Drag Hunt Read online

  The foyer of the hotel complex was the size of an international airport check-in hall, although more opulent and with more Doric columns and marble floors. It could have been the lobby for heaven itself.

  At the far end of the foyer, a waterfall dropped several storeys into a river. Bridges led over it to the main complex: the Golden Fleece Casino, the Elysium Lounge and Bar Lethe.

  Beyond was a labyrinth of slots, full of Mino-tourists. Row upon row of machines beeping and chirping like one-armed idols as the faithful ploughed offerings into them.

  “It’s a joyful sound, isn’t it?” said a voice at his shoulder. He turned to see a tall, lanky man, dusky skinned with a prominent hawk-like nose and long, black hair pulled back in a ponytail.

  Richard frowned. “Pardon?”

  The man, who could have been a Native American, cocked his head at the sound. “You’re British. Love the accent.”

  “Uh, thanks.”

  Richard made to walk away. He didn’t really want to get into conversation.

  “Your first time in Vegas?”

  “That obvious, huh?”

  “You look lost.” Coyote held out his hand. “They call me Kai.” He smiled a self-assured smile. A Danny Ocean smile. It oozed charm and affability. It was the easy smile of an old friend, the older brother Richard never had. The smile washed over him. This was a man he could trust.

  Disarmed, Richard took his hand and shook it. “Richard. Richard Green.”

  Kai’s eyes twinkled, lighting up with an easy smile. “So, Richard.” A hand dropped on his shoulder as they eyed the slots together. “Want to be a winner?”

  “Christ, yes.”

  They walked though the aisles of slots across plush carpet that did nothing to muffle the electronic beeps, whoops and musical cascades. They passed the Elysium Lounge and headed up the wide stairs that swept toward the Golden Fleece Casino, where a spotlit gold-coloured fleece hung in pride of place on the wall, like a trophy.

  Richard hesitated.

  So far he had been sensible. Sure, he had his redundancy pay, but he wasn’t going to lose it all in Vegas. He wasn’t stupid. Gamble only as much as you can afford to lose, he’d heard once. He figured how much of his money he could afford to burn and decided that was his limit. So far, he’d lost a chunk but had managed to make some of it back. He wasn’t willing to risk too much more. Safe, dependable, boring old Richard. That, he had decided bitterly, was ultimately what cost him Becky.

  Kai winked at Richard and tapped his prominent nose. “Trust me, I have a system,” he said. “You’ll get your capital back plus a share of the winnings.”

  Richard found himself at the casino ATM, surprised to realise he’d withdrawn his entire redundancy package. Sod it. He was going to be quids in. Sod Satellite Electricals. Sod Becky. He was a winner and Kai had a system. He couldn’t lose. His confidence was unassailable. They made a beeline for the blackjack tables. Some other players nodded as they took their seats.

  “Gentlemen,” acknowledged the dealer. With a practised hand, he slid them their cards.

  Kai, a shit eating grin on his face, glanced at each of the players in turn.

  So much for a poker face, thought Richard.

  Chips crossed the table, more chips and cards crossed back. They stayed for a few hands. Richard noticed Kai slip his hand into his jeans pocket. What was that, some kind of device, a card counter maybe? Shit. Alarmed, Richard glanced around, hoping no one else had noticed.

  Kai caught him in the beam of his smile and everything was all right again.

  Richard watched as Kai raked in their winnings and pushed his chair back.

  “Thanks, fellas.”

  They moved on to baccarat. Richard didn’t even know what baccarat was. It was just something James Bond played. Was it James Bond? Probably. Strangely, he didn’t know much of anything. Couldn’t think. It was as if someone had taken his brain out and stuffed it with cotton wool. But that was okay. He had Kai.

  Kai, his hand still straying to his trousers, was sufficiently cunning to lose often enough not to arouse suspicion.

  Richard remembered the clatter of the roulette ball. The chips stacking up, pile after pile. Kai knew what he was doing.

  Then Richard had a sudden attack of lucidity, like a small eddy clearing a patch of fog in his mind. He looked around. Kai was nowhere to be seen. Sod Kai, his money had gone too. Anxiety wringing out his insides like a wet flannel, he prairie dogged, glancing around the casino.

