Fanni Hall had to give Callista Horlicks credit for having moxie, not to mention more than a little chutzpah.
The session on the horse and even the nipple clamps didn't quite break her. It took a return engagement of being whipped across her thighs and breasts while being hung by her thumbs to finally get her in the mood for talking.
Drew Thrasher glanced as her Rolex as Fanni brought Callista into the living room of her father's cabin out in the Jersey woods. Fanni had washed her down and cuffed her hands behind her back. Callista was quite naked, with her long blonde hair still in wet strands over her face as she sobbed quietly.
Callista hissed in pain when Fanni sat her down in a rough, wooden chair. Her recently paddled ass felt like it was in flames. Drew noted the criss-crossing of welts over her breasts and nipples and winced herself.
"Now, lets get to it, shall we?" Fanni said conversationally as she stood over Callista with arms crossed.
"Yes..." Callista whimpered.
"All right, Callista," Drew said kindly. "Let's start with your employer, Joseph Dexter Weskler. How long have you been with him?"
Callista started to cry harder.
"Hey." Fanni slapped her head. "Talk, bitch!"
"He's... gonna kill me," Callista sobbed. "If I talk he'll fuckin' kill me. Or worse."
"What's worse than death, dear?" Drew asked.
"Becoming a fucktoy on that goddamned island of his. Girls check in, but they don't check out..." Callista wept.
"Listen to me, dear," Drew said. "Tell us what we want to know and I promise you we'll let you go. We'll even set you up with a new identity. I have a friend who does this for a living. I'm sure you've got some money squirreled away, right?"
Callista sniffled. "Yeah."
"You can access that money and start a new life. I promise you that," Drew finished.
"However," Fanni said. "Jerk us around, chicklet, and I'll deliver you bound and gagged to the loading dock of the Weskler building on West 34th Street myself! Along with a note plastered to your ass saying, Thanks for the info!"
"All right... I'll talk," Callista sagged in final defeat. "I'll tell you anything you want to know."
"Good. When did you start working for him?" Drew asked.
"Six years ago, right out of college."
"What was your job?"
"At first I was a numbers cruncher for his east coast spas and healthclubs," Callista said. "Then I put the word out I would handle any 'under the table' transactions."
"And then?"
"I started getting girls for him."
"You mean you started abducting girls into slavery," Fanni corrected.
"Yes. I would get them fresh off the bus down at the Port Authority or even Penn Station. Fresh and virgin from places like Minnesota or Iowa... I'd befriend them. Then make'em disappear."
"Where to? This island you mentioned?" Drew asked.
"Yeah. It's called The Sargasso, and it's located on a small, private island in the Bahamas. It was supposed to be this big, ultra-ritzy casino resort. Til the dot.coms went bust and Weskler picked it up on the cheap."
"Where in the Bahamas?"
"Between Nassau and Grand Bahama Island," Callista said. "It's only 150 miles east of Miami. A seaplane is running supplies and girls in there all the time."
"Is that where Tai Anne Roper is being taken?" Fanni asked.
Callista shrugged. "Mebbe. I know Weskler's operative out east a man named Tanner-Hyde was in charge of the McClintock hit. He could've had this Tai Anne Roper taken to The Sargasso... or he could've had her killed and dumped in the bay for sharkbait."
Both Fanni and Drew closed their eyes at that dark thought.
"Or, he could've taken her to Wildfire," Callista offered.
"I saw that mentioned in your papers," Drew said. "What is Wildfire? Some kind of research lab?"
"Kinda. Its an old biological weapons lab that Weskler bought from the government," Callista said. "It's located up in northwest New Mexico, way up in the mountains. Nobody knows about it. Wildfire is five stories down in solid rock. This crazy Russian bitch runs the place."
"To what end?"
"Weskler hopes to creat a race of 'superwomen' to do all the labor in his 'New World Order'..."
"We know that," Fanni said. "Your boss is quite mad you know."
"Hell, we all know that," Callista said. "But as long as he keeps signing the paychecks every Friday, who gives a shit?"
