Chapter 3

Taylor was guided through a door made of glass, and found it empty on the other side. There were benches of old oak, with fabric cushioning on top, but nothing else to note. Lockers, chest-high, ran around the edge of the room, nearly hidden by the careful lighting. He looked behind him, as Frederick had instructed, and found the door of such locker hanging open, the white robe on the other side shining through. He changed quickly in the center of the room. There was nowhere to change privately in the small room.

That’s probably the point, Taylor thought.

The cloth was white cotton, as soft as anything he’d ever felt. “Guest” was embroidered along the breast.

That’s probably why they were waiting for him in the sauna, too. It wasn’t enough to have wealth and influence over him. They had to literally strip him down before they lorded their power over him. It was petty. The whole thing got more bitter with every minute. He could feel annoyance bubbling through him, and it grated at him even more. He pushed through the door in the back, as directed, heading further into the maze, and he emerged into a fog of steam.

He hadn’t been in one before, but he knew immediately that it wasn’t any ordinary sauna. It was like a meeting hall. Rows of benches ran around the room on raised tiers, descending into a stage in the center. It was wide enough that the steam hid the far side. With no windows and only two narrow beams of light coming from the ceiling, Taylor could barely make out the second row of seats. There were a few bodies already seated along the benches. And one sat on a special throne above all the others, facing Taylor as he stepped down onto the smooth wooden planks.

The air was painful, at first. Then it became suffocating, once the door swung shut behind him, dimming the lights even more. From all sides, more people seemed to be joining them, filing into the seats in muffled silence. Taylor came to a stop at a short table in the center of the room, in a clearing about ten feet wide on every side from the nearest bench.

He felt, with absolute certainty, that if he tried the door behind him again, he’d find it locked. Not that he was likely to get far. He held his gaze forward, and waited for them to talk.

When everyone had settled and the man in front finally did speak, though, it wasn’t to Taylor. It was to the room.

“Gentleman,” the man began, “we have business.”

This must be Reinhart, Taylor thought. He was older, over 50, his hair white was cropped short, with a wild beard. Broad-shouldered and powerfully built, he definitely seemed like he was running the show. In a loose robe, sitting on a bench in the sauna, his face in heavy shadow -he held all the authority of a king addressing his peasants.

“This is a brotherhood built of power.”

Jesus Christ, what is this?

“The dull axe kills the wielder. The rope untested is the first to fail. The judge grown merciful sentences the world.” The others chanted the words along with the old man. It was like watching Satanist gathered over a bound virgin in a horror movie. And Taylor watched it all with the same detached feeling.

“Our brotherhood is built of power. The world is for us to ravage. Our actions will be unanswered save for wilting servitude. Gods do not feel shame. Taylor Evans,” Reinhart said, his eyes flashing suddenly. The boy staggered back several steps instinctively at the dark look that bore down into him. He was still holding tightly to the knowledge that this was just businessmen asking him for a favor. It was business.

“Taylor Evans, you have seen our faces. You know our names. You see our palace,” he said calmly, raising his hands upward. “And do we feel fear?”

Three dozen heads looked to Taylor. “No,” they chanted together.

“You are meat for us to use as we desire,” Reinhart said, his robe sliding from his shoulders. He stood nearly six and a half feet tall, three hundred pounds of hair and muscle. His massive, bulging cock hung erect in the air, choked by a thick, graying forest of hair.

“You will re-forge our bonds. You will show us our power,” he said, stepping closer, and around the low table in the center of the room, nearing arms-reach of him.

Now he was ready to run.

The sound of the crowd changed as he spun and leapt back up the steps toward the door handle. It wasn’t sounds of anger or surprise, like he expected, but excitement. Someone laughed, like he’d made a mistake.

Fuck this, he thought. He slipped through the door and tore across the locker room in a blur. He hadn’t kept up his training after college, but he was breaking records now. Through the locker room, he burst back into the room surrounded by doors.

If he had a moment to think about it, he may have found the door he had come from earlier. Instead, he ran for a lit hallway on the left, and made sure he kicked the door closed on his way through it. It only took him a moment to see it wasn’t the same way he had arrived through, but that didn’t matter now. There was no use getting to the lobby with the keypad if he wasn’t getting through it. And more could be watching for him there.

They’ll be watching for me anywhere now, he thought.

Not helping, he replied.

The next door he found was locked. The next had another keypad. On down the hallway he went. The next room held a single elevator, with the power off, and three doors. Two were dark and locked, one was lit and open, leading down another hallway lined with rooms.

Locked, locked, locked, locked, locked ... There were no more doorways with the lights on. It was a dead end. He could feel the panic building in his throat. If he went back, there was every chance he’d run right back into the mob.

