The Church of Sleep (Central Series Book 5)

by Zachary Rawlins

  He nodded to her, and then gently closed the door.

  Hayley stood in the center of the hotel room, staring at the closed door.

  Min-jun?

  He paused, his fingers on the metal switch at the base of the lamp.

  Yes?

  Is a movie…is that all you have in mind?

  Sure, Min-jun thought, adjusting his pillow. If that’s what you want to do.

  Hayley gave the matter further consideration.

  Don’t you have a fiancé, Min-jun?

  I do.

  What would she think of you having a girl in your room at this hour?

  She would not like it, Min-jun thought. But she is in Seoul, and we are here, so what does it matter? We are beyond that now, and with all due respect, you don’t have to make it out to be such a riddle. This is normal behavior in exceptional circumstances. It’s not that complicated.

  ***

  “You have something you want to say,” Anastasia said, not bothering to open her eyes. “Please go ahead, Mai. I value your perspective.”

  “It’s nothing, really,” Mai said, gently combing out her Mistress’s hair. “I was just thinking that the risk of this endeavor continues to grow as we proceed.”

  “You wish that I would reconsider,” Anastasia said. “What worries you? Everything, or just the arrangement that I have made with the Auditors?”

  “I would never second-guess your decisions,” Mai said. “You have set a course, and we will follow it. I wish you would take more time for consideration, that’s all. Your father will be just as adequately avenged in a month or a year, Mistress.”

  Anastasia was quiet while Mai finished combing the braids and the tangles from her hair.

  “I cannot sleep, Mai,” Anastasia admitted, her eyes still closed as Mai misted her hair with Moroccan argan oil. “I try, but I cannot seem to fall asleep, since the bombing.”

  “Mistress, I had no idea.”

  “I will not be able to rest until my father is buried.” Anastasia finally opened her eyes, and their reflection in the mirror was dull. “I will not see my father buried while his enemies live and breathe. I will not allow them to celebrate or mock. I cannot.”

  “Let them try,” Mai said, her heart pounding. “We are prepared for them now, Mistress. We will not allow them a second chance.”

  “I will meet my father’s enemies at a time and place of my own choosing,” Anastasia said. “Why would I give away that advantage, allowing my enemies to wait until I am at my weakest?”

  Mai hesitated for a long time before speaking again, waiting until she had nearly put Anastasia’s hair up for the night.

  “As long as you are acting from a place of strength,” Mai advised. “Do not allow yourself to be goaded by emotion or obligation. There is nothing that you owe to anyone. You are the injured party, and you are deserving of restitution, but you should not be hasty.”

  “Except where haste is required,” Anastasia said, smiling at her in the mirror. “Your advice is as invaluable as always, Mai, and I will bear your words in mind. Is that all?”

  “One other thing,” Mai said. “You cannot trust the Auditors to do the right thing, Mistress, or even the best thing for themselves. Alice Gallow is capricious and deviant, and acts on her whims, rather than any logic or sound strategy. The Auditors are nearly as dangerous as allies as they are as enemies.”

  “You are right, of course, and I do not trust them in any capacity. My needs are great at present, however, and I will use all the tools at my disposal, and as I suspected, Ms. Gallow is more than eager to be used.”

  ***

  Alice left the hotel they were staying in almost without realizing it, conveyed by a moving walkway through a lobby so large she could barely see the other end. The pervasive air conditioning made the evening feel mild and inviting.

  She had no specific destination.

  Their hotel had a bar – several bars, truthfully – but she never even gave them a thought. She needed a place where no one knew her and did not want her evening ruined by encountering a Black Sun flunky, or one of her youthful charges.

  She was certain that she had visited Las Vegas before, but had no specific memories of doing so. Alice imagined that she must have come here with Becca, when they were both just Auditors, and life was sweet and simple and soaked in blood.

  They probably had fun, Alice reflected, wandering through the visual and auditory chaos of a casino floor. She briefly wished that she could have remembered, and then almost immediately put it aside.

  Alice had no interest in a maudlin evening.

  The casino appeared to be a maze built almost entirely of slot machines. A dozen or so card tables were sandwiched in between the rows of beeping and ringing consoles, oversaturated monitors framed in fake bronze arranged like a wall around the small islands of green felt.

  At the tables, most of the gamblers were Asian tourists. At the slot machines nearby, there was a large contingent of vacationing widows, each toting a plastic cup filled with coins in one hand, a cigarette inevitably in the other. The powerful air conditioning reduced the smell of smoke to a tolerable level, but Alice still found her eyes watering.

  She wandered through the casino into the carpeted labyrinth of the hotel floor, passing through a marble-floored shopping mall, and then a weird conglomeration of restaurants, with high-class steakhouses and sushi on one side, and a neon-accented food court to the other. Alice caught her reflection in a thousand mirrored surfaces as she walked, smiling crookedly back at herself, maybe just a little tipsy.

  Tipsy wasn’t going to cut it tonight, Alice thought, passing a sports betting alcove with a hundred different televisions silently projecting football, horse racing, and row after row of incomprehensible numbers – betting lines, scores, or statistics, Alice supposed.

