Undesirable Chapter 24
TITLE: Undesirable (A vampire novel)
RATING: NC-17 (This chapter R)
SUMMARY: The surprising things the Resistance has to offer George and Wally.
Word Count: 6987 -- creeping up again.
Chapter 24
My mind was so blown away by the fact that I was meeting Vestalar -- the Vestalar - that it took an embarrassingly long time to realize where the hell he'd brought us. After taking the garage elevator to its top floor, which happened to be ground floor lobby of the building above, we then joined a rather long line. Most of the people were young, dressed hipply, if not downright scantily. I stared for the better part of five minutes, almost entirely unseeingly, at a rather chunky woman's bare back. Though it did occur to me that her outfit wasn't particularly flattering to her figure, it didn't even come close to registering that a leather mini skirt and bra weren't appropriate attire for a normal restaurant. Mostly, I was caught up with the fact that the guy I once would have paid serious money to sit next to on a plane was standing less than a foot away, talking to Wally. Now was the time to ask all those questions I thought up through the years, but my mouth had gone dry and I couldn't think of a single thing to say that wasn't completely retarded.
It wasn't until we'd almost reached the head of the line and my eyes fell across a broadsheet sized list of rules tacked to the wall that it struck me where we were: We were at a club.
A sex club.
My entire body shook with sudden panic. No. No way. No way, no way, no way. This wasn't right. I was surrounded by people looking at me in a sexual way, and I'd had more than my share of that with vampires. I couldn't take that meat-market feel from humans as well. I looked with betrayal over at Chuck and attempted to get myself out of the line. I'm not quite sure what happened but I seemed to come to myself in a corner with Chuck's hand on my shoulder and his patient voice in my ear, overpowering the ambient noise.
"Calm down, calm down," he was saying. "You're having a panic attack."
"Not here," I found myself saying. "Not a club."
Chuck spoke soothingly, like a psychologist talking down a madman. "You're safe. I'm not sure what you think will happen here, but no one is going to touch you against your will."
"This is a fucking sex club," I snarled.
"Yes," said Chuck. "A sex club - not a rape club. Look at the rules. Rule 4." He put his finger down on one of the broadsides posted up around the lobby.
It was hard to focus my eyes on the rules, but I blinked and they started to sort themselves out:
1) No Minors Permitted on Premises.
2) No Alcohol, Drugs, Cigarettes Permitted on Premises. No one who shows signs of being intoxicated will be allowed in.
3) No Weapons of Any Kind Permitted. Whips and Paddles and Electrical Stimulators May be Rented or Purchased Inside.
4) No Badgering, Stalking, Unwanted Touching or any other form of Harassment. Please see staff if you feel bothered or unsafe. BDSM aficionados: Safewords may be used in rooms but in all halls and common areas "No" always means No, no exceptions ever. Violators will be immediately expelled.
The rules went on and on after that, all 58 of them spelling out in meticulous detail everything from the allowable levels of consensual violence to embarrassingly frank matters of hygiene. I'd never seen anything like it, and I felt as self-conscious as a twelve year old presented with a nudie magazine. Many of the rules concerned acts so bizarre that it boggled my mind that it would be an issue worthy of a rule. I didn't know whether to laugh or to flee.
"Christ, Chuck," I said. "Can't we just go to a Denny's?"
"No," said Chuck apologetically, "We can't. I've got other projects I need to work on besides you. The people I need to see and the things I need to do are all here. That's why I had you brought to me rather than coming out to you myself. I know you are worried, but you really have no need to be. Have you ever been in a club before?"
I shook my head.
"All Clubs rely on discretion to keep their clients. They have rooms where you two can sleep, a restaurant where you can eat, and a shop where you can get any necessities you may have left behind. And unlike a Denny's, or a 7-11, or a Shilo Inn, they aren't going to spill the beans about you the moment some random vampire from Cleveland calls up to ask. It's all sanitary and safe. I've found them very useful in moving clients in the past."
I couldn't argue with Chuck's reasoning, but my guts still rebelled. Years worth of carefully honed prejudice wasn't that easily left behind.
Wally's eyes entreated mine. "I go to a club almost once a week. They really aren't as sleazy and dirty as you think they are."
"Would you like to take a walk around the block before we go in?" Chuck offered.
My panic collapsed under the weight all the reasoning and expectation, and then I was just embarrassed for my conduct. "No, I'm cool," I said. "If we are going to do this, lets just go and do it. I've been in worse places." Wally seemed unconvinced, but Chuck took me at my word and we got back at the end of the line.
The crush had passed, and we only had a minute or so of wait this time before we reached the bouncer. At that point, I nearly had a second panic attack when I realized he would be expecting my bloodtrust ID - which I simply didn't have. To my surprise Chuck pulled three cards out of his wallet. One had a prominent green stripe, which indicated that someone was over 40. The other two had red stripes. Chuck pointed to Wally and myself as he offered up those cards. After the bouncer had swiped them, Chuck tucked them back in his wallet. I wondered what my supposed name was for this evening.
I didn't have a chance to ask before Chuck took a firm hand to my upper arm and lead me around the privacy partition into the club, making sure, I imagine that I wasn't going to cop out at the last minute. To my surprise, Wally was completely right about the club. I was noting like the sleazy strip club I'd imagined. It was actually, astoundingly enough, classy. The inner lobby was large and brightly lit and airy, with a two story ceiling lit up with chandeliers. There were a number of small groupings of tasteful couches and chairs around mirror polished coffee tables. Everything was spotlessly clean. It looked like it belonged to a rather expensive hotel. It was, however, loud. Under the constant thunder of conversation was a muffled musical wumping, more felt than heard, that seemed to be coming from somewhere through a wall. There were a number of large corridors branching off the inner lobby, leading to other parts of the club, and along the back wall was a large check-in area where people had lined up.
Chuck lead me to one of the comfortable low oversized chairs and told me to sit. He sat down on the coffee table, so that we were knee to knee. Wally took the adjoining couch looking concerned, but open to whatever Chuck had in mind. Chuck's attention was purely on me.
"Are you bothered by flashbacks? That tasting sounded pretty traumatic to me."
As if in answer, I got a strong memory of lying tied to the bed with Sydney standing over me, his long black cock hanging like a thick sea slug by my mouth. I pulled back away from both the image and Chuck.
"Easy, easy," said Chuck, calmly. "I encounter this a lot. The people I tend to work with have gotten the bad end of things with vampires. It looks like Nadette messed you up good."
"You going to take her out for that?" I asked, somewhat hopefully.
But Chuck shook his head. "She had the arrogance to poach you, and suffered an extremely public humiliation when she lost you again. It's going to take a long time for her social standing to recover from that party. As natural consequences go, it's a pretty fitting end for her overreaching. Don't you think?"
I didn't. I wanted her dead or at least maimed the way she'd maimed Darlene. But it was clear that Chuck didn't feel she was worth the risk.
"What I can do," Chuck went on, "Is, with your permission, I can try to hypnotize you to help alleviate some of that stress. You won't have any more flashbacks. It may make it easier to be in a place like this. Are you willing to let me do that?"
I hesitated. I didn't think I was that traumatized by the tasting, but on the other hand, any stress relief would be welcome. Besides good old-fashioned hypnosis wasn't anything like Vampire mind powers. Hypnosis is just a spooky word for a relaxation exercise with a bit of verbal suggestion and maybe some acupressure tossed in for fun. Hell, my dentist uses it. It probably wouldn't work because I wasn't in the mood, but then, if it made Chuck happy.… "Okay, why not."
Chuck looked relieved. To my embarrassment, he slid off the coffee table and knelt on the ground next to me. I looked around self-consciously to see if anyone else in the club was watching, but they seemed to be involved with their own groups and no one was paying more than the most casual attention. Chuck grasped both my hands in his and put his thumbs squarely down in the center of my palms and pressed. "Close your eyes," he said to me. "Try to imagine you are in a theatre."
