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concealed door. She slipped out into the corridor, then ran down the steps
leading to the dungeons.
It didn't take long for Liam McMurphy to grow bored with sitting in his cab.
The
meter was still running, but he had long since given up on getting paid. He
grimaced at it with disgust and turned it off. A short distance away, he
could
see some of the other chauffeurs gathered together, having a smoke and
drinking
coffee that had been sent out to them. Being a cabbie, he didn't much feel
like
hobnobbing with the chauffeurs they were paid more than cab-drivers and
tended
to be snobbish about it but he could use a cup of coffee, so he opened the
door
and got out of the cab.
A couple passing by, arm in arm, out for a moonlight stroll, stared at him
strangely as he got out of the cab. He glanced down at himself, wondering if
perhaps he'd left his fly open, but everything seemed to be in order, and he
set
out toward the knot of chauffeurs standing perhaps twenty or thirty yards
away.
"Hello, lads," he said, coming up to them. "Any more of that good coffee,
then?"
They all fell silent and stared at him, giving him a onceover. "Who the devil
are you?" one of them said.
"Oh, I'm one o' your lot," Liam said. "Drove a party over in that limo over
there." He pointed back toward his cab.
"What, dressed like that?" said one of the other chauffeurs with obvious
disbelief.
"Here, how did you get in here?" another said.
Liam glanced down at himself, and men it dawned on him that he obviously
appeared to these chauffeurs the way he really looked. The spell that gave
him
the appearance of a chauffeur must have been placed around the cab! The
moment
he had left it, everyone saw him exactly as he really was.
"Ah, never mind," he said, backing away. "I wasn't really thirsty, anyway."
He turned and plunged into the garden shrubbery. Damn it all, he thought,
that-wizard might've told me it only worked while I was in the bloody cab!
Then
he heard a moan coming from close by. He stepped out of the bushes onto a
garden
path and saw a man dressed in neo-medieval costume sitting doubled over on a
stone bench.
"Here, are you all right?" said Liam.
The man turned an unfocused gaze up to him and moaned. His eyes and his
breath
told the complete story.
"Too much to drink, eh?" Liam said. "Some fellas just can't hold it."
As if in agreement, the drunk moaned again, then pitched forward off the
bench
and onto his face. Liam prodded him gently with his toe. There was no
response.
Liam turned him over on his back. The drunk had passed out.
"Well, I guess you've had your partyin' for this night," Liam said. "Too bad.
Looks like things are just warmin' up in there." He glanced back toward the
castle, then looked down at the unconscious man, who was just about his size.
"An' I'll bet they serve a good drink too," he said thoughtfully.
He glanced down at the unconscious drunk again. "Ah, well, my dear ol' Dad
always told me, 'Liam, never waste an opportunity to advance yourself. An' if
this here isn't an opportunity starin' me straight in the face, I just don't
know what is."
He bent down and started to remove the drunken man's clothes.
Royce had never seen anything like it. The corridor they passed through
opened
out into an underground chamber designed to resemble a small cavern. The
floor
was gleaming black veined marble, but the ceiling looked like the rock roof of
a
cave, complete with small stalactites hanging down. There was a carved stone
dais at the back, flanked by huge stone idols that looked like ancient
Egyptian
deities, human figures with the heads of beasts. In the center of the floor
was
a round, gold-inlaid circle with a golden pentagram inside it. Placed around
the
perimeter of the circular room were Roman-style couches and floor cushions.
Bronze braziers stood evenly interspersed around the room, with two large
ones
on either side of the stone dais. Behind the dais, carved in relief on the
wall
was a pyramid with an eye inside it. The entire surface of the carving
appeared
to be covered in hammered gold.
My God, thought Royce as the blond girl led him to a couch, Carfax was being
absolutely literal when he was talking about men being nothing more than boys
with more sophisticated toys. He was so overwhelmed with how elaborate the
whole
thing was that he couldn't even speak. What on earth was there to say? Before
he
had seen this, if anyone had told him that some of the richest and most
powerful
men in England, peers, heads of corporations, respected jurists, even
ministers,
dressed up in black robes and gathered in a secret underground grotto hidden
beneath a rebuilt medieval castle, where they participated in elaborate
orgies
with lissome young girls, he would have said it was preposterous.
All right, perhaps not totally preposterous. A few among them easily could
have
had some secret vices along such lines, but for so many of them to actually
join
together and openly participate in such a thing as if they were debauched
Roman
senators and Carfax a reincarnation of Caligula, it was simply mind-boggling!
He
had known some of these men for years. They were all men of position with
families; he never would have believed this. He wanted to go over to Bob
Paddington and ask him what in hell was going on, but Paddington was
ensconced
upon one of the couches with a brunette, and Royce could only gape at what
was
going on.
Then the next thing he knew, the blonde was pushing him back down onto the
couch
and fastening her mouth on his. He felt her warm tongue probing between his
lips, and it was with an effort that he gently pushed her away. His heart was
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