Love Me or Kill Me Read online

  “Oh, Cable….you are wonderful. You just helped me release tons of—of anxiety that had been building and building in me…for weeks…”

  “What is it that has you running scared? I see it in your dad, too. Your Mother seems to be elsewhere.”

  “Oh, Mother is capable of blanking everything out. Not me.” Then she went back to her slower, seductive voice. “But right now…Mr. Denning…private dick…I am cancelling out the world…with you…and you know what, handsome?”

  “No, pretty doll, tell me.”

  “I’m really, really happy. I haven’t been happy for a long time. It’s your presence. Even if you don’t live very long in this world…you were stuffing…a lot of quality into me a few minutes ago. God, Cable, now I smell of you…that wonderful male essence smell.” She breathed in deeply. “Do you know what it feels like to have a man’s juices combine with yours—and to feel a part of him all over?”

  “No, I can’t exactly say I’ve experienced that, Eden. Remember, I’m the wrong sex for it.” No wonder she ran a bordello, she was so damn sexually fixated.

  She giggled and threw her warm body onto mine, putting her arms fully around my neck. “Stay with me, Cable. A week—a month…I’ve plenty of money. We can even go away—”

  “—I can’t, doll. You’ve forgotten why I’m here. You said it yourself, your Dad paid me big bucks to help you get away—and I’ve got to stay on task here, babe.” I was also thinking of Adora and her beautiful sincere eyes, that glowing heart that made me always want to come home to her. “And besides, there’s someone in my life I care a lot about.”

  The corners of her mouth turned down. “Oh…there always is…isn’t there?” Then she rolled off the bed, put on a robe and lit up a cigarette. She dropped all the pretensions of her affected, seductive voice. “Oh, well, I’m a fair actress anyhow, aren’t I? I fooled you for a few minutes, you know, pretending to desire you and all, enjoying your manhood, faking an orgasm—I’m pretty good, huh?”

  “Yeah, you could’ve fooled me, kid,” I said, full well knowing she had pretended none of it except her phony vamp-like voice. “I was really into you—if you’ll pardon the expression—and felt the same from you.”

  “All a sham, I’m afraid. I’m the great pretender, Mr. Denning. I’m many personalities all rolled up into one. At least for a man, that can be exciting. So I’m an expensive whore with selective tastes. Big deal.” She took a deep drag on her cigarette. “Truth is, I enjoyed you…but I’ve got to reject you—pfft! out of my life. Do you know why? Sincerity kills me. I can’t stand honest, truthful lovemaking. And yours was, Cable Denning. It hurts too much.”

  “Tell me…what the hell happened way back there somewhere in your youth that scarred you inside, Eden?” I asked, getting myself dressed. “I sensed that same thing from your father, mother—and the same feeling also stalks the hallways of Neptunia. What about your sister? Is she also warped along with the rest of you?”

  “Warped, Cable? Warped? Ha! Zephyr has been out to lunch since the first day she almost drowned in the ocean at Santa Monica. I was four years old and there. I saw the panic, the brain damage later. My mother and father denied it, pushed it away, made up some insipid story about her being native to the sea world and supplied my sister with all the fantasies her drowned-out little brain could desire—to keep her out of a nuthouse.”

  “Okay, that takes care of Zephyr. What about you? What happened to you that you shrivel away when I bring it up?”

  “Well, I can’t say it, detective. Not even to myself. So, please…. leave it alone, if you don’t mind.”

  Whatever it was, the same pervasive evil seemed to infect the whole family. But in the end, none of it was any of my business. “Okay, doll, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push you.”

  She came over to me as I was putting my trench coat on. “I do think you’re handsome—and I do feel your essence still on me right now. Normally I’m a more careful girl. But I let you because I wanted you.”

  “I wondered about that. But I guess that’s a woman’s prerogative, isn’t it? I mean, who she lets in and who she doesn’t…”

  “Suffice it to say I don’t let anyone in very often. And as far as moving away to some strange land and starting over on my father’s whim…. forget it, Cable.”

