Blood Engines

by T. A. Pratt

  Marla turned a corner, wondering how many rooms the basement had—she suspected the division into rooms was meant to make it seem more vast and labyrinthine than it actually was. A small crowd was gathered to watch a woman with an impressively large strap-on fuck her girlfriend, who was dangling in a full-body leather sling. Marla paused for a moment to watch—the couple had charisma, and a good sense of showmanship. People didn’t just come to sex parties hoping to sleep with strangers, after all; those with exhibitionist tendencies came to show off their skills with current partners, too. The room beyond held a few alcoves with padded floors and mattresses, most of which were inhabited by people having more-or-less straight sex. One couple was unpacking a suitcase filled with whips—a ribbon flogger, a cat-o’-nine-tails, a quirt, even a long bullwhip. A varnished-wood X-frame with metal rings at the four points leaned against the back wall. Marla turned to her admirer. “Okay,” she said. “You think you want a whipping?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Marla went to the couple on the mattress. “I’ll give you a hundred dollars for that bullwhip.”

  “Actually, it cost about five hundred,” the man said.

  “Five hundred?” Marla said. “That’s what you get for shopping at fetish stores—next time, go where the ranchers go. You’ll get a better whip for a lot less money. It might not be shiny black, but it’ll get the job done.” She sighed. “But, okay, I’ll give you six hundred for it.”

  “You know, it takes a lot of practice to use one of these correctly. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can really hurt somebody—”

  “Look, is it a deal, or not?” Marla interrupted. “I know how to use a bullwhip. Don’t teach your grandma to suck eggs.” She reached into her boot for her money clip and counted out six hundred dollars in twenty-dollar bills.

  The man glanced at the woman he was with, shrugged, and said, “Sure. We mostly use it as a prop anyway.”

  Marla picked up the bullwhip, did a few swimmer’s stretches, and lashed the whip through empty air with a resounding crack—the sound came from the end of the whip breaking the sound barrier. People crowded around the doorway, made curious by the whip-crack, most likely, and eager to see the show. Marla set the coiled whip on the floor and led Jared to the X-frame. She tied his wrists and ankles in place with the loops of heavy cotton rope that protruded from the arms of the X. “You’re sure you want me to do this?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. His eyes were wide, and he kept licking his lips. No one could say he hadn’t asked for it.

  Marla turned her head and nodded to the crowd in the doorway. They’d all heard Jared ask for this—they shouldn’t have an excuse to throw her out now.

  She took the bullwhip to the far end of the room. Marla cracked her knuckles. “It’s been a long time,” she said, “but let’s see if I can still write my name in somebody’s ass.” She let the whip fly.

  When Jared cried, “Safe word! Red! Red!” Marla let the whip drop. The people watching burst into spontaneous applause.

  “That’s it?” she said. “You follow me around, asking me to beat you, and all I get is seven strokes?”

  Jared didn’t answer, just panted and leaned his forehead against the wall before him.

  “Somebody should untie him,” Marla said.

  Block letters, each line a stroke of the whip that had just barely drawn blood, spelled out “MA” on Jared’s left butt cheek. The lettering was so neat, it might have been written with a knife.

  Jared, untied by one of the watchers, stepped off the X-frame and winced. “I thought we might play more,” he said, not very hopefully. “Something less…stingy.”

  “No, thanks,” Marla said. “I said I wanted to see you whipped, and I got what I wanted. I’m sure you won’t lack for people who want to dominate you, walking around here with ‘MA’ written on your ass.” She glanced around. “That bullwhip’s up for grabs, if anyone wants it. Just clean the tip with some alcohol.” Drawing her cloak around her, she slipped out of the room, and up out of the dungeon, people complimenting her on her whip-handling all the way. Marla even muttered acknowledgment to a few of the comments.

  Whipping the idiot had been fun—she hadn’t done anything nasty in hours, and she’d been feeling fidgety. But now she wanted to find Finch. After her performance with the bullwhip, other people were going to start following her around and asking for her attention, and she simply wasn’t in the mood.