He turned suddenly at the sound of a doorknob turning. It wasn’t from the way he’d came, it was from one of the locked rooms.

“Trap,” Taylor said.

The man only shrugged, a guilty grin on his face. He was quite overweight, but young, maybe thirty. He was still wearing dress pants and a button-up, though the buttons were undone down to the last two.

“Did you follow the lights, little moth?” the man asked, his voice eerily low. He approached slowly, still grinning. “These doors are all locked,” the man said, glancing around as he stepped forward. “Time to take your medicine and get sent home to bed. Don’t make daddy angry now.”

“I’m not going to let you...” Taylor said, and shook his head, unable to finish the words. “I’m leaving.”

He looked for a way around the man, but he was too damned fat. He was impossible to slip past. He could fight him, but the man had two hundred pounds on Taylor, easy. He wouldn’t feel a few lame punches. At least not to the face.

Taylor charged with ten feet between them. The man tried to close his legs, but they were too slow, and too heavy. Three hard kicks with the balls of his bear feet connected, and dropped the man to one knee. Taylor hit the wall to slide past, and the man’s hands were wrapped around his wrists a moment later, crushing them with impossible pressure and pushing him to the floor in an instant.

“Nope,” the man croaked, twisting him along the ground, trying to climb on top of him, crushing him with his weight.

With a howling, panicked scream, Taylor pulled his leg free enough to kick wildly. When the man turned to guard his groin, Taylor’s head connected with his nose.

“Fuck!” the man gasped, dropping his full mass onto the boy’s legs. Taylor squirmed wildly, his body wet with sweat, and pulled himself forward. He hopped quickly out of reach of the man’s hands and sprinted back the way he had come.

Two hallways later, he was limping. The fat man had done more damage than his brain could process yet, he knew. His legs would be bruised from his ass to his ankles, he could tell already. He grabbed every handle he came across, lit or not, and pulled them open, running into any open rooms he could find.

And then he heard it. The soft harps, the gently running water. He was back in of the pool rooms.

They all connect. Those arrogant bastards connected them!

The pool beside him was empty, but he had to lean and peak through the pillars to confirm it. The pillars surrounded the water on all sides, obscuring the view, while the marble pathways were open and visible. He slipped past the columns without a second thought, and stepped quickly into warm water down to his waist. He wasn’t much of a swimmer, but his legs were slow, and aching more now with every step. He dropped the robe from his shoulders and hit it behind one of the stones before swimming in. The water and the weightlessness was nearing bliss as it pulled him in.

The pool spanned nearly a hundred feet before branching in two directions: one the way he had come, and one the way he had been heading. He took the latter path, and cruised under the near-darkness that divided the rooms, through a long tunnel lined in ghostly blue light. There were recesses carved into the stone, with what seemed like hot tubs overflowing into the main pool. They were, thankfully, all empty. As was the next tunnel he reached, five minutes later, when he collapsed over the railing, panting for air, letting the steaming water pour against him in the darkness.

How many more could there be? How far had he walked?

He shook his head. He couldn’t remember how many they had walked through. A dozen? It didn’t matter. He wasn’t even going the same way he had come in. The sudden sound of a door pulling open sent him off the wall and back below the waters, his head re-emerging from behind a pillar.

Voices followed, not quite so happy as before, though he couldn’t make out the words. He watched the shadows pass quickly between the pillars as they headed onward in the direction he had been heading. His muscles trembled wildly, ready to collapse at the first hint of defeat. He could travel behind them, though, hiding if they doubled back.

“Hey!” Taylor jerked, turning suddenly toward the sound. A face was bobbing in the water, from the tunnel he’d just swam from, less than fifty feet away. Taylor’s mind went blank. It wasn’t possible.

“HEY!” the man screamed again, rising from the water to point a finger in Taylor’s direction. “I found him!” he shouted down the corridor. The man dove back into the water, flying through the water toward him like a fish.

The door in the hall banged open again, and Taylor was gone, floundering wildly at full speed, swimming blind, waiting for the feeling of a hand to snatch him around his ankle, for the movement to suddenly stop. But it never came. A minute passed -a full, agonizing minute of panic swimming on overspent muscles. His heart beat erratically in his throat, his breath was ragged, his eyes burning from the water.

Idiot, he thought. Taylor slowed to a stop.

He turned and saw the shaggy black hair of the man behind him, casually paddling in his direction, a smug grin smeared across his face. The shadows jogging lightly along the pillars were even closer. A splash of water from behind made him turn, and he spotted someone wading toward him, a hulking shape, eager for the kill. If he felt any pity for Taylor, he didn’t show it. The man’s hands snatched the boy by the neck and wrist, pulling him toward the edge of the pool. The man scooped his hand under Taylor’s armpit, and pushed him easily out of the water, letting him collapse weakly on the marble.