by John Bruni
“Well, it’s my second,” Edward said. “It’s just this time, I’ll be on the other side of things.”
Coppergate nodded. “Quite right. I do hope you enjoy yourself. There are not many people like you.”
“I know.” He thought about Samuel.
Coppergate turned to Charles. “Has anyone else arrived yet?”
“Martin and Elizabeth are in the observation room,” Charles said. “Shall we?”
“Of course,” Coppergate said. He hit the switch on his armrest, and the wheelchair crept forward. Everyone followed him, the paupers after their prince, and when they entered the observation room, they found the other two sitting, waiting. Neither of them talked to each other, but that surprised no one. Elizabeth and Martin didn’t have a lot in common.
Ah. Elizabeth Drake. Despite her beauty, she could be just as nasty as Richard Coppergate. Her light blue, almost colorless eyes never seemed to blink, as if she were a corpse. She never seemed to move anything at all. Even her face was usually blank, the picture postcard of eternal boredom. Her perfect figure hid behind a power suit, except for her incredible legs, which topped out at a mini-skirt that must have cost her thousands of dollars.
These proceedings were usually men only—not even wives were allowed—but Elizabeth was the exception. She had more money than all of them combined, except for Coppergate and Samuel, and she had a taste for blood.
God, how Edward wanted to fuck her. He’d tried many times, but she always shot him down. She liked strong men, men who could kick ass for breakfast and fuck like mad for dinner. Edward didn’t fit either of those categories.
He remembered a time when the two of them had been waiting for their limos outside of a posh restaurant after an excellent meeting. Coppergate had been with them, but he wanted to stay for a late business dinner. As Edward and Elizabeth waited, a junkie with a gun approached them, demanding their money.
Elizabeth laughed and used some martial arts moves that Edward hadn’t even seen in movies. When the mugger’s arms and legs had been twisted beyond recognition, she took the gun and shot him six times in the chest. She laughed as she did this.
Yeah, Edward had no chance of getting up her skirt.
Martin Taylor, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have much of a taste for anything, not even when he sat in on these proceedings. However, like Elizabeth, he was different from the others. Whereas everyone else was white, Martin was black. Nobody seemed to have a problem with that, except for Samuel, who had a problem with fucking everything.
As for Edward, he would never be entirely comfortable around a black man. His parents, while they weren’t obviously racist, had been closet bigots. They never said the dreaded n-word, but they used to talk about Them when they were around like-minded people. Growing up, Edward had picked up on that. He never treated Them poorly, but he would never be truly okay with Them, even though he’d hung around with a lot of Them throughout most of his adult life.
Edward approached the large, stoop-shouldered man and said, “How’s it going, Martin?”
Martin shook his hand. “All right.”
As he greeted Martin, Edward noticed Elizabeth get up and approach Coppergate. In her calm, lifeless voice, she said, “It’s wonderful to see you, Richard.”
Coppergate showed off all of his metal fangs. “I always find your presence spiritually rewarding.”
Elizabeth bent over, her lips puckered. Coppergate, who didn’t mind the touch of a woman at all, lifted his head up to offer a clear target. Edward looked away from the horrible display, but he still heard the smack as her lips pressed down, then pulled back from Coppergate’s withered cheek.
Edward felt a little sick. The booze had kicked in a little, and that didn’t help. His bladder felt a bit tight, so he said, “If you’ll excuse me, I need to use the facilities.” Ordinarily, he would have said that he needed to “take a piss,” but Coppergate hated vulgarities. Coppergate, above all the others, was not a man to fuck with.
“You know where it is, I’m sure,” Charles said.
Edward nodded, and he left the observation room. The echoes of his footfalls, which had so enthralled him earlier, now comforted him. It would be nice not to have to see Coppergate for a while.
He stepped into the bathroom, and he locked the door behind him. Just in case. For the most part, he didn’t care about the others walking in on him. However, having Coppergate do so, as irrational as the thought seemed, would have been terrible, kind of like standing naked in front of a hungry lion.
