The Cyberkink Sideshow (15 page)

“That’s his car, over there.” Sylvia pointed to the dark saloon car pulled up at the curb.

“Go past it and find somewhere to stop,” Victor suggested.

Vaughn pulled into the car park of a tower block. He switched off the engine and lights.

“Go on, then,” he told the snake-charmer lady. “Your number’s up.”

The woman got out of the car and pushed the door closed silently behind her. She stalked across the concrete in her high-heeled boots, brushing her long black hair from her face with the back of one hand. With a dull click, Vaughn opened his door slightly, leaving it ajar.

Sylvia leaned over Max and wound down the back window. Pikesley had stopped just short of a streetlamp hidden by the corner of the building, leaving his car in easy sight. The edge of the high-rise cast the car park in inky shadow.

The woman approached the open passenger window. She leaned her elbows on the sill and pushed her face and breasts through the gap. She said something Sylvia didn’t catch, what with her head in the car. She straightened and stared at the rear of Pikesley’s car and said something about a puncture.

Pikesley’s graying light-brown hair looked sickly in the streetlight as he got out of the car and walked around examine the back tire. As the superintendent bent over, Vaughn pushed open his door. He slipped out into shadow, a hessian bag gripped in both hands, its opening folded over into a loose tire. Vaughn was out of the shadow in two strides, and he flung the bag down over Pikesley’s head at the same instant the woman took hold of his arm and sidestepped. Her ankle had hooked around his, pulling his leg across his body when she moved. Pikesley flung out his arms as he lost his balance and Vaughn wrenched them behind his back and bound them there.

Vaughn dragged the hostage back to the Jeep while the woman switched off Pikesley’s car’s engine and shut the door. Behind Sylvia, the Jeep’s boot door was flung open and Pikesley landed on his back behind the seats, on top of a tarpaulin and an assortment of plywood boards.

The vehicle’s suspension lurched as Vaughn reseated himself at the wheel. The snake woman ran back to the car and got into the passenger seat. Behind the back seat, Pikesley made muffled yells of indignation. Max turned his head to look over the headrest and let out a low bark.

“Let’s get the hell out of here.” Vaughn reached for the keys under the wheel. The start-up motor whinnied and the engine roared to life. Vaughn pulled away with a squeal of tires. Pikesley rolled up against the back of the boot door with a thud. Max lost his balance and slipped forward on the seat, one of his forelegs sliding into the foot well. He scrambled back up and barked again at Pikesley, louder this time.

“What’s the matter with him?” Victor shouted over the noise of Vaughn’s driving.

Sylvia put her hand out to Max. “What’s wrong, lad?”

Max pulled away from her and barked again, now at full volume. Sylvia put her fingers to the interface on her forehead and synced herself to his signal.

“Does he recognize the smell from the dungeon?” said Victor.

“No, it’s not that. He’s smelled Pikesley before, several times in the station.” Pikesley didn’t seem to care for dogs, and with Max the feeling had been mutual. But this was more than Max merely disliking Pikesley. It wasn’t a smell either. It was an electromagnetic signature the dog had picked up.

“It’s electronic contraband,” she realized.

Back at the garden festival, Vaughn hauled Pikesley to his feet and pushed him ahead into the tents and down the stairs to the dungeon. He manacled his arms to the metal spider-web wheel before pulling the bag off his head.

Pikesley squinted about the room, his hair bristling with static. “Price! You’ll never work in this country again!”

Max began to bark again, at Pikesley. Sylvia pressed her hands to his chest on either side, just under his arms, and slid them down. She came upon an odd lump in the pocket of his expensive jacket. When she reached inside to take it out, she recognized it as a memory bank, the same as the sort she’d seen in his office. Max stretched his nose toward the device and began to whine.

“What are you doing hanging around the red-light district with
this
?” Sylvia demanded.

Pikesley gave his arms a useless yank against the restraints. “I’m your superior; I don’t have to answer to you!”

“Yes, you do,” said Victor from where he stood just behind Sylvia. His voice was not loud, but it had a certain power to it that commanded the attention of everyone in the room. “Because this is my Sideshow. It doesn’t work the same way your world outside does. In here, I make the rules.”

