It didn’t matter. It all helped Frederick narrow down the locations in which various drugs were dealt and used in. The fact that San Diego seemed to have a damn heroin epidemic underway made his life considerably easier.
Satisfied that he was likely to find reasonably harmless users, he checked that he had cash in his pocket, then left the suite.
THE SOUTH-EASTERN corner of Balboa Park was, according to his hasty research, where many heroin users liked to shoot up. It was also conveniently close to Golden Hill, where Brennan lived, so hopefully some of the users here would be Brennan’s customers.
Despite the city’s frequent forays into getting on top of the problem, the fact remained that it was possible to find spots which afforded reasonable cover and excellent visibility. Most users could be sure to finish what they were doing before the police could catch them in the act, and that meant that he too would be seen long before he saw anyone.
Not that it posed an issue for him.
Frederick allowed his barriers to weaken as he strolled. To all intents and purposes he was simply one man out for an early evening stroll in the cooling air, and he sifted through the thoughts which reached him, searching for users. It would be better if they were not under the influence, but beggars could not be choosers.
The minds around him were disparate, no two sharing the same ideas and focus.
He said six o’clock. Where is he?
28th and Ash. Got it.
Man, look at that asshole.
Shit, now I’ve gotta wait until he’s gone.
His gaze flickered in the direction of the guilt and frustration, searching for the source. It took a few seconds before he figured out that she had hidden herself well in the shade of a small copse of trees, but while he searched he dug deeper to be certain that the source of her frustration was the desire to inject.
She had a little balloon in her hand, clenched in her fist. He saw it in her imagination, her yearning to tear open the rubber and cook the contents. It made her gums itch.
Frederick sauntered closer. There were green picnic benches near the trees, so he settled down on one and idly patted down his pockets until he located his phone and began fiddling with it.
His free hand slid the wad of cash out of his jacket and slid it onto the bench as though he were divesting himself of some trash.
He didn’t look her way. There was no need. As he played with his phone he dug hooks into her mind and overrode her addiction. That energy would be spent better elsewhere.
Take this cash, he implanted. Take it to Mikey immediately. Give it to him and tell him he is to visit the penthouse suite of the Hotel Palomar where, if he satisfies the resident with the quality of his merchandise, there will be ten times as much waiting for him. You will not keep a single bill. You will give it all to Mikey, you will tell him where to visit, you will tell him that you’ve heard some rich kids are looking to party hard and have money to burn, and then you will come back here and forget you left here. You will use your heroin just like you planned to and you will forget that you took the money, that you saw Mikey, that you gave him a message.
He bit the tip of his tongue a moment, then caved in to temptation.
And then you will feel so sick that you never want to use drugs again. You won’t be able to look at heroin without feeling that sickness. You won’t want to take anything else. You will work on your problems rather than run from them. You can do better. Start a new life. Seek help. Do not tolerate abusers. Have courage.
He rose from his seat, gaze fixed on his phone as though deep in text conversation, and wandered back toward 28th Street, leaving the money behind.
Her attention was on it in a flash, and as Frederick called for a car, she had already stuffed it into her pocket and begun her sprint toward Golden Hill.
FREDERICK DIDN’T RETURN to his suite. Rather, he settled down in the hotel’s lobby.
The hotel only had one public-facing entrance, and he very much doubted that Brennan would have the sense to try and sneak in through any staff-only doors. If the boy had any brains at all he simply wouldn’t turn up, but Frederick suspected the allure of a potential profit in the thousands of dollars would eat away at him until he at least poked his nose in through the doors to see whether it was a sting operation.
And so he waited. The lobby was a dark place, lit with subdued orange lamps in what he presumed was an attempt to look both modern and opulent, but the actual benefit was that he could tinker with his phone without being disturbed.
He was there for an hour before Laurence called him.
It took another hour to digest the meaning of the phone call.
