She was sick.
He could tell. But since she was a lady, he didn’t comment on it because it wasn’t any of his business.
“There’s a mite difference between ‘living in the past’ and ‘sticking with what works,’ ma’am.” He informed her. “I love that building. Spent my whole life creepin’ and crawlin’ around in it, I know where every nail and screw fits.” He gestured to the old building on the horizon. “It and me? We’re used to each other now, and even if you don’t think we’re pretty, we can get things done. Which, if you’ll forgive me, is more than can be said for you fine folks, with your lovely clothes, which are the height of fashion no matter how twisted up the season happens to be.” He straightened his tie. “Me? My necktie might be a touch narrow for current tastes, but if you’ll again excuse me for the boast, ma’am, my biggest problem at the moment is findin’ a garage in the city that’s big enough to fit my limo.”
The old woman snorted at that, then let out a wheezing cough. “Trying to drag that family back into respectability is a hard bargain, Thraex.”
“It’s uphill, ma’am, I can sure enough tell you that.” Thraex straightened in his seat, sensing that he was about to close a deal. “But I’m not one to tie myself to a drowning man. I stick with what works, and if it can’t do the job no more, I find myself somethin’ which can. That’s just the kinda fella I am. Tradition is only important if it’s a sign of quality and dependability, and as soon as it’s not, then tradition ain’t worth a damn bit of good to me no more.”
“This neighborhood is headed in a bold new direction, I agree.” Mrs. Magnolia Lafayette-Dupree didn’t look entirely convinced by his other logic though, and shook her head. “You make a fair case, son, but I can’t risk it. The Westgates are no longer worthy of that kind of trust, I’m afraid.”
“Now how would your family have gotten on if no one had believed in your great-granddaddy Benjamin, when he told them he’d found a valley of diamonds on that asteroid?” Thraex challenged, arching an eyebrow. “Probably wouldn’t have worked out so well for you, since that’s what launched your family into the forefront of this society.”
“One of them is a drunk, one of them is crazy, and Sasha should have been put away years ago.” The woman summarized. “If not for the murders than definitely for her… immorality.”
His jaw ticked, and he did his best to keep from getting angry with the woman. It wouldn’t help anything. “I know a good bit about Miss Sasha’s ‘immorality,’ ma’am, obviously.” He got out calmly. “And, as they say: ‘if it don’t scare the cows none, then who cares?’” He spread his arms wide. “It’s nobody’s business but mine.”
Magnolia shook her head, lip curving in distaste. “You’re far too kind to that woman, Thraex. You need to escape that family and start going out with normal people.”
“Ain’t no normal people left in Reichelt Park, ma’am. Freedom Squad took care of that and Triumph Industries is pickin’ off the survivors. You all played in the mud with animals, and now all them fine clothes are dirty. But the Westgates? Their clothes might be out of style… but they’re still as clean and dependable as they ever were.” He gestured to the Westgate Foundation building, through the trees. “And everyone in this town knows it. They’re the last of the old families left standing, and their roots go deep.”
The old woman took a long sip of her tea before responding. “Your step-father poisoned himself with vial after vial of stupidity, and left them nothing. Nothing but their name and your building.” She put the delicate cup down. “They’re broke.” The woman reminded Thraex flatly.
“But they’re famous.” Thraex shot back. “And in this big ol’ world of ours, I think you’ll find that the latter is more important than the former, ma’am. Their name was the most prized thing my step-daddy ever could have left them, he sure didn’t leave me anything near that valuable.” He smiled his flirty smile at her. “So how’s-bout you let me worry about their finances, you just worry about the money they’ll be funnelin’ into your parched accounts, and all for you not doing a damn thing at all to earn it.”
The old woman considered that for another moment, obviously taken by the idea, then nodded. “You’re a very convincing young man, Thraex.” She smiled at him in return. “I will consider your proposal, although I don’t know what you could possibly be getting out of this. Trying to rescue those people is an exercise in futility.”
