“It’s because the other members of the board are far wiser than you.”
“Dr. Harkenrider, you may be skilled at frightening and intimidating people to get your way.”
“I am.”
“Well so am I! You’re my employee and you will respect me.”
Harkenrider let out a satisfying laugh as though he had been quite tickled by the CEO’s order. Then he started speaking directly to Ann Marie as though it were just the two of them in the room. “You see,” he said to her, “there is an important lesson here. Watch him. Do you see how the little imp has taken power over the others? He isn’t the smartest or the strongest of the group. Clearly. Somehow he manages to make the others afraid. It’s very interesting. Human politics is fascinating in a sick kind of way.” Dade didn’t care that the executives could hear every word.
Ann Marie didn’t know how to respond and just looked down at the carpeted floor.
Philip Handley stood up, leaning over the conference table on his stocky arms. He seemed less like a corporate manager and more like the leader of a criminal enterprise. He pointed one of his bulbous fingers at Dade Harkenrider as though marking him for death. He growled, “You don’t know who you’re fucking with! You’re gonna do what you’re fucking told! You’re gonna deliver my DeathStalkers and that acoustic weapon that you’ve been working on.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You know very well what I’m referring to. You can’t hide everything from us. We know about Project Devil’s Breath. We know you have a working prototype. We know you’re holding out on us.”
“You’ll get recon drones. If you’re lucky.”
“I know the new DeathStalkers have been built. You’ve certainly spent the money.”
“I certainly have.”
“Dr. Harkenrider, please,” said Phillip Handley. He sat down and gained some composure. “There is no need for antagonism between us.”
“Do you see what he’s doing now?” Dade asked Ann Marie. “He’s changing his tactics because he’s not getting anywhere. This is textbook behavior.” Then Dade scowled at the CEO as though the man’s days were numbered. He told him, “And you, you craven little bastard, you’re going to stay out of my way and Ann Marie’s way.”
“Or else what?” The CEO jabbed. “You are going to get me with your magic powers? I know that’s just rumors and rubbish. I’m not a gullible fool like the others, Dr. Harkenrider.”
The other men around the conference table got very nervous. Some started sliding their chairs a little further from the table and checking messages on their phones. Ann Marie was standing on the outskirts of the room but she could tell that everyone, except for Philip Handley, was afraid of what was about to happen.
“Get a load of this guy, Ann Marie,” said Dade. “Despite all the warnings and whispers about me and what I’m able to do, he is totally fearless. It’s kind of impressive. Actually, I just think he’s just too stupid and arrogant to know any better. I wouldn’t exactly call that fearless. Still,” he went on to only Ann Marie, “don’t ever underestimate humans like this one.” Dade glared directly at the CEO and took a few steps toward him. The other board members pulled their chairs even further back from the table. Harkenrider smirked and then, looking right at Philip Handley, shouted, “Boo!”
The CEO screamed as he stood up from the conference table and grabbed at his eyes. “What have you done!” He shouted to Dade. “I’m blind! You’ve made me fucking blind. Fucking blind!” He pressed the palms of his hands to his eyes as he tried to hold back the panic.
“This is how it’s going to go,” said Dade like he was reading a familiar verse of a poem. “Blindness is one of the most garden variety things I can do to you. I can come up with plenty of creative and exotic stuff too. You’re going to stay the hell out of my way and Ann Marie’s way. You’re going to be extremely careful how you speak to us. You’re going to make sure Ann Marie and I have the resources we need to get our work done. If I see you or anyone from your sick circle around my lab, I’m going to swap your eyeballs for your testicles. Do you hear me, you pathetic little human, you pathetic little nothing?”
“Please!” Philip shouted to the dark empty air around him as though begging to some charitable force. “Please! I will do anything.” He got down on his knees and clutched his palms together like he was going to start praying. “Please, Harkenrider. I don’t know how you did this but I promise to stay out of your way. Please!”