"Go on."
"He hopes to unlock the key by capturing Jessica McClintock," Callista said. "But if he can't get to her, Wildfire is his backup plan."
"How so?"
"I dunno. This Russian bitch... some kind of biogenetics wiz back in the old USSR, is experimenting on humans. I truly don't know the details, or even her name." She shook her head. "To tell you the truth, I didn't want to know. Sometimes I would send girls out to Wildfire... but they were never heard from again. Not ever."
***
So who am I?
I don't remember My name. I do remember places and people though. I remember San Francisco. I remember roping women up and taking pictures of them. I remember a woman named Paige Torne. She betrayed Me and for that I will kill her.
There are others on My list. A black bitch named Iwana Binder, who had the audacity to beat Me up and leave Me tied like a girl. And Tai Anne Roper. Who never respected Me.
And finally there is Fiendly and his Wenche. Both of them must die. Fiendly played Me for a fool. And his Wenche broke My body and left Me in a garbage can for the rats to have their fill of Me.
Only I didn't die. I was reborn like a phoenix from the flames. I was given a new body, and the slate of memories of who I was and what I was, has been wiped clean. I am no longer the Man I was. I am virgin clay. Ready to be remolded into the instrument of My own revenge.
Even now I am encased in a sort of glass womb. Totally submerged in a liquid that I can breath. With tubes in My body pumping unknown fluids into Me. Fluids that are making Me strong and changing Me into something else. Something stronger than I was. Something invincible.
On the other side of this glass womb I see a woman. She is pretty and she smiles at me as she writes things down on a notebook. She is dressed in white. She smiles at Me quite often.
I dream of ripping her throat open and drinking her blood.
***
Nurse Juliette Odie smiled again as she tapped the glass that held HS-23. Which was Wildfire Clinic shorthand for Human Subject 23.
HS-23 was coming along beautifully, fully submerged in a large tank of oxygenated ambiotic fluid that was quite breathable for afterall, all humans breath fluid for their nine months in the womb and was allowing his wounds to heal at a tremendous rate.
Nurse Odie was a pert, pleasant faced woman in her early thirties, with short brown hair and a trim body nicely accented by a uniform of skintight, shiny white latex; a side-zippered front top, a knee length skirt so tight she had trouble walking, gum rubber stockings and rubber boots. It was a uniform mandated for her by Clinic director Dr. Katrina Kahrimzakov.
It wasn't so bad... except that she squeaked when she walked.
She activated a pocket recorder and noted the time.
"This is Nurse Odie," she said, speaking in her precise Brit accent. "It is now 22:33 hours MST, on Wednesday. Medical log of patient John Doe, Human Subject 23...
"Patient has been at Clinic now for approximately... 18 hours, since being brought in from an Oakland, California hospital. Subject has made a truly remarkable recovery.
"This is all due to the blood transfusions from subject WS-04. HS-23 has received only three units of whole blood from this subject, and the results are beyond belief.
"All broken bones have healed, along with total regeneration of muscle, ligament and skin tissues. Most amazing is regeneration of subject's tongue and right eye, both of which were missing due to previous trauma.
"Muscle mass has regenerated well beyond the norm, as has bone mass. 18 hours ago, subject weighed 132 pounds and was appoximately 5 foot nine inches tall. Macular scans of subject now shows a weight of 182.5 pounds, and is well over six foot six inches tall. Almost all of this mass is muscle and bone, with body fat now less that 2 percent of total body weight.
"Also, long term memory wipe has..."
Her cellphone chirped on her hip. She cursed, shut off the recorder and clicked on.
"This is Nurse Odie, what the bloody hell is it?"
"Toadie! We've got a big fuckin' prob in Detention 5-2!" It was Dr. Tasha Yarko, her voice already panicked. "New subject JC-01 is awake and has already badly injured three medtechs. We have her contained in the pod, but don't know for how much longer!"
"Well, bollocks! Just juice the bitch!"
