I finished the essays I was working on for a side project, so now I’m back to working on the third volume of Jake and the Dynamo, currently under the working title of The Shadow of His Shadow. Here’s a foretaste. As always, there is no guarantee that this will be in the final product.
On an added note, I am still waiting to hear back from some publishers to whom I’ve submitted, so I have no updates on possible releases of the previously published volume or its sequel.
At last, these treatments were apparently at an end. The bespectacled goblin sniffed once, made another mark in his ledger, and threw a loose silk robe over Jake’s shoulders. Then the trolls dragged him through yet another dank hallway, finally depositing him in the Bedchamber of Darkness, where he fell to the floor in a heap.
The trolls bowed respectfully before turning, leaving, and shutting the door behind themselves.
Jake raised himself to his knees and blinked against the gloom. He saw a large, four-poster bed atop a pedestal reached by steep stairs. On the walls hung an array of bizarre devices, most of which were unfamiliar to him—but the collection of coiled whips and handcuffs had an obvious purpose, as did the bloodstained rack standing in one corner. Ropes and chains dangled under the canopy above the bed.
He swallowed loudly.
On the bed lay the coldly beautiful woman he had earlier seen in the inner sanctum of the Temple of the Moon Princess. In a filmy dress of glossy black, she had one broad hip exposed, like an imposing hill in the middle of a plain. Her full, blood-red lips were slightly parted, and her round breasts rose and fell with her breath. Her raven-dark hair splayed across an embroidered samite pillow.
Frowning against bruises and stiff muscles, Jake carefully pulled himself to his feet.
Am I … am I about to score with the Dark Queen?
The Queen said not a word. She merely reached out with one shapely yet bone-white hand tipped with sharp nails as red as her lips. She patted the comforter once, twice. At the same time, she raised an arched eyebrow.
Jake swallowed again, more loudly.
The scenery was macabre and hardly what he considered romantic, but he couldn’t deny the thrill that ran from his heart to his groin as he gazed at the Queen’s voluptuous and carefully posed figured. He knew this was probably some kind of cruel trick, but that didn’t stop him from walking forward, half-dazed, while the excuses he might use later played through the back of his mind: I couldn’t help it, I didn’t know what else to do, it wasn’t like I enjoyed it, she forced me—
As if entering some grisly pagan temple, he mounted the steps to the high bed, all the while glancing nervously at the hanging chains. Gingerly, he sat down on the edge of the mattress. The Queen wiggled her eyebrows and undulated one shoulder.
Jake’s heart thrummed in his ears.
The Queen cleared her throat faintly. “Hey there, big boy,” she said in a husky whisper.
Jake squirmed a moment before he answered, “Um … hey.”
An awkward silence settled over them.
The Queen cleared her throat again, leaned toward him, and said, “So … read any good books lately?”
Jake blinked.
The Queen tapped the top of the bedclothes. “Anyway, nice weather we’re having, right?”
Jake rolled his tongue in his mouth. This chick sucks.
“Why?” Jake asked.
The Queen stiffened, and her left cheek twitched.
“Look, I don’t understand everything that’s going on,” Jake added, “but you look just like the High Priestess. Why are you—?”
The Queen jumped from the bed, walked across the room, and pressed her hand to a panel, which opened to reveal a small wet bar.
“Most of the boys I bring here,” she said, turning her back on him, “I fit with hypnotism collars to keep them compliant.”
She dropped ice into a glass, glanced over her shoulder, and added, “So don’t press your luck.”
He laughed quietly.
“Requests?” she asked.
“For what?”
“I’m mixing you a drink. Any requests?”
“I don’t really drink anything besides beer. I’m a kid.”
“Nothing you want, then?”
“How about absinthe?”
She rattled spoons and cups and pulled a bucket of ice out of a small freezer. “Strange tastes for a kid who only drinks beer. I don’t have absinthe.”
“Then make a second of whatever you’re making for yourself.”
