*******

Kael picked up a tail as soon as she left the seedy hotel. At first, she left the man alone, enjoying the simple feral pleasure the chase gave her. Leading the guard further and further down into the squalid areas of the city, she ducked in and out of dank alleyways, doubling back and covering her tracks. The man was very good and managed to keep up with her until Kael hid in a narrow alley, deep within the shadows of a towering building. As he took a step past her concealment, she rose an arm to grab him around the neck, changing in mid-stride to instead jab at his unprotected neck with the stiffened fingers of both hands.

Her eyes opened in shock as the man slumped to his knees, gasping. “Well, whadda ya know. It really works.” Squatting down on her haunches, a sneer curling her lips, Kael patted the hapless man’s cheek. “Well Chang, or whatever the fuck your name is, I’ve just cut off the flow of blood to your brain.” She cocked her head, her features assuming a mockingly sympathetic cast. “And to tell ya the truth, I’m not too sure I know how to undo it.” She grinned. “So how ‘bout if we do this. You take a message back to your master for me, and I use the remaining time trying to figure out how to undo this thing before you join your ancestors right here in this alley. Huh? Sound good to you?”

The man’s head bobbed and nodded as if it were on a spring. A thick line of blood flowed slowly from one nostril.

Kael put one finger up to the man’s nose, trailing through the blood and rubbing it between her fingers. Her sneer widened. “Now that’s a pretty sight.” She came in closer to the man, her lips almost touching his ear. “Now, here’s what I want you to do. You tell your master that I don’t need anyone following me around his city. Tell him the next idiot he sends won’t get off near as lucky as you. Got it?”

The man nodded again, gasping and moaning, his eyes pleading with her.

“Good.” Bringing both hands up to her face, Kael extended the first two fingers of each, stared at them, then shrugged. “Well, here goes nothin’.” In a lightning fast move, she jabbed at his pressure points. The hold broke and the man slumped to the concrete pavement, groaning aloud and panting for the breath he’d lost.

Rising to her feet, Kael smiled down at him. “Sleep tight,” she intoned as she delivered a sharp kick to his exposed head. The man’s body flew against the opposite wall and fell limp to the ground. Mouing her lips in mock sympathy, Kael blew on her still extended fingers, twirled them like she was twirling a gun and jammed them down by her sides. “Score one for the bad guys.”

Stepping out of the alley, Kael sauntered deeper into the bowels of the city, led on by the sweet scent of opium as it wafted gently into the still night air. The three months that she spent in horrid withdrawal from cocaine and other drugs she had started taking to distract her mind from the gnawing pain of her shattered legs were among the worst she’d ever known. Geraldo had stuck with her throughout, bathing her sweating body with cool, clean water, changing her fouled clothes, enduring her beatings and raving shouts as she demanded just one hit, just one line, anything to subdue the agony roaring through her body and mind.

If she hadn’t been so ill, the true irony of the situation would have amused Kael no end. That she would be lying on a bed brought with money from the very drugs she was unable now to consume. That she was being comforted by the very man who made his living pulling others into his net of fast highs and faster deaths. The irony escaped her at the time, however, so great was her need.

Now she was going back into that seductive trap with her eyes open, knowing full well what might lay in wait for her at the end of the line. This time it was her craving for power and not the overwhelming need to forget that led her here, to the deepest, darkest part of the city where her kindred spirits dwelled.

Passing several drug houses, she finally stopped at one that seemed to meet her needs for the evening. At first, her way was barred by two thick-set men who stared at her and her foreign features as if she had come from another solar system entirely. With a flash of her smile and a ruffling of cash, the way cleared before her as if she were Moses and her cash the staff which parted the sea of suspicion. She walked through the place as if she owned it, and if truth will out, she would one day, stalking up to the bar and laying a slim bundle of currency on the stained surface. “A clean pipe and an ounce of your best,” she ordered imperiously, smirking as the proprietor stared at the money with wide, almond eyes.

The requested items appeared magically before her and Kael grinned as she swept them into her hands, leaving a generous tip for the man before making her way to a relatively unoccupied corner of the dark room. It took mere minutes to set things up to her liking and soon the stem of the pipe was between her full lips and she was dragging the sweet, pungent taste of oblivion deep into her lungs.