"Why don't you fuckin' juice the bitch!" Tasha shouted back. "We can't get near her and the sleep gas is off-line! I've got security in hardsuits standing by..."
"Fuck that, we need all the JC subjects we take in alive and unharmed!" Juliette Odie paused, trying to think. "Right, hold the fort, I'll get Dr. Kharimzakov down there ASAP."
"Oh Great! Just don't take to fuckin' long or there won't be anything left, Toadie!" She clicked off.
Toadie! Christ how she hated that bloody monicker! But she was stuck with it ever since she had aligned herself with Dr. Kahrimzakov and became her lap dog here at the Wildfire Clinic.
Toadie hurried off to find the good doctor.
***
Dr. Katrina Kahrimzakov woke up from her pleasant, vodka soaked dreams to find her personal assistant trying to shake her awake in her bed.
Katrina responded by slapping Toadie's face hard enough to knock her to the floor. Katrina then sat up and proceeded to projectile vomit all over Toadie.
"Ugh! And good evening to you too, Doctor!" Toadie growled as she wiped her face. This wasn't the first time this had happened, and it prolly wouldn't be the last.
"Uhhhhhhhhh... Vat time ez et?" Katrina muttered, searching her bedside for a package of the unfiltered Russian cigarettes for which she had a three pack a day jones. She found one and lit it. Toadie thought it smelled like a raging brushfire. "Vell?"
"It's 10:37, Mistress," Toadie replied, moving to her knees in a respectful slave kneel.
"Ummmm... AM ur PM?"
"PM, Mistress."
"Krrrist, vat dew yew fockin' vant?" Dr. Kahrimzakov waivered, almost slipping back to unconsciousness.
"We have trouble in Detention 5-2, the Jessica Cocktail subject we just got in from San Francisco a few hours ago."
"I em avarre of who she diz," Katrina replied.
"Tasha says she's awake and has almost broken free of detention..."
"Ummmm... preparrr my uzzal... I needz a shower..."
As do I, Toadie thought.
While Katrina screamed under the hissing jets of an ice cold shower, Toadie prepared her usual. Her usual wake up remedy that is. Six ounces of ice cold Red Bull and six ounces of ice cold Stoli Vodka from the small fridge in her living quarters.
Toadie shook it up in a tumbler and poured it out into a frosted glass. She went into the small bathroom and presented it to Katrina, who was somehow keeping a cigarette lit while showering.
Dr. Katrina Kahrimzakov wet and naked was truly a sight to behold. She was in her forties, more than a little overweight and sagging in more than a few spots. Her short, dark hair was in her eyes but she grinned when she saw Toadie.
"Ahhhh... splaceba!." Katrina took the glass and drank it down in one long swallow, somehow still puffing away on her ciggie.
"We must hurry, Mistress!" Toadie warned.
"Da... da! Boot feerst... a leetle suum-ting to get da blood flewing. Da?"
Toadie knew what the good doctor meant when she opened her legs wide for her.
Chirst, it's anchovy time! Toadie thought as she knealt under the cold, hissing jets and slipped her tongue deep into the folds of her Mistress' very hairy Russian muffin.
Toadie crinkled her nose at the stench. Bollocks! I wonder what the Russian word for 'douchebag' is...
***
Ten minutes later, Dr. Kahrimzakov and Toadie were exiting the elevator on the fifth and deepest floor of the underground Wildfire facility.
Three security guards in red hardsuits were waiting by a sealed steel door, Tasers at the ready.
"Vats da sit-ew-ation?" Katrina asked. She was dressed in a white lab coat, over a nice skirt and blouse. Toadie still squeaked in her rubber. "Vell?"
"Subject JC-1 awakened from trank induced slumber," one of the hardsuits chittered over the p.a. on his helmet. "Subject attacked two medtechs, and three more who attempted intervention... We sealed the doors after that."
"Vat a bonch uf poosies!" Katrina snarled, lighting another cigarette with the butt of one she was finishing. "Open diz doar!"
