by Edward Lee
“Capitalism at its finest,” Via said. “Things actually aren’t that different. If you’ve got money, you’ve got privilege. Hierarchals enjoy an eternity of luxury, on the backs of the poor. Just like the Living World. See? Even the government’s in on it.”
“Hush seems very interested in this place.” Cassie noted her friend’s longing eyes.
Then Via explained, “Hush can’t talk because the Constabs caught her stealing a piece of Ghoul Sausage from a vendor. They cut out her voice box as punishment.”
The answer seemed simple to Cassie. “Well, by the looks of things, we can buy her a new one.”
“Ain’t gonna happen. It’s a government annex,” Via explained. “To get services, you have to register. Me, Xeke, and Hush are XR’s—we’re fugitives. You have to prove residency for any government service.”
Damn. It distressed Cassie when she considered the predicament. Hush would spend eternity wanting something she could never have.
“Here’s another Annex,” Via pointed out when they crossed the next block. The elaborate neon sign read: SUCCUBIC SERVICE CENTER! RENTALS, LEASES! AN AUTHORIZED SUBSIDIARY OF THE LILITH SUBCARNATION CONSERVATORY.
“The Conservatory is another government project,” Via said, “but this annex rents succubi and incubi to all the downtown strip joints and escort services. Lilith herself is the Conservatory’s CEO—Lucifer’s had a thing for her for eons; she bore Adam’s children after Eve left him, and the children were half-bred sexual demons. At the Conservatory, she uses Conversion Spells to turn humans into succubi, to subcamate them into the Living World where they haunt men’s dreams. just like the legend.”
By now it was occurring to Cassie that many myths, legends, and occult lore must actually be true. Behind the glass, several naked “samples” sashayed back and forth in a plush parlor. Glowing yellow eyes glinted back at her. The women had flawless physiques, every aspect of female desirability accentuated to supernatural perfection. They were bald, however, and bereft of any body hair, and their poreless skin shined as if shellacked, not flesh-toned but a rich, exotic violet.
“And you say they rent them out?” Cassie qualified.
“To titty bars, live-sex shows, massage parlors and whorehouses.” Via chuckled sardonically. “Sounds a lot like L.A.”
They continued on down the maze of dark streets. Via hadn’t been kidding earlier, when she’d said they’d be going to the seedier parts of the district. Wan prostitutes enticed customers from bordello windows; some were human, some succubi, and some crossbred demons. Peep show parlors flashed like Las Vegas casinos, promising live sex shows, private booths, and the latest pornography. Beneath a garish yellow sign that read JACK RUBY’S ROMP-HOUSE, an eager Imp barked at them: “Step right in, ladies! Dancers wanted! Jack’ll take your applications personally!”
“No, thanks,” Via smirked.
DEAD PORNSTAR LAP DANCES! boasted another sign, and then another, CRIPPENDALES! FOR LADIES ONLY! GET A PRIVATE DANCE (AND MORE!) FROM JOHNNY THE C-MAN HIMSELF!
Lastly, the Onan Theater sported a flashing marquee: “HELL-TRAMP 666” STARRING CATHERINE THE GREAT! PLUS EVA BRAUN IN ”GARGOYLE ORGY A-GO-GO!”
Cassie grew weary of the parade of smut. So much revolved around sex, just like in her world. Hush seemed to sense her impatience, pointing to the next block.
“The S&N Club is right over there,” Via said. “In Herod’s Alley.”
But when they crossed the street, Via slowed. A Golem was hulking down the street, stopping at each street lamp and sign post. The huge, clay-bodied thing seemed to be attaching sheets of paper to each post.
“What’s he doing?” Cassie asked.
Via didn’t answer; instead she trotted to the first street sign. “Shit, I should’ve known,” she muttered.
Cassie looked at the paper that the Golem had fixed to the post. It’s a Wanted poster, she realized when she read it..
POSTED BY ORDER OF THE AGENCY OF THE CONSTABULARY (BONIFACE DISTRICT) WANTED FOR THE MURDER OF 16 MUTILATION OFFICERS REWARD OF 1000 HELL-NOTES FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO THIS CRIMINAL’S ARREST
And below that was a picture of Xeke. Via was laughing softly. “How do you like that? He killed sixteen of them and got away.”
