The Lure of the Pack (33 page)

Oh God, thought Piper, please God!

Another pause, the beautiful physician continuing to stare
at Piper, her eyes seemingly so gentle, so…sexual. “I’m going to remove the
bandage and take a look at the wound, just relax.”

The pain in Piper’s right knee had been with him since he
first awoke, but he had accepted it. He knew he would have to, for worse pain
was yet to come, of that he was certain.

Ever so gently, Doctor Lana Franke unwrapped the bloody
bandage from Piper’s broken kneecap. “It wasn’t very nice of Wilhelm to shoot
you, was it?” Again, there was no reply from Piper as she finished removing the
bloody strips of cloth. “The bullet has damaged your Patella quite
considerably. In fact my darling, there’s nothing there, just broken
fragments.” Lana moved away from the table, to a four-shelf trolley in the
corner of the theatre.

Slowly, worriedly, Piper lifted his head as she did so,
looking at the area of damage. My God he thought, I should be healing faster
than this! Suddenly, he heard a metallic sound, a sound of instruments being
handled.

She turned around, a pair of large surgical tweezers in her hand,
together with a roll of cotton wool and a bottle of…something. “The wound will
have to be cleaned, my darling.”

Oh no, she’s licking her lips again thought Piper, the
physician quickly returning to his side, tearing off a large piece of cotton
wool and removing the lid of the plastic bottle. Tipping the bottle, she soaked
the cotton swab. As she did so, Piper began to recognise the smell coming from
the bottle. What the hell, he thought?

“You will feel some pain during this standard procedure
darling, but there’s nothing to worry about. I’m just going to clean the wound
with antiseptic, now…just relax.” As Lana Franke placed the sodden swab in the
grip of the tweezers, she began to giggle. Quickly, she grabbed Piper’s knee,
just above the wound, the pressure of her grip sending him into spasms of
agony.

“Shit! Doctor Franke, no…wait…” Giggling, she leaned over,
preparing to swab the broken bone and tissue as the smell assaulting Piper’s
senses sent warning messages to brace himself.  “You bitch, that’s not
antiseptic, that’s fucking…” she applied the swab, “…BLEACH!” With a sudden
jolt of pain coursing through his kneecap, Ash Piper wrenched against the
straps as he screamed in torment.

To Jurgen Falck and Fritz Kempler, the view of their Fuhrer
and Fraulein Zeist in their powerful Were forms was truly a sight to behold.
But of the howling, there was no sign, for their silence was still of such
great importance. The four wolves, primed in their wondrous magnificence,
shared their greetings, whining and tail wagging, their snouts rubbing one
against the other. Their feelings of joy could not be suppressed, but for Otto
Von Kurst, those same feelings of joy were now reaching new heights.
Contentedly, Von Kurst curtailed his whining as the cool breeze blew his fur
like waves across a gentle sea. As his magnificent wolf form faced south,
towards the city of Koln, the other three wolves also ceased their greetings.
He growled, so too did the others, not in anticipation of the hunt, but in a
show of defiance. With a lowering of his powerful, majestic lupine head, his
ears and whiskers twitching in olfactory delight, Otto Von Kurst prepared to
lead his packmates southwards to their hunting territory, just as his own
grenadiers were once again…preparing to strike! 

“OH FOR GOD’S SAKE, YOUR WOUND MUST BE CLEANED, LIE STILL!”
Lana Franke’s face contorted in anger, her gloved hands continuing her work,
dabbing the bleach soaked, bloodied swab onto the exposed, vulnerable, broken
pieces of Piper’s kneecap. The smell, so intense, nauseating, the pain, like
shards of hot metal cutting through Piper’s flesh. She continued further,
giggling, dabbing the swab, pouring more bleach, this time directly into the
wound as Piper screamed again, his broken, disjointed kneecap now in agony.

“GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD,” he yelled.

“God can’t help you in here, my darling.” The giggling
receded, now Lana Franke laughed aloud, insanely, gripping Piper’s agonised
kneecap and twisting it, wrenching, squeezing, the patient convulsing in spasms
of unending agony.

He screamed again, squirming against the straps.

“That’s better…” the assault finished as Piper lay panting,
exhausted, his lungs gasping for air as he tried to concentrate on anything
except his current predicament. “Now,” the maniacal physician whispered, a
terrible hint of sadistic menace in her voice, “I need to take a look at the
Medial Meniscus.”

“You bitch!”

“Shut up!”

