Beneath the gleaming skyscrapers and picturesque facade of the City of Redemption lies another city; a community of dark and ancient magic populated by creatures of the night. Strephon Bellman, a semi-immortal half-fae, has been charged by the Queen of the Fae with investigating Melchior Dusk, a fae noble posing as a human. Strephon is attending a party being held by Melchior in the company of Miss Cassandra True, a reporter for the Daily Oracle, and when Melchior agrees to be interviewed by Miss True, he leaves leaves his personal assistant, Inanna, behind with Strephon to entertain him.
Dark Redemption is an Urban Gothic Fantasy which will be running in weekly installments Wednesday evenings. Previous installments can be found linked at the Dark Redemption Index.
|
If you enjoy reading this, please consider clicking on the newest Community Needs List diary, to see if you can kick in a couple bucks to help someone there.
All material is copyrighted by the authors. 📚 Click on their name to follow individually, or on genre, group, etc. in the taglist, to get those diaries in your activity stream. 📚 Depending on RL, authors may arrive some while after posting; this is a feature, not a bug.
|
Chapter 8: Private Conversations
In Which Strephon finds himself in a ticklish situation and Miss True encounters a chorus of featherbunnies.
"I see you have acquired a toy of your own," Inanna said as Cassandra went off with Melchior.
"Miss True?" Strephon sipped his champagne and tried to keep his tone nonchalant. "A pleasant lass, if a bit impulsive. I met her here in your lobby the other day, as you may recall. I wouldn't call her 'my toy', though."
Inanna gave a musical chuckle. "Don't be so modest, Strephon. I can see the signs. That girl has been touched by the Fae." She sat on the armrest of his wheelchair. "So, have you been naughty?"
Strephon's polite smile tightened slightly. Of course she expected him to deny it and become flustered. No, he'd play the game. "A gentleman never tells." He calmly took another sip of his glass. Not too much; he needed to keep his wits about him. Why didn't he think to order something non-alcoholic?
"Do you like impulsive girls?" Inanna dipped her fingertip into his champagne and gave it a lick. "I can be very impulsive." She slid over a little closer to him.
"Indeed." Strephon felt himself growing warm again. "Do I have to remind you that we are in a public place?"
"Not anymore."
Strephon suddenly realized that the party conversation had muted. He looked around and saw a grey veil of mist surrounding Inanna and himself. The rest of the guests seemed oblivious to them.
"It's a zone of privacy, clouding our presence from others." Inanna swung her legs across so that she now straddled his lap. "They won't notice a thing."
"Ah. Splendid. Then we may speak openly."
Inanna nibbled on his earlobe. "I like openness."
"Did Lord Melchior attempt to have me killed the other night?"
Inanna ceased her nibbling and drew away. "What are you talking about?"
"A group of werewolves attacked Miss True and myself Saturday evening, only scant hours after I had left this building."
Inanna sniffed. "Wolfen. What they have nothing to do with us."
"Melchior is making alliances within the were-community, is he not? I believe some of the guests tonight are in fact pack leaders."
Inanna squirmed a little. Strephon found that more than a bit distracting, but took some satisfaction from seeing her uncomfortable for a change. "That's just business. The wolfen are a law unto themselves. What makes you think the ones who attacked you had any connection with Melchior?"
"One of them wore a collar inscribed with fae runes. Now, unless someone is putting enchanted fae fetish gear on the open market, that suggests a deeper alliance. But you would know more about that than I."
Inanna bit her lip. "Melchior gave no such order. I would know if he did. If anyone is supplying fae artifacts to the wolfen, it is not this company."
Strephon frowned at her. For a moment she almost sounded sincere; then her voice slid back into its sensuous purr and she wriggled up his lap again. "Lord Melchior is very interested in you. And he's not the only one. I'm so glad you didn't get hurt..." She placed her arms around his neck and drew her lips towards his.
Strephon felt trapped. There was nothing he could do but move his own arm around Inanna...
...And dump his champagne down her back.
Inanna screamed and the grey mist vanished. Everyone in the room turned to stare at Inanna scrambling off Strephon's lap.
"How very clumsy of me," Strephon said; "I've spilled my drink all over you. Terribly sorry."
Inanna glared hatred at him. Now that was sincere.
----------
Cassandra could not believe her luck! Not only was she finally getting her interview with Melchior Dusk, but she was rubbing elbows with some of the most powerful people in the city! Fortunately, she thought to bring a camera with her. She tried to be discreet about her shots -- no need to push her host's generosity. On the other hand, if she came back from this party with no pictures at all her editor really would flay her the way he promised that morning after he spiked her story about the wolf attack. If you're going to write about wolf attacks, I wanna see you sprouting fur! he said; At least gimme a statement from an old gypsy! What about the naked corpse? Where's the sizzle? Well, that was just fine by her. She wanted to make a name for herself with real serious journalism, not trashy spooks and UFO garbage.
"I'm sorry to cut this short, but I really must be seeing to my other guests," Dusk said.
"Oh, no, no! That's fine! Thank you so very much for your time!" Cassandra gushed as he turned away to chat with another group of people. She sighed. Here she thought he'd be a jerk, but he turned out to be very polite and charming.
As she fumbled with her purse to return her pocket recorder, she noticed one of the guests staring at her; the skinny pizza-faced guy in glasses wearing the tuxedo a size too large. He shuffled his feet and looked over his shoulder apprehensively. Then he mustered enough courage to approach her.