“Yeah,” Cassie remarked, “but now they’ve got a bulletin out for him.”
“At least he’s still alive. We can only hope he’ll make it to the club.”
Cassie saw her point. Xeke being wanted by the police meant he was still out there somewhere.
So long as they were looking for him, he was still alive.
“Let’s get going,” Via urged and led on.
When they arrived at the alley’s entrance, Cassie noticed an endless line of rundown buildings pressed together. It reminded her of the Goth block in D.C.: black-painted brick-fronts and bouncers standing with their arms crossed in front of battered propped-open doors, but these bouncers were either deformed or demonic. Low bassy notes and a familiar voice eddied from one door: “Since my spirit left me, I’ve found a new place to dwell. I drugged out and croaked on a toilet seat and—went straight to Hell.”
Cassie paused. No, it ... couldn’t be!
Or could it?
Before another club, a severed head on a stick talked to them. “Hey, girls! No cover! Robert Johnson and Grieg are JAMMING!”
NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS! HERE’S THE S&N CLUB! a sign down the way alerted them. Finally, Cassie thought.
“Crap!” Via exclaimed. “We can’t get in! I just remembered that Xeke has all the cash!”
“And there’s no sign of him,” Cassie observed around the entrance. “If he was here, he’d be waiting outside for us, wouldn’t he?”
“Yeah. Damn it!” Via looked down at stained pavement, scuffed a boot. Cassie could imagine what she was considering: that Xeke wasn’t coming, because. Xeke was being apprehended by the Mutilation Squad right this instant.
“He’ll be here,” Cassie tried to sound hopeful. “He’s probably just hiding out for a while, until the Constabs leave.”
Via just nodded. Then she asked the weirdest question: “How long are your fingernails?”
“Huh?”
“It’s the only thing I can think of that can get us in the door. We can’t trade our train passes, in case...”
Via gulped at the reality. “In case Xeke never shows up.”
Cassie looked at her long black-lacquered nails, then hesitantly showed them to Via.
“Those are great. Bite one off.”
Cassie winced at the thought but when Hush made the universal gesture—rubbing her thumbs against her first two fingers—Cassie knew that the fingernail from an Etheress would serve as money. Less than delicately, she bit the nail off her pinkie, gave it to Via.
The instant that the nail was no longer part of Cassie’s body, it glowed a harsh lime-green.
“Cover charge is a De Sade Note each,” croaked the bouncer at the door. He was shirtless, everything from the waist up covered with third-degree burns. He looked at them with lidless eyes.
“Three for inside, Romeo,” Via said and gave him the luminous fingernail.
The bouncer examined the nail, impressed. “Where’d you get this?”
“I’m a concubine for Grand Duke Charles the First. Why don’t you be a sport and slip us some drink tickets too?”
The bouncer produced the tickets without a quibble, and let them pass.
Inside, at first, Cassie was reminded of all the wonderful Goth clubs she’d gone to in D.C. Completely inchoate surroundings, subdued chatter, a dance floor filled with faces and murk. Dim light flickered from comers and around a long, congested bar in the back. All the walls were black-painted brick.
Cassie noticed crude graffiti: SEE U SOON, JOHNNY! JIM WAS HERE, AND I NEED AN L.A. WOMAN.... I FUCKED UP—JAMS
Music she’d never heard before ground out from a high DJ station and occult speakers driven by Hell’s version of electricity. The DJ himself appeared to be
some species of Troll. Beneath wavering phosphor lamps, the stage extended, bereft of a band as yet, guitars on stands and a drum set in wait. ,
Mostly better heeled humans filled the dance floor, some dancing to the current set, some chattering with acquaintances, odd-colored drinks in hand. One couple made out not-so-discretely while they danced, a male demon with a thin chain joining the tips of his horns, and slick green skin over his twelve-pack abs and Mark Wahlberg pectorals.
“Here. At least look the part,” Via said and extended a warm metal can to her. Cassie sniffed it; it smelled like rotten hops, and the label read HELL CITY BREWING COMPANY. Ugh! she thought, not daring to taste it.
