Dark Matter

The clatter of falling coins accompanied by the bells and whistles of the machines was almost deafening. Chaos ensued as men and women jumped to their feet in disbelief. The redhead kept walking, unfazed, a faint smile on her lips.

She stepped out the entrance made famous by a forty-five-foot bronze statue of the MGM lion. She’d been playing hooky coming here, blowing off the VIP ticket Zag had given her to see the new Lance Burton wannabe at Mandalay Bay. The magician’s final act featured the band Do It To Julia vanishing off the stage after performing their new hit single.

Zag had masterminded the gig for his charity du jour. He’d be pissed that she’d missed it. Still, she was in Vegas, the land of don’t-ask/don’t-tell.

She was showgirl tall and wore black leather pants and Gucci boots. Her cherry wraparound silk blouse displayed a nice amount of midriff—Evie worked out. But it wasn’t just her looks that turned heads. There was an air about her, as if here was trouble, but not the kind most people wanted to avoid.

She caught the eye of the doorman and signaled for him to hail a cab. The instant she stepped off the curb, a gray Bentley swerved to a stop, blocking her path. The tinted window rolled down.

She took out her ear buds and leaned down to the window. “Hello, Zag,” she said with a smile.

He lowered his leopard print Dolce & Gabanna shades. He looked absolutely furious.

“You missed the show.”

“Did I?” She glanced back at MGM’s entrance. “And here I thought I caught the main event.”

The door opened. “Get in.”

It wasn’t a request.

“Someone’s feeling grouchy,” she said.

She slipped inside the Bentley next to him, throwing her Prada bag and iPod on the floor. Zag pushed her up against the white leather seats. Evie knew he’d been onstage with the band as a guest guitarist. He still wore stage makeup and was dressed in an electric-blue suit with tails but no shirt. She ran her hand through his spiked, bleached hair, staring into his eyes.

There were many unique things about Gonzague de Rozières, not the least of which was his name. Like a rock star, he went by the moniker Zag. He had the wiry frame of a long-distance runner but managed to appear imposing despite being a good two inches shorter than Evie’s six feet one. He had more money than God and just as many secrets. But to Evie, the most unique thing about him was his eyes.

The pupils appeared always enlarged, as if he lived on some perpetual high even though he didn’t do drugs. There was almost no pigment to the iris, either. The color changed depending on the light and his mood. At the moment, they appeared a steely-gray.

“You want a show?” he asked.

She leaned against the door of the Bentley. With the grace of a ballerina, she raised a Gucci-clad foot and pressed the stiletto against his bare chest, pushing just enough to know she’d leave a mark.

“What do you think?” she asked.

He took her boot by the ankle. He shook his head, smiling. “I told you to stay away from the cage.”

She pouted. “Why? Don’t you enjoy the effect?”

She kissed him, hard, and then bit his lip, almost drawing blood. He returned the favor by grabbing her arm and pulling it tight up her back.

“Now, now,” he whispered in her ear. “No fair biting.”

Evie was twenty-six. She’d been with a lot of men. But there’d never been anyone like Zag. He could take everything she handed him. And then some.

By the time they reached his suite at the Wynn, she knew she’d have bruises. It’s what she wanted. Seeing those men in the cage, drawing that energy to her, she needed the release.

Afterward, they lay naked on the Egyptian-cotton sheets of the California King Wynn “Dream Bed,” one of the hotel’s most talked about attributes. Like everything about the Wynn, the suite was opulence itself. At two thousand square feet, it was larger than some New York apartments and featured wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling windows with a gorgeous view of the Strip…which was why Zag preferred the salon suites to the more exclusive villas on the hotel’s golf course.

Zag covered her body with his, making that connection with his eyes that she only had with him. Despite a broken nose—a memento from a mountain-climbing expedition in the Himalayas—he possessed an almost striking beauty. He had a thick head of bleached white hair, but absolutely no body hair. A genetic condition, he’d told her.

He reached for the bottle of Cristal nestled in the bedside ice bucket. He took a drink from the bottle then offered her a sip, holding the bottle up to her mouth. Only, champagne wasn’t what Evie wanted.

She dropped the bottle on the carpeted floor. She heard it roll away as she pressed her lips to his with enough force that his head sunk into the down pillow.

