His introspection was interrupted by Alec sitting down on the stool beside him. The werewolf looked the same as he had for the last three nights, a combination of resigned and dejected. ‘Anything?’ he asked Carter while waving at one of the two scantily clad girls behind the bar.
‘Do I really look like a man fulfilled?’
Alec grunted and turned to the approaching girl. ‘Whiskey, a double.’ The girl nodded and went to pour his drink.
‘You’re actually going to drink that?’
‘It’s almost closing time here. I’ve been propositioned by fourteen women, three of which were men. I’ve trawled every bar on Patpong Two and caught neither sight nor smell of her. I need a drink, and it’s worse at Nana Plaza.’
Carter shrugged slightly, acknowledging the logic, and took an inadvisably large swig from his glass. ‘Not much worse,’ he grumbled. ‘I had sixteen propositions. I’m not sure about the sexes.’
‘It’s the suit,’ Alec replied. He dropped a note onto the counter, picked up the glass he had been provided with, and downed the contents in one go, hoping that it would miss his tongue. ‘Gah! They think you’re richer than a guy in jeans and a T-shirt.’
‘Sixteen to fourteen is not a statistically valid difference.’ He put his glass down, still containing half a measure. ‘Should we go now?’
Alec pulled himself to his feet. ‘Might as well.’
Patpong One was a brightly lit street; glaringly so. The signs were a mix of neon tube and enchanted, each blasting out the name of a bar with enough force that you almost needed sunglasses. Smaller signs at the doors were reminiscent of Soho, though they came in two languages. “Girls! Girls! Girls!” “Live Girls!” “Full Service Massage.” Carter never wanted to see that kind of thing again.
Together the two men walked down the street, ignoring several women who tried to attract their attention, and picked up a taxi on Thanon Silom. It was a little over a mile and a half between the two sites as the crow might fly, but a lot longer on foot. Alec growled at the taxi driver when he tried to take them the long way.
Nana Plaza was a three-storey structure dedicated to keeping tourists happy at all hours. And by happy, they meant drinking and sex. Space within the building was rented out to various bars and while it was possible to hire many of the girls working the bars at Patpong, it was a forgone conclusion that the Nana girls were available. It even had a couple of by-the-hour hotels on the top floor. Carter and Alec split up, Carter taking the ground floor and Alec the middle one. They would meet up at a bar called Green Light on the top floor in two hours to compare notes.
The kathoeys were thicker on the ground here. Carter ignored the two bars with “Ladyboys Only!” written up beside the door, but that still left maybe twenty establishments to hang around in ignoring the rather pushy hookers. He did not have Alec’s nose to tell him which ones were male, but he was only interested in one woman and, after over ninety minutes of cruising he had found as much evidence of her as ever; none.
‘You don’t look happy,’ the girl behind the bar said as he sat down. This was the last place to try and he was not happy. Hope had more or less left him the night before and now he was searching out of sheer, bloody-minded desperation.
He looked up to see a rarity; the girl was white. She looked to be about nineteen or twenty, pretty, with short blonde hair and a tan which Carter suspected had no lines in it. There was plenty of tan on show since she was dressed in a bright pink fishnet dress with only a matching thong under it. And she was also lacking the disillusioned expression so many of the bar staff wore. ‘No,’ Carter said, ‘I’m not. I’ll take a whiskey though.’ Nodding, she grabbed a glass and a bottle from behind her. ‘I’ve not seen many white girls here.’
‘Huh, no. I’m only here cos I got stuck. I’m American. Decided I wanted to see more of the world. Started in China and ran out of money in Thailand. Kind of dumb really.’
Now that she mentioned it, he could hear a slight American twang to her voice. ‘Southern states?’
‘New Orleans girl.’ She gave him a grin. ‘You’re English, right?’
Carter nodded, dropping a note onto the counter for the drink and then removing a photograph from his wallet. ‘You haven’t seen this woman about, have you? She’s English. Went missing about two months ago and I believe she was brought here.’
