Drag Hunt (3 page)

He wandered down the Avenue of Heroes toward the Strip in shock, past the bars and stores and the street entertainers. The night air cleared his head. It was like a rude awakening, as if someone had just snatched away a warm duvet and a comforting dream. Everything was too loud and bright.

People jostled round him with glances of annoyance as he stood on the sidewalk and looked in despair at his wallet. He stared at the ATM receipt. Everything, his savings, his redundancy. Gone. How was that possible? The bastard had cleaned him out. All he had to his name now was about fifty dollars, cash.

He had hoped that by leaving England the ill fortune that seemed to have dogged his life recently would be left behind. No such luck. So he wasn’t entirely surprised when he felt the hard metal in the small of his back, and two men ushered him into the alley.

“Oh, for fuck’s—”

A fist slammed into his solar plexus, driving the wind, and any chance at protest, from him. He doubled over and went down, pistol whipped on the back of the head as he crumpled, the jagged pain forking like lightning across his head. He tumbled forward, cracking his forehead on the tarmac, and bit his tongue.

In desperation he scuttled over to a dumpster, his back into the corner, arms over his face to protect himself.

Rough hands went through his pockets. He clawed at the air as they pulled his mobile from his pocket and picked up his wallet from the floor. It earned him a kick to the stomach. His body folded round the boot as it withdrew, only to catch another on his temple. Lights burst behind his eyelids and faded one by one, as darkness washed over him, like the waters of the fabled Lethe.

CHAPTER TWO

Coyote Interruptus

W
INNING ALWAYS GAVE
Coyote a boner. Putting one over on
anyone
gave him a boner. And there was only one thing you could do with that.

He lay in bed, hands clasped behind his head, his dark hair pooling on the silk pillows. Coyote in the hen house. It had been a good night.

He was in one of the most expensive penthouse suites in the Olympus. It had cost him most of his winnings, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t his money and he could always get more.

He loved the look on the faces of the other guests as they got into the elevator to see him stood there with five amazingly beautiful women, nymphs all. They didn’t know where to look. Well, they did, but they tried desperately not to.

He grinned at the memory and took in a deep, contented breath. The room was heavy with sweat and sex. The women’s musk hung in the air, their mascara blotted the pillows and the stains had dried and stiffened the silk sheets. Five nymphs, and none of them had any complaints. His appetites were as prodigious as his member.

He stretched out an arm. The large bed was empty.
Ha!
He wasn’t surprised. No woman could trap Coyote, not even the nymphs that had once trapped Hylas.

Just the word ‘woman’ stirred feelings in him. He smiled and let out a contented sigh as he remembered last night’s events.

His forehead creased and he opened his eyes. That wasn’t right. That should have roused him. The silk sheet should be rising above him, tented by his tumescence in all its morning glory.

He sat up, arched his back and yawned. The silk sheet slipped down his torso and gathered round his pelvis. He looked around.

“Rise and shine, younger brother!” he said. “The sun is up and so should you be.”

He lifted the sheet and looked down his body, over his pecs, to his abdomen where a faint trail of hairs darkened, thickened and curled. He’d lost his boner. Literally. Where his penis should have been, there was nothing.

“Come out, come out wherever you are,” he said, looking around the suite.

Nothing.

He leaned over the side of the bed and peered underneath. Nothing there, either.

“Right, come out,” he called out. “This isn’t funny anymore.”

He whistled and clapped his hands as if summoning a wayward terrier. He checked the pockets of his discarded jeans. He checked the pouch he sometimes used to carry it around in. It wasn’t there. He scattered his patented Bonafide Penis Returning Powder across the suite. Nothing.

It wasn’t the first time his member had gone missing. However, it had always come back before now and he could usually sense it, wherever it was. The disembodied sensations could be
distracting
to say the least, especially if he was trying to concentrate on something else. But now, he could feel nothing. Not a twinge, not a throb, not a pulse. That gave him cause for concern.

He farted.

“And you can bloody well shut up,” he told his younger brother, anus. “You had one thing to do, one thing—keep your beady little brown eye on him. I’d punish you but I remember what happened last time.”

Still, he wasn’t that worried. He should have no problem tracking it down. After all, he had the keenest nose of all the People.

