Matriarch

by elle`attend

 

FOR MATURE READERS ONLY

 

Chapter Nine

 

Arrivals  and Departures

 

Cassandra Bétancort pushed the lovely young blonde away with a contemptuous toe and disentangled herself from the sweat-soaked sheets. Stalking across the moonlight-stained cypress plank floor, she snatched her cigarettes and lighter from the bureau and held a flame to one, venting smoke from her nostrils with an exasperated snort. She let her gaze wander toward the french doors facing the sea, then stepped through them onto the veranda and leaned against the rail, luxuriating in the relative coolness of the wooden railing against her bare thighs, the soft night air on her sweating breasts, and the faint breeze ruffling her tawny copper-colored hair. She stood lost in thought, listening to the susurrant sounds of the waves as they made whispering love to the sand.

 

The whole thing smelled. 

 

Stank to high heaven, actually - Mackay must be losing it completely, she thought sourly. It was bad enough that the woman had put the entire Golden Crescent operation in jeopardy out of sheer sentimentalism, but to compound that bit of almost criminal carelessness by sending a total cipher, a complete non-entity deep into the network - well, that was simply stupid. An unknown, untrained little nobody from East Wheresthat, Iowa to try and snatch her irons out of the fire…irons that had doubtless been melted down already, perhaps even been forged into a new weapon, one to be used against themselves.

 

What can the woman be thinking? She shook her head disgustedly..

 

She stubbed her cigarette out angrily on the veranda railing, her thoughts as dark as the midnight blue Aegean Sea dancing beneath its frenetic frosting of moonlight. The woman would be arriving in a few hours. Fine. There might not be much that Cassandra Bétancort could do about what had happened to this point in time, but there was quite a bit that she could do about what happened going forward.

 

Oh yes. Quite a bit indeed.

 

Cassandra turned back toward the huge carved-cypress four poster bed, and the pretty young girl chained to it. Her frightened eyes were wide and imploring, and her face ashen with dread in the moonlight. Cassandra smiled in the semi-darkness, reaching for the leather quirt on the nightstand.

 

“Come, and draw the poisons from me, my heart’s desire…”

 

**********

 

The walk up the hill from the ramshackle pier where the boat had deposited us had not been a long one. Nonetheless by the time we reached the top of the uneven goat path that served as a road I was sweating like a pig, my clothes glued to me as if I had been run through a carwash. My mood was beginning to match my thoughts, and they were neither of them very cheery.

 

We crested a small rise, and started down the gently sloping rock-strewn incline toward the compound. My escorts moved closer to me, our bare arms occasionally brushing together now as we picked our way down the rocky slope. I took in the small grouping of low, whitewashed cottages and outbuildings below us in a swift sweeping glance, making mental notes feverishly as I surveyed my surroundings. I might not get many opportunities to familiarize myself with the lay of the land, and I needed to take full advantage of every one that presented itself. Then my eye fell on the Amazonian figure standing at the clearing’s center. I stumbled, catching my toe on a small stone as the verge flattened, and threw out an arm, just catching myself before I pitched face first into the dust. I found myself on my knees, in the classic position of supplicant at the giantess’s booted feet.

 

“Welcome to Callypygnos,” she said expressionlessly.

 

I got to my feet warily, brushing off my scratched palms on the front of my shorts, staring rather rudely at this unusual looking woman.

 

“I understand that I’m to be your guest for a few days at this lovely destination resort,” I said, my eyes darting about the barren compound, a few whitewashed plaster bungalows scattered around the hot, sandy commons. A long, low shed-like building made of corrugated metal ran the length of one side of the dusty clearing, and further up the sloping hillside was a larger, more expansive wood frame house with sweeping verandas surrounding it on every side. A few stunted, hardy junipers struggled vainly to add a touch of  green to this otherwise stark, rocky moonscape.

 

The thought flitted through my mind that this place would be a tough sell for the most sanguine of travel agents.

 

“I take my breakfast late, and usually in bed,” I went on breezily, watching her closely, waiting for her reaction. No point in putting off taking the measure of the opposition here, I figured.

 

The six-foot, flame-haired woman smiled faintly at this, tightening the slim, pale scar that transected her sun-bronzed face from just below her left eye to her upper lip and across to her chin. Her dark eyes danced. No other part of this rather ferocious looking visage betrayed any emotion whatsoever.

 

“If you do well, you may be allowed a pallet of dirty straw after a time, to collapse on at night.” She paused, looking me up and down carefully.