The barmaid glanced at the picture and shook her head. ‘No, but if she’s been trafficked over here she wouldn’t be in the tourist districts. People don’t come here for white girls.’
‘Where would they take her?’
‘There’s a place out on Thanon Asok that caters to the Chinese soldiers and bureaucrats. I won’t work there because they tend to play rough.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘And with the way things are going in the Dragon Empire I don’t think the place will have any clients in a few months.’
Carter nodded, biting his lip thoughtfully as he tucked Cheryl’s photo away. The Empire was, indeed, falling apart with the demise of the dragons which had run it from the background. It was too large to hold together the way it was. If it actually managed to hold onto the whole of China it would be by pure luck. He came to a decision. ‘Can I hire you for the rest of the night?’
She blinked at him, obviously a little surprised at the turn of events. ‘Uh, sure. Usual bar fine and I can come with you.’ Carter pulled several yen notes from his wallet and handed them over. She waved at the girl at the other end of the bar as she put the money in the till. ‘Suchin! Bar fine. I’m going with this gentleman.’
The Thai girl looked across at Carter, smiled, and said, ‘Okay, Lindsey.’
Lindsey grabbed a short jacket from behind the bar and followed Carter out onto the main floor. He took her arm in one hand and pushed her gently toward the stairs up. ‘We need to find my friend first,’ he said as they started up.
‘Uh… I don’t normally… I mean, I can do two of you, but it’ll cost extra.’
Carter gave her a quick look and a short laugh. ‘I didn’t hire you for sex, dear girl. Get us to this place you think they may have taken the woman, I’ll give you two hundred, Sterling.’ She gasped at that; yen were going out of favour as the empire collapsed, British pounds or American dollars were not. ‘If we find her there, I can arrange to get you out of the country. As far as Britain anyway.’
‘Holy crap! Mister, you got a deal.’
‘Carter,’ he replied. ‘The name’s Carter.’
~~~
The road was lined with bars, just like Patpong, but these ones had signs in Thai and Chinese. It made little difference; they were all the same aside from the décor and the girls. As Lindsey had indicated, the street she had taken them too had far fewer Thai girls. Here they were Chinese, Japanese, and European, and if any were male Alec’s nose could not detect it. Lindsey had taken her two hundred and insisted on waiting for them at the end of the street. She would not go in there, especially not dressed as she was, but she was going to wait; she had a vested interest in the result of the search.
Two white men walking into the bars did not go unnoticed. The clientele were all Chinese, many in military uniforms, and they watched the two suspiciously. No one stopped them, however, and they checked through the first four bars without trouble, but also without finding Cheryl.
The next bar was named Dragon 8 and Carter stopped in front of the sign, looking up at it. ‘I think this might be it.’
‘Why?’
‘Eight is a lucky number in China. It symbolises sudden fortune. Add in “dragon” and…’
Alec shrugged. ‘I’ll believe in luck when we find her.’
Cheryl was dancing on one of five small stages around the room. Hers was well at the back, but Alec caught her scent as soon as he walked in and made a beeline for her. She looked at him and then at Carter and their hearts sank at the complete lack of recognition in her green eyes. She just kept on dancing, swinging around the pole set into the middle of the stage. Her body looked mor
e toned than it had been, likely the result of dancing every night. The white, two-piece she was wearing barely covered anything, and was translucent from the sweat running down her pale, freckled skin. Her red hair was unbound and swinging around her neck and face, and despite being clearly the oldest of the girls in the bar, she was probably the most popular since she was also the most enthusiastic. Around her neck was a silver chain and Carter gritted his teeth when he saw it; the little heart-shaped pendant with a single gem at the point was just rubbing salt into the wound. This was the thing keeping her mind submerged.
As they watched, one of the men at the table, a bureaucrat from his suit, reached out a flabby hand with a two yen note in it. Cheryl swung toward him, dropping to her knees in a fluid movement, and allowed him to push the note under her bra cup. The audience let out a cheer and the bureaucrat laughed and turned to his friends on either side. Cheryl turned, grabbed the pole, and hoisted herself back up with far more skill than either Carter or Alec would have expected. Another hand came out, another two yen for a grope. Alec stepped forward and closed his hand around the suit’s fingers.