“Fine,” said Dade. “You can have your sight back for now.” He took his attention away from the CEO and the man quickly regained his vision. Then Philip ran from the room like the building was on fire.
On the way out as they walked to Asylum One, Ann Marie asked him about what he had done to the CEO. “Is it like hypnosis? Was it something in your tone of voice?”
“It has to do with intent.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither to I, fully.” He thought about it and tried to phrase in a manner she could better grasp. “I guess,” he said, “it’s about isolating yourself from all the information in your environment. As fully as you can, envision whatever it is, from the sights to the smells. You use your imagination like the tank, to create your own world. Then it just happens.”
“What exactly happens?”
“The boundaries dissolve. I was able to expand into that jackass and, in a way, take over his vision.”
“It sounds beyond impossible,” she said, discouraged.
“Teleporting is the same thing. It’s about your intent, your mind’s vision.”
...
Several days later in the evening, Ann Marie went looking for Dade in his lab. She found The Sheriff up there with him. They were in the middle of discussing something that seemed important. There was a map up on the computer screen in front of them.
“Is everything OK?” she asked them.
“No tank tonight,” Dade said to her. “I’ve got some business.”
“Where?”
“L.A.”
“You never go down the hill to L.A. You hate L.A. You say it’s diseased.”
“What I said is true,” Dade told her, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I have to go. There’s trouble down there.”
“Does it have something to do with all those signs for lost pets?”
“It might. I’m not certain yet.”
The Sheriff chimed in, saying, “We’ve gotten a lead on where a local coven might be hanging out. We think these folks might be the ones trespassing on the laboratory grounds.” He added, “Groups like this have been known to be into some weird shit.”
“A coven?” she questioned as though the term was bizarre. “Like witches?”
“Afraid so,” The Sheriff told her.
“That was a coven I saw by the road?”
“Afraid so.”
“They’re out of line,” said Dade. “They’re trespassing. They need to know this kind of behavior can’t be tolerated. I’ll just go down there and we’ll have a reasonable discussion.”
“That’ll be the day,” commented The Sheriff.
“I’m all alone tonight,” Ann Marie told them. “My mom’s going out on a date. Can I come with you by any chance?”
“If you’d like,” Dade answered. “Although I don’t understand the desire.”
“Will it be dangerous?” She asked him.
“Yes. Does that bother you?”
“No. I’m not scared.”
“That’s what worries me,” Dade told her. “Promise me you’ll do exactly as I say when we get where we’re going.”
“Where are we going?”
“I said promise me that you’ll do exactly as I say,” he said before adding, “even if what I say seems strange.”
“I promise.”
“You promise what?”
“I promise to do exactly as you say,” she said with a slight eye roll.
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They took Asylum One down the hill to the 110 freeway and headed toward the decomposing guts of Los Angeles. Ann Marie had never been to that run down area of the city before. Their destination in South Central Los Angeles was made up mostly of abandoned homes and decaying industrial parks. By nightfall, there was virtually no one on the streets. They passed not a single car or pedestrian for nearly twenty minutes after they exited the freeway. The first person they saw was a homeless man wrapped in perhaps a dozen layers of tin foil. He stood on one of the street corners, shouting at the night sky. When Dade’s truck passed him by, the man became entranced with the space-age looking vehicle and started to chase them down the street.
“What’s wrong with this neighborhood?” Ann Marie asked as they passed by the orange glow of campfires in the distance. “It wasn’t this bad even in West Philly when I left.”
“This is the economic recovery,” Dade told her. “And it’s spreading fast.”
Just down the street, Ann Marie noticed what looked like a familiar glimmer of civilization. A beam from a large spotlight was sweeping across the sky in the distance. As they got closer, the spotlight became even brighter. They started to notice other cars. Ann Marie thought she heard the bass sound of a drum mixed with the feedback from an electric guitar. It sounded like a rock concert down the street.
“Stay close to me,” Dade told her as Asylum One started to slow down at the end of their journey. “Don’t drink, eat, or touch anything.”
