The Sopaths (16 page)

“It will not be my penis that enters you,” he said, though his member was now rigid and on the verge of jettisoning. She was a sopath, but she had one of the finest bodies he had ever encountered, and she knew it. She must have achieved her position among sopaths, including the girls, by being the most physically attractive.

The man pointed the poker at Dreda’s face and pushed it slowly forward, centering on her left eye. Terrified, she urinated on the floor.

Abner watched. He had to keep Autopsy close to him as long as possible, hoping that Pariah’s confidence in his secret weapon was not misplaced. That meant allowing this revolting challenge to proceed until his hand was forced. Dreda had depended on him to protect her, and he intended to do that, but she was in serious doubt now. How he wished he could reassure her!

Autopsy put her thighs together, squeezing his turgid member between them. How well she knew her power! “Desire is beating horror,” she remarked. “So far.”

“You can’t bluff him,” Nefer said. “Under that souler mask there’s one extremely tough man.”

“We shall see,” Autopsy said, tightening her thighs to put additional pressure on his penis.

There needed to be a more immediate show of force. “Deliver the warning shell,” Abner said into the phone.

“How long before detonation?” Autopsy inquired as if it were routine. She must have let him keep the phone so she could call his bluff.

“About thirty seconds.”

“Wait thirty seconds,” she told the poker bearer.

He held the poker in place, about two inches before Dreda’s eye. She was quietly sobbing, fearing the worst.

Then the shell exploded in the intersection outside the house with an authoritative boom. The building rattled.

“I’ll be damned,” Autopsy said, startled. He felt it in her momentary clench of thighs, and pause of breath beneath her breast. “You do have us covered.”

“Did you think I walked into this nest of scorpions, with my family, unprepared?” Abner asked rhetorically. “We of Pariah do know something about handling sopaths.”

She remained on his lap, reassessing the situation. “So it seems. We have guards to stop anyone from driving or walking in. How did you get the bomb there, and set it off?”

“It’s a mortar,” Abner said. “That’s a mini-cannon that hurls shells in a high arc, to land and detonate like bombs. You can’t defend against it. We have it zeroed in on this site. The next round will be for effect.”

“You’d bomb yourself and your family to get at us? I don’t think so.”

“When the alternative is torture? We’ll soon know, won’t we?” Abner asked, squeezing her breast a bit too hard. He could merge sadism with sex when he chose to. He needed her to accept that he was indeed a tough man.

“Then we’d better get on with it.” Autopsy glanced at the poker man and opened her mouth.

Abner raised the phone to his face. Bluff and counter bluff, not about their abilities, but their nerve. If Autopsy thought she could still make Abner yield, she would. But she didn’t want to have that poker raping her, and he didn’t want to have to do it. But he could, and would. He was already furious about the way Dreda was being terrorized.

Autopsy slapped the phone out of his hand. It dropped to the floor and skidded before the chairs. Bunty dived for it, but a guard intercepted her and held her tightly against him. He was evidently eager to rape her the moment he was given leave.

Clark tried for the phone, but another guard kicked it back the way it had come. Autopsy slid off Abner’s lap, reached lithely down, and scooped it up.

Only to discover herself caught from behind, with a knife at her throat. While the others had focused on the phone, Nefer had focused on Autopsy. “Try to bluff
me,
cow!” she hissed.

The guards, seeing their mistress captive, froze in place. The poker retreated from Dreda’s face. Abner retrieved the phone from Autopsy’s hand. She had lost their contest of wills, by not letting him call in the strike.

“You’re a sopath!” Autopsy said, amazed. “You serve a souler?”

Nefer shrugged without letting the knife blade waver. “There’s just something about him. I love him.”

“And he keeps you in his family? You must be one hell of a young fuck!”

“I am, but he doesn’t know it yet.” She looked at Abner. “Do I kill her? You know we can’t trust her. Those goons won’t wait forever without orders.”

Abner hesitated deliberately. “You kill her, you take her place,” he said. “It’s the way an anarchist society works. They’ll obey you. It could be a good deal for you. A sopath-controlled town. Power and an easy life.”

“Yes, but I’ll still serve you, and you won’t want to stay here. There’s nothing I want here, when you go. I’d be in constant fear of getting knocked off by the next power-hungry sopath bitch.”

