The Taste Of Night

21

The memory of Marlo’s lifeless body kept me going those next few days. That and the disgust and horror on Hunter’s face as he realized what I’d made him into. That last look had been a telling one. He’d never forgive me-I hadn’t really expected him to-and he’d never look at me with longing or lust again either. And that was okay. If I could just regain enough trust to be allowed back in the sanctuary, the closeness we’d once held after sharing the aureole would be replaced with professional reserve, which was all I really wanted.

Wasn’t it?

I was wondering about that as I parked in front of Cher’s house, where I’d been staying since my ejection from the sanctuary. Olivia’s home was unsafe now that the gloves were off between Regan and me, and even though she was supposed to be tucked away in some safehouse in preparation for her metamorphosis, I wouldn’t put it past her to have revealed my hidden identity to Joaquin-or even the Tulpa.

“Heya, honey. What’s up?” Cher said when I entered her guest room, her eyes never leaving the comic she was leafing through while lying on my bed. Not a comic-a Shadow manual. Shit. Had she gone through my stuff? Or had I left that one out on the nightstand after combing through it the night before? It had to be the latter, though I knew Olivia wouldn’t have made a stink either way. Those two, I had to remember, kept no secrets from each other.

“Not a lot,” I said, keeping my tone light as I toed off my tennies. “Just back from the gym.”

She was propped up on her elbows, and as I tossed a few local magazines down onto the bed-weeklies that offered underground commentary on the city, politicians, and entertainers-she gave me a horrified once-over. “Darlin’, did you…sweat?”

I hadn’t actually. If I were to work out to the point of breaking a sweat I’d break whatever machine I was training on. There wasn’t a free weight made that I couldn’t lift a thousand times, and sparring with mortals was a total waste of time. I had been at the gym, though. The repetition of running or biking in place helped me think. My conscious mind zoned out while my subconscious pondered whatever problem I was trying to figure out. Besides, it was the last place the Shadows would think to look for me, and these days I was taking refuge where I could find it.

“Um…” I’d applied water to my chest after the workout to make it look a little more realistic. I should have known Olivia didn’t sweat. “See, there was this girl next to me on the treadmill, and a cute guy on the other side of her, so I thought if I just went faster than her I could get his attention, but every time I upped my speed, so did she.”

“That whore!” Cher threw the manual aside as she sat up.

“Yeah, so I ended up sprinting for like, five whole minutes, and when I looked up, the guy was gone.”

Cher shook her head. “Next time why don’t you just ask him how to work the machine? That always works for me.”

Oh yeah. The this-inanimate-object-is-smarter-than-me approach. That was so me. “I’ll do that,” I said, and shot her a weak smile.

“What are these?” she asked, holding up one of the weeklies.

“Just local newspapers. They’re free at the gym, and they have lots of good articles.”

She looked at me suspiciously as she smoothed her hair back from her face. “You sure are readin’ a lot these days.”

Comics and angry criticism was considered reading a lot? “I’m not really reading them,” I said, and her expression immediately shifted to relief. “I just look at the social events in these, and I like the pictures in the others.”

“Oh, but I’m not talking about this,” she said, picking the Shadow manual back up. “This is really good.”

The lights and movement that animated the manual when I touched it were dormant in her mortal hands. Apparently it had some sort of sensory on and off switch, and it looked like any other comic as she thumbed it open. “What issue is that?” I asked, leaning forward.

“It’s called Daughter of Blood, about Dawn, the Shadow Gemini.”

I couldn’t help myself. “Oh, I can’t stand her. She’s a real bitch.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, flipping through the pages. “But she dresses cool.”

I drew back, studying the panel she flashed at me, unreasonably annoyed that my/Olivia’s best friend would find one of the foremost supervillains in the city attractive. “No, she doesn’t. She’s totally hooker-fied.”

“You think?” she asked, turning the page back to study it. “I don’t know. I’d wear that.”

“Sure, to a costume party,” I said, flopping down in an oversized side chair.

Cher angled her eyes up at me, plucked brows winging high. “See, honey, that’s why I don’t exercise. It puts me in a shitty mood too.”

“I’m not-” I stopped, sighed, realizing this could go on forever. And would, I thought, if I were still me. The good thing about being Olivia was being able to change mental direction without signaling first. Especially with Cher. “So where would someone go if they were looking to have sex with a lot of people?”

“It’s Las Vegas,” she pointed out, flipping another page.

Point taken.

Then again, that kind of thinking would mean I had nowhere to begin looking for Joaquin, which wasn’t exactly true. Since I knew the virus was now being spread sexually, I had a fulcrum around which to expand my search. Las Vegas was hardly lacking in establishments meant to whet the sexual appetite.