  Two well dressed men, casino security, moved towards him like sharks through the sea of gamblers.

  “If you’d like to accompany us, sir.”

  Of course he would. “Thank god, I’ve been conned. Someone’s made off with all my winnings.”

  “Our footage showed nobody else.”

  Confusion clouded Richard’s face. “What? But he was here. He took all my money. Aren’t you going to get my money back?”

  One man deftly guided Richard away from the tables and towards the casino entrance. Still, Richard was convinced that they’d soon have this sorted out. After all, they had CCTV. All sorts of security. Bound to.

  “Let’s take this somewhere else, sir. We don’t want to cause a scene.”

  Scene? Richard blinked. “But surely you don’t think—I’m the injured party here. I’ve been conned in your casino. I demand that you do something about it.”

  People glanced at the raised voice as they passed various gaming tables.

  “We’ve had a complaint about you slot walking.”

  “Slot walking? I don’t even know what that means.”

  They escorted him past the golden fleece, out of the casino and through the slots hall. Richard’s face flushed with anger and embarrassment. Any attempt to stop or turn was met with a firmer pressure by the hand on his shoulder, steering him as surely as a tiller.

  A golden fleece? Yes, it bloody well had been.

  KAI WATCHED AS Richard was escorted out, and had a moment’s guilt. No, not guilt, indigestion. He looked up at the golden fleece. He wondered what the punters would think if they knew it was the genuine article. He grinned, a coyote in sheep’s clothing.

  OUTSIDE, RICHARD TURNED and looked back at the hotel entrance. The two security men stood there, eyes fixed on him, as if they were trying to turn him to stone. He took an experimental step towards them. One adjusted his weight marginally—hands held low, palms facing in—and Richard thought better of it.

  He wandered down the Avenue of Heroes toward the Strip in shock, past the bars and stores and the street entertainers. The night air cleared his head. It was like a rude awakening, as if someone had just snatched away a warm duvet and a comforting dream. Everything was too loud and bright.

  People jostled round him with glances of annoyance as he stood on the sidewalk and looked in despair at his wallet. He stared at the ATM receipt. Everything, his savings, his redundancy. Gone. How was that possible? The bastard had cleaned him out. All he had to his name now was about fifty dollars, cash.

  He had hoped that by leaving England the ill fortune that seemed to have dogged his life recently would be left behind. No such luck. So he wasn’t entirely surprised when he felt the hard metal in the small of his back, and two men ushered him into the alley.

  “Oh, for fuck’s—”

  A fist slammed into his solar plexus, driving the wind, and any chance at protest, from him. He doubled over and went down, pistol whipped on the back of the head as he crumpled, the jagged pain forking like lightning across his head. He tumbled forward, cracking his forehead on the tarmac, and bit his tongue.

  In desperation he scuttled over to a dumpster, his back into the corner, arms over his face to protect himself.

  Rough hands went through his pockets. He clawed at the air as they pulled his mobile from his pocket and picked up his wallet from the floor. It earned him a kick to the stomach. His body folded round the boot as it withdrew, only to catch another on his temple. Lights burst behind hi
s eyelids and faded one by one, as darkness washed over him, like the waters of the fabled Lethe.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Coyote Interruptus

  WINNING ALWAYS GAVE Coyote a boner. Putting one over on anyone gave him a boner. And there was only one thing you could do with that.

  He lay in bed, hands clasped behind his head, his dark hair pooling on the silk pillows. Coyote in the hen house. It had been a good night.

  He was in one of the most expensive penthouse suites in the Olympus. It had cost him most of his winnings, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t his money and he could always get more.

  He loved the look on the faces of the other guests as they got into the elevator to see him stood there with five amazingly beautiful women, nymphs all. They didn’t know where to look. Well, they did, but they tried desperately not to.

  He grinned at the memory and took in a deep, contented breath. The room was heavy with sweat and sex. The women’s musk hung in the air, their mascara blotted the pillows and the stains had dried and stiffened the silk sheets. Five nymphs, and none of them had any complaints. His appetites were as prodigious as his member.

