The Forgotten

by R. L. King

  Stone rejoined them. “Shall we, then?”

  The bouncers didn’t give them a second look—including Verity and her fake ID—but just collected their money and waved them in with a bored “Enjoy the show.” Beyond the padded doors was a steep, black-painted stairway lined with posters and flyers from bands who had previously played at the club, along with a lot of graffiti. Most of the latter seemed to be names and phone numbers, band names, and general obscenities regarding one band or another. Jason didn’t spot anything that looked like gang tags, and surprisingly he could find no evidence of Forgotten symbols. When he mentioned this to Stone as the three of them were borne along up the stairs by the rest of the crowd, he shook his head. “If you were Forgotten, would you have any desire at all to come in here?”

  “Good point,” Jason had to admit. Both of them had to shout over the music.

  The stairway ascended what appeared to be one or two floors, and then opened out onto a large, crowded dance floor. The music, no longer muffled even by one wall, was nearly deafening now. The three of them stepped out of the flow of traffic and stood to the side so they could take in the scene.

  It was impossible to see everything from where they were—it was evident that the place was designed in such a way that it wouldn’t allow unrestricted sightlines to much of anything. There were no windows. The only things they could see clearly were the enormous purple-neon-rimmed bar on the other side of the room, and the stage far off to their right. Small tables dotted the landscape, spread out and hidden back in alcoves so no more than two or three of them were near each other, and all around them people stood in little knots holding drinks or writhed on another dance floor in front of the stage. The band currently performing consisted of a slim young woman behind an impressive looking synth, a dark-haired man in sunglasses playing guitar, another man they couldn’t quite see on drums, and an animated lead singer with short-cropped, bright blond hair and a military-looking outfit. There was no way to make out any of the song’s lyrics between the distortion, the volume, and the fact that the lead singer was growling into the mic. The crowd was eating it up, though.

  “Where do we start?” Jason shouted over the music.

  Verity tapped his arm and pointed to a miraculously empty table near one of the walls. They hurried over and commandeered it. Once they were seated, Jason leaned in toward Stone and yelled, “Is your magic thing buzzing yet?”

  Stone raised an eyebrow, but pulled the little cube out of his pocket and held it in one hand, shielded by his other. The crystals were glowing faintly. “It is,” he said. “As I expected—I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find a decent contingent of Evil in here.”

  “That doesn’t help much,” Jason said. “What do we do—just wander around until we find something? I don’t want to split up.” At Verity’s glare, he glared right back at her. “I’m sorry, V, but I’m still responsible for you for another month, and there’s no way I’m gonna let you wander around a place like this by yourself.”

  “He’s right,” Stone said. “I don’t think it would be the safest thing for any of us to wander around here alone. It’s unlikely we’ll be spotted or recognized, but if that were to happen, I think our chances would improve significantly if we remained in a group.”

  Verity nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Most of these people look like fun, but I’ve seen a few sleazeballs, too.”

  “I don’t think what we’re looking for is out here, though,” Stone said. “We need to investigate the dungeon area.”

  “Where is it?” Jason asked. The crude map Stone’s student had provided didn’t include the entrance to the dungeons. “We can’t exactly walk up to somebody and ask, ‘Hey, can you tell us where the bondage dungeon is?’”

  Verity grinned. “Sure we can. You just have to do it the right way.” She started to stand, then waved Jason off as he reached for her to pull her back down. “Just keep an eye on me. I’m not going far.” She pointed at a balding, middle-aged man dressed in a leather jacket with a mesh shirt underneath, too-tight pants, and a dog collar similar to hers. He stood about ten feet away from their table on the periphery of the dance floor. “Gonna go talk to him for a minute.” Before Jason could protest further, she was gone.

  Jason and Stone did not take their eyes off her while she sidled up to the man, close enough that their leather-clad shoulders touched, and appeared to be saying something to him. Everything about her body language suggested that she found him the most attractive man in the club, and it was everything Jason could do not to leap up and punch the guy’s lights out. “Steady,” Stone cautioned with a hand on his arm. “Let’s see if she can pull this off.”

  The man’s pasty face broke into something resembling a leer as it became clear that this attractive young woman seemed interested in him. He said something to her, to which she replied with a predatory smile. He said something else, pointed across the room toward the bar, then reached out as if to touch her. She danced deftly out of his grasp, shaking her head and waving her finger at him in a ‘naughty boy’ gesture. He looked briefly crushed, then brightened, said one more thing to her, and moved off into the crowd.

  Verity came back over to the table about three seconds before Jason was about to jump up and drag her back. She dropped down into her seat with a long sigh. “What a perv,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I took a chance—with an outfit like that he might have just been a leather daddy with bad taste in clothes, but no, he was a straight perv. I told him I was looking for a little more interesting action, and he practically drooled on me.”

  “Did you find out where the dungeon is?” Stone asked.

  She nodded. “The entrance is over there past the bar. It’s on the first floor, which is why we had to come up here to get to the club. There’s no other way in for the public besides through here. Supposedly you don’t get in without an invitation, but he said you can bribe your way in, and women and cute guys pretty much just have to smile at the door guy.” She looked the two of them up and down. “I think you two qualify. We should be okay.”

  “How did you get rid of him?” Jason asked, hooking a thumb toward where Perv Guy had disappeared while doing his best to ignore what she’d said about him and Stone.

  She chuckled. “Oh, that’s easy. I told him to get out of my sight. I think he thought I was a dominatrix. Which means he’ll probably be looking for me once we get in there, but I’ll just tell him to lick my boots or something and we’ll be good to go.”

  Jason looked at her sideways. “You know way too much about this stuff. I’m not gonna ask you where you learned it.”

  She shrugged. “Hey, it was pretty boring when I was in the nuthatch. I did a lot of reading.”

  Stone stood. “Well, then. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can think of many places I’d rather be spending my time. Shall we get on with this?”

  Jason was all for that. The sooner they got done and out of here, the happier he’d be. This wasn’t his kind of club even if it wasn’t a haven for Grand Poobah Evil of this part of the state, and much as he was loath to admit it, Verity’s comfort level in here didn’t sit well with him at all. He wondered sometimes—often, actually—how she managed to deal so well with the aftermath of the five years she’d gone through. Nobody just shrugged off that kind of situation. He kept catching himself watching her as if expecting her to lose it any minute. The fact that she hadn’t yet he attributed less to Stone’s blocking magic and more to a growing fear that it was building up and getting ready to blow at the smallest provocation. Can’t worry about that now, though, he told himself, hurrying to catch up to Stone and Verity. Gotta deal with this now. Time for the rest of it later. He might not be able to cast lasers from his hands, but his fists were in pretty good shape, and he wasn’t about to let anything happen to Verity and Stone while he had the power to prevent it.

  On the far side of the bar, obscu
red 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 wit
h 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.”