“You two need to stay out of the city,” I told Gary and Tiggy the afternoon we arrived to the outskirts of the city. I could hear groups of travelers on the Old Road through the trees of the Dark Woods. “It’ll be too difficult for all of us to get in without getting recognized. I don’t think it’s going to take that long.”
“But I want to see Mama,” Tiggy rumbled.
“I know,” I said. “But this isn’t that kind of visit. We can’t stay. And you two aren’t exactly inconspicuous.”
“I resent that remark,” Gary said. “I am as inconspicuous as they come.”
“Me too,” Tiggy said.
“Says the hornless gay unicorn and half-giant. You draw too much attention. Because you’re so amazing.”
They both preened. Like I knew they would.
“Who’s Mama?” Ryan asked.
“You didn’t tell him?” Gary demanded. “He’s going to meet Mama for the first time and I won’t get to be there to watch? I don’t even need to tell you how unfair that is!”
I rolled my eyes. “And yet you’re telling anyway.”
“This is going to be something I’m not going to like, isn’t it,” Ryan said. “I feel like that has happened a lot on this trip already.”
“Adventure,” I corrected him. “Not a trip. Adventure. Trips imply vacation. Adventure implies awesomeness. And no, I haven’t told him about Mama. It hasn’t exactly come up yet.”
“But,” Gary whined, “it’s going to be hysterical and disturbing and wonderful and you’re going to make me miss it. What have I ever done to you? Name one thing. Wait. Don’t answer that. I just thought of forty things.”
“At least,” I said.
“So are you going to tell me who Mama is?” Ryan asked as I handed him a hooded robe from the pack Gary carried. I pulled out a similar one, muted and gray, and tied it over my shoulders, pulling the hood up and over my face.
“She runs the Tilted Cross among other things,” Gary said with barely contained glee. “The only gay brothel and tavern in Meridian City. And she is Sam’s fairy drag mother.”
MERIDIAN CITY was run by a council with an elected figurehead to make the pretty speeches and faulty promises. They touted reform, plans to clean up the streets, to make the city more hospitable, less of a sinkhole.
The problem was, if you lived in or visited Meridian City on a regular basis, chances were you didn’t give two shits about making the world a better place.
So the old people were voted out and the new people were voted in, all saying the same things over and over again. It was a circle, and one that had sustained itself for decades.
But everyone knew the real truth.
If you needed weapons, you went to Feng, a barrel of a man with half his teeth.
If you needed drugs, you went to Letnia, a beautiful older woman with an eye patch and a taste for cigars.
If you wanted anything else, you went to Mama.
And I needed information.
I pulled my hood tighter around my face as we pushed through the crowds. I thought I saw an orgy going on through an open doorway. A woman on a corner told me she was born with six fingers and that made hand jobs that much more intense. A man tried to sell me rotted fish. A girl not that much younger than me told me with glazed eyes that she’d dreamed of me the night before. A boy who had to be just into his teens asked if I wanted a blow job. “I’m cheap,” he said with a bit of pride.
I pulled Ryan on.
His eyes were wide, darting all around. His face was flushed and he looked horrified and aroused all at the same time. It was a good look on him.
“You never been here before?” I asked, seeing the sign for the Tilted Cross in the distance. “Figured you army boys spent your leave here.”
He shook his head. “Most did. I never saw the point. I don’t need anything that’s offered here.”
I laughed darkly. “Now that certainly can’t be true. You can get anything here.”