At the dark end of the street
that is where we always meet
hiding in shadows where we don't belong
living in darkness, to hide alone
You and me, at the dark end of the street.

Oh, darling, please don't you cry.



"I can't do that, Brentan. I have an arrangement with Hei--. Yes. The inspector. Heil DorGhood. You? Huh? Okay. But I can't-- Okay."

She hung up the phone and sighed, burrowing dove white hands into pockets of leather. Brentan needed her to come down to the hospital with someone from one of the numerous underground safe houses for the street kids. This meant asking Maranya for some information, for another look into any rings that were running the youth apart from the Orpheum, and another attempt at talking to Andy.


Madison walked out of the coffee shop and meandered off down the lane, pulling her shades over her eyes to blacken out the bright sun. Overhead there was a flock of crows cawing out their eulogy for another dying of the sun, a few talking to her as they balanced on wire overhead.

Things were changing course, the wind was stirring again. She had a mind to stop and hear what those birds were telling her. Sure that they were croaking at her to run. To run fast. To turn back.


But Madison felt it was too late for that. The other shoe had dropped. Time to get to the heart of things. To follow the blood trails and wherever they may lead.

Inside the Bird House, the air was laden with cheap cologne, stale beer, and the uncomfortable humidity that came with rampant sex; doors that opened off to both sides of the bar inviting spectators and participants alike. Bird cages surrounded the light fixtures of various sizes, and small exotic birds, virtues of taxidermy, sat along the back mirror behind the counter, forever suspended midflight.

She came to sit amongst it, meet Brentan, and get. Places like this could be weathered but never enjoyed ? the urge to shake those women by the shoulders and tell them they didn?t have to open their legs to make a buck was always there. But that wasn?t her business. And Cal had put it best; they were making money off what they were good at. At least they were working. But that was another matter, for perhaps another day.


Brentan meandered in, looking relaxed, and his smile sailed so cleanly that she knew at once he was on. Angel Grease. He had that shine to his skin. His knuckles were like gleaming white marble. ?Madi. Good to see you.?

Watchful as ever, she gave the man a nod and sat back.

?Michael has got himself some trouble?, he informed.

?Who doesn?t??

He smirked.

?Whatcha gonna do about your ? ?

Madison was waving it off.

?I have a right to know, don?t I??

Nails left grooves in the denim on her knee as she dropped her eyes. ?I?m letting them have me.?

He raised his brows. ?You?re what??


?Tell me about this business with Michael. Mako. The Grease.?

So Brentan shook his head, leant in, and got on with it.

Kiss the Devil

SEB, early Saturday morning.


Magenta Grail. Statuesque is the word to describe her. She's bit more than 6' 2, and most of that seems to be leg. Her breasts, tonight straining against rubber bondage wear, are likely not entirely products of nature. Her eyes are the pale gray of dirty rain. Her hair white blonde, long, worn in a carefully casual waterfall. Her features are both beautiful and cruel, with beauty and cruelty having rubbed against each other on that face until both are honed to a razor point.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are." A challenge as much as anything, not a night for surprises. The empty bar suits her just fine. So she arranges herself on a stool, with a slither of thigh on crossing thigh.

But the bar isn?t empty at all. Spirals of cigarette smoke course around the face of a dark haired loner. Avenue of leg jacked up against the pool table she leans against. "So you're the Big Bad Wolf?" Madison drawls in a folkdark voice, humour dancing in her throat. A smile to curve her lips in the shadowy spotlight of a poor fluorescent tube.


Magenta turns to the voice, not shocked, and scans the woman with dirtyrain eyes before replying. ?Two out of three ain't bad...?

The gunslinger gives her an upward nod. "Brentan told me you have been saucing him with the Grease." Boot falls and she saunters on over, exhaling a tangle of phantoms.

?People say all sorts of things, don't they??, a waterfall of fragrant blonde hair forked back from her face.

Madison watched the spectacle of woman before her. A pantomime in fierce sexuality.

"That they do. Hence my willingness to talk to the Wolf herself." Stubbing the cigarette, traces of peyote still in her eyes, wither in the tray. "I'm Madison." She stuck out a fist, while looking at Magenta?s own. My, what big hands you have.


