It was only Duke’s firm grip that kept me where I was, my squirm passed off as a bid for attention. I felt it, waves of… It was hard to say what was coming off that stone. It was like being too close to an electrical field or the edge of a cliff. Everything inside me wanted to get the fuck away from it.
“It’s OK, baby,” Duke crooned, smoothing my hair back from my face and touching his thumb to my lips. I tried to play along, even as he parted them, pushing the tip between them. “You my girl for tonight.”
“Some girls need reminding of their place,” Mike said, looming over the two of us. “I got something for that if you need it.”
He pulled the necklace off from around his neck, swinging it back and forth like a hypnotist would a pocket watch. My eyes were dragged after it though, left right, left, right.
“Bitches love this shit. I’ll do you a good price, Mr Rockstar. Pure grade A ruby. It’ll give you everything you need.”
“Need?” Duke spared him a sidelong look full of scorn. “I don’t need shit. Thanks for the beer. I’m gonna go and see how Izaiah’s doing.”
He didn’t wait for Mike to respond, just steering us clear of the bar, beers in hand as he headed to the back.
We stopped just before a set of swinging doors, frosted glass inset into both. I heard a cacophony of sound coming from within—music, shouts, feminine screams and pants, the shapes of the occupants shadows against it.
“You need to go back to Aragide,” Duke said in a low tone.
“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “Something’s going on, and it stinks of the Rutherglen and his shit. What the fuck was up with that stone? I hated it, wanted to get as far away from it as possible, but…”
“It’s a power stone,” Marlow said. “I’ve seen a couple of them, but not many. It’s definitely Rutherglen’s or Sky Daddy’s. The people that came into the torture room wore clear ones,” all the stones I’d provided for Hartley flashed into my mind, “but when they’d finished what they came for, they were dark red like that one.”
“Torture stones?” I said.
“Degradation stones,” Duke corrected, his mouth thinning down. “Keeping other people down was always his stock in trade, but now…”
I thought of Jake and the Hartleys, the ways the Rutherglen had fucked with their lives. “Now he’s found a way to weaponize it.”
“Walk in with your head held high. Don’t react to what you see in here,” Duke had warned as he put his hand on the door. I hadn’t realised how hard that would be. He pushed it open, but stepping inside? It was like entering the first circle of Hell. Bosch-like scenes of carnality and decadence played out in the humble settings. Huge bottles of cut glass filled with alcohol were everywhere. Some poured into shot glasses and downed, others grabbed and swigged from the bottle themselves. A smoky haze hung over the room, fed by the multitude of cigarettes, cigars, and joints. But it was the participants that drew your attention.
There was something terribly familiar about all of this. Sprawled out on battered chairs or in front of scarred tables were a bunch of young men, somewhere between twenty and thirty, talking just loud enough to be heard over the blaring music. Joints were passed around, drinks poured, beautiful women wearing just lingerie danced, either on the small podium set up at the back of the room or on the laps of the men. Except for one.
“You best last, boy,” another man said, his eyes crimson red as he watched the girl’s head bob over the dick of the guy next to him. “You paying, all this, for sure you can’t last.”
“Izaiah.”
Duke’s voice wasn’t especially loud, but it cut through the noise. I almost took a step backwards when I saw a sea of red eyes staring at us.
“That’s thirty. Get up off me, bitch.”
Izaiah pushed the women off his glistening dick, leaning back in his chair, panting as he fought to collect himself. That was OK, we had other problems. The men stared like a pack of wolves, deciding whether to eat us now or later.
“Well, what do we have here?” the leader said. Or I assumed he was, as his stone was the largest, glowing now with a sickly red light.
“D, man,” Izaiah said, finally tucking his dick back into his pants, his attention drawn when the girl started the same with another man, but he pulled it back to us. “What’re you doing down here? Haven’t seen you around much. Seems like a lot of your people just up and folded.” The man’s eyes glowed when they turned to us. “Why is that?”
“I come and go. Everyone knows that, and the withdrawal? There’s some new players in town, flexing their muscles.”
“Yeah, there is,” the man sitting next Izaiah said with a wide grin, bumping fists with those next to him.
“We got our fam out safe, now we wanna know what’s come in to replace us.”
“You wanna know that, you talk to me,” fist bump guy said.
“And what do you know about it, Leroy?”
“That things are good.” The word came out long and drawn out. “That all this Mother loving bullshit your people was pushing down our throats was making us weak. But not anymore.” He settled back against his chair, gesturing for the girl who’d been sucking them off to come to him, which she did quickly enough. Her eyes were dazed and unfocussed, tinted red as well when she sat down on his lap. He pulled her G-string to one side, lined up his dick, and forced her down on it, her eyes flaring redder when he did. “We running things now, so either get with the new world order or get the fuck out.”
“So what did that achieve?” Marlow asked we stood around outside the bar, having left pretty quickly after that.
“We need a presence here,” I said, imagining those men going home to their wives and kids. “Something, anything to stop that shit from happening. Those guys…” My lips tripped over themselves trying to form the words, their inhuman eyes still sending shivers up my spine.
“We’ll head back to Aragide and get a bigger crew. We’re gonna need help moving the families out, plus a presence on the streets to help those women who want to stay,” Duke said.
“All that’s band-aid measures,” Marlow said. “It’s distribution. Whatever those fucking stones are and who’s circulating them.”
“Agreed.”
Big Mike swung down the steps, taking the three of us in with a slow smile. “Things get too hot for your honey in the backroom, Duke?”
“She thought she was ready for the real deal, but you know these princesses… S’all right. I’ll break her in.” I’m not sure Mike was entirely convinced, but he smiled along. “She’s been riding me for one of them stones, though. Damn near tweaking for it. What’s some red ice going for these days?”
That lowered Mike’s defences immediately. I could almost see the dollar signs spinning in his eyes.
“Let’s head into my office, see what we can do about setting the pretty lady up with some bling.”
I did not want to be here.
Mike’s office was behind the bar and was all dark wood panelling and leather. Quite nice if you liked a hyper-masculine décor. But it wasn’t the old-skool vibe that had me wanting to run, it was them. He gestured for us to have a seat, poured a whiskey or something for the two guys, and then unlocked a wall safe to bring out a tray of gold necklaces.