Pikesley looked past Sylvia and at Victor. He scowled. “Fat...
pirate
...freak!”

Vaughn stepped over to a coat rack hanging by the steps with leather costumes and whips hanging from it. He pulled off the tight t-shirt he’d worn while driving and put his executioner’s hood back on.

Something had moved above the entrance to the stairs, blotting the light there. “You two!” Vaughn called up. “Want to join us?”

The Hermaphrodite Twins descended into view. Both wore ordinary clothes, and without their masks it was obvious they weren’t in actuality related at all, although it was still not obvious which sex either might have started life as.

“You’re not coming in my dungeon dressed like that!” Vaughn roared. “Go and put your costumes on!”

The pair disappeared back up the stairs. While they waited for them to return, Pikesley’s breathing became very noisy and his Adam’s apple began to jerk up and down under the skin of his throat.

He mouthed for words for several seconds before finding his voice. “You’d be mad...to do anything...to hurt me.”

Vaughn’s jaw clenched into a grin. “If you like, I’ll give you the number of that bird who sectioned me. You can discuss it with her.” He grabbed a pair of surgical scissors off a table and began hacking Pikesley’s clothes off him. He cut as little as possible, relying mainly on grabbing the superintendent’s shirt and trousers and ripping them off him.

“You
fucking
pervert!” Pikesley yelled as Vaughn scissored the seams of his hideous Paisley y-fronts and flipped them onto the floor. Sylvia stared at Pikesley’s naked body as Vaughn turned away and began to sort through racks of nasty metal implements. He had sparse chest hair that ran in a denser line down his navel and into the graying, unsavory pubic mop from which his tackle dangled. From the definition around his stomach and pectorals and biceps, she divined he probably worked out. He had no tattoos, no piercings, no unusual features to make his body unique and interesting, no soft fatty areas to play with and probe with one’s fingers. He was sterile and bland, boring, ordinary, unsexy.

Vaughn turned back to face Pikesley. He held a digital camera, and it looked little and silly in his huge gauntleted hands. “Would anyone care to pose with this ’orrible chap?”

First the snake charmer and his ladies posed next to Pikesley. One of the ladies held Pikesley’s dick and the other held a snake. Then the zebra woman posed with her bosom in his face, her back turned to the camera to show off her broad, striped flanks and tail. The Hermaphrodite Twins, who had returned in their costumes, then posed on either side of him, and the contortionist sat on his shoulders naked with her legs wrapped around his neck. All the time Pikesley yelled and made noises of protest and disgust. Finally Vaughn handed the camera to Sylvia and posed next to the hostage, holding up his cat-o’-nine-tails in one hand and a thumbs-up in the other.

“Now,” said Sylvia, “if you should try to accuse anyone here of anything, we will happily email these photographs to all the major tabloids in the country.” She passed the camera to the zebra woman. “Make sure this is backed up in a few safe places.”

After the woman had gone, Vaughn spun the wheel over a few times, apparently deliberating what to do with Pikesley. Leaving the wheel turning slowly, he strode over to one of the racks and selected something.

“Ever seen one of these before?” Vaughn held a long thin sound close to Pikesley’s face. “It’s a...” He gave his other hand a dismissive wave. “Never mind, you’ll see what it’s for.”

He reached up and grabbed Pikesley by the cock. The superintendent screamed and his body went rigid the instant the steel began to press into him. “Stop! I’ll tell you whatever you want to know! Please!”

“All right,” said Sylvia. She motioned for Vaughn to step down. “Who stole Victor’s fish and planted it with those memory banks?”

“Some guy I know who I told to plant them. You don’t really think I go to Highfields so I can fuck
whores
?”

“Who is this
guy
?” Victor asked.

“I don’t know his name.” Pikesley’s eyes darted from side to side. “I helped him. He wanted to kill prostitutes, so I schooled him in when and where to do it so it would be overlooked and how to destroy the evidence trail, and I twisted a few arms when investigations down the station looked to be cutting too close.”

