Descent Into Darkness (27 page)

CHAPTER LV – Kat Nap

The glow within
Katarina that night was like nothing she had felt before. Exhaustion was pushed aside as they’d writhed in the passion of an embrace neither thought could ever happen.

She’d spent most of the night awake again, but on this particular night, it didn’t matter. There were no cage bars gouging into her flesh keeping her from sleep, there was no fear seeping into her dreams when she did snatch some. What kept her awake was the exciting freedom the woman beside her had given, the love Amber had for her. They’d enjoyed each other, like gorging on previously forbidden fruit; it was the sweetest of tastes.

Weak shafts of light prodded their way around the blinds. The world looked different today but the promise of a new dawn was nothing compared to the thrilling freshness of this new relationship. If fate had its twists, then it had wrapped itself in a Gordian knot to place her beside Amber, but placed she was. Katarina looked at the sleeping face of her future.

Amber offered safety, surety and an overt appeal Katarina couldn’t resist. Katarina couldn’t help but giggle though as Amber snorted and wafted a hand over her face to chase away Katarina’s exhaled breath as if it was a persistent fly.

The tranquillity otherwise was almost surreal. It was so different to the previous night. No early alarm. No click of a time lock. No wake up duty that almost made her vomit.

Her sleepily contented mind sparked abruptly into life as a horrific realisation hit her like a sledgehammer. Flinging the duvet back, Katarina’s legs hit the floor and she was running even before she knew it.

“What’s wrong?” croaked the half conscious Amber, awoken by the duvet being torn from her grasp. Cracking open an eye to see Katarina rush through the door she questioned again but no answer came. Katarina was already gone.

== ~ ==

She was bruised in innumerable places but they were bruises of her own making and Raven no longer cared, using them as fuel to her anger. They had to pay but circumstances dictated she started small, and she did so by preventing them from sleeping.

So Raven had thrashed against the bars of her cage, stilled only by the occasional shocks to her neck. Each time she screamed silently around the oversize rubber ball wedged into her mouth until it passed and she could begin again.

It was several hours later, when emerging from a few snatched minutes of sleep that it had happened. The alarm sounding to Raven’s side was familiar and a crooked smile curled around the gag. They’d made such a simple mistake. Amateurs.

So eager to leap into each other’s beds, they’d been careless. Fate was giving Raven what it owed her and, as the automatic latch slid aside, she would make them all pay dearly.

== ~ ==

Bursting into the room, her short borrowed negligee clinging to her now perspiring body, Katarina was horrified. The cage had opened as it was set to at the same time each morning and Raven was already emerging, uncurling long limbs with one hand on the bed.

Katarina cried out, something incoherent but desperate to alert Jade and Mela to the threat, it didn’t matter. She knew they wouldn’t wake properly in time, and Raven’s head snapped round toward the source of the noise.

The malice in her eyes would have slain an army if looks really could kill. Katarina was beyond their reach now though and, thinking quickly, she grabbed Raven’s ankle and yanked her back.

The mule kick initially dislodged her grip but Katarina snatched a hold again, then seized the ankle with her other hand too.

And Katarina tugged. She tugged with strength born from anger at what Raven had put her through, from what she’d done to them all. Anger at the monster she’d created in Red. And finally, anger at Raven’s righteousness and arrogance. Raven clutched at the sheets but could find little purchase. She started to slide away from her prey.

Her scream of frustration was wildness itself and even the gag did little to mute the din of a huntress hauled from her would be kill. Katarina yanked again while kick after kick thumped against her fingers and wrists, then Raven thudded heavily to the floor. Kicks rained in afresh but Katarina held firm - she would never go back to the nightmare of the past few days.

She dragged Raven back further and further away from the bed. The kicks started to weaken. Raven’s hands clawed at her neck to try to dislodge the collar that was now shocking her with increasing intensity.

Katarina had been in that collar just a little more than a day before. When she had worn it, the more distance she gained from Raven, the more intense the pain. Now the further Raven got from the bed, the less she fought. And so Katarina hauled again, moving her further from her prey, further from the life she had won until all she could focus on were the shocks coursing through her neck.