Chin in her knuckles, elbow on the bar, leaning toward Madison, Magenta poised a question to rival the manufactured elegance of her seat on that chair. "Tell you what, sweets, tell me where you wanna be, I'll tell you if I can get you there."

There was a friendly burst of laughter, as the ?slinger tossed her head back, resting a hand on the swell of sharp hip. "Do you deal Grease?" Cutting to the point, neatly.

Finally, one of those large chill hands takes hers in an extended shake. ?Magenta, Mags, Grail if you want to be formal. I don't deal, Madison girl, I create, and that's paint-by-numbers stuff to me.?

A firm grip and a warm smile, she lets go. "Is Angel Grease your forte', or some parallel to it; Yes, or No, Magenta." The name said sweet, like a frayed prayer.

The blonde fishes a leather pouch from its tuck against secret waistband perfumed flesh. ?Like I said, tell me where you want to go. I don't make anything anyone else has a name for.?


"Brentan calls you The Specialist. Said your brand of dreams don't come cheap, but they're worth every dime and then some. I don't care what it's called." The brunette helps herself to a stool beside Magenta, tucking a few errant dark curls behind an ear. "I just want to know how you got involved. You're not going to find trouble. It's just a question."

But Magenta is in the midst of her preparations, architect of dreams in a dirty bar. Fingers worry the timid lips of the pouch open, stroking and teasing. ?Samples here, the doctor is in...?

Cornflower blues were somber, and unguarded, shifting over, peering at the pouch, almost afraid to. As though she were privy to something she shouldn't be looking at, like an inadvertent public pervert.


Magenta laughs, as Madison?s words sink in, laughter that is all chocolate and ground glass. ?They don't come cheap because they come free. Your friend seeks to impress you perhaps. My satisfaction is in the creation and the result. You want heightened senses coupled with imperviousness to pain? Now that would be a challenge, and I could do it.?

Then Magenta licked her lips, regarded Madison. ?I'm a magic girl, you see.?

Madison studies the other, dark brows in a crook. A woman who was almost cartoonishly perfect. Something pulled from comic, deposited into real life. "Magic..." Corner of her mouth twinges, and she flashes a secret smile.


?Thing is....? Magenta dumps a little red powder on the back of her thumb, snorts it efficiently, blinking at the burn. ?If I got involved it was because he asked a hard question, didn't just come to me looking for Grease. I don't deal in other people's drugs, any more than I make love like they might...liking what you see, maybe??

Madison cants her head, shaking it. "I'm not here on account of myself..."Lift of eyes to her, again. "Do you deal with others at the Docks?"

Lapping at the back of her thumb, cleaning carefully, the blonde portrays another opaque response. ?Thing is, sugar, I don't ask where there're from. I get all kinds, it's the complexity of the need that calls me. You, for example, wear need like a perfume.?


The ?slinger pursed her lips and she leant back, watching the woman lap up the stuff like a cat to a bowl of milk. "And what would you suggest for a girl like me?" A good natured smile.

She rolls her shoulders; it does wonderful things to the rubber halter trying to contain her breasts. She fishes though the pouch, holding vials up to the light, finally settling on a luminous pink powder. ?This for a start, of course I'd customize. Just a thumbnail sized pour upon your tongue. And then a kiss to see how it mixes with you...?She offers it, dirtyrain eyes playful.

Madison regards the vial, then flicks her eyes to the Specialist.


The Specialist purrs her laugh. ?No charge, so no refunds.?

A tickle in her throat, Madison lowers her lashes a touch. She accepts the vial, pours it on a fingertip, and pushes it past her bee stung lips. Magenta watches, taking temperature, already adjusting the components in her mind.

Madison has never been a woman of the lash fluttering variety, but the forest of her lashes shutter wildly now, her lips contoured into something ... else. Bliss, or a girl on the cusp of it. And there the architect is, studying Madison's eyes, watching for the loss of pain, the brightening of new sensation, curious to see how this ether trick plays out.