The door opened to reveal chaos. The long, corridor of white was splattered with blood, and the bodies of at least three medtechs were lying on the floor.
The harsh fluorescents now blinked and sputtered.
Katrina, Toadie and the hardsuits started carefully down the corridor. The glass fronting Detention Center 5-2 was shattered. Supposedly an impossible feat since it was inch thick Lexan that could stop a bullet.
"Alex!" Toadie ran to the body of a medtech she knew, only to be scooped up by someone hiding behind the curve of the corridor.
Toadie cried out as a tall, very muscular black woman held her up as a shield. Easily keeping Toadie's booties dangling a few inches from the floor.
The woman was dressed in clothes taken off the medtechs. A white top and matching pants that were way to small for her. She was also barefoot. The fact she still had her long dreadlocks meant she had awakened before the Level IV Cleansing Process.
Dr. Kahrimzakov held up her hands, signaling the hardsuits to halt. She noted that the subject didn't seemed at all frightened of her situation... just pissed off.
"I um Doktar Katrina Tatayana Kahrimzakov," she said gently, puffing on her ciggie. "Da Die-reck-tor un diz Klinik..."
The woman frowned. "Say what?"
Katrina grinned. "Unnd... yoor name ez?"
"Kunta Kintare," she snarled back. "You mean you assholes didn't even know my fucking name when you snatched me off the street?"
Katrina shrugged. "I know yew haff questions, da?"
"Just which way is out for this overgrown roach motel, you bitch!" Kunta shouted. She shook Toadie like a pinata. "Tell me fast or I start tearing the rubber nurse here apart limb by fucking limb!"
Please... Mistress!" Toadie sobbed.
Katrina shrugged. "Da stoopid beech meanz lezz den noo-tink to me. Kill her ef yew vish!"
"Fuck you," Kunta said. She suddenly tossed Toadie into Katrina like a ragdoll and sent both of them sprawling. She then rushed the nearest hardsuited securityman and drove her fist deep into his gut, shattering his unbreakable duraplas armour.
She tossed him into the other hardsuit who missed with his Taser shot but was knocked down by his partner.
Kunta then leaped over them all, running as hard and as fast as she could down the long, curved corridor. She spotted a glass shield coming down in front of her but she kept moving, leaping into a hard, forward kick that spiderwebbed the Lexan, but didn't let it shatter.
Kunta grunted as her ass hit the floor. Another glass shield slid down behind her. She hopped up and threw another hard kick into the Lexan, but by then clouds of white sleep gas were filling the enclosure.
Katrina walked up to the glass and laughed as she saw Kunta finally fall to the floor unconscious. Toadie joined her, still crying.
"Mistress..."
"Shaadup, yew stoopid Toadie," Katrina growled. "Kleen diz sheit up...Un meke dam shure diz niggar beech ez sekure... Da?"
Toadie nodded. "Yes, Mistress."
"Gaaaaawd... the power un strength uf da Jessika Kooktail ez amaazink! Diz ez da power Weskler ez zeeking... Un I vill be da vun who unlooks et!"
"Yes, Mistress."
***
While others cleaned up the mess, Dr. Katrina Kahrimzakov hurried to Detention Center 5-4, where more security hardsuits stood guard.
She lit another cigarette, used her keycard to get through and kept going to another Lexan fronted Detention Cell.
The lettering on the steel door read, WS-04.
Katrina looked in on the test subject, which appeared to be an old, Mexican gray wolf. A now uncommon find in the New Mexican mountains that surrounded the well-hidden Wildfire Clinic.
"Hullo, old man," Katrina said to the wolf.
The wolf looked at her with cold, startling gray eyes. He was sitting up on his haunches in the stainless steel bed with the rubber cushion that was the only furniture in the stark, white cell.
The wolf had eaten all the raw, prime sirloin he had been given. Katrina had wanted for him to get his strength back after they had tranked him and relieved him of some blood.