A glance at the bed and Katarina saw Mela sitting upright, slightly nonplussed, holding the remote. Twisting and flailing, Raven suddenly wrenched her ankle free and, spinning onto her feet, charged toward the open doors of the bedroom.  But Katarina stood between her and freedom, and the days of excruciatingly hard exercise that Raven had forced her into had made her stronger.

Yet Katarina couldn’t know how long her abused body would remain strong for and so when Raven charged her, in one fluid movement Katarina brought her to a halt then, swinging round, tossed her into the hallway beyond the doors.  More distance between collar and remote, far more than Katarina had lasted, and finally Raven was consumed by the shocks.

Leaving the remote on the bed, Jade and Mela followed Katarina into the hall where the writhing Raven curled and twitched on the floor. She was lost. With a disdaining toe under the small of her back, Katarina rolled the helpless woman further away. One more roll made doubly sure that Raven would not be in any fit state to resist.

“Grab the chains and let’s get her ready.” Katarina was now in charge.

Their error could have cost them dearly, they all realised that and, with a hand on Katarina’s arm, Jade said, “Thank you, Kat, dear.” With a grateful smile, Jade rolled the agonised Raven even further into pain, just because she could.

CHAPTER LVI – Red Missed

Red’s
world when she would eventually wake was very different to the one she’d inhabited before she was knocked unconscious. Raven was no longer Mistress of the house and even the meek had turned, Mela having been instrumental in Raven’s downfall. It was she that was to assist Amber in preparing Red for her future.

For now though, still drugged, Red slept through the drama and the noise, folded and chained into the small cage on the opposite side of the bed. Together, the women slowly drew the imposing Californian out from the cage and rolled her onto her back. Cramped as she had been, the torn leather of her catsuit had stuck to the weeping wound of her new tattoo. She groaned as her thigh brushed the scratched words on her belly.

“That’s not good,” observed Amber mockingly. Taking the ragged edge of the leather between fore finger and thumb, she ripped it away from the fresh tattoo with a wince, taking the first scarring away with it. “That’ll be sore.” She even surprised herself with her impassive tone. “And probably leave a permanent scar too.” It was a matter of fact summary for their captive’s benefit, the stab of pain drawing another groan.

Amber fished the scissors from her holdall and with Mela’s help, cut away the rest of her leather catsuit. The body revealed was one to envy. It would be her only asset as they prepared her for life on the street.

The tattoo was only the first stage. There was much more to do and they worked quickly until Red was naked apart from her stiletto boots. Seeing her start the long process of waking from the drug, Mela sat on the woman’s chest as heavily as her small body would permit, wriggling down in the hope that it would hurt, while Amber sat on her knees to pin her legs and started to remove the boots.

The heels needed to be higher, much higher, to achieve the look they were working toward. Amber tossed the stilettoes across the room, where they landed with a clump.

Their replacements were much less refined, and certainly less expensive. With a cheap black patent shine, towering cube heel and two inch platform they screamed for sex rather than whispering a promise of seduction. The zip closure was tight, causing the woman’s muscular calf to bulge over the top of the boot. Still not content, Amber ran a thread of glue along the zipper. If Red was to take them off, then she would damn well struggle and probably ruin them, leaving her without any footwear at all.

Stockings would have been too obvious. The vision in Amber’s mind was that, in the advancing autumn nights, even Red’s tanned legs would turn an ugly blotchy purple. Her main trade would likely to be found away from the warm caress of daylight hours. The shortness of the skirt they now wrestled up her legs would ensure they were well displayed and Amber was happy that the skirt matched the cheap PVC of the cheap boots.

She knew how Red despised PVC. It never sat snugly with its plastic shine and lacked the clinging allure of latex or the expensive power of leather. Amber no longer cared and she was looking forward to seeing Red’s reaction. Snapping press studs together to secure the skirt, Amber pushed on.

In tandem, the two women dismounted and raised the slowly waking woman to sit upright. Mela pulled Red’s wrists behind her and snapped them together in handcuffs while Amber chose a fluorescent pink nylon boob tube. They looked as one at the cuffs, Amber shrugged and they tugged it up her legs instead and past her hips, dragging up the skirt. “Looks like we forgot underwear.” Amber’s second shrug had Mela giggling.

Amber was happy at how the look was coming together. They were well on their way to turning expensively honed into cheap and trashy. The next step would help Mela. Amber passed her the scissors with an inviting smile.