The question was, which of the nightclubs, sex shops, lounges, or strip joints would be most alluring to Joaquin? Because he’d want to be out there, watching devastation unfold among the populace of healthy, sexual humans who had nothing more on their minds than a sweaty workout themselves. It fit in perfectly with his M.O.-causing pain through sexuality.

I mentally scratched the strip clubs from my list. As much as mainstream society liked to demonize the clubs and the women who worked there, they were fairly white-bread. How else could they flourish in every city in the country? Our culture’s dirty little open secret. Besides, that was too blatant for Joaquin; the sensuality and allure of sexual desire would be lost in the transaction, money for titillation. No, he got his jollies from more unpredictable circumstances. Joaquin, I knew, liked the chase.

I reached over and grabbed one of the folded weeklies from the bed, tossed another to Cher, and flipped directly to the back where all the political rants and pseudo-articles that filled the earlier pages were replaced with ads offering phone sex or house calls or “special massag-ies.”

“Help me look for a dominatrix,” I told Cher, trying not to wonder where all these girls came from. I angled the paper to the side. Did their mothers know they were posed like this?

“Dang, girl,” she said, picking up the magazine. “You aren’t turning into a muffin bumper, are you?”

“Don’t worry, Cher,” I said, skipping past the ads that promised one-on-one action. Joaquin would want to cast a wider net. “You’d be the first to know.”

She smiled brightly. “Why thank you, honey!”

“Thanks for what?” Suzanne asked, entering the room without knocking. In other families that could be a cause for death by stoning, but Cher made room next to her, passing Suzanne a third magazine as she continued her search.

“Olivia’s trying to decide if she wants to munch rug, but first she’s looking for cheap sex with a stranger and no strings attached, just to make sure.”

I blushed under Suzanne’s startled gaze and held up a hand. “That’s not true. I’m just…adding a service to my web business that makes it easy for potential visitors to find what they’re looking for when they come to Vegas.”

“How entrepreneurial of you, darlin’,” Suzanne settled next to her daughter and picked up her weekly. “Sex does sell, and it’ll certainly spice up that racketeering thing you have going,” she said, flipping open her magazine. I stared.

“Yeah,” I said slowly, trying to shake off the image of my sister, the mobster. “Anyway, I’m looking for some place kind of illicit. Something that reeks of secrecy and intrigue. One where you have to know a secret password or handshake or something to get in.”

“Well, you’re not going to find it in one of these rags,” Suzanne said, and tossed her magazine aside. I looked at her. “You’re not.” She crossed her legs, flashing lean thighs. “What you want is something exclusive. Invitation only. Like a sex club that meets every so often to masturbate together, or a same-sex meeting.”

I wrinkled my nose. “There’s such a thing?”

She looked at me like I was hopelessly naive. “Honey, there are fringe groups for anything that tickles a human’s fancy, and a few things that shouldn’t. Bondage, bestiality, sometimes both.” I shuddered at that, and Cher let out a horrified squeal. “They don’t advertise because they know society wouldn’t approve. But there’s a whole subculture of people who indulge in fetishes others try not to even imagine.”

“I don’t really want something that…uh, extreme. A little more vanilla. Regular people looking for a good time, but lots of them.”

“Oh, you mean like partner swapping?” That sounded about as vanilla to me as a double-caramel-mocha frappuccino, but before I could say so, Suzanne went on. “What you want is a swingers’ club, though they often have an interview process that takes weeks, and you’ll have to send in a picture as well.”

Interviewing? I thought. To be a sex partner? I began to look through my magazine again. There had to be something else.

“Of course, anyone can register for the yearly swingers’ ball. People from all over the country come to those, and if you belong at a national level you’re automatically allowed in to any local gatherings.”

Bingo.

“How many people?” I asked, angling my head.

“What, at the big balls?” she said, causing Cher to snort. Suzanne arched a brow in her direction, but continued speaking to me. “Thousands. People plan it into their summer vacations the same way they would Disneyland, though here they don’t bring the kids.”

Here, I thought, where they could die wrapped in a stranger’s embrace. It was perfect. Perfectly horrible, I thought, correcting myself, but perfect for the Shadows’ intentions. Joaquin might even see such an event as a mass suicide. Thousands of people putting the metaphorical cup to their mouths, and him on hand, goading them to drink. “That’s it,” I said quietly. “That would be perfect.”

“Really?” Suzanne tilted her head. It made her look younger than her years. “You’d be interested in that?”

