the damned.”
Her face turned red. “And then it gets very… sexual. And that’s all after that.”
Acheson looked at Kerr. “Hypnosis again, doctor?”
Kerr continued to stroke his beard, looking at Claudia directly. He took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh.
“No,” he said after a moment. “Not yet.”
Acheson leaned back in his chair. “Well Claud, it sounds like you need to have your car’s clutch looked at.”
“At least we got that much out of it.” Claudia’s Blackberry beeped. She pulled it from its holster and stared at its display.
“I have to pick up Chiho at the airport,” she explained.
“Ah, actually I’ll do that, if you don’t mind,” Acheson said suddenly. “I need to discuss something with her about her trip to Washington. Will that be a problem, Claud?”
“No,” Claudia said, but there was no disguising the fact she was put out by it.
“I’ll be back in about an hour,” he said, rising from his chair.
“You never picked me up at the airport when I did the federal runs,” Julia groused. She had played the courier role for a year, right after the team moved to Los Angeles. Acheson laughed.
***
He took the Harbor Freeway to the 105 Westbound to get to Los Angeles International. Chiho’s flight was due to arrive at 1:25pm, and the light traffic allowed him to arrive twelve minutes early. Acheson parked the Tahoe and walked across the eight lanes of airport traffic to the baggage claim area.
Not much later he spotted Chiho Hara’s small frame on the escalator. She wore a tan business outfit and sunglasses and had her long black hair pulled back in a ponytail that reached to the small of her back. She spoke into her cell phone. Acheson knew it was Claudia informing Chiho she would not be the one meeting her.
Acheson met Chiho at the base of the escalator. She nodded to him slightly.
“Mark, I’m surprised to see you here.”
“What, can’t I pick up one of my favorite troops? How was Washington? Fiedler give you a tough time?”
Chiho shook her head. “No, I only saw Millhouse and Schectner.”
“And how are the Twins of Evil?” Michael Millhouse and Bernard Schectner were civil service employees who reported to the Group’s senior director, Erskine Fiedler, himself a career government man.
“They’re well. I have nothing in the courier pack.”
“Cool. Let’s beat it.”
Acheson escorted her across the airport access roads to the parking garage. He opened the Tahoe’s passenger door for her.
“Ever the gentleman,” she commented as she climbed up into the SUV.
“At least someone recognizes it.”
As they merged onto Century Boulevard on their way to the 405, Chiho looked at him sidelong.
“Why are you here, Mark?”
Acheson adjusted his sunglasses as accelerated onto the southbound 405.
“How are things with you and Claudia?” he asked.
“Since when are my personal affairs your concern?” she asked lightly.
“Since never,” Acheson replied. “But she’s been acting very hinky lately, and—”
“You frighten her. She thinks you don’t respect her talents.”
“Untrue. If I didn’t think she was an asset, she’d be gone. Claud’s letting her personal feelings cloud her judgment.” He paused for a moment. “And I guess you haven’t been exactly trying to dissuade her, am I right?”
Chiho said nothing. Acheson merged onto the 105.
“Again: how are things between you and Claudia?”
“We get along well,” Chiho answered. “She’s a kind and gentle woman.” She removed her sunglasses and looked at him for a moment as he drove.
“You’re not really here to talk about Claudia,” she said finally.
Acheson sighed and smiled. “I guess I’m not. Sharon wants to get married.”
Chiho continued to look at him for a time. Then she slipped on her sunglasses and faced forward again.
“Then congratulations must be in order,” she said. “You must be happy.”
“You know that’s not the case.”
“Then perhaps choosing her over me was the wrong choice.”
Acheson clenched his teeth, but said nothing.
Chiho sighed after a long moment. “I’m sorry for that,” she said softly. “I’m just—I’m still angry with you, Mark. For choosing Sharon.” A pause. “Was it because I’m bisexual? Is that why—”
“That has absolutely nothing to do with it,” Acheson said. “Sharon and I get along better than you and I did. That’s all there is to it.”
Chiho took off her sunglasses and looked at him directly. “So you just used me in bed, then?”
Acheson clenched his teeth and took his eyes off the road for a moment to return her gaze. One thing Chiho had going for her was a pair of the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. Of a deep brown that bordered on black, they were the kind of eyes a man could lose himself in. She had a uniquely Japanese beauty, a sensuality that was only enhanced by a frosty—yet placid—demeanor.
“As I recall, you used me, too,” he said.
Chiho slowly put her sunglasses on again. “It only started out that way,” she said softly. She folded her arms beneath her small (but quite firm, he recalled unwillingly) breasts. “Kuso.”
Acheson fidgeted in his seat and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. “I don’t want to make this into a Peyton Place moment,” he said after a time. “I just want to know if Claudia’s communicated anything to you that might shed light on what is going on in this city.”
“She hasn’t been sleeping well, and she has a hard time getting up in the morning,” Chiho said. “I asked how she was feeling, and she said fine. But other than that, I’ve noticed nothing else.”
“She went into a fugue state last night when we were leaving the office.” Acheson went on to brief Chiho on the events of the night before.
“She hadn’t mentioned that to me,” Chiho said.
“That ever happen at home?”