He sniffed the air. There were lingering traces in the room. He went to the door, opened it and sniffed the corridor in both directions. Nothing, no scent of ball sweat, or stale piss. He couldn’t even sense its psychic imprint, which was disconcerting. He’d lost any connection he had with it. This, it seemed, was more than just an errant erection.

He went back into the suite and sat down on the bed in disbelief.

Someone had stolen his penis.

Who would want it? That answered itself, really. Who wouldn’t? So it was just a process of elimination. He would have to play detective and, he suspected, he would be a brilliant detective.

Then he stopped. “Oh.”

This detective lark was easier than he thought. Of course, it was obvious. He knew exactly who had taken his penis. Well, not exactly. But he’d narrowed it down to a few suspects. The usual suspects. Loki. Or the Monkey King. Anansi. Tezcatlipoca. Li-Nezha. Or that Bamapana. Or Ti-Malice. Tricksters, everyone. Bastards, the lot of them. He wouldn’t put it past them. If it was him, he wouldn’t have put it past himself.

He gathered up his discarded clothes from the floor, pulled on his T-shirt and climbed into his jeans.

He’d see about this. Nobody put one over on Coyote.

He picked up the phone and rang down.

“I want to see the manager,” he said. A whiny subservient voice buzzed the earpiece. “No, everything is not all right. I have a complaint.” Buzz buzz buzz. “Well see that they do!”

He hung up. It was a small victory. He ran through the evening before, tracing his steps. When did he last remember seeing it? He grinned, distracted by the memory. The look on her face!

There was a knock at the door.

That was quick. But then, the Olympus
was
run by a cartel of gods, so he should have expected it. Vegas had been a prime site for gods to set up house after the Great Usurper exiled them all down here. After all, here superstition still had a strong hold.

At least they were taking him seriously. He drew himself up to his full height and put on a scowl, and went to answer the door.

A tall, lithe bodied man stood in the doorway. Tailored suit. Hands clasped in front of his groin. Gelled blond hair. Expensive wrap-around shades. Behind him were two well-dressed heavyweights. Coyote recognised them as Anemoi or, as he liked to call them, the Breeze Brothers, a pair of minor Greek wind gods.

Blondie’s tone was clipped and businesslike. “Coyote.”

Coyote regarded the man for a moment. He’d been expecting some flunky he could have bamboozled and charmed, not
him
.

“Hermes.”

Son of Zeus. Messenger of the gods. Trickster. Maybe he took it. He was certainly fast enough. A prime suspect if ever there was one. Coyote was curious to see how this one played out.

Hermes stepped into the suite, glancing at the money and chips strewn about the room. The Breeze Brothers stepped in behind him. Hermes turned his head and jerked his chin at the room.

One of the Breeze Brothers raised his hand and a small air current rippled across the floor, gathering up into a small whirlwind in the centre of the room that spun slowly around the suite, ruffling the silk sheets and sucking up Coyote’s scattered winnings. It returned them to the wind god, before dissipating gently and depositing the cash and chips into the Anemoi’s hands.

“I’m impressed,” said Coyote, raising an eyebrow. “In fact, I know someone who’d like to meet you.”

“I have a message,” said Hermes.

“You would.”

“The gods of Vegas are not happy.”

“They’re not happy? I’m livid.”

“They want a word.”

“Good, because I’ve a word or two I want to say to them. This kind of thing gets out and it could ruin reputations.”

Hermes jerked his head towards the open door. “They’re waiting, and trust me, that’s not good.”

“Well in that case, lead on.”

Coyote allowed them to escort him along the corridor to an elevator. The public didn’t ride this one. It was private. It went to the summit of the Olympus, where the gods dwelled.

Once in the elevator, Coyote cocked his head, listening to a voice only he could hear. “No, it’s all right. Go on. Say hello. Don’t be shy.”

Coyote’s anus let out a deep, vibrato fart.

“Sorry,” he said, giving the Breeze Brothers an embarrassed shrug, and waving a hand under his nose. “What can I say, he’s a big fan.”

One of the gods scowled, made a small gesture, and a gentle breeze wafted round the elevator herding the noxious expulsion to the floor.

