Prologue
Horst Wessel considered himself a brave man. He seldom experienced fear, having become adept at avoiding situations likely to put him to the test. Instead, he sought those which guaranteed him power, and exploited them to the utmost.
Tonight though, things had not begun well. Not well at all.
As he left the tenement in which he lived, there had been a black van parked a few doors down. He heard the motor start as he crossed the street. It followed at a discreet distance. All senses alerted, he entered the maze of alleys which led down to the docks, and came out onto the harbourside.
Nothing untoward. A few kids swapping cigarettes in the trash repository which served as a playground. A couple of female motorcyclists standing by their machines beneath a streetlight, chatting and smoking. He took a second look, had always been turned on by the black leather they wore. They ignored him, seemed deep in conversation. Bloody dykes!
He walked through the park and along a laneway at it's rear, emerging eventually onto the main road close to the pub which was his second home and place of business. It was crowded as usual with the scum of the docks. He bought a beer and spent the next hour trading in crack, and in the local security information which was his main livelihood – few of the dockland businesses realized the burglaries which constantly plagued them were the result of his acute observation, for Horst was an expert in his field.
The two woman motorcyclists entered the far end of the bar and stayed for a time, drinking, but he failed to notice them. They cast him a casual glance and left after finishing their drinks.
At closing time he left, and retraced his steps along the road. Something made him look back, and his heart lurched as he saw the black van parked opposite the pub – dark tinted windows menacing in the street light. He cut rapidly off to the laneway, and along it to the park, where he stopped and listened. No motors. He slipped into the park and was almost halfway through it when a black figure rose to his right. He yelped in panic and began to run, stumbling through the garbage. A second figure rose on his left and a sibilant whistling broke the stillness. His legs were clamped in a vyce and he fell heavily.
The two figures leapt on him and quickly overcame his struggles, twisting his arms to the rear and applying handcuffs. His belated cry for help was cut short by a leather gag. The figures hauled him upright and propelled him to the street and the waiting van, whose door was open. Hands reached out to haul him in.
'Christ!' a female voice muttered, 'I'll need an antiseptic bath after this!'
Chapter One
The chain rattled with shocking clarity!
Slowly her arms rose in supplication to it's demand and it drew her upward onto the balls of the feet before it stopped.
The single harsh light from above limned her taut body, throwing every detail of it's fine musculature into strong relief against the blackness beyond. Her head was free to move back and forth within the soft custody of her arms and she looked down at the proud jut of breasts with their engorged nipples... and further, to the feet barely in contact with the round stone dais set in the floor.
Her ankles were drawn apart almost a metre, tethered by chain to the outer rings set in the dais.
She took deep, slow breaths against the rising panic.
The whip came!
Flickered with black savagery in the halogen glare, her body arching to the white heat of it's embrace, in a tragic parody of orgasm.
Seconds passed. The vista below had altered. A cord of blue-black now curved over the breasts, growing in relief as she gazed, horrified. She had willed herself to look down, as if the sight of her feet, the stone dais, would help her remain centred in reality. It did so, but she knew the whipfire would triumph and inexorably draw back her head until eyes insane with agony locked on the bar-tight chain climbing above her into the void.
Someone from another cell had been assigned the flogging, it was always done that way. Someone who did not know you. Nothing to soften the experience – nothing.
The dais had dropped.
Just a fraction... but now the toes strained to support her weight. Each movement of her body tripped the mechanism that lowered the stone ring – another flagia refinement.
The muscles and sinews of her arms and torso, seasoned by constant exercise, would hold her – but at a cost. As the flesh tautened, the whipstrokes across it would reveal whole new worlds of pain.
The next stroke came, and the next, tearing coarse moans from deep inside her. They were round body strokes and the fire drove deeply, probing further until no part of her felt inviolate.
She could no longer look down now, as the rhythm imposed by the whip became her new reality. Somewhere she could hear the clicking heels of the flagia who paced about her in the darkness, barely out of the glare of the rooflight as she cut with casual savagery into the body of her prey.
Such were the flagia – relaxed, lethal, supremely competent. Cruelty elevated to a realm of incomparable sophistication, and practiced with mind-shattering sensuality.
The next stroke was horrific! She flung vainly in the harsh light, and the first scream was torn from her. Not shrill, but the deep full-throated primal scream of animal pain and terror. A terminal scream that speaks of the certainty of death – for lash of the bullwhip penetrates far below the flesh and into the very soul.
The hot trickle of urine down her legs.
The dais had left her hanging and soon the motion of the ankle chains would bring it's weight to bear. The Flagia rack!
...momentary gleam of polished leather from the blackness...lash whisper...
It was the last thing she saw before the chain...OH LILITH! OH KALI! OH WHITE MOTHER!
Now the pitiless monster grasping her ankles drew down and down. Now the ropes of incandescent fire that had been muscle and sinew held discourse with the circling whitefire. Now the both fused in a savage inferno where sanity died and screaming drove up into the void and out into the very stone of the chamber.
And later, too much later...the chain shimmered into red blackness and silence came.
Chapter Two
We
see him
Good, keep visual contact – if he tries to leave, you know what to do
OK
David saw the headlights as they swung in from the main road, watched them flicker through the screen of trees that bordered the park. Large car, black.
Despite the warmth of the night, he shivered.
The rendezvous site Laura had sent him by text was well chosen. Here in the long straight before the avenue sloped down to the river, there were few lights – perfect for an assignation. He shivered again, half in anticipation, half in fear. The warning bell that had saved him in Kosovo was clanging full blast, but the answering voice seated comfortably in his genitals shouted 'chance it.'
How many correspondents had felt the same alarms before calmly walking to disaster – dick suicide, they called it. The countryside alive with menace and yet a pretty face, sultry voice, backward glance - could wipe away years of training in a second.
And a life.
He had been flippant when he spoke with Laura, but her reaction had been like an icy douche. No humour there, but fear that tweaked his journalist buttons. There was a story here! They are no joke, she whispered hoarsely, and was gone.
The car was close. A limousine, tinted windows. Wealth. Anonymity.
He took a deep breath as it sighed to a halt before him.