And then blue eyes widen, her smile sinful, uncharacteristic. Pleasure rattling throughout her a like dizzy rollercoaster; but it is the loss of pain in her right shoulder that really sparks her. "This is the .. " .Swallows and straightens herself, back straight as a board. "I've not had .." .She reaches around to her shoulder, gives it a squeeze in disbelief."That's amazing.." Speechless. The perpetual ache of her arm nothing but a concept, not a reality. It worked so fast.

And while the girl swirls in her daze, Magenta leans forward, she takes a handful of dark hair, eases Madi's head toward hers, for a slow, open-mouthed kiss, tongue tasting the drug in her saliva, measuring dose and content, and taking pleasure at the same time.

The rain dancer freezes. This the second time she has been risen to a plateau of sensation at once thrilling and terrifying. Offer of a kiss not taken seriously but nevertheless, she responds - if not entirely herself, inhibitions tampered with by the drug. But her kiss was real, her eyes closing as a pale hand curls around the back of the woman's neck. The kiss sensuous and slow, and then she breathes to the Specialist?s mouth, between their liplock, in the quietest of whispers. "Who are you?"

Magenta slips from the kiss. And very, very softly, she speaks. ?What you've tasted is crude, Madison, compared to what I'll mix for you..?

Madison could only gaze, entrapped in this prism of time and chemistry and affection.

?My name is Magenta Grail, an artist, and I'll make magic for you.?

And the rain dancer inhaled with a shiver. ?Magic..''

...She hit the ground in a run, the second story fire escape rattling in her wake a mad rickety song. Boots were a staccato in the night as she took off around a corner and up a flight of stairs leading across a grove, all overgrown, stone archways crumbling and leading off to the cemetary to the right. She hurried past both and down another flight, these also made of stone, bricks giving way under the beat of her path. She weaved across the wet road and straight for all she could see that provided any sort of cover out here, everything else boarded up and inaccessible, or accessible but not without a crowbar. A leap and hands were grabbing onto a wire fence, as she wriggled her body up with a grunt and threw herself over the other side. Somewhere.


Turning on the spot she gave the place a look over. It was night and while her vision was especially sharp with Magenta's influence on her life, lovely little drug maven that she was, easing Madison's aches and having her senses keener at the same time, even so, the darkness was bitter and she could barely see a thing. Footing was uncertain. A vague flashback to the hills outside of Lofton when she had been on the run from the rangers with the stolen horse, moving over rocks and logs, trying to keep her balance. Hand slid to the revolver at her hip. She dared the shadow deeps.


After a few minutes of blind stumble, her drifting hand came upon a padlock. She elbowed it, threw her weight into it and nothing gave. A round fired off shot it loose, then shouldered the wooden door wide and stepped in. Memory preyed on her. She could smell sawdust and Old things. Like the melancholy barn where she had been left to toast after a kidnap six summers past. It felt the same. Sad and forgotten, a place for no one, except maybe her in this strange moment, in the strange watery light of this building. Boots kept to a hush as she creaked along the old floorboards trying to determine what she was inside of. A look showed a shattered glass dome that only let in scant light, now home to greedy vines, smothering the above. Where light did manage to infilitrate the dim, it was jungle green, illuminating a row of chairs around what might have been some sort of glass tank. A broken pump or generator nearby it. She looked down. At het feet was various refuse. Old wrappers, tickets and the glass that had fallen from above. A dead rat. As she neared the tank she peered inside. Fright in shock tearing across her face. A giant skeleton of some animal sat there, like a white setpiece in a horror film. It stared back at her with its hollow eyes. Her gaze ripped away.

She maneuvered out of that room and down a corridor that was carpeted and stained with unidentified marks, which led into where a giant and dried up pool was. No sign of seals or dolphins here. No sharks. The 'slinger gave a shiver nonetheless. A look around and she shielded her eyes, as refractions of aquarium panes spilled like a vision of silk along the floor, bouncing from glass to wall. That cerulean reflection soaked Madison in ghosts of water as she traveled through the remains. Another lot of small skeletons. Definitely animal. There was a staircase, unfinished or ruined with time, that ascended into nowhere a little way ahead. A glance back the way she had come. Hopefully she had lost the follower.