Grave Makers (Darkside Dreams - Series 1 Book 2) Read online

  GRAVE MAKERS

  By A. King Bradley

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by A. King Bradley

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For more information visit: www.kingbradley.com & www.twitter.com/akingbradley

  To Monica, Christine, Audrey, and Aaron.

  And also in joyful memory of

  my dear friend and mentor

  Dr. Dawn DeVeaux.

  SOUNDTRACK

  ◆◆◆

  For the most complete experience be sure to download a copy of the Darkside Dreams Original Soundtrack:

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  Contents

  Title Page

  SOUNDTRACK

  GRAVE MAKERS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  SEEVA

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  EPILOGUE: PRELUDE TO BLACK MARBLE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  TWITTER

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  GRAVE MAKERS

  By A. King Bradley

  CHAPTER 1

  ◆◆◆

  San Francisco, California…

  – March 28, 2131

  "In a few hundred years," Oscar said, "people like me will rule the Earth. And no one will even know about it."

  He was lying in the dark, with cool sheets under him and a warm body pressed against his side. He ran his rough old hand over her forearm, feeling the skin prickle as his fingernails scratched lightly over it. A subtle feature, but one that made all the difference in the world. A being that cannot respond to touch is not one any normal person would want to copulate with.

  "Your kind?" Catalea asked, breathing warmly against his neck. "I think you already rule the world, darling."

  Oscar lifted his head, glancing over at the stunning synthetic woman’s moist eyes in the dark. "I wasn’t talking about men, babe. Not specifically anyway."

  "Neither was I. I meant organics. You already rule the world, Oscar,” she replied.

  We’ll see how long that lasts,” Oscar said curiously.

  “Well that’s an interesting comment,” Catalea remarked, raising one of her perfect eyebrows as she glanced at Oscar. “Does it have anything to do with this entity status thing I keep hearing about?”

  "That’s only in twelve states, babe. Can’t forget about that," he quickly replied. No reason to get her hopes up too high.

  "What does it mean?" she asked, swirling a finger through his chest hair. "What does it mean to be... an entity? Why do politicians get to decide that? Clearly synthetics exist... clearly we're already entities. What's the big problem? People get pregnant accidentally all the time, but their unwanted children have all the same rights as anyone else. Synths are created very deliberately. We exist because someone willed us to. Why does that make us inferior in their eyes?"

  Oscar chuckled. "I guess you don't understand the inertia of human thought. Getting us to see the error of our ways is like pulling teeth with tweezers. Usually you have to wait for entire generations to die out before you can start doing things differently. It's a good thing you synthetics live so long. You might actually get to see a world where you're treated the same way as everyone else."

  "But what does it mean?" Catalea pressed. "This 'entity' status? In real world terms, how does it impact us?"

  "It means you're officially recognized as a form of intelligent life. It's a whole tricky world of semantics and political correctness, but basically synths are starting to be seen as sort of a race of people… but not really, if you know what I mean. We're not quite all the way there yet... it's kind of like the civil rights movements of the past all over again. From what I can tell, entities get the same rights as a dog or a cat, I suppose. You can't kick them. Or kill them without consequence. Certainly not ideal, but I guess it’s a step in the right direction."

  Catalea frowned. She looked disappointed. "I guess you’re right. Better than not having any protection at all."

  "It is. In ten years, who knows? In fact, there's an idea getting kicked around in congress right now too. Supposed to be a new amendment that would grant synths full citizenship on a federal level. If that happens the individual states wouldn't be allowed to restrict the rights of the synths living in them. But of course, no one can agree and the whole thing is still up in the air. It’ll be an uphill battle for sure, but I'm sure it'll get passed someday, maybe even in the next few years. Doesn't hurt that Tucker Berg himself is backing it."

  She smiled, tapping the tip of his nose with her finger. "As I said, you already rule the world. You're a man and you were born from a womb. There's nothing you can't do."

  "I beg to differ. I wanted to be a gigolo but no one would have me."

  “I could give you some pointers,” she said with a laugh, pressing her face into his side to muffle the sound.

  Oscar smiled at her quip but still stared off into space, still lost in thought.

  "I’m sure you could. I wasn't talking about all organics ruling the world by the way," he continued. "I was talking about private investigators. The world is so afraid of itself, everyone distrusts everyone else... We're the go-betweens, the guys who aren't afraid to enter dark places and ask tough questions. When everyone else is cowering in their hiding holes, we'll be the one’s out pounding the pavement. The only ones left who won’t mind getting shit done."

  Her long index finger extended, brushing over his lips. Laughing, she said, "Is that really what you meant?"

  "Yep. That's it."