I nodded, then quickly added, “For my website, of course. Strictly professional research.”

“Of course,” she said, standing. “Well, you’re in luck. The ball’s this weekend, and this one’s a huge to-do in the swingers’ community, an anniversary of some sort. Troy’s been trying to get me to go for a month now. He says it’ll ‘strengthen our relationship’ and ‘add another dimension to our knowledge of sexuality.’”

Troy was full of shit, but I wasn’t going to say that to Suzanne. I made it a rule to never say anything bad about my friends’ boyfriends until I was sure they were well and truly out of the picture-preferably dead. Or gay. Or both. And while her voice was neutral as she talked about him, Suzanne might still be interested in the little jerk. Though at least she didn’t sound bowled over by the idea.

“Oh, I have an idea,” Cher said, sitting up on the bed so fast my head spun. “We could all go! We could dress up like Dawn in Daughter of Blood, and pretend we’re into the ‘lifestyle.’” She made little quotation marks in the air.

Alarmed, I sat up straight as well. I didn’t want these two anywhere near a place where both Joaquin and the virus promised to be running rampant. “I don’t know if they let you pretend to be someone you’re not,” I said, thinking quick. “They probably ask for social security and health cards and everything down to your latest medical exam.”

“No, they don’t. Troy’s already checked it out,” Suzanne put in, and I thought, I just bet he has. Then she added, “Who’s Dawn?”

“Some make-believe slut who reminds Olivia of this girl at the gym,” Cher said, and picked up the manual she’d thrown aside. “See?”

“Oh my.” Suzanne clasped her hands in front of her, managing to look startled and dumbfounded all at the same time.

“Isn’t her outfit cool?” Cher said, leaning over so they could both look at the same time.

“Oh. My.”

“Uh…it’s a comic book, Suzanne,” I said, because her expression had suddenly shifted from puzzled to alarmed.

“Y-Yes, but…why?”

She meant why was it here, sullying the posh, urbane feel of her house. I couldn’t fault her. Most people thought they were geeky, but I’d done a lot of reading since becoming a superhero, and I’d found the plots and action to be more engaging than most thrillers. Not to mention they were based on fact. Though I left that part out when explaining this to Suzanne.

It didn’t seem to help. She bit her lip, backing up even further. “But only certain people read those things…and you guys aren’t them.”

“What kind of people?”

Her pretty mouth screwed up with distaste. “Virgins.”

“It’s not an affliction,” I said, leaning back on my palms, amused now.

“And Dawn doesn’t look like a virgin,” Cher pointed out. “I bet if I show up to the swingers’ ball in that get-up I could pop a few cherries.”

“Can you please stop talking about that woman? Here…try this one.” I dug around in my bag until I found a manual of Light, careful to toss it to Cher so I was no longer touching it when she spotted it. I didn’t need laser beams spilling out from the pages and blowing my supercover.

“Vanessa Valen: Agent of Light,” she read, then flipped open to the first page. She shrugged. “She’s pretty hot.”

“She’s more than hot,” I said, unreasonably miffed that Cher should prefer Dawn over Vanessa. I still felt loyalty toward the agents of Light, and still saw myself as part of that troop…even if I was the only one. “She’s tough and she’s kind, and she has the coolest condu-er, weapon out of almost anyone. You should dress up like her.”

“You really read these things?” Suzanne asked me, bending over Cher’s shoulder.

“They’re pretty good, Momma,” Cher said, saving me for answering. She held out the manual to her mother. “Here, try one.”

Suzanne drew back, looking from Cher to me as if we were patients in a psychiatric ward. “You know,” she said, backing away from the bed, “come to think of it, I bet a day trip to a nice little sex club would do us all some good. Olivia, you in?”

I thought about it, still not liking the idea of them accompanying me, but at least I’d be around to help if anyone tried to murder, infect, or draw them into a threesome. It looked like Troy had already planted the seed, as it were, anyway. And now that I thought of it, if Troy was so interested in sampling other people’s partners, what’s to say he wasn’t already a carrier? I could keep an eye on him, as well as my friends, plus have a pretty good cover for attending in the first place. There was power in numbers, as they say, and this time the power happened to be anonymity. Just what I needed. “Sure, I’m in.”

“You, Cher?”

“Only if I can dress up like an evil, murdering whore.”

Suzanne smiled, a look of great relief passing over her face. “It’s practically required. I’ll go call Troy now to get us some tickets.”

“Okay, so when and where?” I asked.

“Saturday night, where all the great parties are held,” Suzanne said, tossing the answer over her shoulder as she glided from the room. “Valhalla, of course.”

I smiled wryly. Of course.