“A witch. She turned dudes into animals. And you turn me into a wild beast. A swine.”
He lunged face first into her breasts, growling and nuzzling her with his bristly beard. She squirmed, cooing with delight like a child.
They were in the structure that Freeboot had named the Garden. From the outside, it was a log building, like all the others here-a crude bathhouse, with a big stone basin for the hot springs that flowed from the ground at a perfect 112 degrees. But inside, he had transformed it, stocking it with things that he hadn’t even known existed until he was able to buy them. Then he learned about them fast.
The rough log walls were hung with old tapestries from Europe. Thick Persian rugs carpeted the plank floor. A two-thousand-year-old Greek statuette sat on top of a Chippendale console. The central piece was the Louis XV king-sized bed that Freeboot and Circe were lying on. Part of a wall had to be chainsawed out to get that in. The moisture and warmth from the hot springs maintained a jungle of exotic potted plants. There was every kind of liquor and every kind of dope. Freeboot wanted the feeling in here to be overpowering-lush. But above all, the Garden was for sex. The brides were a reward for the maquis who performed their missions well, and a tormenting lure to recruits.
It was Freeboot’s own version of the garden of delights of the Old Man of the Mountain, chief of the original assassins. That old dude was slick. He had drugged young men with hashish and brought them into a place that had every delight they could imagine-women, wine, more drugs. He promised them that if they died for him, this would be their heaven for eternity.
The world had changed since those days. Not many people were going to settle for pie-in-the-sky anymore. But the basics still worked. Freeboot, and Shrinkwrap with her psychological savvy, carefully handpicked the young people they drew in. All of them were aimless and hungry. The men wanted power; the women, love; and they all wanted to feel superior. It was perfect raw material for shaping into devotion, and the two of them knew just how to do it-break down the personality, then rebuild it with increasing status and privileges as they got more bonded, until finally they believed that they were godlike-while totally obedient to Freeboot. During the process, Taxman trained the men up into skilled assassins. The women didn’t need much physical training. Most of what was required of them came naturally.
“Now, we’re going to do with our souls what we just did with our bodies,” he murmured to Circe. He played gently with the damp strands of hair that curled down her neck, stroking her hypnotically, coaxing her to relax against him. “I want you to open up like you never have before. Make yourself bare, and let me in.”
“I don’t know how.” Her voice was muffled, a little frightened.
“I’ll show you. Just don’t fight me.”
Freeboot had learned a long time ago, using LSD, that he could separate a part of his mind from the rest-like a tentacle, like a snake-and send it into other minds. The younger and more stoned they were, the easier it was. It was like opening the door to somebody’s living room and seeing them sitting on the couch watching TV, so wrapped up in it, they’d forgotten where they were. There were several screens, broadcasting the different channels of thoughts, memories, feelings, everything that went on in their heads.
Feelings were the most important. They were what ruled. Freeboot could see them, beaming out from that TV set-fear, hate, love, doubt, all the pressures that built up in people’s lives, mixing together to push them into what they did and said.
And he knew how to push those feelings. He didn’t know how he knew, he just did. He shone his energy, his power, on the ones he wanted-love for the women, aggression for the men, jacking up fear in a maquis who was getting cocky or devotion in a bride who was restless.
When he went back out that door and closed it again, they didn’t know what had happened, didn’t even know that he’d been in there. But that energy he pumped in was him. As those feelings got stronger, Freeboot was the hidden essence of them, like oxygen in air. Every breath they took contained him.
When he finished with Circe, she was trembling a little.
“That was good,” he said. “You’re going to be a sweet bride. But one thing you got to understand-some of the other girls are going to be jealous of you. You have to keep yourself above that.”
“Okay,” she breathed.
“Good girl.” He petted her once more, then stood. “I’ve got to step out a while. Go ahead and toke up some more of that hash. I’ll be back.”
He pulled on his jeans, then took a money clip from his pocket and laid five one-hundred-dollar bills beside her on the bed.
“When you get back to town, buy yourself something pretty,” he said. Devotion might be a matter of the spirit, but it rolled more smoothly on wheels well greased with things that could be touched.
Circe got up, too, and slid luxuriantly into the stone bath. Lying back, with the clear water rippling over her young body, she was a luscious sight.
“Freeboot?” she said. Her face was childlike with seriousness. “Can you make me stop dreaming about flunking out of high school?”
He grinned. “Don’t worry, baby. Pretty soon you won’t even remember it.”
5
Monks’s shackles were locked around his ankles, with an eighteen-inch chain connecting them, like a slave would have worn. The chain was locked again to a cable bolted to the floor, giving him just enough slack to move around the room. He’d had to take off his boots to put them on. They weren’t tight enough to hurt, but they weighed. He wondered where you would find something like that these days. A specialty shop. Or maybe on e-Bay.
There was no window he could see out of to watch the sky, no way to tell the time, but he guessed that it was around three A.M. by now. He and Mandrake had been alone for the past couple of hours. He had thought about trying to escape, but the shackles cut off any hope, and it was clear that the camp was being guarded. Ludicrous as this bunch might seem-adopting the term maquis, for Christ’s sake, the sterling French resistance fighters of World War Two-they were at least organized. Captain America had been on duty, then had been relieved by someone called Sidewinder, announcing this in a ritualistic fashion: Take this, brother, may it serve you well. Whatever that meant.
Monks sat again on Mandrake’s bed with a cup of water, as he’d been doing every half hour or so. The bed’s other occupant was the only stuffed animal that the little boy seemed to have, a fat, four-foot-long lime-green snake with a happy grin. The small pile of books on the dresser had a few old children’s standards-Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, Dr. Seuss-but was mainly made up of more modern works, like copies of Heavy Metal magazine and Angry Blonde, the rap lyrics of Eminem.
Monks cupped the back of Mandrake’s neck with one hand, then poured a slow trickle of water into his mouth.
“Come on, buddy,” Monks said. “You need this. Attaboy.” Mandrake sputtered, but swallowed. Monks kept the water coming until his head twisted aside.
“This must be a pretty neat place to live, huh?” Monks said. “Up here in the forest? I bet there’s deer that come around.” His hands drifted gently over Mandrake’s body as he spoke, absorbing information about his condition. The boy’s eyes had opened a little while he was drinking the water, but then closed again.
“You know, what those deer really like is bread,” Monks said. “That’s a good way to make friends with them. You want to try feeding them tomorrow?”
No response. Monks reached under the covers and felt the diaper. It was wet. There was a box of Huggies beside the bed, another bizarre touch in this rustic scene. He pulled off the wet one, tossed it into a slops bucket, and got two fresh ones, using one to dry Mandrake and putting the other on him. It took Monks a moment to figure out the self-adhesive strapping arrangement. Back in the days when his own kids were in diapers, his wife had mostly used the washable kind.