Johnny Bass vs. the Kung-Fu Dragon Cult:
A Love Story
By Christian Klaver
Back to Chapters One - Five
Chapter Six
Johnny drove down Greenfield watching the road behind him. Nobody followed him out of the Hope Center parking lot. He jogged East on 13 Mile, then turned into the greater traffic on Woodward and drove for another few miles before he pulled into one of the suburb streets, parked and pulled out the bundle of papers to look at them again.
He rifled through the papers. Old school records, past addresses, car info. He'd know a lot more about the mystery lady when he could go through it at length.
He picked up some dinner and managed to get home before the Thai food got completely cold. He threw his things on the table. He felt like celebrating, so he pulled an old dusty bottle of Merlot out of the cabinet. He was enough of a barbarian to throw a small ice cube in, and enough of a rebel not to care. Since he was drinking red wine out of a washed out peanut butter jar, it didn't make any sense to put on airs. After congratulating himself one more time on his success, he used a pair of break-away chopsticks to pull a pile of spicy noodles from the rest and flipped the folder open.
"Leslie," he murmured to himself. "Let's see who we have here. Christ. I hope the newspaper doesn't have all this info on me."
The file was thick, with a lot more information than a workplace should have. Driver’s License. Police records, old school records, taxes: it was like a C.I.A. or F.B.I file.
Leslie Grimes. Ward of the state. A number of different schools, and quite a rap sheet as well. In trouble early, but not lately. A long list of past schools and a history of getting expelled from them.
Old addresses were listed all the way back to kindergarten. He filed through these briefly, and was about to flip the page when he noticed something familiar. Sacred Pines. When she was about eight years old. Leslie Grimes...a voice whispered to him...Leslie...Leslie... He knew that name from before.
Munchkin. Holy Shit.
He snapped his fingers.
Munchkin...he hadn't thought about her in years. More than that. Such a long time ago, when he was just a kid.
Johnny wasn't a lot different back then, serious face for a 10 year old, unruly hair. Only two years older than the girl in the apartment across from him. He watched Munchkin let the door slam behind her as she ran out into the apartment courtyard on her way to Johnny’s apartment.
Johnny and the Munchkin both lived in Sacred Pines Apartments, but it didn't have any pine trees and no one knew what might be sacred about it. The building was three walls of pale pseudo brick, facing into a unkempt green courtyard. A parking lot bordered the forth side of the square, and Munchkin gave fearful looks to the gap in the parked cars as she ran. Johnny knew which parking space she was checking. No one ever parked in the middle space since her dad beat up Sammy Fulson’s mommy and daddy for parking there last Christmas.
During the summer weekends the courtyard bustled with families, beer, a dozen rusty barbecues and lots of kids for Munchkin to play with. Johnny liked it on weekends, but now the courtyard lay empty and dark. The night seemed to swallow Munchkin momentarily as she came across the courtyard and Johnny stepped off the porch, then reached back to open his front door for more light. She popped out of the night suddenly at his elbow, like she just escaped, and gave him a wide-eyed look.
Behind her, dark tendrils of smoke curled out of her apartment. Her mom never got mad, but every time her dad went out, she burned things. Usually while cooking, but once Munchkin and Johnny had sat and watched her mom drop a lit cigarette onto the shag carpeting and kneel, as if in prayer while the cigarette burned a serpentine groove into the carpet. But the carpet didn’t catch, and later she went back to the dishes. Then Munchkin's dad came home and got mad when he saw the carpet and yelled a lot. The next morning her mom burned the corn biscuits so bad they had to call the fire department.
“I'm not supposed to let you in,” Johnny said to her on the front porch “My mother said not to.” But then he pushed the screen door open just like Munchkin knew he would. “My mother’s not home,” he finished.
An old movie played on the black and white TV in the corner. Munchkin sat down on the big fuzzy couch and watched the rest of the movie. They always spent a lot of time together, but neither of them was very talkative, so they often had hours of silence between the two of them. That was Munchkin's second favorite thing about Johnny’s house. Her first was that Johnny’s dad had left over two years ago, and his mother always worked late. She ate from the overflowing bowl of popcorn in front of her and they watched the rest of the scary movie. That always made her feel better. Better than home, though she jumped a little when the woman on the TV showed her forked tongue.
Munchkin didn’t leave the TV set when her dad’s car gunned into his parking spot, but her hands were shaking. Johnny went over to the window and peeked out, then came reluctantly back over to the couch. He didn’t really want to see any more of the movie, but it was a lot better than outside.
The first movie ended and they were only a few minutes into the second movie of the late night double feature when someone pounded on the frame of the screen door hard enough to shake the whole wing.
“Johnny! I know she’s in there. You open up, you hear?” Munchkin’s dad’s voice was rough and muddled. “You open up, you hear? You hear me?”
Munchkin made the tiniest of shrieks and looked at Johnny wide-eyed. He jerked his head towards the door to his bedroom. “Get in there.” She scurried out of the living room after flashing him a grateful look.
She watched though, holding the door to Johnny’s bedroom open just a crack. She could see Johnny, but from the side, so she couldn’t see out the front door.
She heard her daddy’s voice, though, muffled like it always was at night, but very loud. “Johnny, you little shit. You bring her out here or I’ll come in and get her. I wanna know if any men have been in that house while I was working.”
“I haven’t seen her, Mr. Grimes. Honest.” Johnny said.
“Bullshit.” Quicker than a snake, he jerked the screen door open and reached in to grab Johnny by his t-shirt. He yanked him easily out on the porch. Munchkin shivered as she heard two slaps, very quick. Daddy was really mad this time. She could hear Johnny crying.
“How about now, you little fuck? You wanna go and get her now? I know she’s in there.”
Munchkin started shaking all over. Daddy always got what he wanted because no one else could stop him.
“I don’t know,” Johnny’s voice was small and choked.. “I told you I haven’t seen her.”
“That bitch lied to me again.” The screen door fell shut, but Munchkin still couldn’t see anyone. She crouched by the door, her hands over her mouth.
The screen door opened again and Johnny limped back into the house. Daddy had gone away. Johnny had stopped him somehow, so Daddy wasn’t going to get her this time.
“Johnny,” she said, from the shadow of the bedroom. “Is he gone?”
Johnny nodded weakly. “Yeah.” He staggered over and collapsed into the brown fuzzy couch. “He’s gone.”
“Geez, Johnny, I…” She wanted to say that she didn’t know it was going to be so bad, but they both knew it could have been a lot worse.
Instead she said. “We’re friends, right?”
“Yeah,” Johnny said. “We’re friends.”
“Will we always be friends, Johnny?”
“Yeah,” Johnny said. “We’ll always be friends.”
And somehow everything didn’t seem so bad that way. As long as she had one person.
"Here," she said. "Will you hold onto this?" She passed over a big silver ring. "It used to be Daddy's, but he doesn't wear it anymore. Then he said I could hold it, now Mommy wants to throw it away."
"You're not going to give it back?"
She shrugged. "He doesn't want it, and she doesn't want it, so that makes it mine, right?"
"I guess so."
She nodded. "It does. But she'll take it if she sees it. So, will you hold onto it for tonight? I'll get it tomorrow, and then I can hide it better."
"Okay."
It seemed only a few minutes later that someone shook Johnny awake.
"Leslie's got to go home, Johnny," his mom said wearily. Johnny nodded. But when the two of them knuckled the sleep out of their eyes and stepped onto the porch, they stopped, transfixed. The square might have been dark, for the sun was just starting to rise, but ambulance and police cars stood idling in the parking lot, their lights washing the walls like a satanic disco. A lot of policemen were loading Munchkin's dad into one of the blazing police cars.
One of the neighbors pointed Munchkin out to a lady in a pink business suit, and the lady came over. She was very tall, with her hair tied up in a bun with two red sticks stuck in it to hold it in place.
"Leslie, honey?" Munchkin nodded miserably and the woman knelt down beside her.
"You're going to have to come with me, Leslie."
The ambulance pulled out of the parking lot, lights and siren blazing.
"Mommy?" Leslie choked back tears.
"The paramedics are taking her to the hospital now," the woman said. "I'm sure she'll be all right, but you'll have to come with me now." She gently disentangled Munchkin's hand from Johnny's.
Johnny watched as the woman took Leslie to another car, then he suddenly remembered the ring. He ran across the courtyard to the parking lot as the woman helped Munchkin into the car. She was about to close it when Johnny ran up and thrust the ring towards her.
"You forgot this," he said.
"I'll get it when I come back," she said. "Keep it for me."
When the car pulled away, the monstrous willow across the street hung over them as they made the turn into traffic. Leslie's face appeared in the rear window, and Johnny watched as it was nearly blotted out by the shadow of the willow tree, her expression obscured by its many fingered darkness. The tree loomed higher than everything, like a giant beast that swallowed Leslie whole.
Back in his apartment, sixteen years later, Johnny ran upstairs and started pawing through old boxes. After a few minutes of this, he started tearing them up and dumping their contents all over the floor. Nine boxes later, he didn't see what he was looking for and started tearing things out of his attic. He'd always meant to unpack these things, years ago, and then decided that it was less work to live without them. Now he ripped through years of collected crap, flinging things everywhere. Finally, he pulled up a brown box of lacquered wood. He'd bought it to keep valuables in. He cleared a shelf with a sweep and dumped the box onto the shelf, pushing aside trinkets and souvenirs before holding up his find triumphantly. He held the tarnished silver ring in his hand.
"Leslie Grimes," he said. "Munchkin."
As he held the ring in his hand, a wash of blackness came over him, then fear and revulsion. They were flashes, experienced like a hot knife but strangely disassociated from him. And then they were gone, like a movie clicked off while on fast forward.