Edward unzipped his pants, and his heart nearly gnawed its way out of his chest. Blood stood out on his dick in a ring, and he couldn’t help but think that someone had tried to bite it off. Then he remembered the fuckslinger and her lipstick, and he grabbed a tissue to wipe it off.
He broke the seal, and when nature’s call had been answered, he went to the mirror and looked at himself. His blue eyes were bloodshot already. He’d put on a few pounds since a year ago, so his face seemed puffier than usual. That was okay, though; back then, he’d been too skinny.
He reached into his pocket and withdrew one of the vials of coke, pondering whether or not he should do a line yet. After two seconds of consideration, he tapped out two thin rails and snorted them up each nostril. His circulation kicked up a couple of steps, and he washed his hands. He whistled a tune as he did so, eager to get back to the others, to start the game.
He dried off his hands and stepped back out into the corridor. On his way back to the observation room, he passed through the parlor, where he ran into a middle-aged man, about fifty, with a gray handlebar mustache resting on his upper lip and his balding hair cut fairly short, almost to the length of a crewcut. He grew it out long on one side of his head so he could comb it over a scar that ran the length of his head from just above his ear to the back. Edward smiled, taking satisfaction in the fact that he’d caused that scar. He’d marked this man for life.
For being fifty, though, the man’s arms were as big as tree trunks, bristling with well-cultivated muscles and veins. Samuel Maxwell Barnabas III had nearly as much money as Coppergate, but he spent most of his time away from his business. He enjoyed hunting, among other sports, far too much to spend his days languishing in a suit behind a desk.
Unlike all the others, except for Coppergate, Samuel had earned every penny of his fortune. Everyone else had inherited their wealth, and Edward himself had won his first billion dollars from these very people.
“Eddie,” Samuel said.
He hated being called Eddie. It made him sound like some kind of sitcom jock, or a barfly in the background of a cop show. Eddie was dead. He was Edward now. But he knew he had to play ball with this guy. “How’s life treating you?” he asked.
“Fine, fine. I can’t wait to see the group Charles put together this year.”
They entered the observation room, and for the first time, Edward looked through the one-way glass to see who they’d gathered so far. There were only six of them. They needed one more to get this ball rolling.
All of them were unconscious except for one. Odd. Usually they were all out cold by this time. The one who sat up stared out into space, as if he were watching a TV program no one else could see. His gentle brown eyes remained stationary behind his thick, blocky glasses. His short, slender form didn’t move except for a slight chest movement caused by breathing. Though he looked harmless, Edward felt slightly unsettled by the guy’s posture. No normal human being could sit so still and passionlessly.
Samuel had gone directly to Coppergate, and while they conversed, Charles’s butler took drink orders from everyone else. When George asked for a soft drink, William said, “Why don’t you bring him a whiskey, neat?”
“Dad, I—“
“It’s time you learned to act like a man. Men drink whiskey.”
“But Mom said—“
“She’s not here. I am.”
When Edward’s turn came up, he considered going with water, thin
king it would be best to stay away from anything that might make him sleepy. Instead, he decided he wanted something to even out the coke, so he asked for a double whiskey, intending to nurse it for a while.
Samuel asked for a beer. “Nothing fancy, either. Just bring me whatever.”
Coppergate didn’t drink. Instead, he sipped at a bottle of water his assistant provided. Not that he had an issue with alcohol, but he hadn’t survived as long as he had by putting garbage into his body.
To take up the time, Edward picked up an InfoPad that contained the dossiers Charles had put together of their guests. Edward downloaded this and flipped through files leisurely and thoughtlessly until he came to one.
He blinked. Looked up through the glass at one of the unconscious forms. Looked back at the tablet. He reverse-pinched the screen in his mind, and the picture of this one expanded until he knew he was right. Double-checking the name sealed the deal. Barry Taylor. Martin’s son.
“Martin?”
“Hm?”
Edward held up the InfoPad as soon as he found Barry’s picture again, so his companion could see it. “Did you know about this?”
Martin sighed, nodding.
“And you’re okay with this?”
“I don’t have a son.”
“I . . . um—“
“Don’t worry about it. I certainly don’t care.”