 

“On those nights in which you are allowed to sleep at all, that is…”

 

I returned her gaze with what I hoped was a good deal more self-assurance and righteous indignation than I felt. “Listen,” I fumed. “I’ve been locked in a cabin the size of a closet on a pitching, rolling bucket of a boat for twenty hours. I’m tired, and I’m hot and I’m filthy, and I need a meal, and a bath, and a telephone. I suggest that you procure them all for me immediately, or I’ll give you reason to be very, very sorry that you didn’t.”

 

I never even saw the bullwhip in her hand until it was wrapped around my throat, having already been employed to deposit me in the dirt on the seat of my none-too-prisitine white shorts. My calves burned where the whip had wrapped around them, pulling my legs from under me. Now, crouching at my side, she shoved its stiff handle beneath my chin, raising my startled eyes to her own. They were the color of the Aegean on a moonless night, and made me feel vertiginous, as if I were looking down into a midnight blue maelstrom. She tightened the whip’s coils slowly about my throat as she spoke.

 

“You may think that you can provoke me into killing you swiftly with your brainless chattering, but I assure you that you cannot. As for your ‘needs’, they are of less concern to me than this…” she reached down to the ground near her booted foot, and plucked a small wriggling insect from the sand, which she dangled in my face, only inches from my eyes.

 

I swallowed painfully against the coils of leather constricting my throat, watching the tiny, pale scorpion wriggle and twist between her fingers, a drop of clear venom beading on the barb of the tiny arachnid’s tail. I whimpered softly, aware of the perspiration pouring off of my flushed face, running in torrents beneath my saturated blouse again, soaking me to the skin.

 

“Speak to me again without my leave, and I’ll have you staked out here and now, and let this one and her little friends feast on your sweat and your panic piss. Do we understand one another?”

 

She gave another little tug on the supple leather lash wound around my throat for emphasis. I nodded my head almost imperceptibly, too terrified to make a more expansive gesture. As if on cue, I felt a few drops of hot urine squeeze out of my urethra, further dampening my already soaking shorts.

 

Very good,” she breathed, loosening the whip from around my throat, and tossing the insect away.

 

“Now get on your feet, and get undressed.”

 

I scrambled hurriedly to my feet, the last of my bravado having dissolved like seasalt in the hot wet current of my abject terror. Trembling uncontrollably, I fumbled at the buttons on my sodden blouse with palsied fingers, peeling it off, dropping it with a wet ‘plup’ on the gravelly sand. My shorts, bra and panties quickly followed. I wrapped my arms tightly about my self, shivering violently, though it was broiling in the compound beneath the staring eye of the hot Aegean sun. The woman raked me with her eyes again as I attempted ineffectually to cover myself with my hands and arms. I thought that I might be beginning to understand the true meaning of the word ‘rape’.

 

She gave a short jerk of her head in my direction, speaking to my escorts. “Get her out of my sight. And get Hekate. I want to begin immediately with her conditioning. We’ve not got much time.”

 

With a last disdainful look, she turned her back on me, and strode off, leaving me naked and alone under the blazing, merciless eye of that impassive sun.

 

**********

 

“That bitch Erica…I swear to God, you let some people play with your ta-ta’s, and they think they own ya. Go around jabbing you with needles and who knows what all else…”

 

Jolie continued muttering to herself as she ran a comb through her tangled shoulder-length honey colored hair.

 

And then letting her nod off, and just leaving her to spend the night on Erica’s eight-foot suede leather couch…well, it just burned her tamales, if you wanted to know the truth. She ran warm water in the sink, then slipped her panties down and began gently washing  herself.

 

And how in the WORLD did I get this SORE, she wondered, wincing as she gingerly completed her ablutions below the waist. Must have gone at my self with both hands, and the damned stapling gun, she thought dryly. Pulling her panties back on, she scrubbed more vigorously at her armpits, then splashed more water on her face and toweled off briskly. Slipping into her skirt and t-shirt she stepped back into the Administrative Assistant’s anteroom.

 

Still no Erica.

 

Jolie stepped to the door and tried it again… no dice, it was still locked. Security was a bear at this place, she thought for the twentieth time. She sank back down in the plush sofa with a sigh, and began to drift into a sweet recapitulation of her dreams of the night before. A sleepy, satisfied smile spread slowly over her face.

 

She’d seldom had such vivid dreams before, and certainly never about Vannie. She blushed when she remembered them, how the woman had felt, smelled, and tasted, exactly as Jolie had imagined she would. And the sensations had been so immediate, so real…She sighed, feeling the little somnolent stirrings between her thighs again. She wondered absently if Erica might have a spare pair of panties about.

 

No, a dream like that was worth a little temporary short term amnesia, no doubt about it.