Somehow…somehow he knew Leslie was in trouble.
Johnny screeched to a stop in front of the Donofrio residence, partly on the curb. A throbbing in his head drove him like a wild fury. Munchkin was in trouble. Right now. He could feel it. He didn’t know how, but he could. He left the car door open as he strode to the front door, noticing only that the blue car was still parked in the drive, alone. Convenient, but unnecessary. A house full of people wouldn’t stop him this time. It was just after dinner time, but the neighborhood was silent. The personnel file fluttered in the passenger seat behind him. He went past the copper lamp post and took the porch steps in one leap. He tried the latch, ready to break a window if no one answered, but the heavy door clicked gently open to his touch.
He prowled into the house with a sense of impending revenge and justice. Fear and violence seeped into Johnny’s senses like a blood stain creeping across the floor.
The front room was empty, a snowy den of white and copper. The carpet was a brilliant white, and ran down the halls and up a flight of stairs off to the right. A round coffee table of copper, big enough to play shuffleboard and etched like an Aztec calendar dominated the space near the window, catching the sun's rays in a brilliant halo. It was surrounded by a furniture set of the same unstained white so the whole room looked like a snowy landscape around a sunlit pool in the mountains. But Johnny saw streaks of crimson in his mind’s eye, though he knew it wasn’t something he could touch or see fully, but rather something that crowded the edges of his vision when he wasn't fully looking, like fearful ghosts. White shelves covered the walls, filled with an array of leather bound volumes of pale browns and tans, looking like they were picked more for color than content. A cherry wood grandfather clock stood in one corner, and the pendulum rocked back and forth.
Johnny stood for a moment in the doorway. The door crashed into the wall next to it with a loud bump, but no other sound came except the implacable pendulum in the clock.
A short shriek, punctuated by the slap of flesh came from above, and Johnny was in motion before the slight echo came off the stairway walls. He didn’t run, but rather stalked up the stairway in an swift and purposeful gliding motion. He came up in a hall filled with more snow colored carpet. Another shriek, short and out of breath came from down the hall. When Johnny pushed his way into the bedroom, his hands flexed involuntarily, like claws.
A large man in a business suit crouched on the bed, pinning the struggling woman underneath him. Even blocked, Johnny could tell that it was her. Leslie. One of the man’s huge hands was on her throat, the other hand reared back for another slap. Blood already trickled out of the corner of her mouth. Neither of them noticed Johnny’s entrance.
Before the man could hit her again, Johnny was in the room. As the man cocked his arm for another punch, Johnny grabbed his wrist and threw a left hook into the man’s kidney. The man grunted in surprise and bolted into an upright kneeling position on the bed. Johnny let go of the wrist to snake his arm over the man's shoulder from behind. He palmed the man’s jaw and pushed up on the man's nose, snapping the head back. The Johnny pivoted and stepped away from the bed into a near crouch like a baseball pitcher trying to scorch one across home plate. The man was twice Johnny's size, but without anything to hold onto. He fell off the bed, hit the floor hard, and slid nearly to the doorway on his back. Before he could get up, Johnny stepped and swung his shin into the man’s exposed ribs, hearing at least one of them give way. When the man clutched his ribs, Johnny took the opportunity for an overhand cross to the man’s chin. Then Johnny stepped back. Only then did he recognize the man from the motel, only this time without his tuxedo. Frankenboy.
The man sputtered and wiped the blood from his mouth. “You little fuck,” he said, and Johnny recognized the menacing voice that had threatened him over the phone. Johnny waited, and when Worthington pushed his hands against the floor to get up, Johnny let loose with another kick, this one to the jaw. Then he stepped back again, but not out of mercy, only to pick and choose each shot. Johnny didn’t want to grapple with someone twice his size, and sure didn’t want to let him get up. When Worthington covered his face, Johnny stomped on the man’s ribs again, then took another open hand right. Nothing fancy, quick and direct. The last shot to the jaw finally had the effect he wanted and the huge man slumped to the floor.
Johnny watched for a second, wanting to hit him again, yet half afraid he might get up. He wore a gold embossed name pin on his lapel, like the kind sometimes worn by real estate agents, that said: Bradley Worthington.
Johnny lowered his fists and turned back to the woman on the bed. He could feel the blood hammering through his veins, pounding in his face and hands. There was blood on his knuckles, his own. Johnny’s right hand was numb, but he could move it enough that it might not be broken.
Worthington was out cold, but wasn’t bleeding too bad. He’d have plenty of bruises and probably a few broken ribs to wake up to.
Leslie didn’t move when he sat next to her on the bed, but stared at him in wonderment.
"I shouldn’t have tried to leave..." she said, her voice dazed. "I thought at first you could help me...but...” The look on her face said that she didn’t think anyone could help her now. She looked remarkably like the night at the motel, a small black slip of a dress, halfway torn off. Fishnet stockings and tousled blond hair everywhere.
He thought at first that she might be in shock, but she didn't look it. Her gaze was clear, only distant, like she was lost in thought.
He started looking her over to see if she was hurt. Maybe he should be afraid to touch her this time, but it seemed different. She made no effort to stop him when he tilted her chin to get a better look at the split lip that Worthington had given her.
"You should have run," she said. "I told you to. Why didn't you?"
Johnny didn’t answer her directly. He was too busy swimming in memories. “Leslie Grimes,” he said, as if to himself. And then, “Oh, Munchkin, why didn’t you tell me who you were?”
"Because after the night you found me, and I realized who you were, I didn't want you involved," she said. "You deserve better."
Johnny snorted. "I'm not so sure about that. Anyway, I'm here now, and I'm not going. Not without you." He bit his lip, thinking about the money. He wanted to apologize, but it seemed like a long time since someone had looked at him with that kind of gratitude. He'd tell her later, if she didn't remember anyway.
He held out his hand, and reluctantly, she took it. “You’ll need some clothes.”
"They'll come for me," she said. "They'll find me."
"Then they'll find both of us," Johnny said. "Come on."
Chapter Seven
After the accident at Sacred Pine apartments, the social workers were reluctant to let Leslie see her mom in her condition. They didn’t think it was the kind of thing an eight year old should normally see. But Leslie was persistent. Her mom was the only family she had left.
The hospital kept her mother in a 1st story room that overlooked a courtyard much like the one at Sacred Pines. Only this building was older, sturdier, and built with a brownish red brick that made the green area outside her window cheerful. Leslie spent a lot of time in the chair by the window. At first, it was a plastic chair, powder blue, but after the first few months, they replaced it with a new padded one, yellow and red. One of the nurses that kept finding Leslie passed out in the blue plastic chair stole one of the sitting chairs from the Doctor's office. This one wasn't so uncomfortable to sleep in.
Her mom filled the room with the powerful odors of old skin, urine and feces. Leslie sat there for hours, drifting in and out of sleep, listening to the hiss-hiss whisper of the breathing machine. Her nose and mouth were always full of an antiseptic smell and the underlying scents. The worst was her mom's hair. An old mop smell drifted off it constantly. Leslie moved the chair so she could sit at the foot where it wasn't so bad.
Her mother never moved, never opened her eyes or twitched. She lay with her pinched face looking defeated and hurt and lifeless. Her skin became thinner and thinner, like the kind of paper you could lay over pictures of dinosaurs and pretty women so you could trace their outline. Her mother didn't look like anyone that was going to walk again, and Leslie thought that if someone had come and built up a black coffin around her, no one would have known the difference. The only signs of life came from the machines.
Leslie wasn't sure why she kept coming back, sitting day after day watching her unmoving mom get thinner and thinner. She sat underneath the window, opening it just a crack so she could suck at the fresh air as she drifted off to sleep. Then she would go home to the center, her duty for the day done.
She tried talking to her mom at first, but she didn't know what to talk about and since it didn't seem like anyone was listening she quickly stopped. Her Dad, she didn't see again, and no one spoke about him. Even so, Leslie heard people whispering when they thought she couldn't hear, and learned that he'd gone to jail.
Leslie still had bad dreams about her father and mother. She hadn't been there the last time, but she'd seen him hit her enough to fill in the blanks. She could see the silhouette's like an old TV drama where they couldn't show too much. Her father's hulking shadow gripping her mother's wrist or shoulder, towering over her kneeling form, raising his arm in a huge swing, then nothing. She could still hear the cries, and smell the stale beer, though. Though her father's face would stay shrouded, she could often see her mother's face clearly. It twisted between a beaten look, and cunning malice. Like the whipped dog, her mother was clearly cowed, but her eyes glared with seething hate, as if imagining a knife sticking from her husband's back, but too afraid to do more than dream of it. And the fear and hate was all she had, when she turned her battered face to her children, or the housework, it was deadened, as if the hate and fear had burned out any other emotions. When Leslie woke up in the middle of the night, it wasn't her father that kept her from falling back. It was her mother's face that haunted her and kept sleep away. She would close her eyes and see her mother's dead, cold eyes. Peggy Ann Grimes believed that emotions were reserved for special people. Her children got only emptiness.
Sometimes, when she couldn't help herself, Leslie would stare at her mother's fingers, or her knee, and wonder if that tiny piece was still alive. How would anyone at the hospital know if an immobile woman's limbs stopped working? Or maybe just a finger, or toe. If the smallest toe on the left side of her mother died, but the rest continued in a sort of half life, would the hospital know? Leslie could feel it happening, one tiny little piece of her mother dying at a time, as if the hate was still trapped inside, and killing everything, one tiny piece at a time.