"Hello, You're a reporter?"
"Yes, my name is Cassandra True. I'm with the Daily Oracle" she said.
Once again the geek glanced furtively around the room. "I'm Byron Sanders. Senior Game Designer." Cassandra blinked. He didn't look old enough to be a senior anything. On the other hand computer games was a young man's field. "I created the original Virtual Hot Tub," he added with undisguised pride. Yes, she could believe that.
"Really?" Cassandra said fishing the recorder back out of her purse. "That's very interesting." This could be useful background material for her Dusk profile.
"I suppose Mister Dusk told you about our new virtual reality platform?"
"A little bit. It sounds exciting."
"Oh it is!" Again the apprehensive pause. Had the guy never spoken to a girl before? Cassandra remembered Virtual Hot Tub. Maybe not. "We have a working prototype. Would you be interested in seeing it?"
Now it was Cassandra's turn to look over her shoulder. She suspected that Byron was seriously overstepping his authority. If Dusk had wanted to show this gizmo to the press he would have suggested it himself. Snooping around like this was a sure way to get herself booted out of the party. On the other hand, she already had her interview; what could she lose? "Sure!"
The two slipped out of the party without raising comment. Cassandra considered telling Strephon where she was going, except that he seemed to be trapped in a conversation with the banker's wife. Poor Strephon! Cassandra made a mental note to rescue him once she came back.
Byron led her to a nest of cubicles two floors down from where the party was. He cleared off a desk in the messiest cubicle and placed a console the size of a laptop computer on it.
"Where are the goggles?" Cassandra asked. She'd played virtual reality games in arcades before; they generally required cumbersome equipment.
"This is all we need." Bryon placed a headset on her head. "This is just the prototype mind you. Eventually we'll be able to directly jack into the player's brain."
"What?"
Bryon donned a second headset and booted up the game. Before Cassandra could protest, she saw the cubicle around her dissolve to be replaced by a woodland scene in bright crayon colors. Byron's clothing had also been replaced -- her own too, Cassandra realized -- by a colorful t-shirt and shorts. A group of cute fluffy bunnies with pastel-coloured fur and shimmering white wings waddled out of the forest. The bunnies joined hands in a ring around the two and began to dance and sing.
"We are featherbunnies!
We like to dance and play!
And if you rub our fluffy tails
We'll grant a wish today!"
"Hang on, hang on," Byron said. He conjured a phantom console in front of him and fiddled with it. In the middle of the second verse, the bunnies froze and large luminous letters appeared in mid-air reading "PAUSE".
"Sorry about that," Byron said. "I wanted to make sure we weren't overheard and this was the only way."
"What's going on?" Cassandra asked.
"Listen. I've got to tell someone! The world's got to know before it's too late!"
"The world's got to know what?"
"It's Dusk! He isn't human!"
"Oooo-kay." This was starting to weird Cassandra out. "Then what is he?"
Byron became frantic. "I don't know! I think he might be an alien! Him and his people!"
"Hang on. Let's start from the beginning." Cassandra felt she could take this a lot more seriously if not for the ring of bunny rabbits with frozen attitudes of cuteness smiling at her. On the other hand, it gave the whole thing a surreal quality. She had to believe it. Either that or someone was crazy. She dearly hoped it wasn't her.
Byron took a couple breaths and calmed down. "It started about a year ago when Dusk bought out the company. We were already a successful game company, but he made us bigger. Then he started bringing in his own people. He said they were programmers, but none of them know a line of code; I'd stake my life on it! But every one of them is a whiz! They seem to do it instinctively! Like they just wish the computer to do what it wants!
"They're the ones who developed this new platform. Now I know programming. And I know a fair amount about hardware. But I have no idea how this works. It seems to interface directly with the player's brain to create an illusion world.
"But that's not all," he continued. "There's something about him and all his people. It's like they have some kind of mental powers or something. It sounds crazy, but they do! They know what you're feeling and they can affect your emotions and she enters your dreams so you don't know what's real anymore!"
"She?" Cassandra asked.
Byron turned bright red. "Inanna, Dusk's assistant. She... well she..."
"I get the idea." Cassandra remembered meeting the assistant and mentally filing her as "Maneater." The poor boy was no match for her. With a guilty start she wondered how Strephon was faring.
Suddenly, the bunnies and the forest disappeared. A wall of static surrounded them. "Uh, what just happened? Did the power go out?"
"No, if it did we'd just leave the game. Someone must have removed the game disc. Bollocks!" Byron conjured up the console again, but before he could do anything, the world changed again.
Now the two stood in a small stone chamber with a vaulted ceiling. Heavy wooden doors faced them from each wall. Cassandra realized that she now held a semi-automatic rifle.
"Bugger!" Byron said. "Felching heck!"
"What is it?" Cassandra looked wildly around, fear beginning to gnaw at her.
Byron slung his own rifle over his shoulder and tapped frantically at the phantom keyboard. "It's a virtual reality version of one of our shooter games, Nowyr 2 Run, Nowyr 2 Hyd. It's not ready for commercial release."
Somehow that innocuous-sounding euphemism chilled her. "How do you turn off the game?"
Byron looked up at her, a cold sweat on his face. "It's not letting me."
The door to Cassandra's right opened and the orcs came pouring out.
NEXT: Smooth Operetta
