Dreams and Desires (60 page)

The older woman came up to the terrified, shocked woman and presented to her her final adornment. It was a narrow, black leather collar. Dangling from a ring in its front was a small, brass medallion. Etched on it, in black, was the number 722. When the collar was circled around her neck and buckled shut in the back, the older women closed the eyelets to Alison's hood and reconnected the chain between her legs. After they had attached a leash to the front of her collar, they led her disconsolate figure from the room.

Experimental Subject No. 722 had proven to be the most promising in a long time. After a series of test protocols recording her dream patterns and her sexual responses, she had been kept in an almost constant hallucinogenic and lustful state. It had been found through trial and error that sensual deprivation played a significant role in increasing the strength and duration of the dreams of the many test subjects that had passed through the lab, and so 722 was kept constantly hooded and bound, confined in her little, windowless room, except for the purposes of cleaning and maintenance. The shaman, who continued to cooperate in the dream experiments, wove his own terrifying and lust inducing spells around her. Once her potentials had been realized, Jonathan tormented and drove the female to a series of wrenching orgasms at least once a day when he was at the Fortress, filling her mouth or her other, fevered orifices with his radiant, enthralling cock and spilling his seed within her. Using his ability to rewire the synapses of her brain, he manipulated her sexual urges to a constant, excruciating need. At other times, the subject's passions were seen to by the lips and hands of the female Apache lab assistants or the stiff, hard pricks of one or more of the male security staff drafted for that purpose.

Dr. Morton felt they were on the verge of a real breakthrough. Jonathan had been able, for the first time, to follow the tendrils of a subject's nightmares to the edge of the dimensional divide. He was sure of it. Of course, identifying the barriers to this dimension and breaking through them was only part of the problem. There were a virtual infinity of universes out there and this female's lustful, fearful emanations would need to be directed to the right one. It was Dr. Morton's hypothesis that once it had been shown the divide had been pierced, the mind of Blackthorne's familiar could be used to direct No. 722's to the precise place necessary to obtain access to the Whole. Jonathan had ordered the intensity and frequency of the subject's torments of fear and pleasure be increased in the hopes she could be pushed over the top. Morton had, initially, demurred, fearing that, like so many others, 722 would be driven into a deep psychosis as a result. But the renegade dream man had been insistent.

Now, as he watched the bound and naked, hooded female squirm and moan with distress on the broad, comfortable bed from the heavy dose of pain and lust he had implanted in her mind, Jonathan felt something he had not experienced since assuming male, human form five years ago: fear. The pursuer was coming, had arrived at long last, and everything he had worked for and accumulated was now at risk.

Blackthorne was a man of action, not of contemplation, and he immediately set into motion. The arrival of the pursuer was not unexpected and he had not been idle all of these years in preparing his defenses. The good news was the fact that the pursuer's arrival would certainly entail the existence of a familiar. If he could capture her, he would kill, so to speak, two birds with one stone. He would eliminate the threat of the pursuer and he would have another possible route of access to the Whole. Also, if he could convert the pursuer's familiar to his own use, Diane, his current source of the Whole's essence, would be available for the continued experiments Dr. Morton wanted to conduct. Any concern his familiar's ability to draw sustenance for him across the dimensional divide would be compromised by the experiments would be assuaged.

Jonathan was pleased his trap for the pursuer had worked. It was he who ratted out the pimp who had taken ownership of the pretty, brown haired girl, Nadine, his familiar's younger sister. He knew that the abrupt deprivation of her reason for life itself, the master he had bound her to, would drive her into a near psychotic state. He had assumed that the pimp would be imprisoned for many years and had been even more pleased to learn he had chosen to shoot it out with the police rather than face a long jail sentence. Eventually, the police would trace Nadine's origins and her family would have her hospitalized. He had assumed the pursuer would readily be able to discover the identity of his familiar. After all, how many prominent, single women disappeared every year in the Chicago metropolitan area? Once that identity had been revealed, it was a sure, short line to finding Nadine.

