Body Shrine (Savage Erotica)

BODY SHRINE

By Amanda Close

Copyright 2013 Amanda Close

Kindle Edition

Kindle Edition, License Notes

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The Savage Age

The world as we know it has changed, altered forever during an event the survivors now call The Witching Hour. It was a time when vampires, the walking dead, and worse emerged from the shadows and threw our global society into apocalyptic disarray.

While some people eke out a living in small towns, ever threatened by bandits, monsters, and the elements, most live in Las Vegas… a bizarre dark carnival community built on the ruins of the old city. It can be a dangerous place to live, though for most people it is better than staying out in the wilderness, where the Witching creatures rule the sand.

There are other beings in this brave new world, known as Powers, who manifest a wide array of supernatural abilities, making them heroes to some and gods to others. A lone wasteland warrior, Cassandra, is one such being. Her gift is the ability to control life-force energy though sex.

This is her story…

ACT I

Cassandra could hear the girl’s screams for her father, who lay bleeding in Cassandra’s arms, drowning out to the roar of half a dozen engines. The young warrior looked up and saw the raiders fleeing the battle, their cars and trucks kicking up sand as they sped away in several directions at once. She could not see through the swirling dust clouds which vehicle Zara had been taken by, knowing that a grisly fate awaited her no matter where the raiders took her. Thirsters, the vampire creatures who ruled the wilderness, and their blood-bound servants, known as ghouls, were not known to keep prisoners for long.

She had been patrolling the borders of Las Vegas, working as a bounty killer who brought in the fangs of thirsters, or the heads of well-known bandits. She had seen the smoke in the distance and sped in that direction, assuming that it was yet another refugee caravan fleeing the plague that had destroyed the neighboring city of Reno. The mass exodus had been so swift none of the refugees had been able to take precautions, and hastily assembled caravans crossing the desert were easy prey for the multitudes of thirster gangs. Cassandra did not think of herself as a hero, though if she could save a few lives while scoring a few more bounties it had seemed like a win/win.

The man in Cassandra’s arms groaned in pain, his handsome face obscured with an expression of pain and splattered with blood. She had come here to find the battle and bounty promised by a skirmish with raiders, and yet she had found more. Carnage she had seen, and heroism to, though nothing as selfless as what she had seen this dying man display. Cassandra ran her fingers across the man’s strong jaw line, the touch of skin seemingly electric, and he opened his eyes to stare into hers. In that moment Cassandra did something she had not expected, and she decided to ignore the bounty. She carefully loaded him into her car, and rushed him to the temple of the medicae in Las Vegas, pushing her vehicle to its limits as she tore across the desert. A man who would do for others was rare in this world, and she was overcome with the need to help him. Even if he died soon, which seemed likely given his wounds, she had to try, if not for him, then for his captured daughter, or perhaps even for herself. Once he was safe in the temple, she returned to the wasteland, positive that she could pick up the raider’s trail.

She did not have to search for long, and soon battle was joined again on the open roads. 

Cassandra shifted into high gear and fed the throttle with a stomp from her boot, and the car lurched forward, its engine seeming to roar in anticipation of the carnage to come. As she sped onwards several miles behind her lay the burning wreckage of the first truck she had vanquished that day, its occupants dead on the sand and food for the crows. The sound of metallic impact was deafening as she hit the accelerator and slammed her car into the back of another vehicle. She had come around in a wide arc and smashed the rear wheel well of her enemy’s vehicle, and sending the smaller car flipping end over end. The young warrior brushed her long braided hair over her shoulder and corrected her course with one hand as she pulled back the string of her crossbow with the other, locking another bolt into place. Within moments she closed the distance between her vehicle and another ghoul truck, bringing them into range of her mounted weapons.