Icky could control fire. On the face of it, it seemed as absurd as telekinesis, but ultimately perhaps they should all be grateful that it hadn’t manifested at the funeral. It was far easier to make people remember a freak weather event when nobody had been burned to death.
He was so lost in thought by the time a cocky-looking redhead sauntered past the hotel windows that he almost missed it.
Almost.
Frederick thumbed his phone. The battery was on the wane, but onlookers didn’t know that. He had scant seconds to skim-read the young man’s thoughts to ensure he wasn’t about to err.
I can’t see any cops. Would they hire a whole penthouse just to catch someone small-time like me? But Candice couldn’t even describe whoever gave her the money. Mind you, she could’ve been high as a fucking kite when it happened—
That was all Frederick needed. He latched on and steered Brennan past his own caution and directly into the lobby, puppetting the American toward the elevators. Brennan’s hands pressed all the right buttons without any input from his own brain.
Wait for me.
Frederick took his time. Brennan had no choice but to exit the elevator and wait, so Frederick gave it a few minutes before heading to the elevators himself.
The prey was well and truly caught in his web, and he was in no hurry to pounce.
UP CLOSE, Brennan showed great promise. Oh, his teeth could use some work, and his hair was a shambles, true. His clothes were dire and reeked of all sorts of chemicals. But his skin was like bone china, spattered with red-brown freckles across his nose and cheeks, and his cheeks and lips were of a soft pink the color of cherry blossoms. With some effort, the boy was eminently fuckable.
If it wasn’t for the pesky fact of his chosen trade.
Frederick clicked his tongue, and Brennan undressed without a word. There was terror in his dark green eyes, but that was hardly relevant. Frederick sent the boy off to shower, then picked up discarded clothing and checked the labels for sizing details.
It was a simple matter to have the concierge not only fetch new clothes, but also to dispose of these ones. He wasn’t willing to have the stink in his vicinity any longer than absolutely necessary, and when Brennan emerged from the shower wrapped in one of the hotel’s generous towels, Frederick was ready for him.
“Are we having fun yet?” Frederick murmured.
Brennan let out a choked sound, halfway between a sob and a plea. “What’s happening? Who are you?”
Frederick rolled his eyes. “Dull,” he mused. He forced Brennan down the stairs and into a seat, and then wandered over to straddle the boy’s lap. “Awful, isn’t it? To have no control. To be entirely under another’s domain.” He delved his fingers into the still-wet red curls and peered closely into Brennan’s eyes. “You do this to people, Mr. Brennan. Day in, day out, you take free will away, and you don’t even put it to any good use.” He sighed. “And so here we are. You have information that I want, and I’m going to take it.”
“Anything!” Brennan trembled in terror beneath him, but his breath hitched with something else. Something identified all too easily.
Arousal.
“Whatever you wanna know,” Brennan blurted. “Please, just don’t kill me!”
Only a fool would mistake arousal for consent, but Frederick filed the reaction away for
later, in case it became relevant. The boy liked being pushed around by a superior force. Perhaps that was why he was able to squirrel away from police custody so often. Maybe he even used his own kink to convince himself that his customers were all there of their own volition.
Regardless, Frederick wasn’t here to talk. He was here to take.
He didn’t answer Brennan’s plea. Instead he pushed himself into the boy’s mind and began to sift through it.
There were several years of memories to work through, and he had all night to narrow down his search.
12
MIKEY
It sounded like a trap. It looked, smelled, and quacked like a trap. Why the fuck was he remotely surprised that it turned out to be a trap?
Oh yeah, because he couldn’t walk away. And because some fucking tourist was giving him a lap dance.
He tried to bail. Like, all the way from the front door to the elevator he was giving it his all, but nothing doing. Why the fuck he even got into the elevator, waited like he was crossfaded to hell and back, then got naked in front of this dude and had a fucking shower in his swank hotel room he couldn’t figure.
The whole situation was sketch. Worse, the tourist wasn’t even asking any questions. He’d been all like hella keen on information, then said nothing.