Her life outside of the hospital seemed to grow more and more faded, and the hours spent with her mom grew sharper, like a camera coming into focus. Leslie remembered going to school, and staying at Hope Center, but when she tried to tell her mom about the things she'd done that day, she could barely remember them. Time slid by this way, day after day, like she was reading someone else's distant story.
One day, she heard one of the nurses talking about her mom's stay. She heard the nurse refer to her mother's arrival two years ago. Two years. Leslie remembered turning nine, then 10, but it didn't seem very important. She hadn't even mentioned it to her mom, those days.
When she was eight, her mom called her Munchkin. No one called her that anymore. Just Leslie.
When Leslie was walking through the school halls the next day, she tried to ignore the usual giggling and pointing. Everyone could tell the foster kids in the school. Second hand clothes and a scared walk. The counselors were always stopping and talking in a friendly manner to them in the hall and everyone knew they didn't belong.
"Fuck 'em," Digsy said, noticing her look. Digsy was a short and thick little girl with charcoal black skin. She had the room next to Leslie at the center, and the locker next to her at school. She also swore more than any kid alive.
"Let them come right out and say something," Digsy went on. "I kick their fuckin' asses, and they know it." Leslie nodded. Digsy was always getting into fights, here at school and at the center. She always seemed to lose, but it never stopped her.
"Delilah Proud," Ms. Thornton snapped. Digsy stiffened and Ms. Thornton pulled her aside for the seventh time that day. Leslie craned her neck around in dismay to watch Digsy get pulled away, and didn't see Billy Reeves stick his foot out. Leslie went sprawling into a table set up in the hall. She fell in a flutter of “Vote for Your Class President" forms, a rattle of scattered pencils and laughter. Her glasses spilled out onto the floor.
The laughter brought up a hot fury in Leslie, and when her hand groped on the floor for her glasses, it closed instead on one of the pencils. Even though she didn't have her glasses back on, she could still see the laughing faces clearly, especially Billy's. She gripped the pencil in her hand like an ice pick, and looked up so that she could see Billy's face clearly as she took a full swing and stabbed the pencil through Billy's sneaker and deep into his foot.
Billy screamed and fell, and then the other children started screaming. Ms. Thornton abandoned Digsy in the face of the new crisis and came bustling over. Leslie watched the dark stain spread through the shoe and a small spark of satisfaction crawled from inside. Fear gripped her suddenly, and she regretted her action. The more she looked at Billy's mangled foot, the more it seemed like someone else must have done it. Not her. She couldn't even have said what would make someone do it.
"Leslie Grimes," a smooth voice said above her.
She looked up at the tall, tall shadow of the school counselor. He was a skinny black man with a perpetual smile that never quite reached his eyes. Leslie felt like his shadow swallowed up all the light around her, like she had fallen into a very deep hole.
"Come along, Leslie," Counselor McCobbe said. "We have a lot to talk about."
"I'll pick you up after dark," he'd said. And Leslie came. Mr. McCobbe hadn't said anything about punishment. Maybe he didn't exactly disapprove of Billy's bloody foot.
He hadn't said anything about time and Leslie hadn't asked. She sat on the porch and waited, watching the lights from the carnival across the street. Her foster family was all over there, but she'd pretended to be sick so she could stay. She thought for a scary moment her foster mom might stay as well, but she decided that the TV and a glass of Vernor's would hold Leslie and took the other two kids over. Her foster dad was never home until much later, so Leslie had the house to herself.
The darkness swallowed up the street in small increments, until only the butter yellow lights of the carnival remained. The carnival was busy and filled with music, but it seemed far away, like a huge music box playing to her from the darkness. The cool summer air carried over the scents of French fries and elephant ears and Leslie remembered that she hadn't had anything yet for dinner.
Just as she turned back to the front door a long black car glided silently to a stop in front of her house. She took one long look at the lit house, then the bright lights and noise from across the street. She thought she might have heard her foster brother's happy shriek from the height of the Ferris wheel. She got in the car.
"Well now, Leslie," he said gently. "Here we go."
Mr. McCobbe gave Leslie a wan smile and pulled away from the curb. He drove without speaking, but sang softly along with the Motown tune playing on the radio. “I Second that Emotion”. After that, it was “Baby Love”.
Leslie didn't recognize the route, but that didn't mean much. She didn't know anything besides the immediate neighborhood. She thought maybe they were in the city.
Leslie wasn't scared, but a part of her mind thought she should be. McCobbe might be a school counselor, but she knew enough to know that this trip couldn't be sanctioned by her school. An older man didn't take a twelve year old girl into this kind of neighborhood. Leslie had a knife she'd taken from her foster brother's room. Kyle would never miss it, but somehow she knew she wouldn't need to use the knife on McCobbe. If Kyle did find out, he would certainly make her life miserable for it.
He stopped on an overpass, where the road underneath was overgrown with weeds and grass, even though there were buildings all around. The buildings didn't look very nice, though, all dark and lumpy and most of them had graffiti. McCobbe helped her out of the car and down the grassy incline. The nearest building was a giant abandoned stucture, five or six stories high and fenced on all sides.
He led her down underneath the bridge where a group of people waited, possibly the strangest group of people Leslie had ever seen and she immediately wondered if they'd come from the carnival by her house. The nearest of them turned, a man in a long coat that might have once been white, like a doctor's. His face was abnormally long, and bony, almost like a horse's face. His eyes rolled up into the back of his sockets as McCobbe brought Leslie up. He looked like he wanted to run.
Behind him stood an enormously tall woman. When the horse-faced man stepped out of the way, Leslie could see the woman was wearing an indecently short miniskirt and the tallest heels Leslie had ever seen. She also had a leather leash that led to a collared man crawling at her feet. The woman smoked a cigarette and flicked the ashes onto the man's bare back.
Standing in front of them was a large, bulky man in a crimson hooded robe that concealed his features. The robe smelled of moth balls and old rain, and looked torn in some places. His hands were covered in tatters and he held a tarnished bell in his ragged clutches.
“Is this the girl?” the hooded figure rasped, and Leslie’s sense of fear finally caught up with her. Something about the husky voice sounded so inhuman that she twisted with a shriek, intending to bolt up the hill. McCobbe was faster than she thought, and stronger, too. He seized her by the back of the neck in a wiry grip.
She dug for the knife in her pocket, and pulled it out with shaking hands. McCobbe knocked it away with a casual backhand.
Damn, Leslie thought ridiculously. Kyle's going to kill me for losing that. Leslie gave another shriek as McCobbe hauled her along, and she found herself an unwilling member of one of the strangest processions that she’d ever seen. They led her down underneath the bridge to a large crack in the cement foundation.
The tall woman nudged the naked man on the leash forward. The car lights played garishly across the man's bare back as he crouched in front of the opening. Only the man’s back wasn't bare, but covered by a large and intricate tattoo. The woman started whispering in the man's ear, soft crooning sounds that reminded Leslie of the way some people talked to animals. The rest of them gathered around as the woman kept up her whispering, clinging more and more closely to the crouching man until somehow she'd managed to slither nearly into his lap. She stroked his shaven head with a loving caress and bent her mouth to his.
Then she withdrew, and the red shrouded man came and put his hand on the crouching man’s shoulders. The tall woman seized Leslie’s hand inside her own, and also gripped the red fabric of the man in front of her. And so it went, each of them linked in a long human chain as they all filed down into the black fissure.
Leslie shivered in McCobbe's clutches, and when he forced her into the fissure, she started thrashing and striking out feebly. At the same time, a huge sob jerked out of her, as if the sharp taste of fear had suddenly pooled in her stomach, and turned into hopeless sorrow. The darkness sapped her of strength, as if she were drowning. She could hear the sounds of the street behind her, fading slowly as the darkness closed over her completely. It got colder, too. Each step she was forced to take pulled her farther from the warmth, the noise, and the light of the human world above. She cried with every step.
The red robed man had a light of some kind and Leslie saw a hallway leading ahead, and to the right, a long stairway leading down.
"It's the stairs for us this time," McCobbe murmured, and he sounded afraid. That more than anything frightened Leslie.
The naked tattooed man led them forward, and the stair branched into a maze of corridors. The red robed man consulted the tattooed man's back, and they turned left.
"It was right, yes, no?" the horse faced Doctor said to McCobbe.
"It probably was," McCobbe hissed back. Even so, their voices echoed through the corridors and the tall woman looked back long enough to give them a lipstick crimson sneer.
“And I suppose you still think we’re under the train station?” she said.
"It's different each time...burrum," the Doctor went on. "And each time he uses the same map, yes no? How can that be? Does it change?"
"Evidently," McCobbe snapped back. Then the red robed man snarled for them to be silent and the Doctor shut up. Leslie had been carried almost to a place beyond fear. She couldn't help but giggle quietly at the two of them being scolded like school children. Maybe this was some kind of dark recess.
It became like a dream. Leslie noticed the walls were covered with a wild trellis of vines, but wasn’t sure for how long. It didn’t seem right to see that kind of plant underground, out of the sun. It was a thick vine tapestry of the lushest green, and Leslie was amazed to feel the softness of grass under her feet. A few more steps and the concrete was back. Their path was made of an irregular pattern of both. She could smell the green in the air, too, so different than the dank of the underground. The vines got bigger as they walked, until Leslie tried to stop and wonder and touch the bark of a deep golden tree that climbed right from the rock to disappear in the darkness overhead.
“Keep moving,” McCobbe said gently, but he firmly moved her forward. She nearly stumbled as he did, because she was struck nearly senseless by the sight of a myriad of stars that glittered overhead, more plentiful and brilliant than she’d ever seen before. The darkness was less like nighttime, but rather like a rich tenebrous fog that clung to their ankles and swirled off from their footsteps. It played games, sometimes revealing concrete overhead, sometimes stars, sometimes a canopy of shining gold boughs. It was beautiful and frightening.
