Training the new maid.

Naomi had not gone though, just made it appear as if she had. Hiding in the kitchen, she listened to One’s boots click across the marble floor, heard a brief crackling sound, and then heard both pairs of boots, then the door slam. She waited a few minutes, then looked around the cabinet. They were gone, probably looking for her.

Her apartment was all the way across town, assuming they went there; she should have nearly an hour to escape. What would she do? Where would she go? Naomi wandered into the living room in a daze, then through rest of the suite. Ok, first some clothes, she’d seen boxers and t-shirts in their bedroom, and, yes, money, they had a drawer full in there for some freaky reason. She’d take it, how much worse could it get? They were already going to kill her, the severity of the beating had convinced her of that, and their faces.

Jesus, her back was killing her, if she survived, she’d have some scars. Fucking assholes. Even now though, a part of her enjoyed the intensity, the desire, the control they’d had over her. She was still wet, still remembered their hands on her. Christ, what was wrong with her, wake up girl, you need to get out of here, quick.

Naomi started pulling open drawers looking for things she could use. A pair of socks, and slippers were better than nothing, some boxers, oh, a gi, that would be perfect once she cut off part of the legs of the pants. Naomi pulled on the clothes and smelled Two’s scent, sort of a combination of spice, gunpowder, leather—very masculine. Focus, they are going to kill you fool, she told herself. Why did they affect her like that?

Grabbing a small Hermes overnight bag she found at the top of the perfectly organized closet, she stalked back into the bedroom and started loading it with the money from the drawer. There were several guns and knives spread throughout the room as well, she took a Beretta with a holster and tightened it around her chest as best she could under the gi. It was still too big, but better than nothing. She sent up a silent prayer of thanks for her brother teaching her to shoot on the sly, that and for his obsession with guns—she’d shot a Berretta.

Slipping the extra clip into the bag, she added a long knife as well, and a digital camera. She’d get some shots of those doors on the way out, no way she could go home now, that life was over and she still felt that the doors were a clue of some kind, something important. Checked the clock, ten minutes elapsed. Maybe there was something else around here she could use, something that would help her to at least know what the hell they were? Not werewolves, not vampires, so what were they? You can’t fight what you don’t know, not well anyway, and she wanted to survive.

She stepped out of the bedroom and paced through the suite. As she turned into the bathroom, she saw another room open around the corner, one she’d never seen before. What was this?

The room seemed to shimmer like a heat haze. It was a library, but there were only a few books in it. One seemed to call her in particular, a big open book on a podium. She stepped into the room and felt goose pimples raise up on her flesh, like she was being scanned and then, barely, accepted.

Once in, the room seemed like any other library. The book, still, felt somehow powerful, not evil, just, powerful. Like that frisson she used to get when she walked by the big transformer boxes, a sensation of power. She lifted it off the podium, no time to look at it now, and felt a change in her, something, a shiver.

And her back stopped hurting. What the hell? She reached around, slipped her hand under the jacket and felt smooth flesh. Keeper, this book was definitely a keeper. Naomi scanned the rest of the room, but nothing else appealed to her so she slipped the book into the bag and headed for the door.

Still forty-five minutes, good time. She slipped her coat over the gi, put back on the ridiculous shoes so as not to attract any attention as she left, stuffed the Hermes bag in a trash bag with some of the twins’ garbage on top, grabbed it then paused to snap some pics of the door and walked out through the servants’ quarters as usual.

Instead of taking the bus, she hailed a cab and went to the opposite side of town from where she though the twins were going, straight to a guy she knew through college who had a car for sale. He’d been talking about it at a study session, how he needed the money for school. Any car would work, but this one sounded pretty fast. Anything to get her out of town.

On the way to his apartment, she stopped off at an Eckerds and got a bottle of hair dye, sunglasses, a cheap pair of shoes and some toiletries. Even took the time to rinse her mouth as soon as she could pry open the little bottle of mouthwash, faugh, the taste of him. She wanted to wash them off her so bad.

Pulling on the shoes, she took off the couple of blocks to his apartment, Christ she hoped her was home.


One and Two reached her apartment in twenty minutes flat then popped the lock and let themselves in. Rather grim little place, really, but Naomi had done a fair job at decorating it with her limited funds. Two sat down at the computer and turned it on.

**Let’s see what she’s interested in, perhaps she keeps a journal**

One leaned over to watch. The first thing they noticed was her wallpaper—it was the first panel of their door.

**Interesting, she is trying to figure us out** Amusement rang in Two’s voice.

**Yes, curious that she picked up on that as a clue so quickly** One felt vaguely uneasy, something was not right, something.

Two logged on to the net and found that she was employing several webcrawlers to search for each of the images from the door, had written descriptions of both the pics and of he and his brother’s appearance and were searching for those, and had somehow managed to obtain pictures of he and One and were running a search for them that way as well. And she was running a search for anything to do with the chateau, multidimensional dwellings, werewolves, vampires and

**Demons, she’s searching for demons too**

**Relax Two, our names are well hidden**

It was a common misconception, one they cultivated, that they were “ghost” programs that had never been given names. This was incorrect. When the Mainframe decided to distract the humans from the existence of the Matrix by releasing some of their most feared mythical monsters into the “real world,” it had pulled from all the mythologies
Th
They were demons, and their weaknesses, like demons, were very very few, in fact, one. Their names. They had them, but they were hidden in a sentient book, called simply enough, Book,”that could only be retrieved by a human virgin, and then only if said virgin was in desperate need and then only if Book felt like being retrieved. It was part of their virgin games, occasionally, to see of any of them could find and retrieve Book. No real threat, would still have to figure Book obut but still fun. So far none had succeeded in even finding the room.

**One, did we leave the chamber open this evening**

**Of course**

They waited another thirty minutes, a slight sense of alarm growing as they read Naomi’s detailed notes on them, their movements, their belongings, the other occupants of the chateau, nothing escaped this girl’s notice.

Then they got to her goal: “I want to become one of them. I hate being human, being weak. I’d gladly give up my soul to live forever, wouldn’t even hesitate. That’s what I want from this, and somehow, I’m going to get it from them, some how I’ll figure out the secret. They are so stupid they don’t even notice how much I’ve already learned. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to get it, to get them to give it to me, to make me one of them. I can do this. ”

Both ran for the door, ran down the stairs, ran for the car—that was exactly the sort of attitude Book would love.