TRINKETS
20.
Behind Kerry and her Mistress, the captive Tribeswomen walked placidly, pretending their hands were bound behind their backs.
While Mistress had been reprogramming Kerry into obedience, the other woman in safari rig, whom Mistress called Sophie, was deepening the trances of the Tribeswomen. They had all drowsily wandered out of the bushes by the path, their eyes strange and focused on the bits of glitter she held in each hand, smiling at them.
At a single soft command, they slid out of their bikinis, heedless of the drone in her harness who stooped to pick them up. Kerry wondered if she dreamed the gentle fingers playing at her own hips, the breeze that kissed her uncovered bush.
Kerry was dimly aware of it even as Mistress’ voice wormed its way deeper into her head. When Mistress was through with the initial takeover of Kerry ‘s mind, Kerry saw the other women kneeling and gazing up at Sophie. She was telling them about the magic vines that had grown around their wrists, drawing their hands back behind them. Each Tribeswoman, with her eyes full of the glitter of pretty beads, dutifully realized that she was helplessly bound.
Warmth answered promptly to “Pretty” now, and Pretty told Sophie in a dull voice that yes, these were all the women she had with her. Sophie spread her hands and whistled softly. Sleepy Eyes and the other two drones came to her and took the trinkets from her hands.
They were earrings, Kerry saw without much interest, cheap costume jewelry, and the slaves began to clip them onto Warmth and the others.
“Now, you witless little savages,” Sophie said, “you will hear the lovely bright things by your ears, making their lovely bright noise. Each step you take will make the noise again, and it will be lovely and bright and make it even harder to think. Harder than usual.”
Both women laughed, and Kerry felt good to hear her Mistress pleased.
No . . . these are my . . . Tribesisters, she tried to think. They are being enchanted.
This was wrong. And there was something more, something even larger, but as Kerry tried to focus on it, she knew it was making her feel that Tribe was—that Tribe itself was—evil.
But that had to be wrong. These were her sisters. They were Tribe.
She was . . . Tribe . . . wasn’t she?
No—if she was with anyone, it was Sue—but Sue was back there.
She pictured Sue’s face, her clear, intelligent eyes, and for a moment it was as though the world was tilting. It was tilting back to level, promising to free Kerry from the spell that convinced her that this bent worship of someone who’d hurt . . . Liz . . .
But Kerry wondered how it would feel to have to look into those eyes and tell Sue that their quest had been in vain, that there was no help, that they were alone on the island with enemies. A small shocked whisper in her mind came to her: Better if she dies not knowing.
What Sue might be doing now, feeling now—suffering now—it was too much for Kerry.
Mistress turned to her. She must have moaned, and only a small part of her remembered to be afraid she’d been heard.
Mistress swung the whistle and spoke softly, and Kerry went back to sleep with her eyes open.
The next thing she was aware of was walking again. She felt Mistress next to her, holding her close as though they were strolling lovers. Mistress’ twill vest was pleasantly itchy against Kerry’s side, but her thigh was smooth and soft when it would brush Kerry’s as they walked.
Mistress’ hand on her ass was soothing, but it excited her too.
She heard the breathing of the Tribeswomen who were carrying the girl who’d been netted and tranquilized, still drugged in her net and slung between two poles that had lain by the path near the trap. The one that Sophie had hit with the other dart before she could help Warmth swung limply from straps between two other poles and two other hypnotized Tribeswomen.
When they reached a gully and had to step over rougher ground, she heard Mistress say, “Damn, I hate this part.” Mistress found her footing. “OK, Whistle Girl, come this way,” she said, taking Kerry’s hand and guiding her down the rocks.
“Well,” Sophie’s voice came from behind the docile captives, “the poor little dears are half-mindless now, so someone has to keep them from falling all over themselves and breaking their bones.” She called out commands to the drones, and Sleepy Eyes and the other two slaves took up spots along the broken ground and started relaying the Tribeswomen from the path to the clear spot at the foot of the gully and then up to the other side.
Each Tribeswoman kept her hands behind her, unable to spread them to balance.
Kerry waited beside her Mistress, and saw Pretty (Pretty?) waiting her turn near the back of the group, stopping dutifully at a touch from Sophie. Pretty’s blank expression started to wrinkle into something, and her eyelids fluttered. She was trying to fight it, to rouse herself from the spell Mistress had cast over her.
Pretty blinked, and her glance found Kerry’s. She looked at her.
Then Sophie tapped Pretty’s ass lightly and said, “Now you, girl. Go.”
Pretty obeyed, and her earrings clicked again as she moved.
Her eyes rolled up once and closed, and when they opened they were wide and blank again, and she moved sluggishly from Sophie’s touch to the hands of the harnessed drone that helped her down.
Pretty was obedient again.
No—Warmth was. Kerry stared at the woman, trying to grasp the third name she had, the one that seemed to mean the most. But it was . . . Warmth . . . the senior Tribesister who was struggling against the Others’ enslaving magic to save them all.
But that was what she and—Sue—knew that Tribe was . . .
Her thoughts kept breaking up in the shine of the dazzling silver whistle that spun and swung in her mind.
