Books 1–4

by Nancy A. Collins

  Bloody hell, where was everybody? He glanced at his Rolex. He’d agreed to meet that little shit and his blue-haired friends here, so where were they? If they didn’t show up soon, he’d be forced to go looking for a party. Chaz hated that Muhammad-and-the-mountain jazz. He enjoyed being the center of attention. Make ‘em dependent him, that’s the way it should be. Still, the boy wasn’t bad to look at, and a had a damn sweet cock on him. Maybe he’d take him along with him to Rio? Then again, Brazil was full of beautiful boys with skin the color of cafe au lait. He could buy any number of dark-eyed Carioca down there, so why bother importing some petulant, blue-haired rough trade? No, the Rio de Janiero would definitely be wasted on his pet Blue Monkey.

  Chaz shook out another clove cigarette and fired it up with his lighter. God, he hated this depressingly young country and its populace of bourgeois mall-crawlers. He just had to be patient. Come Carnival he’d be spending his days downing umbrella drinks and eyeing the samba dancers as they paraded down the streets.

  He had dreamed of Brazil for years, ever since he saw the poster in the window of a West End travel agency. He was seventeen at the time and already well-versed in the language of exploitation. He was posing as houseboy for a withered old pouf while wringing him for whatever he could get. It wasn’t a demanding job, really—the odd suck and fuck—mostly the old queen simply wanted a handsome boy to hold his coat. They went to the theater a lot. They were leaving the London staging of Phantom when Chaz happened to see the poster. It depicted two figures, male and female, photographed against an aerial view of Rio de Janeiro at night. Fireworks filled the sky like chrysanthemums made of colored fire. Both the man and the woman had the bronzed skin and dark eyes of a true Carioca. The man wore skin-tight white satin pants that flared at the knee, the vents lined with red silk. His white shirt boasted the billowing, layered sleeves of the samba dancer, and exposed his bare midriff. Chaz admired the muscles that rippled across the dancer’s washboard stomach. The samba dancer wore a simple domino mask over his face and the sunniest smile Chaz had ever seen, while shaking a pair of brightly painted maracas.

  The female samba dancer was also dressed in white satin, which contrasted with her dusky skin. One beautifully naked leg was extended from the voluminous ruffles of her skirt. Her midriff was also bare, but far more subtle in its muscularity. A white halter concealed breasts shaped like caramel kisses. Her head was covered by a carefully wound, snow white turban, and she wore a mask identical to her partner’s. But where the male samba dancer held maracas, she balanced a vibrantly plumed scarlet macaw on her forearm.

  Chaz stood and stared at the samba couple until his patron lost his temper and stormed off. There was a row later that night and within two weeks Chaz was back on the streets. The fact that the relationship was over didn’t bother him. Now he could ‘visit’ his beautiful dancers as often as he wanted. About a month later, the poster advertising carnival in Rio was replaced by a poster advertising package tours to Sorrento, but the smiling Carioca were never far from Chaz’s thoughts. Sometimes he awoke to the sound of steel drums echoing in his head and the smell of the Amazon rain forest clinging to his pillow. Now, decades later, he was finally going to go there.

  He had enough money to live like a king down there. A man with his savvy and unique abilities could do well for himself down there. Maybe he’d buy into a marijuana plantation. Or perhaps he could open his own escort service, specializing in handsome, smooth-skinned Carioca of both sexes. And, if his luck failed him, there were always the turistas . . .

  Bored, he cast his mind outward and touched the thoughts of those in the bar. His talent was slight but he had learned how to master it years ago. He was proud of his skill at mind reading. In his estimation, it was better to be a dead-on shot with a .22 than a blind man armed with an assault rifle, like that tarted-up, holier-than-thou bitch, Wheele. He groaned. Thinking about Sonja was bad enough, but he absolutely refused to let that whore preoccupy his thoughts. He returned his attention to his probes.