She continued their kiss, forcing the issue when he tried to push her away. She didn’t stop to catch her breath, felt herself getting light-headed. She visualized the men in the cage—the blood—the idea of death making her feel so alive.

She felt her head yanked back by a fistful of her hair.

Zag stared at her, his eyes almost colorless now. Catching his breath, he said, “Be careful, Evie.”

She smiled, breathing just as hard as Zag. He kept his grip on her hair, but she didn’t care.

She brushed her thumb over his swollen bottom lip where she’d bitten him earlier. “Fuck that.”

Evie locked her legs around his hips and bit his lip again, this time drawing blood.

The next thing she knew, he rolled them both off the bed. He pinned her to the carpeted floor, straddling her.

“I said, be careful!” This time, he meant it.

That was another thing she enjoyed about Zag. He was one of only two men who could best her physically.

She turned her head and looked at the Cristal bottle and the champagne soaking into the confetti design of the carpet next to her face.

“Oops,” she said, smiling coyly.

“Gracious, was that almost an apology?” he asked, nibbling her earlobe, his anger easily forgotten.

He stood and held out his hand. Pulling her to her feet, he clucked his tongue at the empty ice bucket.

“Cristal.” He made a soft sound of disappointment deep in his throat. “What a waste.”

But Evie was already heading out of the bedroom toward the wet bar in the living room. The marble floor, in a deep shade of cocoa, felt deliciously cold under her bare feet. She passed the room’s most touted feature: a fifty-inch plasma screen set dead center against the wall of curtained windows. Anyone watching the high-def television would have the Vegas strip as background courtesy of the floor-to-ceiling windows.

The furnishings were chic and contemporary, the color scheme soothing. The russet grasscloth wallpaper served as the perfect foil for the cherry-toned furnishings. Two sofas bracketed the marble-topped coffee table and Andy Warhol prints graced the walls. Steve Wynn had spent two-point-seven billion on his namesake casino hotel. The opening had featured an exclusive with Vanity Fair magazine and a commercial during the Super Bowl. Zag prided himself in knowing all the right people, people like Steve Wynn.

In the living room, she took in the flotsam and jetsam of Zag’s other life. A curious array of scientific papers, business journals and scholarly tomes covered most every surface. Tucked among such lofty subjects as “string theory” and “dark matter” were the pseudosciences that so fascinated him—several copies of the Journal of Parapsychology, printed articles examining sundry paranormal phenomenon, a report on remote perception put out by PEAR, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research program. One title in particular caught her eye: The Atlantis Generation.

She almost laughed. Apparently, Zag wouldn’t be satisfied until he reached his goal of becoming both man and myth. Evie knew she was an important part of his quest for the latter.

She picked up a bound copy of proceedings from the coffee table and weighed the heavy tome in her hand. She’d turned down his offer of the company jet, choosing to drive into Vegas the day before, presumably so they might spend some time together. But Zag had been in town for days attending one of his precious paranormal conferences.

She turned back toward the bedroom where Zag now stood in the doorway, his hands braced against the doorjamb. She took a moment to appreciate his naked body. The combination of alabaster skin and lack of body hair made him look like a Greek statue: his muscles were as clearly defined as sculpted marble. Even the broken nose served to give the refined, almost feminine features more gravitas.

She dropped the proceedings back on the coffee table, where it landed with a heavy thud. “Always mixing work with pleasure.”

“Always mixing pain with pleasure,” he countered.

“True. But my mix is ever so more fascinating, don’t you think?”

“Have I ever told you what a goddess you are?” he asked.

She preened in her naked glory, completely aware of her beauty. Despite her waist-length red hair, she didn’t have a freckle on her body. Any mark came from grueling practice fights in one of several martial-art disciplines she’d mastered.

As she turned away, Zag came up behind her. He cupped her breasts in his hands and kissed the nape of her neck. She reached back and dug her fingers into the hard muscles of his thighs, pressing back against his awaking erection.

“Not to mention all those boring charity events,” she continued. She pretended to snore loudly as she turned in his arms. “I forget. What was it this time?” She bit her lip in mock concentration. “The fur and diamond deprived of Beverly Hills?”

“Autism,” he answered. “And it was a fabulous success—which you’d know firsthand if you’d bothered to show.”