I pressed my lids closed and tried to I imagine myself seated in a darkened movie theatre. It seemed a bit silly, but with some effort I was able to do it.
"Okay, now up on the screen I want you to see the tasting. Watch it unfold."
I did so, stiffening as I accidentally triggered one hell of a post traumatic flashback. The horror and fear and helplessness were a whole lot realer than I was prepared to deal with. For that moment, hypnosis seemed like a really bad idea and I wanted to claw my way out of it. But then Chuck, sensing my distress, pressed the palms of my hands to the point of pain, and I seemed to come back to present.
"It's just a movie," Chuck repeated, over and over. "Not to you. You are just watching them." His thumbs moved in tight circles, distracting me from the memory, helping me put it outside of myself. To my enormous relief, the feelings became more distant, muffled, unreal. Sure enough, when Chuck eased up the pressure on my hands, the whole miserable experience felt like some second hand memory after all. A movie I once watched and got a little too into. I latched onto that eagerly.
"The movie is speeding past. It's almost over. And now it's the end." Bizarrely, my mind invented end credits and I let out a chuckle of relief. How to give a man a complex, starring George Handle as Poor Schmuck Tied to the Bed. "There," said Chuck. "All done. Now I want you to get up and walk to the back of the theatre and climb up a little stairway there to the projection booth. Can you do that?"
I did. It was easy. Damn, I was getting good at this hypnosis thing.
"See the film that you just saw? You are going to pull it off the projector and put it into a canister. It can't come out of that canister unless you want it to. The only time you will remember it is when you want to remember it, and decide to play it back. Otherwise it's just going to sit there. It's just a movie."
I put the reel of film into a canister and felt intense, near giddy relief.
"Go ahead and open your eyes when you are done." I did. Chuck let go of my hands and sat back down on the table looking satisfied. "Do you think that worked?"
"I feel great," I said, rubbing my sore palms together. And I did. It was like a huge weight I hadn't even been aware of had lifted off of me. Being in a sex club no longer had the overtones of threat to it. It just seemed like any other nice hotel. No one was staring at me. No one was even being overtly sexual with each other around me. My earlier worries evaporated and I had to shake my head with surprise at how effective that little mind exercise had been. "Damn, Chuck, is there anything you can't do?"
"I'm a horrible singer," Chuck deadpanned. "Totally tone deaf. But seriously, this is what I do, George. I rescue people. And a lot of them have been in much worse situations than you were in. I'm also a certified paramedic, if that should ever come up." He stood up and clapped my shoulder. "Try to trust me."
I nodded and got up as well. Wally staggered up with us, looking rather concerned, looking like he wanted to touch me but didn't quite dare.
Chuck on the other hand seemed as relaxed and confident as ever. "Since George here's done freaking out, let's go get a room where we can continue our conversation in private. Not that I expect anyone is listening in on us, but it always pays to be discrete."
Our seats were taken by a group of eight giggling women the instant we moved away. Vaguely, I noticed the multicolored bracelets around their all of their wrists. Each wore blue and some of them wore a second bracelet in pink, orange or black as well. As Chuck lead us through the increasingly crowded, noisy lobby, I noticed those same rubber wrist bands on everyone else. I wondered if maybe we should be wearing one.
While Chuck stood in line at the check-in desk, I tapped Wally's arm. "Um did we forget to get something?" I pointed to some dude with pink and black wristbands and then pointed to my bare wrist.
Wally took a second to figure out what I meant, then he started laughing. "Only if you are looking to sleep with someone other than me tonight." Although he said it lightly, there was something in his voice that suggested he would not be okay if I did. "Look," he pointed to a couple of girls near by, they were taking off their pink bands and dumping them into a wicker basket on a nearby pedestal. "You only wear them until you've made your hook up. You and I have made our hook up." He leaned down and gave me a kiss to drive the point home.
I twiddled my thumbs for a minute or two while Chuck inched up in the line, then curiosity won out. I wandered over to the basket and picked up one of the bands at random. It was the same sort of cheap rubber bracelet that people wear for various awareness causes. I read the color guide framed on the wall above the basket. Apparently, pink meant one was looking for a woman, and blue a man, and purple transgender. The popularity of girlish pink among the guys now made sense. The rest had to do with the type of sex one was up for. Apparently yellow was for … oh gross!
"Is there something about you I should know?" asked Wally. I looked down and realized the band I was unconsciously feeling up meant I was looking for someone to dominate me in a BDSM tryst. I hastily dropped it back in the basket.
Chuck joined back up with us and handed Wally and me a key card wrapped in a little paper sheath with a room number scrawled on it in pen. "I figured you two might not feel like sharing a bed with me, so I got us a party suite." He grinned, then glanced at the basket. "Unless, of course, you do." He was obviously joking but I backed hastily away from the basket anyway.
We took the elevator next to the front desk up to our room, having to stop at nearly every floor to let a group on or off. The club was bustling and the pheromones were thick in the air. I found myself having to work not to stare. People had mostly been wearing scanty but street legal clothes in the lobby, but every floor, people seemed to wear a whole lot more vinyl and lace and lot less of everything else. The public displays were getting bolder and bolder, sex toys were being jokingly waved around like weapons. I looked to Wally and Chuck for guidance, but the two seemed to think nothing of it, so I tried to pretend that I didn't notice that a chick hanging out in the 4th floor hallway was naked but for boots and carrying a scary looking whip.
We stepped out onto the fifth floor - the top story for the building. The carpeting seemed a richer, more garish red than on the lower floors and we passed a number of large gilded framed mirrors. I glanced in one and saw the bags under my eyes and my sallow cheeks dotted with mangy roughness. My hair tufted up in a desperate cry for a comb - or in other words, just the way it had looked when the stylist finished with me last week. The corridors were more or less empty up here, and though I could hear the rhythmic pounding of music coming through the walls of several of the closed rooms, most were eerily silent. Up ahead I heard a door cracking open and the sudden roar of laughter and chatter following in its wake.
We turned the corner and saw a woman lounging in the doorway of one of the rooms, wearing a leather teddy that showed off the entirety of her humongous breasts. I'd never seen tits that size before, they were like small cantaloupes and her silver dollar sized nipples appeared to be pierced with brass door knockers. I couldn't help but stare at them. They were obviously meant to be stared at.
"Hey boys," she cooed. "Wanna join our party?" The booze on her breath rolled out like a rancid wave. She reached out a playful arm to try and snag me, but I stepped sideways out of her reach. Pouting, she heaved up a massive tit in one hand and flicked the door knocker with her thumb. "Oh, come on. We're having all kinds of fun in here!"
Next to me Wally stiffened in cartoonish horror the way only a truly gay man would have. I laughed at his reaction and looked over at Chuck. To my surprised, he looked thoroughly disapproving. Then both looked at me as if they were afraid I might freak out again.
"I'm cool," I reassured them, vaguely embarrassed for their concern. And I was cool. I hadn't been triggered at all. She just was silly and drunk and I couldn't feel anything other than amused at her behavior. Compared to that chick with the whip, she was positively tame.
We walked up to the next door and stopped. Chuck silently ran his key through the lock and opened up our room. With a flick of his hand the lights came on, one after another in a slightly staggered fashion. I looked inside and gasped. Holy, fuck. Chuck had really set us up in style. This wasn't a room - it was a palace. It looked to be twice as big as my Beaverton apartment, made even larger by the fact that two of the walls were covered in mirrored tile. Beyond the enormous living room there was an open kitchen and three further doors branching off of that. The only thing missing was windows. There were none at all - making the place seem rather like a luxurious bunker.
I'd barely looked around when Chuck tapped my shoulder. "Hang out here for a few minutes. I have to go and report that party to the management. The woman who accosted you is going to get her ass perma-banned and the rest of them thrown out."
I was surprised and a bit insulted by his protective vehemence. "Oh, come now. I wasn't bothered. It was just a little lewdness and for god's sake this is a sex club. Isn't that what this place is about?"