Thraex rose to his feet. “There’s a glory in futility, ma’am, and in giving it your all anyway. Anything worth doing is worth failing at.” He gallantly kissed the back of her hand, then started to saunter away.
“Merridew and Doucet were right about The God Machine.” She called after him. “And deep down… I think you know it.”
Thraex stopped in his tracks for a long moment, looking down at the pavement. “Enjoy your afternoon, ma’am.” He told her simply, then walked away.
He made his way down the street away from the park, back towards the comforting silhouette of the Westgate Foundation building, which still stood tall above the neighborhood.
He’d always loved seeing it from this angle, because in his mind, it was the truest view of the building you could have.
The headquarters of “The First Family of Interdimensional Travel,” as seen from the neighborhood which they had helped build.
The Westgates might be crumbling before his eyes, but their name still meant something. He hadn’t been exaggerating about that. Their building was still unbreakably strong, towering over the fools that thought them obsolete. The Westgates had outlasted them all, and Thraex was determined to see that that didn’t change anytime soon.
He had a betrayal to carry off, after all.
He absently ran his hand along the stone wall to the park as he walked along its border. He’d spent a lot of time in the park when he was younger. It was a place where the whole community could come together and engage in their shared passions: science, socializing, and judging strangers.
Thraex had had his birthday party there.
His 13th.
Sasha had made him her famous “4th Dimensional Cake” and she had hugged him. His first real experience with closeness.
It had been… nice. He’d liked it. But, then again, he was a thirteen year old boy going through puberty in an alien dimension, so it really wasn’t too much of a surprise that he had enjoyed being embraced by a beautiful blonde scientist, who looked like a model and who treated him with sweet kindness.
…Her breasts had been very soft against him, he remembered that. Soft but firm. Barely constrained by her ladylike sundress, the hard buds of her nipples standing out proudly, pressing against him. Her dress had clung to her leg when she’d knelt down to hug him, giving him a brief view of the perfection of her lower thigh above her knee. Promising such wonders above its hem as an unwanted bastard like him would never be fit to see.
It was one of the first times he’d thought of Sasha as a person, rather than a god. Recognized that she was flesh and blood.
She was, quite literally, the first woman he had ever seen in his entire life. Before that, he had been completely unaware that they had even existed, he assumed that if other people were out there, they would also be men like him.
Like his father.
Dirty. Hard. Uncivilized.
Men.
Sasha Westgate showed him how wrong that assumption had been, and she was the woman against which all women since had been judged, and found wanting.
And want her he did.
He wanted to explore the mysteries of her body. Wanted to pet her, and stroke her, and touch her. Wanted to run his hands over every one of the private areas which his tutor, Mrs. Eugenia Crandall-Davenport, had showed him in a diagram of a woman’s body inside a biology textbook, and warned him that no fine lady would ever let a gentleman touch.
Those areas were unknown and exciting, and he had wanted to touch them on Sasha. Taste them. Make them his.
Thought
s which no “gentleman” should ever have.
He was a child and she was a woman who had never been anything but kind to him, and if he had had his way, he would have taken her right there. Roughly, without another word. Right in front of everyone at the party, in the middle of the park. Showed all them fine folks that she belonged to him and always would, no matter how much noise they made about it.
Mrs. Eugenia Crandall-Davenport hadn’t exactly gotten to the finer points of her “marital relations” lesson until several years later, but he’d been pretty sure he instinctively knew the basics. Even then. He’d looked at Sasha Westgate in her spotless and feminine party dress, and he knew exactly what part of him he wanted inside what parts of Sasha Westgate.
It had been an almost revelatory moment for him, not only because it was the first of many times he imagined that strange goddess naked and moaning in climax, but it was also the first time he recognized the second half of his real mission here.
He was a betrayer… and he would have Sasha Westgate.
He’d do everything he ever wanted to her.
These were the two central facts of his life.
The details of the party were rather hazy now, because immediately after the event, the exact duration of the hug had started to increase in his young imagination, while the neckline of her dress went ever downward.
Dream had long ago melded with reality and he wasn’t sure where to draw the line anymore, or if he even wanted to try.