  “I think it’s your father’s fear that drives him, Eden, not a whim. He’s running scared, or haven’t you noticed? Your keeping me in the dark about what happened way back when, makes it harder for me to do my job. I hope you understand that. Okay, so I work with a handicap. I’m used to it. You know what they say, ‘you can lead the horse to the water, but you can’t make him drink it…’ I think that’s you, young entrepreneur. I don’t know what has to happen to shake your house, but I don’t think it’s today. Maybe your sister will be more co-operative.”

  “Good luck,” she said rather harshly. “You may as well try and catch the wind, Mister—and after all, that’s what her name means—soft, summer wind.”

  “So it has nothing to do with the sea, then?”

  “Nope. Not a thing. My Dad’s fabrication—and my mother went along with him because she’s my mother and a bit ditzy in the head herself. Not crazy, just a flitter bug. You know why? Because my Dad stopped making love to her right after we were born. He always reminded us girls as we grew up that sex was solely for procreation—and when that was over, well, find something else to do. So guess what I did?”

  “You opened a whorehouse.”

  “Yep, only a clean, classy one would do for me, Mr. Private Detective. Hell, U.S. Senators often frequent my

  Place when they’re in town.”

  “You’re a lot tougher than I thought, Eden. But I also know when you made love to me, just for an instant, I felt a wonderful, warm woman surrender herself, actually feel she was being made love to and some light came through the dark.”

  “In your imagination…ask anyone who knows me, Cable. I’m as tough as nails and twice as mean when I’m crossed. You were looking at the frosting on the cake, not the insides.”

  “I don’t think so, kid. I’ve kicked the can around the block a few times.” I took a big breath and extended my hand to say good-bye. For an instant she lost herself again and came crashing into my arms, hugging me like a little girl who just lost her best friend.

  “I wish I was someone else, Cable!” she whimpered.

  “I’m—I’m not my brother’s keeper, Eden. Nor my sister’s savior, nor a knight in shining armor about to rescue the damsel.”

  She was crying as she backed away. “Don’t ever offer me just your hand, Cable. I don’t know what you do to me—or whether it’s that you’re a good person and I know it—or whether it’s your damn fancy patter, and you weave a spell with the tone of your voice. But I do want to hear it again someday…soon?”

  “Thanks, Eden, but I can’t guarantee that. Benedict Royce hired me to do a job and I’m on it—the best way I know how.” Her flipping back and forth bothered me, as if a polarity switch kept alternating inside her from hardness to tenderness.

  “Good-bye, Cable. Let me know how you make out with the other family members. And, oh, I thought I’d warn you—Zephyr has been known to not speak a word for days on end.”

  I left and as my taxi drove away into the night, I was thinking how crazy this world was and how damaged people get when some ingredient in the love barrel is left out and we grow up crippled. People are haunted by their own ghosts. I suspected Eden Royce was no exception. Sure, I had lots of ghosts shoved down deep inside me, those places we all like to avoid because when they erupt all hell breaks loose and our emotions make us sick. At thirty years of age I had more than my share. The thick calluses that had grown around my psyche from a rough childhood of fight or flight posed as a double-edged sword for me. On one hand they insulated me from the hard knocks most people can’t tolerate—but on the other, they hardened and numbed me, forced me to look into the eye of evil and the diabolical….. sitt
ing there in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE GIRL WHO LIVED IN A SEASHELL

  It was late when I walked up the steps to the landing. Suddenly I heard a shriek coming from my office. It sounded like Adora’s voice. I drew my .38, got out my key and came bursting in through the door. Adora was backed up against a wall on the far side of my desk while a short little creature was trying to calm her with arm gestures. It was Toggth! “Adora! It’s—it’s okay, babe. I know him.” I went to her and took her into my arms to calm her. She was trembling. “It’s alright—Toggth and I have had a few adventures together. He was looking for me—and he, uh, doesn’t enter or leave using conventional methods.”

  “Ay! Tuve mucho cuidado, entonces—yo soy temeroso, querido!” she exclaimed, out of breath.