After further rattling, she returned with two high-ball glasses full of ice and clear, fizzy liquid. “Gin and tonic,” she said.
He nodded. That was at least a drink he’d heard of. He took it and held it, letting it cool his hands.
“It’s not poisoned,” she said as she sipped her own.
“What about magicked?”
“That would ruin the taste. You might as well drink; you’re going to be here a while.”
He didn’t drink.
After a second sip, she raised an eyebrow, and her lips pursed. “I don’t think you understand, boy. I don’t need to slip you a mickey. If I want to poison or drug you, I’ll just do it.”
Staring at her, he drank cautiously. It was like soda pop, sweet and carbonated but with a distinctly bitter, medicinal note.
“What did you put in it?”
“You’re probably tasting the quinine,” she said as she sat beside him. “Gin and tonic is an invention of the British East India Company: They took the quinine to stave off malaria, but it was bitter, so they mixed it with sugar, water, lime, and their gin ration to make it tolerable.”
Jake drank. He couldn’t detect the alcohol. “Seems a lot of girls lately have been serving me beverages with interesting histories.”
“Oh?”
“I asked you for absinthe for a reason.”
“You’ve been spending time with Grease Pencil Marionette, I take it.”
He slopped his drink.
She smiled thinly. “She always had a taste for that abominable stuff.” She sipped again. “There’s much I don’t remember, but for some reason, I remember her.”
He shook his head and took a long pull on his gin. “Remember her? What are you, exactly?”
“Don’t ask me questions. Asking questions is my job. Later on, you and I are going to have a nice, quiet date with some sodium pentothal—but for now, you might as well relax.”
The gin went down the wrong way and burned. He started coughing.
“Can’t hold your liquor, can you?”
“I told you, I’m a kid,” he rasped as he pounded on his chest.
She sighed, climbed onto the bed, and leaned against a pile of pillows.
“How do you know Marionette?” he asked. “You’re a magical girl, aren’t you? That bat must be your familiar.”
“I’m warning you—”
“If you’re as old as the High Priestess, you’ve been around a while. How did you stop aging?”
“I said, I’ll ask the questions.”
“So ask them.”
“All right. Who is Pretty Dynamo?”
Jake grinned, shook his head, and drank again.
“You might as well tell me now because you will definitely tell me later.”
“I know.” With a small shrug, he continued drinking.
“Okay, then. We’ll start more simply. What is your name?”
He shook his head again.
Tell them nothing. That was a rule drilled into Urbanopolitans in case they were abducted or captured rather than killed outright. Humanity and its enemies were not parties to any mutual treaty, so even his name was information he was obliged to withhold.
Indeed, he’d probably told her too much already.
Her dark eyes became hard. “Let me explain something to you. Sentinel, your supercomputer, can’t find you here. Your magical girls can’t find you here. Pretty Dynamo can’t find you here. They’ve given you up for dead.”
He stared at the ice slowly melting in his drink.
“If you think you can endure until you die, let me assure you that I, and only I, will decide when you die—and I will also decide how much pain or pleasure you experience before that happens. When you die, your Moon Princess won’t take your soul to her kingdom because she can’t find you here, either. Your future existence, all of it, now depends entirely upon me.”
He swallowed.
“If there’s something I want to know, I will learn it. I will learn it either by breaking you or because you tell me voluntarily. If you fear the consequences of disloyalty to your friends or your city, there’s no point: From now on, I alone decide the consequences of your actions.”
His mouth was dry, so he ran his tongue across his teeth before he said, “Why not just fit me with one of those hypnotism collars you mentioned?”
“Those are good for altering behavior but not for getting information. No,” she said through clenched teeth, “for that, old-fashioned torture is still the best.”
Despite himself, he grinned. “They say information gathered under torture isn’t reliable.”
“‘They’ say that because they’re squeamish. No, torture is quite reliable if the torturer is skilled enough.”
She leaned toward him, raked her fingernails down his left arm, and hissed in his ear, “And I, dear little boy, am quite skilled.”
