Crimson Flare rocked backwards, exulting in the knowledge that her hero had now embraced her as his own. She was now the object of his love, a love that had physically manifested itself. She scooped and pushed the viscous fluid that had been spread over her small hard breasts downward, downward, past her firm stomach toward her hungry sex. There, visible to all but the heroine herself, the organ bloomed; its blossom sent sharp tingles across her hips and up her spine, which only added to her bliss. Her body shivered and jerked involuntarily as the message of his yearning for her sank deep into her distorted consciousness. Her mind did not see the blossom; nor did she sense the humiliation of her actions. Rather, she only knew that she was protecting the seed of her god-lover the only way she could, by internalising it.
Must protect him, she thought. He meant this for only me.
Through the mists that surrounded her, she heard his laughter and his voice told her that he was pleased. It swam up at her from the depths of that fog. ‘Crimson Flare, do you know what you are doing?’
Yes.
‘Are you trying to make me happy?’
Yes, my lord.
‘You do well. But you must do more. Will you do all that I require of you?’
Oh, yes, my lord. I only live to fulfill your needs.
‘Good, Crimson Flare, very good. I am very pleased. But now you must please those who serve me. If you do this, you will satisfy me. Will you serve others to serve me?’
Oh, yes.
‘Then you will wait on your knees,’ Fareed Gouyannou said softly, his malicious smile reflecting his deep enjoyment of the moment.
The naked superheroine shifted her weight forward. The satin gloves that covered her powerful hands were encrusted with the seed of Nick Napolitano. She placed them on the hard floor as she curled her legs under her bare hips. The scuffle of her black leather boots as they settled under her was the only sound in the hushed ballroom. Outside the wind rose and rattled the French doors again, but hardly anyone heard the sound, fascinated by the defeat of Mitropoulos’ Champion. She settled back on her haunches, looking blankly, expectantly, straight ahead, but seeing only what her tortured mind played out before her.
‘Good,’ said Gouyannou, ‘now stay as you are, and they will come to you. They will tell me if you have kept your word.’
‘Oh, yes, my lord,’ Crimson Flare mumbled, almost incomprehensibly. She rested calmly, serenely, on her haunches, her petite but magnificent body swaying in the middle of the roomful of men.
Smiling, Gouyannou stepped back. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘your slave awaits.’
Three gang members stepped forward immediately. Roughly they pulled the insensible heroine upward.
The last female observer of the Masked Maiden’s humbling finally left the room, choking back tears, her sisters awaiting her in the anteroom beyond. Their last desperate hope that somehow the Champion of Mitropoulos would be spared this degradation was gone.
Lynn and Maria traveled silently back toward Karen’s apartment. In Lynn’s mind, confusion and fear. Why would Gouyannou want Crimson Flare? What was happening to her now? Was she dead? Or worse?
Maria’s mind was likewise a jumble. Why had the criminals freed her? What was the involvement of her partner, Tim Westbrook, in these events, if any? Could these two women still act to save Crimson Flare?
As Lynn’s blue Ford pulled into a parking space outside the apartment building, the rain, until now either sporadic and misty, began to pour down, loudly pelting the van’s roof. But the two women seemed almost unaware of these conditions as they both stepped into the deluge and made their way to the building’s entrance. They failed to notice the Lexus that had pulled into the lot behind them, its two occupants quietly watching as they entered the building. Only when the lights in the fifth floor apartment winked on, indicating that the women had arrived, did the shadowy figures venture into the downpour. They carried large containers with them, whose contents would be used to erase evidence of the crime.
The men entered the lobby and headed directly for the stairs.
Crimson Flare’s addled brain slowly struggled its way through the haze. She had quietly endured numerous lovers, as commanded by her god. But now her body ached as the effects of the heroin cocktail began to diminish. The avenger’s great strength proved insufficient against the pain that was now gripping her. She felt sharp blasts streaming across her hips and up her spine, agony such as she had never felt before. It seemed to be emanating from inside her very being. At the same time, the hard wood floor pressed against her naked torso. It felt cold.
Small beads of perspiration rolled down her face and neck in response to the torment that gripped her within, a torture spreading across her body like an open flame, spreading outward from her hips, from… her most private….
She groaned. The emptiness she felt only added to the suffering.
A voice from behind her asked soothingly, ‘Crimson Flare, are you in pain?’
‘Y-yes,’ she mumbled.
‘Do you want relief from your pain?’
She took a deep breath and felt the anguish surge up her spine to her shoulders and down her arms. She shook as she replied, ‘Please. Yes. Help me.’
‘You have to pay.’
