It had become almost a ritual. The guns, unloaded and cleaned and placed with reverent care into their spaces in the gun racks. The heavy leather duster, hung up on a dressmaker's dummy that was the only souvenir of his battle with the Doll Queen. A touch of solvent applied around the edges of the golden mask, just enough to melt the spirit gum that helped hold it in place. The mask itself, placed in the heart of a small shrine at the back of the workshop. Incense lit, an offering of thanks for his luck and speed and for the misfortune brought to his enemies. A comb run quickly through the hair to brush away any mats or tangles left by wearing the mask. And with that, the crime-fighter known as the God of Bullets vanished for another day to leave behind the man, Li Huang.
Huang checked the cameras that showed the outer workshop. He didn't really expect anything-Gemma knew better than to take any visitors to this room when she showed them around the house-but good habits bred good outcomes. Sure enough, the room looked just as dusty and cluttered as always, the kind of half-abandoned basement workshop you might see in the home of a man who was always meaning to fix things up but never got around to it. Just the way it was supposed to. He triggered a small switch to open the hidden door and went from one life to another.
After securing the hidden door again, he went out through the workshop into the laundry room, taking care to avoid leaving any footprints in the sawdust he'd scattered around to help maintain the illusion of disuse. As he stepped gracefully from one clear spot to the next, his mind was already working on thoughts of the evening ahead. Gemma had probably made dinner, but if not, Huang was pretty sure he could make something palatable out of the leftovers from last night. The lawn needed a little trimming, but he could take care of that after dinner-the nights were so short these days that he could practically let it go until bedtime...
With one last ten-foot bound, he landed in the laundry room as lightly as a sparrow coming to rest. He checked quickly-nothing in the washer, and the clothes in the dryer were already clean. He dumped them into a basket and took them with him-he could probably get them all folded and put away by the time dinner was ready. Huang started up the staircase, the smell of fresh laundry in his nostrils.
As he got further up the stairs, though, he began to notice another scent. He took a whiff, trying to place it. It smelled floral, but nothing like detergent; this had notes of hibiscus and jasmine, like a tropical garden had bloomed in the house. It smelled somehow familiar...had Gemma worn this as perfume some time?
He quickened his pace slightly, drawn up by the aroma. He definitely knew it from somewhere, but he couldn't quite place where. It was almost maddening, because he knew he should know exactly where it came from, but the memory hovered just out of reach like a teasing lover. It smelled wonderful, though, like hothouse flowers blooming on a sunny day. If this was a perfume of Gemma's, he should ask her to wear it more often because it was absolutely delightful. He felt a pleasant warmth between his thighs as his cock twitched slightly.
The aroma drove him on, making him take the steps two at a time, drawing him up through the kitchen and out into the living room. He tossed the laundry basket onto the couch, his fingers suddenly fluttering with an urge he couldn't describe. He felt tension running through his body, but he couldn't explain what kind. Some part of him wanted to turn and go back for his guns, but it was as though he couldn't possibly stop himself now.
He found himself breaking into a run, and even as he turned the corner to head to the bedroom his mind was racing with arousal and sudden panic intermingled into a swirl of adrenalin rush because he remembered why he didn't remember. He remembered all the times before when he'd smelled this same perfume and forgot why it was so intimately familiar, because the first thing the scent induced was a mild amnesia that meant you never remembered who you were facing until you saw-
"Believe it or not," Femme Fatality purred out in a voice that sounded like whiskey mixed with buckwheat honey, "this really is all just coincidence." She was lounging on his bed, her body swathed in the trademark silken scarves that were soaked in her mind-numbing scent, shifting just a little to let the translucent fabric tease her naked body underneath.
Behind her, Gemma lay unconscious on the same bed. She'd been hogtied with two scarves around her wrists and ankles, and a third acted as a gag. Huang tried to focus on how angry that made him, and how worried he was for his wife's safety. It helped keep his mind off of the strength of the erection he'd just gotten.
"I mean, by the time I found the house, it was obvious who you really were," she said, "but I really wasn't looking for the God of Bullets at all." Fatality parted her legs slightly, not enough to let Huang see anything but enough to make him all too uncomfortably aware of what he wasn't seeing. "You know me, I've never been one for revenge. There's no profit in it. I've always said that if you're foolish enough to go looking for your enemies, you deserve whatever you get."
Huang staggered backwards, trying to get back out of the room before more of Femme Fatality's sweet, thick perfume could saturate his lungs, but she unwound out one of her weighted scarves with a smooth and easy gesture, snapping it out like a whip and snagging the doorknob. She pulled the door shut just as he reached it. "No, I was actually looking for a gunman. I've got a target at the United Nations, and there's just too much air conditioning and too much security for me to get at him easily. And unfortunately, the sanction is a bit time-sensitive." Huang knew she meant 'murder', but Fatality liked to wrap her bloody business in a cloak of delicate sensibilities.
"So I started looking around for someone I could...persuade to assist me." Huang headed to one of the windows, hoping to get some fresh air into the room. He could smell the heady, tropical aroma everywhere in the room-she'd soaked the whole place with perfume. The bed, the carpets...even the wallpaper gave off her scent. He'd been able to resist her mind-altering toxins before, but that had been out in the open, and never this much at once. "And everywhere I went, people said the same name. I'm sure you can guess who it was."
Huang tried to lift the window sash, but it wouldn't move. With a tremendous effort, he focused eyes that had already become glassy with desire and saw nails hammered into each sash where it met the frame. She'd left nothing to chance, it seemed. Even Gemma was accounted for-Femme Fatality's perfume didn't work on women, but she'd made sure that his beloved couldn't do anything to help. "They said you were the best in the business, that you could do magic with a gun. They said that you just kept getting better and better until one day, you simply vanished. Like you'd gotten so good that the devil had hired you to kill angels for him."
Huang balled up his fist and punched at the glass, less concerned about cuts than about whatever Femme Fatality might make him do once she'd gotten him under his sway. He'd sworn to the monks at Huoyao Temple that he would never again take a human life with his guns, but he knew that Femme Fatality's drugged perfume could dull his mind to the point where no oath would have meaning. She would use his skills until her scent had worn his mind as smooth as a stone, and then leave his blank and empty husk to take the fall for her crimes like she had with so many others. He had to-