“Oh.K,” Ann Marie said as though she found the request bizarre. “Where the hell are we even going?”
“GirlFixer,” said Dade, pointing toward the truck windshield. Ahead of them, a line of cars, vehicles worth two-hundred dollars up to two-hundred thousand, poured into an immense parking lot.
A neon pink sign featured the name, GirlFixer, along with the outline of a woman’s high-heeled shoe.
“That’s where we’re going.”
“A strip club!” Ann Marie balked. “Why are we going to a strip club?”
“It’s not really a strip club,” said Dade. He was eyeing the entrance like a bank robber casing the place. “It’s the headquarters of a coven. A dangerous one.”
“Are there pilgrims and blacksmiths in there too?”
“It’s a twenty-first century coven,” said Dade. “Not a bunch of teenagers in the woods. They’re advanced, organized, and not so interested in communing with nature.” He added, “You’ll be fine but stay close to me. Don’t touch...”
“I know,” Ann Marie cut him off. “Don’t touch, eat or drink anything. You must think I’m a stupid kid. I’m not gonna just pick up someone’s chicken wing or half-empty margarita. I think I’ll be fine.”
She stepped out of the truck first, followed by Dade, who instructed Asylum One to autonomously circle GirlFixer until they were finished with their visit. The car headed off as it was told. Outside the club, a group of truckers was smoking cigarettes by the door. When they noticed Ann Marie, the drunkest one of them shouted, “Hey little girl! I’m gonna have to check your pubes to see if you’re old enough!”
Dade stopped and faced the group of men. He stared at them in a way that was strange but not a bit threatening. Looking at the man who had yelled at Ann Marie, Dade whispered something unintelligible under his breath. Suddenly, all the men started coughing. It was a kind of sick, muffled cough, as though the air had been kicked out of their lungs. The men all struggled to breath and began falling one by one to the pavement.
With Dade in the lead, Ann Marie passed through the blacked-out doors of the club. She looked behind them to see the group of men choking down air and falling all over themselves to run away.
“What happened to them?” She asked like she already had some idea of the answer.
“The smog in LA is terrible.”
When they got inside, it wasn’t the strip club she had expected. The place had the dim red lighting and the patio table-sized stages for the strippers but something was odd. Not a single one of the strippers was dancing. The girls on the stages were fully clothed in rather comfortable and unflattering garb. Instead of dancing, they were all sitting and relaxing on the stages, playing games on their cellular phones or reading. Despite the lack of effort in their acts, each girl had an enthusiastic crowd of men around throwing money.
As Dade and Ann Marie walked toward the back of the bar, she noticed that the men in the club looked rather strange. Blank eyes and hung open mouths, the men looked like they had been mostly anesthetized. They were all slowly and methodically emptying their wallets of cash and credit cards while staring blankly at the strippers. The girls didn’t seem to be paying much attention, but occasionally, one would clear the stage of cash by piling it all into a garbage bag.
The music was very strange. It was a highly repetitive two or three second drum and bass loop. The sound was like a combination of techno and traditional African drumming. “Try to shut the music out of your mind,” Dade said as they walked toward the back of the club. “It won’t hurt you but it confuses humans.”
“I just think it sucks.”
The girls on the stages didn’t look like strippers. They seemed too much like wallflowers. The group looked more like an academic sorority. When they saw Dade, the girls all perked up like a celebrity just walked in. They all smiled in his direction with a certain respect and familiarity.
One of the strippers was wearing a full set of blue hospital scrubs. She was dressed like some sort of nurse. The girl was albino but her hair had been dyed charcoal. She beamed when she saw Dade and didn’t care about stepping on a few of the male patrons on her way over.
“Dr. Death!” she shouted over the bass loop. “Dr. Death is here, everyone!”
The other strippers left their stages and hurried over. The male patrons stayed locked in their trance. They continued to stare off blankly as though the girls had never left the stages.