For the first time, she opened her eyes. Through the mist, she saw that she was naked. ‘Wh-what?’
‘You have to pay. Relief from pain is expensive. What do you have that you can pay us with?’
She remembered how she had paid the Normans in the abandoned subway stop. Tears roiled up in her eyes and poured over her black mask. ‘I—I…’
‘Surely you must have an offering, an offering to the gods.’ Fareed Gouyannou began to chuckle, then cut himself off.
Another sharp spasm of hot pain lacerated her hips, and the Champion of Women tried to catch her breath.
Breathing hard, her face and neck now streaked with perspiration, she looked around for assistance. ‘I… don’t….’
‘I’ll help you, Crimson Flare,’ a voice said from behind her. She twisted her naked body and tried to sit up, but failed. She saw a muscular young man enter and move across her hazy field of vision. ‘But you will have to satisfy me first.’
Gouyannou spoke to the hapless girl. ‘You have agreed to do as we demand, slave. You must satisfy your master first; before you receive your relief from pain.’
‘And after,’ the young man said.
‘And after,’ repeated Gouyannou.
Crimson Flare struggled to her feet, awkwardly, still in a daze. Her boots clumped and clicked on the hardwood floor as she stumbled across the room. Though he was only a few meters away, her agony and disorientation meant that she required a great deal of time to reach the young man. When Crimson Flare finally found her way to him, the Maiden dropped to her knees.
‘No, not here,’ he said, angrily, as she began to undo his pants. ‘Get up and come with me, you slut.’
‘Obey him!’ Gouyannou ordered sharply.
Frightened by the tone of her masters, her gods, the bewildered and helpless heroine again struggled to her feet, yanking at the young man’s clothing, desperately trying to pull herself up and to bring her feet under her, so that she could walk with him. It was a difficult, almost vain, struggle. On the verge of sobbing, she eventually succeeded, though she now leaned heavily against his shoulder as he led her from the ballroom.
‘Brandon,’ Gouyannou called after him.
‘Yes, sir,’ the muscular young man replied, stopped in his tracks.
‘Don’t break her. She has much to do for us.’
Crimson Flare leaned in and began to sensually kiss his chest, shoulders and neck, working her way upward toward his lips and face. Brandon had to push her away to respond. ‘I understand, sir.’
‘And Crimson Flare.’ Gouyannou said softly.
She did not answer though she ceased in her caresses.
‘You will do as he requests.’
Crimson Flare resumed her kisses and licks.
Brandon led her across the room and through an open door.
The door slammed shut.
Once the two women reached the apartment, Lynn headed directly for the bathroom, already removing her wet outer clothing. Once there, she removed all of the soaked outerwear, and threw on a thick cloth robe. ‘Use the bedroom, there on the right,’ she called to Maria. Maria disappeared into the small room, closing the door behind her. Inside she found a similar robe, one that belonged to Karen, lying on the bed. She quickly put in on and returned to the living room. As Maria seated herself on the sofa, Lynn took herself to the kitchen to prepare a hot drink.
‘Coffee or tea?’
‘Coffee, please,’ Maria replied.
‘All we have is instant,’ she cautioned.
‘That’s all right.’
While waiting for the water to boil, Lynn stood in the doorway, silently hoping that Maria would remember something, anything, from her captivity.
A sharp creak from the floorboards in the hallway outside the room brought the two women back to their senses, and to an awareness of the danger that might be pursuing them.
Almost before they could act, a heavy body smashed against the entrance to the apartment. The door held, but a second crash quickly followed.
Again, the door remained steadfastly secure.
The women stared briefly at one another. Then Lynn headed for the bedroom that housed her combination office and library. ‘Follow me,’ she said, surprising the policewoman with her calmness.
‘It’s not a panic room, but it’s the next best thing.’
Closing the door behind them, Maria, saw that a steel door had been painted—camouflaged, really—to appear similar to any of the other of the apartment’s entryways. That and the reinforced walls, also plainly visible from the inside of the room, would protect them until the police could arrive. But Lynn had no such interest in the room’s security. ‘There,’ she said, pointing at a cabinet in the far corner. ‘We have a gun there. You know how to use it.’
Pulling open the cabinet, Maria saw not a single weapon, but two. She picked up the .38 revolver and moved back toward the door. Lynn had fired up the computer and, as Maria watched, the monitor flared to life, revealing a television image from the living room. She wasn’t surprised to see two men busy there. The heavy security door was an obstacle they couldn’t overcome, so they had begun splashing a liquid across the furniture and floor from some containers they had evidently brought with them. The smell of gasoline penetrated even into the library.