 

She was just on the verge of going to the door again and banging on it, setting up a ruckus, maybe getting security’s attention when the latch clicked quietly and Beatrix Mackay swept through, followed closely by Erica Galloway. Bea looked ghastly, her face pale and drawn, a bandage of white gauze swaddling her slender neck. She crossed to one of the chairs arranged around the low glass and chrome coffee table opposite Erica’s couch, and settled into it, flashing Jolie a somewhat distracted smile. Erica put a box of donuts and the carafe of steaming coffee she was carrying down on the table, and took the chair just to the left of Doctor Mackay. She began pouring hot coffee into steaming mugs, and slid the box of donuts toward the girl, a preoccupied smile on those sinful lips of hers.

 

“Good afternoon, Jolie,” Beatrix Mackay began, stirring a spoonful of sugar into her own mug, then offering the silver bowl to the girl. “How did you sleep, darling?”

 

“Gogh, I’m hgho hnnghryy…nmmmnn…”  Jolie mumbled around the mouthful of bearclaw that she had already bitten off, pushing stray crumbs daintily back in with a pinky finger as she answered. She took a swallow of the hot coffee, wiping her lips demurely with her fingertips and then ladled another heaping spoonful of sugar into the mug.

 

“What happened to me, anyway?” she asked, taking another nibble on her pastry. “The last thing I remember was…” she shot a quick, watchful glance at Erica Galloway, then changed tacks. “I don’t really remember much of anything, after we got here, in fact. Can someone please fill me in?” She smiled innocently at the pair.

 

“You fell asleep in the office, dear,” Erica quickly began. “I left you for a few moments, and when I returned you were sacked out on the couch. I tried to wake you, but you were dead to the world.” She smiled nervously again.

 

Jolie shot a wry look in Erica’s direction. “Yes, I must have been exhausted, mustn’t I, Erica?”

 

Jolie turned back to Beatrix Mackay. “How did your talk with Vannie go, Bea? Were you able to get her to say ‘orgasm’, without choking?” Jolie laughed merrily.

 

“As a matter of fact, we had quite an interesting conversation, Jolie. Your friend is a most intriguing, and accomplished woman. I feel that we can do a great deal for each other.”

 

“You mean she’s joined? You’re kidding! She’s agreed to join WISDOM? I can’t believe it!” Jolie goggled at the woman as if she had just told her that the Martians had landed in Times Square, with Elvis as their ambassador.

 

“Nevertheless,” Bea spread her hands, smiling enigmatically at the excited, incredulous girl.

 

“And now, Jolie, darling…Erica tells me that you might be interested in postponing your graduate studies for a while, and coming to work for us, dear.” Beatrix leaned forward, enfolding the girl in the hot green jungle of her gaze.

 

“How would you like to spend September in the Aegean, Jolie dear?”

 

**********

 

Down, and down I went, in a complete and utter eclipse of self.

 

Now rising slowly, in anticipation, and fear; thighs widespread, sweaty and trembling with exertion, sticky with the sweetness leaking from my sex. Then down again in supplication, the fine, hot sand filling my mouth, the shaft filling my loins, my lower body rising concupiscently toward its ravisher, welcoming it, begging it to know me, to possess me utterly. And up again, more slowly now, a cry knocking against the back of my teeth now, my hips lifting on the hard rubber root buried within me, knees raised nearly clear of the sandy ground, my body possessed of it, and its pain - and its knowledge, which I was being filled with as well.

 

My body was learning...

 

I was learning.

 

Cassandra was training me herself this evening. I was never certain of her motivations for this, and therefore never completely comfortable with her. Thus I was seldom able to make that deep descent, that self-abandoning plunge into the pure animal sexuality of my nature that I could when Hekate and Sabrina worked me. Always with Cassandra there was that small seed of doubt, that thin membrane of resistance interposed between myself and my body, interfering with the fusion within me that transported me beyond mere self, into something other, something richer, something more fulfilling, more power filled

 

That first afternoon, as my guards had led me broken, stumbling, and naked across the hot sand to one of the tiny bungalows, I firmly believed that my life was finished; that nothing could be done to me that could possibly matter any longer. I was convinced that I would be dead soon, and all that intervened between now and then would simply be filler for my obituary, if it were ever written; nothing more.

 

I could never have imagined how much I had still to learn.

 

My ‘escorts’ led me into the low-ceilinged, whitewashed room, sparsely furnished with a bed made of raw pine posts, a small nighttable with a glass-chimnied kerosene lamp upon it, and several ladderbacked wooden chairs with woven straw seats. They guided me to the bed, and pushed me down not ungently onto the pale blue cotton coverlet on my back, then tied my wrists and ankles to the four low corner posts of the bed with brightly colored silk scarves. One of them lit the small oil lamp, and then they left, closing the heavy wooden door behind them, leaving me alone, with my bleak thoughts. I stared morosely at the ceiling watching the light fail, thinking of my husband, and my babies; wondering what they were thinking, if they imagined I was dead, if they had given up hope already, as I had. I began to cry quietly, but soon the soothing sounds of the Aegean, fretting against the rocky shore at the foot of the cliff beneath my window, lulled me into a restless, exhausted sleep, filled with dreams of monsters, and evil slithering things that pursued me, and wrapped their wet tentacles around my body.