  None of it interested in her in the slightest, but she was pleased to be away from the crowds of tourists in garish printed tees, shouting at each other or into cell phones, each toting what looked like a tall thin vase about with them, a meter of neon plastic filled with slush and well liquor. The sports book was quiet, by Vegas standards, and the high-limit area just beyond that was even more subdued.

  She drifted into the high roller’s area, bemused by the small tables playing pai gow and casino war, and the roped-off arcades filled with slot machines identical to those at the standard casinos, saving only their denominations, which were wildly inflated from their humble coin-eating origins. Alice laughed, wondering to herself what kind of person had thousands of dollars to lose gambling, but chose to do so on a machine inexplicably covered in emojis.

  There were a handful of patrons and hundreds of machines. The music was innocuous light rock, nearly drowned out by the din of the underused slots. There was a perfusion of columns and drapes, an abundance of polite staff in burgundy coats that made no attempt to stop or question her, and more ATM machines than could have ever been required.

  A bar was situated around an indoor fountain beside the cordoned gambling areas, beneath an enormous chandelier which dangled frost-glass icicles over tables occupied by men in suits and women wearing cocktail dresses. Alice found a seat at the bar, in between a man in a sports coat completely occupied by his phone and a bored-looking woman with teased hair and an overly sculpted face.

  It took quite a while for the staff to acknowledge her, and when they finally did, the gin and tonic she ordered on a whim took even longer to arrive. When it finally did, Alice frowned at the first sip, unsure if she enjoyed the comingling of lime and juniper. She had recently forgotten what she preferred to drink and had since been working her way through every cocktail and spirit she could recall, trying to determine her preferences.

  Bored and tired of waiting, she left the bar and resumed her wandering.

  It was not clear to her if she wandered into a different casino, or just a further extension of the same one. There were no clear demarcations, only jarring shifts in theme and color palette. O
ld Vegas had been more radical in its presentation, Alice recalled, setting castles and dragons beside pyramids and faux New York and Paris skylines, but these newer hotels seemed only to offer variations on what a high-end resort might look like, to different crowds and tastes.

  Alice was not sure if that represented an improvement.

  She found another bar, less bright and polished than the last, though it featured the same wooden Modernist aesthetic, but was blue-collar enough to have video poker terminals inset in the bar. It was close to the casino, so that the racket of hundreds of slot machines was a dull roar of competing electronics. Alice took a seat at the nearly empty bar, scanned the unoccupied tables, and wondered if she had mistakenly wandered into a place that was closed. She had no time to consider leaving, however, as a short bartender with permed hair and excellent teeth appeared to take her order, his smile perfectly expressing polite boredom.

  Alice ordered a whiskey sour, because it was the first thing listed on the “Featured Items” menu, and then settled back, leaning against the bar and looking out at the casino floor.

  The bar might have been largely overlooked by patrons, but it was heavily trafficked by waitstaff. Alice watched them parade in and out, their trays burdened with dozens of garish cocktails, and decided that this bar was primarily used to supply the waitress that worked the casino floor. She was so absorbed with people watching, and her bartender so indifferent, that she did not notice her drink arrive until her elbow bumped it.

  Alice sniffed at the drink, shrugged, and then drank, swirling the cocktail in her mouth before swallowing.

  It wasn’t bad, Alice thought, but also definitely not her favorite.

  It would have been nice to pretend this was progress, another possibility eliminated from a whole catalog of prospective drinks, but Alice suspected that was not case. She could not remember what she had ordered the last time she drank. For all that she knew, she could have been trying the same handful of cocktails on each attempt, vainly repeating herself into drunkenness.

  She stirred the drink with the thin red straw provided, frustrated and mildly agitated. Alice felt certain that she had known what she liked to drink quite recently. Without her diaries to refer to, or Becca to question, she had no way to research her prior preferences, but she promised herself that she would do so, as soon as she returned to Central.

  She threw back the rest of the drink and then set aside the empty glass. The bartender did not reappear to make inquiries, but Alice was okay with that. She was distracted by a mental review of the various things she had forgotten just lately.

  It was getting worse, Alice knew, though acknowledging that chilled her.

  The more she used her protocol, the greater the gaps in her memory became. Just lately, the losses were piling up, and seemingly becoming more personal and important.

  Things like her preferred drink.

  What else had she forgotten, Alice wondered, that she was simply unaware of? How many little things had slipped away from her, she wondered, and fallen into the black hole that was consuming her mind?

  The worry that she was running out of memories to forget nagged at her. She struggled to remember the names of the new Auditors, and to remember details from recent field operations. Alice considered the possibility that her condition had advanced to the point of preventing the formation of new memories, a sort of preemptive forgetting, and shivered at the thought.

  Xia had to remind her of Min-jun and Grigori’s names on a regular basis.

  Hell, early this evening, he had to remind her that Mikey was in the hospital, back at Central.

  Grim thoughts.

  Alice spun around on her stool, aiming to locate the bartender and order the second option on the list.

  The bartender was nowhere in sight, but there was a pair of champagne flutes on the bar filled with a peach-colored liquid, and a well-put-together man in a suit as grey as his hair standing not far from her, a strange smile on his face. He nodded personably, and then gestured toward the stool beside her.