Cassandra worked alone, so had to compensate or this by rigging her car-mounted weapons with a series of swivels and pulley systems so that she could keep one hand on the wheel and use the other to engage her enemies. As such, her weapons were designed for close range auto-dueling, and in her mind this was how such fighting should be, close and personal. The two ghouls in the back of the truck began taking pot shots at her as she drew near, the hard rounds spanking off the plate armor welded across the majority of her vehicle. Cassandra swerved to the left, putting as much of the armored car between her and the salvo as she brought the vehicle ever closer to the driver’s side of the truck cab. She pulled the safety catch on the over-sized crossbow mounted on the passenger side dashboard and took hold of the pistol grip she had fastened to the base of the bow. The ropes and pulleys she had anchored to the car kept the crossbow steady through the bumpy ride, and she aimed at the driver. Just as she pulled the trigger a lucky round sped through the venting in the window armor and slammed into her right shoulder, causing the twenty-four inch crossbow bolt to miss the driver and imbed itself in the door. Cassandra snarled in pain and put both hands back on the wheel, the adrenaline of the moment helping her push through the agony and keep the vehicle steady. Unable to re-load or fire the crossbow Cassandra resorted to using her vehicle itself as a weapon. She had welded large spikes at the center of each tire mount, which at these high speeds would be more than enough to shred an enemy’s tires if she was able to hit them just right.

Cassandra gritted her teeth and drew upon her Power, expending what little energy remained to attend her wound while repeatedly ramming the side of her vehicle into the ghoul’s truck. The energy flowed from the base of her spine and coursed up her back, finding its way to her shoulder. The energy activated white blood cells that immediately began attacking the multitude of infections already invading her body as torn muscle fibers and tendons began knitting themselves back together. Within moments what had been a crippling injury had been healed to being little more than a minor wound that would heal on its own in due time. More rounds bounced off of the car’s armor, and two more slipped through the vents, though luckily they failed to hit Cassandra as she rammed her can into the truck once more. While the two vehicles sped down the dusty road, the metal of their competing frames grinding and shrieking, Cassandra looked at the driver for the first time. His ears were pointed; his skin had the pale yellow of the thirsters, and his eyes a piercing red. Their eye contact was only for a fleeting moment, before Cassandra broke away from his gaze and regained her senses, for even in those swift moments the thirster was already assaulting her mind. Cassandra downshifted suddenly, and slammed on her brakes while still grinding the side of her vehicle into the truck. The driver did not react and swerve away quickly enough and as the truck sped past the back tire was shredded upon impact with her back tire spike, then the spike from her front tire ripped into the axle and sent the truck spinning out of control. Cassandra yanked on the e-brake and twisted her wheel in the opposite direction, making her car screech to a horizontal halt as smoke from the burning rubber momentarily filled the air. The thirster tried to correct the path of the vehicle without success, and the truck tipped over on its side, kicking up sparks and asphalt as it ground to a slow stop.

Cassandra leapt out of her car as soon as it stopped, leaving the engine running as she stalked towards the damaged truck. She could hear the thirster growling inside the cab, and from the way the crossbow bolt in the door was moving she realized that her bolt must have pierced his leg, and she smiled at that, knowing that the barbed tip would be difficult and painful to remove. She quickly scaled the underside of the truck and pulled herself onto the top of the vehicle. She looked down at the thirster as he thrashed about furiously, having been wretched by the crash into an awkward sideways and nearly upside down position. As she drew her revolver from its hip holster the thirster bellowed and ripped its leg off of the barbed bolt, falling down into the passenger’s seat. Cassandra coldly pointed the pistol down into the cab and cocked the hammer, though just before she could fire a shot rang out and she fell to her knees. The two ghoul passengers were thrown from the vehicle as it tipped, though the power of the thirster’s blood coursing through their veins kept them alive, even if battered and bruised.  A bloody hole had been punched through her left thigh as the two ghoul passengers appeared on the other side of the truck, working the actions of their own revolvers to spit more rounds into their lone adversary. Cassandra brought her right leg up and rose into a painful crouch as she started firing, fanning the hammer to cycle through the bullets of the single-action revolver. The first two rounds went wide, though the third and fourth thudded into the chest of one ghoul, then another miss, then the last round into the guts of the second ghoul. Tough as the thrister’s blood made them, thought Cassandra in relief as she slid the empty pistol back into its holster, it doesn’t make the ghouls bulletproof.