  The Hellhole’s manager, Rocky, was lounging near the door. Rocky didn’t like Chaz, or the crowd he brought with him. Rocky thought Chaz was a dealer. Chaz was not upset by the manager’s low opinion of him. You can’t have thin skin if you’re a psychic, or you’ll go psychotic and end up sticking your head in the gas cooker. Just like his poor ole mum. Turns out she couldn’t handle knowing what the neighbors really though, not just about her, but everything. Stupid cow never learned how to screen herself properly.

  Chaz found Jennifer the barmaid’s mind, however, more to his liking. Where Rocky’s thoughts were chunky, her internal monologue was more like mental champagne: extremely bubbly and perhaps too sweet for its own good. She was bored and a bit lonely. She was debating whether she should let Chaz chat her up. He was quite a bit older than her, which was sort of creepy, but he also possessed a world-weary glamour that sparked a vague heat between her legs. He smiled into his drink. If his Blue Monkey didn’t show, perhaps the night wasn’t a complete cock up, after all…

  Suddenly there was a hand on his shoulder, pinning him to his seat. “Hello, Chaz. Long time no see.”

  His skin turned gray and sweat jumped from his brow. “Sonja,” he whispered.

  She smiled without revealing her teeth as she slid into the booth beside him, cutting off his exit. “Mind if I join you?”

  “No. Of course not,” he said nervously.

  Jennifer the barmaid left her station to take the new customer’s order.”Get your friend anything, Chaz? Cocktail? Beer?” she asked, with just a trace of jealousy in her voice.

  The woman sitting beside Chaz turned her head to look at the waitress, revealing mirrored eyes. “We are not here, is that understood?”

  Jennifer wobbled and blinked a few times, then left the table, rubbing her forehead with the heel of her palm.

  “What did you do to her?” he hissed.

  “Nothing serious. I just don’t want our little discussion interrupted. After all, we haven’t seen each other in such a long time. I take it your employers didn’t see fit to tell you I’d escaped?”

  “I don’t work for anyone,” he replied sharply. “Never have, never will. You know that.”

  “And you know you can’t lie to me. So cut the bullshit, Chaz. What did they pay you for giving me up? I can’t see you slitting your throat for tuppence.”

  “Half a million.”

  “Dollars? Euros?”

  “Pounds. I’m not a fool, you know.”

  A look of surprise crossed her face as she finally got a good look at him. “Christ, you look like shit.”

  Back in London, when he was at his peak, he had been strikingly handsome. Some even went so far as to call him beautiful. But that was before nearly every dollar he’d earned went up his nose or in his arm. Age and dissolution had done their damage, but the last six months of insomnia had delivered the coup de grace to what little remained of his looks

  Chaz lit a fresh clove cigarette from the one he was already smoking as he searched the bar for some hope of escape. “So—to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

  “Where is it, Chaz?”

  “Where is what?”

  Her voice became as sharp and cold as a surgeon’s scalpel. “I don’t have time for games, Chaz. I know you have it. You filched it when you kissed me. I thought, at first, that was why you shot me. I want what’s mine, Chaz.” She extended one hand and waited. It was an elegantly menacing gesture.

  Chaz sighed as he withdrew the folded switchblade from his breast pocket. The handle was six inches long and made of lacquered teak. A golden dragon winked its ruby eye in the dim light of the club. Chaz held it in his hand and admired it one last time before returning the knife to its rightful owner.

  She turned the weapon over with trembling hands, caressing it like a lover. As she pressed the dragon’s eye, the blade leapt from its hiding place within the hilt. She turned it so the braided silver surface caught the light, makin
g it look like a frozen flame.

  “I have to admit I’m surprised you still have it, Chaz. I honestly thought you would have pawned it by now.”

  “I kept meaning to,” he sighed as he stared at the silver blade, his eyes focused on something far away. “Perhaps I wanted a keepsake of our years together.”