 

I awoke with a start, literally paralyzed by fear, and nearly afraid to breath. At first I thought that the creatures from my dream had pursued me into wakefulness, or that I dreamed still. The room was dark now, except for the imbricate patterns thrown upon the ceiling by the fitfully flickering orange glow of the lamp. I was still bound spread eagled to the bed, and plump wet things were moving on me; things that were warm, and alive, and sentient. I lowered my eyes, and in the dim light beheld two pale, lovely succubi attached to me like young coral polyps on a tropical reef. Their long silken hair trailed over my thighs, and my belly; and their skin was like warm velvet, brushing over me; their lips soft, dewy hothouse orchids on my feverish skin, sucking and nipping at me lightly, almost playfully. The one nearest my face lifted her fair head, eyes glowing like golden embers in the lamplight, and smiled at me; then she lowered her hungry mouth to my right breast and clamped her lips on its nipple, and began to lave it with her hot, well-schooled tongue. It felt slightly rough, like a young kittens, and sent jolts of sensation through me which converged at my groin.  At the same instant I felt the other wraith, lower down on my body and obscured by her playmate, bury her own clever tongue deeply into my buzzing folds.

 

I gasped and moaned with pleasure, pleasure such as I had not believed could exist in this world, for me at any event. I was transported by my overloaded senses; the feel of their eager mouths on my body, and their soft skin sliding over mine; the sounds of their pleasure, as they giggled occasionally, and sighed like young girls in the throes of love’s first arousal, sucking and slurping at me as if I were a sweet gelato on a hot summer’s afternoon. The mingling scents of our bodies, theirs clean and sweet, smelling of the ocean, and soft pine breezes; mine hot, and rank with the strong animal odors of my sweat, and my fear, and my passion as they slowly drew it forth from my very pores with their cunning hands and lips. My orgasm was like the sea below my window; crashing, seemingly endless, as I screamed my body’s joy and my soul’s despair mindlessly into the indifferent darkness…

 

I screamed once more, the sound torn from my throat, ripped past my clenched teeth, as Cassandra hurt me gratuitously again.

 

This too, was different. Hekate and Sabrina had taken no great pleasure in inflicting pain upon me. This one did. I could feel it in her touch, hear it in her voice, smell it on her body,  sense it in her soul. Pain was her lodestone, her polestar, her religion. I knew by now that it was a necessary adjunct of my training, that it was needed to draw my body’s attentions, to focus it more completely in preparation for the fusion. Still, there was a subtle difference in the way Cassandra employed it, as if it were an end in itself rather than simply one of many means to that end. And there was no mistaking the satisfaction, the sheer joy she derived from her cruelty toward me.

 

How the power of your own sexuality can literally transform reality…not only your own, but that of those around you as well…

 

I grunted like an animal as she lowered me to the ground again, drawing the thick rubber shaft strapped around her hips slowly out of my dripping sex. I lowered my face to the sand beneath it, now moist with my sweat, and my tears, panting dreadfully, my mind a desolation of pain, and degradation.

 

Tap the river of your essential nature, your elemental power, and bend it to your will…

 

“You’re nothing but a cheap whore,” Cassandra hissed into my ear as she slid the tip of the fat black monster along my swollen cuntlips, toying with me now. She wrapped her strong fingers in my soaking wet hair, and jerked my head up and back violently. I rolled my eyes in terror toward that sound, filled with a venom, a hatred such as I had never heard before in a human voice.

 

Make your own body answer to your will, its  pleasure serve your own ends, and others will follow, as night follows day…

 

“I’ve seen your true nature…and before I’m finished with you, everyone else will see it, too. Then Mackay will give you to me, and I’ll sell you to the Libyans, with instructions that you are to be chained to a metal-frame cot in the Sul­uq barracks, and used by the soldiers until there is nothing left of you to use.”

 

She laughed then, a bitter, hateful sound, as she suddenly plunged the slippery horror into my bleeding rectum, impaling me on its dreadful girth again, lifting me from the ground on it.

 

Startled birds flew into the black night from their perches in the cypress and scrub pines above the compound, frightened from their roosts by the screaming, which echoed off the rocky slopes endlessly…

 

**********

© MEB 2002

 

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