The albino nurse was clearly the leader of the group of girls. Ann Marie recognized her from the night they came up to her car. She was in her early twenties with dyed hair combed flat nearly down to her butt. Her eyes looked neon purple from the colored contact lenses she wore. Her blue scrubs had an embroidered pink rattle on the front as though she worked in something to do with pediatrics.
“The great Dade Harkenrider,” she said as she stroked her fingers down his sleeve. “In the flesh.”
Dade pulled his arm away. “Stop,” he told her very plainly. “You know how I feel about human hands on me.” The other girls noticed Ann Marie and started trying to talk to her. “Keep at least five feet away from my student,” he told them. “I won’t warn you again.”
“What brings you down to our little neck of the woods?”
“MoneySexPower.”
The girls all started laughing. “I suppose those are all good things but I don’t know what you’re talking about, Harkenrider,” The Nurse said. “We’re just some bitches trying to earn a living. It’s pretty tough out there in case you didn’t notice.”
“I don’t care what you do to these pathetic savages,” said Dade. “You can rob them all night long for all I care. You’re doing a public service. You won’t see me getting in your way.”
“That’s right,” said the Nurse, smirking at him. “Dade Harkenrider is disgusted by all aspects of pleasure.”
“I’m going to stop this MoneySexPower creation of yours, whatever it is,” Dade said to her. “That will be sufficient pleasure for me.”
One of the other girls was getting close to Ann Marie and tried to touch her. Before Ann Marie could react, she felt a short-lived but powerful breeze in the room. Dade had teleported and was now right next to her.
He caught the woman’s hand in mid air and something snapped. The young woman fell to the ground and grabbed her wrist. Dade had broken it.
“I institute a five foot zone around my student. You go in, things are going to break.” He looked at the albino Nurse a
nd angled his eyebrows as though he meant business. “You stop whatever you’re up to or I will have my drones rip this place apart and burn it to the ground. I’ll scare your clientele so bad that their dicks will never work again. Last but not least, I’ll run you and all these girls out of this town. I’ll make it impossible for you to survive here. Every single day will be a worse nightmare.” Then he raised his voice to such an unnatural level and tonality that it shook Ann Marie’s insides and made her dizzy. “Understand who’s in charge here!”
His voice sounded like a jackal fight at the bottom of a dark alley.
The albino Nurse looked more titillated than frightened by Dade’s vocal trick. She smiled and batted her eyes at him. “You turn me on,” she said. “I know you hate that, but you do.”
Dade wrinkled up his face in distaste. “Just remember what I told you,” he said to her.
“Oh I will keep my eye out for what was it you called it? SexKinkySex?” The Nurse’s manner went from flirtatious to threatening. “Of course you can intimidate us now,” she said. “But things are changing. Something’s brewing.”
Dade started for the door with Ann Marie right behind him. Just as he walked out, he told them all, “Don’t break the rules.”
Outside the strip club, Ann Marie noticed a growing line of men waiting to get inside. She pleaded with Dade to try to help them. “You can’t just let them walk in to be brainwashed,” she said. “You have to do something. Somebody has to help these poor men.”
Dade stopped near the entrance and considered it. “Fine,” he said with what she could only interpret as sarcasm. He raised his voice and addressed the growing group of men outside the club, saying, “Gentlemen, may I have your attention. My associate tells me that I should try to stop you men from making a terrible mistake. I’m supposed to warn you that this isn’t a regular strip club, that it’s run by an evil coven of supernatural runaways who will make you forget your own name and won’t stop until your wallet it totally empty.”
The men seemed even more excited when they heard Dade’s description. A few started whistling. One shouted, “Hell Yeah! Everyone is raving about this place!” The drunkest of the group started improvising his own song, something like, “E-E-Evil stripper. E-E-Evil stripper!” They all seemed even more insistent to get inside.
Ann Marie's Asylum (Master and Apprentice Book 1) Page 12