Drag Hunt Read Online Free PDF Page A

labyrinthine corridors of the shabby hotel, past door after door, each one a choice, a direction. He loved hotels. Travellers passing through. To and from. Here and there. Lives intersecting. Chance meetings. Illicit liaisons. Anything could happen.
    And things were. Things he was not a part of, so of course he wanted to know what. They had led him here. Why, he didn’t know. But this was a crossroads. All he had to do was wait and that wasn’t a chore, not for Eshu Elegba, God of the Crossroads.
     
     
    R ICHARD G REEN MANAGED to find his hotel eventually. He explained to the desk clerk that he’d lost his key card, but the clerk seemed more interested in the TV show playing on his iPad. Richard gave his name. The bored clerk’s fingers clattered across the computer keyboard. His details checked out. He handed Richard a spare key card with complete disinterest and returned his attention to the iPad.
    Richard limped along the hushed maze of grubby corridors, past house cleaning trolleys with piles of fresh linen, as staff stripped and prepared rooms for new patrons. He found his room number, swiped the card and pushed the door open.
    Someone had trashed his room. Idiot. Fuck. They had thrown his clothes everywhere, ripped apart his bags and he couldn’t find his passport.
    He felt dirty and abused. He winced in pain as he dropped down on the bed and surveyed the wreckage of his life. He wanted to cry, but instead he wiped his eyes roughly, his lips puckered in self-pity. He shucked off his stained clothes, to see bruises blooming on his torso. He walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower, waiting for the steam to build before stepping under the spray. The hot water sluiced down his body, burning the grazes on his hips and elbows. The water stung like hot hail.
    How could he have been so stupid? He slumped against the cold tiles of the wall, slick with condensation, the ceramic soothing against his shoulders. He groped for the shower dial, shut the water off and stepped out.
    He wiped the steam from the mirror, smearing the side of his fist against the cool glass. The reflection of a face not his own peered over his shoulder, through the condensation.
    It smiled at him.
     
     
    “J ESUS !”
    “I’m sorry, did I startle you?” Eshu carried on smiling as the young man grabbed a towel and wrapped it round his waist.
    “You scared the hell out of me,” said the naked man, blinking water out of his eyes, “What the hell are you doing in my room?”
    He shrugged, as if it was obvious. “There was no sign on the door.”
    No signs, no sigils, which was as good a welcome as he ever knew.
    “Do you work here?” the wet man asked.
    Work here? Yes, in more senses than one. He pointed to his badge. Hi I’m Eshu .
    “Call me Shu,” he said.
    “Richard. Sorry, had a shit day. Shit night,” said Richard. He saw Eshu’s trolley by the door. “Housekeeping, right?”
    Eshu was enjoying this. “In a way.”
    Richard clenched his fists. “I’ve been bloody robbed.”
    “Yes, I rather think you have,” Shu agreed, but he wasn’t talking about material possessions.
    “I’m going to go down and report this to reception and they can call the police,” Richard was saying as he pulled on a pair of jeans.
    “They won’t help. You’ll be in the system then; organised, ordered. You’ll get bogged down in paperwork.” He tutted and shook his head. “In triplicate. Tch. Thrice named, such a binding.”
    “What choice do I have?”
    Well, not the boring one. That was why Shu was here.
    “What brought you to this place?” Shu asked.
    “Pardon?”
    Shu looked back along the paths that had brought him here and was puzzled. There was a turning in his life that shouldn’t have been there. He probed it, examined it, like a tongue in a tooth cavity. What he found was interesting—and disturbing.
    “Choices,” Shu said. “Choices were made, you were cast adrift on the ripples they caused. They cost you what