Witch Hunter (26 page)

Then the wind came. It picked up suddenly and she knew they were after her. It was nothing more than a noise in the treetops but it was inexorably chasing her down. It was Morgana and her girls. She had betrayed the witch and nothing and nobody escaped that woman. She could hear the shrieks of the bacchante girls as an undercurrent to the rustling leaves. The panic swelled inside, sending her heart crazy, muffling her ears. She dared not look back, not for a second, even when she found her bike on its side in the bush just as she had left it.

She pedalled off but only slowly, her thigh muscles almost bursting with the pain of her exertions. She was up off the saddle, her bottom out, as she tried to put some power into her efforts. The wind was gathering behind her, the noise increasing. The girls would have their sticks, like in the drawings she had seen of them. She would be run down and run through, the long points of the toys driven up into her stuck-out bottom as she tried to get away. Would she live long enough to have the dildos at their waists driven two, maybe three at a time inside her? How long before they spanked and bit and ripped her to death?

They were right behind her now and she was sobbing out loud, her muscles spent. Their whispers were in her ears. She could feel the fingernail swipes at her bottom, the lunges in the air behind her as they tried to grasp her hair, their breath hot at her neck. She was at her limits and had nothing left to give. Her head was telling her legs to move but they could not. She slowed, the tears falling down her cheeks as she capitulated, and came to a standstill. Awaiting the inevitable crash her eyes closed, only to spring open again immediately at the sound of an engine. The car was coming straight towards her and the life rushed back into her limbs. It was the same Land Rover as before. It was the estate manager, her only saviour!

She flagged him down and jumped in, gabbling at him to drive and get the police. She unloaded all the facts without a pause, about how Hadyn Shady was hiding out beneath the Big House, how he kept slaves and was going to kill one of them, how he had kidnapped her and was going to murder her too. It sounded ridiculous but the estate manager was listening intently, noting it all, ready to drive her to safety. He must have felt an idiot that all this was going on under his nose, but Mimi was in no mood to berate him. She was too overjoyed at being out of danger.

It was obvious from her relief that she wasn’t making it up. Her saviour put his foot down and sped away. The girls wouldn’t catch them now, but still she couldn’t bring herself to look back, just in case. Her adrenalin was still raging but the cold fear was starting to be replaced by the warmth of huge relief. Strange, now that she was away from Morgana’s influence the thought of becoming her lover seemed utterly ridiculous again. The woman was pure danger, nothing more. She was no doubt every bit as ruthless and scheming as Shady and needed to be locked up for just as long. To think she had just been so close to giving herself up to that mad cult!

She concentrated on planning how to present her evidence to the police, how to ensure they acted immediately and sent a squad there without hesitation. Her own recent incarceration and impending death might not be enough to sway them. She might have to embellish a little and say a murder had already been committed. Maybe it had. Maybe Dominic had been found out and revenge already taken upon him. At the back of her mind the same nagging question kept trying to break through: how could Shady sell the land when it was no longer his?

The estate manager was reaching for his phone. Good thinking – he was going to ring ahead, to make sure the police were already gathering when they got there. He would help unearth the villain. There would no doubt be more damning evidence to find once the hidden bunker was searched, as long as Shady wasn’t disposing of it at that very moment. Speed was going to be essential and the driver beside her was doing her proud in that respect. She wasn’t really watching where they were going, concentrating so hard on what she was to say. She didn’t see that they had turned back onto the drive that led past the Big House.

‘You’d better meet me out front,’ the estate manager was saying into his phone. ‘I think I’ve got something that belongs to you.’

Mimi realised way too late to react. The car skidded to a halt and the group was already gathered, Shady at the centre and his slaves around him, including an ashen-faced Dominic. She was pulled out by her hair and dragged off. She could hear the car engine disappearing into the distance as she was taken back towards the stone hut with its secret door. She knew as she was steered down the same dark passage that there would be no escape this time. As Shady threw her back into her cage he said, ‘I only want to know one thing. Which fucking bitch let you free?’