Abner made his decision. “Then let her go. We already have the situation in hand, and she could be useful.”

“She could also be one really hot fuck,” Nefer agreed, slowly releasing the woman. “She’s got the body I don’t have yet.”

Right on target. Abner’s erection remained, in plain sight of everyone, desiring the sopath leader even now. He had underestimated her sheer sexual appeal.

Autopsy got to her feet. “Loose the child,” she said to the guards. “Then get out of here. The issue has been settled; the operation is under new management.” She turned to Abner, inhaling. “Tell your mortar crew to ease off. We don’t want some trigger-happy joker shelling this house while we’re in it. We haven’t fucked yet.” She glanced at his stiff penis, knowing that this aspect of her power remained. Like Nefer, she could bide her time when she needed to.

Abner lifted his cell phone and did so. Meanwhile the guards freed Dreda, and she came running across to Abner. He swept her up and held her tightly, comforting her as she sobbed. She had known he would protect her if he could, but had not been sure he could. He had not been sure either, if his threat did not dissuade the sopath.

“You’re right,” Autopsy said to Nefer. “There’s something about him. Just being close to him makes me want to fuck him.” Which was her way of saying that she was getting a crush on him, as Nefer had. It seemed that sopaths had no natural limitations apart from conscience; when they got turned on by someone, they plunged in all the way in mere minutes. That could be a worthwhile lever, and was in this case. Pariah had gambled on it and on him to implement it, and won. Autopsy wanted sex with him, yes, but this was beyond that, and would not end if she seduced him. Exactly as Nefer had discovered.

“He has that effect,” Bunty said.

“But there’s one thing I don’t get,” Autopsy said. “I know why you made her let me go, Abner, because I made your penis hot and you really want that fuck. All men do. You just want to fuck me on your own terms, not mine. It’s a power thing. But you, Nefer—you’re a sopath like me, and you want to fuck him too. You could have saved the competition by killing me. He gave you leave to do it. You know I can seduce him before you can, because I’ve got the hardware you lack, and once he fucks me, he’ll have no interest in you. Why did you throw away your chance like that?”

“Because I love him,” Nefer said. “I’ll do anything he wants me to. So will you. He’s got the power.”

Autopsy surveyed Abner again. “He does. I’ve never felt anything like this. Fucking’s always been a business for me, and I’m good at it. I’ve fucked every man in Kraut, most of them multiple times. They can never get enough of me. All I ever felt before for a man was contempt. A man will throw away everything just to get his penis into my slit before it bursts. Just to pump his gism into me. I enjoy sex but it doesn’t govern me like that. That’s weakness.”

“Abner won’t. He has this thing about not fucking children.”

“So I have discovered. But I’m not a child, just young. I made him hard, but I didn’t make him try to get into me. He’s strong. I think he really would have raped me with that poker if I hurt his child. I admire that. But this is more. I want him to
want
me. I want him to possess me. I want him to—to love me.”

“That’s the hell of it,” Nefer said. “He won’t. He hates sopaths, and usually kills them. He loves Bunty, and she’s the only one he’ll fuck, and if anyone touches her or the children he’ll kill them. I’ve worked with him; I know. Love is like a magic spell cast over you that you can’t fight. You don’t even
want
to fight it. You just want to be with him and do anything he wants you to, knowing you’ll never get any more than the satisfaction of pleasing him.”

“That is weird.” Autopsy shook her head. “But true. It’s the way the men are with me. I wanted to get close to him the moment I saw him.”

“Yep,” Nefer agreed. “You thought you were seducing him, but he was seducing you, not for sex, but for love, which is worse. And
that’s
why I made him let you go. Now you’re his captive, his love slave, same as me, and if there’s any way you can be useful, you’ll do it. You must know a lot about this place. Maybe you’ll help us complete our mission.”

Nefer smiled. “For that, maybe he just might fuck you, if Bunty tells him to. Just as he’d fuck me, if she told him to. It’s a faint hope, but it’s all there is.”

Autopsy glanced at Bunty, who nodded.

“Weird,” Autopsy repeated. She seemed to be in a partial daze, overwhelmed by the unfamiliar emotion. For the first time in her life she wanted to give rather than to take. It was contrary to her sopath nature.