The man who called had been in service to Blackthorne for the three years since Nadine had been a patient in St. Catherine's Psychiatric Hospital in Omaha. He had been corrupted in the usual ways, a financial incentive together with a revolving series of abject, devoted sexual slaves to serve as his mistress. Reggie Johnson, a clerk in the administrative offices, had noted the fact that Nadine had had a visitor. Although he would have discovered it anyway eventually by going over the visitor's log, a task he undertook at least once a week, he had been marooned at the hospital by the same storm that kept Ramón and his PI prisoners at their motel. Having nothing better to do, he went down and checked the log book. He assumed the name used was a false one, which it was, but the mere fact a visitor had come at all was important. He placed his call to the number he had been given, initiating a series of portentous events.

A casual questioning of the attendant who had escorted Nadine to and from her meeting with the stranger had resulted in a rough, but adequate description. Blackthorne had ‘donated’ a security system to the hospital and Reggie was able to obtain copy of the surveillance tape showing the man coming in and out of the hospital. He emailed a copy of it to the security firm Blackthorne had on retainer in Omaha. The storm had been a lucky thing, delaying the pursuer's departure. All bets were that the pursuer would fly out the next morning. A crew of investigators, armed with an outtake from the video and the verbal description, would be waiting there in the morning for the purpose of identifying him and monitoring the flight he took. Once his destination was known, another crew of agents would be ready to pick him up at that airport and follow him to his ultimate destination.

Blackthorne ordered Bob to have a crew of his best and most ruthless Apache warriors on standby. Once it was known where the pursuer was going, they would be placed on one of Blackthorne's private jets and flown there to make the snatch of the pursuer's familiar. Of course, no plan was foolproof, the pursuer might manage to give the agents the slip. Or the familiar might be too well protected to make the snatch. But no security the pursuer could devise would be flawless and, if it turned out she could not be captured, she, or the pursuer, could always be killed.

Jonathan walked through the underground connection to his hacienda pensively. His whole person was aflame with the thrill of the chase. This had been what he had been waiting for for years. Nothing had tempered his enjoyment of the experiences of this world and his life as a virtual god in it. His plans for national political power were well underway. Senator Grant, who Jonathan had corrupted many years ago, was well poised for success in the primaries next year. Blackthorne would pour a hundred million dollars into his campaign and influence many others to contribute vast sums. He imagined himself walking into the White House on inauguration day and setting before the new President his personal agenda. The entire nation would dance to his tune. He would be impregnable, even if the Whole sent agent after agent against him.

The tunnel from the dream lab led directly into his private quarters in the basement of the hacienda. It was here that his familiar resided, protected by heavy steel doors to which he alone had the combination. The series of rooms was equipped with all the amenities of life and the female and his three enthusiastic acolytes could subsist down here for weeks on end should he not be able to return to the Fortress for some reason.

The lock to the outer door was keyed to Jonathan's brain patterns and opened easily when he projected his thoughts to it. Each room in his bunker was separated by its own locked steel door. The ‘playroom', as he thought of it, was the second door on the right. It had served as the home of his familiar and his three acolytes for the last four years, ever since it was built. Kept constantly naked, they ate their meals there, slept there and existed in a state of almost perpetual sexual arousal. It was large, about 50’ long on each side. The walls were of white plaster covering the cinderblock construction. The only decoration in the room was the large replica of his talisman painted on the wall. There was an entertainment system, to occupy the women between their frequent bouts of sex, exercise machines to help maintain their fitness, showers, a bathroom, everything you could want. Their meals were sent in via a conveyer system from the upstairs kitchen. It was like a twentieth century nuclear fallout shelter, designed to sustain them indefinitely.

Blackthorne unlocked the heavy steel door and entered. As usual, the room was a beehive of sexual activity. His servants Darla and Christine had one of the Apache girls who were delegated to him until the next festival out of her cage and lying on the plush, red rug. They had bound the pretty, dark skinned girl's hand to her sides. Christine had her mouth between the young girl's widespread, naked thighs and was mouthing her to pleasure while Darla straddled her head, using her mouth for her own delight. The Apache girl squirmed and writhed under the onslaught of the two fiercely impassioned women, crying out her unwanted pleasure into Darla's engorged and distended cunt. Yvonne, his black skinned beauty, had his wife, the still aristocratic looking Dolores, on her knees and bent over on the floor and was fucking her from behind with a large, black dildo which was strapped to the black woman's waist. Dolores, her arms locked behind her, was moaning with enforced pleasure, her ample breasts swaying under her madly as Yvonne gave her frantic strokes with the merciless instrument. Jonathan, pleased by the orgy of lust and enjoying the waves of passion emanating from them, sent his servants a mental command to continue as they were.