Mistress put her hand on Kerry’s ass again, and Kerry stopped trying to think at all.
They came out of the jungle, and the city that loomed up on the mountaintop before her startled and awed Kerry out of her daze, though Mistress’ hypnosis kept her quiet. It seemed strange that no one else made a sound either, but the Tribeswomen were smiling emptily in the cheerful clicking of the baubles on their ears, and the two huntresses had no awe of the place.
In a moment, Kerry realized she’d been too suggestible. The buildings sat impressively atop a hill across a slowly rising stretch of grassy flatland, something like an Escher picture she’d seen once, but it wasn’t the castle she’d thought she’d seen.
I really have been brainwashed. I’m thinking like a primitive. Everything is bigger than I am. If I see an airplane I’ll probably . . .
Reflection vanished when Mistress let go of her, and Kerry walked by herself, feeling lost and undeserving, soothed only by the memory of the whistle that Mistress had left in her head.
Her eyes sought focus and she saw groups of women here and there on the meadow. She saw a line of them moving up to the complex atop the hill, nude and harnessed, swaying under the baskets and bundles on their heads. More drones. Some others were working a piece of ground near the path where Mistress led her and the other captives. Kerry saw the way the women labored, tranced and unaware, but it was different than the way she half-remembered bliss when she’d toiled in the fields for Tribe.
Before she could fall into that seductive memory, she realized that seeing these slaves somehow frightened her even more. And remembering that Tribe’s weird, irresistible work had scared her, as well as turning her on, roused Kerry even more from her daze.
But it was warm in the sun, and knowing that at any moment Mistress could be back beside her, with her touch—and her whistle—leashed Kerry’s soul again.
Sue was in her mind more faintly now, and Kerry worried about what Sue would think.
Maybe if Mistress could make Sue think that she . . .
Kerry tensed, and found herself seeking the image of the whistle too quickly to feel ashamed. Letting it put her under again. Disappearing.
A clop-clop sound woke her. They’d all moved up the slope as well, slowly as Mistress and Sophie herded their sleepy flock, and now they were near a gravel path that spanned it. Mistress had halted them, and Kerry slowly turned her head to see a small cart rolling up the path.
What mesmerized her was the ponygirl pulling it.
21.
The harnessed woman was tall and small-breasted, and unlike the one Kerry had seen in the Tribe’s village, her hands weren’t crossed in the reverence gesture but laced into a single bondage glove before her. Her hoof-boots ran to mid-thigh, and for a moment Kerry couldn’t look away from those powerful, toned thighs and the way they moved, the chestnut tail visible in the gap as they pumped, reminding Kerry of the plug in the ponygirl’s ass. To run impaled on it, all day . . .
Her driver spoke a command. The ponygirl stopped her trot, mincing a couple of short steps forward to keep from jarring the driver before bringing her feet together and standing calm and straight between the shafts. Lips working slightly over the bit in her mouth, she stared forward, looking—proud.
Kerry’s throat tightened as she knew there was nothing at all in the bridled woman’s mind but the joy of being bound in her leathers, the breathless wait for the next kiss of the reins. She saw the tension in the pony’s hips, and knew she was aching to work herself on the tail-plug again.
But too well-trained to do anything but wait for the reins.
She felt herself twitch as she realized she’d been staring at the slave for some time and hadn’t even thought to wonder what the woman had been, before. What had given her life purpose and pride before she’d come to Dormignonne and been taught to love the harness.
Before Kerry could think further, the reins clicked and the ponygirl snapped into motion again, stepping high and pulling the cart smartly forward, her ass switching the tail pertly in its exertion. Kerry had only the vaguest impression of the driver, a blur of hat and jodhpurs and boots, and the nagging knowledge that she’d been too riveted by the pony to pay attention to what Mistress and the driver might have said.
It’s getting to me. All of it. More than—Tribe. It’s . . . pulling me . . . in . . .
There was no help. Perhaps even now there was no Sue, either . . . Kerry was puzzled why she could even bear to care at all.
They moved on, and Kerry saw they weren’t entering the terraced cluster of buildings but instead going to a smaller compound halfway up the hill. She saw that there were walls, vine-draped cinderblock, and at the top, something else.
Wire.
She couldn’t see whether it was barbed, or wound round electrical terminals. She didn’t know whether the ice that locked her heart when she saw it came from some Tribe-programming that made her love soft walls and open buildings. Or because whoever put this wall up must have good reason to think anyone inside would want to try very, very hard to get out.
The slaves they kept here were closer and easier to see. Kerry saw their stiff posture when they weren’t carrying out commands, the way each woman’s hair was tied or slicked back, which just made clearer how harshly and emptily they stared. Their faces were less than blank. No one was pairing off like Tribeswomen did, either.
She tried meeting the eyes of one or two of the drones, but each time her nerve failed her.
Tribe kept women imprisoned in an endless dream. These were tethered in a nightmare. She remembered Pretty—no, Warmth . . . screaming.
But I won’t run away. I don’t . . . The whistle spun in her mind, mocking the inner twinges of self-preservation that didn’t even reach Kerry’ s muscles. . . . don’t want to disobey . . .