She gave him a quick kiss, then danced out of his reach when he tried to spank her. She headed for the bar where she did indeed find another bottle of Cristal in the refrigerator.

“And have my picture splashed all over the tabloids as your new mystery woman?”

She turned the champagne’s wire cage handle the requisite six half turns. The cork flew across the room with a satisfying pop. Champagne foamed over her hand, spilling to the marble floor.

“I can think of worse things,” he said.

“Pass,” she said, drinking from the bottle.

Innovator, playboy, bazillionaire philanthropist, Zag, Evie knew, liked the headlines, and not just on the ho-hum pages in Barron’s. Playing guitar onstage at Mandalay Bay was the sort of thing that guaranteed Zag a mention in People, a magazine that had already proclaimed him one of the sexiest men of the year, dubbing him the Mad Magician.

She took another drink from the bottle, letting the tiny bubbles fill her mouth. She walked back to Zag and pressed the bottle to his lips.

As far as Evie was concerned, Zag, the self-proclaimed Bill Gates of the psychic community, didn’t have anything to worry about when it came to making good press. His company, Halo Industries, provided paranormal services in sundry forms—employee evaluations, intuitive counseling to Fortune 500 companies, forecasting future trends for Wall Street firms. It was even said he’d been hired by certain sectors of the government, though Zag always pleaded “no comment” when asked.

Then there were those pesky rumors about his strange lineage—rumors he denied and cultivated with equal effort.

While the man could be a jack-of-all-trades, Evie knew his true passion. The bound proceedings she’d dropped back on the coffee table were as thick as the yellow pages. Playfully, she pretended to pour champagne on Indigo Children and the Evolving Brain. Zag grabbed the bottle away, shaking a scolding finger.

Indigo Children referred to a rare breed of kids singled out in the last ten years. Presumably, they were more highly evolved than the general population, many possessing psychic abilities. Some claimed they even used a higher percentage of their brain. The term had been published by Lee Carroll and his wife. Carroll channeled the entity, Kryon, who sent information through Carroll to help mankind ascend to a higher level of consciousness. But there were other theories about the origins of the Indigo phenomenon.

Synesthesia was a neurological condition that could cause a person to experience two physical senses simultaneously. A synesthetic might hear with their eyes or get a specific taste in their mouth whenever they heard a particular sound. A psychic by the name of Nancy Ann Tappe, who had the condition, had claimed to see auras—a New Age concept that argued the body was surrounded by a luminous field of color.

This same psychic began seeing an indigo aura surrounding these more highly evolved children. Eventually, the term became linked with certain conditions such as ADHD and autism.

She pushed Zag onto the couch and straddled him. “You know what they say. All work and no play.”

“I’m hardly that.”

She filled her mouth with champagne and kissed him, sharing the taste of the Cristal with their kiss.

Zag had his own theory about the Indigo experience, going so far as to claim the existence of “Halo-effect” children, a smaller, more select group of children who had “evolved.” Halo Industries now had schools where parents could send their special offspring to fine-tune their gifts. Their unique curriculum presumably helped hone psychic abilities. That’s where Evie came in.

On the couch, Evie rose up on her knees. Her hair fell like a curtain over her and Zag. But as she lowered her face for another penetrating kiss, she heard her cell phone in the bedroom, its ring tone, Handel’s “Water Music.”

Hearing the distinctive ring, she broke off their kiss, handed Zag the Cristal and rose to her feet.

There was only one reason he’d call her at this hour.

Back in the bedroom, she grabbed the cell phone and stepped over to the floor-to-ceiling windows. She stared at the phone, allowing it to continue ringing in her hand.

“Aren’t you going to answer?” Zag asked from the door.

She glanced down at the street below. “Isn’t it funny how, here in Vegas, it doesn’t matter if it’s day or night? The lights are always on.”

Of course, Zag would recognize the ring tone.

She was trying to decide if she should take the call here with Zag listening in or risk his censure by asking for privacy.

“Let him leave a message then,” Zag said, his voice in dulcet tones as he lay back on the Dream Bed. “Come back to bed, cherie.”

Only, they both knew she wouldn’t.

Evie flipped open the phone. She whispered into the cell, “Hello, lover. How’s our boy doing?”

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