  “Something to remember me by? I never figured you as sentimental, Chaz.” She folded the switchblade and slid it up the sleeve of her battered leather jacket. “

  “Look, Sonja, it’s not what you think... I’m your mate, aren’t I?” Chaz said anxiously. “I didn’t go into this to hurt you. But I didn’t have a choice. I had no way of knowing that Wheele bint was a Pretender. She sussed me out, right off the bat. She threatened to turn me mind inside out if I didn’t do what she said! She was gonna boil me brain like pudding. What could I do, eh?” He reached across the table and took her hands in his. “C’mon now, love. We’ve been working’ together for a long time. We’re mates—-and more’n that at times. It could still be like it was between us. You’ve escaped from that loony bitch, right? We can go somewhere safe, where she’ll never find us. How about it, Sonja? Rio sounds nice, don’t it?”

  He looked into her face, searching for signs of her weakening. He’d played this game before, and had gotten rather good at it, despite the lack of eye contact. He’d have to fuck her, but that was the easy part. He’d long since learned how to get it up and keep it up, regardless of who or what his partner was. It was sidestepping The Other that was the tricky part.

  “I’m sorry,” The Other smiled. “But Sonja isn’t in right now. It’s a good thing, too, because she’d probably do something really stupid, like forgive you. I knew you’d bolt if you knew it was me in here. I’m getting pretty good at imitating her voice, don’t you think?”

  Chaz tried to pull away, but it was too late. She had already reversed the grip on his hands. Her voice was politely detached, like that of an airline stewardess.

  “How about I break one of your bones for every day I spent locked up in that stinking madhouse? Does that sound fair to you, Chaz? I was in there for six months. That averages out to one hundred and eighty days. Did you know there are two hundred and six bones in the human body, Chaz? That’ll leave you with twenty-six of them unbroken. That’s not too bad, is it, now?” The Other tightened her grip and Chaz screamed as the bones in his left hand snapped in unison, like a bundle of dry twigs. “That’s twenty-seven ...” His right hand crunched and became a mess of obtuse angles. “... and that’s fifty-four! Only one hundred and twenty-six more to go! Oh, and don’t bother yelling for help, Chaz. I told the manager we weren’t to be disturbed. He was very obliging.” The Other smiled, her fangs unsheathing like the claws of a cat. “I hope you enjoyed those thirty pieces of silver Wheele gave you.”

  Chaz began to shiver violently as he went into shock. He noted with detached fascination how the jagged ends of the finger bones pierced his flesh. He was astonished at how clear his thinking was now that his pain receptors had shut down, refusing to allow the agony of his ruined hands to escape past his wrists.

  “She’s not the one who paid me,” he said with a sick laugh. “I never went to her in the first place. I went to him. He’s the one who paid me to hand you over. He’s the one who brought Wheele in as muscle, not me. He wanted you gotten rid of. But it was Wheele’s idea to lock you away, so she could control them both.”

  The Other leaned across the table, her face inches from his own. He could see himself reflected in her shades. She was right: he looked like shit. ““Why didn’t you run when you had the chance, Chaz? Surely you knew they couldn’t hold me forever.”

  Chaz blinked. That was a genuine puzzler. One he’d asked himself every sleepless night for the last six months. He should have jumped the first flight to Brazil the day he’d received that nice attaché case full of unmarked bills. But instead, he stayed put. He knew, better than anyone, that nothing short of death—and maybe not even that—would keep her from tracking him down. And yet he did not leave.

  “I don’t know why I didn’t leave,” he admitted. The numbness was starting to recede, signaling that his hands would be waking up soon. “I should have gone to Rio. The coke’s cheaper there. I could have sailed the Amazon…learned how to chew the coca leaves….” He smiled at the idea. Flocks of brilliantly colored macaws fluttered at the corners of his eyes.

  “Who is the man who paid you, Chaz?”

  The Other was losing her patience. He felt a shadow move through his forebrain, like a pig rooting for truffles. He raised a barricade and the dark thing in his head hissed its displeasure. The shield would not hold for long, but it didn’t have to.

  “Who paid you, Chaz?”

  “Jacob Thorne.”

  There was a heartbeat’s worth of silence, and Chaz suddenly realized that The Other was no longer in ascendance, that Sonja was once more in control. The face below the sunglasses writhed. Chaz was secretly pleased to see how deeply he had hurt her.