They stopped at the steel door to the compound, and yet another safari girl stepped out, looking at them all with supreme disinterest and then speaking quietly with Mistress and Sophie.
Four drones stalked over in lockstep to the quartet of Tribeswomen who stood under the poles, and Sophie directed the newcomers as they slipped nimbly into position to carry, and took the two drugged captives along the wall, away from the steel door. Kerry blinked, watching them disappear around the corner.
She ached for them. She couldn’t tell why, since she and others were just as helpless, ready to go anywhere and do anything the two lithe huntresses laughingly commanded. But the other two looked so much more helpless as they slept.
Kerry turned her head with an effort, and saw . . . Warmth doing the same. The Tribeswoman dragged her gaze from the end of the wall and forced her eyelids up. She looked at the top of the walls, and Kerry saw her shake the slightest bit. She knows, too. Just then she felt sad for Warmth, who must feel responsible for them all still, and was feeling, in advance, what each of her Tribesisters would face in this place of walls and evil magic. That magic had clouded her mind, betrayed her into betraying them, but even in her trance she was regretting it.
She felt it for—Dove’s Cry, too.
Between flashes of the whistle, Kerry had a moment of hurtful memory, of Liz, and wondered if there was anything left of her inside this agonized woman after all, if she realized what she’d done to Kerry and . . . Andrea . . . and Jen . . .
Brainwashed. She’d said that to Sue, absolving the women who’d drawn them both into this evil, and now she was finding she could believe it. Kerry looked at the woman—still her friend. She’d forgiven her back in the jungle, seeing her go up against the Others and their magic rather than leave her terrified sister in the net. After whatever they, whoever they were, had done to her mind or taken from it, were they pleased?
The world where they were Liz and Kerry was gone. Kerry was starting to know that if she ever left here she would be as obedient to them as Liz. She wondered what that slave-Kerry would feel.
She wondered if there would still be as much of her left as there was of Liz in Warmth.
Who soon might become Pretty forever.
The door opened wider and they marched inside. She heard muted women’s voices, and the sound of vague fear. There were smells—not the latrine odor she’d feared, but something like the scent of arousal she was used to in the Tribe village, and something almost like ether. She didn’t need anything else to make her lightheaded.
There were walls inside, whitewashed concrete, not as high as the compound’ s but enough to make them feel confined even before they reached wherever they . . .
Kerry was suddenly afraid. Would they at least be left together?
She didn’t know what scared her more—being put into a cell by herself, or being separated and put in with strangers.
But they were directed from the dim corridor into a bare room, open to the sky, without anyone being pared away. Sophie told each Tribeswoman, as she crossed the threshold, that her mind was bound and that she would have neither the ability nor the desire to leave until she was told to, and as Sophie walked away with the slaves Mistress lingered in the doorway, staring at Kerry.
“You too, Whistle Girl.” She grinned, seeing Kerry’s eyes flutter at the word. “You won’t leave until your Mistress tells you to, will you?”
“I must obey you,” Kerry intoned, trying to imagine the whistle, which reflected a friendlier light than what glittered in Mistress’ eyes.
“Of course you must.” Mistress kept staring at her. “Hmm. Whistle Girl . . . Whistle Girl. No, I don’t think so. Have to come up with something cuter for you. Something as cute as you are.
“Something as simple and silly as your mind is going to be.”
Her stare made Kerry feel like meat being held over a guard dog too lazy to leap for it. Yet.
But would meat be getting damp at the thought, as it hung?
Mistress looked at Kerry’s uncovered pussy, and though none of them had been shaven yet like the slaves here, she felt certain Mistress could see the dew there.
“Do you have a name, Whistle Girl?”
Kerry thought about it. She heard a tired moan from behind her, and heard someone try to speak before it dissolved in the almost-inaudible clicking of the earrings.
Sue. This is the only fight left. It’s a loser, but . . .
She tried to straighten, and almost looked Mistress in the eye. She thought of Warmth, who had, and then met the pitiless gaze herself.
“I . . . I am Tribe,” she said. “I am called Dove’s Cry.”
22.
Mistress didn’t even laugh before leaving. Dove’s Cry looked at the sky, wondering what she’d done.
She saw a long, thin, white cloud in the corner the walls made, not quite a contrail, and she had one brief, piercing moment of nostalgia for the sight of an airliner.
Lowering her eyes, Dove’s Cry turned away from it and tried to let the whistle fade from her mind.
Turning to the Tribeswomen, she saw some of them kept clicking their earrings and going under again, their minds still conquered by Sophie’s posthypnotic suggestion. The rest gazed at each others’ adornments, captivated by the original fascination of pretty colors.
Somebody just didn’t get enough of her trinket indoctrination. Dove wondered why, but for now she’d see what she could do with her immunity.
She looked at Warmth, who stood still, trying to control her breathing, raising her hands with delicate haste.
Trying to keep from triggering herself into trance again.
One of the other Tribeswomen gave a soft little cry of delight at the way the light played in someone else’s bauble, and Warmth turned at the sound.
Heard her own earring click.
Sank into hypnosis.