While Alec crushed the man’s hand, Carter turned toward the bar. ‘The redhead at the back, I want her.’ He pulled several large notes from his wallet and tossed them onto the counter. The barman shrugged, picked up the money, and nodded to Cheryl. She looked a little bemused as Alec offered her a hand to help her down off the stage; apparently she was not used to being treated that well. Alec thought it was amazing she could dance on six-inch heels let alone climb off a platform.
‘Do you have a coat?’ Carter asked as they escorted her to the door.
‘No,’ she replied happily. ‘It’s not cold. Are you both going to fuck me?’
Carter felt a fist clench around his guts. ‘Yes, dear girl, we’re both going to…’
‘Great! I’m Wànjù.’
They had taken her name too. Wonderful. ‘Good evening, Wànjù, this is Alec and I’m Carter.’ They started down the street toward where Lindsey was waiting as out of sight as she could get. The blonde emerged from the doorway of a closed shop as they walked out onto Thanon Asok and hurried over. Carter saw the excited look on her face and held his finger up to his lips.
‘You found… someone then?’ Lindsey said. She could see both the pained expression Carter was trying to suppress and the happy look on Cheryl’s face, and it all added up to something she figured she should be subtle about.
‘Indeed,’ Carter replied. ‘Alec, get us a taxi. Lindsey, this is Wànjù. Wànjù, we’re going to stop off at Lindsey’s place so that she can pick up… some things.’
‘Okay,’ Cheryl replied. She took in Lindsey’s outfit and came to a conclusion. ‘You want me to fuck her too? I don’t mind. I do girls too.’
Lindsey did her absolute best to keep the look of horror off her face. Even to someone who did not know Cheryl she was acting like some sort of brainwashed sex toy. The blonde sidled up to Carter as Alec put Cheryl in the taxi. ‘They did something wicked to her head, didn’t they?’
‘An enchantment, yes. She’s a doctor of thaumatology. Very intelligent.’
‘Can she be… fixed?’ Carter nodded in reply. ‘You know what “wànjù” means?’
‘No. Chinese is not a language I’ve ever learned.’
‘Toy or gimcrack.’
Carter’s teeth ground as he steered Lindsey into the taxi ahead of him. The worst part of it was that there was no one to make pay for it. The creatures who had turned Cheryl into the nymphomaniac in the taxi were all dead. There was nowhere to direct his anger. All that was left to do was to get Cheryl home and repair as much of the damage as they could.
Part Three: The Science of Hell
Nedarim, Demon Realm, Day 18.
‘Sorry, I wasn’t paying that much attention to anything before I found out you were alive.’ Ceri marched along the road with one end of a chain in her hand.
At the other end of the chain, Lily padded along on the pair of sandals Ceri had insisted on buying for her even though both Lily and Hiffy had said that a slave should be barefoot. There were also carefully crafted silver cuffs around her ankles and wrists, and her leather collar had been replaced by one which matched the cuffs. All of them were closed with little golden padlocks, secured by spells. To complete her outfit, a silver chain was slung between rings through her nipple piercings. Despite the sandals, Hiffy had thought the overall look was pretty good, almost perfect. ‘You didn’t even watch the evening news?’
‘Lil, I was mourning your death!’
‘Oh. Well, I suppose…’ There was a pause long enough to make Ceri think the half-succubus had given up. ‘You could have asked Carter what was going on before you left.’
‘Carter was busy. I found out where Cheryl was. Before that he was employing himself in abusing his liver.’
‘You found Cheryl? Well that’s something?’
‘I figured out where they’d taken her. Carter and Alec were headed to Bangkok to find her.’
‘Bangkok?’ Lily’s tone fell. ‘Shit. That’s not good.’
‘No, but hopefully she won’t remember what happened while she was there.’