Piper fell silent; it served no purpose to goad her.  He
gritted his teeth and prepared…for further pain.

“Ah yes…” Doctor Franke continued leaning over Piper’s right
leg, her bloodied, bleach-stained gloves preparing once again to enter the
wound, only this time with just the surgical tweezers. “Do you know what the
Medial Meniscus is, my darling?”

Go with it thought Piper, his chest rising and falling, his
breathing, more controlled. “No Doctor,” he panted, “I don’t.”

She smiled, “there are actually two separate discs of
protective cartilage covering the surfaces of the femur and tibia. They are
called the Medial and the Lateral Meniscus.” Again, came the giggling, the
fucking schoolgirl giggling, thought Piper.

“I can see your Medial Meniscus quite clearly,” she reached
up and adjusted the theatre light, “yes, very clearly.” Slowly, ominously,
Piper’s torturer leaned down with the tweezers and began picking, the patient
screaming again and again, his body writhing, wrenching, trying to break free.
But it was hopeless! The female physician probed deeper, pulling at her
patient’s cartilage, picking, nipping. She reached for the bottle, slowly
pouring its contents over the tortured muscle tissue, the bleach burning every
nerve ending of Piper’s wound.

The patient screamed and kept screaming.

“Oh my darling, please, I’m only playing with you at
present, this is just a little bit of fun!”

Again, Ash Piper writhed in agony, but this time, his anger
and frustration could be held no longer. “YOU FUCKING, PSYCOPATHIC BITCH!” he
shouted, his blue and amber eyes set with dire hatred.

The torment ceased.

“What did you say?” Her voice was monotone, threatening, the
look in her eyes, that of an insane woman.

Piper fell silent.

“WHAT DID YOU FUCKING SAY?” she yelled, “ANSWER ME!” In a
state of furious rage, Lana Franke threw the tweezers across the theatre, her
seething face lowering to his, her right hand gripping her agonised patient’s
jaw. He strained against the grip as she suddenly smiled. “No,” she whispered,
“no…I know what you’re doing! You’re goading me, aren’t you?”

“Go and fuck yourself!”

Slowly, she leaned down and kissed him, her eyes searching
his, “such a wonderful show of bravado, my darling. You’re frightened aren’t
you? Very frightened, you know you’re helpless, with the wolf inside you, being
controlled…”

Piper’s heart sank, his feelings in turmoil. Again she talks
of the wolf, he thought. But how can she control…?

“…and your friends, they must be so worried about you, but
of course…they don’t know where you are.”

The damn bitch thought Piper, she’s draining my resolve, or
at least trying too!

“Believe me Oliver, as of tomorrow,” menacingly, Lana Franke
traced her right index finger across Piper’s chest, stopping to stroke his
right nipple, “you will beg me for mercy. For tomorrow my darling, brings the
beginning of your interrogation, and we have such a great deal to discuss,
don’t we?” She tweaked his nipple, sliding her tongue down his sweat covered
face, her hot breath, so close! “No darling, today I continue with basic
treatments, just to soften you up, so to speak. At present I am not interested
in who you are, or whom you work for, no…that comes tomorrow and believe me…you
will talk, and you will scream, yell and struggle. Oh, my dear Oliver,” she
kissed her patient again, gently, tantalisingly, “I am going to make you
suffer, like no man has ever suffered. Now…it’s time for your first course of
electro therapy!”

“If he has turned, then CEATA is at grave risk!” Commander
Maurice Hertschell sat stupefied at his desk as Charles Mann nodded his head,
“you think he has joined Von Kurst, don’t you Charles?”

“You know as well as I do Maurice, from our military
viewpoints, we must presume the worst.” The Colonel paused. There was still a
look of doubt in the Commander’s eyes, or was it just bewilderment. The two men
had worked so hard on the formation of CEATA, and none more so than Maurice
Hertschell.

“Perhaps we were fools Charles, we should have been more
prudent with Piper.”

“So you agree with me then?”

The Commander sat back, an exasperated sigh slowly leaving
his lips, “four of our best Followers dead, a total blackout of communication
then Piper vanishes, along with Von Kurst and Oratz.”

“And don’t forget the imagery just before we lost contact!”

“Yes, I know.” The Commander shook his head in dismay, his
memory slowly reliving the satellite view of Piper shaking hands with Von
Kurst. “I still cannot believe what’s happened Charles. How could he do this to
us?”