"She shouldn't have come on to us," said Wally, barely containing his shock, as if being catcalled in the hall of a sex club was unheard of. "We aren't wearing bracelets."
"She was totally hammered," I protested. "She made a mistake."
"Alcohol isn't allowed in a sex club," said Chuck, utterly unamused.
"See I don't get that," I said, crossing my arms in front of my chest. "It seems to me a little booze would make it easier to have sex with total strangers."
"Well, that's exactly the thing," said Wally. "If you need booze to want to have sex with someone, you shouldn't be having sex with them."
"Inebriated people can't consent to having sex," Chuck agreed, flatly. "That party is a lawsuit waiting to happen, and I rather like this place. Why don't the two of you go ahead and order some room service, while I show our neighbors how much of a party pooper I am. I'll be back in fifteen or so." He then headed out the door.
Wally and I set off to explore this grand suite Chuck had put us in. Frankly, I would have been more than happy to just have a clean bed to sleep in. But this… there wasn't any need to leave this room - ever. It had everything. The main room had a sunken pit area lined with couches and enough throw pillows for a good sized fight. There was an enormous flat screen TV taking most of the space above the gas fireplace. To one side was an entertainment center with all the different platforms of gaming consoles and an entire shelf full of popular games. Sitting on a glass shelf was a booklet containing the movie selection, most of them pornographic, which could be downloaded to the TV from their in-house system. The stereo had a karaoke option with a list of songs ten miles long. When we were finished with the living room we discovered that the other doors lead to a humongous bathroom with a tub big enough to seat six, and two rather disappointingly small bedrooms, each almost entirely taken up by a luxurious king sized bed.
"What no dungeon?" I joked.
"You have to pay extra for those," said Wally, perfectly straight. "Though this place isn't cheap. What the fuck, Chuck is going all out for us, isn't he? This place has to cost at least a grand a night. The Resistance must have a ton of money at its disposal."
"You mean, you don't get a room like this when you go to the… what did you call that club you go to in Oregon City?"
"The Cliffside, and hell no," said Wally with awe. "I get the super-cheap hotel style room. Three hours for thirty bucks. It doesn't even come with a TV." Wally wandered back to the kitchen and pressed the screen of a monitor bolted to the counter. "Here's where we order room service."
As I left the bedroom to see what he was talking about, by chance I happened to look up notice a small but very obvious camera mounted in a corner. Looking around in sudden panic, I noticed others placed at strategic spots around the rest of the suite.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" I grabbed Wally's shoulder and pointed. "I thought you said this place was private."
Wally looked up, unfazed. "Oh those. Liability. If something goes wrong, the police can access the tapes of the room for their investigation." Noticing that I wasn't at all reassured, Wally went on. "Look, over here." He pointed to a panel papered to blend in with the wall. "The feed doesn't even leave the room, it just goes into a hard drive, which isn't connected to anything. It takes a court order to copy over information. And in three days it's overwritten. Even the club employees don't ever get to see it."
I was dubious. It seemed very creepy - but maybe it was just par for the course at a sex club. I didn't know. And anyway there was nothing I could do about it. If Wally thought it was no big deal, I just had to trust him.
Grumpily, I went to the screen bolted to the kitchen counter and ordered our dinners. The menu included everything from the downstairs restaurant, plus a slew of raw ingredients, I supposed to indulge those guests whose fetish involved cooking. Wally wanted the coconut shrimp platter and I took the braised lamb, both more expensive than any meal I'd ever ordered before. Accidentally in the course of finalizing our order, I tapped one of the tabs at the top of the screen and discovered a series of other menus. The one for sex items was longer than the one for food and included color photos, some of the product in use. I hurriedly tabbed out of that menu and found the one with toothbrushes and deodorant and other more mundane necessities. I added to Chuck's bill a mess of hygiene items that we'd forgotten to pack in our rush to get out of Abram's compound. The price on everything was marked up at least 200% beyond reasonable, and I hoped sincerely that Chuck wasn't going to surprise us by demanding we split this bill at the end of our stay. If it came to that, I wasn't going to do it, I vowed. After all, I hadn't chosen to come to this extremely expensive place.
Fifteen minutes later there was no sign of Chuck, but going on half an hour after he'd left, phones all over the apartment rang. The two of us hesitated a second but then I picked the nearest handset up. It had to be Chuck, there was no way anyone else could have tracked us here, and if they had, they sure as hell wouldn't be tipping us off with a phone call.
It was Chuck. "I'm going to need to take a bit longer than I expected, other business has come up. Did you order your food?"
"Yes," I said. "It's expensive," I felt obligated to warn him.
"Oh, I know. Don't worry about it. Feel free to buy what you need - just maybe not that thousand dollar PVC gimp suit. I don't think I have room in my trunk for that."
"Okay," I agreed. Chuck, I decided, was just a bit weird.
"Stay in the room. I'll be back in … oh an hour or so. Oh and George? Next time don't answer the phone. Let it ring." I beat the handset against my forehead, then hung up.
"Wanna watch a movie?" Wally asked. So that's what we did, pausing it mid way through some unmemorable action flick when our food finally arrived. The personal items were in a plain brown bag which Wally took to the bathroom. I pulled my wallet out to tip the bellboy, but he waved it off. "My tip was already added to your tab." He then left.
Two hours later the movie was over, food eaten, and Wally and I had jacuzzied ourselves sick in the enormous tub, and Chuck still hadn't returned yet. Wally made overtures to having sex, but between the cameras and the uncertainty of when our absent Resistance guide would finally pop through the doors, I just didn't feel comfortable. I was starting to worry that something might have happened to Chuck. What if a vampire had gotten to him? If that happened, how were we going to get out of this place?
Wally dismissed my concerns. He seemed much more at ease than any time since this whole journey started. "I'm just going with the flow," he said when I asked. "I'm not in control." Then he tried to distract me with wii bowling, but the worry kept growing. I was starting to get tired. Did I dare sleep? Or should I already be running? I couldn't even call down to management in hopes of paging him. I had no idea what Chuck's last name was or even if Chuck was the name he'd put the room under.
Finally at half past midnight, more than four hours after he'd left, Chuck returned carrying a briefcase. "Good, you are still up." He said with no trace of apology for worrying us. "I'd have hated to have to wake you."
"What the hell happened to you?" I called up from the sunken couch.
"See," said Chuck, grinning, "The downside of getting the big cheese as your own personal chaperone is that sometimes other people demand his attention. Okay, let's get this party started."
"Is there some hurry," Wally asked. "Geo's getting sleepy."
"Just a lot for you to decide," said Chuck. He laid his case on the coffee table and opened it up. Inside was a laptop computer. "I've got something a thousand times better than my old bible: full bios on every vampire living in the United States, age, genders, habits, you name it. Because of George's status, we actually have a lot more flexibility than we usually do on placement. We won't have to worry about any of the usual political alliances, and pretty much any reasonably social vampire will be glad to take you."
I felt absolutely sick. "Wait a minute," I gasped. "Any vampire will what? You aren't planning on giving me over to the vampires, are you?" From the surprised expression I could see that was exactly what Chuck was planning. Oh, hell! "No!" I protested. "No way. I didn't go all this way just to get put back into exactly the same position I left!"
"Well, George, what were you expecting me to do with you?" Chuck asked. I could tell by the slightly patronizing tone that he didn't expect me to have an answer to that.
But I did. "Let me join you."
"Join me?" He didn't sputter, I'll give that, but clearly I'd rocked him with the suggestion. His eyes seemed to sharpen and he sat up straighter. "In what capacity?"
"In any capacity. I'll drive. Hell, I love travel, I'm good driver. I know the ins and outs of being on the road like the back of my hand." I thought of Mindy and her adventures. Damn that was a sweet gig.
"No," said Chuck with absolute finality.
I was taken aback by his firmness. "What do you mean, no. Why not?"