By the time he was fifteen, his memory of the “hug” had basically become them dry-humping next to his birthday cake, while she let him bury his face in her fully exposed cleavage and whimpered in surrender as his fingers played inside her delicate lace panties.
Now, all these years later… well, his imagined memory of the event was no longer even fit to remember in mixed company. Hell, that kind of debauchery shocked even him. He was downright ashamed to be that kind of man, even in his imagination. He now remembered them doing darkly sexual things which blurred the lines between pleasure and pain, and which were… well… downright ungentlemanly.
Thus far, his mission to secure Sasha Westgate for himself had taken 20 years. But life couldn’t keep her away from him forever. Thraex was a patient and methodical man. And he’d made up his mind the moment he’d first seen Sasha Westgate: she would be his. Not just for a night, not just for a long weekend, but forever. That woman was his first and only woman.
It was Thraex’s one and only real ambition.
As long as he held the Westgate Foundation building and controlled her family… she had nowhere else to go.
He recognized that he should probably feel bad about using her love for her idiot relations as a chain to tie her to him… but he didn’t. Sasha Westgate was his and he’d gladly play any card fate dealt him, if it allowed him to hang onto her.
And now that he had her? She wasn’t going anywhere. Thraex would put up damn guard towers if need be, making sure that his Westgates stayed in the happy little enclosure he’d meticulously created for them.
It was nice there, right? They didn’t need to leave. It was much safer for them on their preserve, where he could keep an eye on them.
He reached his destination and pushed open the door to “History’s Giftshop,” which was located a block away from the Westgate Foundation building.
Founded by the husband of noted adventuress Virginia Dare after WWII, the shop specialized in all the mystical, antique, and cursed objects which any self-respecting super-scientist or superhero might need.
If it could be stolen from a tomb, found deep in a temple cave behind a series of clever deadly traps, or bought on the black market in a country whose name you couldn’t spell, then it would probably show up at History’s Giftshop eventually.
There used to be dozens of shops like that in the neighborhood. Dimly lit little stores filled with archeological curios, scientific trinkets, and piles of junk. The perfect place to buy a mask filled with cursed emeralds, or a suitcase of stolen plutonium, or a headset which allowed you to control plants. Anything and everything you could imagine. But these days, History’s Giftshop was the only store of its kind left in Reichelt Park. The last of a dying breed.
He made his way into the store, which was standing as a stalwart against modernity. The shelves were still crammed with all kinds of magical odds and ends, most of which looked like they hadn’t been touched since the Kennedy administration.
The whole placed smelled like dust and old books.
Behind the glass counter sat Clayton Dare, a man in his 60s who dressed like a college professor. The rest of his family might be adventurers to the core, but Clayton was more at home in a library, wearing nothing but tweed. Thraex had known him for years and had never seen him wearing anything other than a tweed suit, no matter the weather.
The man adjusted his gold rim spectacles. “I don’t want no trouble in here, Thraex.” He warned, taking a step back. “Not after last time.”
Thraex ignored that, prowling closer to the counter. He dropped his parcel in front of the older man, producing a loud thumping sound on the worn glass. “I asked you for a thirteen inch bronze statue of The Eater of Joy.” He tapped the wrapped object. “This is fifteen inches.” He shook his head, pointing at the statue in question. “That is unacceptable.”
Clayton looked down at it, then back at Thraex. “It took me over four years to find that one.” He objected. “Damn near got my granddaughter killed in the process, she had to jump off a rope suspension bridge with it strapped to her back, and…”
“I don’t care.” Thraex told him flatly, cutting off his unnecessary explanation. “It does not fit my requirements. So, either find me one which does, or I will take my business elsewhere.”
That seemed to amuse Clayton for some reason, and he began to unwrap the statue. “Good luck with that, lad. In case it’s escaped your attention, the neighborhood is changing. We’re the only shop left from the old days, everything else in this neighborhood just sells obnoxious souvenirs, Funko Pops, or is boarded up and sells drugs.”