  She spotted Rondeau in the hot tub, with Zara squirming in his lap, and walked in their direction.

  Then she saw Bradley Bowman in the hot tub beside them, doing his best to be inconspicuous. “Well,” she said, crouching by the tub, behind them, whispering into Bradley’s ear. “I know you didn’t simply follow us, because I would have noticed. Has someone been using their little twitch of psychic ability to find out where I’m going to be, hmm?”

  “It’s not what you think,” B said. “When you blew me off this afternoon, I went looking for something to do to pass the time, and I ended up here.”

  “So you’ve been to these parties before?” Marla said, voice silky and dangerous.

  “I think he’s on the up-and-up, Marla,” Rondeau said. “He nearly peed in the pool when he saw me. I don’t think it has anything to do with us. This party is just the place to be, is all.”

  Zara yawned, pointedly, and Rondeau went back to nuzzling.

  “There’s no such thing as a coincidence, Rondeau,” Marla said. “Not on a night like this. If B’s here, he’s almost certainly here for a reason, even if we don’t know what it is.”

  “See?” Rondeau said to B. “I told you.” Zara made a petulant noise at his inattention.

  “Confluence,” B said.

  “That’s right,” Marla said. “Now, what do you know about Finch?”

  B shrugged uncomfortably and glanced around at the other people—the ordinaries—in the hot tub. “Nothing much. Nothing more than anybody else knows.”

  Marla sighed. Discretion was all well and good, but she was tired of being patient. She’d wasted too much of today killing hummingbirds and whipping idiots, and she wanted some forward momentum. She dipped her finger into the hot tub and swirled it counterclockwise. After a moment, the ordinaries in the tub climbed out and wandered away. Even Zara climbed off Rondeau’s lap and went into the house.

  Rondeau sighed. “I only had sex with her once. We were sitting here so I could recuperate.”

  “Maybe you can hook up with her again later,” B said, sliding out of the water.

  “Yeah, sure,” Rondeau said. “But do you think I really want to look underneath all those other people to find her?”

  “You know,” B said, “you could’ve asked me to get out of the tub, and we could have gone to a private corner of the yard to talk.”

  “Marla prefers direct action,” Rondeau said. “Which is why you’d better start telling her about Finch.”

  “I meant what I said, pretty much,” B said. “Finch is a rich, horny, pushy, generous, no-nonsense bear of a guy. He throws parties and trains submissives. He also runs an independent press, publishes erotica and nonfiction about sex. I’m pretty sure he makes pornos, too, all kinds, though that’s the shady side of his business, and I think on paper he doesn’t have anything to do with movies at all.” B glanced around. “I hear he does stuff for the, ah, specialty market. Really hardcore S&M, the kind that’s only questionably legal in this country. I’ve heard rumors that he does snuff films, but I think that’s bullshit, it’s just the kind of thing people say when they hear about somebody making illicit movies.”

  Marla shook her head. “Bowman, we’re not the vice cops. I don’t care if Finch makes movies of dogs pissing on his mother. You’ve got a streak of extra-perception—what does that tell you about Finch?”

  B shook his head. “I haven’t actually seen him in person in years, not since before…I became this way. So I don’t know.”

  Marla made a disgusted sound. “Maybe thi
s is just coincidence, you being here. Wasting my time. I think I’m going to have to start beating people up until Finch comes around to deal with me personally.”

  “Wait, you just want to see him?” B said.

  “Yes. That’s why we’re here. But I’m tired of waiting.”

  “Well, hell,” B said. “I’ll show you up to his room, if you like.”

  “Give it your best shot,” Marla said. “If it were me, I’d make sure my room was really hard to find.”

  “Oh, I’ve been there before,” B said. “Back when I was famous. Finch and me and a couple of other guys had some fun together one night.”

  “Lead on,” she said.