"No, the Resistance can't use you," said Chuck patiently. "You can't ferry packages - you are the package. You are worth upwards of a million dollars on the open market. Having you transport contraband would be like hiding a twenty dollar bill in a sack of diamonds."
"Well then something else. Surely you do things other than move people from one place to another."
"You are right, I do a lot more than that. But I'm not a charity. I pay my drivers generously because they need to be on call 24/7/365 -- but all the rest of my people have outside jobs, George. The resistance is a calling, not a career." Chuck shook his head sadly. "And all of my people, even my drivers, have a home protectorate and patron, just like what I'm trying to set up for you here. The difference is, their patrons don't give a shit about them. They aren't harem material."
"Well, what about those fake blood trust cards, like the ones you used to get me and Wally into this place. Give me a fake card - a new identity. I can hide in plain sight, the way I've done before. Trust me, I will pay you back."
"Ah, God." Chuck put his hand to his forehead as if he had a headache. "George, Vampires aren't stupid. They already know you exist. They aren't going to forget about you simply because you go into hiding."
"I'll be clever," I insisted. "I'll be low profile. And if I get caught - it's not like I'll be any worse off than if you hand me over to some random vampire right now."
"You aren't getting it," said Chuck, earnestly. "You've got your head ducked down so low, you have no concept of how big the hunt for you is. George, an unattached white is an unheard of opportunity. There are vampires in New York who are patrolling their borders and hotels on the off chance that you might turn up there. Vampires from as far away as Sri Lanka are randomly traveling around the U.S. in hopes of encountering you. Vampire forums are discussing the idea of breaking protocol and putting out wanted posters for you - I think the hang up on that one is that no one has an up-to-date photo of you - but the point is, every day this continues, it just gets more ridiculous. It's become a game for them. The vampires haven't been this energized since the war."
"Good for them?" I countered.
Chuck rocked back on the sofa with obvious frustration. "Oy. Now I can see why you were an only child."
"Hey!"
"Wally," Chuck sighed. "You asked what the hurry was. This is the hurry: six hours ago, one of my runners was caught in the net meant to catch George here. He didn't have the two of you, of course, but he did have contraband, and now he's in jail. It won't be a simple matter of smuggling him out of the protectorate - this is human law he's afoul of, it'll take months to grind through the system. His life is ruined and the only thing I can do is provide him a lawyer. I spent the last few hours sending messages out to suspend operations until this insanity dies down. But, George, people are still in dire need. I'm just helpless to help them until the vampires go back to their normal routines."
I swallowed.
"I didn't want to lay this guilt trip on you," said Chuck. "And god knows I'm sympathetic. I certainly wouldn't want to be in your position. But I got to weigh your needs against all these other people's."
"I get it. I'm dragging your Resistance down. You are only helping me to get rid of a problem case."
"I have to be pragmatic," said Chuck, apologetically. "Trust me, I wish I could figure a way that I didn't have to let you down, but even I don't have the kind of power you'd need to get what you want. It sucks. I've been at this Resistance gig for more years than I ever thought I would, and I'm plenty tired of it. Situations like this just make me even more fed up. I keep it up because there's a need. Sometimes I have the truly lousy task of being the bad guy - of failing my clients. I'm sorry. I really am. But I can't change the entire system just for you."
"Whatever happened to the 'we are legion, we need no heroes, no one can stop us' uprising?"
"Seriously? You are going to hold that against me?" Chuck looked pained. "I wrote that fifteen years ago. I had no clue what I was doing back then. You know what happens when you have no leaders? I'll tell you. Nothing. Lots of energy all frittered away stupidly. The anarchy model might work if I'm trying to make a riot and get a ton of people pointlessly killed, but to actually get things done, I needed realistic goals followed through by dependable people." He sighed. "It's not romantic, but my resistance organization the only thing standing between the worst of the vampires and humanity."
"So I'm screwed. You aren't going to help."
"Absolutely, I'm going to help. You have to have a Patron, but they aren't all equal. You have an unprecedented opportunity here to pick one out who you can tolerate. One you don't feel you have to run away from." Chuck swiveled the laptop in my direction. "Here. Look it over. I suggest you pick a place you like then search through the vampires who live in that protectorate. There are over sixty thousand vampires in the US alone. That can be overwhelming."
Angrily, I took the computer and began figuring out how to navigate Chuck's system, more to satisfy Chuck than because I really thought any vampire would be tolerable. I wasn't choosing a patron after all, I was choosing a fucking pimp.
Wally spoke up, somewhat reluctantly. "Uh. I hate to seem egotistical and I know Geo is the important one here, but what about me?"
"I never meant to give you that impression, Wally," said Chuck. "You are very important. So, about your situation… technically you belong to Abram, I could take you back to him."
"No," said Wally, flatly. "Never."
Chuck nodded. "Not a problem. Abram has few political alliances and his resources are overstretched from what I hear." I snorted loudly at that. "In any case, I can put you wherever you like. Same deal as George. You can go with him or you can go separately, your choice."
"With Geo," said Wally.
"So tell me about Abram," said Chuck. "What is the old goat up to these days. Anything interesting?"
"Scamming people," I said. "Right Wally?"
Chuck looked interested, so Wally discussed the gate scam, which lead into a complete narrative of the events that took place at Abram's compound. Wally was a more methodical storyteller than I was, so I just let him do it without my input. I was looking through all the Portland Protectorate vampires when the coffee table jostled. I looked down and noticed that Chuck had his foot resting against the table leg.
"So she's dead - you saw the body." Chuck's voice sounded calm enough, but he looked intensely thoughtful.
Wally nodded.
Chuck was grim. "This changes things. You don't need to worry at all about Abram. Come the end of the week, there will be no Abram."
I felt a flare of anger. "What? Nadette sits easy after what she did to me, but you are going to take Abram down because he killed Darlene?"
"Of course not," said Chuck. "Darlene's a vampire. Out of my jurisdiction. But Abram is waylaying innocent travelers and using his powers to make them stay for his own selfish ends. He's a menace to every human who passes through his territory."
"And how is that different from what Jeffrey did to me?" I asked. "I was innocently wandering through Chicago and bang, I find out he's changed my bloodtrust file and won't let me go home."
"George," said Chuck, then stopped himself. "I'm tired of arguing. Just pick who you want as your patron."
I shut the lid of the laptop. "Chauncey Towers," I said firmly.
Chuck jerked with surprise. "Who?"
"He was my patron before this all started. I've always lived in his protectorate. I'll simply go back to him."
Chuck gaped for the longest time. "You have no idea what you are asking."
"What the hell is wrong with the guy?" I asked. "He's not in your database. I checked."
"Of course, he's not in my database - because I've got nothing on him. I don't have any reason to. His footprint is miniscule. He's not involved in vampire politics. He doesn't mess with his charges. He doesn't even have a harem, he just hunts when he gets hungry, and apparently he's discrete enough about that he's not generating any complaints." Chuck reached over and lifted the lid of the laptop again. "I said any halfway sociable vampire will be happy to take you, Chauncey is a hermit. If I let you go to him, he'd simply turn around and sell you to someone else, and that won't do you or Wally any good."
I sighed with disappointment.
"Was Jeffrey really that bad?" Chuck asked.
"Yes" I said petulantly, remembering the agony on his couch and the callous way he'd tossed me off to Marc and his harem. But the anger really wasn't there anymore. I was getting far too used to this sort of treatment.
Chuck looked thoughtfully at me for a long moment, then stood up. "I have to go. I'll be back in a few hours. Why don't you sleep on this? You can tell me your decision in the morning."
Once he was gone, Wally and I retired to bed. I tossed my clothes off into a callous heap and crawled between the crisp, cold sheets. Wally rolled over the expanse of the huge bed until he was next to me, taking a moment to kiss my cheek and make a move towards groping me, but I was too damn tired and pissed off to be in the mood. After a moment Wally got the hint and rolled back to his own side of the bed, and in minutes we were both asleep.
We were probably the only couple in the goddamn club who didn't have sex that night.
