Female Prey & the Elusive Prey (27 page)

The curtains parted. Mr. Brown emerged. Another man followed him, about the same age, clean-shaven, white-haired and wearing a white lab coat. A stethoscope dangled around his neck. ‘Of course…’ Kimberley thought with a mental snicker… ‘this must be Doctor White’.

Her second thought was not as funny. Why do they need a doctor? Then she saw what Mr. Brown was holding in one sinewy hand. It was a branding iron, glowing nearly white-hot. She opened her mouth. She almost said something, but Mr. Brown looked at her first and something in his eyes made her swallow her words with an audible gulp. She felt Barbara move close to her, touch her. She slid an arm around Barbara’s waist, and Barbara slid one around hers. She could hear Barbara’s breathing, fast and shallow…or was that her own breathing?

Mr. Brown stood over Cat, as if choosing where to put the brand.

“Hold ‘er tight, now,” he told his henchmen. Kimberley saw Cat’s body tense, then shudder uncontrollably. Cat began squealing around the ball gag.

Mr. Brown eyed Cat for a moment, stepped a bit closer…and then, with a quickness that surprised Kimberley, applied the white-hot iron to Cat’s round little ass. Cat shrieked and her body bucked against the planks in spite of the two men holding her down. Barbara, still holding on to Kimberley, turned her head away with a moan. Kimberley herself was torn. Part of her wanted to turn away also, but instead she kept staring at the scene in horrified fascination. Mr. Brown held the iron in place for a moment, then withdrew it, signaling for the doctor to come over before turning back to Kimberley and Barbara.

“That’s all, ladies,” he said. “Time for you to go back to the hotel now.” Mr. Green and Mr. Black had released Cat and stood up. Doctor White bent over the tiny, sobbing woman apparently beginning an examination. Mr. Brown looked down at them for a moment, then back up.

“She’ll be fine,” he reassured them. “And in case you were wondering, this is part of what she signed up for. Mr. Black and Mr. Green will escort you back to the hotel. Good day, ladies.”

Kimberley took one last glance back over her shoulder as they left the slave market. She could see Mr. Brown and Doctor White helping Cat to her feet. Cat was still bound and gagged, but…she did seem all right…didn’t she?

Her legs felt unsteady. So did Barbara’s, from the way her friend was leaning against her. Neither of them said a word during the long walk back to the hotel.

“I just can’t believe it…” Barbara said for what seemed to be the thousandth time. They were sitting in a corner booth in the hotel restaurant, drinking coffee and waiting for their breakfast order. The restaurant seemed to operate twenty-four hours a day, but at this early hour, there were few other customers.

“Will you stop saying that?” Kimberley shot back with a low hiss. She herself could believe it all too well: the sight, the sound, even the faint odor of Cat’s seared little bottom, were all too fresh in her mind. “We were both there. We both saw it. It happened, okay?”

Barbara looked pale and shaken. “I can’t…” she started to repeat, and caught herself. “I mean, it’s hard for me to believe that she asked for that.”

“Oh…” Kimberley took another gulp of her coffee. “Well, apparently she did. Now I know why she wanted some moral support with her, but I wish she’d warned us first.”

“Would you have still gone if she had?” Barbara leaned closer, eyes wide.

“I think I would have,” Kimberley replied. “How about you?”

Barbara leaned back, looked away and shrugged.

“Are you thinking of backing out now?” Kimberley prodded. Barbara was about to answer, but was interrupted by the arrival of their breakfast. The two women just looked at each other, saying nothing, until the waiter had left. Barbara glanced over her shoulder at him until he was out of hearing, then turned back to Kimberley.

“No…I’m not thinking of backing out now. I’m just kind of…shaken, you know? What else is going to happen to her now?”

“I don’t know.” Kimberley shrugged. “Whatever it is, she knew about it ahead of time. Hell, she signed up for it. So, it was her choice.” She turned her attention to breakfast: A cheese omelet, sausages on the side. It looked and smelled delicious, but she didn’t seem to have much appetite at the moment. She kept thinking of Cat’s shriek as the branding iron was applied. A brand was permanent. Tattoos were permanent too, but while she’d seen plenty of women with tattoos…usually small ones…she had never seen a woman with a brand before. Cat’s brand had looked small…nothing more than a wavy line, like a stretched-out letter ‘s’, but still…

She sighed loudly and took a bite of the omelet. Across from her, Barbara poked at her own breakfast with a fork. She didn’t look particularly enthusiastic, and maybe she was thinking of quitting in spite of what she’d just said. Kimberley didn’t want her to do that. It wouldn’t be the same without Barbara along. It wouldn’t be the same at all.