Blinked awake. Slowly started again.
Dove’s Cry stepped to her, hands raised, eyes locked on hers.
Warmth shook in surprise and put herself under again. Dove held her shoulders, steadying her as she woke again, and quickly raised her hands to clasp the earrings. Warmth lifted her hands to her left ear to undo that one. Once Dove felt Warmth’s fingers around it, she moved her hand to the other woman’s right ear.
Warmth nearly looked at the trinket as she brought it down, but glanced away in time to avoid being tranced again.
Dove’s Cry took it from her and held it tightly, then looked around. The enclosure was bare, and she wondered about how hypnotic the damned beads would be just lying on the concrete. God, if she even had her bikini . . .
“Use this.” Warmth unwrapped the green cloth knotted above her bicep. It unfolded to a fair width, and Dove’s Cry held the beads carefully in its center.
Dove looked her Tribesister in the eye.
“Your voice guides me,” she said. “I transgressed, and I ask for no mercy from Tribe. I ask only—that you let me help you and obey you.”
Warmth looked at her, and nodded.
Dove’s Cry knelt and kissed Warmth’s thigh, and rested her forehead against it, tempted by the scent of her cleft but resisting its lure as much for Warmth’s sake as her own. She rose.
Warmth stroked her shoulder. “Tribesister.”
Dove was reaching to hug her, to press close against her, but she held Dove off, even as she cupped her cheek.
“Don’t worry, Dove. You are with us and of us. But we must be strong.” She swallowed. “I must be—strong.”
Dove’s Cry looked at her, knowing what she meant now. She couldn’t even comfort Warmth. Warmth couldn’t afford to lose her edge. It might not matter—but it did. She looked into Warmth’s eyes.
“I understand, Tribesister. You are strong. We are strong in you.” They looked at each other, knowing how little it meant here. “May I help you free the other sisters?”
“Yes, Dove’s Cry.” They stepped apart and Warmth took the cloth, gently, closing her eyes at the muted click of baubles. But she opened them and smiled thinly at Dove’s Cry. “I am still Tribe,” she said.
“But—watch me, please?”
Dove stepped away, and took the nearest Tribeswoman’s armcloth, seeing her sway slightly, but not varying her vague smile as the motion clicked her earrings again. She looked up and broadened her smile, but didn’t resist as Dove’s Cry unclipped them. She glanced at them as Dove put them in the cloth and went deeper. Dove stroked her hair, gripped the cloth, and moved to the next Tribeswoman.
Since her impulse was to stay beside Warmth and watch over her, she resisted it and made herself de-bead two other women before looking over, but Warmth looked back and nodded. Her eyes were narrowed and her mouth was tight, but she hadn’t slipped into Pretty again.
It happened with the last woman. Dove thought Warmth had tried to reach the Tribesister, speak to her, but when she moved to join them she saw Warmth staring vacantly at the earring in her hand, while the woman next to her sat blinking sleepily, the other earring still in place, clicking her into trance again each time she moved.
Dove’s mind twitched. She knew the woman Warmth had been—still was—and could guess what the other Tribesister had been before . . . Tribe. Now they were both paralyzed by costume jewelry. She knelt beside Warmth, seeing her face relaxed for the first time since they’d been taken. Dove almost felt guilty waking her.
She reached around and gently covered Warmth’s eyes, then put her other hand over the earring and took it. After setting it on the concrete behind Warmth, she thought a moment, then took the Tribeswoman’s other earring from her ear, too.
“Warmth,” she whispered, resisting the urge to kiss her Tribesister’s ear. “Come back to us.”
After a moment Warmth stirred, and her hand took Dove’s and moved it aside. She sighed. “It’s sooo peaceful.”
Dove’s Cry gave in to the need and knelt down against her, her breast in the hollow of Warmth’s back, her head against Warmth’s, smelling the sun still in the other woman’s hair. Her hand slipped down to Warmth’s breasts, then to her stomach.
“As peaceful as Tribe?” she whispered.
“No,” said Warmth, but she shook guiltily. Dove’s Cry held her tighter. “It’s so hard,” she whispered. “I’m so, so tired even now. And there are no Priestesses . . . I must obey someone, and there . . . aren’t any Priestesses. Only they can know what must be done.
“Dove’s Cry, I’m just a simple obedient Tribeswoman like them.” She nodded toward the others. “We all need to be told what to do.”
Liz. Fight with me. We can drag them to the door and damn the magic, and from there—
The idea blew away. Dove’s Cry didn’t even know if Warmth could still remember that life from before, or if the Priestesses had drained her mind forever. Even if not, losing even the hold Tribe had over her might just collapse her.
Something else occurred to Dove. They were just primitives, being toyed with by the higher-culture huntresses in this citadel.
But primitives had their own ways to fight. She remembered one of the most frighteningly powerful times that Tribe had blotted out her selfhood and made her Tribe’s creature. Tribe was all they had left, and It might be the dark strength Warmth would need. That they’d all need.
“Warmth, the Priestesses are wise and know all.” Dove could barely believe she was saying it, but she felt Warmth relax against her. “They set you over us to teach us to obey. We are all better sisters in Tribe because of your voice and your truth. We obey.”