  "And what about all the other things you used to do?" she asked curiously as she ran her hand down his chest.

  "That’s all behind me now," Oscar said as the ghosts of his dark past suddenly surged into his mind. He shut his eyes to quiet the mental noise and pulled Catalea closer, feeling and relishing the warm, soft press of her breasts against him. "Now I’m just trying to change the world. One case at a time."

  She smiled, pushing her hand ever lower, with painstaking slowness. "And do you really think you have that power? To change the whole, entire world?"

  Oscar thought about it a moment, but only with part of his brain. The rest of it was focused on the woman beside him, the perfectly crafted flesh and the sweet-smelling hair that tickled the side of his face. He shrugged, shoulders whisking against the sheets.

  "Well," she said, as her hand finally completed its journey and grabbed a rapidly swelling part of him. "You've already changed my world, Oscar Graves."

  He could have said a
lot of things then. He could have asked her the one burning question that remained in their strange relationship. What about the other men? Did she say the same things to them? Was this all just programming, or had she just learned to put on an act, the way any organic human could?

  He let the question go, floating off into the fog of his subconscious mind, and focused on what her hands were doing. A few minutes later she swung her leg over and straddled him, clawing gently at his chest as she moved slowly up and down. He watched her intently, drinking in her sultry gaze, her fluttering eyelids, her little gasps.

  Oscar had been with plenty of women before. He'd even been married to one. He knew the signs, and he knew the giveaways. There was no act here, not now as she fulfilled her professional obligation, as she earned her sum of money from him. He had no idea how she felt about most of her other clients, but he knew for a fact that she looked forward to her time with him. Technically, it was still work for her; but she seemed to enjoy every second of it.

  In his younger years, Oscar would not have been able to hold back. The faces and sounds she made would have driven him wild. Out of his mind. He would have gone too fast, finished quickly, sweaty and out of breath. Now he was at that golden age, pushing sixty years of age in a time when sixty was the new forty-five. Old enough to go slow and steady, young enough not to shut down entirely.

  Afterward, he flipped her onto her back and kissed her for a while; from her lips on down, and eventually back up again. By the time he reached her face again, her eyes were closed, her lips parted, her breath flowing in and out in perfectly slow, measured gusts. She was asleep, or very close to it... or perhaps just pretending.

  "I love you," he said, and meant it. He had no expectation of hearing it back.

  CHAPTER 2

  ◆◆◆

  Oscar Graves left the pleasure house well after dark, as a cold rain washed over the city and turned the streets to dark mirrors. Ponds and puddles clogged with garbage, a smell like a zoo wafting out of the storm drains. Oscar walked fast, his head low, the collar of his coat turned up to cover his neck. He kept his hands in his pockets. His left hand cradled a pack of cigarettes, keeping the damp from soaking in and ruining them. Cancer sticks, he called them. No reason to lie about what they were. They were such an archaic habit anyway. He felt dumb, left behind like some clueless Neanderthal, but sometimes he just needed to feel the burn of smoke down his throat - especially now.

  He was a lonely man always, but never so much as these evenings when he left Catalea behind. Her room was so homey. It felt just like an apartment. Cozy. Lived in. His stomach always sank a bit each and every time he stepped into the pleasure house hall though. The illusion always failed as soon as he saw the endless rows of identical rooms. Designed to make the dumb, lonely men who came through here feel like they were part of a real relationship. That their lives were anything but empty.

  Half of those men were just like Oscar. Divorced, estranged from adult children. Their glory days long since passed. Their self-worth at an all-time low. Oscar was still in the business as far as his day job went, still taking cases, but it all felt so much emptier now. So much less important. Crime rates were dropping anyway, and the most thrilling thing he got to do now was hunt down cheating spouses and taking pictures of them. He'd had a fair share of those cases in the past as well, but they had always felt more... interesting.

  The other half of the guys who went to the pleasure house were just as miserable, just as pathetic, but along different lines. They were guys who were still married, but whose wives hated them. Or vice versa. They came to these places to blow off steam, to feel like real men again, with women who were literally built to make them feel like studs no matter how lame their performances were. Oscar knew this type well. He often spied on them, chased them to rendezvous points, snapped pictures. In fact, that was how he had met Catalea...

  A cold night. A slick of ice on the roads, a covering of snow that made every pile of garbage look a little less ugly and a little more like a mound of boulders. The kind of night that made him wish he hadn't screwed up with Gwen, that he could be with her right that second, sitting by a roaring fire with her body pressed against his.

  His mark, a guy named Coster, had left work late. When he finally emerged from the office building, swathed in warm clothing and with a cup of steaming joe in his hands, he had not gone for his car. He had departed on foot, heading deeper into downtown.