Leslie started as something passed them in the dark and gloomy fog. Something huge, taller than any of them. It snorted like a bull, but walked like a man, and Leslie caught the earthy smell of a wild bison and quick glimpse of a great horned head as the form loped past.
“But what in the world…” Leslie started, but McCobbe clapped a hand over her mouth.
“Don’t speak,” he hissed in her ear, but in a kind tone. “It’s dangerous.”
She kept silent as they passed something inhuman that wore a police uniform, a trio of slender luminous figures drifted by without moving their feet and a great band of squat figures that nearly bowled them over as the horde of them swarmed past. They passed under a tree, gnarled black and ancient, that spanned the size of a football stadium and she had the briefest glimpse of an enormous chasm filled with swarming maggots with vaguely humanoid shapes.
After that, they were back on a staircase, only these were moss covered, and rougher and larger than before. The long stairs, up and down, made her legs ache almost immediately, but she couldn’t stop. With each step, she felt as if she was trying to escape the darkness, only there wasn't anyplace to run to. All paths led deeper from here.
A whirlwind of cold and black, and the feel of cruel fingers pulling her onward. Even if she could have seen, the unreasoning terror took her senses and she could not have retraced her steps even in the light. Even so, Leslie never really stopped struggling, though her weakness made her motions feeble.
Sobs came from all around, and McCobbe’s laborious breathing rasped behind her, as if he suffered in some way. A blanket of fear covered them all.
An eternity later, after more sobbing and painful walking, a cold sliver of light cracked open in front of them. Not as if they’d found light, but more as if the chilly light had found them.
Something huge in the dark shifted, and the single sliver became two cracks, like two narrow windows opening to reveal a slice of brightly moonlit frozen wasteland. Each of the slivers were the size of broom handles, and spaced far apart.
When Leslie had been in the orphanage, a nun used to visit them, usually telling them about the wonderful things that her God would bring them. But to the bad children, and Leslie had been one of the worst, she talked about the devil, and the brimstone horror that bad people went to if they didn’t turn to face her God.
Now Leslie knew two things. The nun had been right, there was a devil. But what she’d been wrong about was the heat.
When the black thing shifted again, and the two slivers of light blinked and looked them over, Leslie knew that the devil’s world was cold, the temperature of corpses in the frozen ground. The eyes opened slightly more, and burned like frostbite into Leslie’s eyes as they lit the room.
When Leslie could see better, she immediately wished for the darkness again.
The nun didn’t get the devil right, either. It wasn’t red, and it wasn’t a man. The devil was a great beast, long and black, and it filled a cavern the size of the Empire State Building. It had long claws that broke and shifted the rock just in front of you like a person might grip their bedcovers. The devil towered over you like a great cobra many, many stories tall. It didn’t have the cobra's hood, but the stink of death hung around it. The devil’s tail lashed behind it a quarter of a mile, and the devil’s mouth was filled with thousands of teeth and it looked like it could easily swallow you and your entire sixth grade class, teachers and all.
And the devil could hear your thoughts, just like the nun said about her God. It heard the feeble good thoughts that whispered in Leslie’s head, and it could hear the nasty thoughts, too. The nasty ones echoed louder in Leslie's head, spiraling into the depths where the worst thoughts hide. The devil laughed inside your head, where no one else could hear when it came across any thoughts that made you particularly ashamed.
The devil was a Dragon.
When they entered, the entire entourage fell painfully to their knees. Leslie stood transfixed until McCobbe yanked her down.
The Dragon's eyes held Leslie in a captivating grip, and even after McCobbe pushed her forward, she only stumbled, too numb to even catch herself as she spilled onto the cold rock. She watched from her sprawled position, a sideways view of the red robed man climbing to his feet, approaching and then prostrating himself at the edge of the pool in front of the great black beast. The Dragon looked on, towering over him like a skyscraper. The man leaned over and cupped his hands to drink from the black pool that surrounded the Dragon's feet. It came to Leslie that the pool wasn't just black water.
It was blood. The Dragon's own blood, for now that she could see better, she saw that the great beast was actually trapped by a network of roots, gnarled and twisted and large enough to be buildings themselves. Many of them grew in such a way that they'd pierced the Dragon's skin, possibly centuries ago, so ancient did everything look. The largest of which was a root the size of a freight train that anchored and enfolded the creature's shoulder and held it pinned as if the very earth had placed a huge restraining hand. When the creature worked itself loose, Leslie knew it would bring about the very destruction of the world.
Leslie could now see that the cavern walls were actually the beast's wings, pinned in hundreds of places by the invading roots. They were smeared all over with the Dragon's blood, still seeping in an infinitesimally slow but enormous stream to gradually fill the huge basin in which the Dragon stood.
Come…
The black pool was deadly still, pooled in deep pockets around the feet and tangle of roots, but a great open expanse lay just between the Dragon's feet.
The man in the red robe struggled awkwardly on his knees towards the huge mouth. The Dragon's eyes flared in interest and watched as the man splashed into the pool and cupped some of the black blood with shaking hands. He drank deeply.
The man straightened with a gasp, and then stood unnaturally still.
A piece of me…into you…
The Dragon hadn't moved its mouth, but still the message ran through Leslie. Not words, exactly, but the meaning. The red hooded man was still waist deep in the pool. Leslie couldn't help but wonder what the man's expression looked like underneath the hood. Then he gasped in shock, and started thrashing uncontrollably in the dark pool. As he struggled, his hood fell away, revealing a grotesque face, pallid and veined, like an albino’s. And it showed her something else.
Leslie started to understand, then, the depth of the pain that was filling her, how profound it was. It burned, and hurt more than she thought possible. More personal. Just the glimmer, perhaps about the voice in her head, or the pale face. She could feel the hate, flowing like a tangible stream from the Dragon, into everyone around her, into Leslie. But with her, she took more into herself than anyone else.
She was special. She was family.
She didn’t know how, but the Dragon talked to her in a voice she recognized.
Some of her mother’s memories were good ones: like when she helped Leslie make cookies. Others weren’t so good. The bad ones usually came after Daddy got home. They would send Leslie to watch TV, or more often to her room to play. Only none of her toys were any good any more, and the only thing Leslie could do was sit on her bed, quiver and listen. Sometimes they would go into the bedroom, and do what her mom called the “Daddy Dance”. Mostly they argued. Either way, it was loud. Usually, it was Daddy’s voice that she heard yelling when they argued, which was scary, but occasionally, it was Mommy’s voice that Leslie heard, and that was always scarier. Mommy only yelled after Daddy had yelled for a long, long time, and when she did, she sounded like the bad people on TV, promising all sorts of terrible things with knives while Daddy was sleeping. Then Daddy would hit her and it would be all quiet again. Leslie thought of that sometimes. Mommy’s mean voice.
That was the voice the Dragon used now. But mommy was dead. It was a trick.
No…my little munchkin…this is no trick, the voice whispered into her head. Each sentence came after a long pause, as if the words were sent up along a bad telephone. It’s mommy…I’m not gone…I’m just different. It took me so long to get back to you, baby. It was the voice that did it. Leslie couldn’t believe at first, but her mother’s voice whispering directly into her head couldn’t be refused.
We’re all here, baby…but this time it’s different, better. Daddy’s here, but he’s changed. He doesn’t drink anymore. He won’t hurt us now. The words were Mommy’s, but so was the hate. Not veiled behind a door or hidden most of the time, but revealed in its purest, most profound form, just like in Leslie’s worst nightmares. The ones where Mommy hurt her. Leslie burst into tears.
Somehow, the man in the red robe managed to pull himself from the pool without drowning, and Leslie’s shock grew worse as her recognition of the red-robed man grew to a certainty.
Daddy.
Only it wasn’t Daddy any more. He was fatter. And his skin was bleached white as if the life had been sucked right out, like in the zombie movies. She still knew his face, but without the sharp look in his eyes, it seemed to bear the same relation to Daddy that Mommy’s hospitalized form had to her. Still, Leslie couldn’t take her eyes off him.
If the wasted mind of her father even recognized her, he didn’t show any sign of it. He lay gasping like a beached fish with the same vacant eyes.
We’re part of a big family now, Munchkin… Mommy’s voice whispered. I have so many children now, but you’ll always be my favorite, now that we’re back together. And this time the Dragon actually moved, matching action to inner voice, flexing its shoulders and wings so that the cavern buckled slightly and little sounds of falling rock trickled all around them. A few larger pieces fell into the dark liquid to be swallowed in a syrupy embrace. The Dragon lowered its head slightly, and opened its mouth wide, wide, wide.
Come, my children. Come to me. It wasn’t a request, but a command. And the voice evidently rang in everyone’s head. Not just Leslie’s. The others shuffled forward.
The horse faced man went next. After him went the tall woman, and so they all went. The man who had been Leslie’s father clambered to his feet and put a hand on her shoulder when McCobbe left her side to take his turn. But Daddy’s hand wasn’t meant for comfort. He was making sure Leslie stayed put when it was McCobbe's turn, though she couldn't for the life of her imagine where she might go. She looked in his face, but still couldn’t see any sign that he knew her, or anyone else.
It took some time for horse faced man and the tall lady to recover enough for the rest to go. McCobbe was the last. It seemed a long time before he was done, and Leslie was sure that one of them might find a way to drown in the pool. She wondered why none of the others helped them out, but maybe the Dragon didn't like that.