Nefer had done Abner the favor of clarifying Autopsy’s newfound loyalty to him. It was time for him to take over. He held Dreda close and spoke over her head. “Autopsy, I am leaving you in command of Sauerkraut, under me,” he said. “I could have killed you at any time, or shelled the house, but wanted to play out the scene. Are you satisfied that your choices are to obey me and live, or oppose me and die?”

“Not entirely, because if it weren’t for this emotion, this love, I could get rid of you soon enough. This is my town. But I do want to fuck you, and to make you like me. Give me that, and I’ll do what else you say, no limits, as she says.”

Abner answered cautiously, aware that this extremely attractive sopath was now dangerous in other than a purely physical way. When he saw her torturing Dreda he hated her, but now she was on his side. Nefer had slowly gotten him to like her, and Autopsy was apt to do the same despite his knowledge of her vicious nature. “Not at this time. You will have to satisfy me that you are sufficiently useful for my purpose. That may take time.”

“See?” Nefer said. “He’s playing you as he plays me, and you know it, but all you can do is beg for more.”

Autopsy nodded. “Just let me be close to you, Abner. I’m not used to this, but I’m a quick study.”

She surely was, to have survived and achieved power as a teen. She had made expert use of her power over men. “I want your full effort to fathom the mystery of these two towns,” he said. “To figure out why the one has no sopath births while the other has mostly sopath births. If we can get that answer, I will probably depart and leave you here as you were, giving you what you want.”

“I don’t want it anymore,” Autopsy said. “I want to go with you, as Nefer does.” She smiled with a suggestion of humor. “To be your love slave.” She glanced at Bunty. “Your concubine, for when your wife’s not in the mood. I am always in the mood.”

“I can’t promise that.”

“Or have you stay here, and work with you. Just so long as it’s close to you.”

Abner was surprised. “That might be possible, depending on what we discover. We do need a new place to settle.”

“I’ll try as hard as I possibly can,” Autopsy promised. “Anything I know, anything I can get for you, it’s yours.”

“That should suffice.”

“Kiss her,” Nefer advised, satisfied with the way of it. “To seal the deal.”

Abner glanced at Bunty, who nodded again. So he took Autopsy in his arms and kissed her on the lips. He felt her melting. He had indeed made another conquest.

She remained infernally tempting. How long would he be able to hold out against her seduction?

After that they all dressed and adjourned to more comfortable quarters. The guards were gone, food was served, and Autopsy was resplendent in a more modest dress that hardly masked her beauty. She looked like the world’s loveliest Girl Back Home. It was hard to believe that she had sat naked on his lap while fondling his penis, or that she had ordered Dreda tortured. Dreda, however, refused to look at her. Her second brush with a hostile sopath had not been any more pleasant than her first.

“I am convinced that the secret is hiding in plain sight,” Abner said. “Maybe if we review the history of the two towns we’ll happen upon it.” He looked at Autopsy. “You must have been close to the first sopath born here. I am not inquiring into your personal history, merely the larger situation. When did the sopaths start?”

“I could have been the first,” she agreed. “My family was the first to move here after the fruities left, and I was born soon after.”

“Fruities?”

“The cult freaks. Their canon was to be fruitful and multiply, like in the Bible, and did they ever! I think they just liked to fuck. They thought nothing of having ten or twelve children in a family. Their women were almost continuously pregnant, including the single ones.”

“Then they left,” Bunty said. “Somewhat abruptly, I understand. Why?”

“No one knows. They seemed to be doing great, then suddenly they moved far far away, leaving their houses empty. Something must’ve scared them off, like a toxic nuclear waste dump buried under the town, poisoning everything. Except it wasn’t. My folks checked that out, before I ditched them. No waste, no radiation. The environment was fine, and nobody since has suffered any problems. The town’s clean, except for the sopaths.”

“Much of it looked deserted as we drove in,” Abner said. “Empty houses, fallow fields, as if a blight struck it.

Autopsy laughed. “That was us. The sopaths. We did so much damage that folk started moving out as fast as they had moved in. So now we’re trying to get more settlers in, especially responsible older soulers, but they’re wary. I could persuade the men, but their wives won’t let them be within a hundred miles of here. So there’s just not enough people here.”