  She nodded, wondering how he had gotten so close without her noticing.

  “Good evening,” the man said, a hint of an unfamiliar accent to his words. “I don’t mean to trouble you, but you look rather distressed, and I thought…”

  “You thought I could use company?” Alice smiled. “Maybe you’re right.”

  She gave him a quick visual evaluation. His suit was well-tailored and modern in cut, worn with such aplomb that Alice suspected he was familiar with the prosperity required to maintain such a wardrobe. His skin was smooth and bronzed, the lines of his shoulders and waist suggestive of a regular gym regime. Only the grey in his trimmed hair and neat beard were indicative of more years than his cultured voice and enthusiastic demeanor would have suggested.

  After a moment of drunken contemplation, Alice decided that he probably would do, if he could make any sort of a conversation.

  “I would certainly be honored to keep you company,” the man said. “Thrilled, really. That is not what I wanted to say, however.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes,” the man said, his head bobbing as he took the flutes from the bar, offering her one. “I wondered if there was someone causing you distress, Alice, and if there was such a person, if I might do you the favor of seeing them buried alive in the desert?”

  Alice laughed.

  “You know, I’m really tired of meeting people who know me already, but I can’t remember. I think I might make an exception for you, maybe. That’s quite a line, by the way.”

  “It has been well-received in the past.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Jacob Havel,” the man said, sipping from his flute. “It is always a pleasure to meet you, Alice Gallow.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Alice said, trying her own drink. “This…this isn’t bad. What is it?”

  “A ‘French 75’. Gin and champagne, primarily. We like to serve it with a bit of citron juice, along with a little rind.”

  “Wait, wait. What’s with ‘we’? You don’t look like a bartender.”

  “I should hope not,” the man said, laughing. “I’m part owner of this establishment, along with several others. We own a few hotels here, and in Amsterdam and Macau as well.”

  “I see,” Alice said. “Color me intrigued.”

  “Excellent. What can I do to improve your opinion of me further?”

  “You could tell me how we know each other. You seem to already know how bad my memory is.”

  “I know that well, and I know why your memory fails you. We’ve known each other for a very long time, Alice. I met you first in London, but it was a brief encounter, and of no particular significance.”

  “I didn’t make an impression?”

  “Not in comparison with the impact of our second meeting in Vienna. I can say without reservation that it changed my life. Both of our lives, if I might be so bold.”

  “Really?” Alice laughed. “You think you made that much of an impact on me?”

  “I assume so,” Jacob said, smiling modestly. “We spent the next three decades involved. Associates at the very least, if not partners.”

  “What? No way! You’re full of shit.”

  “I assure you that I am being truthful. You must realize that you have not always been an Auditor.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “I hope the cocktail is still to your tastes?”

  “This is something I liked to order, I think,” Alice said, taking another contemplative sip. “I should probably write this down.”

  Jacob smiled cautiously, the taut skin of his ageless face suddenly creased with concern. Glancing down at his slim, manicured fingers, Alice was struck by his swollen and lined knuckles, and suspected that he was older than she had initially imagined.

  “You have become frank regarding your condition,” Jacob observed. “It used to very much be a secret.”

  “I can’t really pretend that it is much of a secret when strange men
make a habit of accosting me in public, somehow aware that I can’t remember fuck-all.” Alice looked down at her drink. “I wonder how many of you don’t say anything. Makes me feel like I’m always at a disadvantage, conversationally.”

  “There are relatively few people who know about your memory,” Jacob reassured her, glancing at the bartender. “Fewer still who have any understanding of your condition. I do not wish to alarm or alienate you, but I think it’s likely that I know you better than anyone else.”

  “That’s disconcerting,” Alice said, finishing her drink. “Enough with the mystery. Who the hell are you, Jacob Havel?”

  “As I said, I am an investor in various gaming and hospitality ventures around the world, and a recluse who rarely leaves the pleasant confines of this resort. It is likely more to the point to discuss what I was. I have been many things, over many years – largely thanks to you, I might add – I was among the first Operators, and the very first Director. The credit is misplaced, and neither the rumor nor the title originated with me, but I’m told that in Central these days, I’m often known as ‘The Founder’.”

  ***

  Hayley waited in the lobby for her delivery, chewing gum and people-watching. The hotel was kept slightly too cool for her tastes, and she shivered occasionally, wishing her field jacket had been clean enough to wear to the casino.

  Anastasia Martynova had offered clothing and supplies to the Auditors, but Hayley’s Hegemonic affiliation was too strong to accept charity from the Black Sun, well intended or not. She had buried an uncle and two friends, killed in the endless minor skirmishing between the Hegemony and its rival, and the experience colored her outlook more than she cared for.

  Sometimes even working with Katya was more than Hayley could bear.

  Hayley popped her gum and frowned, upset by the tenor of her train of thought. She prided herself on an open mind and an optimistic outlook. The last few days, however, she had felt an overwhelming amount of frustration and despair, coupled with a sense of isolation, caused more than anything by Ms. Gallow’s flippancy, along with the stoicism of Grigori and Min-jun.