His familiar was on the large, plush bed, her hands bound to the headboard above her, her head covered with the deer skin pouch the shaman had given him so many years ago. She had been dosed with peyote milk about two hours ago and she was squirming, naked on the bed, in desperate need and full of the life giving essence she had been drawing from the other side during the course of her hallucinogenic dreams. He would collect it in a short while, but first he wanted to lose some of the anxious energy that had built up in him as a result of the news about the pursuer.

The demonic other worlder strode over to the cages that were stationed along one of the walls. Anxious eyes peered out at him from three of them. The two remaining Apache women who had been loaned to him in the name of their tribe watched him warily as he passed them. To their relief, he had no designs on them for the moment. The last cage contained a pale skinned, naked, black haired woman. She was new, hardly even broken in. She had been part of a shipment of Ukrainian women who had been smuggled into the country ostensively to find work. They had been whisked here to the Fortress upon their arrival. The other six were now on their way to one of the sex clubs run under his authority in Dallas, all properly enraptured and enslaved. They would be dutiful, lustful employees and, after they had learned their new trade, would be shipped out to other clubs around the country. This one, a girl named Ulrika, had caught his fancy. After he had enthralled her, he had brought her here to await his pleasure with instructions no one should touch her until her had had his way with her.

The pretty, blue eyes of the black haired girl looked out at him with fear from between the steel bars of her little prison as he approached. She was thin and pale, with a graceful figure and long legs. Her straight, black hair fell to her shoulders, accentuating the paleness of her lustrous skin. Her face was round and well appointed, with large, luscious lips and an elegant, long, strait nose. She did not yet bear the tattoo which would symbolize his ownership on her flesh. He would have it done in the morning. But she had been educated as to the fearful power of the heavy copper disk and, as he showed it to her now, she cringed and fell back as far as she could go in the tiny enclosure. Blackthorne unlocked the gate to the cage and, sending her a strong psychic message of his will, ordered her out.

The thin, pale girl gave a sob and edged her way out of the steel prison. It had been her prison, but also her refuge. At least while she was inside it she was not being abused. She had watched the three devilish women earlier as they tormented the bound woman on the bed and also the three dark skinned girls, each in their turn. They were insatiable. And now the man who had captured her mind, had destroyed her ability to act and think on her own, had compelled her to leave her tiny sanctuary. She could not fathom the mysterious power he had over her and, concluding that he was some form of devil, had spent her lonely hours in her cage awaiting his return bemoaning her fate and praying for divine deliverance.

Jonathan used a mental command to urge the pretty, young girl to kneel outside of her cage and place her hands behind her head. Her round, coffee cup sized breasts stood up proudly and she trembled as she looked up at him anxiously with her tear filled eyes. He crouched down in front of her and seized the firm, pert mounds, circling his powerful hands around them and sending a strong message of lust to the girl. At the same time, staring back at her terrified eyes, he sent her a message of psychic pain and fear. He could feel the mixed emotions emitted from her confused, agonized mind. It flowed through him like ambrosia.

"I'll never get tired of this,” the renegade dimension traveler thought to himself as he drew strength from the girl's effusions of emotion. “Pretty, tender breasts in my hands, a beautiful body to explore. I'll never give this up, never!” Blackthorne had lost count long ago of the number of women he had captured and converted to his will. There were thousands of women all across the Untied States, Canada and Mexico who labored under the mandates of his will, slaves to callous masters. And overseas too. Last year they had sealed a deal with a Korean outfit, three pretty, lithesome Asian girls for each Western one. The ruthless gangsters shipped them over by the containerful and delivered them by truck to the Fortress for enslavement. And it was easy to send the Caucasian girls the other way. A few minutes with him and they would arrange their own passports, even buy their own airline tickets, and deliver themselves to their doom. All it took when they arrived was a glance at the little, copper colored medallion and they would obey their new masters energetically and without question until the day they died.