  When following a guy on foot, any good private investigator will go on foot as well. In a car, you'd have to keep doubling back or circling the block. Either that, or you'd have to drive four miles an hour right alongside the son of a bitch. Either way, anyone with an eighth of a brain would spot you in about three seconds and start rethinking their itinerary. They might even get the cops involved.

  So, with a great deal of regret, Oscar switched off his car and went slipping and sliding across the road. The wind was blowing hard, and no matter how many turns and changes in direction he made, it always seemed to be blowing right into his face. His instinct was to go fast, but this Coster guy was taking his sweet time. He even ducked into a shop for a refill on his coffee. In retrospect, Oscar figured the guy was trying to stay up late so he could really get his money's worth at the pleasure house.

  While Coster was in the shop, Oscar ducked under the awning of a closed cafe across the street. Hiding in shadows, his dark coat a wall against the blizzard, he lit up a cigarette and clutched it with numb fingers. The color of his fingers was flushed and pink, rather than dead and white, which meant he still had some time before a retreat into a heated environment would become necessary. Instead he just smoked, hopped up and down a bit to keep warm, and waited.

  What a pathetic sight he must be; and a very troubling one. Depending on who was looking, he would either appear like the saddest, loneliest man in the world or some sort of thief casing the joint and planning his next move.

  Damn, it was cold. Even now, four months later, he still thought he could feel the cold tingling in the tips of his toes. It wasn't just the temperature that was frigid, either. It was everything. His heart. His soul. His prospects. He was at a dead end, had been for a long time, and nothing was changing except that dead end was getting darker, narrower.

  If he could just get out of this cold. But what did he have to look forward to once he did? A return to his gloomy apartment. A lukewarm shower and a beer, a long sit on a hard chair with a loose spring that dug into his back. A night of watching other people's misery in programs, letting his mind melt a bit further. And in the morning, a hangover, a breakfast of restaurant leftovers, a trip to his client's preferred meeting place to drop off his pictures and collect a bit of money and maybe, if he was lucky, an extension on his assignment. Then another long night, either in the cold watching Coster or at a bar killing his liver and the few stubborn brain cells that insisted on reminding him how miserable he was.

  He had no vision of his future that didn't involve some combination of those same events repeated ad infinitum, until the day he was lucky enough to keel over and die.

  There was no room or energy for hope or optimism. He didn't know it, but all he really needed was one good thing. One bright light, one beautiful moment of peace. And he found it that night, as he strode through the halls of the pleasure house in search of a good place to post up with his camera.

  One of the doors was open, and a woman stood there. She was dressed in a sheer nightgown, something that failed to hide the shape, color and size of her slightly oversized nipples and the heft of the breast themselves. Apart from this glimpse of Eden hidden under a thin sheet of cloth, the woman looked to Oscar like a widow stood at the end of a dock, waiting for her sailor husband who was never coming back.

  He was mesmerized by the sight of her. Completely unable to speak at first.

  She asked if she could help him. He explained that she couldn't, unless she knew about a guy named Coster.

  She smiled at that. "I know h
im. I know the girl he likes to see..."

  Then she showed him. Oscar was grateful. At some point during the walk over, Coster had looked at the time and apparently saw that he was running late. He booked it, leaving the private investigator behind to hobble on stiff, frozen legs. Oscar managed to stay just close enough behind to see him vanish into this simple, nondescript two-story building, quite like a hotel in structure. The lack of any kind of signage, and the vast collection of vehicles in the parking lot, pegged it immediately as a pleasure house. The only place where a synth could get a paying job, which was still an upgrade from where they were a couple decades ago.

  There were a lot of advantages to laying with a synth. The main one was that they could not transmit any kind of STD. Though they felt, tasted and smelled like any organic woman, there were fundamental differences - hidden ones - that disallowed human pathogens from surviving in their bodies. You could still theoretically catch something from them, if you went in within a few minutes of another guy, but the pleasure houses had rules to prevent that.

  In return for their service to the public of frustrated men and women, the synths were given money and permanent, private use of their rooms. When they weren't pleasing a client in them, they were living in them. The money was of little use to any synth, so most just let their checks collect in untouched bank accounts. Just in case they were one day freed, considered as actual citizens, allowed to do things like purchase property and hold down other types of jobs.

  Oscar came to the pleasure houses often, almost always in the hunt of a mark and not for the intended use. He knew a lot about these places, and about what he often referred to as the lost souls who worked in them. Because to him they did have souls, if the soul existed at all. They were people. And he felt sorry for them, even as he stared at their bodies and contemplated burning a bit of his money on them.