The doors opened and they stepped out onto the sixty-eighth floor, not so much where the gods dwelled, but where the gods did business. It was a large white pillared space, flooded with light, bounded as it was on three sides by floor to ceiling windows that looked out over Las Vegas. The fourth was a frescoed wall, in the middle of which was a set of wooden double doors, in the Grecian style. In the centre was what looked like a marble altar, although the position of a chair behind it and white leather sofa in front suggested it was actually a desk.

The doors swung open and a dwarf walked in with a rolling gait. He had an ugly scrunched face of dusky Hindu complexion, at odds with the immaculately tailored white suit he wore. He had the demeanour of a man who was extremely busy and had little time for all this.

Coyote frowned. “You’re not Apollo. I thought he ran this place in his father’s stead. Where is the guy with the swan fetish, anyway? I hear no one’s seen him in over a decade.”

He was looking for weak points, buttons to press.

“Apollo isn’t going to trouble himself over an animistic brat like you, trickster,” said the dwarf. “I’m Kubera, Treasurer of the Gods. I run the Olympus for the Greek Pantheon, Mr Coyote. Or do you prefer Raven, or perhaps Wakdjunkaga. Heyeohkah, maybe?”

Coyote feigned nonchalance, trailing a finger along the back of the white leather sofa as he walked round it.

“Kai is fine.”

The Breeze Brothers placed Coyote’s confiscated winnings on the marble desk. An offering, or evidence?

Coyote hadn’t been invited to sit, so he sat, arms stretched out along the back of the sofa, his right ankle resting on his left knee, his crotch open and obvious. Despite the rather slack empty feeling in his jeans, and the nagging sense of loss, Coyote was enjoying himself. This had all the hallmarks of a shakedown. And he should know. They probably needed his help and wanted to make sure they got it, that’s all. They wanted a little insurance, so they sent Little Miss Fleetfoot here to kidnap his pecker and hold it to ransom. It was classic. Boring, but classic. A bit of praise wouldn’t have gone amiss, though. It always oiled the wheels. But, you know, gods. They didn’t want to look soft.

“So, is this the point where you tell me I’ll get my penis back if I do your dirty work for you?” he asked. “What is it, some inter-pantheon shenanigans? I expect you need Plausible Deniability. And a trickster.”

“I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Kubera, settling himself awkwardly into the chair behind the desk.

“You
don’t
want my help?”

“Whatever for? We have Hermes. He’s Pantheon. He knows the meaning of loyalty.”

“Then if Hermes didn’t take my penis, who did?” Perplexed, Coyote got up and started to pace.

Kubera, watching him like a snake, said nothing.

Coyote stopped and clicked his fingers. “I know. Uranus! He hasn’t got his own. Not since his son Cronos castrated him, and mine would make a fine replacement. But, you know, seriously. Eww.”

Kubera’s faced darkened. “Be warned, trickster, this isn’t the Farm. There is no neutrality here. Your calumny may have consequences.”

Ignoring him, Coyote waved a finger, his mind racing. “Wait. I know. It’s those Fate triplets, isn’t it? The Graeae, the ones who have to share the eye. They’re sharing my pecker and going all futanari on each other’s asses.” He fell silent, lost for a moment in a personal reverie.

Kubera fidgeted in his chair with increasing irritation. “I took you to be a more spiritual being.”

“Oh, I am, when I’m at one. Unfortunately I’m not. I’m at two, at the very least.” Coyote planted his hands on the desk, leaned forward in earnest and cocked his head. “Are you sure you don’t have my penis?”

Kubera met his gaze. “I have told you, trickster. We don’t have it. That is entirely your own problem. You leave your valuables unattended at your own risk. Besides, if you will carry it around in a pouch, that’s your own lookout. No, I called you up here on an entirely different matter.”

“Oh,” said Coyote. His shoulders slumped under the weight of disappointment.

Kubera leaned forward, one hand patting the untidy pile of money and chips. “You have been using your talents to beat the house down in the casino. If you hadn’t spent most of the money on one of our most luxurious suites, and if we hadn’t recovered this, then we would have a bigger problem than we do already. Lucky for you there’s enough left to cover the bill for the nymphs that you enjoyed last night. You know there are rules here. Gods don’t avail themselves of the public casino.”

“Odds are stacked, are they? The house always wins.”