  “Should I come, too?” Rondeau said.

  “No,” Marla said. “No reason for us to look like a parade. Besides, if things get nasty, I’d like to have some backup Finch doesn’t know about. If you hear a commotion, come running.”

  “I shudder to imagine a commotion that you couldn’t handle but I could.”

  “Stranger things happen,” Marla said, and followed Bradley Bowman up the stairs to the deck on the second floor. There were couples in various stages of undress and excess in all corners of the deck, and Marla and B wove around them. The second floor was all windows in back—and inside, the floor was covered with groups of sucking, groping, gasping people. Half a dozen men stood on either side of the walkway to the door, watching the people inside through the windows while they tugged on their cocks—walking past them would be like running a gauntlet, Marla thought. Fortunately, B kept leading her around the side of the house. “Finch is on the third floor, up these stairs,” he said.

  “What stairs?” Marla said, annoyed, and B took her hand. She gasped. There was a wooden stairway, right there, going up the side of the house, ending at a door. She hadn’t seen it, or sensed its presence at all. Marla almost never failed to notice a door. She looked at B with new respect. Maybe he was more than a half-assed seer.

  “It’s usually not so hard to find,” B said. “I’ve been here for smaller parties, stuff like that, and it’s not usually hidden at all. But I think Finch likes his privacy for these big gatherings.”

  “I’m sure he does,” Marla said. “He’s probably sitting up there, soaking in all the accumulated sexual energy, storing it up for use later.”

  “What do you mean?” B said.

  “I think Finch is a sexual magician. All these people fucking produces a kind of energy, and a sorcerer can tap into that to power spells, to commit acts of magic. The people downstairs think they’re just having a good time—and they are, maybe even a better time than they would have otherwise, since Finch has spells on the place to make people want to fuck more—but they’re also giving Finch his strength.”

  “Are you a, uh, sexual magician, too?”

  Marla laughed. “From anyone else, I’d think that was a come-on. No, I’m not a pornomancer, I’m a foul-rag-and-bone-shop sorcerer. I do a little bit of everything. Jill-of-all-trades. I know a lot about sex magic, though. My old mentor, Artie Mann, was a pornomancer.”

  “Did he throw parties like this?”

  “Sometimes, but for a different reason. Artie didn’t like to depend on anyone else for anything. He did a big spell to make himself impotent when he was in his twenties, at his sexual peak.”

  “He was a sex magician who couldn’t have erections?” B said.

  “It was kind of brilliant, actually,” Marla said. “He owned a bunch of strip clubs, and he surrounded himself with young women, and I think he chose me as an apprentice as much because of my appearance as for any other reason. He wanted to fuck constantly, but he couldn’t, he’d made it impossible for himself, and the frustration and tension built up in him to tremendous levels. He used the energy from that tension to power his magic. So while Finch needs all these dozens of people screwing to give him power, Artie just had to go to one of his strip clubs, and in a pinch, he could just watch some porn. He did sometimes have people over to his place for parties, though not on this scale. He didn’t draw his power from the guests, though, like Finch does.”

  “Wow,” B said. “Pretty smart. Except he couldn’t fuck.”

  “I never said it was a flawless method,” Marla said. She glanced up the stairs. “I should go up and introduce myself. You know Finch. Is he the type to listen to a reasonable request?”

  B shrugged. “Sure, I guess. He doesn’t take shit from anyone, but he’s always struck me as a reasonable guy. I used to think he was great, super-nice, to throw these parties in his house, but I didn’t realize he had ulterior motives…still, sure, he’ll listen to a reasonable request.”

  “Good,” Marla said. “That’s good to hear.” She cracked her knuckles. “We’ll see how he handles un- reasonable requests, then.” She went up the stairs to Finch’s door, leaving B below.