Next, she stared. A spritey woman bopped past, with a navel where her mouth should be. Cassie couldn’t resist to look further, to the woman’s midriff. Where her navel should be was a mouth, complete with lip piercings. “Hi!” the mouth said to Cassie.
Good lord ...
“It’ll probably take a while to find Lissa,” Via proposed. “I doubt that she’ll come on until the band starts.”
“Didn’t the bartender at—what was it called?”
“The Ghoul’s Head Tavern.”
“Didn’t he say that Lissa was an employee?”
“Yeah, I think so. Said she worked the cages, but as you can see ...”
Cassie’s gaze followed Via’s upward. Hanging over the stage were four dance cages—all empty.
“Hush,” Via instructed, “you go hang by the front door, watch for Xeke. Me and Cassie’ll snoop around.”
Cassie tried to appear normal in the hellish club, scanning the crowd and deformed bar-staff for Lissa’s face, but she saw nothing. She works here, she thought in fragments. An employee. A dancer. Where would dancers be before their set?
In the back.
“Where are you going?” Via asked.
“In the back,” Cassie said and pulled away.
“Be careful!”
Via’s objections were drowned out by rising shouts. The crowd in front shoved their fists in the air, demanding “Sid! Sid! Sid!” as Cassie shouldered her way through more decadently displayed bodies. She was grateful for the distraction. Eventually a deathly thin man appeared on stage, tight jeans and studded boots, spiky black hair. His shirtless chest revealed crisscrosses of razor cuts.
“I’m fucked up!” his cockney accent blared into the mic. “Can barely walk or talk—yeah!”
The crowd exploded.
“Anybody got some smack? Fuck it! Here’s the hottest band in Hell! Aldinoch!”
The band she’d heard on the cassette tape.
A human trying hard to look like Trent Reznor grinned slyly and rubbed his groin against her side. Cassie sneered at the crude gesture.
“Hey, doll baby. Just got a new rig at the Transfigurist’s.” He brazenly displayed his hips to her; the crotch of his black slacks looked as if he’d stuffed a puppy in them. “Wanna try it out?”
“I’d rather be damned to Hell,” she replied.
“Hey, that’s a good one!”
She smirked off. Dirge-like guitar riffs meandered through the air; drums began to pop as the band—four figures in black cloaks-began their first number. Cassie found a black door further back, opened it a crack, and peered in.
WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!
A fat Troll in suspenders was beating a small Imp with a truncheon. The Imp had been peeping through the keyhole of another door.
“Freakin’ pervert! Get back in the garbage hopper unless you want me to fire your ugly ass!”
Several more blows of the truncheon, and the Imp squalled and shimmied away, blood running from its pointed ears. When the Imp was gone, the Troll—obviously a manager—peeked into the keyhole himself and chuckled.
Then he, too, was gone.
Cassie slipped in, looked in the hole.
As she’d hoped, it was a dressing room. Several dancers in slinky outfits were filing out another door. Cassie noticed another violet-skinned succubus, a four-breasted She-Demon with modest bat-wings and a scarlet corset, and two human women in black bikinis, both of whom sported outbreaks of yellow tumors on their faces.
But no Lissa.
Then, all the girls left the room through a rear door.
Damn it all!
Had Lissa filed out of the room before Cassie had peeked in?
She snuck back out. The band’s sonorous mix of Goth and death metal was grinding out in full as the dance floor rocked.
“The house of God in flames, protect me Father Satan, in Hell I’ll be your slave!” the lead singer croaked.
Cassie could scarcely hear herself think over the infernal lyrics. But now the dance cages above the stage were occupied—with the girls she’d seen previously in the dressing room.
Another girt—a human with a white pageboy hair-cut—stepped right up to Cassie, hugging her. “Let’s dance!” she said.
“Uh, no thanks,” but as Cassie struggled to pull away, she felt hands clumsily kneading her breasts.
What the hell?
Then she saw how this could be. The woman snickered and stepped back. She pulled up her blouse, displaying human hands, which opened and closed, sprouting from where her nipples should be.
This place is REALGY a trip!
