Part 3 (1/2)

She went on with that same sensual amus.e.m.e.nt, as if she were educating the totally innocent-which, of course, in the circ.u.mstances, she was.

”Children, let me point out the playrooms. Beyond the bar, the movie room. We have a comprehensive selection of exceptional quality, men and women, women and women, men and men...whatever might appeal. Up the stone stairway...the pleasure rooms. Just beyond that, my personal domain. My dungeon. Visit me later, if you dare.” She smiled at Mary and Nancy. ”Have you been bad?” she inquired in a throaty, teasing voice. ”Do you need confession? We can arrange for that, too. But first, you must have a drink. The special tonight is a b.l.o.o.d.y Mary. Mary...how darling, just like your name,” she said, eyeing Mary again.

”Tonight, everything is on me.” She laughed softly. ”We'll find a form of payment. For now remain at the bar. Watch.” She stared at the three of them for a long moment. ”I will tell you when it's all right to move, do you understand?”

”Yes,” Jeremy said, relieved. He had to admit, he was more than uneasy.

He was...scared.

She leaned close to them. ”Always know the way out,” she said.

”Always know the way out,” Nancy repeated. Jeremy wondered if he had sounded almost mesmerized when he had spoken, the way Nancy did.

The dominatrix seemed pleased with the response and smiled again.

She exuded a sleek sensuality, along with something smoldering and fierce. She escorted them the rest of the way to the bar and spoke to the man behind it. ”Drinks, please. Right away. For my American friends.”

The bartender was tall, lean, dark-eyed, perhaps in his early thirties. He nodded, then hurried to do her bidding.

They sat at the bar to wait for their drinks. Looking around, Jeremy thought it might have been almost any bar anywhere-except for the naked people and the masked woman. Next to them, two men were discussing something in French. At the end of the bar, a good-looking man speaking German was trying to pick up a pretty blonde.

He turned to say something to the dominatrix, but she was gone.

”This is so exciting.” Mary whispered.

”Yeah. A thrill a minute,” Jeremy murmured. ”Stop being such a weenie,” Mary told him.

”You know,” Nancy murmured, ”we're not going to learn much if we spend all night just hanging out at the bar. We need to look around.”

”That woman just told us to stay here,” Jeremy said firmly.

”She also said we should watch,” Nancy argued. ”We'll see more if we look around.”

”She said to stay at the bar,” Jeremy repeated firmly. ”And to always know the way out.”

Mary giggled. ”Maybe they're worried about police raids.”

He had a sickly feeling the dominatrix had been worried about something far more serious.

”Look, Jeremy, that woman is gone, and we can't just sit here all night,” Nancy said.

”We need to split up,” Mary added. ”No one is going to talk to us if we stick together like the Three Musketeers.”

”We should stay together,” Jeremy warned uneasily.

Mary laughed softly. ”You shouldn't want us hanging on to you. Our hostess seemed to be pretty into you.”

Jeremy didn't know why, but he had the feeling the dominatrix had quickly a.s.sessed him and found him too young and far too naive. He looked over the heads of the Frenchmen and saw that she was back at the bar. She was behaving casually, chatting with the bartender, speaking to people as they came and went from room to room, and yet...

She seemed to be watching.

For what?

”I don't know about you two, but I've got to see the pleasure rooms,” Mary said, sliding off her bar stool.

”I'll check out the movie room,” Nancy said.

”I don't know about this,” Jeremy protested. ”I can't be with both of you.”

But they ignored him, already moving. He saw the dominatrix. She had noted their movements, and she didn't seem pleased.

Jeremy immediately lost sight of Mary, who must have run up the stairs. He found Nancy hovering at the back of the movie room.

He stopped where he was, taking the overstuffed couches and the haze in the air from cigarettes and pot. On a large screen, a p.o.r.no flick played. Two women were seducing one man-and each other. As he watched, one woman held the other down while the man bared his teeth and bit into the immobilized woman's neck. She seemed to go into instant throes of ecstasy. Blood l.u.s.t apparently led to wild arousal.

Despite all the flesh on show, the movie didn't begin to arouse him. He realized he was far too tense to feel anything other than an unsettling sense of alarm.

A girl rose from one of the couches and approached Nancy, taking her hand. Nancy followed her back and sat down.

Jeremy decided that Nancy could fend for herself. The woman who had approached her was slim and not more than five two.

Nancy was giggling and over twenty-one. If she wanted to live on the wild side in pursuit of her craft-or using her craft as an excuse-it was completely her call. He made his way to the stone stairway and hurried up.

They should have stayed together at the bar, as they'd been told, and just watched.

He reached a long hall lined with doors.

The hall itself seemed far longer than it could possibly be. Perhaps it was the dim lighting and the way the far end of the hall was almost completely dark, adding to the illusion that it went on forever.

On and on...as if in an impossibly long shot for a horror film.

Except this was real.

He told himself that he was only giving in to fear and letting his imagination run wild. Look. All he had to do was look.

No one was in the hallway. He had no idea which door Mary might have chosen.

As he stood there, he felt rather than saw a shadow. No, not a shadow, exactly, a sense of greater darkness. As if something large had cast a pall over the meager light offered by the candles that burned in medieval sconces every ten feet along the walls.

A lump formed in his throat. He was tempted to turn, run back down the stairs and out into the night. Of course, if he did, he had no idea of where he would actually wind up. They had been driven through a dense, fog-shrouded forest, and they hadn't pa.s.sed another living soul until they had reached this place, which, from the outside, had appeared to be nothing more than a ruin on a cliff. Yet the urge to run, escape, flee to any other place on earth, tore at him with an urgency that defied all logic.

He would not yield to it. Mary and Nancy were here, and while they were welcome to whatever pursuits they chose, he couldn't abandon them to this...

”This danger,” he whispered aloud.

Because somehow he knew that his unease was justified. He felt a raw sense of instinctive panic taking hold in his gut.

The shadow was there, real, palpable, evil and malignant.