  “Liar!”

  Sonja grabbed Chaz by the throat and dragged him from his seat, shaking him like a terrier does a rat. She stopped when his head lolled backward, the skull no longer supported by his neck. The bastard was smiling.

  He’d hustled her yet again.

  Jennifer finished cleaning the countertop and tossed the damp bar rag in the sink. God, what a slow night. The only customer in the joint was that Brit, Chaz. Jennifer still wasn’t sure what to make of him. She always felt naked when he was around. Like he not only looked through her clothes, but her skin as well. But he also had this weird mojo going on, the way Keith Richards and Iggy Pop did. And no American girl is completely immune to a British accent, even a lower class one. Besides, he tipped well and occasionally offered a bump if the service was good. She’d screwed guys for less than that.

  She glanced at her watch. He was bound to have finished his gin and tonic by now. As she approached his table, she saw that he was slumped over in the booth, hands folded in his lap. His chin was resting on his breastbone, his dirty blond hair hanging down in his face.

  Great, she groaned to herself. The asshole’s strung out.

  Rocky didn’t like the customers nodding out before they settled their tabs, and he didn’t like the Brit, even when he was straight.

  “Hey, Chaz! Wake up!” She grasped Chaz’s shoulder, her hopes for a big tip and a line of coke meth rapidly disintegrating.

  His head rolled backward, revealing lifeless eyes. His mouth dropped open, and blood and saliva dribbled onto her hand.

  Jennifer’s screams were audible from the street.

  Chapter Eight

  He was walking through a featureless maze. There was no sky above him, only emptiness. Every turn led him down a corridor that looked the same as the last. Claude did not know where he was, how he got there, or what he was looking for.

  He suddenly became aware, as it happens in dreams, that he was not alone, but actually being led through the identical passageways. At his side walked a huge lion with a long black mane, guiding him as a seeing-eye dog would a blind man, save that it held Claude’s right hand in its mouth. Although Claude was not frightened by this realization, he was still concerned to find his hand inside a lion’s jaws. Even though the beast showed no signs of harming him and it seemed to know the way, it was still a predator...

  He awoke in darkness. What time was it? Had the sun come up yet? Or had an entire day slipped past without his being aware of it? But what had started him from his sleep?

  As if in answer, he heard a door close somewhere in the dark.

  His enigmatic hostess had returned.

  Claude sat up on the futon, fumbling with the plastic milk crate that served as his nightstand. His hands closed on a cylindrical object. How considerate. She left him a flashlight in case he had to find the john in the middle of the night. He bit back another fit of hysterical giggles and thumbed it on. The beam wasn’t very strong and did little to illuminate the b
lackness of the loft. The painted animals on the screens seemed to move, as if caught in the ac of stalking him.

  Claude found her in leaning against the exposed brick wall of the loft. He also noticed the rusty metal rungs sunk into the brick face and the trapdoor set in the ceiling for the first time. Her back was to him and the shoulders of her leather jacket hitched in short, sharp spasms. It took him a second to realize she was crying.

  Decades spent tending to the welfare of others kicked in, and Claude stepped forward, lifting the flashlight so he could see her better. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She whirled about, startled by his voice. Claude cried out at the sight of the blood smearing her mouth. But that what really scared him was that she didn’t have her sunglasses on.

  The whites of her eyes swam with blood and red as fresh wounds. There were no visible irises, just over-expanded pupils the size of shoe buttons. They were the eyes of a wild thing. She recoiled from the light, lifting a forearm to shield her horrible, flat eyes. The hiss that escaped her made Claude’s testicles want to crawl back into his body.

  “Don’t look at me! Don’t touch me! Don’t talk to me! Just leave me alone!” She growled, knocking the flashlight from his hand.

  Claude watched the beam of pale-yellow light cartwheel through the darkness before shattering on the floor. He felt her jacket brush his elbow as she ran past him, and then she was gone, swallowed by the rice paper labyrinth.