“I will find someone who can fulfill my order if you can’t, old man.” Thraex jabbed a finger onto the glass counter in front of him. “I need a thirteen inch version of this exact statue. This is not open for debate.”
Clayton picked up the statue in question and placed it onto a shelf behind him, where it would undoubtedly sit and wait for decades until someone else found themselves in need of it. “Oh, well why didn’t you say so. Certainly, I’ll just run right out and find you another lost treasure of a mystical beast from a parallel dimension of swordsmen.” He waved a sarcastic hand. “No problem.”
“I know the statue fitting my requirements exists in this dimension.” Thraex insisted. “You need to find it.”
“Is this a world-ending emergency of at least a Class 3 rating?” Clayton asked emotionlessly. “Because if it’s not at least a Class 3, then it’s going to have to take a number and get in line behind all the other artifacts of doom which need to be obtained.”
Thraex pointed at the statue. “Old Professor Beardsly’s father found two thirteen inch statues of The Eater of Joy while on a dig with your grandfather in 1927.” He informed the man coldly. “One of them is above the reception desk in the lobby of the Westgate Foundation, but the other one was stolen from the building years ago.” His eyes narrowed. “I want it back. Now.”
Clayton blinked at him.
Once.
Twice.
“You’re searching the world for a cursed mystical statue of a particular size… for decorative symmetry?” Clayton asked in amazement.
“It belongs to the Westgate Foundation.” Thraex growled. “Which means it belongs to me. And whoever has got it, had best return it, ‘fore I skip the middleman and simply track down the current owner myself. I figure he’d rather deal with you than have words with me.”
Clayton eyed him for a moment longer, then nodded. “Okay. I will put out additional fee
lers and let the usual suspects know that this is a stolen artifact they don’t want the trouble of possessing.” He started writing something down onto a pad of paper next to the register. “I’ll let you know if anything shakes loose, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”
“I don’t ‘hope,’” he told the man firmly, “I ‘know.’”
Clayton put the pad down. “Was that it?”
Thraex scoffed at him. “What, you want to spend a while jawin’ about the weather?” He started towards the door. “It’s hot as manure straight from the horse. No sense in discussin’ it, everybody with any sense already knows.”
“Speaking of the weather,” Clayton raised his finger to draw attention to the topic, “word has it that it’s the result of Colby Westgate’s meddling with the climate…”
Thraex swore silently to himself, once again wondering how a girl who rarely talked could somehow still manage to blab that bit of news all around town. “Are folks in Reichelt Park really so desperate that now they’re blamin’ the Westgates for the damn weather!?!” He rolled his eyes. “Folks has got too much time on their hands, no wonder they’re all sinkin’ faster than a cinderblock thrown into the river.”
Clayton gave a soft laugh of amusement. “You are such a horrible person, Thraex, you know that? You and I both know she’s behind it— the entire thing has got the Westgate name all over it— but you’re gonna lie straight to my face about it.”
Thraex paused for a beat, then nodded. “Looks like.” He admitted dryly.
Clayton chuckled again. “That’s the kind of thing I miss in this neighborhood. People calling out each other’s dirty laundry. There was accountability there.”
“Colby Westgate ain’t accountable to nobody but herself and her giraffe, and if anyone in this town says different, them and me are gonna have words.”
Clayton ignored that, using a cloth to wipe down the counter. “Used to be that there were scientists, adventurers, and Capes. The Westgates, my family, and whoever the super-flavor of the week was. But now the science is done by ‘Triumph Industries,’ a billion dollar corporation that doesn’t give a shit about the public, everywhere worth exploring already has been, and the Caping is paradoxically done by a group which were undoubtedly the most incompetent villains this city ever had.” He spread his arms wide to his surroundings. “I’ve got the treasures of a dozen different now defunct super-science organizations and the secrets of fifty years of Capes for sale. I’ve got enough magical trinkets in this room to kill us all a million times over… but no one cares anymore.” He looked down at the showcase in front of him, unseeingly. “…No one cares.”
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