She slid around to squat in front of Warmth, looking up into her eyes. “Tribe is all,” she said, and her voice broke and her eyes blurred as the heat of Warmth’s body and the faint smell of her sunscreen reminded her of the last time she’d said that. The wonderful moment of near-telepathy when she’d had to playact with—with . . .
Dove’s Cry had to stop remembering. She saw Warmth trapped in the intensity of her gaze, and knew that this woman needed her now. She let the emotion into her voice.
“We are Tribe.
“We are one with Tribe.
“We accept what Tribe ordains.
“We are one with Tribe. Our minds and bodies are Tribe’s.”
Warmth’s lips tracked the litany, and her eyes began glazing over. Behind her, Dove heard whispers as the words woke Tribal programming in some of the others.
“All must obey Tribal customs!” She waited until Warmth rose and then stood with her.
She’d wanted to see that implacable amazonian glare in Warmth’s eyes, but it still hit her with an almost physical impact when she actually saw it. She’d been feeling vaguely guilty about playing Warmth like a puppet on the strings of her Tribal brainwashing, but now that she’d activated it, she knew Warmth was no longer a toy.
Warmth was a weapon.
The rest of her plan made Dove’s Cry very afraid, now. But it also made her want to drop to her knees and bury her tongue deep in Warmth’s wetness.
“All must obey,” said Warmth, quietly and firmly, and Dove’s bones quivered more than if she’d shouted it. Dove gathered what she could find of her will, to finish.
Almost surrendered when the others chorused, “All must obey!”
They looked at Warmth, utterly hers, eyes shining. She smiled back at them like a queen.
Tribe is real. Dove was unsure whether she were happy or horrified. It wouldn’t matter.
“All must obey Tribal customs!” she told them. For a heartbeat they ignored her, focused on Warmth. Then they turned, all together. And stared at her.
“I have disobeyed . . . Tribe,” she said, her voice starting to shake. Only her fear of what their captors would do, of becoming one of the harnessed, robotic drones, pulled her past her dread of what she saw in her Tribesisters’ eyes now.
“I have—t-transgressed,” she said, backing slowly away as they began to surround her. “I m-m-must be punished!” She had to force it out now, hearing how hollowly it echoed from the concrete walls.
They were all around her. She looked at Warmth, who stood outside the ring. Warmth’s nipples rising at the tips of her generous breasts. She had a tearing desire to lean against them, to be held. Forgiven. She tried to meet Warmth’s eyes. With the last of her strength, she tried to stand straighter.
I ask for no mercy from Tribe.
Warmth’s eyes bored back into hers.
Very briefly, they closed, and when they opened Warmth nodded.
Then she raised her arm. “Submit to Tribe,” she said.
The others’ arms came up, and it began.
“Submit to Tribe! Submit to Tribe! Submit to Tribe!“
Dove’s Cry fell to her knees, dizzy and realizing at last that she was hyperventilating from sheer need, feeling it plunging into her, making her soft and pliant. It took all she had to stay kneeling, not to droop down to the rough concrete. She had nothing left to join the chant and only felt her mouth working clumsily.
It felt like she was trying to eat someone out, trapped in their juicy furry dark. The words stopped meaning anything.
This time she was too aroused to fall. She couldn’t move at all.
She tried to raise her hands in reverence, but they stayed in her lap. But then . . . her right hand was sliding inward to her crotch, while her left fled it, stroking her hip and butt. Seeking the crack of her ass and then traveling down and in.
This is why I did this. Not to help Warmth. Not to unite them against slavers. Not for Tribe.
Dove’s Cry could barely remember what an idea was, but she knew this one hurt, and enjoyed that.
They were dupes before. They’ll be slaves soon.
Her questing fingers found her holes, together.
I’m —lower than that.
A few shreds of who Dove was, a few of Kerry, found each other, and she tried to call for help.
She forgot how.
She screamed and came and screamed and came and when the world spun it didn ‘t end and when the bright blue was up and the bright pain swatted her head it didn’t end and she came and screamed . . .
23.
Sue had survived.
They’d found her.
Kerry watched, rigid but tingling in horror, as her lover hung spread-eagled from ropes, her lithe limbs in an X between the grimy concrete stanchions. Sue’s head slumped in exhaustion, but her face twisted in agony as she tried to breathe around her tearing heart. Just holding herself up was killing her. She stood still and straight and watched Sue die slowly, feeling her hands curled gently by her hips. Her hair was tight against her head, and her head was stiff above the high close collar. Underneath her tightly-tied hair it felt as if straps and chains held her brain fast, too.
She was a drone.
She couldn’t move. She knew she’d been told not to, and the pleasure of obeying that command, even if she couldn’t remember hearing it, was like a heady drug whose buzz was better than stirring a finger at the sight of her lover’s pain.
She couldn’t speak. Slaves never spoke until their heads were filled and an owner opened them to pour the truth out. Her head was empty.
She tried desperately to remember whether she’d helped capture Sue, if she’ d been mechanically tying Sue’s ropes to the embedded eyebolts moments ago, while Sue screamed at her. She couldn’t.