Mikey tried to look away from those glassy eyes, but he couldn’t even do that much.
His brain felt like it was being picked apart by ants.
“Isn’t this your fifth arrest this year, Brennan?”
Mikey laughed and draped himself across the cruiser’s back seat. It wasn’t easy; they put these single unit molded plastic seats back here these days to stop people like him slipping their drugs away between seat cushions and claiming they’d been stashed by the previous occupier. There were dips in the plastic for seats to stop perps from sliding around, and that meant he had to squirm in place and hike a leg up over the divider. It was usually worth the effort, though. He fluttered his eyelashes as he held up his cuffed wrists, and injected pure suggestion into his voice. “Maybe I like you locking me up, officer.”
“Oh, you do, huh?” Officer Brown met his eye in the rearview mirror for a heartbeat, and Mikey knew right then that he’d won. Brown confirmed it with a slight shift in his seat.
“Maybe I like helping you get out of doing such boring paperwork just for minor crap like me. You know I’m 909 as fuck, huh?” He licked his lips. “You could be back out there catching some real criminals. Why don’t you take my time-wastin’ outta my ass and throw me out, and I promise I’ll be a good boy?”
Brown snorted at him. “Sounds like you’re trying to offer me a bribe, Brennan.”
“No, no no, no.” Mikey gave it his best sultry chuckle. “Mutually beneficial arrangement. C’mon, brah, what’re they gonna do? Lock me up for a month? And what’s gonna happen while I’m in there? They’re gonna pound me in the ass all night long, then throw me out so I can go right back to whatever it was you think you might’ve picked me up for.” He bit his lip and leaned forward, dropping his leg back to the floor. “But at least if you pound me in the ass we both get something out of it.”
“You’re a slut,” Brown snarled. That didn’t stop him flipping a bitch and turning right back the way they’d come from, though.
“And you’re gettin’ laid,” Mikey crowed. “Man, I can suck a golf ball through a hose. You won’t regret this. Be rough as you wanna, dude. Get all up in there and go wild.”
“Yeah,” Brown grunted. “You bet I will, you filthy fucking whore.”
The ants trickled between his ears and turned over everything in their path like they were searching for something. Mikey gasped as memories flickered in front of his eyes, real as the day they’d happened in the first place, replacing this hotel and the drop-dead gorgeous dude an inch from his nose with people and places who weren’t here… Or was it the tourist who wasn’t here?
Jesus, shit was messed up. Had he taken something?
“Are you sure it’s pure?”
“Fuck you. If you don’t want it, I’ll find some other gutter trash to sell to.”
Mikey adjusted his stance, dipping one hip and lowering his head. The cartel thugs were so short-tempered. They were also aggressively hetero, so he couldn’t use his usual bag of tricks. “I just wanna work out how much I can charge for it, brah.” He eyed the merchandise on the table. The usual slurry went for five bucks a pop, but if this stuff was as good as Enrique claimed then he could shoot as high as twenty or thirty.
Enrique scoffed at him and grabbed one of two bags tightly bundled in Saran Wrap from the box on the table. “This is fresh, man. Number four, straight from Colombia. You gonna get rich easy off this.”
Yeah. Rich. Like that ever happened. Like he didn’t shed his cash on bribes, doctors, security, and new stock. “How much you want for it?”
“Two kilos?” Enrique shrugged. “How ‘bout two-for-one?”
Mikey almost choked. “A hundred grand?” He repeated the quote just to make sure that’s what Enrique meant.
“You’ll double that. This shit is dank. Anyone with hella tolerance is gonna drop two grand a day on this, easy. Get you some of them rich kids from up in College Heights, they’ll be all over this.” Enrique tossed the brick down into the box. “Fine. Cut you a deal. Do it for eighty.”
Mikey eyed him and straightened himself up. “What you doin’ running Columbian merchandise? Brah I can’t get customers on this if you ain’t gonna have replacement stock any time soon. You want me to get ‘em hyphy over quality then try switching them back to black tar? I’d go out of business!”