  I left her and approached the little creature standing quietly a few feet from us. “Toggth! It’s good to see you, but you really can’t just appear and vanish in my office anymore. Adora’s living here with me until we can get a little house somewhere…”

  I looked back at Adora. This was news to her. I had been thinking about getting us a little place with the dough I had received from Benedict Royce. Maybe even invite her mother and sister to join us.

  “I’m sorry, Cable, I did not know.” Then he looked sympathetically at Adora. “Please, excuse my frightening you. I assumed Cable was alone and—”

  “—Adora, this is Toggth. He’s sort of an overseer for Lei-Tao. Remember, the Chinese gal I had the adventure with in San Francisco when you kidnapped me on the train?” I snickered.

  “Oh.”, was about all that my beautiful lady could say. Being a lover of danger herself, she stepped forward and offered her hand. “I am glad to meet you, señor. But you sure me espantaste—make me afraid.”

  The gentle Toggth took her hand and soon Adora settled down. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance, beautiful lady,” he said, pouring on the charm. Then he looked up at me with those warm little orange eyes of his. “Cable, we need to speak. In confidence.” I asked Adora to take the little box radio and go into the bedroom. She smiled gently at Toggth and left with the radio under her arm.

  “Yeah, my little lady sure got a start, you little son-of-a-gun, you. But I am glad to see you nevertheless. I think of you now and then. How’s Lei-Tao doing?”

  His face saddened. “She has gone back. A new one will take her place. The lotus has returned, Cable.”

  “You mean for another fourteen thousand years or so?”

  “Perhaps. Depends on the wellbeing of the Fen de Fuqin.”

  A place in my heart sank. I had become attached in a strange way to the exquisite Chinese Red Dragon Lady. “Well, just about now I wouldn’t take a bet on the safety of the precious capsule—there’ve been a lot of stirrings from you-know-who since Ravna got a few unexpected bullets in him, fired by the flying priests.”

  “Yes, Father Tortelli and his ‘Holy’ accomplices. But, as you know, others will come. Their supply of demons appears endless.”

  “So…what can I do to help? It seems our fates are kind of tossed together in this terrible grab-bag.”

  “The man who has hired you…Mr. Royce…was very high up on the human side of the Oculus. But he objected to something they did to him and his family many years ago—and he has since become an unwanted participant. His usefulness to them has come to an end.”

  I was surprised—but not really—that Toggth knew about Benedict Royce and his family. “Well, I guess I’ve got no secrets from you now, do I, Toggth?” I laughed. “And you keep turning up like an old song with bad lyrics.” I lit up a Lucky Strike. “So whatta we gonna do?”

  “I suggest you fulfill your pledge to Mr. Royce and remove them from the soil of the United States as soon as possible. That island opposite Nassau in the Bahamas might be a good place to begin. But you might also have to move them around from time to time—elsewhere…”

  “How in the hell do you know about all these things, Mister? Crap, I’m barely on top of them and here you’re coming out with all this stuff like you were reading it from a notepad.”

  “I guess I am, sort of. Anyway, the first thing is to see to the family, in my opinion. And please, don’t get involved with the daughters like you did Lei-Tao. Your presence in her life almost extinguished her lovely flame. Have some boundaries and propriety, despite your youth and drives.”

  I was rubbing my chin thinking of this evening’s sexual encounter with Eden Royce. “Hmmm….yeah, that’s good advice, Toggth…I really felt bad about Lei-Tao—passing the baby off and all—poor Ginny Fullerton had no clue.”

  “It wasn’t a baby, Cable—at least not in the normal sense. It was Lei-Tao’s insufficient attempt to bear you a human child as a token of her love for you. But it was doomed from the start. It was incinerated.”

  I winced a little. Even if the fetus, whatever it was, got destroyed promptly after Ginny’s delivering it, it was still a part of Lei-Tao and me. Why in the hell did it bother me? Crap, it was a monstrosity! Or was it?

  “I see,” I said looking out the window at headlights passing below.