“But . . . he’s your kid.”
“Not anymore. Not since he pulled that stupid stunt.”
Edward opened his mouth to say more, but he knew how pointless it would be. Once one of these guys made up their mind, that was it. No compromises. Nothing. Part of him wanted to know about the “stupid stunt” Martin referred to, but he knew he’d get no answer. His companions were all free with other people’s information—especially those in the next room—but their own? They’d die before divulging anything personal. Half of them didn’t even use their LiveStreams.
The butler came back with everyone’s drinks. When Edward picked up his, he sipped at it. The desire to gulp it down hovered near the back of his mind, but he didn’t want to have to go back to the bathroom for another snort from his vials. That would look bad, and it wouldn’t last him through the night. Instead, he swallowed the tiny sip in his mouth and let it warm his insides.
While the others conversed among themselves, Edward glanced over the occupants in the observation room. He easily picked out Martin’s son, since he was the only black guy in the room. He rested on the floor in a heap, his raggedy clothes puddled around him like a dirty, full-body halo. His mouth gaped open, showing off his rotten, jagged teeth. The fronts were missing on the top and bottom. He barely had any hair, and even though the dossier said he wasn’t even fifty, he looked eighty.
Next to him sat a guy that looked even dirtier than Barry. He had a mop of greasy hair covering his facedown head. His trench coat, spotted and stained, covered a stick-thin body and flowed out behind him like a cloak. His face sported lesions all over it, and blood seeped through his pores, revealing his disease. Edward thought he’d seen the guy before, back in the old days, but he couldn’t be sure. The dossier said his name was Wayne Richards. Didn’t ring a bell, but then again, he never really knew anyone’s name on the street.
He smiled when he saw the woman next to this guy. Stacy Bartlett. Fuckslinger. She certainly had the body for it. Nice ass, which he could almost see spilling out of the super-tight jean shorts. Small but perfect tits. Long blonde hair. Perfect. Edward would fuck her up, down, left, right and sideways. He found it hard to believe she was only fifteen years old.
Edward knew for sure he’d seen the next guy in the room. Steve McNeil, former cop. Got kicked off the force for brutality a while ago. No one would miss that scumbag.
Edward nearly did a double-take when he saw Laura Bard. The dossier said she called herself Skank, and it sure showed. She only had a band of hair from one temple, around the back of her head, to the other temple; like an old man, except her hair was purple. Two horns jutted out from the sides of her forehead, and between them were tattooed the words FUCK YOU in dripping-blood letters. A tattoo of a bat flapped around on her skin, moving from her head, down her back, and up her arms. Her fingernails were grown out to claws, and she wore rings that had razors on their edges. Then, he realized that she had six fingers on both of her hands. The scarring at the base of each betrayed body modification. Edward squinted his eyes and saw, through her barely open mouth, that some of her teeth were missing. Pulled, no doubt, to fit in with the current punk style. She looked like a jack-o’-lantern from hell.
The last one in the room sat up at the table, the only one conscious. That had to be Toby James Munger. Also unlike the others, he wore nice clothes and seemed pretty clean. His blocky glasses covered up dull brown eyes, and he simply stared ahead, waiting for everything to begin.
Edward shuddered. The guy gave him the creeps. He knew why Charles had chosen him, and he figured Toby would do an excellent job.
The door at the back of the observation room slid open, and a team of doctors entered, pushing a wheelchair with the final contestant in it. They carefully picked him up and brought him to the table, where they leaned him forward, since he still hadn’t regained consciousness.
In the moment before his face went down on the table’s surface, Edward noticed that this guy was beautiful. He didn’t like to fuck guys, but if he had to, he wouldn’t have minded doing it with this one. He also dressed pretty well, and his short blond hair twisted around, sexy even in his unconsciousness.
Edward didn’t remember seeing his file, so he flipped through the dossiers in his head until he got to the final one, showing off the guy’s face. Another fuckslinger, but this one serviced his own sex, too. Samuel Maxwell . . .
Holy shit. Samuel Maxwell Barnabas, IV. He went by the name Randall Marsh, but now that Edward knew the truth, he could see a faint resemblance between him and his old man.