“Hey,” she said. Barbara looked up.

“I think…I think I know how that works.”

“How what works?” Barbara frowned.

“That dramatic little scene we saw earlier.”

“Oh?” Barbara leaned forward. “Please, tell me.”

“Look…there seem to be a lot of levels to all this.” She waved her fork, taking in the restaurant, and, by implication, the hotel, the town, and everything behind it. “You and I are only in the kiddie pool, so to speak.”

“The kiddie pool?” Barbara raised one perfect eyebrow. “I don’t know. It seems plenty deep to me.”

“Work with me,” Kimberley urged. “Sure, it’s plenty deep for me, too. But there are deeper parts. We don’t have to go into them, but Cat just did. I think maybe the branding was some kind of initiation into that deep end.”

“You think?” Barbara frowned again. “Well…maybe…”

“Sure!” Kimberley smiled. “It’s got to be something like that.”

“It was still pretty brutal.” Barbara shuddered delicately.

“Yes, it was,” Kimberley agreed. It was also, she thought, another level of female submission. When she thought of it that way, it didn’t seem quite so bad, but still… Last year, she’d been put through gang-banging, oral sex, anal sex…she’d even been fucked by a woman wearing a strap-on. She’d thought that that was about as submissive as anyone could get, and if she was right about Cat and her branding, it meant that she was wrong about the other stuff. She shivered at that thought.

“So, we’re still on?” Barbara interrupted her dark and unformed imaginings.

“Huh? Oh, hey, sure! Wouldn’t miss it!”

“Okay, then.” Barbara licked her lips nervously. “But…”

“But what?”

“But…I’m still tired and still kinda shaky. I was thinking maybe we could just unwind here for the day, get a good night’s rest and start out tomorrow morning instead of today?”

Kimberley took a bite of sausage to give her a little time to think. She was more than a little tired and still ‘kinda shaky’ herself. The hotel had a pool and even if she hadn’t brought a dress, she had brought a cute little bikini, just in case. It might be fun to flirt with and tease some of the good-looking men here. She also had a few more questions for Joanna.

She swallowed the bite of sausage. “Okay,” she nodded and smiled. “We can do that.”

Chapter Five

“Well…here we go,” Barbara said nervously. Behind them, the heavy metal gate clanged shut, making her jump.

Kimberley laughed. She herself was more pumped up than nervous. There was a belt of fifty feet of open space between them and the forest, and she scanned the trees alertly. Somewhere out there were at least four groups of hunters, plus a number of lone individuals, all seeking female prey. Behind her, faintly, she could still hear splashing and laughing from the hotel pool. She doubted that any of the hunters would be lurking so close to civilization, but why take chances? It would be embarrassing to be caught so soon, given her plans.

She scratched at her ear lightly. There might indeed be a chip implanted there, but she couldn’t feel it. The scratching was a late response to the tiny sting when they’d put it in just a few minutes ago.

“I don’t see any trail.” Barbara remarked, peering ahead. She tugged her baseball cap down a little further and squinted. “Nope. No trail at all.” Her long hair stuck out from under the cap and rippled down her back in a long ponytail. She put her hands on her hips and looked at Kimberley expectantly.

“Just as well.” Kimberley shrugged. “We won’t be taking any trails anyway, if we can help it.” They had a detailed map and a good compass, and she was sure she could navigate the forest with those. The map showed some sort of small town or trading post about seven or eight miles away to the south. It was marked as a “safe zone”. She was planning to go to that place first and have a look around. There were three more such places marked on the map. Kimberley planned to visit every one of them. Barbara could keep up with her or not.

“Why not?” Barbara asked. Then her eyes widened. “Oh!” she nodded.

“Exactly.” Kimberley grinned. “Any hunters are probably watching those trails.”

“So how do we get to that place you want to see?”