Leslie kept looking from the pool to the Dragon's eyes. What was it thinking? What was she thinking. But that didn’t seem right. It was her mother’s voice, and she believed that her mother had become this thing, but it was still an ‘it’ in her mind.
When McCobbe was finally done he came back over to Leslie and reclaimed her with a shaking hand. He took a deep breath, then started forcing Leslie to the pool. She might have fought, but she found the Dragon's cold, bright eyes oddly reassuring, like the bright winter's morning peeking into her room as a child. It didn't matter where the Dragon came from. It had control of her now. Control of everything. It was her mother now, just as before.
And Leslie wasn’t even scared any more. She walked to the edge of the dark pool and stared at the reflective surface, looking at the Dragon’s eyes shining there, too, as if her mother, the Dragon, was everywhere, seeing everything. That should have bothered Leslie, but it didn’t. She gave herself over to it without a thought.
What does that say about me?, she wondered, and lifted her gaze to the Dragon above her again. Mother. She should shy away from this monstrous thing, but she couldn't even pull her gaze from those eyes, not even when McCobbe eased her gently into the pool. They waded in until Leslie was nearly shoulder deep. The Dragon arched its neck slightly to watch the people wading in between its feet like fledglings at their mother's feet.
"Drink, Leslie," McCobbe said.
Leslie stood awestruck and unmoving. McCobbe urged Leslie again, but without any response. Finally, after casting a few helpless looks back at the people on the bank, he gently took Leslie in his arms and lowered her underneath the surface of the black pool. The pool was warm and thick, like silky bathwater. But it still smelled like iron and death. Even as her hair eased into the blood pool, Leslie was transfixed by the Dragon's eyes, and when the black pool of blood closed over her, she did not flinch.
McCobbe let her lay under the pool's surface for the barest of instants. Leslie could still see the Dragon's eyes, even here, brightly watching her as the darkness closed over. She could feel the blood run into her open mouth, and she involuntarily swallowed several times. She couldn’t breathe, but she was too frightened to move.
She felt the Dragon enter her, carried by the liquid of its own flesh. It seeped into her like a planted seed.
A piece of me…into you…I’ll always be with you now. I’ll never leave you again.
Then McCobbe lifted her out of the pool and carried her dripping to the bank. She crawled over near the others, all of them shivering, dripping black ichor onto the cold stone. The blood had messed up her glasses, and she tried futilely to wipe them off using her drenched shirt. It didn't help, but only smeared black goo around. It had gotten colder, and Leslie could see her own breath misting in the air.
The Dragon's eyes grew somehow colder, and the deep rumbling greeting penetrated into Leslie's head, like a vibration that buzzed through her body and reverberated off the other side. She could feel the blood inside her. She found it disconcerting, but the others around her wailed as if in agony. The tall woman doubled over to try and stifle a scream. Leslie watched in strange fascination as the woman sobbed and bit deeply into her own bottom lip. Since the woman's lips were already a deep, deep red, it seemed strangely fitting when the bite caused a rich, crimson trail of blood to dribble onto the cold stone. The warm blood misted the cold around it slightly, as if it burned.
The others must have fought, she thought. But she didn't feel any urge to fight. She accepted the essence of the Dragon inside of her easily. She suffered none of the spasms and pain of the others. She was family. McCobbe vomited, causing an even greater mist around him.
Welcome back…
The Dragon's thought rumbled through them all, but the red hooded man put it into words for them, laying a cold hand on Leslie's dripping face, covering for a moment her wide open eyes.
A piece of me into you…
"Welcome to the cult, my child," rasped the red robed man that used to be her father.
Chapter Eight
It was a week later when McCobbe picked her up and helped her load her belongings into the trunk of his car. They weren’t much, a denim daisy patterned suitcase with a few jeans and some tattered western paperbacks. She didn't really like westerns, but they were the only books she had. Billy listlessly waved from the doorway when they pulled out, but he was only half interested and kept looking back at the movie he was watching about Alcatraz. Her foster parents weren’t home from work yet, but that didn’t seem to bother anybody.
McCobbe ushered Leslie into the backseat. He talked to her while he drove, but Leslie wasn’t really listening. She watched his lips move, shaping words over and over again that bounced around the inside of the car and got lost. She got the gist of it. She was moving. The rest didn't matter much.
She knew he wasn’t talking about their trip through the tunnels, though. She kept hearing that Billy’s family was “unsuitable”, but didn’t catch enough to hear why. It didn’t matter. She didn’t think the government had anything to do with her move. Billy and his folks might be dull and lifeless, but there wasn't much for Social Services to object to, either, as long as no one's expectations were very high.
The Dragon wanted her moved. She understood that. The rest didn’t matter much.
It all should have bothered her, but a grayish cloud hung over her, somewhere in between the place where she lived, and the place where she cared.
Finally, he pulled up in front of a place that looked like an old school building.
“Hope Center, Leslie,” McCobbe said by way of announcement. It looked vaguely dirty, like some schools always are, but she'd seen worse. There was a playground to one side with a fence around. Was it to keep people out, or kids in?
It seemed like their arrival was announced, because a group of people were gathered at the fence, watching them. Mostly kids. It looked like the prison movie that Billy was watching when Leslie left her foster house.
"Fuck," one of the smaller girls said as McCobbe led Leslie by. "Another one." A couple of the other ones shh-ed her, but only half-heartedly.
McCobbe opened the heavy steel door and gestured Leslie in. When the door closed behind them, it slammed itself shut with a heavy metal clang that made Leslie jump.
There were more children inside, watching music videos and dancing in the middle of the room. At least this wasn't a prison movie.
McCobbe gestured to one of the girls. "Evelyn, this is Leslie. Will you do me the kindness of showing her to the last room down the Western hall?" The girl McCobbe was talking to stared at him with wide eyes, looking like she was going to run. She was dark skinned, but didn't look like the black kids Leslie knew. She later found out Evelyn's parents had been from India. The kids had all stopped the minute McCobbe spoke, even though his tone was mild.
"Western h-h-hall?" Evelyn said, looking confused.
"Carrot's old room," McCobbe said, and the girl looked down and nodded. She gestured to Leslie and took off, leaving Leslie to run awkwardly in her footsteps. The building looked like a school on the inside, too. With long corridors, wider than normal and tiled white. Doors ran down both sides and the dark girl led Leslie all the way down to the last one on the left.
She opened the door and gestured inside. "Here."
Leslie went inside, and then stopped. There was a bed, made with white flower print sheets, and an old wooden dresser. But there were things still in the room. A Scooby-Do lunch box lay on the dresser, with a small purse and a strange looking checker set next to it. A few clothes hung in the closet and a large stuffed purple tiger lay on the bed, looking like someone had just left it there.
"This is the wrong room," Leslie said, backing out. "Someone's staying in this one."
"Oh, no they aren't," Evelyn said softly. "Those were Carrot's things. She's gone."
"Gone? Where did she go?"
Evelyn shrugged. "We never know. Here, let me help you with your suitcase. Sometimes kids just go, and sometimes they just come here. Like you. I don't know how it works. But Carrot's been gone for months now, and Mr. M says she's not coming back, so..." She took an end of Leslie's suitcase, though it wasn't very heavy, and the two girls carried it over to the bed. In a few minutes, they’d put Leslie things away.
Leslie wasn’t keen on going back out into the common room, and it seemed Evelyn wasn’t very popular with the other kids. When she suggested that they play checkers with Carrot’s old game, Leslie happily agreed.
The board was funny, just a black grid. And it had a lot more squares than normal. They used the stone pieces for markers, which worked all right until Evelyn got one to the end of the board and they had to king it. The stones didn’t stack very well.
They were trying to fit two of them in one square to mark the king when they heard a door in the hallway open and slam shut. A crowd of kids crowded into the hallway just outside Leslie’s new room. They had just come in from the playground.
“The new kid,” the blond girl in the front said. “And already she’s paired up with the porn star.” It was the same girl who'd said “fuck” before. She was very pretty in a dainty way, but she didn't act dainty. She talked as if announcing everything to the room next door. Her hair was blond, in pig tails and she wore a lot of make-up for a kid. She had a hand on either side of the doorway, regally surveying them. She was wearing a bright pink shirt that said: “Hot Shit”. The kids behind her giggled, all girls except for one tall black boy.
“Careful, new kid,” a black girl said. “Or Porn Star’ll have your cherry right there on Carrot-top’s bed. Right, Dana?” The others laughed while two of them started to gesture with their hips, and make wild obscene grunts to punctuate each hip thrust. Dana laughed and tried to make bomp-chicka-bomp-bomp music of some sort with tears streaming down her face.
Evelyn flushed but refused to look up. Her hands weren’t really messing with the checkerboard anymore, but they kept fiddling with the thin sheet on the bed. From her expression, it looked like this kind of thing happened a lot.
Leslie didn’t have to fully stand up to reach the Scooby-Do lunch box, and swept it off the table with a snapping flick that shot it across the room. It hit Dana square in the nose and blood splattered on her pink “Hot Shit” shirt and down to her jeans. She screamed and clamped her hands to her face.
One of the other girls screamed while the boy tried to take off his shirt and use it as a cloth to stem the flow. Dana ran out, her hands still to her face, while the others trailed after her. The last to leave was the black girl that had told Leslie to worry about her cherry. She was short and a little chubby and stared at Leslie with awe.
“Damn…” the girl said. And Leslie wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be bad or good. The girl shook her head and followed the others and the doorway was empty.
Leslie thought Evelyn might have been scared, or mad, but she wasn’t. She sat on the bed staring at the doorway with a huge smile on her face.
“How did you do that?” she finally said.