‘Come on,’ Lynn said, picking up a gun from the desk. She led Maria through another door into a dark hallway. The lithe blonde flicked a switch that brightened the passage. Maria recognised as she turned the first corner that it led along side the outer room where the intruders were now doing their dirty work.
‘Be ready to use that thing. We’ll be coming on them from the hallway.’
When they exited the passageway, Maria noticed that the exterior of the door was again camouflaged it match the rest of the wall. She stood at a point about fifteen feet from the apartment entrance, where the door was still open.
Lynn ran headlong down the hall, reached for the doorknob and pulled the door violently shut. The slam! shook the walls. As Lynn next twisted the doorknob backwards, Maria heard the sharp click! of a locking mechanism. Then the smoothly functioning blonde athlete smartly smashed her palm against what had appeared to be merely a decoration above the doorbell. In a matter of seconds, one of the big men inside the room smashed into the door in a desperate bid to escape.
‘The gas will have them out in a matter of seconds,’ Lynn said with a calmness that almost frightened Maria.
No sooner had she made this statement, a thud! echoed inside the apartment.
‘It helps to own the building. There are no neighbours to annoy.’
Maria couldn’t help smile, though she did so nervously. ‘Maybe now we can get some answers.’
The two men were tightly bound when their consciousness returned. Each had been secured to a chair with several layers of a thick rope. One of the ropes circled their bodies from chest to waist, lashing the torso of each to the back of their respective chairs. Their jackets, shirts, and ties had been removed; one still wore his tee shirt, while the other’s extra large body was naked. Their legs were tied at the calves to the front legs of the chair; their feet—shoes now removed—were elevated a couple of inches above the floor. Likewise, their bare arms were also secured to the padded arms of their prison. Although their first impulse was to try to overturn the piece of furniture that held them in place, the weight of the object and their own lack of leverage prevented it. The larger of the two prisoners desperately threw his body, within the limits defined by the ropes, seeking to topple himself onto his back. Nothing seemed to work.
Maria walked into the room and faced the men. She was all business now.
‘Where is Crimson Flare?’
‘Fuck you!’ the larger man replied almost before the question had been completed.
Her expression showed her lack of patience. She picked up a hammer from a nearby table. ‘I’m only going to ask you once more. Where’s Crimson Flare?’
‘Fuck y—!’
Maria smashed him on the side of his head as hard as she could. The sickening sound of the hard steel head of the implement against the skin and bone of his head was unmistakable in terms of its effect. A spatter of blood washed over the smaller man sitting next to him; a tooth hit his shoulder and fell to the floor. His cheekbone had been broken.
She turned to the other man. ‘Where’s Crimson Flare?’ The way she held the hammer, she seemed to be simply waiting for a defiant answer.
‘McLeod-Slaughter Mansion!’
Maria walked, smiling, from the room.
A few moments later, Lynn approached the still-shaking thug. ‘What’s going on there? Why does Gouyannou want Crimson Flare?’
‘She was responsible for the loss of a major shipment of drugs. He wants her to replace the goods and the money.’
‘Go on.’
‘She used to be hooked on drugs. He intends to hook her again, then use her to supply him.’
His partner weakly, dizzily, turned toward the speaker. Blood soaked his face and when he opened his mouth to speak, more blood poured over his jaw, dripping onto his chest and lap. What he said was incomprehensible, the broken bones and smashed teeth preventing any comprehension.
But the sound of his partner’s voice seemed to stiffen the other’s resistance. With eyes widened, he drew a loud intake of breath, set his jaw and sat quietly.
‘What is he doing to her there?’
There was no answer.
‘Maria!’
The policewoman entered and the trapped man twisted his body to see she was still carrying the hammer.
‘I’ve said all I’m going to say.’
‘Oh, no, you haven’t,’ Lynn replied.
She wrapped a rubber tube around his bare upper arm and, despite his efforts to wriggle out her grasp, she quickly injected a serum into the vein at the crook of his elbow.
A few moments later, Lynn asked, ‘What is he doing to her there?’
They two women got all the answers they wanted.
The storm was reaching its peak dumping the heaviest rainfall on Mitropoulos that the city had seen in months. The McLeod-Slaughter mansion was ablaze with light, though the pouring rain obscured some of the details on the molded facing that was one of the reasons for the architectural fame of the former residence of the city’s premier newspaper publisher. The bright lights that had been erected at the front of the building revealed a line of parked cars filling the roadway leading to the gate, even though the circular driveway inside the compound was empty of vehicles. Armed men who stood near the entry as well as along the short road leading to the mansion’s entrance were drenched in the deluge.