Back to chapter 23
On to chapter 25
RATING: NC-17 (This chapter R)
SUMMARY: The surprising things the Resistance has to offer George and Wally.
Word Count: 6987 -- creeping up again.
Chapter 24
My mind was so blown away by the fact that I was meeting Vestalar -- the Vestalar - that it took an embarrassingly long time to realize where the hell he'd brought us. After taking the garage elevator to its top floor, which happened to be ground floor lobby of the building above, we then joined a rather long line. Most of the people were young, dressed hipply, if not downright scantily. I stared for the better part of five minutes, almost entirely unseeingly, at a rather chunky woman's bare back. Though it did occur to me that her outfit wasn't particularly flattering to her figure, it didn't even come close to registering that a leather mini skirt and bra weren't appropriate attire for a normal restaurant. Mostly, I was caught up with the fact that the guy I once would have paid serious money to sit next to on a plane was standing less than a foot away, talking to Wally. Now was the time to ask all those questions I thought up through the years, but my mouth had gone dry and I couldn't think of a single thing to say that wasn't completely retarded.
It wasn't until we'd almost reached the head of the line and my eyes fell across a broadsheet sized list of rules tacked to the wall that it struck me where we were: We were at a club.
A sex club.
My entire body shook with sudden panic. No. No way. No way, no way, no way. This wasn't right. I was surrounded by people looking at me in a sexual way, and I'd had more than my share of that with vampires. I couldn't take that meat-market feel from humans as well. I looked with betrayal over at Chuck and attempted to get myself out of the line. I'm not quite sure what happened but I seemed to come to myself in a corner with Chuck's hand on my shoulder and his patient voice in my ear, overpowering the ambient noise.
"Calm down, calm down," he was saying. "You're having a panic attack."
"Not here," I found myself saying. "Not a club."
Chuck spoke soothingly, like a psychologist talking down a madman. "You're safe. I'm not sure what you think will happen here, but no one is going to touch you against your will."
"This is a fucking sex club," I snarled.
"Yes," said Chuck. "A sex club - not a rape club. Look at the rules. Rule 4." He put his finger down on one of the broadsides posted up around the lobby.
It was hard to focus my eyes on the rules, but I blinked and they started to sort themselves out:
1) No Minors Permitted on Premises.
2) No Alcohol, Drugs, Cigarettes Permitted on Premises. No one who shows signs of being intoxicated will be allowed in.
3) No Weapons of Any Kind Permitted. Whips and Paddles and Electrical Stimulators May be Rented or Purchased Inside.
4) No Badgering, Stalking, Unwanted Touching or any other form of Harassment. Please see staff if you feel bothered or unsafe. BDSM aficionados: Safewords may be used in rooms but in all halls and common areas "No" always means No, no exceptions ever. Violators will be immediately expelled.
The rules went on and on after that, all 58 of them spelling out in meticulous detail everything from the allowable levels of consensual violence to embarrassingly frank matters of hygiene. I'd never seen anything like it, and I felt as self-conscious as a twelve year old presented with a nudie magazine. Many of the rules concerned acts so bizarre that it boggled my mind that it would be an issue worthy of a rule. I didn't know whether to laugh or to flee.
"Christ, Chuck," I said. "Can't we just go to a Denny's?"
"No," said Chuck apologetically, "We can't. I've got other projects I need to work on besides you. The people I need to see and the things I need to do are all here. That's why I had you brought to me rather than coming out to you myself. I know you are worried, but you really have no need to be. Have you ever been in a club before?"
I shook my head.
"All Clubs rely on discretion to keep their clients. They have rooms where you two can sleep, a restaurant where you can eat, and a shop where you can get any necessities you may have left behind. And unlike a Denny's, or a 7-11, or a Shilo Inn, they aren't going to spill the beans about you the moment some random vampire from Cleveland calls up to ask. It's all sanitary and safe. I've found them very useful in moving clients in the past."
I couldn't argue with Chuck's reasoning, but my guts still rebelled. Years worth of carefully honed prejudice wasn't that easily left behind.
Wally's eyes entreated mine. "I go to a club almost once a week. They really aren't as sleazy and dirty as you think they are."
"Would you like to take a walk around the block before we go in?" Chuck offered.
My panic collapsed under the weight all the reasoning and expectation, and then I was just embarrassed for my conduct. "No, I'm cool," I said. "If we are going to do this, lets just go and do it. I've been in worse places." Wally seemed unconvinced, but Chuck took me at my word and we got back at the end of the line.
The crush had passed, and we only had a minute or so of wait this time before we reached the bouncer. At that point, I nearly had a second panic attack when I realized he would be expecting my bloodtrust ID - which I simply didn't have. To my surprise Chuck pulled three cards out of his wallet. One had a prominent green stripe, which indicated that someone was over 40. The other two had red stripes. Chuck pointed to Wally and myself as he offered up those cards. After the bouncer had swiped them, Chuck tucked them back in his wallet. I wondered what my supposed name was for this evening.
I didn't have a chance to ask before Chuck took a firm hand to my upper arm and lead me around the privacy partition into the club, making sure, I imagine that I wasn't going to cop out at the last minute. To my surprise, Wally was completely right about the club. I was noting like the sleazy strip club I'd imagined. It was actually, astoundingly enough, classy. The inner lobby was large and brightly lit and airy, with a two story ceiling lit up with chandeliers. There were a number of small groupings of tasteful couches and chairs around mirror polished coffee tables. Everything was spotlessly clean. It looked like it belonged to a rather expensive hotel. It was, however, loud. Under the constant thunder of conversation was a muffled musical wumping, more felt than heard, that seemed to be coming from somewhere through a wall. There were a number of large corridors branching off the inner lobby, leading to other parts of the club, and along the back wall was a large check-in area where people had lined up.
Chuck lead me to one of the comfortable low oversized chairs and told me to sit. He sat down on the coffee table, so that we were knee to knee. Wally took the adjoining couch looking concerned, but open to whatever Chuck had in mind. Chuck's attention was purely on me.
"Are you bothered by flashbacks? That tasting sounded pretty traumatic to me."
As if in answer, I got a strong memory of lying tied to the bed with Sydney standing over me, his long black cock hanging like a thick sea slug by my mouth. I pulled back away from both the image and Chuck.
"Easy, easy," said Chuck, calmly. "I encounter this a lot. The people I tend to work with have gotten the bad end of things with vampires. It looks like Nadette messed you up good."
"You going to take her out for that?" I asked, somewhat hopefully.
But Chuck shook his head. "She had the arrogance to poach you, and suffered an extremely public humiliation when she lost you again. It's going to take a long time for her social standing to recover from that party. As natural consequences go, it's a pretty fitting end for her overreaching. Don't you think?"
I didn't. I wanted her dead or at least maimed the way she'd maimed Darlene. But it was clear that Chuck didn't feel she was worth the risk.
"What I can do," Chuck went on, "Is, with your permission, I can try to hypnotize you to help alleviate some of that stress. You won't have any more flashbacks. It may make it easier to be in a place like this. Are you willing to let me do that?"
I hesitated. I didn't think I was that traumatized by the tasting, but on the other hand, any stress relief would be welcome. Besides good old-fashioned hypnosis wasn't anything like Vampire mind powers. Hypnosis is just a spooky word for a relaxation exercise with a bit of verbal suggestion and maybe some acupressure tossed in for fun. Hell, my dentist uses it. It probably wouldn't work because I wasn't in the mood, but then, if it made Chuck happy.… "Okay, why not."
Chuck looked relieved. To my embarrassment, he slid off the coffee table and knelt on the ground next to me. I looked around self-consciously to see if anyone else in the club was watching, but they seemed to be involved with their own groups and no one was paying more than the most casual attention. Chuck grasped both my hands in his and put his thumbs squarely down in the center of my palms and pressed. "Close your eyes," he said to me. "Try to imagine you are in a theatre."