But just as Cassie was admitting to herself Lissa was likely not working tonight, she felt a tug at her skirt. It was Hush, excitedly pointing upward, behind her.
Two dance cages that Cassie hadn’t previously noticed hung behind them, over the bar. An attractive redhead with a face bloated from elephantiasis danced sultrily in one cage.
It was Lissa who danced in the other.
The long shining black and white streak blurred before her face. She danced to the grim waves of music, still dressed as she had been the last night Cassie saw her alive: the black-velvet gauntlets, the short black crinoline skirt and lacy black over-blouse.
It’s her. She’s really here ...
“You see her!” Via yelled from the other side of the bar.
Cassie nodded.
But now ... How do I get to her? A small hatch in the wall led to the opening of the cage, and Cassie could only guess where the access was. Somewhere in the back, along with the truncheon-wielding Troll. Should she risk it?
A second later, though, she knew she had no choice.
Lissa had stopped dancing. She was staring down through the cage bars, right at Cassie.
“Lissa! Don’t run! I just want to TALK to you!” Cassie did her best to blare over the music.
Too late. Lissa was already out of the cage and crawling away into the hatch.
Got to cut her off! Cassie knew. She bulled back through the dancing crowd, slammed through the back door and slammed again through the door to the dressing room. Toward the rear was an open doorway next to a ladder on the wall, and just beyond that a fourth door, marked EXIT.
Lissa was climbing down the ladder, her face twisted into dread when she saw Cassie.
“Lissa! Please! I’m sorry!”
Cassie was about to run to her—until a heavy scaled hand grabbed her from behind by the hair. All her breath slipped out of her as she was spun around, to stare into the runneled face of the Troll.
The inhuman voice gurgled: “Aw, this is gonna be sweet! Got me a little human bitch back here tryin’ to steal!”
“I wasn’t trying to steal!” Cassie pleaded. “I just need to talk to my—” and then her voice was severed when the taloned hand grabbed her throat and squeezed.
Pale-green eyes glimmered back in homicidal lust. The other scaled hand raised the truncheon.
“Let’s see how fast it takes me to whip your brain into pudding....”
Her fear felt like electrocution; she couldn’t breathe. But as the truncheon raised higher for its first strike to her head, another emotion surged up from her heart.
Anger.
Suddenly the room seemed tinted in sparkling light. The Troll, amazed, let go of her and backed off, and the t
runcheon thunked to the floor. Cassie’s face burned back at the creature, and when she yelled, “LEAVE ME ALONE!”—
Splat!
—the Troll’s head exploded.
Cassie fell back; the strange sparkles fading. Her eyes widened at the convulsing corpse on the floor and the goulash of brains running slowly down the wall.
What the hell just happened?
There was no time to figure it out now. Her focus crashed back: Lissa!
But when she turned back around, her sister was gone.
And the exit door had just slammed closed.
(III)
The hot kiss drew Bill Heydon into a cloud of urgent bliss. The saliva off his mysterious new lover’s tongue melted in his mouth like opium smoke. He breathed her scent and just kept sailing away in the warm luxuriant darkness of his bedroom. When he’d come back to bed, shaken from the macabre hallucination of a breastless, grinning Lissa, he’d turned to find a strange figure in bed with him.
The initial shock had nearly stopped his already faulty heart. The figure leaned up, gently pulled off his t-shirt, then smoothed her hands over his bare chest. The sensation enraptured him.
When his eyes -re-adjusted to the dark, he saw who it was.
Mrs. Conner, the housekeeper.
Her nakedness proved what he’d already suspected. She was a robust, attractive woman, with a high full bosom that hadn’t sunk with age.
Any semblance of rationale escaped him, and if he’d been able to give it any logical thought at all, it would’ve occurred to him just how wrong this was. The steel trap of his lawyer’s sensibilities would’ve remembered that Mrs. Conner was an unbonded employee, an uneducated hill woman. The courts wouldn’t care that she’d snuck to Bill’s bed of her own volition. Tomorrow she could cry rape; she could sue him for millions. And no backwoods jury would ever side with a big-city attorney in a rape or sexual exploitation case when the plaintiff was one of their own.
It never occurred to him to put an end to this right now.