At that moment, Samuel looked up from his conversation with Coppergate and saw the new arrival. At first, he smiled, excited to see who else would be competing tonight. Then, recognition lit his face, and his brow furrowed. His nostril flared, and he almost grunted like an animal.
He whirled on Coppergate. “You think this is going to stop me?”
“Calm down, Samuel,” Coppergate said. “As I understand it—“
“I asked you a fucking question.” This time, spittle flew from his lips and dotted Coppergate’s raisin face.
Coppergate recoiled at Samuel’s expletive, but it looked more like a matter of style than actual surprise. His assistant patted his face dry with her handkerchief. “I don’t think it necessary—“
Samuel grabbed the arms of the wheelchair and brought his head down to Coppergate’s level, their faces mere inches apart. “Answer me, you goddam cripple!”
Coppergate’s eyes snapped down into slits, and he bared his fangs. “Take care, Samuel. You are dancing on a gossamer tightrope, and I will not hesitate to destroy you, if need be.”
His assistant drew her gun from inside her power suit, and she pointed it at Samuel’s face, directly at his left eye.
Samuel didn’t flinch. “You don’t seem to understand. That thing in there isn’t my son. And it’s not going to stop me from the hunt.” He released the wheelchair and slumped onto the couch, his arms crossed.
Coppergate’s assistant put her gun away.
Elizabeth took the chair next to Edward. “This just got interesting.” She sat so close that her soft voice tickled at his face.
“I don’t know if you noticed, but Martin’s son is in there, too.”
She ignored him, staring at Randall Marsh. “He’s a cute one. Too bad he’s not like his father.”
Had she fucked Samuel? He knew she’d had a thing with Coppergate, but Samuel? Who else in this room had she fucked? Did that mean that she might—?
“Uh, you’d fuck him?” he asked.
“If he wasn’t a faggot.”
Wow. Even a nasty, ugly word like “faggot” sounded like honey from her. Something fluttered in the front of his pants.
“So.” She placed a hand on his thigh, high enough to almost pinch the head of his dick. “I take it you brought something tonight.”
“Something?” As if he didn’t know what she meant.
She tweaked her nose. “I wouldn’t mind sneaking off with you for a toot.”
“Sorry. I don’t have anything.”
Her head tilted sideways, and she rolled her eyes. “Come on. The white smudge under your nose says otherwise.”
Shit. He wiped at his nostrils and found white on his fingers. He licked them clean.
“I know a way I can pay you back,” she said.
This piqued his interest. Maybe he’d finally get his turn at her now. Just as he opened his mouth to give his assent, Coppergate said, “They’re waking up.”
Edward glanced into the observation room and saw Wayne’s head starting to rise. Behind him, on the floor, Barry shuddered, and his feet twitched. Stacy moaned, rubbing at her face.
“Later,” Elizabeth said.
Edward nodded and waited for the game to begin.
Chapter 2
Yelling. Steve McNeil’s eyes creaked open, and bright light stabbed through to the back of his skull. Groaning, he straightened up and nearly fell off his chair. The fuzzy world swayed around him, and he wondered how much he’d had to drink last night. The swirling miasma in his guts tried creeping up his throat, but he swallowed it down. This had to be the worst hangover he’d ever had.
But something seemed off. He looked at his surroundings and discovered that there were other people in the room with him. Most of them looked like they might be homeless, and their sweaty pork stink wafted over to him. His gorge nearly gave up the ghost. They all yelled at each other except for one guy; this one sat quietly in the corner, observing the whole mess. He didn’t register amusement, nor did he seem put off by the behavior of the others. Instead, he just existed.
Who were these people? Where the hell was he? This place had an odd ER waiting room feel to it, but there were no nurses or offices or anything, just a sliding door behind him and a giant mirror in front of him. He tried to remember leaving Lenny’s last night and couldn’t quite get there. He went to access his LiveStream, but every time he did this, he received the same message over and over: THE SYSTEM IS TEMPORARILY DOWN. PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER.