"Yew kinnot fool me, old man," Katrina said. "Yer blood ded not kill ze human ve gave et to. Et juz healed hem und made hem stronger. Ve know vat yew arre. Soon yew vill reveal yewsef to me."
The old wolf yawned at her and heisted his leg to lick at himself.
She shook her head and walked away.
Soon, old man. Very soon.
***
Nevada State Trooper Hank Adamson and his partner Kevin Dummar sat in the dark, quiet stillness of their speed trap on US 93, about seventy or miles north of Las Vegas, deep in the Nevada desert.
It wasn't even 10 PM, and they'd already caught their quota of speeders, not to mention three DUI's heading northbound from Vegas.
Their souped-up, Ford interceptor was parked by a buzzing, lighted billboard telling would-be, southbound touristas the awesome sights awaiting them in Vegas.
Both were dozing away when the beeping of their radar unit woke them both up.
Adamson started up the Ford's engine while Dummar fine-tuned the unit.
The familar roar of a fast approaching, high performance engine coming from the north only whetted their appetites to impound some speed demon's tricked-out hot rod.
Something roared by. Without headlights. And since there were no lightposts within a hundred miles, neither trooper had the slightest idea what had just zoomed past them.
"What the fuck was that?" Adamson wondered aloud.
"I dunno," Dummar replied, looking at the radar unit. "But whatever the hell it was... it's going 142 miles per hour!"
***
Silver Adolwolfa sang along with her car radio, she had the sound cranked up and her windows cranked down and the wind in her hair.
"I've been drivin' all night mah hands wet on the wheel!
There's a voice in mah head that drives me heel!
It's mah baby callin', sez I need you here!
And it's half past four and I'm shiftin' gears..."
Silver was driving her pride and joy. A 1969 Mercury Cougar Eliminator, one of the rare ones with a 428 'Cobra Jet' engine that would peel the paint off any Japanese 'bottle rocket' that would dare challenge her.
She was also driving without headlights. Even the moon was blocked out by the dark clouds rolling over the Nevada desert, but Silver's glowing, lupine eyes and razor sharp reflexes guided her on the road and through the night.
"When she's lonely and the longin's too much...
She sends a cable callin' in from above...
Don't need no phone a'tall!
We've gotta thing that's called radar love!
We've gotta thing that's called...
Radar love!"
Silver Adolwolfa turned down the radio as a sudden pain sliced through her subconscious like a knife.
Just ahead in the black of the night, the too bright, fluorescent lights of a convenience store and gas station seemed like an oasis of humanity in the desert.
It hurt Silver's sensitive eyes to look at it, but that wasn't the source of her pain. It's what was happening inside that store right this very moment.
Pain. Rape. Murder. It flowed over her like blood on a hardwood floor. She knew if she kept going, the pain would fade and be gone in seconds.
But instead she slowed her car down and pulled right into the lighted area around the gas pumps, right beside a parked Lincoln County Sheriff's cruiser.
Silver Adolwolfa sighed and got out of her Cougar. She was a tall, solidly built woman wearing homemade, tan doeskin pants and a matching doeskin vest cinched tight in front, exposing her tanned midriff and corded arms. She wore tall, Indian style moccasins laced up her legs.
She was a study in contrasts. Long and lean and muscled, with the curves and full breasts of a centerfold. Long, brown almost black hair hung in loose curls down her shoulders, framing a pretty yet serious face.
Silver walked across the pavement, towards the double glass doors of the convenience store. The permaglass on one of the doors was spiderwebbed by three bullet holes.
She opened the door and stepped over the body of a young sheriff's deputy. Half his head was gone and his remaining eye betrayed the shock and horror of his sudden death. Silver also noticed his gun was missing.
"Don't move, cunt bitch!!!"
The shout came from behind the counter as a skinny, tattooed punk showed himself, holding a young girl, who was also the cashier, hostage. He also had a Ruger Blackhawk .44 magnum jammed deep into her ear.
Silver sensed three of them. One was in the back room, raping a woman who was also a clerk here. The third was sneaking up behind her with a gun pointed at her head.