  6

  M arla hesitated outside the door. She still had her boots on, and they were ensorcelled so that she could kick down just about any door that wasn’t reinforced with iron, but did she really want to go in hard? Finch was the chief sorcerer of this city for the moment, and he was sitting on top of a geyser of sexual energy right now—maybe she shouldn’t mess with him. He’d come down to the party eventually, after all.

  She frowned and shook her head, then slapped herself hard on the cheek. Her head cleared. Finch had some sort of a self-confidence-deflation spell going on up here, probably to get rid of anyone who managed to wander up accidentally. Screw that. Maybe if he hadn’t tried to cut her confidence out from under her, Marla would have simply knocked, but Finch’s subtle little mood-altering spells pissed her off. She lifted her foot and kicked the door, just below the doorknob, and after a sharp snap the door swung open.

  Finch was in the small bedroom beyond the door, standing up and fucking someone who leaned over the bed. Both Finch and his partner looked up when the door opened. Finch was a big, hairy guy—he could have been a lumberjack or a professional wrestler, though his brown beard was neatly trimmed, and the guy he was riding was…

  Not human. His skin was grayish, his eyes mere depressions in his head, and as Marla stood watching he disappeared, shredding apart into wisps, leaving Finch standing empty-handed over a plastic-covered bed smeared with gray slime.

  “Oh, nasty!” Marla cried. “You fuck ghosts?” She’d heard of ectoplasmophilia, though it was, to say the least, a rarefied taste—it took a lot of power to give a ghost enough substance to make penetration possible. Most of the sorcerers Marla knew, generally as morally relativistic a group as one could imagine, found the whole idea appalling, akin to bestiality, though personally Marla thought it was more like fucking dead animals. Ghosts couldn’t technically consent, true, but they were only just barely conscious, just a psychic heat-signature left over from someone’s death. Marla didn’t think ectoplasmophilia was particularly immoral. She just thought it was gross.

  Finch took a white hand towel from his bedside table and wiped gray goo off his cock. “Shut the door,” he said quietly.

  Marla kicked it shut behind her, and it actually closed, though it didn’t exactly hang straight on the frame anymore.

  Finch stretched his arms over his head, then cracked his neck. “I wish you’d come in ten minutes later,” he said. “I would’ve been finished, and then I wouldn’t be starting this conversation filled with quite so much rage.”

  Marla rolled her eyes. “Like I knew you were going to be shagging Casper. I thought you’d be sitting up here cross-legged in a mystic circle, collecting sexual energy.”

  Finch shrugged. “None of that energy is going to waste, I assure you. And you disapprove of my sexual practices, Ms. Mason?”

  She wasn’t surprised he knew her name. Since he hadn’t tried to kill her yet, she’d assumed he must have some idea who she was. “I don’t disapprove, exactly, any more than I disapprove of watching someone eat roadkill. To each his own. I just think it’s disgusting.”

  Finch nodded thoughtfully, walkin
g to a small closet. Marla tensed, but Finch just took out a thin red robe and put it on, tying the sash carefully. “Every sorcerer, apprentice, and low-class alley wizard in this city knows that if they betray me or hurt me, I’ll bring them back from the dead and rape their ghosts. It’s a surprisingly powerful deterrent. Even though most profess belief that the ghost is just a collection of metaphysical dead skin cells, not in any sense the soul of an actual person, they still don’t want me to get my spirit hands on their ghosts.”

  Marla felt a grudging respect for Finch after he said that. Any sorcerer could make outlandish threats—it was practically their stock-in-trade—but Finch clearly followed through. He was also queer for ghosts, and got off on what he did, no question, but everyone had kinks—who was she to judge? “I can see why that might make people less inclined to fuck with you.”

  “And on that note, how can I help you, Ms. Mason?”

  “Call me Marla,” she said, and leaned back against the wall. “Did that Chinese guy call you and tell you I was coming?”

  Finch shrugged. “Reporting on the presence of out-of-town sorcerers is one of his responsibilities while I’m in charge. He asked me not to kill you, by the way. He looks forward to that honor himself.”