Only a short distance from the entrance, Lynn and Maria stared at the surprising scene before them. Protected by the greenery on the opposite side of the road, they peered out into the rainstorm, watching the night’s activity at the estate. Frankly, it was nearly impossible to see anything. The guards looked wet and miserable, and the guests they could see—all of the female visitors seemed to be leaving the party at once—were apparently caught without umbrellas and raingear. They either ran headlong toward their cars, hoping to minimise the damage to their evening finery; or else they walked, it seemed, in a daze, occupied by weightier considerations that may have been left over from the evening’s festivities. Neither of the women had any idea that the crime boss had such a significant presence in Mitropoulos. He was known for his parties and contacts upstate, in the capital. But in Mitropoulos he had always been a minor player.
Not any more, evidently.
‘We can’t get in there,’ Lynn said, her heart sinking.
‘Not dressed like this,’ Maria replied, referring to the sweat suit Lynn wore and her own jeans and tee shirt. Two finely dressed ladies of the night passed through the gate and walked toward their car, parked somewhere along the lane. The night’s torrent seemed not to disturb them.
The two girls looked at one another. They knew what they had to do.
Lynn’s soaked blonde hair hung over her bare shoulders. The tight blue minidress with orange highlights clung to her athlete’s body, leaving little to the imagination. The water running down the fabric reflected the light standards that had been erected outside the mansion and caused the material to glimmer as she moved toward the gate. The fact that she wore no makeup seemed to matter little in the rain, but, in any case, it would likely not have mattered in the face of the pronounced enticements that were otherwise so evident. Her long legs, her peaches-and-cream complexion, the tantalising glimmer of her white go-go boots clinging to her strong calves; she was a vision that would make any man here forget that she hadn’t been invited.
Maria’s black cat suit clung to her and revealed every nook and cranny. The shimmery spandex reflected the lights that illuminated the hillside retreat. Her dark hair had been released from its tight bun and the soaking rain plastered it to the sides of her beautiful face, accenting somewhat her Hispanic heritage.
The women walked quickly toward the gate, just as the storm somewhat abated. Slowing their pace as they approached the lit area, they immediately fell into their act, Lynn laughing uproariously at everything that Maria whispered in her ear, at the same time leaning heavily, drunkenly, against the policewoman. Meanwhile, Maria did her best to appear the soberer of the two, nevertheless appearing not completely sober.
The guards at the gate watched them approach, the longing on their faces evident once the women were close enough to clearly ascertain their attributes. One glanced at the other and smiled. His associate also smiled, and then nervously shook his head. ‘Gouyannou would have our heads on a stick,’ he said.
‘Hiya, boys,’ Maria cooed. ‘Are we too late for the fun?’
Lynn giggled uproariously at that, then repeated the word ‘fun.’
‘You were supposed to be here at midnight. It’s almost dawn. What happened?’ The guards seemed more pleasantly curious than suspicious.
‘Ooooohhhh, you know how it is. You start out with one guy and he promises you a good time,’ Maria began.
‘…and then some other guy wants to offer you an even better time,’ Lynn sniggered.
‘And by the time you finally make it to where you’re supposed to be…’ Maria sounded a little tipsy.
‘…you’ve had a whole lot of fun,’ Lynn snorted.
Then she repeated the word, ‘fun,’ and shook with apparent silent laughter.
The two girls leaned in toward one another and turned away from the men at the gate, giving them a good view of their posteriors, wiggling them conspicuously.
‘Go on in. I’m sure there’s something to please you there.’ The taller guard opened the gate for them.
By this time, except for the occasional droplet, it had stopped raining as Maria and Lynn entered the soaked grounds of the mansion. They continued their drunken bimbo act for the benefit of the gate guards, but they were already considering their next move. Maria’s high heels clicked on the concrete driveway and Lynn’s go-go boots seemed to offer a clumping echo of her partner’s walk. They felt eyes of the half-dozen guards who were placed at strategic positions around the circle on their every movement. The swerved and swayed their way toward the double-doored entrance, eventually arriving before yet another armed man.
He looked them up and down, then briefly nodded his head and reached back to the doorknob.
The door swung open and a brightly lit interior greeted the girls. ‘Go on in,’ he said softly.
Stepping inside, both noticed how warm it was. Perhaps it was nothing more than the coolness following the downpour, but the interior of the mansion seemed to have its thermostats set appreciably higher than traditional room temperature. Soaked as they were, Lynn and Maria felt grateful for the warmth as their clothing began to feel less uncomfortable. They even sensed a drying out of themselves and of these costumes.
Alone in the foyer, they quickly looked around.
