"Jess," Alice Sinclare called out, the black
haired bookstore owner nearly running to catch up to
her. She looked good dressed in her usual business
wear, her slim, fit body accented by the custom made
clothes that she wore.
"Sorry," Jess Drake apologized, her short
black hair falling messily into her eyes, "I didn't
see you there." They easily fell into step together,
the scruffy looking tattoo artist and the elegant
business woman. "So what's up?" Jess asked.
"A boring meeting," Alice made a face, "the
city's small business association." She frowned
slightly in thought as she looked up at Jess to ask,
"Wouldn't you be a member, too?"
Jess shook her head as she answered, "Normally
I would be but I was pointedly... uninvited to their
meetings a while back." With a wry smile she added, "I
guess that they thought that I was a corrupting
influence."
"More of your mysterious past?" Alice asked,
the oddest look on her face.
Jess caught the look and quietly asked her,
"What's wrong?"
Alice hesitated, clearly unsure if she wanted
to say it. "It feels like everyone knows more about
your past than I do," she said, "it... bothers me,
sometimes."
"I didn't realize," Jess answered quietly.
Alice shrugged uncomfortably as she softly
admitted, "I don't think it really hit me until we
went out to the Daughters of Artemis together. They
all seemed to know you so well and it was a Jess Drake
that I really didn't know."
"There are things about me that you might not
want to know about," Jess warned as they passed under
a street light, the sunlight slowly fading away.
Alice put her hand on Jess' arm, squeezing it
gently. "The only way I'll know is if you tell me,"
she said to her seriously.
"Come on then," Jess said, her expression
oddly remote as she continued, "if we're going to do
this, let's do it right."
"What do you mean?" a confused Alice asked as
she hurried to try and catch up to the suddenly fast
moving woman.
"I'm going to take you to where it all
started," Jess answered firmly.
The building that Jess led them to was old,
the exterior battered and badly deteriorating. Windows
facing the street were broken, layers of paint peeling
off, the only thing even remotely new looking being
the heavy metal door someone had installed, likely to
try and keep out street people and other sorts of
vagrant.
"This is." Alice asked weakly.
"Shh," Jess said, striding over to the heavy
metal door. She rapped on it in a certain sequence,
then waited patiently.
After a moment a hidden slot slid open, eyes
looking out to study both of them. "You.." the woman's
voice growled.
"Yes, me," Jess answered firmly. With a grim
little smile she asked, "I understand that I'm still
welcome?"
There was a beat of silence then the heavy
metal door swung open. The woman who was standing
there in the doorway was seven feet tall, at least,
and her arms rippled with pure muscle. "You so much as
look at someone wrong," the amazon said coldly,
"you're gone."
"Got it, Sal," Jess answered.
Sal looked over at Alice thoughtfully,
studying her for a moment. "What's a nice girl like
you doing with someone like this?" she scowled towards
Jess.
"She's a friend of mine," Alice answered
firmly.
Sal moved aside to let them by, opening up an
inner door. "Then you might want to pick your friends
with better care," was her cold remark.
"She doesn't like me much," Jess said quietly
as they went inside, "for good reason."
"What did you do?" Alice asked.
Jess' face was oddly hard, her eyes strangely
unreadable. "I fucked her girlfriend," was her cool
answer as she lead the way.
Hidden here beneath the crumbling exterior was
a full modern nightclub, one inhabited by both men and
women. The dance floor was packed with writhing
bodies, some all but having sex out there while up
above them on another level tables were set for
private conversation, shadowed enough for almost
anything to be going on.
"What sort of place is this?" Alice looked
around her in confusion.
"Welcome to Purgatory," Jess said grimly, "the
most private fetish club in the city." They went
upstairs to a table, beating another group to one of
the little tables.
"You used to come here?" Alice asked as she
checked her seat, brushing it off before sitting down
uncomfortably.
"I started out here," Jess said seriously. She
waved a hand and a young man sauntered up to the table
with a notepad as she ordered, "Two beers, please. And
not the watered down crap, either."
"Of course," the blonde nodded briskly,
disappearing into the crowd only to reappear a few
moments later with two full mugs of beer. "Here you
go," he smiled, his voice oddly high pitched and his
mannerisms almost feminine.
"Thank you," Alice murmured dubiously.
Jess' hand shot out, snagging his arm as she
murmured, "Hold on a moment." She held the other hand
over the beers and said soft, alien words under her
breath. A second later the beers turned a shocking
purple and Jess sighed, "Trying to slip us a micky,
Modred?"
"Can't blame me for trying," Modred answered,
his voice deepening and his posture becoming more
masculine. "How did you know it was me?"
Jess smiled slightly, "Trust me, I knew."
Modred nodded slightly, "I'll bring fresh
beers, then."
Alice looked at Jess as Modred left, "What is
going on?"
Jess sighed softly, "I first came here years
back and I was only just finished my training as a
magician. I hadn't learned the sort of humility an
older magician develops and I certainly hadn't formed
my moral compass."
"What happened?" Alice asked softly after
Modred dropped off the fresh beers and Jess had
checked them over once again.
"I sold my magic for money," Jess said
frankly, "and I wasn't too picky about the jobs I did,
either." She drank some beer, "Everything from charms
to shape the body to enchantments to snare the mind, I
did it all with a smile."
"It doesn't sound all that bad," Alice said,
cautiously trying some of her mug of beer and finding
that she liked the taste of it.
"Tell that to the people I enchanted or
bewitched for my own purposes," Jess said. "But I was
a strictly small time operator until I met Diana," she
sighed.
"Diana," Alice's eyes widened as she quickly
made the connection, "Lady Diana, the supposed leader
of the city's underworld?"
"You got it," Jess nodded. She smiled
self-mockingly, "I was such a fool I had no idea who
she was or what she did, I was just enchanted by her
beauty. I certainly had no idea she seduced me knowing
what I could do."
"What did she do?" Alice asked softly.
"Screwed the hell out of me for the first few
weeks," Jess seemed to enjoy startling her friend as
she said, "then began to get me into the magics she
needed me to do for her." She took another drink,
"Branding her girls, putting protective enchantments
on her goons, glamours for her call girls...."
Oddly Alice didn't seem repelled or shocked,
her eyes merely attentive. She seemed to be taking it
all in easily, letting Jess tell her story without
judging or condemning. "It doesn't sound so bad," she
said to Jess softly.
"Diana was very good at getting me to take
baby steps, each new act just a little farther than
what we had gone before," Jess said quietly. "Even our
sexual games gradually changed, spanking going on to
bondage then into real S & M."
Alice drank her beer thoughtfully, "So what
made you decide to go?"
Jess looked down at her mug, "Kids. Diana
wanted me to bind kids into her service, put them
under an unbreakable enchantment.... I couldn't go
through with it."
"So you left?" Alice asked.
Jess barked a unpleasant laugh, "It wasn't
anywhere near that easy."
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