Silver smiled and waited. A creaking growl escaped from her lips.
"Gotcha, bitch." The punk behind her cocked back the hammer of the pistol he had taken off the dead cop and jabbed at the back of her head with the barrel.
What happened next was a blur to everybody in the room except Silver. She turned about and grabbed the punk's arm, snapping and twisting the joints backwards at elbow and wrist.
Before the pain could even register in his brain, Silver had jammed the large, .45 Colt pistol into his mouth and down his throat almost to his stomach. His hand was still holding on to the gun, his twisted and splintered arm filling his throat and gullet so he couldn't breath.
Silver stepped back. The punk looked at her with wide, frightened eyes, then there was a hollow THUMP and his chest expanded and smoke poured from his nostrils as he hit the floor dead.
The one holding the girl hostage tried to shoot Silver but she simply vanished by ducking down an aisle faster than humanly possible.
His partner still pulling his pants up rushed out to find him still pointing his .44 mag at empty space.
"Tommy!" he screamed. "What the fuck..."
"S-she's... down there!" Tommy quavered, now holding on to his hostage like a life preserver.
"Fuck!" #3 punk brought up his nickeled Taurus wondernine and ducked down the same aisle.
Let the girl go.
Tommy screamed again. The woman in the tight leathers was now just a few feet to the left of him. He didn't bother to yell for his partner. Somehow he knew he was already dead.
She spoke to him again, only her lips didn't move and her cold, gray eyes pierced his very soul.
I said... let the girl go.
He let the girl go. She ran screaming and crying into the back room.
You are less than nothing, her voice boomed inside his brain. You cause pain and misery and death to others... you want to do the one right thing...
"Yes!" Sobbing, Tommy put the long barreled .44 magnum to his own ear and blew his head off.
Silver sighed. She wiped flecks of blood, brain and bone off her face and walked into the back room.
The girl who had been raped was still naked and tied spreadeagle to some pipes with electrical cord. She was pale and slender, with her own blood smeared on her thighs. Her friend was weeping and trying to get the cord off her wrists and ankles to no avail.
"Let me," Silver said. She kneeled down next to the girl and sliced the cord off with the long, razor sharp claws extending from her fingers.
"Who are you?" the naked girl whispered.
"It doesn't matter," Silver said gently. "Once I leave, neither of you will remember me, or what happened here. You both will be at peace, and live long, very happy lives."
Silver walked back outside into the still of the night to find a man leaning against the front fender of her dusty Cougar.
"Hello, Lobo," Silver said.
Lobo smiled. In human form, he was a quiet, unassuming sort. Medium build, mid-thirties, short, tousled sandy hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He wore leather bomber jacket, khaki shirt, jeans and sneakers.
"Just passing through?" Silver asked as she headed for the driver's side.
"You're far too kind to the humans," Lobo said almost too quietly. "Considering the grief they give us."
"I know."
"So where you headed?"
"New Mexico," Silver replied. "Navajo land."
"Skinwalkers." Lobo gritted his teeth. "I don't like them. They're caught between worlds. Can't decide to fish or cut bait."
Silver chuckled. "That's one way to put it."
"I should be going with you."
"The pack stripped you of Protector status for a reason, my friend." Silver opened the door and said down in the Cougar's bucket seat. "You need a lift?"
Lobo was already long gone. She noticed that the dark clouds had parted enough to allow a baleful, blood red, crescent moon to glow from the night sky.
Silver Aldolwolfa sighed and started up the engine, comforted by the deep rumble of the 428ci V-8 under the hood that rumbled like a beast.
Silver slammed the door and peeled out, driving on into the night. The FM oldies station out of Vegas she had been listening to was now playing some vintage CCR. Silver turned up the volume again to hear the raspy vocals of John Fogarty...
I see the bad moon arisin'.
I see trouble on the way.
I see earthquakes and lightnin'.
I see bad times today.
Don't go out tonight.
Well it's bound to take your life.
There's a bad moon on the rise...