Sue raised her head and looked at her. Her lips parted to speak.
Then something warm and rough and wonderfully horribly thick invaded her thighs.
They parted as her lips did to let her cry out, and she broke eye contact. She was giving up Sue’s last few seconds for the joy of being spread, and the knowledge tightened her thighs again around . . .
“Wake up now, Whistle Girl.”
. . . Mistress’ boot. The laces worked into Kerry’s pussy lips as she writhed weakly.
She was on her back on the floor of a room with a ceiling, looking up Mistress’ shapely leg to her imperious face. Her sneer tightened Kerry’s crotch again and Kerry whimpered.
Sue wasn’t there. Kerry knew it more by intuition than sight, until it hit her that she’d been dreaming.
Now she was glad she’d been mute in the dream, giving none of it away to those awake. As she rose past the raw arousal of Mistress’ contempt, she realized it meant Mistress took her tears for need, as she climaxed feebly around the boot Mistress pushed between her legs.
There was no sign of Warmth or the other Tribeswomen. Kerry blinked, no longer feeling the self of Dove’s Cry, and knew how terribly lonely she felt, without even the made-up kinship of the other mind-controlled women around her.
It had freed her to dream of Sue, but she wasn’t certain if she wanted that dream.
The arousing threat of Mistress standing over her dimmed even her worry at what had happened to the others. She looked up and waited, not wanting to act. She watched Mistress stare at her and watched her breathing against her khaki hunting vest, and the way Kerry felt toward her frightened Kerry nearly as much as she did.
Mistress withdrew her foot, and hearing the noise Kerry made drew a smile from her that made her seem almost friendly. Kerry found herself wanting to bring forth that kind of pleasure in Mistress again, and faced the knowledge that it wasn’t just survival that made her want that.
Mistress held her gaze, and Kerry found herself flowing up to a sitting position on the cloth she felt under her butt as if Mistress’ willpower was pulling her forward. Then, sitting, it seemed to make so much more sense to kneel to Mistress instead.
Kerry had to look away from Mistress, and as her eyes dipped she saw Mistress’ boot, still planted in front of where Mistress stood over her. Gleaming with Kerry’s juice.
She leaned down to lick it clean without even having to think of it, and whined quietly against the leather, enjoying its flavor under the harsh taste of her own honey as she slurped it off. She was just aware enough to hear someone say, “Damn, Cass—you didn’t make her beg, either.”
As Kerry sucked the laces, feeling Mistress’ shin against her cheek, she heard Mistress hesitate before saying in an oddly soft voice, “Little whore didn’t give me a chance.” Closing her eyes, Kerry nuzzled the boot.
It pushed against her, and as she rocked smoothly back to sit on her heels, she saw Mistress swing her leg gracefully back to stand and look down at her, as Sophie joined her. Kerry smelled and felt her fluid over her face, and couldn’t stop herself from licking at it while they watched.
“You certainly made an impression,” Mistress said, and Kerry remembered the Tribeswomen, shivering at what just the memory of that last tidal wave of Tribe had done to her mind. The women saw it hit her now and laughed, and their laughter dissolved her vague attempt to hide the lust. She remembered to feel afraid at being caught trying to subvert their brainwashing, but Mistress didn’t look angry.
“You missed a lot after you knocked yourself out coming,” she said. “When they came down from that bitch-high you sent them on, they decided you were some kind of mad prophetess or something, saving their souls for Tribe by giving up your own. They were almost ready to fight us when we came to get you. We had to spray them with sedative.
“And here I thought it was my job to fuck with their heads.” She smiled at Kerry for a while.
“But then—it is my job.” Kerry felt colder and hotter at once, as she realized that Mistress didn’t need to be angry to be dangerous.
“That’s OK too, Whistle Girl. In a way you just made it easier. And you’ ll help again.”
Kerry knelt and wondered.
“Thought about the whistle lately?” Mistress said the word with relish, and laughed sweetly as she watched Kerry writhe. Kerry’s eyelids drooped, and by reflex she tried to fight the image as it started to oscillate through her thoughts again. Back and forth. Back . . . and . . . forth.
She vaguely knew Mistress watched her eyes as they tracked the swinging in her mind, and then the whistle was there for real, just where her gaze focused on the unreal one.
She knew they were one, and it controlled her. Kerry relaxed, watched, listened, prepared to believe and to obey. She barely felt herself open.
Mistress’ voice was in her head, where it belonged, and suddenly she realized she was nothing, just a glove that Mistress put over Her hand, something Mistress used to do Her work and then put aside, limp and blank.
Kerry shook helplessly as each of Mistress’ fingers penetrated her and filled her and gave her the only shape she could have. It wasn’t orgasm. It was better, because it went on and quietly on and never peaked, and it was painfully worse, because it . . . went on and quietly on and . . . never . . . peaked . . .
“Obey,” said Kerry. “Obey.” The word tasted like a leather glove forcing her lips aside and felt like a firm thumb pressing her tongue down and back.
“I must obey!” she sobbed, and felt a tightly-laced boot punish her cunt again as she greedily squeezed herself around it.