Mimi looked up at him, shivering at the sight of his cold eyes. She glanced around at the assembled slaves. All of them had smug grins on their faces, none wider than that of her former guard the Head Slave. All except Dominic, who was white as a sheet, silently imploring her to keep quiet. He had betrayed her and got her into this mess, although in fairness he had apparently tried to make amends, and she had no idea whether he had betrayed her again. Mimi didn’t care for any of them. They were going to revel in her punishment and death.

‘Him,’ she said finally, her arm outstretched, her eyes firmly on Gavin.

‘You lying
cunt
!’ the Head Slave spat, but the Master had turned and cut him dead.

‘I will deal with you later,’ he hissed at her.

She was left for the night, having been reminded it was the last she would ever see. She hated them all and almost wished for her end to come soon, to release her from this madness. How could he sell the land when it was no longer his? How could he sell the land he had already openly sold to Pieter Bakkers? It hit her in an instant and she couldn’t believe she had been so stupid:
Bakkers
stood for
Bacchus
, the god the Master now claimed to be. It was nothing but a thinly veiled alias. No one ever saw the new hero because he didn’t exist. Shady was able to masquerade as this apparent South African saint merely by growing his hair and removing his sunglasses. His eyes were so distinctive that you would know instantly if you had seen them before. But Shady never
showed
his eyes. No one had ever seen them, so no one put two and two together. It was the reverse of a disguise – simply revealing his true features transformed him.

There was still plenty she didn’t understand, like why the facade of Bakkers was needed in the first place, but a fat lot of good it would do her to find out anyway. She was hidden beneath a private house within the grounds of a private, guarded estate. She would be taken out into those grounds in the morning and chased to her death. No one would hear it, no one would come to her aid. Nobody would ever know she had even been there. As an untraceable murder it would be about perfect. She sat on the mattress, pulling the one scant blanket provided around her, and wondered why the thought of the bacchante girls running after her with their deadly dildos strapped to their waists was still causing her pussy to clench and tingle.

Some time that evening Morgana ghosted from the darkness. Mimi was bleary-eyed and numbed from exhaustion, although sleep refused to come. She hadn’t noticed her guard leaving. The witch was there for a while, masked by the dimness of the room. One last look at the condemned, perhaps? She clearly was not there to set Mimi free. She finally came forward and held out a small metal cup and told Mimi to drink from it. She hoped it was a poison to spare her her morning’s fate. As Mimi drank she felt the fear draining away and sleep thankfully starting to overcome her. Her eyes closed and she could hear the witch retreating. She heard the woman’s words, but was too tired to dwell upon them, let alone respond.

‘If you hadn’t betrayed me I might have saved us both,’ Morgana said. ‘Why do you have to keep running from me? Can’t you see we are supposed to be together? Well, my darling, tomorrow you will have to run again, and this time, I’m afraid, it will be for the last time. There is nothing I can do for you now.’

The shadows were long from the early-morning sun spreading down the valley. It was already warm. Only the clump of bushes and trees in the dip at the bottom was still in shade. There was dew still on the lush grass but it would soon be gone. The noise from the car that had brought her here had died away and left only the clear chatter of birdsong echoing through the woods to the rear, and the occasional snort from the impatient horses. It was a beautiful day, certainly one too beautiful to die on. And yet …

Mimi had been dragged here without ceremony, though she had at least been allowed to shower. She had even been granted a piece of toast: not the grandest of final meals. She stood on the top of the rise, facing him, already having to squint against the sunlight. He was mounted and flanked by two of his slaves, also on horseback. He was dressed entirely in black, including a wide-brimmed hat that he must have stolen from Zorro. She thought it ridiculous, but perhaps it was just bitterness from knowing she was to die at the hands of this brute.

Behind him were a couple of slaves on foot, including Dominic, who had always been too much of a wet blanket to learn to ride. He couldn’t even look at her. He was hovering around the slave who had previously guarded her, the one she had lied to the Master about. She was pleased to see him standing against a big oak tree, his hands behind his back and a thick rope around his neck securing him to the trunk. It was some consolation that this particular smug bastard wasn’t going to get away scot free.