“You conniving piece of scum!” Vaughn burst out.

“They’re drug-addicted whores!” Pikesley’s face turned redder than it already was from being suspended upside down. “They’re poisoning our society. You want your kids growing up in a world where they’re allowed to carry that on?”

“They’re humans, the same as you and I!” Victor shouted.

“Wait,” said Sylvia. “Don’t let him drag your emotions into it. There’s something else, isn’t there, Pikesley? This ‘guy’ isn’t through yet. You were going to meet him, to give him that memory bank, weren’t you? What’s on the memory bank and what’s he going to do with it?”

Pikesley relaxed his neck and grimaced. He didn’t speak.

Vaughn picked up a P-spot stimulator and leered at him. Pikesley’s mouth jerked back into action. “It’s information on the construction of different types of information terrorist weapons. He’s...he’s going to plant a Compton bomb tomorrow.” The superintendent’s speech segued into breathless laughter, which intensified into loud, humorless guffaws.

Sylvia looked away from him, turning wordlessly to Victor, his face full of alarm.

Vaughn spun the wheel over, righting Pikesley, and untied him from the wheel. “Get this worthless bastard out of my sight,” he ordered the Hermaphrodite Twins.

As they dragged Pikesley up the steps, Victor said, “Compton bomb. How much do you know about Compton bombs?”

“There are a few different types,” Sylvia recounted her training on the matter. “The older types physically detonate. Something like that could kill everyone in the vicinity.”

Victor shrugged. “It’s no good then. They’ve won. We’ll have to cancel tomorrow’s event. We’ll lose no end of money.”

“No, wait. You’ve got two options. Either we close the Sideshow and avoid the risk, and let this terrorist murderer go free to murder and commit acts of terrorism again, or we don’t let them get the better of us, and we open as usual and we use it to make damn well sure we trap him and stop him for good.”

Victor stared at her for several moments. “What makes you sure you can find this man?”

Sylvia reached out to touch Max’s head where he stood beside her. “Because my dog knows what he smells like.”

Victor rested his thumbs on his belt and shifted his weight onto one heel. He looked confident and sexy in that pose. Sylvia pushed back down the urge to tear his pirate costume off and have her way with him then and there. “We’re going to have to really think this through. I don’t know I’d be prepared to take that risk with members of the public. Let’s talk in my caravan.”

He moved toward the stairs. “I’ll catch you up there later,” Sylvia told him. She waited until the others had gone. There was something she wanted to ask the dungeon master.

“Vaughn, did you know I was the same person when you saw me in the auction, after I’d been down here the night before?”

Vaughn didn’t avert his eyes from her and his expression did not change. “Aye.”

“Why didn’t you tell Victor?”

“’Cause I knew you were curious and you meant well.” He pulled his lips into a sardonic grin, eyebrows flexing under his mask. “I mean, everyone was vanilla once.”

Chapter 8

Victor wore a traditional ringmaster’s costume when he strode into the ring on Saturday night: a purple velvet jacket with gold brocade and frogging, fawn leggings, patent leather jackboots, a lime-green cummerbund, a black hat with a similar lime-green band around it and an oversize bow tie in lurid stripes. He looked majestic.

No sooner had he begun his opening speech, he was interrupted by the lewd clowns, in a garish Reliant Robin done up like a burger van. They threw kebabs and fried onions about and made hot dog ketchup buns with unmentionable parts of their anatomies.

Sylvia, Max and Vaughn watched the opening events from behind the entrance curtain. They’d left Pikesley handcuffed to a wall in Vaughn’s dungeon. He had sworn and spat at Vaughn when he had brought him a ham sandwich and a metal dog bowl with water in it.

“Are you not in any of the events?” Sylvia asked.

Vaughn waved a hand dismissively and made a rude blowing noise between slack lips. “I don’t like all that slapstick rubbish and cheering. It’s more Victor’s thing. BDSM should be scary and made of metal and leather, not clowns and fruit trifles.” He glanced back at the other performers seated about the room. “Besides, who’d get this lazy lot organized backstage?” He put his hand to his cat-o’-nine-tails and grinned demonically.