The words buzzed into her head, and she quivered joyfully under them, like a mare seduced into loving the itch and pollution of the flies that settled onto her. “Obey.”
After a lovely dim eternity, there were other things in her mouth and pussy, smooth and slick with her taste and others, but she just knelt and opened and tightened and accepted. “Obey.”
She saw the whistle, and it came to her that she hadn’t been seeing it for—a while.
Then Kerry remembered that seeing it would make her go right to sleep, now.
24.
When she woke she was standing in the dim hallway just outside the enclosure where Warmth and the others were kept, trying to force herself awake. For a moment she recalled the dream of Sue, but she hadn’t been converted to one of the harnessed drones. At least on the outside.
She was still nude, still wearing only a Tribeswoman’s light comfortable collar, and her hair hung free, not tight against her skull. There seemed to be something tangled in it, but she couldn’t concentrate on that or decide to do anything about it, and found herself wondering what might have gotten caught up in it on the floor as she thrashed in an orgasmic frenzy under Mistress’ touch.
She was terrifically aroused.
It amazed her that she could even think that, but she felt something keeping her focused. She was able to ignore the feeling she had of being filled. Taken. Wonderfully, shamefully used. She’d been played with so hard and so much that her pussy and ass both still felt like there was something inside them.
Beside her, Mistress touched her shoulder with a one fingertip and Kerry went rigid, wanting to beg for more but unable to speak or move.
Then she knew she was to go to the doorway and enter, and she didn’t speak to Mistress as she went. As she crossed the threshold, she felt the hypnotic inhibition against trying to leave again settle over her like a warm mist.
The Tribeswomen were gathered at the far end of the room in a patch of sun, and Kerry found herself trying to reckon how much time had passed. She gave up quickly.
They all stood and looked at her. All of them looked worried, but she saw it was more for her sake than their own, and even the ones who seemed most wary smiled at her when they decided she hadn’t been bewitched away from Tribe and twisted into a puppet of the Others’ dark magic.
Kerry’s pussy and ass clenched over the phantom plugs in them at that thought.
“Dove’s Cry,” one or two of them said. They came to surround her again, but this time they came close and stroked her. She felt so many gentle hands on her that she seemed to be floating, and closed her eyes. She remembered something like it, friends touching her, protecting her, and just relaxing and submitting to them.
Sunscreen . . .
But now she reached her hands down just as gently, and found a velvet pair of lips with each. The surprised gasps in her ears warmed her, and the women she’d captured that way fell against her. She laughed and kissed each one in turn. The others stepped back as her two victims held on to her, suddenly finding it harder to stand as she masturbated them delicately, mercilessly.
The woman on her left almost danced over her fingers, moving drowsily, resting her head on Kerry’s neck. The one on her right gripped her tightly and started fucking herself urgently on Kerry’s hand, tickling the back of it with her hair, her hot breaths bursting urgently onto Kerry’s ear. It was the dreamy one on the left who came first, and then Kerry touched the woman on the right, her thumb finding her clit and setting her off.
They sagged against her and she hugged them tightly until others led them from her.
In front of her, Warmth waited.
Kerry licked her fingers, one hand and then the other, meeting the Tribeswoman’s gaze. She was no longer trying to think of her as Liz: Liz might be proud of some of what Warmth of Tribe had done, but Liz was gone. Whatever they’d done to make her Warmth had left no room for the woman Kerry had known. But Kerry was proud of her too.
Really, though, she was seeing that Warmth was hot.
Warmth smiled, and Kerry smiled back. She wondered why she didn’t feel uncomfortable about no longer being who Warmth thought she was, either. She was no longer part of Tribe, and she had no concern about how to address that.
“Dove,” Warmth said. “You look well. What did they do to you? Did they heal you?”
“Warmth,” she replied, taking her hands, and then moving close to hug her before Warmth could hold her at a distance again. She enjoyed the feel of Warmth’s generous breasts against hers, the way Warmth’s pussy met her own as she pressed against her and then halfheartedly tried to flee, the way Warmth’s nostrils flared at the smell of sex that Kerry wore like perfume.
“I am well. I don’t remember much. They must have put me to sleep with their—magic. But I remember you.“ She stared into Warmth’s eyes and enjoyed the helpless dilation of her pupils as that sank in.
“All of you,” she said, suddenly releasing Warmth and stepping away to say that to the others. Her heart raced at the dazed way Warmth blinked and seemed to sway, off-balance as Kerry’s body suddenly left hers. She didn’t know how she’d been able to let go so smoothly.
She turned back to Warmth, remembering her original goal of helping the other woman resume dominance over them, to resist the deeper, harmful subjugation the slavers held over them. Warmth looked at her, her poise crumpling, seeming almost to long for Kerry to hold her again. Looking worried about that feeling.
Kerry abruptly knelt before Warmth, feeling the others’ eyes on her. She was very close to Warmth, and looked up at her.