  He stretched out an arm. The large bed was empty. Ha! He wasn’t surprised. No woman could trap Coyote, not even the nymphs that had once trapped Hylas.

  Just the word ‘woman’ stirred feelings in him. He smiled and let out a contented sigh as he remembered last night’s events.

  His forehead creased and he opened his eyes. That wasn’t right. That should have roused him. The silk sheet should be rising above him, tented by his tumescence in all its morning glory.

  He sat up, arched his back and yawned. The silk sheet slipped down his torso and gathered round his pelvis. He looked around.

  “Rise and shine, younger brother!” he said. “The sun is up and so should you be.”

  He lifted the sheet and looked down his body, over his pecs, to his abdomen where a faint trail of hairs darkened, thickened and curled. He’d lost his boner. Literally. Where his penis should have been, there was nothing.

  “Come out, come out wherever you are,” he said, looking around the suite.

  Nothing.

  He leaned over the side of the bed and peered underneath. Nothing there, either.

  “Right, come out,” he called out. “This isn’t funny anymore.”

  He whistled and clapped his hands as if summoning a wayward terrier. He checked the pockets of his discarded jeans. He checked the pouch he sometimes used to carry it around in. It wasn’t there. He scattered his patented Bonafide Penis Returning Powder across the suite. Nothing.

  It wasn’t the first time his member had gone missing. However, it had always come back before now and he could usually sense it, wherever it was. The disembodied sensations could be distracting to say the least, especially if he was trying to concentrate on something else. But now, he could feel nothing. Not a twinge, not a throb, not a pulse. That gave him cause for concern.

  He farted.

  “And you can bloody well shut up,” he told his younger brother, anus. “You had one thing to do, one thing—keep your beady little brown eye on him. I’d punish you but I remember what happened last time.”

  Still, he wasn’t that worried. He should have no problem tracking it down. After all, he had the keenest nose of all the People.

  He sniffed the air. There were lingering traces in the room. He went to the door, opened it and sniffed the corridor in both directions. Nothing, no scent of ball sweat, or stale piss. He couldn’t even sense its psychic imprint, which was disconcerting. He’d lost any connection he had with it. This, it seemed, was more than just an errant erection.

  He went back into the suite and sat down on the bed in disbelief.

  Someone had stolen his penis.

  Who would want it? That answered itself, really. Who wouldn’t? So it was just a process of elimination. He would have to play detective and, he suspected, he would be a brilliant detective.

  Then he stopped. “Oh.”

  This detective lark was easier than he thought. Of course, it was obvious. He knew exactly who had taken his penis. Well, not exactly. But he’d narrowed it down to a few suspects. The usual suspects. Loki. Or the Monkey King. Anansi. Tezcatlipoca. Li-Nezha. Or that Bamapana. Or Ti-Malice. Tricksters, everyone. Bastards, the lot of them. He wouldn’t put it past them. If it was him, he wouldn’t have put it past himself.

  He gathered up his discarded clothes from the floor, pulled on his T-shirt and climbed into his jeans.

  He’d see about this. Nobody put one over on Coyote.

  He picked up the phone and rang down.

  “I want to see the manager,” he said. A whiny subservient voice buzzed the earpiece. “No, everything is not all right. I have a complaint.” Buzz buzz buzz. “Well see that they do!”

  He hung up. It was a small victory. He ran through the evening before, tracing his steps. When did he last remember seeing it? He grinned, distracted by the memory. The look on her face!

  There was a knock at the door.

  That was quick. But then, the Olympus was run by a cartel of gods, so he should have expected it. Vegas had been a prime site for gods to set up house after the Great Usurper exiled them all down here. After all, here superstition still had a strong hold.

  At least they were taking him seriously. He drew himself up to his full height and put on a scowl, and went to answer the door.

  A tall, lithe bodied man stood in the doorway. Tailored suit. Hands clasped in front of his groin. Gelled blond hair. Expensive wrap-around shades. Behind him were two well-dressed heavyweights. Coyote recognised them as Anemoi or, as he liked to call them, the Breeze Brothers, a pair of minor Greek wind gods.