“Not in my presence, no.”
“All right. So other than the sleepless nights, nothing else to report?”
“Her…” Chiho paused for a moment. “Her sex drive has been off lately. She hasn’t seemed very interested for the past week or so.”
Acheson thought about mentioning Claudia’s dreams, but elected to withhold that information. Better to let Claudia tell her.
“All right, then,” Acheson said. “Let me know if something else comes up.”
“Another reason Claudia feels troubled around you is that she knows how I feel about you,” Chiho blurted. “I’m not good at hiding my feelings from her.”
“I’m sorry for that,” Acheson said sincerely.
“I miss you, Mark. I miss your hands on me, I miss you inside of me, I miss your touch, I miss you all the time.”
“Stop.” Acheson kept his tone even, trying hard not to reveal the anger he felt. He wasn’t angry with Chiho; he was angry with himself, because her declarations of lust for him excited him. He was already well on the way to a full erection.
“I’m sorry about all of that, Chiho. But those days should stay in the past.”
Chiho leaned back in her seat and looked out the passenger window. “I know,” she said. Nothing else was said during the rest of the ride downtown.
3
The trucks began arriving after sundown. They entered the loading area and backed up to the docks, where they started the process of unloading. Schwimmer asked no questions. He did not watch the proceedings at all closely. Even if he had wanted to, he was compelled to overlook
almost everything he saw, so great was the power over him. The Master had not even threatened him with violence. Just one casual glance into that pair of undead eyes was all it took for Schwimmer to be held in a near-eternal state of thrall.
Oh, he could still think for himself. He formed his thoughts freely, and could still employ shrewd logic. For instance, he knew that his Master couldn’t exist in secrecy for much longer. Eventually, within days, perhaps weeks, people would begin asking questions and hunt about for clues. Discovery was unavoidable.
Schwimmer opined the Master did not need a great deal of time to complete his plan. He did not know what the Master’s plan was, of course, nor did he particularly care to find out. Schwimmer was just a lower functionary, his importance rivaling that of a fly. As he sat in his darkened office, he knew quite well his time was almost done.
“Still alive, are you?”
Schwimmer looked up. Tremaine stood in the doorway. Schwimmer would have hated him on sight in ordinary life. Now that his life was suddenly more than ordinary, Schwimmer hated him even more.
“What do you care?” Schwimmer asked.
Tremaine shrugged. “I don’t. Do you know what’s happening out there?”
“No… and I don’t want to.”
Tremaine laughed easily. He flipped on the overhead lights, and the fluorescent tubes flickered to life. Schwimmer blinked against the sterile brightness. Tremaine sat on the leather couch after taking a moment to smooth out his white slacks. He regarded Schwimmer’s desk for a moment.
“One could certainly get laid on this. Ever bonked a birdie on it?”
Schwimmer turned his head away from Tremaine, disgusted despite his soul-wrenching fatigue. Tremaine chuckled heartily.
“I’ll take that as a no. So… you want to be a member of the family?”
Schwimmer shook his head. “I don’t want any part of this.”
“Too bad. You’re in it all the way, my kike friend. Try and enjoy it while it lasts.”
To hell with you, Schwimmer wanted to say, but didn’t. They all lived in Hell already.
***
“How do you like my city of the damned?” the powerful Black Man asked. His voice was at once as sultry as a whisper sliding across satin, as raucous as a shout in a mausoleum. Claudia Nero trembled at the sound of it, at its sheer seductive force. No man’s voice had ever stirred such conflicting feelings in her.
She peered over the balcony railing. The glittering lights of Los Angeles beckoned to her, a terrestrial constellation infiltrating the night, whirling and twirling around the jaunty terrain. It was beautiful. And it was damned. It always had been.
“But why is it damned,” she asked, her voice paler than the moon overhead.
“A modern Sodom and Gomorrah… commerce, death, business, flesh, all rolled into one,” the Black Man said. “There exists no other city quite like this in the entire world. So modern. So sprawling. So normal in appearance, yet just beneath the surface, so impenetrably decadent. Anything can happen here. A lawless land hidden beneath a veil of civility.”
“You hate it.”
“On the contrary,” the Black Man said with a laugh, “I adore it. It just needs to be… refined a trifle.” Claudia gasped as cold fingertips stroked her back. Chills ran up and down her spine, as fleet as centipedes scrambling to evade a sudden light. But the chills did not leave her in the least bit cold; mysteriously, they coalesced into a moist heat that left her vagina almost soaking.
“Why am I here?” Her voice was a half-sob, half-sigh. “Why are you showing me these things? They’ll find out through me—”
“They will find out what I wish them to know,” the Black Man said. “Do you think I fear them? That fool Ellenshaw… he paled before me, caved in. His underling Acheson… torn by competing desires he hides from even himself, leaving him adrift and ineffective. The others, a motley collection of military burnouts who spend their earnings carelessly, not even saving enough for a single day’s retirement… if they were to live that long, which they will not. You know this, don’t you, my bitch?”
