Chapter 2
Into a Black Forest Night
A pothole bounced her awake. Gretchen felt like hands pressed against her temple, squeezing and releasing. Strong hands like Wolf's. Not a headache exactly. More a painless throb. A canteen hung beside her cot, swinging as the vehicle swung it. Tape attached a note to it saying, "Drink this." The choking chemical dryness in her mouth made the message intensely appealing to her. With groggy hands she lifted the strap from the hook and opened the canteen and drank. It tasted like highly diluted orange juice when she poured it into her mouth, the container completely vertical, and swallowed several times. Not only did it quench her, it cleared her head.
Walls glowed bluish white around her at a low wattage. She discovered tubes of light behind white transparent plastic. Four cots in addition to hers had been fixed into place in the floor of the vehicle. Four bodies slept on them covered by reddish brown blankets. A large white apparatus with knobs and small gauges and a large monitor sat at the front right shut off.
Hearing voices, she lifted her body and found it restrained. Under the blanket, she discovered the belt strap across her abdomen. It had a buckle like a seat belt which she released and sat up, her feet resting on the metal floor. A curtain draped across the front side of the space the same color as the blanket. With gingerly care she tested her ability to stand and found despite the bouncing and the steady forward motion that she could balance.
A masculine voice she assumed to be Wolf and a feminine voice and laugh muffled by the curtain made the voices difficult to translate or for the masculine voice to be identified clearly as Wolf's. When she drew the curtain slightly at the center, she saw Wolf driving and a pretty woman with straight black hair and a flattish wide face and a small nose and wide lips. The bit of dialogue they exchanged before realizing their audience still couldn't be understood by Gretchen. It sounded like Romanian or Finnish.
The woman turned to her and smiled a pleasant smile, kind and warm. She had weird golden eyes Gretchen never thought existed in humans. Wolf glanced quickly back and smiled nearly as warmly as the woman. He seemed genuinely happy in the strange woman's presence which for some reason caused a wave of jealousy to tighten Gretchen's stomach.
"Ah Gretch, you're awake," Wolf spoke the obvious.
"Unless you're in my dream," Gretchen returned.
"Perhaps we're all subjects of someone's dreaming," the woman suggested, her voice warm and sweet.
"Gretchen, meet Katarina. She prefers Kat," Wolf introduced.
"How do you feel?" Kat asked.
"Surprisingly rested," Gretchen responded with a yawn. Wolf and Kat chuckled. Gretchen bowed low and glanced into the dark night only illuminated by the van's beams. "Where are we?"
"The Black Forest," Wolf answered. "Beyond that, the whole putting you to sleep thing would be rather superfluous. We'll be home in about an hour."
"Home?" Gretchen wondered silently
A pot hole nearly dropped Gretchen to the floor. Kat immediately unbuckled and rose from her seat. "Sit here my dear." Seeing Kat's form under her white sweater and tight white pants, tall and sleek yet not thin, more muscular, with smallish breasts and subtly curved waist didn't relieve Gretchen of jealousy. Another model's body like Maria's.
"What about you?" she asked.
"There's a little nest of cushions beside you. I've been comfortable for miles. I don't mind giving my seat up for Wolf's mate," replied the beautiful and seemingly sweet woman.
The leather seat looked inviting, so Gretchen ignored the implication of Kat's statement for a moment and slipped past her, feeling a definite muscular form press against her in the tight space, and took the passenger seat.
"I'm your mate, hunh?" Gretchen finally responded. "Seems old fashioned: a poor damsel torn from her town to be subjugated by the capturing soldier."
A half smile and a glint of sadness in his steel blue eyes on that handsome rugged face made Gretchen's tummy quiver. A familiar feeling ever since they met. "I love you," he told her.
"You don't know me," Gretchen objected.
"I feel like I've known you since...since I matured enough to desire a mate. You desire me, don't you?"
Gretchen changed the subject. "You found Beatrix?"
"You'd be surprised how thorough the Stasi can be," Wolf answered.
Gretchen shook her head and sighed. "I'm not surprised. Paranoia is never a pathological fantasy in this fucked up regime."
"You're right about that," Wolf sadly agreed.
"So they're extraction...the troupe...it must have been witnessed."
"Of course my love. But we're quite good at disappearing into shadows."
"We? I thought you were a Stasi agent."
"Yes I was, and I hate that you hate me for that. But I'm not anymore. That little unpleasant stint has ended."
"Unpleasant?"
"Horrible?" he suggested and Gretchen nodded. "I can't claim I didn't bring horrors to a few of your comrades, and I can't excuse myself for such cruelty. All I can say is that nearly all of my captors deserved their fate."
"All of them did, Wolf," said Kat. "Tell her."
"She'll think I'm trying to sugar coat my cruel profession."
"Then I'll tell her," Kat pronounced.
Gretchen turned in her seat and looked past the seat back studying the kind looking woman with the weird eyes. "You love him, don't you?"
Kat smiled sweetly. "You're jealous. That is good. Perhaps love is too strong a word. But if love is an amplification of positive emotion, like like becoming love or desire intensifying to that highest level, perhaps I do love him. In my case it is respect that has been amplified. And hopefully he feels the same."
"I do," Wolf told Kat. "I guess in the time we've known each other, respect has become love."
"And to think how bloodily we clawed each other at the beginning," Kat waxed strangely nostalgic.
"Ah, Kat, where else could respect have been seeded, but sewn in respectable wounds?"
Kat snorted with laughter as did Wolf.
"Maybe respect grew to love with his cock plunging into your cunt?" Gretchen suggested.
Both Kat and Wolf chuckled.
"What's funny about that?" asked Gretchen.
"You deserve her, Wolf. She's a spry little sprite," Kat smiled. "But I'm afraid even if I desired the brute, it would be impossible. Our clans can't mate."
"Some sort of incest?" asked Gretchen.
"The opposite," Kat replied.
Wolf shook his head. "You're confusing her."
"I know. All will be revealed, lovely Gretchen. Try to be patient. Let me get back to where we started. Our relationship resembles allies between one principality and another. A little wary of the neighbor during peace, sharing an enemy brings us together to combine forces, and in that comingling, we learn trust which develops into respect and perhaps love. We discover surprising similarities and acknowledge and accept differences."
"So you're like negotiators or something?"
"Closer to generals," said Wolf. "Like in the big war with Montgomery and Eisenhower and De Gaulle."
Kat agreed. "Leaders chosen by ability and accomplishment rather than by the elected."
"Is that what alpha means, Wolf?" asked Gretchen.
"You remember."
"Of course. It seems like minutes ago when you said it."
"It's exactly what it means," said Wolf. "I'm to be my clan's alpha male if I can. I've been otherwise occupied for some time. And Kat plans to lead her clan."