  Blondie’s tone was clipped and businesslike. “Coyote.”

  Coyote regarded the man for a moment. He’d been expecting some flunky he could have bamboozled and charmed, not him.

  “Hermes.”

  Son of Zeus. Messenger of the gods. Trickster. Maybe he took it. He was certainly fast enough. A prime suspect if ever there was one. Coyote was curious to see how this one played out.

  Hermes stepped into the suite, glancing at the money and chips strewn about the room. The Breeze Brothers stepped in behind him. Hermes turned his head and jerked his chin at the room.

  One of the Breeze Brothers raised his hand and a small air current rippled across the floor, gathering up into a small whirlwind in the centre of the room that spun slowly around the suite, ruffling the silk sheets and sucking up Coyote’s scattered winnings. It returned them to the wind god, before dissipating gently and depositing the cash and chips into the Anemoi’s hands.

  “I’m impressed,” said Coyote, raising an eyebrow. “In fact, I know someone who’d like to meet you.”

  “I have a message,” said Hermes.

  “You would.”

  “The gods of Vegas are not happy.”

  “They’re not happy? I’m livid.”

  “They want a word.”

  “Good, because I’ve a word or two I want to say to them. This kind of thing gets out and it could ruin reputations.”

  Hermes jerked his head towards the open door. “They’re waiting, and trust me, that’s not good.”

  “Well in that case, lead on.”

  Coyote allowed them to escort him along the corridor to an elevator. The public didn’t ride this one. It was private. It went to the summit of the Olympus, where the gods dwelled.

  Once in the elevator, Coyote cocked his head, listening to a voice only he could hear. “No, it’s all right. Go on. Say hello. Don’t be shy.”

  Coyote’s anus let out a deep, vibrato fart.

  “Sorry,” he said, giving the Breeze Brothers an embarrassed shrug, and waving a hand under his nose. “What can I say, he’s a big fan.”

  One of the gods scowled, made a small gesture, and a gentle breeze wafted round the elevator herding the noxious expulsion to the floor.

  The doors opened and they stepped out onto
the sixty-eighth floor, not so much where the gods dwelled, but where the gods did business. It was a large white pillared space, flooded with light, bounded as it was on three sides by floor to ceiling windows that looked out over Las Vegas. The fourth was a frescoed wall, in the middle of which was a set of wooden double doors, in the Grecian style. In the centre was what looked like a marble altar, although the position of a chair behind it and white leather sofa in front suggested it was actually a desk.

  The doors swung open and a dwarf walked in with a rolling gait. He had an ugly scrunched face of dusky Hindu complexion, at odds with the immaculately tailored white suit he wore. He had the demeanour of a man who was extremely busy and had little time for all this.

  Coyote frowned. “You’re not Apollo. I thought he ran this place in his father’s stead. Where is the guy with the swan fetish, anyway? I hear no one’s seen him in over a decade.”

  He was looking for weak points, buttons to press.

  “Apollo isn’t going to trouble himself over an animistic brat like you, trickster,” said the dwarf. “I’m Kubera, Treasurer of the Gods. I run the Olympus for the Greek Pantheon, Mr Coyote. Or do you prefer Raven, or perhaps Wakdjunkaga. Heyeohkah, maybe?”

  Coyote feigned nonchalance, trailing a finger along the back of the white leather sofa as he walked round it.

  “Kai is fine.”

  The Breeze Brothers placed Coyote’s confiscated winnings on the marble desk. An offering, or evidence?

  Coyote hadn’t been invited to sit, so he sat, arms stretched out along the back of the sofa, his right ankle resting on his left knee, his crotch open and obvious. Despite the rather slack empty feeling in his jeans, and the nagging sense of loss, Coyote was enjoying himself. This had all the hallmarks of a shakedown. And he should know. They probably needed his help and wanted to make sure they got it, that’s all. They wanted a little insurance, so they sent Little Miss Fleetfoot here to kidnap his pecker and hold it to ransom. It was classic. Boring, but classic. A bit of praise wouldn’t have gone amiss, though. It always oiled the wheels. But, you know, gods. They didn’t want to look soft.