A cold hand slid over her shoulder like a spider, gliding on fingertips as hard as spikes; claws really. They tweaked her left nipple, teased it for a moment. Claudia moaned as an orgasm tore through her like wildfire, so intense that she almost wilted to the floor. The orgasm ceased suddenly as the hand floated away from her breast.
“You desire more?”
Claudia steadied herself on quivering legs. There was no denying it.
“Yes.”
“You will have to earn it, my bitch. You are a child of the City of the Damned, and you know the desires of the flesh, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then perhaps it’s time to start showing you some more.” With that, a hand as cold and lifeless as granite seized her jaw, turning her head away from the lights of Los Angeles. A figure lay supine not far from where she stood with the Black Man—
Claudia’s eyes snapped open as her heart pounded and her breath caught in her throat. The bedroom was quiet. A pale glow from the streetlights cast the lazily-moving shadows of a tree’s branches across the ceiling. The digital clock on the nightstand read 3:14AM. Beside her, Chiho Hara was fast asleep, her dark hair smelling of lilac.
Claudia rolled over onto her back and tried to recall her dream. Parts of it were clear, but other parts… they retreated from her recollection like phantoms slinking off into a misty night. There was nothing for her mind’s eye to survey. All that remained was a nameless sense of dread tinged with excitement.
Claudia rolled toward Chiho, spooning up against the smaller woman. Chiho’s body was not soft and curvy like her own, but hard, lithe, in phenomenal shape. She exercised like a soldier, keeping herself as close to her physical prime as possible. Aerobics, resistance training, martial arts—all conspired to leave her with a physique that Claudia could only liken to that of a coiled spring.
But Chiho’s control over her emotions was less solid than the discipline she exercised with her physical body. There were times when Claudia could read Chiho, and read her well. While they had never discussed it at length, Claudia knew Chiho was obsessed with Mark Acheson, a man Claudia had no beef with and generally liked. It pained Chiho that Acheson had turned her away, instead seeking out the companionship of Sharon Thomas. Claudia had nothing against Sharon, but when she compared her with Chiho, Sharon did seem a bit on the vanilla side (a thought that struck Claudia as funny, since Sharon was black). It all went to further prove that, to Claudia at least, men were a puzzle she felt she’d never quite understand.
Not that she hadn’t tried. Though she could count on one hand the times she’d tried to become familiar with a man—physically, at least—they just didn’t capture her attention the way a woman did. They did not arouse her, either intellectually or sexually…
…at least not until the Black Man in her dreams. And that was another cause for concern. Claudia had never been truly secure in her sense of self. She did not, on a fundamental level, know herself well. And like many people, she identified herself with her sexuality. Was it possible her preferences were changing? That seemed unlikely, as she and Chiho had enjoyed themselves for almost two hours before falling to sleep. If nothing else, it demonstrated to her that her desire for Chiho, while erratic as of late, was still genuine.
So why the dreams? Why such outright sexuality with a man whose face she hadn’t even seen?
None of it made any sense. And Claudia feared that by the time it did, it would be too late.
She fell into a blessedly dreamless sleep just before dawn.
***
Willie Lopez walked up to the small house on the corner, his leather jacket buttoned up against the cold. The streetlight at the corner was out, leaving half the intersection hidden beneath the veil of inky darkness. Overhead, the nighttime sky was devoid of stars; like the corner house, they too were hidden, but by smog, not by vandalized municipal equipment. A battered pickup truck roared pa
st, loud Latin music blasting from inside its cab. Lopez glanced at it, and for an instant, his eyes met those of the passenger, riding with one arm hanging out the window. José Sanchez nodded imperceptibly as the truck continued past to the intersection. Lopez didn’t nod back. The truck barely slowed as it rounded the corner and vanished from sight.
“Goin’ in,” Lopez whispered quietly as he pushed open the gate in the chain link fence that surrounded the house. His work boots thudded on the concrete walkway that led to the house’s heavy metal door. The house was generally a nondescript affair, one of the many thousands that were built in Hawthorne, a small city that made up part of southern Los Angeles. Decent, hard-working people who rose early and came home late owned some of the houses on the block. A man who didn’t exactly fit that particular mold owned this one. The owner of the small house on the corner was a member of Mara Salvatrucha, one of the most notorious gangs to land in Los Angeles county. The MS13 gang had originally been formed by old hands who belonged to the FMNL and former La Mara gang members from El Salvador, and they’d blessed the LA area with a special kind of violence that included blasting opponents with M-16s and hand grenades. They were more than just slightly dangerous, and the owner of the small house Lopez approached was practically the poster child for all that could go wrong with a man. Alonzo Arce was hardly a human being, in Lopez’s estimation; he was more like a deranged pit bull on steroids.
And one that loves to kill cops. That thought was never far from Lopez’s mind. He had spent the better part of a year trying to gain Arce’s trust, and tonight he was finally going to be introduced to Arce’s primary drug connection in Los Angeles. Lopez was alternately thrilled and mortified at the prospect. If the small wireless transmitter sewn into the collar of his oversized flannel shirt was found, Arce would kill him on the spot, long before Lopez’s fellow officers could make it in to save him. There were ten tactical officers like José Sanchez on this street and the next, and four marked police cruisers two blocks away. They might as well have been on one of Saturn’s moons.
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