I pressed my lids closed and tried to I imagine myself seated in a darkened movie theatre. It seemed a bit silly, but with some effort I was able to do it.
"Okay, now up on the screen I want you to see the tasting. Watch it unfold."
I did so, stiffening as I accidentally triggered one hell of a post traumatic flashback. The horror and fear and helplessness were a whole lot realer than I was prepared to deal with. For that moment, hypnosis seemed like a really bad idea and I wanted to claw my way out of it. But then Chuck, sensing my distress, pressed the palms of my hands to the point of pain, and I seemed to come back to present.
"It's just a movie," Chuck repeated, over and over. "Not to you. You are just watching them." His thumbs moved in tight circles, distracting me from the memory, helping me put it outside of myself. To my enormous relief, the feelings became more distant, muffled, unreal. Sure enough, when Chuck eased up the pressure on my hands, the whole miserable experience felt like some second hand memory after all. A movie I once watched and got a little too into. I latched onto that eagerly.
"The movie is speeding past. It's almost over. And now it's the end." Bizarrely, my mind invented end credits and I let out a chuckle of relief. How to give a man a complex, starring George Handle as Poor Schmuck Tied to the Bed. "There," said Chuck. "All done. Now I want you to get up and walk to the back of the theatre and climb up a little stairway there to the projection booth. Can you do that?"
I did. It was easy. Damn, I was getting good at this hypnosis thing.
"See the film that you just saw? You are going to pull it off the projector and put it into a canister. It can't come out of that canister unless you want it to. The only time you will remember it is when you want to remember it, and decide to play it back. Otherwise it's just going to sit there. It's just a movie."
I put the reel of film into a canister and felt intense, near giddy relief.
"Go ahead and open your eyes when you are done." I did. Chuck let go of my hands and sat back down on the table looking satisfied. "Do you think that worked?"
"I feel great," I said, rubbing my sore palms together. And I did. It was like a huge weight I hadn't even been aware of had lifted off of me. Being in a sex club no longer had the overtones of threat to it. It just seemed like any other nice hotel. No one was staring at me. No one was even being overtly sexual with each other around me. My earlier worries evaporated and I had to shake my head with surprise at how effective that little mind exercise had been. "Damn, Chuck, is there anything you can't do?"
"I'm a horrible singer," Chuck deadpanned. "Totally tone deaf. But seriously, this is what I do, George. I rescue people. And a lot of them have been in much worse situations than you were in. I'm also a certified paramedic, if that should ever come up." He stood up and clapped my shoulder. "Try to trust me."
I nodded and got up as well. Wally staggered up with us, looking rather concerned, looking like he wanted to touch me but didn't quite dare.
Chuck on the other hand seemed as relaxed and confident as ever. "Since George here's done freaking out, let's go get a room where we can continue our conversation in private. Not that I expect anyone is listening in on us, but it always pays to be discrete."
Our seats were taken by a group of eight giggling women the instant we moved away. Vaguely, I noticed the multicolored bracelets around their all of their wrists. Each wore blue and some of them wore a second bracelet in pink, orange or black as well. As Chuck lead us through the increasingly crowded, noisy lobby, I noticed those same rubber wrist bands on everyone else. I wondered if maybe we should be wearing one.
While Chuck stood in line at the check-in desk, I tapped Wally's arm. "Um did we forget to get something?" I pointed to some dude with pink and black wristbands and then pointed to my bare wrist.
Wally took a second to figure out what I meant, then he started laughing. "Only if you are looking to sleep with someone other than me tonight." Although he said it lightly, there was something in his voice that suggested he would not be okay if I did. "Look," he pointed to a couple of girls near by, they were taking off their pink bands and dumping them into a wicker basket on a nearby pedestal. "You only wear them until you've made your hook up. You and I have made our hook up." He leaned down and gave me a kiss to drive the point home.
I twiddled my thumbs for a minute or two while Chuck inched up in the line, then curiosity won out. I wandered over to the basket and picked up one of the bands at random. It was the same sort of cheap rubber bracelet that people wear for various awareness causes. I read the color guide framed on the wall above the basket. Apparently, pink meant one was looking for a woman, and blue a man, and purple transgender. The popularity of girlish pink among the guys now made sense. The rest had to do with the type of sex one was up for. Apparently yellow was for … oh gross!
"Is there something about you I should know?" asked Wally. I looked down and realized the band I was unconsciously feeling up meant I was looking for someone to dominate me in a BDSM tryst. I hastily dropped it back in the basket.
Chuck joined back up with us and handed Wally and me a key card wrapped in a little paper sheath with a room number scrawled on it in pen. "I figured you two might not feel like sharing a bed with me, so I got us a party suite." He grinned, then glanced at the basket. "Unless, of course, you do." He was obviously joking but I backed hastily away from the basket anyway.
We took the elevator next to the front desk up to our room, having to stop at nearly every floor to let a group on or off. The club was bustling and the pheromones were thick in the air. I found myself having to work not to stare. People had mostly been wearing scanty but street legal clothes in the lobby, but every floor, people seemed to wear a whole lot more vinyl and lace and lot less of everything else. The public displays were getting bolder and bolder, sex toys were being jokingly waved around like weapons. I looked to Wally and Chuck for guidance, but the two seemed to think nothing of it, so I tried to pretend that I didn't notice that a chick hanging out in the 4th floor hallway was naked but for boots and carrying a scary looking whip.
We stepped out onto the fifth floor - the top story for the building. The carpeting seemed a richer, more garish red than on the lower floors and we passed a number of large gilded framed mirrors. I glanced in one and saw the bags under my eyes and my sallow cheeks dotted with mangy roughness. My hair tufted up in a desperate cry for a comb - or in other words, just the way it had looked when the stylist finished with me last week. The corridors were more or less empty up here, and though I could hear the rhythmic pounding of music coming through the walls of several of the closed rooms, most were eerily silent. Up ahead I heard a door cracking open and the sudden roar of laughter and chatter following in its wake.
We turned the corner and saw a woman lounging in the doorway of one of the rooms, wearing a leather teddy that showed off the entirety of her humongous breasts. I'd never seen tits that size before, they were like small cantaloupes and her silver dollar sized nipples appeared to be pierced with brass door knockers. I couldn't help but stare at them. They were obviously meant to be stared at.
"Hey boys," she cooed. "Wanna join our party?" The booze on her breath rolled out like a rancid wave. She reached out a playful arm to try and snag me, but I stepped sideways out of her reach. Pouting, she heaved up a massive tit in one hand and flicked the door knocker with her thumb. "Oh, come on. We're having all kinds of fun in here!"
Next to me Wally stiffened in cartoonish horror the way only a truly gay man would have. I laughed at his reaction and looked over at Chuck. To my surprised, he looked thoroughly disapproving. Then both looked at me as if they were afraid I might freak out again.
"I'm cool," I reassured them, vaguely embarrassed for their concern. And I was cool. I hadn't been triggered at all. She just was silly and drunk and I couldn't feel anything other than amused at her behavior. Compared to that chick with the whip, she was positively tame.
We walked up to the next door and stopped. Chuck silently ran his key through the lock and opened up our room. With a flick of his hand the lights came on, one after another in a slightly staggered fashion. I looked inside and gasped. Holy, fuck. Chuck had really set us up in style. This wasn't a room - it was a palace. It looked to be twice as big as my Beaverton apartment, made even larger by the fact that two of the walls were covered in mirrored tile. Beyond the enormous living room there was an open kitchen and three further doors branching off of that. The only thing missing was windows. There were none at all - making the place seem rather like a luxurious bunker.
I'd barely looked around when Chuck tapped my shoulder. "Hang out here for a few minutes. I have to go and report that party to the management. The woman who accosted you is going to get her ass perma-banned and the rest of them thrown out."
I was surprised and a bit insulted by his protective vehemence. "Oh, come now. I wasn't bothered. It was just a little lewdness and for god's sake this is a sex club. Isn't that what this place is about?"