‘What do we do now?’ Lynn ventured almost afraid to make any sound.
Seeing the glowing lights from the ballroom directly in front of them, Maria replied, ‘There, I think,’ indicating with her head the open doors.
Suddenly a roar of laughter erupted from the room that they were approaching.
‘Yep,’ Maria said softly, ‘there.’
The room they entered seemed to be another world. The ballroom was ablaze with light; candelabras on the walls and a huge chandelier suspended from the ceiling reflected in mirrors in the paneling, all multiplying to overwhelm the girls as they crossed the threshold. The bare, polished wooden floors gleamed. Even the painted portions of the walls, and the fine woodwork borders surrounding these multicoloured surfaces, had been cleaned to a spotless brilliance in preparation for this evening.
The two women, drier now, looked across the wide expanse and saw a throng of men, probably more than two dozen in number, encircling a small portion of the floor. Off to one side, stood the unmistakable portly figure of Fareed Gouyannou, holding a microphone and smiling widely.
‘Here we go,’ Maria whispered to her newfound friend.
They had not taken two steps, however, when the room was filled with an ear-shattering scream. The source of the shriek was not visible, but the overwhelming sense of pain and desolation that it conveyed was unambiguous. It was immediately followed by another peal of laughter from the body of men.
Gouyannou now spoke up. ‘There you have her, gentlemen. The once-mighty Crimson Flare. Sprawled like a clumsy rag doll! The Champion of Women. Flat as a pancake! And we did it! Tonight, in a matter of hours, we turned this fearsome figure of law and order into a quivering plaything, used for our amusement.’
Lynn and Maria turned to face one another and then walked slowly toward the mass of dark-suited figures. Lynn felt the inside of her mouth go dry. Almost desperately she worked her jaw to moisten her cheeks and tongue. Even as she did so, she felt sick and her knees felt weak. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to run from the room.
The men seemed to part as the women reached to edge of the crowd. As they penetrated to the centre, they came upon a sight they would never forget.
Curled up in a trembling fetal ball, the naked form of Crimson Flare lay on the polished floor, whimpering, wrapping her arms around her torso, seeking security. Her body was bruised, small signs of discolouration along her back and legs. She still wore only her cowl, mask, boots, and one of her satin gloves. The Champion of Women lay on her right side. Crimson Flare’s black boots were scuffed badly, but there was still much evidence of the highly polished sheen that was so familiar about them. Her legs moved up and down, up and down, came together and separated, came together and separated, the motion irregular. Sometimes it was only her calves that moved, her left knee shifting on to and off of her right. At other times, the entire left leg rolled off of the right, the hard leather shusshhing across the floor. The motion was uneven and both of the legs shivered uncontrollably. Just above the tops of the black leather was now only barely visible the tatters of the heroine’s colourless tights. The normally flawless thighs were covered in filth and debris, smeared with the flaky remains of someone’s manhood or a still viscous more recent deposit. Dirt and small flakes of paper clung to her.
Her hips, too, moved, responding to the spastic squeezing of her thighs, as well as their own rotation around the focus of her right hand, which had found its way between those magnificent appendages, and one finger of which had now secretly—or, perhaps, not so secretly—wedged itself inside her. Desperate for the stimulation of her sex, unaware of the audience surrounding her, America’s Darling pressed her body down onto her satin-covered middle finger, but without evident result.
Her naked back was fully curved, her bare shoulders rounded. The powerful muscles could be seen quivering uselessly. Her small breasts could not be seen while she was in this position, and because her left arm, shorn of its glove, wrapped itself across her chest. The firmness of her breasts pressed hard against her forearm and the marble-like nodes that crested each would have been impossible for any observer to fail to note, were they visible. The arm itself, bruised like the other limbs, was also covered with men’s residues and encrustations of the filth of the floors of this building.
Her masked face and cowled head were the most familiar remainders of who she once was. The cowl had been torn in places, Karen’s short, dark brown hair protruding in sweaty tufts. The formerly shiny black mask was scratched and smudged, covered with the scum of her indignities. Around her mouth and across her jaw, a mixture of blood and cum had begun to form a disgusting crust.
She moaned. It was like the sound of an animal in pain. Her mind, that fine-tuned, crime-fighting weapon, had been devastated by pain and abuse. Now, all she could do was plead for remission from her agony.
But no one offered help. As she looked from one face to another, she saw only disdain and hatred. Why had her gods turned on her?
Wait! There! There’s… someone who’ll help. Someone who has never let her down. She opened her mouth to speak, but was able to only croak out a mournful syllable.
‘Lynn?’
End of Chapter Four