  “Just so you know, Cable. I cried…the little girl inside the pod was beautiful. She glowed with an iridescence even in death. Her hair was shiny black, her little eyes a warm brown like her mother’s.”

  “Please…Toggth…let’s move on. I don’t think I can take too much more of this.”

  “Sorry, Cable. So…get the family to the Bahamas as soon as you can—or you may not make the journey in time.” He hopped up on my comfy chair behind my desk as I stood, still looking out the window, smoking. He took a deep breath and let it out. “Unfortunately, we are not going to be dealing with humans from this point out. There is a relentless, ambitious creature, completely without conscience, as you might know it, who heads up the earth section of the Oculus Pyramis Mandatum. So far, they’ve sent only humans to do their dirty work, but even the aliens do not know how to access the Fen de Fuqin. There are safeguards to prevent it from being stolen again. Now they will do anything—kill anyone—to get at it.”

  “I’ve—I’ve always had this question, Toggth. If these guys are so brilliant and advanced, how come they don’t know what the God of Our Fathers contains? It seems to me they could have decoded at least some of it by now—even the phony had the right symbols on it, right?”

  “Wrong…I duplicated only parts, Cable, so that it could not be decoded. I also confess to taking out the golden etched parchment inside, that really contains the secret of life and enables the Tone of Creation. It was painstakingly copied from the original parchment thousands of years ago.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You? You removed the tablet from inside the capsule? No wonder they were pissed when they tried to figure the damn thing out!”

  “I couldn’t risk it being in their hands, Cable. I substituted it with some worthless replica. Believe me, there was no other way.”

  “Yeah, I believe you—but the trouble is, they’re gonna believe you too when they put it all together and come hunting you down like a pack of ravenous alien wolves.”

  “So that’s where you come in.”

  “Me? Now, wait a minute Toggth. I’m having problems here just buttoning my shirt in the morning. I’m a human…remember me? The guy who makes lots of stupid decisions and can’t keep it in his pants?”

  Toggth smiled. “I enjoy you, Cable…I always have. Your honest, bumbling ways endear you to me.” Then he drew serious. “At some point they are going to come for you. They will probably attempt an easier way first, like arrange a private meeting with you. If that doesn’t work, they’ll come, as you say, like a pack of ravenous wolves.”

  “Oh, that’s comforting. So now they’re gonna descend on me, probably kill me when they don’t get what they want—”

  “—that’s precisely why they won’t kill you. You’re the only one they know of—human that is, because they surely do not know
about me—who knows about the Fen de Fuqin. Remember, you have seen it in the Blue Light of Noda. They are relentless with details. Every tiny little thing you know or have experienced with the capsule they will want to know and cling to every word you care to share with them on the subject.”

  “Yeah, that’s swell, you little pirate, you. So you’re gonna leave me holding the bag at the eleventh hour, is that it?”

  “No, Cable, I would never do that to you. You will lure them to a certain spot on the map when the proper time comes. It will be a trap. We of the other dimensions have not been idle. And don’t get any preconceptions this is to save earth people, per se—but rather to save the inner mechanisms of harmony that allow your three-dimensional world to function. That…is what the Fen de Fuqin is all about, harmony and balance.”

  “So when does all this happen? You know the last few months haven’t been exactly an emotional picnic for me, you know I lost—”

  “—yes, Cable, I’m sorry you lost someone dear to you. I must say, however, that exquisite female creature waiting for you in your bedroom is truly extraordinary. I’d keep her if I were you.”

  “Thanks, Toggth. I appreciate that. And I think I will keep her.” I went away from the window and sat opposite him in my client’s chair. “So let’s get on with this show—have you any idea what a weight it puts on me, never knowing when the other shoe will drop?—”

  “—timing…timing, Cable. That’s the secret. I will keep you informed. In the future, remember they will haunt you for your memory of the Fen de Fuqin and attempt to access it from you through whatever means are at their disposal. Right now, I suggest you perform your paid-for task and secure the Royce family as best you can. I must go now.”