Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Blood, Sex and Magik ❯ Chapter 11

Blood, Sex and Magik: Falling Angel

"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."

To be continued....