The Hybrid Cycle: Volume 1

1: Gasper the Rasper

Tania called him "The Prince," but never out loud.

The Prince had good manners and didn't argue price. His blond hair and angel face were almost feminine in their beauty.  Elegant.  A nearly discomforting exquisiteness, like an aristocrat with a taste for strange flesh.

He could have modeled, she thought, if not for the rest of him.

A thick and pink-rimmed scar ran across The Prince's throat like a mountain range on a topographical map. It lacked surgical precision.

When it came to such things, Tania's golden rule was "Don't Ask."

She catered to all kinds of men. Vanilla husbands desperate with boredom. Mob capos who needed a strict, attentive mommy. Men who lived in the cold gray fringes that only occurred to normal people when watching late-night shock TV.

 Experience taught her that the fewer questions, the better.

He knelt, shirtless, his hands cuffed behind him. Not padded cuffs, but sharp-edged metal that jutted into the wristbone.  Black-coated, triple-hinged steel. Most men preferred the cushiony insides of the play variety.  The Prince, however, had been specific about his wants from the beginning.  Almost like reading from a script.

When he spoke, his voice was a grating half-whisper. It unnerved her.

"Tell me what I am."

"You're not a real man," she said, sliding fully in character. 

Tania the Master Bitch. Tania the Pitiless. Devourer of Men...and their wallets.

"I certainly wouldn't let a spineless peon like you lace my boots.  Not a worthless, milksop half-person."

He made a sound like someone straining to breathe through a gas mask. Animal lust. A jungle cat being jeered at from outside of a cage and liking it. 

She caressed his shoulder with the short-tail whip.  The workbench part of the session would start soon.  It made her queasy to strike him, but she always did.  It wasn't because she felt sorry, but rather that she never quite felt in control.  He'd never done anything to justify the feeling.  It simply was.

His head snapped up. 

The Prince's pale blue eyes gazed with an almost reptilian sense of focus into the middle distance. He cocked his head slightly, first in one direction, then another. A predator listening for scurrying feet in the underbrush.

"Stop," he said. 

Brusque.  Commanding.

When he stood Tania stifled the urge to backstep. His body expanded in space like the hard-muscled statue of a god of war. On his abdomen and chest stretched a tattoo of an Oriental-style peacock, the tail-fan spanning an enormous distance from shoulder-to-shoulder.

She gasped when she saw the handcuffs on the ground. They were law-enforcement grade. She'd put them on tight.

"Pardon me, Tania.  I have to apologize for this... sudden intermission.  I hope you'll stay here to complete our session."

She nodded silently.

****

Gasper stepped out of the dungeon and into the hallway of a musty apartment complex.  Antique White walls that had yellowed into a color like droning sleeplessness.  Cheap fluorescent lights buzzed like mechanical cicadas. 

He was still shirtless. 

He'd been waiting five minutes when a well-dressed man in chic, thin-rimmed glasses walked down the hall.

"I felt you were close, Mikhail," Gasper said. "Admittedly, I can't burrow my way into your thoughts, but you've got a focus that sounds like a buzzsaw. Very singular. Did you know that?"

He smiled. Not a friendly smile, but Gasper's smiles rarely were. "You also found me so easily. I won't ask how."

Urbane, distinguished Franklin Mikhail sized him up.

Gasper the Rasper. Unique, even among his own strange tribe. He would be rapturous when he heard the news. They needed Gasper's talents badly.

"It's good to see you. I'm pleased to say that I come as a bearer of glad tidings." Franklin's voice was mildly continental. An educated man about his business.

Silence passed between them. Gasper tried to bore into the older man's headspace but found him unpleasantly resistant.

"We have a lead. A farmer in a dreadfully obscure town. He happened upon some vagrant trying to steal tractor parts. Nothing remarkable in-itself, but there's something interesting. The physical description he gave made the police think he'd sipped a little bit too much corn-whiskey... or whatever awful libation they prefer down in Linell, Kentucky."

"Abraham?" replied Gasper. The smile disappeared. He uncrossed his arms and stepped closer to Franklin, his eyes fixed on the older man like the cross-hairs of a weapon.

"It appears so," Franklin said, pleased with the effect. "I'm only telling you because we supposed you'd take a personal interest in the matter. A very personal interest."

Another silence.  Gasper's smile returned. He reached up and caressed the gash across his throat as if he were stroking a kitten.

"I hear it's beautiful down south this time of year."

"Quite. Just one small condition, however.  Whatever you do, make it quiet,"Franklin said. "We, of course, will handle the cleanup. There's even been talk of extending your privileges. More girls, Gasper."

With this, Gasper turned back towards the door. Over his shoulder, almost as an aside, he said "Speaking of cleanups, I think I may need one in ... let's say twenty minutes.  I've felt so repressed as of late.  A person of my temperament needs a lot of release, Franklin."

It was the older man's turn to be unnerved.

"You've got to be kidding me?"

Franklin knew that he wasn't.

***

A half-hour later, men wearing green coveralls emblazoned with "B-Sure Pest Control" wheeled an oversized pushcart to the door of an apartment in the Bronx. The building was in poor shape - a refuge for welfare cases and semi-functional addicts.

An old woman in a paisley headscarf walked by them. "We got roaches again?" she asked loudly. The inflection of the near deaf.  A nosy old bird with nothing better to do.

"Just this unit ma'am." a man replied. He had a serious face and a clean, regulation buzzcut. 

When Headscarf Lady had dawdled back to her unit - mumbling to herself in the manner of the borderline senile - they tried the door and found it unlocked. The first man who entered the room made a forceful retching sound. 

 He was a professional, but it simply could not be helped.

Four hours later they left, wheeling the same pushcart.