"She shouldn't have come on to us," said Wally, barely containing his shock, as if being catcalled in the hall of a sex club was unheard of. "We aren't wearing bracelets."
"She was totally hammered," I protested. "She made a mistake."
"Alcohol isn't allowed in a sex club," said Chuck, utterly unamused.
"See I don't get that," I said, crossing my arms in front of my chest. "It seems to me a little booze would make it easier to have sex with total strangers."
"Well, that's exactly the thing," said Wally. "If you need booze to want to have sex with someone, you shouldn't be having sex with them."
"Inebriated people can't consent to having sex," Chuck agreed, flatly. "That party is a lawsuit waiting to happen, and I rather like this place. Why don't the two of you go ahead and order some room service, while I show our neighbors how much of a party pooper I am. I'll be back in fifteen or so." He then headed out the door.
Wally and I set off to explore this grand suite Chuck had put us in. Frankly, I would have been more than happy to just have a clean bed to sleep in. But this… there wasn't any need to leave this room - ever. It had everything. The main room had a sunken pit area lined with couches and enough throw pillows for a good sized fight. There was an enormous flat screen TV taking most of the space above the gas fireplace. To one side was an entertainment center with all the different platforms of gaming consoles and an entire shelf full of popular games. Sitting on a glass shelf was a booklet containing the movie selection, most of them pornographic, which could be downloaded to the TV from their in-house system. The stereo had a karaoke option with a list of songs ten miles long. When we were finished with the living room we discovered that the other doors lead to a humongous bathroom with a tub big enough to seat six, and two rather disappointingly small bedrooms, each almost entirely taken up by a luxurious king sized bed.
"What no dungeon?" I joked.
"You have to pay extra for those," said Wally, perfectly straight. "Though this place isn't cheap. What the fuck, Chuck is going all out for us, isn't he? This place has to cost at least a grand a night. The Resistance must have a ton of money at its disposal."
"You mean, you don't get a room like this when you go to the… what did you call that club you go to in Oregon City?"
"The Cliffside, and hell no," said Wally with awe. "I get the super-cheap hotel style room. Three hours for thirty bucks. It doesn't even come with a TV." Wally wandered back to the kitchen and pressed the screen of a monitor bolted to the counter. "Here's where we order room service."
As I left the bedroom to see what he was talking about, by chance I happened to look up notice a small but very obvious camera mounted in a corner. Looking around in sudden panic, I noticed others placed at strategic spots around the rest of the suite.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" I grabbed Wally's shoulder and pointed. "I thought you said this place was private."
Wally looked up, unfazed. "Oh those. Liability. If something goes wrong, the police can access the tapes of the room for their investigation." Noticing that I wasn't at all reassured, Wally went on. "Look, over here." He pointed to a panel papered to blend in with the wall. "The feed doesn't even leave the room, it just goes into a hard drive, which isn't connected to anything. It takes a court order to copy over information. And in three days it's overwritten. Even the club employees don't ever get to see it."
I was dubious. It seemed very creepy - but maybe it was just par for the course at a sex club. I didn't know. And anyway there was nothing I could do about it. If Wally thought it was no big deal, I just had to trust him.
Grumpily, I went to the screen bolted to the kitchen counter and ordered our dinners. The menu included everything from the downstairs restaurant, plus a slew of raw ingredients, I supposed to indulge those guests whose fetish involved cooking. Wally wanted the coconut shrimp platter and I took the braised lamb, both more expensive than any meal I'd ever ordered before. Accidentally in the course of finalizing our order, I tapped one of the tabs at the top of the screen and discovered a series of other menus. The one for sex items was longer than the one for food and included color photos, some of the product in use. I hurriedly tabbed out of that menu and found the one with toothbrushes and deodorant and other more mundane necessities. I added to Chuck's bill a mess of hygiene items that we'd forgotten to pack in our rush to get out of Abram's compound. The price on everything was marked up at least 200% beyond reasonable, and I hoped sincerely that Chuck wasn't going to surprise us by demanding we split this bill at the end of our stay. If it came to that, I wasn't going to do it, I vowed. After all, I hadn't chosen to come to this extremely expensive place.
Fifteen minutes later there was no sign of Chuck, but going on half an hour after he'd left, phones all over the apartment rang. The two of us hesitated a second but then I picked the nearest handset up. It had to be Chuck, there was no way anyone else could have tracked us here, and if they had, they sure as hell wouldn't be tipping us off with a phone call.
It was Chuck. "I'm going to need to take a bit longer than I expected, other business has come up. Did you order your food?"
"Yes," I said. "It's expensive," I felt obligated to warn him.
"Oh, I know. Don't worry about it. Feel free to buy what you need - just maybe not that thousand dollar PVC gimp suit. I don't think I have room in my trunk for that."
"Okay," I agreed. Chuck, I decided, was just a bit weird.
"Stay in the room. I'll be back in … oh an hour or so. Oh and George? Next time don't answer the phone. Let it ring." I beat the handset against my forehead, then hung up.
"Wanna watch a movie?" Wally asked. So that's what we did, pausing it mid way through some unmemorable action flick when our food finally arrived. The personal items were in a plain brown bag which Wally took to the bathroom. I pulled my wallet out to tip the bellboy, but he waved it off. "My tip was already added to your tab." He then left.
Two hours later the movie was over, food eaten, and Wally and I had jacuzzied ourselves sick in the enormous tub, and Chuck still hadn't returned yet. Wally made overtures to having sex, but between the cameras and the uncertainty of when our absent Resistance guide would finally pop through the doors, I just didn't feel comfortable. I was starting to worry that something might have happened to Chuck. What if a vampire had gotten to him? If that happened, how were we going to get out of this place?
Wally dismissed my concerns. He seemed much more at ease than any time since this whole journey started. "I'm just going with the flow," he said when I asked. "I'm not in control." Then he tried to distract me with wii bowling, but the worry kept growing. I was starting to get tired. Did I dare sleep? Or should I already be running? I couldn't even call down to management in hopes of paging him. I had no idea what Chuck's last name was or even if Chuck was the name he'd put the room under.
Finally at half past midnight, more than four hours after he'd left, Chuck returned carrying a briefcase. "Good, you are still up." He said with no trace of apology for worrying us. "I'd have hated to have to wake you."
"What the hell happened to you?" I called up from the sunken couch.
"See," said Chuck, grinning, "The downside of getting the big cheese as your own personal chaperone is that sometimes other people demand his attention. Okay, let's get this party started."
"Is there some hurry," Wally asked. "Geo's getting sleepy."
"Just a lot for you to decide," said Chuck. He laid his case on the coffee table and opened it up. Inside was a laptop computer. "I've got something a thousand times better than my old bible: full bios on every vampire living in the United States, age, genders, habits, you name it. Because of George's status, we actually have a lot more flexibility than we usually do on placement. We won't have to worry about any of the usual political alliances, and pretty much any reasonably social vampire will be glad to take you."
I felt absolutely sick. "Wait a minute," I gasped. "Any vampire will what? You aren't planning on giving me over to the vampires, are you?" From the surprised expression I could see that was exactly what Chuck was planning. Oh, hell! "No!" I protested. "No way. I didn't go all this way just to get put back into exactly the same position I left!"
"Well, George, what were you expecting me to do with you?" Chuck asked. I could tell by the slightly patronizing tone that he didn't expect me to have an answer to that.
But I did. "Let me join you."
"Join me?" He didn't sputter, I'll give that, but clearly I'd rocked him with the suggestion. His eyes seemed to sharpen and he sat up straighter. "In what capacity?"
"In any capacity. I'll drive. Hell, I love travel, I'm good driver. I know the ins and outs of being on the road like the back of my hand." I thought of Mindy and her adventures. Damn that was a sweet gig.
"No," said Chuck with absolute finality.
I was taken aback by his firmness. "What do you mean, no. Why not?"
"No, the Resistance can't use you," said Chuck patiently. "You can't ferry packages - you are the package. You are worth upwards of a million dollars on the open market. Having you transport contraband would be like hiding a twenty dollar bill in a sack of diamonds."