Leslie shrugged. She didn’t feel too good about it, actually. She'd gotten mad and her hand had sort of reached out by itself. Sort of. She kept thinking about the Dragon. Her mother, whispering approval to her as she struck out.
“I mean,” Evelyn asked. “You were so fast. How did you do that?”
“Just lucky, I guess,” Leslie said. “I guess I’m lucky when it comes to hurting people.”
Evelyn didn’t know what to make of that, so they went back to their checkers game.
At least I’ve got one friend here, Leslie thought. Maybe things won’t be so bad.
The rest of the kids stayed away from the two of them for the rest of the evening. When the staff members came and made them come to dinner, there was no talk about what had happened to Dana’s nose, and none of the kids spoke to her. This was just fine with Leslie. She and Evelyn talked quietly to themselves until they could be excused. Then they went back to Leslie’s room and played checkers until one of the staff poked their heads in and announced “lights out”.
It was lonely getting into the bed and staring at the darkness, but she was tired after all, because she quickly fell asleep.
When Leslie got up in the morning, she got dressed as quickly as she could and went to Evelyn’s room. She knocked, but didn’t get an answer. Maybe Evelyn was already up.
When she went into the common room, a huge black man was doling out cereal to a table full of kids. Dana was there, with some of her friends, but Evelyn wasn’t. Dana still had a huge red mark on her nose and looked for a second like she was going to say something, but didn’t.
Leslie went up the the man. “Mister, Evelyn’s not answering her door.”
The man nodded sadly. “It’s Maurice, and I’m sorry, but Evelyn was transferred early this morning.”
“She’s gone?” Leslie felt she was going to be sick. “Gone?”
“I’m afraid so,” Maurice said.
“When is she coming back?”
Maurice just shook his huge head sadly. “Sorry,” he said.
“No more Porn Star,” Dana’s black friend whispered, but loud enough to be heard two states over.
“Quiet, Digsy,” McCobbe said, appearing practically from nowhere. “I’d hate to see you have an accident like Dana, there. How is the nose, Dana, dear?”
Dana didn’t say anything. No one did.
Leslie ran back to her room and cried for a long, long time.
Chapter Nine
A week later, McCobbe came to pick up some of the children. Leslie, Digsy, and a smaller pudgy boy Leslie didn't know. Digsy was wearing her hair in a top knot lately, and telling everyone that she was half Japanese. It might have been true. The boy just looked white and fat. McCobbe said something to the director about paperwork for the special placement program, but the woman shrugged and let him in without questioning. Routine, it seemed.
None of the other children spoke, either, as McCobbe drove out to a familiar looking street in the inner city by the abandoned train station. Sure enough, McCobbe took them down to the tunnel that Leslie remember from before. The one that led to the Dragon. He stepped aside and gestured them in with a smile. None of the other kids objected, and Leslie also found herself walking in. But she wasn't happy about it, and pretty sure the other kids felt the same.
Whatever way they had taken last time, it became immediately apparent that McCobbe was showing them a different route, and Leslie breathed an audible sigh. She had no desire to face the Dragon again. This time, McCobbe led them up a set of stairs just inside the tunnel. The stairs were dark, but regular and a wan light appeared several stories up as Leslie climbed with the other children behind her. The light coming down from above made the stairs dark and spectral, swathed in shadow, but also made it possible to see enough to avoid stumbling.
First he led them up, apparently into the train station. Inside, it was an enormous building half lit by the daylight streaming through broken windows. The orange paint was peeling in most places, and covered with graffiti in a lot more. McCobbe led them quietly though large open spaces and down torn apart hallways, with walls and floors that had jagged holes in them so you could look through into the next room or the floor below. They passed a broken lavatory, and Leslie stared for a moment at the rusted pipes and broken porcelain. There was enough garbage on the floor, fast food wrappers and empty bottles, so that it looked like there might be people around.
A man waited for them in the largest part of the building. He looked homeless, in ragged clothes, bare feet, dirty and lean. But he looked mean in his thinness, hardened and not weakened in his poverty. And nothing about the way he held his head or watched them suggested weakness. He looked them over and spat onto the dirty floor. Leslie noticed a strap that run over his shoulder, like a pack, only it wasn't. When she got closer she could see a long handle showing over the man's left shoulder.
The man was wearing a scabbard with a real live sword in it.
The man shot a disgusted look at McCobbe, who just shrugged and dusted off a broken piece of concrete near the corner and sat down. The silent man grimaced and spat again. He squinted into the sun and then looked them over again. He didn't seem to like them any better the second time.
McCobbe stopped and took out a pocket watch, fiddled with it and put it back in his pocket. Leslie and the other children looked at him in confusion, but he merely looked back with a serene expression.
The younger boy Leslie didn't know got a scared look on his face and tried to run, but didn't get far. The raggedly dressed man made a scooping motion with his bare foot and a long pole lying on the floor leapt into his gnarled hands. He took a long step and stuck the pole out to cut the boy off.
"Ah ah," McCobbe said from his corner.
Closer, Leslie saw the man with the sword was tall, with thick wrists and corded arms that looked like they could twist iron bars. His hair was cropped very close in an ugly ragged way, and he had stubble and dirt on his face. His eyes were a light blue, maybe grey, only they didn't have any expression at all, like the dead eyes of a shark. He had a lot of smallish scars on his arms and legs, and a longer one that ran over his neck.
The boy cried out and backed away, blinking in confusion.
The man used his pole to flick another stick in the boy's direction. The boy cried out again as the pole fell on his shoulders and then clattered on the floor.
The man made a gesture to each of them, pointing at the sticks on the ground.
Leslie looked down. Sticks and poles lay scattered around the floor with the other garbage. The one Leslie picked up had a threaded knob on the end, the kind of mop handle that you screw into the brush part. The other end was a ragged splintered stump where it had been broken to make it smaller.
Digsy picked one up, too. But the boy shook his head and backed away. "Wha-what is this?" he stammered.
"He's going to teach you how to fight, Bradley," McCobbe called out. His voice was light, as if he might be talking about washing the car. "You'll start this way, but eventually, you'll practice with a variety of weapons. Someday, you can learn to kill a grown man with your hands, if you survive."
"Ha!" Digsy burst out, still trying to look bored, but the man didn't laugh or change his expression in any way and the laugh died on her lips.
"Pick one up, Bradley," McCobbe said to the boy again, who still hadn't done so.
The boy did, with shaking hands. "You want us to try and hit someone with these?"
"No," McCobbe said, laughing. "We don't expect that of you. Use it to try and stop Map from hitting you. All of you."
Digsy didn't laugh this time. No one did. When the man hit Digsy on the shoulder, it was so quick that Leslie didn't even see it. Digsy screamed, loud and long like in a horror movie. She dropped the stick and fell down.
"Pick it up," McCobbe said calmly, though they could barely hear him over Digsy's screaming. "Pick it up or you won't have a chance of stopping the next one." The boy tried to run, but the quiet man cut him off easily, knocking him to the cement with a shot to the shins. Leslie was next, and he chopped at her, swinging the pole in with a whistling arc that came slashing down on her arm. She dropped her weapon and doubled over, clutching her wounded arm. Tears came to her eyes, but she clenched her teeth against the sobs, not wanting anyone to hear her. It didn't really matter. Both of the other kids were crying, Digsy in wailing screams.
The man leaned on his stick patiently for a few minutes, then shook his head and hefted his stick again.
McCobbe had to shout to be heard. "If you get up, and pick your sticks back up, you've got a better chance." No one got up, so the quiet man started hitting them anyway. After a few more hits, Leslie groped for her makeshift weapon. Her arm still burned, and her shoulder where he'd hit her. And a seething hate coursed through her. No one should treat kids like this! He was ten times bigger than they were. It wasn't fair, and it was mean.
Her hands closed over the wooden pole as the man moved to hit Digsy again. Leslie waited until he was in mid swing, with his back to her, and leapt to her feet. Damn this guy, and damn McCobbe for leaving them here. Maybe when he came back to a crippled teacher they'd get some nicer ones. Just as the man was hitting Digsy, Leslie swung a wicked shot at his knees. She stepped in like a major league baseball player, putting everything she had behind it, aiming for the knees.
The man flicked his pole behind him, knocking away Leslie's shot without looking. Leslie's pole shot out of her hands and flew some yards away, clattering loudly on the floor.
He nodded to her once, as if he was pleased, but then his face dropped all trace of expression. He slowly showed her how to place her hands. He demonstrated with his own stick once in the air, very slowly.
"You'd better pick one back up, Leslie," McCobbe said.
And the quiet man showed her how to swing when he hit her again, a short chop to the same shoulder. She realized that he was using the same stroke over and over again. She should be able to find a way to block it, only it was too fast. He wasn't holding back on the power, either.
He struck at her and she dropped her stick again.
Leslie glared at him. "Fuck you, dickhead. I hope you get hit by a truck."
Behind him, Digsy was looking at Leslie like she was out of her mind.
He gestured for her to pick up her weapon again.
And she did. She hated him, and wanted to try attacking again, but her shoulder was too sore to do more than defend. And she even managed to block some of his blows. Not all, but some.
And so it went. He didn't break any of their bones, but it felt like it. He beat them over and over, but always with the same stroke. Until each of them had identical bruises running from their left shoulder all the way down to their wrists. The boy's was particularly bad and his wrist was swollen to twice its normal size. They were also sniffling with headaches from crying the whole time.
"He went easy on you," McCobbe said to them. "Next time, it'll be harder."
"Like there'll be a next time," Digsy murmured under her breath. But, of course, there was.