“This is a war Maurice, a war with no boundaries whatsoever.
Piper must have felt a bonding; a feeling of being wanted, after all, these are
human wolves we are talking about. God…I just wonder what else Von Kurst has
got up his sleeve regarding the European Muslim Freedom Fighters.”

Maurice Hertschell’s gaze fixed rigidly on his friend, “I
trust there is still no news of any further detonations?”

“No, none since the forty six earlier this week.”

Another sigh parted the Commander’s lips, “and we are just
damned well sat here, waiting, fearing the worst.”

Charles Mann leaned forward, his expression stormy, “and
with a damned rogue agent on the loose!” 

This time he couldn’t scream. The gag made sure of it. It
was punishment for answering her back. He had previously voiced his opinions
while he yelled and writhed on the table, the humming from the electrical
appliance echoing in the theatre. No, this time he had to be kept quiet, for
her concentration had diminished, all because of his screams and his verbal
abuse! He had fought courageously against her heavy-handed grip, trying hard to
stop her from prying his jaws open, but she was strong, and totally in control.
A woman demented, he’d thought as the thick leather straps tightened around his
head, the ‘bit’ holding down his tongue.

The patient’s pain racked body continued to twitch, stretch
and writhe again and again, much to the delight of the giggling physician, the
electrodes having been thoroughly gelled and placed neatly on various sensitive
areas of his body, except his genitals, which had surprised him. But none of
that mattered now. All that did matter was trying to scream, to let out the
feelings of torment coursing through carefully selected parts of his agonised,
tortured form.

“Again darling…” Doctor Lana Franke turned the dial slowly
clockwise, greatly increasing what she calmly called, ‘the flow of electro
stimuli’. The voltage increased again and so too, the giggling, “oh darling,
we’re having so much fun, aren’t we?”

The sound issuing from beneath the gag could have been
mistaken for the squealing of a pig being slaughtered, the patient continuing
to thrash against the straps, his torso bucking up and down then arching in
agony, upward, towards the circular light. 

It had been over two hours of torment, not that he had
realised it. For him, time didn’t matter. All that mattered now was the will to
live, the will to fight on. Suddenly, blessedly, the numbing, mind bending pain
ceased, the physician stepping away from the machine controlling his agony as
she walked calmly over to the twisted, pain racked man lying on the operating
table.

Savagely, she grabbed her patient by his soaking, sweat drenched
hair. “I’ve lost Otto, because of you, YES, YOU!” Her breathing was sporadic,
her eyes on fire with detestation, “you…have ruined my life! Because of you,
the man I…I…love, is with me no longer. HOW I HATE YOU!” Her hand lashed out at
Piper’s face again, making him grunt under the gag. She pulled his hair
tighter; slamming his head again and again on the hard headrest. “SUFFER, I
WANT YOU TO FUCKING SUFFER, JUST LIKE I AM!” He grunted again, the gag
preventing any form of speech. “It’s just you and I, my darling,” she whispered
as Piper groaned again, “for as long as I wish, unleashing pain on your
wretched form, for days, weeks, months. GOD YOU ARE GOING TO PAY!”

With a look of seething hatred set firmly on her attractive
face, Lana Franke picked up the sponge and dipped it into the bowl, “let’s
start again, shall we?” Piper moaned under the gag as his tormentor squeezed
cold water over the areas of his body fitted with the electrodes. Sighing
gently she returned to the apparatus, turning the dials again, his torso
jolting, straining. “I have to admit darling, I’m starting to become very moist
watching you suffer like this.” The voltage increased, so too, Piper’s spasms
and screams. “Let’s see if I can bring myself to an orgasm while I continue
your treatment.” The high-pitched squealing of the patient continued, so too,
the whine of the electrical apparatus and amidst it all, the moans and sighs of
a woman enjoying herself…immensely.

They continued to move quickly, efficiently, the four
wolves, united in their strength. Their travels from outside the city,
southwards, had been without incident, with the Fuhrer, the alpha male, taking
the lead. As always they had moved in single file, avoiding human contact, at
least for the present.

 If their journeying had been in the depths of winter, they
would have trod in each other’s paw prints, to conserve energy and cover their
tracks. But the winter was long past. Now, the spring and summer had rolled
into one, Von Kurst having already planned their weeklong route, to coincide
with the farmlands of the Rhineland and the lonely tourist spots, where hikers
and campers idiotically preferred to lay their heads for the night, before
moving on. If all goes well thought Otto Von Kurst, and we continue at this
pace, the hunt will begin tonight.