The poor slave was looking pretty sick, as well he might. Unbeknown to Mimi he had just been informed in front of the others that later he was to have his erect prick cut off. It was to be stuffed with couscous, chopped dried fruit and chilli, plus his own lightly sautéed balls, then roasted and served as the centrepiece for the evening’s feast. If he hadn’t bled to death he was to be bent over the feasting table with his prick under his nose. Each bacchante would fuck him in turn, then the Master himself would have a go – the first time he had ever entered another male in front of the Order, and a prequel to the Grand Event where he plundered the Priestess’s
cunnus
for the first time. The slave wouldn’t get to see this. Once the Master had used him a bacchante would be chosen to replace the dildo at her waist with her
thyrsus
stick, and she would drive it into him, using just her hips and body strength to force the point ever deeper inside him, until finally it came out of his mouth. Then his carcase could be carried like a spitted pig to be disposed of elsewhere. It wasn’t the kind of news you ever wanted to hear.

Away some thirty yards to Mimi’s left was Morgana, astride a large white charger. She was adorned in a foxskin coat and tight hide leggings. She looked as sexy as ever, even at this distance. How was Mimi not able to just hate her? It would have made everything so much simpler. The bacchante girls were in a line to her front. Most wore tight leggings like their Priestess, and similar loose white smocks. Three or four of them appeared to be naked from the waist down, although it was hard to be sure because all of them already had a false prick in a harness strapped tightly to their groin. Some of these dildos looked frighteningly big. Each girl carried a long stick with some kind of bulbous point at one end, their
thyrsus
, although Mimi didn’t know it. She dared not think what they would be used for.

Fright had shrunk her stomach and she was in danger of retching up her toast. She felt light-headed and numb-jawed. She was freezing, despite the warmth of the day. Her neck was aching from the strap around it, which was joined at her nape by a metal rod going down to a set of cuffs securing her hands behind her back. Because of this apparatus she had been forced to travel there lying across the back seat of the car, which meant she couldn’t see out and had no idea where on the estate she now was. Not that it mattered. As far as she could tell there was nowhere to run.

‘If you can reach the trees way up on the far side you might have a chance,’ the Master announced, showing that Morgana was not the only one adept at reading minds. ‘The cover there is much thicker and you will be harder to follow.’

Mimi glanced around to see where he meant but her heart wasn’t really in it. The wood in question was a good mile away, up a long slope. The thought of reaching it, even with panic driving her on, was laughable.

‘I’m going to fuck that fat arse of yours today,’ the Master sneered, leaning forward on his horse towards her. ‘Every single one of us here is going to go up you today, and more than one at a time. I’ve seen a girl on the web take three at once so I know it’s possible – and that was just in the one hole. Even my horse here is going to get a proper ride this morning. We are going to sluice your bowels with a whole gallon of spunk and oil and before you die we will get to watch you spray it all back out. It will be a wonderful memory to take with you, don’t you think?’

‘I know that you are Pieter Bakkers.’

Mimi didn’t know why she had said it. Perhaps just in an effort to wipe the smile off his face, to show him he wasn’t quite as clever as he thought.

‘Well, bully for you for guessing the easy bit,’ he said dismissively. ‘I’m sure the Pulitzer is already on its way. Pity you won’t be around to receive it.’

‘And I know you are secretly selling the land.’

‘Yes, but I bet you haven’t connected the two things,’ he said, and then laughed at her blank expression. ‘Christ! You are going to die for your snooping yet you haven’t even worked anything out! Well, let me put you out of your agony, as it’s really quite simple. The planning permission for building a road has in theory been granted, pending agreement to sell a large parcel of these estate lands. Haydn Shady was never going to be allowed to buy those lands from the Baron, so I needed him to disappear. What you village idiots don’t know is that as good old Pieter Bakkers, the saviour of the estate, I have been able to negotiate first refusal of the lands still owned by the Baron when he dies. Just by pretending to be nice for a while I’ve got that old fool to agree to sign it all over, easy as pie. This includes crucial parcels of land I need to sell to get the road built. It will make me twice what I paid for the whole estate. So, before the Baron gets wind of the planning consent and smells a very stinky rat, it would be convenient if he would just die. I therefore plan to, shall we say,
expedite
his death.’