"Well then something else. Surely you do things other than move people from one place to another."
"You are right, I do a lot more than that. But I'm not a charity. I pay my drivers generously because they need to be on call 24/7/365 -- but all the rest of my people have outside jobs, George. The resistance is a calling, not a career." Chuck shook his head sadly. "And all of my people, even my drivers, have a home protectorate and patron, just like what I'm trying to set up for you here. The difference is, their patrons don't give a shit about them. They aren't harem material."
"Well, what about those fake blood trust cards, like the ones you used to get me and Wally into this place. Give me a fake card - a new identity. I can hide in plain sight, the way I've done before. Trust me, I will pay you back."
"Ah, God." Chuck put his hand to his forehead as if he had a headache. "George, Vampires aren't stupid. They already know you exist. They aren't going to forget about you simply because you go into hiding."
"I'll be clever," I insisted. "I'll be low profile. And if I get caught - it's not like I'll be any worse off than if you hand me over to some random vampire right now."
"You aren't getting it," said Chuck, earnestly. "You've got your head ducked down so low, you have no concept of how big the hunt for you is. George, an unattached white is an unheard of opportunity. There are vampires in New York who are patrolling their borders and hotels on the off chance that you might turn up there. Vampires from as far away as Sri Lanka are randomly traveling around the U.S. in hopes of encountering you. Vampire forums are discussing the idea of breaking protocol and putting out wanted posters for you - I think the hang up on that one is that no one has an up-to-date photo of you - but the point is, every day this continues, it just gets more ridiculous. It's become a game for them. The vampires haven't been this energized since the war."
"Good for them?" I countered.
Chuck rocked back on the sofa with obvious frustration. "Oy. Now I can see why you were an only child."
"Hey!"
"Wally," Chuck sighed. "You asked what the hurry was. This is the hurry: six hours ago, one of my runners was caught in the net meant to catch George here. He didn't have the two of you, of course, but he did have contraband, and now he's in jail. It won't be a simple matter of smuggling him out of the protectorate - this is human law he's afoul of, it'll take months to grind through the system. His life is ruined and the only thing I can do is provide him a lawyer. I spent the last few hours sending messages out to suspend operations until this insanity dies down. But, George, people are still in dire need. I'm just helpless to help them until the vampires go back to their normal routines."
I swallowed.
"I didn't want to lay this guilt trip on you," said Chuck. "And god knows I'm sympathetic. I certainly wouldn't want to be in your position. But I got to weigh your needs against all these other people's."
"I get it. I'm dragging your Resistance down. You are only helping me to get rid of a problem case."
"I have to be pragmatic," said Chuck, apologetically. "Trust me, I wish I could figure a way that I didn't have to let you down, but even I don't have the kind of power you'd need to get what you want. It sucks. I've been at this Resistance gig for more years than I ever thought I would, and I'm plenty tired of it. Situations like this just make me even more fed up. I keep it up because there's a need. Sometimes I have the truly lousy task of being the bad guy - of failing my clients. I'm sorry. I really am. But I can't change the entire system just for you."
"Whatever happened to the 'we are legion, we need no heroes, no one can stop us' uprising?"
"Seriously? You are going to hold that against me?" Chuck looked pained. "I wrote that fifteen years ago. I had no clue what I was doing back then. You know what happens when you have no leaders? I'll tell you. Nothing. Lots of energy all frittered away stupidly. The anarchy model might work if I'm trying to make a riot and get a ton of people pointlessly killed, but to actually get things done, I needed realistic goals followed through by dependable people." He sighed. "It's not romantic, but my resistance organization the only thing standing between the worst of the vampires and humanity."
"So I'm screwed. You aren't going to help."
"Absolutely, I'm going to help. You have to have a Patron, but they aren't all equal. You have an unprecedented opportunity here to pick one out who you can tolerate. One you don't feel you have to run away from." Chuck swiveled the laptop in my direction. "Here. Look it over. I suggest you pick a place you like then search through the vampires who live in that protectorate. There are over sixty thousand vampires in the US alone. That can be overwhelming."
Angrily, I took the computer and began figuring out how to navigate Chuck's system, more to satisfy Chuck than because I really thought any vampire would be tolerable. I wasn't choosing a patron after all, I was choosing a fucking pimp.
Wally spoke up, somewhat reluctantly. "Uh. I hate to seem egotistical and I know Geo is the important one here, but what about me?"
"I never meant to give you that impression, Wally," said Chuck. "You are very important. So, about your situation… technically you belong to Abram, I could take you back to him."
"No," said Wally, flatly. "Never."
Chuck nodded. "Not a problem. Abram has few political alliances and his resources are overstretched from what I hear." I snorted loudly at that. "In any case, I can put you wherever you like. Same deal as George. You can go with him or you can go separately, your choice."
"With Geo," said Wally.
"So tell me about Abram," said Chuck. "What is the old goat up to these days. Anything interesting?"
"Scamming people," I said. "Right Wally?"
Chuck looked interested, so Wally discussed the gate scam, which lead into a complete narrative of the events that took place at Abram's compound. Wally was a more methodical storyteller than I was, so I just let him do it without my input. I was looking through all the Portland Protectorate vampires when the coffee table jostled. I looked down and noticed that Chuck had his foot resting against the table leg.
"So she's dead - you saw the body." Chuck's voice sounded calm enough, but he looked intensely thoughtful.
Wally nodded.
Chuck was grim. "This changes things. You don't need to worry at all about Abram. Come the end of the week, there will be no Abram."
I felt a flare of anger. "What? Nadette sits easy after what she did to me, but you are going to take Abram down because he killed Darlene?"
"Of course not," said Chuck. "Darlene's a vampire. Out of my jurisdiction. But Abram is waylaying innocent travelers and using his powers to make them stay for his own selfish ends. He's a menace to every human who passes through his territory."
"And how is that different from what Jeffrey did to me?" I asked. "I was innocently wandering through Chicago and bang, I find out he's changed my bloodtrust file and won't let me go home."
"George," said Chuck, then stopped himself. "I'm tired of arguing. Just pick who you want as your patron."
I shut the lid of the laptop. "Chauncey Towers," I said firmly.
Chuck jerked with surprise. "Who?"
"He was my patron before this all started. I've always lived in his protectorate. I'll simply go back to him."
Chuck gaped for the longest time. "You have no idea what you are asking."
"What the hell is wrong with the guy?" I asked. "He's not in your database. I checked."
"Of course, he's not in my database - because I've got nothing on him. I don't have any reason to. His footprint is miniscule. He's not involved in vampire politics. He doesn't mess with his charges. He doesn't even have a harem, he just hunts when he gets hungry, and apparently he's discrete enough about that he's not generating any complaints." Chuck reached over and lifted the lid of the laptop again. "I said any halfway sociable vampire will be happy to take you, Chauncey is a hermit. If I let you go to him, he'd simply turn around and sell you to someone else, and that won't do you or Wally any good."
I sighed with disappointment.
"Was Jeffrey really that bad?" Chuck asked.
"Yes" I said petulantly, remembering the agony on his couch and the callous way he'd tossed me off to Marc and his harem. But the anger really wasn't there anymore. I was getting far too used to this sort of treatment.
Chuck looked thoughtfully at me for a long moment, then stood up. "I have to go. I'll be back in a few hours. Why don't you sleep on this? You can tell me your decision in the morning."
Once he was gone, Wally and I retired to bed. I tossed my clothes off into a callous heap and crawled between the crisp, cold sheets. Wally rolled over the expanse of the huge bed until he was next to me, taking a moment to kiss my cheek and make a move towards groping me, but I was too damn tired and pissed off to be in the mood. After a moment Wally got the hint and rolled back to his own side of the bed, and in minutes we were both asleep.
We were probably the only couple in the goddamn club who didn't have sex that night.
Back to chapter 23
On to chapter 25