McCobbe brought them back in three days. Leslie expected the other kids to refuse. Actually, she planned on refusing herself, had started to leave the school several times, but just couldn't bring herself to. They all climbed into the car without comment when McCobbe told them to.
The ride was long and grim. Digsy sat with an defeated expression like a death row inmate next to her, but the boy was even worse.
"Bradley," Digsy said to Leslie, indicating the boy. If the boy heard his own name, he didn't give any sign. He quivered in the backseat next to her, moaning with his eyes open but vacant. Like a boy having a bad dream, only he could never wake up.
"I hear he tried to leave," Digsy whispered to her.
"They caught him?" Leslie asked. They tried to keep their voices to a whisper so that McCobbe couldn't hear them, but he didn't show any interest. He continued humming to the radio. “Respect” this time.
"Not 'they'," Digsy whispered. "Him. The guy with the sword."
"Him?" Somehow the idea of seeing him outside of the abandoned train station, out where normal people walked around, was monstrous.
"I don't know what he did, but it must have been bad."
Leslie looked at the quivering boy next to her. She couldn’t imagine what was worse than his training sessions, but she knew it must have been. Apparently, the cult wasn't very forgiving about truancy. It made Leslie shiver.
When McCobbe led them into the huge open space the homeless looking man was standing in exactly the same spot as before, as if he’d never moved. McCobbe went over to the same stone and sat down with a sardonic expression on his face. Leslie noticed that he never seemed to get any dust on his black suit, no matter where he sat.
With McCobbe’s sardonic words to fill in any gaps in understanding, their instructor led them through a series of knife attacks. Bradley was quickly singled out as the demonstration victim. They made Bradley attack over and over with a dull butter knife. First so the man could demonstrate the technique he wanted, then so Digsy and Leslie could attempt it. Only after two hours of effort did Bradley get a chance to try on Digsy.
The next year was like that. Classes dominated her waking thoughts, partly because she was always walking with a stiff arm, or a limp. Partly because of the intensity, which demanded nothing less than your full attention. If their instructor so much as twitched or a bee whizzed through the training area, the students were supernaturally aware of it. Compared to that level of attention, and partly due to a burning fatigue, the rest of her life was gray and dull, like shades moving around her. No one cared what kind of grades she brought home from social studies class, but if she didn't get the footwork correctly for an overhead block, she would be picking scabs off of her head for weeks.
Their instructor never spoke, and it was a matter of some debate if he could. He certainly didn't answer questions. McCobbe's running commentary was often unhelpful.
The best of it was this: after three months, during a particular session McCobbe stood up and strode over to the three of them. "This man is not training your hands to be fast, or your head to be clever. The training of a particular stroke or step is secondary. He is training your intensity. The kind of fighting you'll learn here is the kind that only one person walks away from. I want you to be that one person. This kind of training is uncomfortable."
Map's gray eyes held nothing as he watched them absorb this news. Not hate, but certainly not forgiveness or compassion, either. The small patchwork of scars on his face looked more sinister than ever. McCobbe's eyes were dark, black like the Dragon itself, and his face was intense.
This routine remained the same until the day Bradley's accident happened.
They were working a cunning five step series and Leslie was just starting to feel good. She was using an actual sword now, though it wasn't sharp. It was heavy, though. Map came at her with a diagonal stroke, using another of the practice swords. She blocked with the same stroke, and the clanging metal echoed loudly off the concrete around them. A half beat later, Map's backstroke came, but Leslie was there with her own. The entire drill worked like this, each mirroring the other. If you did it right, each stroke countered the other. If you couldn't keep up, you got hit.
Sweat broke out on Leslie's head as she whipped the sword back and forth: diagonal, backward diagonal, low inside, low outside, stabbing across the body so that her forearm thudded into Map's as he did the same. Low stab, high attack and whip the weapon around like a baton to strike the same place again. Blindingly fast, their swords crossed over and over. They were coming to the clinch. She hardly ever made it this far without a bruise for her trouble. Into the overhand strike clinch, and Map was already moving to the side for a throw, Leslie circled to keep him from gaining her flank and Map sprang backwards so that their swords disengaged.
McCobbe was applauding lazily and laughing. "Well done, Leslie," he said from his corner.
Bradley and Digsy, who were supposed to be doing the same drill, had stopped, watching. Bradley ogled them openly, his eyes bulging. One look from Map sent them busily clanging their swords together, though not nearly as fast as Map's pace.
Map turned back to her and nodded, as if agreeing with McCobbe's applause and Leslie flushed. This was the highest praise she'd seen. But the echoes of the clapping hadn't faded before Map sprang at her again. He attacked in a fury, the same series, but Leslie wasn't ready this time. She only got two steps in before he tagged her on the elbow hard enough to numb her entire arm and send her sword flying. She clenched her teeth and ran to pick it up. Still when Map nodded again and turned to Digsy, Leslie thought his frown was a little less pronounced. Map didn't go as fast, and still Digsy didn't do nearly as well, so Leslie didn't feel too bad.
Bradley did even worse, which didn't surprise anyone. While Leslie and Digsy took their turn together, Map kept at Bradley. Bradley dropped his sword, over and over while Map kept hitting him. Over and over. Map always looked grim, but now he looked worse. He looked angry. The next time Bradley dropped his sword Map didn't stop, but brutally pushed through the series, cracking Bradley a shot to the head that made his weapon ring like a chime. Map gestured angrily for Bradley to pick up his sword and then was on him again. Bradley gripped his sword, but wasn't keeping the point up, and when he flailed wildly trying to block a shot to his shoulder he stuck his arm in the way and they could all hear a dull crunch as Map hit him.
Leslie flinched as she heard it. It was broken. It had to be. Map didn't stop, but hit him again from the other side as Bradley fell. With grunt after grunt, Map smacked him again on the ground, battering him mercilessly.
Suddenly McCobbe was there. With a push Map went sprawling. The larger man instantly jumped to his feet and was swinging. Digsy shrieked and Leslie felt the same panic. Map would kill him for sure.
Quicker than lightning, quicker than anything, McCobbe struck while Map was still mid-swing. Short little punches that rocked Map's head and bloodied his nose. Map's blow never landed. A close-in kick Leslie hadn't even seen, it was so fast, shot Map's hips back far enough to drop him on his face.
Leslie stared. Map was the most dangerous person she'd ever met, faster and stronger and more deadly. Or so she thought. A part of her was in shock, and a not too secret part of her didn't mind watching Map get hit for once. But mostly, she was just watching. To see how McCobbe did it.
Map lurched to his feet, staggered once and snarled noiselessly. It occurred to Leslie how odd it was for someone to get hit and not cry out.
Map snatched his sword from its scabbard. The real sword. His face was twisted with rage. McCobbe looked calm. He flicked his hand open in an odd gesture and suddenly his hand had a black cane. It was far too big to be hidden in his sleeve, Leslie thought. And it didn't look like it had telescoped out. It was just suddenly there. Still, it didn't look as dangerous as Map's sword. Then she noticed something odd about the sword that made it look even more dangerous.
Smoke curled from the tip, as if the metal burned.
It looked like steel, cold and bluish in the light that streamed in from the windows. There was no reddish ember or fire, but a constant trail of black smoke curled upwards and the room suddenly had the smell of someone lighting a match.
Then Map threw his sword away and it clattered loudly across the long expanse of concrete. Map spun and stalked away. As he passed one of the pillars, he swung his naked fist. Concrete fragments exploded in a cloud of dust as he punched a head-sized hole into it. Then he stalked off into the darkness. A few seconds later, they heard him hit something else.
McCobbe only watched with a curious expression on his face, but no blatant emotion. It was hard to tell anyway, as a slender line of shadow cast by the partially intact roof overhead hid his expression.
Finally he turned to the unconscious boy at his feet.
"Bradley," he said mildly. "Perhaps it would be better if you stopped coming here."
Chapter Ten
Things at Hope Center didn't get much better. McCobbe was director now, having moved from the school, but it was only a technicality. He'd been running the things he wanted in both places, though Leslie wasn't sure how.
When Bradley came back from the hospital, he waved shyly at Leslie sitting in the common room. Leslie hissed at him like a spitting cat. He bit his lip and turned away. Map had been brutal to her and Digsy all week, and they knew it was his fault.
Digsy took it even more personally and she took pains to let Bradley know. She started with spiteful things at the center. Shoves in the hallway, coffee grounds in his breakfast, and milk poured onto the carpet of his room escalated to physical assault.
A week afterwards, Leslie happened to look out one of the center windows as she walked by. Digsy had Bradley trapped against the chain link fence of the basketball court. By the time Leslie got outside, Bradley was on his face, trying to shield himself from the beating Digsy was giving him with one of the center's broom handles.
Leslie skidded to a stop, unsure of herself. She hated Bradley, too, for a second. Then she watched Digsy land another blow to the back of Bradley's neck and stepped in, grabbing the stick on Digsy's backswing.
"Stop it, you'll kill him."
"So what if I do?" Digsy snapped. "He's weak." Leslie had to hold her as Digsy yelled over her shoulder at the cowering boy. "Twice our size and look at him. Little baby!"
Bradley saw his chance and bolted while Leslie held Digsy back. Then Digsy pivoted and Leslie went sprawling.
"Ha!" It was a game to her, Whack the Bradley. Digsy bolted after him and tackled him by the front door of the center. He was much bigger, but Digsy took him down easily. She was all spit and fury, and he was no match for her. He flailed about trying to push her off. She mounted his fat belly and started raining blows down on his face. His right arm was still broken, and when possible, Digsy pounded his cast with evil glee. When his other hand got too much in her way, she twisted the wrist into a brutal lock. She kept the wristlock with a cheery laugh and dropped back to one side, pulling his arm with her like a lever. He screamed as she hipped upwards, putting pressure on his elbow. She was wrenching it harder, trying to break his other arm.