‘How did you figure it out?’
‘Not all the dragons died. Gwyn, Mei, and Ed survived that I know of, though they’re basically human now. They had to change what they were before you collapsed the bridge. When I found out you were alive, my brain started working and I remembered I was sure she was alive, and that had to be because Ed stopped them killing her.’
‘Ed knew where she was all that time?’
‘He’s not on my favourite persons list, but he was under duress. I can’t entirely blame him for that. I can blame him for not telling me where she was before I went to drag the information out of him.’
Lily nodded, the action sending a ripple through her chain. ‘And Gwyn and Mei are okay?’
‘As okay as they’re likely to get. Mei’s seeking asylum in Britain. The Dragon Empire is collapsing. I know that from what Mei said.’ She stopped as they reached the brow of a small hill and found themselves looking down on a village.
Ceri wanted to call it a hamlet, but maybe it was a little too big. There were maybe twenty houses, built in wood, and another three buildings built in stone which looked more like they were communal. The largest looked like it was some sort of fortified structure, probably for the villagers to run to in case of attack. Ceri was not sure what kind of attack; for a place run by demons the world seemed to be pretty safe to travel through. In front of the small keep was a central plaza. Ceri could see the roof of a well in the centre of it, and a few things which looked like market stalls around the edge.
‘I guess that’s Nedarim,’ Ceri said. ‘If we kept time this is when we should be arriving.’
Lily pulled up just behind Ceri’s left shoulder. ‘Time to be Mistress and slave then. Let’s get down there. Maybe they’ve an inn with a bath.’
Ceri let out a groan. ‘That’d be too much to hope for.’
~~~
The “keep” was, in fact, an inn, though the thick door which could be locked by a heavy looking bar suggested that it did double as a refuge in times of trouble. Most of the rooms were simple, a bed, a chair, a washstand, but they had one VIP room and Ceri easily had the cash to rent such a space in a backwater village like Nedarim. The bed was bigger and it had a cloth mattress and feather pillows… and a bath! It was more or less a hip bath, even Lily was too tall to stretch out in it, and the water had to be carried up from the kitchen by two det, but it was worth every copper Ceri paid to get it filled twice. The inn’s owner had looked a little bemused at a slave getting her own water, and getting bathed first, until Ceri had asked in her most imperious tone whether he expected her to allow a road-soiled slave to wash her.
Properly clean for the first time in what felt like a month, Ceri was in much better spirits as she walked down from the upper floor, Lily following along on the end of her chain. The tapro
om took up about half of the lower floor and, in many ways, it was a nicer place than the Devim’s Horns. The walls were solid stone and the tables were well made. The bar was more a set of benches, but it seemed more homely, and there were no impoverished Lorril hanging over the railing hoping to get fed. There were no customers in at this time of the day; Ceri suspected the place would get more crowded around nightfall.
The innkeeper was a tall, thin demon of a species Ceri could not identify. His skin was a reddish-brown and slightly glossy, maybe suggesting that it was toughened. His features were hard and angular, though his nose was flattened, barely more than a pair of nostril under a bump. If he had ever had hair, he had none now. There was a huge, two-handed sword over the bar which suggested he might once have been a soldier or warrior. Ceri’s working theory was that he had fought for some Lord for years, saved his pay, and retired to run a village pub. She had also entertained the more romantic idea that he had retired on the proceeds of a life of adventuring in the wilds, but the soldier idea seemed more likely. His name, carved into the sign above the inn’s door along with “Nedarim Inn,” was Qualiksh
‘Is the room to your satisfaction, Lady,’ Qualiksh asked as she approached the bar.
‘Not what I’m used to, of course…’ Which was true; she had been living in a hovel for the last few days. ‘However, one must put up with things when travelling. Yes, the room is quite satisfactory.’ She actually wanted to compliment him more, the sheets were clean and the room had been cleaned scrupulously, but that seemed like breaking character. ‘I’m looking for someone, Qualiksh. A det. Scholarly. Knows much about magic.’
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