“Just trust me,” Kimberley replied. “I’ve done this kind of thing before.” She began walking towards the line of trees at an angle, looking for a good-but-not-obvious way to enter. She felt good…very good. The buzz of the bees, the swishing noise they made as they trod through the long grass, the smell of the flowers that poked up here and there, the blue of the cloudless sky overhead all seemed wonderfully sharp and clear to her senses. She could feel her muscles clenching and unclenching, her heart beating, slow and strong and steady, the warmth of the sunshine on her arms and bare knees. She almost felt as if she could fly, and she knew the reason the roller coaster was beginning the slow click-click-clicking ascent.

Barbara’s idea to postpone everything until today had been a good one. Both of them had benefited from a day of rest, and Joanna had answered the questions they’d had after witnessing what Kimberley now thought of as Cat’s initiation into some mysterious inner circle. That had taken up the rest of the morning in their suite. That afternoon, they had gone to the hotel pool. That was the only part about the day that Kimberley thought could have been improved on. She looked pretty good in a bikini and had attracted a fair share of male attention until Barbara showed up in her own black string bikini. She had a love-goddess body, enhanced and toned by long hours of teaching aerobics, and from the moment she’d arrived poolside she was just about the only woman there as far as the men were concerned. Today, Kimberley was hoping to walk Barbara into the ground as a token of her appreciation for that.

They were dressed almost identically for the wilds: knee-length, loose-fitting tan hiking shorts, even looser-fitting tan short-sleeved shirts with many, many buttoned pockets, knee-high heavy wool socks, also tan, and sturdy trail boots. Here, they differed. Kimberley’s boots were dark brown, while Barbara’s were a slightly darker shade of tan than the rest of her outfit. Each also wore a tan baseball cap. Their packs were light, no more than a blanket, a change of clothes and two pairs of socks, two days’ worth of food, a canteen and a few other necessary items each. Kimberley was also carrying a survival knife in a sheath at her belt. Barbara had instead chosen a big Swiss Army-type pocketknife that seemed to have everything in it but a radio.

“Here.” She pointed towards a pair of large trees that grew right at the edge of the woods. There was hardly any underbrush around them.

“You sure?” Barbara frowned.

Kimberley shrugged. “Sure enough. It doesn’t look like much of a way in to you at all, does it?”

“No, not really.”

“Then it won’t look like it to most anybody else either.” Kimberley chuckled. “Come on, follow me.”

Joanna had been a terrific source of information, but she would only answer direct questions. She never volunteered anything. It had been very frustrating at first, and Kimberley hadn’t been sure whether the older woman’s attitude was part of the policy here or due to something else. In the end, Kimberley had had to treat the situation as a game in order to keep from losing her temper. She really did not want to lose her temper with Joanna. It might very well be paid back with usurious interest later.

The map showed a total of four “safe zones” to the south, all of them along a wide arc about eight miles away from the hotel, linked to each other by roads or trails. According to Joanna, they were trading posts. Each had about a dozen permanent residents and a variable number of transients. Any woman who entered one of these posts on her own was completely safe as long as she stayed there. Kimberley intended to visit each and every one of those trading posts. They could pick up supplies there, and didn’t need any money to do it. Instead, the chips implanted in them would be scanned and the costs would be charged to their accounts. Up to a point, she rather liked that arrangement.

Each post also had medical facilities, if they were needed, and its own small slave market. Captured women could be bought, sold or traded there, saving them or their captors the long trip back to Gordburg. Kimberley also wanted to see those. She did not want to end up in one herself. She might not mind seeing Barbara in one, though. Barbara did not feature in her long-term plans.

She expected to be caught eventually. The odds were very, very high that she would be. But, now she was Elf-Girl again. Last year she had eluded a small team of professionals for several days, and they had been very tired by the time they caught her. There might be more teams out there in the woods now, but they were all amateurs. One of those teams, or even some lone individual, might run her down, but she was going to make them work very, very hard for it. At the same time, she intended to flaunt her presence at every post, and at every opportunity. She might normally fade into the background when Barbara was around. But on her own she might start her own local legend of the bold, elusive Elf-Girl, and that was an area where, she was sure, neither Barbara nor that exotic-looking pair she had seen caged in the slave market yesterday could compete. Kimberley smiled to herself. You work with what you’ve got.