Leslie ran over, her head spinning. This was too far. But she skidded to a stop as the center door burst open and Mr. McCobbe barged out.
"Digsy! What do you think you're doing? Can you imagine the kind of questions we'd have to answer if someone saw this?" Digsy had already let go, surprised into it. Bradley scrambled frantically past McCobbe.
"Bad enough," McCobbe went on scolding Digsy with a dangerous tone. "That the center could get closed down for this kind of brutality. But I'd hate to have to try and explain where you learned something like that. I don't want to see that kind of thing outside again, do you understand me?"
Digsy's grin came back. "Outside?"
"Just so."
She jumped to her feet and went running back into the house. It probably wouldn't matter. Bradley had had time to get to his room, and could easily keep her out.
McCobbe saw Leslie's astonished face. "Rascally children," he said with another benign chuckle and he reached out and tousled her hair. "Don't worry, Leslie." He said fondly. "We have a place for everyone here, and Bradley will soon learn his. It's just a matter of finding the right talents."
Then he carefully closed the door behind him and started to stroll out to the playground, whistling cheerfully to himself. Sam Cooke, this time.
Leslie turned to watch him go, perhaps fully understanding for the first time the kind of place she'd found herself in.
Leslie didn't participate in Bradley's punishment, but she didn't discourage it anymore, either. It wouldn't have done any good. And she still didn't forgive him for not having to go to classes. A few months after Leslie's fourteenth birthday, Digsy got her wrist broken and was dismissed, too. Leslie didn't forgive her, either. Digsy was moved out of the center a few months later. Leslie didn’t know where to, and no one talked about it.
Bradley followed her around like a cub orbiting the pack leader. Never close enough to make Leslie mad, but always nearby. He became an irritating shadow. And though the center kids understood, no one else seemed to. As if the teachers and school kids only saw the skin, and nothing underneath. Leslie understood the danger of fighting at school. Digsy's first fight outside of the center had resulted in another visit from Map. And no one wanted that. Fortunately, no one at school expected it of her there as much. She was a girl.
For Bradley's part, she was surprised to find that the kids at school, unlike the center kids, gave him a lot of space. Leslie had forgotten how much bigger he was then the rest of the kids. To them, he looked dangerous. Since she didn't want to fight, she started to find his continual presence convenient. When Bradley wasn't escorting her, he ran errands for McCobbe. Leslie didn't know what, but he often came back looking haggard and worn. She tried to ask him, but couldn't get him to talk about it. She knew he had nightmares, though. His screams were loud enough that the whole center knew.
By now, she was the only one left when McCobbe picked her up for the training sessions. This time, McCobbe walked her to the stairs and bid her goodbye like a Southern gentleman from the movies. He would be back to pick her up, he explained. This was rare, but not entirely unheard of, so Leslie headed in by herself.
When she got to the large courtyard, it was empty. A flickering light played in the shadows to her right, in one of the smaller rooms. A voice, singing something sad but indistinct, echoed quietly past. Rain spattered through the open windows, and the combined smells of rain and smoke filled the darkness around her. The light came from the left, and when she carefully walked through the space towards one of the rooms, she could see why.
Inside one of the rooms adjacent to the courtyard, a cheery campfire blazed right on the concrete floor. It took a second for Leslie's eyes to adjust to the flickering light, and her jaw went slack as she saw a woman in an old high-backed arm chair, complete with footstool and a coffee table for her drink. The woman was absurdly tall, even sitting, with dark skin and dark hair. She wore a leather corset, fishnets, and not much else. Strangely, the shiny material of the corset was the brightest part about her so that when the light flickered, she occasionally looked like a disembodied corset sitting in the chair by itself. A long black quirt, like a jockey might use, lay near her hand on the table next to her drink. All of these seemed so out of place in the abandoned station that Leslie stood transfixed in amazement. Even stranger, a naked man crouched at her feet like a lap dog, lying on a carpet by the fire. A black leash ran from the woman's white gloved hand to a studded collar on the man's neck. The music was coming from a radio set in the far corner. Patsy Cline.
"Ah…," the woman said. "My dear child, how nice to see you." It was the same woman from underneath the bridge. Her initiation night. The night Leslie had first seen the Dragon. The naked man had been with her, there, too. They'd used the convoluted markings on his back to find their way through the network of mazes underneath the station.
She caught herself staring at the man's tattoos. They writhed ever so slowly along the man's back, seeming to flicker in the candlelight, but also moving of their own accord. They made dark sinuous tracks along his back. Her eye tracked one of them down the small of his back, to his hip, and then she saw the markings. These were red and thin, like she'd seen in movies. Whip marks. From the quirt on the table. Then she turned away in shame when she realized the man had an erection.
"I am Madam Tyranny," the woman said. "And I believe you already know this man." She smiled a bright lip-sticked smile and kicked the man negligently with the toe of her foot. Then she reached down and yanked the man's chin so that the candlelight fell on the gray eyes and scarred face of Leslie's instructor. The man was Map.
Leslie collapsed. She landed on her bottom, and sat there staring stupidly. At first she had an urge to protect him, free him. But then she noticed that he wasn't constrained. The leash on his collar wouldn't have held anybody. And his hands and legs were free.
Then she looked at his face again, hardly recognizing him. At first, she thought it was because of the absurd situation. Then she realized it was something else that transformed him. His face writhed with expression, and in a few seconds she saw him bite his lip and clench his teeth as he writhed on the end of his leash. Most of all, whenever his eyes flicked back to the woman in the chair, naked adoration shone in his eyes. It floored her. She'd never seen so much as a flicker of emotion in this man for months, and now this. It was too much.
"I know you. You were there that night, with the blood and the…" The Dragon, she meant, but it seemed wrong to speak of it out loud. "I know both of you…now."
"Map…" Leslie wondered out loud. "He's how we found our way. It's that…" She pointed at the subtly shifting tattoo pattern on his back.
"Yes." The woman said.
"But he's so mean!" Leslie burst out. "And tough…and…"
"My poor duckling," the woman said warmly to her. "It's a shock, I know. It must be. But it's been decided that you need to learn many things, and no one man...particularly not a man...can teach you all of them. He objected, of course, but..." Shrugged. "Such is life."
Then she leaned over. "Come," she snapped. Just as you would speak to a dog. "Come!" She pulled on the leash to emphasize her point, but Map was already scrambling to obey. She jerked on the leash with just the tips of her fingers, and he followed her lead and crawled so that his head was in her lap. The woman leaned over and pinched a small bit of his skin, where another man might have had love handles. Then she crooned a strange melody to him as she twisted the bit of flesh. He flinched only slightly, though it must have hurt him.
"Come here, Leslie," the woman said and crooked a gloved finger to beckon her. And such was her tone of command that Leslie got to her feet in a daze and approached.
"What is this…that I hold here," Madam Tyranny said to Map in a low, husky voice.
He didn't answer, of course, so she answered herself. "It's your skin, isn't it?" Map looked like he was going to cry out. Leslie watched, entranced, as the white fingers continued their twisting. The bit of his skin looked inhuman, red and flushed. Like something not attached to a person.
"And whose is it? Why, it's mine, isn't it? This skin?"
Map nodded frantically.
"And what can I do with it?" the woman went on. "Yes, that's right, anything I want," It sounded like something she repeated to him often. "Yes, good." She reached over and picked up her teacup. "Alas, my tea is cold." She snapped her fingers and Leslie nearly jumped out of her skin when people glided out of the shadows. She would have sworn that they were alone.
Three men descended on her, non-descript except that they were all dressed like butlers. One of them held a teapot in his hand, ludicrously out of place in the near dungeon-like surroundings. They busied themselves freshening the tea and replacing dishes and sugar and then were gone again moments later.
"Thank you," Madam Tyranny said to no one and took another sip. "Ah...yes, much better." The butlers were all gone, presumably to do something with the teapot and dishes, though Leslie couldn't begin to imagine what. She looked around, trying to figure out where they could be now, but the Madam was talking again and she had to pay attention.
"You have to understand, that men are strong here…" The Madam raised her hand and gave one of Map's shoulders a slap. The sound rang like a gunshot and echoed around the stone room. "And here…" she repeated the slap on the meaty part of his leg. "But they're weak. Weak right here. Inside." She tapped her own chest.
As if on cue, the music swelled. Patsy was onto “Crazy”. More work from the invisible servants. Leslie couldn't imagine anything more wildly inappropriate.
"And Leslie," Madam Tyranny said, drawing her attention back with a wicked smile. "The most important thing to understand about men is that they're weak here." Her long arms allowed her to look elegant while she reached underneath him. Leslie saw where the woman's hand was going and flushed scarlet, looking away.
"There are many kinds of power, Leslie," the Madam purred. "And he can only teach you about the physical." Leslie watched in horror as one of the white gloved hands, like a creature in its own right, reached out and grasped her own. Leslie’s hand looked much, much smaller inside the ivory grip.
"I can teach you," Madam Tyranny went on, "So much more." Leslie was helpless to struggle as the white gloved hand drew her own lower. She had to crouch as she was pulled closer, leaning on the crouched man for balance. Her horror mounted as Madam Tyranny drew her hand between Map's legs. Almost unwillingly, her hand closed around him, and Map arched his back and hissed, long and low.
"I can teach you, Leslie. How to enslave their hearts. And that is a power of greater reckoning. Come. Let's begin."
And she did.
Continue to Chapters Eleven - Fifteen