Cassandra caught her breath and drew the wickedly sharp bayonet from the scabbard on her thigh. It was a relic of the old world, some long forgotten war fought by the ancients, though it was made of good steel and held an edge like no other blade, making it the perfect tool for carving up her enemies. As Cassandra stood and limped back to the driver side the door exploded outwards, the hinges sheared off by the raw force of the blow from inside. The thirster emerged from the opening and with near superhuman speed climbed out to charge Cassandra. The young warrior assumed a fighting stance as best she could, despite her wounded thigh, determined to fight to the last. With a cruel smile the thirster advanced, heedless of the deep gashes Cassandra painted across his chest and abdomen with her blade. He tackled her off of the truck, their bodies airborne for a moment as they plummeted to the hard road beneath. Cassandra was dazed by the fall, having taken the brunt of the impact, though her finely tuned fighting instincts guided her to use the momentum of the fall to throw her uninjured leg high and bring it around to the front of the thirster’s neck. She grabbed the hand that held her throat and torqued her body upwards and left, successfully rolling the thirster onto its back with her on top. She pushed the bayonet’s tip into the thirster’s throat, though before it could go more than an inch the creature’s hand grabbed her wrist and halted the blade’s descent. The thirster, though badly injured, was horrifically strong, and grunted as it overpowered Cassandra’s own strength and pushed the knife upwards and out of its body even as it bucked and threw her off its body.

Cassandra took a hard landing for the second time that day, and her bayonet went skidding across the asphalt as she struggled to stand. She took the few painful steps needed to reach her car, and leaned against the hood, her energy spent and body exhausted, as she fumbled for the backup blade hidden between her shoulders. She questions her motivations then, gravely wounded and down to her last weapons. Was she about to die for a handsome stranger and his daughter? This was the wasteland, and caring about others was a surefire way to get oneself killed. What if he was not the kind of man she thought he was? What if, even now, he lay dead in the temple and his daughter’s corpse rotted in some roadside ditch, violated and drained of blood? The thirster sprung to its feet and turned its gaze towards her, catching Cassandra’s eyes before she could look away, all doubts washed away as the thirster’s mind collided with hers. They stood in silence for a moment, waging a war of minds, as the primal thirst of the creature struggled against the survival drive of the young woman.

The thirster stepped closer and closer to her as their eyes remained fixed upon one another. Cassandra knew that this was the enemy, knew that this creature was using its hunting gaze to transfix her mind, to lock her into place while it closed in for the kill. Yet she could not look away, as if there was a hunger in those eyes that a part of her wanted to feed, something in the gleam of his pupils that made her want to be his meal. The creature reached its hand around Cassandra’s waist and pulled her close, the thirster’s mouth opened and its fangs erupted from their hidden cavities above his teeth. The moment their skin touched the young warrior’s Power awakened, energy coursing through her as her empowered arousal swelled in her body, crashing into and yet complementing the thirster’s primal hungers. Cassandra drew in her breath, a wanting gasp, and pushed herself further into the creature’s hold. The thirster had never had a victim advance upon him in this way and as her questing hand, blade all but forgotten, found his manhood and he felt it swell with desire. He was a creature of blood and death, having little use for sex or food or other human pursuits in the traditional sense, though the power of sex was a core part of its being.

Thirsters were the apex predators of the sands, and they knew it, this knowledge arousing the creatures beyond control, often resulting in blood drinking combined with brutal sex acts. His shaft hardened and his pulse quickened as Cassandra moved her hand into his pants, grasping his flesh in her own and working it back and forth till it was throbbing with need. Victims did not act this way, and for a moment the thirster was confused, before the hunger in the young warrior’s eyes met with his own, and he snarled. The thirster began to crave her flesh more than her blood, the desire to fuck this strange warrior woman suddenly and fiercely overcame his need to drink her blood. Cassandra’s mind was a tempest, part of her locked in a struggle to maintain independence from the domination of the thirster, and another part recoiling at the touch of the creature. It wasn’t human, and though by right she wasn’t fully human either, this thirster was a monster, and she was going to fuck it. She pushed her revulsion to the back of her mind and steeled herself to take on this beast, for as their bodies connected they fought on her battlefield. Their gaze broke as the thirster blinked at the surge of energy from the young warrior, and Cassandra moved her mouth to his, drawing her tongue across his sharp fangs and wetting both their mouths with her blood as they kissed deeply. When the blood hit his system the thirster’s sexual desire and bestial nature took hold of him, banishing the hunter’s awareness that the game had change, and he growled huskily as his hand shot up to grasp Cassandra’s smooth neck. She gasped again and wrapped her thighs around his waist, seemingly oblivious to the wound in her thigh. The thirster tightened its grip on her neck and forced Cassandra onto her back across the hood of the car.