The drugs hit her cleaned-out system powerfully, a muted buzz humming from her heart outward, tingling through her limbs and swaddling her in a cocoon of warmth and bliss. “Woah,” she said softly, blowing the smoke out into the room, “that’s more like it.”

A few more hits and she was ready to look around and so she did, taking in the looks of casual disinterest emitted from glazed eyes. She kept her own expression carefully non-committal, inviting no one, yet spurning none. Her cool façade seemed to calm them and the patrons went back to their own oblivions-in-the-making, none the worse for wear. Kael knew that there would soon come a time where she would use both her cash and the allure of her western body like a siren, drawing the men into her web and seducing information from their small minds. But for now, she was content to simply let both the drug and the muted conversation wash over her like a warm wave, picking up small bits of information and storing them in that part of her mind that remained very much awake and aware. Time enough to put plans in motion later. Now was for laying subtle groundwork and ingratiating herself, by her very aloofness, into a society she soon hoped to possess.

Thoroughly satisfied with her lot in life at the moment, Kael stood to her full height, stuffing the remainder of the drug into the front pocket of her jeans for later consumption. The world tilted oddly for a moment and she braced herself against the head-rush as casually as she was able. Once she was sure she could navigate without difficulty, the tall American walked through the small room, stopping only once to slip a generous tip into the hands of the surprised doormen. Then, with a spring in her step and a jaunty whistle on her lips, Kael made her way back through the city to where her tiny bed awaited.

*******

Sitting straddled in a high-backed, thoroughly uncomfortable, wooden chair, Geraldo checked the luminous numbers on the bedside clock yet again. His anger had long ago given way to fear, paranoia, and finally a sense of the inevitable. Kael was out there, somewhere, doing God knew what with God knew whom. In his younger days, he doubtless would have let his anger spur him into a building by building search of his wayward lover and, upon finding her, let his sharp tongue and sharper fists do his talking for him.

He sighed, putting his head in his hands. All those previously used tactics went nowhere with the thoroughly beautiful, thoroughly charming, thoroughly exasperating woman who captured and held his heart effortlessly. Trying to tame Kael was like trying to rope the wind: impossible. Just when you thought you had a handle on it, it would change direction and dance laughingly just out of your reach. He sighed once more, looking again at the clock which seemed to taut him from its place on the scarred nightstand. With an arching fist and a guttural yell, he smashed the timepiece into tiny bits of protesting plastic and circuitry, then batted it against the far wall with a sweep of his strong arm. “Damn it, Kael!” he shouted into the silent room. “Where are you?”

The door chose that moment to slam open and Kael sauntered in, a faintly amused grin on her full lips. “Why Geraldo,” she said, eyes wide in mocking sympathy, “I’m right here!” The smile bloomed fully on her face as she brushed past her dark-haired lover and dropped her rangy frame down onto the lumpy bed, bouncing a few times for effect.

Geraldo shot to his feet, his anger slamming down onto him like an iron bar dropped from on high. “Where the fuck have you been all this time!” he shouted. “I’ve been worried sick! You don’t just … .” His diatribe trailed off as he noticed the condition of his lover for the first time. The smile remained firmly in place on her face and her striking eyes were glazed over, slightly reddened. “You’re stoned!”

“Sure am,” Kael replied happily. “Right out of my fucking gourd. And ya know what, Geraldo? It feels goooood.” Leaning back on her elbows, she eyed him coquettishly from beneath half-lowered lids. Freeing one hand, she dug it into the pocket of her jeans, producing the baggie filled with opium and holding it up between her thumb and forefinger. “Want some?”

“Why you … .” One hand shot out to grab the stash while the other one attempted a blindside hit to Kael’s sneering face. Neither tactic was successful and the drug lord quickly found himself flat on his back, a widely grinning Kael straddling his waist, the drug still safely in her possession.

“I’m in a very good mood right now, Geraldo,” Kael explained to her pinned captive. “But that could change in an instant.” She looked down at him, one ebony eyebrow raised. “You wouldn’t want to make me angry now, would you?”