It had been a day of exorcising demons. First Raven and now Red. Red had often been the chief tool of Raven’s sadism, the cudgel to support Raven’s scalpel. When she looked at the sharp scissors in her hand, an impish smile returned to her face.

Mela started to hack off lock after long red lock, agriculturally chopping Red’s hair untidily short. It was plainly a hatchet job. No style remotely visible with ragged ends and an untidy finish. Amber nodded her approval and they jointly lifted the Californian to move her to the bathroom. Even between two of them, she was difficult to handle.

Mela unlocked the woman’s handcuffs to allow them better purchase on her arms. They could feel movement and life starting to return but she was still far from lucid and they dumped her on a chair, hoping the landing would bruise.

They gave Red a beauty treatment with a difference - vengeance. Once they’d secured her tightly around her waist to the chair, they bleached the fire from her hair until it was trash blonde. Next Amber and Mela caked makeup thickly on the former Red’s face, leaving her as the perfect caricature of a ten dollar hooker and as they held the smelling salts under her nose to revive her, the image that greeted Red’s awakening was shocking in the extreme.

The former redhead stared aghast at the image staring back from the mirror. Gone was the long lustrous mane of auburn hair. She had tended and treasured it over countless hours. Her hands shot up to her face, as if to test whether the image she saw was really her and a gunshot hit her abdomen as the still-raw skin flexed and ripped a scream from the base of her soul.

Hands either side quickly grabbed Red’s wrists and thrust them onto the chair, quickly looping rope around them to fix them to its arms. “I guess we should’ve done that first,” observed Mela with a playful lilt in her voice.

“What? And deny her the thrill of being bound? That’s all part of the fun she likes,” retorted Amber, matching the singsong tone of Mela.

“What the fuck’ve you done, bitches?” bawled the former Red, seeing the tattoo scrawled across her stomach for the first time. Her eyes darted to what passed as her clothing, her thick makeup, her hair. “My fucking hair!” Red’s eyes fixed wide on the poorly cut and badly yellowed crop.

“Settle down, Blondie,” taunted Amber. “You’ll make more this way. You wanted to be like Raven and now you will be.
Just
like her. She started on the streets with nothing but her body to sell to keep her alive – you’ll have to do the same.”

Amber allowed the horror to sink in. “They say blondes have more fun, that’s what you brought us to this fucking place for after all. You’ll just have to hope they make more money too.”

While the bound woman struggled ferociously, Amber tipped a bottle’s contents onto the cotton gauze and clamped it over Red’s nose and thickly painted mouth. Not yet fully recovered from the sedation of the previous few hours, Red’s struggle was brief and ultimately futile.

== ~ ==

He’d driven for hours. The closest town was too high brow, too cultured. They wanted Red to balance on a knife edge of survival. Dan was eager to help so here he was, driving to the decaying, post-industrial city that would be both Red’s punishment, and new home.

He looked in the mirror. She was still sleeping, barely recognisable now, looking like the prostitute she would have to become to get by. He’d hated the way Raven ruled the house. Her disdain for everything and everyone showed, to him at least, a simple lack of class. More than once, she’d treated him like something she’d stood in and the woman in the back was no better. He hated that. He was worth more, far more. So Dan was glad to help.

They finally turned the corner to the place he had been told to go. It was just how Jade had described. He would discard the woman here. Drawing the car to a standstill beside the old warehouse, Dan turned off the engine, got out and tugged the rear door open. All was quiet for now. It was an area not many dared visit during the day. When darkness fell though, it came alive with the dangerous detritus of the inner city.

Red was heavier than Dan expected. An imposing, well-muscled lady, he knew many thought her quite something but she wasn’t his type – too tall, too loud, too, well,
plastic
- and how she’d treated Mela had always made him silently angry. With determination, he hauled her out and over his shoulder.

He didn’t have to walk far until he found the perfect spot. It was an effort but with a grunt, Dan slung Red down into a corner below a streetlight with a broken cover. The puddle was an added bonus and it splashed up before lapping back to settle an inch deep around her slumped body, another bruise added, clothes already a mess.

She wouldn’t stay undiscovered for long; he knew that for certain. Even if she lasted until dark, she would be picked out by the streetlight and the vultures would gather. As Dan drove away, he was sure the manor would be a better place without her.