Enrique scowled. “Fine. Sixty. Take it or leave it.”
“Fifty,” Mikey countered. “I can’t charge full for this and you know it. You’ve stolen a shipment off the Colombians and you’re trying to milk it. How many other dealers you shipping this to, huh? It’s bad merchandise and you’re gonna take fifty G’s or get it out of here.”
The courier squinted up toward the ceiling. He looked like he was doing some serious math, and eventually he shrugged. “Fifty,” he agreed. He offered Mikey his hand. “Deal.”
Mikey gripped it tight as he shook. It didn’t do to let these guys think you were remotely femme or they’d take your money and leave you bleeding in the alley behind your own den. “Deal,” he growled.
He’d never seen eyes like them. Were they silver? Gray? Or were they mirrors, reflecting his own dirt back at him?
Hot breath washed against his skin. It purified him. He wondered whether this was how people felt after they bathed in the Ganges, though everything he ever saw online made that river look just polluted as the rest of the world.
The ants ate his brain and soon there’d be nothing left, and maybe that was for the best. He was cancer, and people were better off without him.
“Oh come on, man. You always say it’s ‘the good stuff’.” Laurence curled his lip, but his eyes were sharp with hunger.
He was already halfway to buying. Mikey could almost smell his desperation.
“Columbian number four, brah,” Mikey scoffed. “Look at it and tell me it ain’t the freshest shit you ever saw.”
Laurence ran the tip of his tongue along his lower lip in a way that made Mikey half hope his friend couldn’t afford a hit. That mouth on his cock was like a fucking gift from heaven, but Laurence only gave it up when his wallet was empty.
The packet of white rocks rested between them.
“How much?” Laurence breathed.
Laurence’s tolerance to black tar was obscene. The guy could bang three or four grams of that crap a day and still be back tomorrow, but number four was something else, and Mikey had only prepared bags of 10mg each. The packet he’d opened for Laurence was a week’s supply for most users.
If Laurence was flush with cash from working for his mom, now was a good time to hit him up. He was like a super unreliable ATM; Mikey had to work fast while the bank was flowing.
“You don’t believe the grade?” Mikey shrugged. “You can have this for a dub, ‘cause you’re a valued customer. Don’t go telling everyone else what you paid, though.”
Twenty bucks was roughly what he’d paid for it. It was worth four times as much if the supply would be stable, but Enrique had sold him at fire sale prices, so Mikey had to get rid of it fast. If Laurence liked it, he’d throw down every last cent he had and he’d get through it like it was going out of fashion.
“Okay.” Laurence dug two tens out of his wallet and thrust them into Mikey’s hands.
“Be careful,” Mikey warned. “Don’t bang it all at once.”
Laurence dug his tin out and popped it open with his thumbs. He had the spoon and syringe out before Mikey could even pocket the bills. “What, you think I can’t take it?”
“It’s from Colombia.” Mikey passed him a stretch of rubber tubing for a tourniquet. “This is the best of the best. It won’t be around long. You’ve gotta be careful. I can’t lose my best customer.”
There was no way Laurence was his best customer. The guy went through months of being unable to pay, or his mom would shuffle him off to rehab, or he acted like they hadn’t been friends for years. But Mikey didn’t keep customers by telling them all how shit they were.
He eyed Laurence dispassionately as the guy ignored every word and cooked up the entire batch right there in front of him. Soon it was disappearing into Laurence’s veins, and he lay down on the floor to stop from falling down later.
Mikey walked around the table and hovered over him, looking for any sign that Laurence had OD’ed. For a while all he saw was that blissful smile and the flush of heat across Laurence’s cheeks before his breathing slowed down.
Then stopped.
Mikey swore. He smacked Laurence across the face, and it seemed to remind him to breathe a while, but then his chest faltered again.
Reeve of Veils (Inheritance Book 4) Page 8