“You are over us,” she said, and saw Warmth shudder as her breath caressed Warmth’s pussy, inches from her face. “You are our strength.” She kept speaking, phrases she didn’t know she remembered from mindless nights dancing and worshipping under the spell of the drums and torches. Tribe-triggers. She was praising Warmth, building her up in front of the other Tribeswomen. She heard some of them start to echo her, and saw Warmth ‘s eyes shyly light up, as they all venerated her, here in the slave pen.
She was watching Warmth’s eyelids flutter, too, as she kept blowing across her cleft, stirring Warmth’s bush—and from the sound of Warmth’s breathing, stirring much more.
Then it seemed the only thing to do was lean forward and kiss Warmth, just where the triangle of dark fur faded onto her mound, and the taste kept Kerry there. Warmth had stared down as Kerry did it, looking almost hypnotized and unable even to speak, much less stop her. It took forever before Kerry felt Warmth’s hands gently—weakly—trying to push her head back.
But by then she was licking, and the hands fell away.
Dimly, Kerry heard sighs of wonder and delight from the Tribeswomen as they watched their prophetess go down on their leader. Even as she tried to wonder why she could still think about that—wonder how she could still think at all—she knew it meant they wouldn’t interfere.
Interfere with—?
Warmth grunted, almost in pain, and began to thrust her pelvis into Kerry’s face, slowly, rolling on a wave that flowed through her. Kerry’s lips danced with Warmth’s nether ones and drank. Kerry didn’t think, for a moment.
Her tongue stabbed into Warmth and flicked across her clit and then she leaned back and grinned up at Warmth, leaned further back to spread her arms behind her. Her grin widened as Warmth nearly fell and looked down at her, hot and bothered and confused at her withdrawal.
Kerry’s cunt and ass clenched again as she saw need and dominance war inside Warmth’s mind. It was her throat that tightened as she saw affection there, too, being swept up by the stronger lusts but still present enough for her face to say Why are you playing with me?
But Warmth smiled tightly, and touched herself, feeling how slick Kerry’s mouth had left her.
Kerry licked her lips, savoring how that riveted Warmth even more than she savored Warmth’s taste on them. “Come,” she whispered, and backed further, feeling the concrete rasp lightly beneath her asscheeks as she kept her legs spread.
Warmth knelt, and Kerry listened again, hearing the other women starting to pant as they watched. She could even hear the wet click of someone playing with herself hard, and deepened her smile.
They wouldn’t interfere.
Warmth crawled to her, her eyes going flat, her mouth working. Struggling against her need. Kerry sighed and relaxed, feeling her spread thighs loosen further at the way her helplessness turned Warmth on.
“Drink,” she said, and saw Warmth shudder. Warmth’s eyes focused, and she stared at Kerry, confused and worried. Trying to worry. Sensing that her lust was pulling her somewhere, but unable to fight it.
Pleading . . . but not for a taste.
Kerry saw a dark spot in the concrete by Warmth’s knee, as the other woman’ s will flowed out of her.
Warmth was shaking as she held herself up on all fours, trying to look her in the face but drawn hypnotically to her pussy. She frowned, and her eyes searched Kerry’s body but could only see the offered flesh. She made no sou nd as she dropped her eyes and then lowered herself to kiss it.
Kerry leaned back on her arms and looked up to the thick tropical sun and the empty blue sky, seeing the dark outline of the walls and inside it the heads of the nearer women as they watched, transfixed. Mesmerized. Masturbating together.
She drew her feet gently toward each other, feeling the long strong muscles of Warmth’s lower back against her heels as she rested them on her, too slack to grip Warmth’s head between her thighs.
Kerry’s body started to stiffen with the intensity of the turn-on as Warmth ‘s tongue found her and began to enter her, filling her pussy and finding impossibly many points on its walls at once. She heard Warmth’s strange bewildered moan, but she couldn’t marvel that Warmth still had thoughts left to bewilder because her own thoughts were gone.
Warmth had found the treasure hidden inside Kerry, and her nimble tongue was drawing it out, blowing Kerry’s mind. Kerry’s body reacted and helped her, spasming on a long, slow orgasm to thrust out what it had clenched.
Kerry needed to scream.
There was something she had to do first.
Part of the thing was in Warmth’s wet mouth and the rest was still coiled inside her, but it was long enough that Kerry heard it clicking on the concrete. Kerry felt Warmth stiffen and try to rise.
“No,” Warmth hissed. “No. I can’t! My—sisters—” Kerry found it easy to press her heels on Warmth’s back, keeping her down. Something passed into her fading thoughts (she’s fighting it for them, not for Tribe) and left. The compulsions that drove her blanked her mind to the willpower it must have taken Warmth even to try to pull away from what her tongue had found.
What Mistress had put into Kerry. Clicking on the concrete. Glinting in her juices on the sunlit concrete.
Warmth groaned as she looked down at the bead necklace inches from her eyes.
The gasping around them grew more frantic and then fell to quiet.
Kerry’s mouth opened, and Mistress’ word touched her tongue. “Pretty,” she said.
Warmth looked up, her face shining from Kerry’s juice. Her eyes were damp.
And blank.
“Pretty,” she said.
Kerry came, bucking up into Pretty’s mindless smile and questing tongue. Now she could scream.
25.
She lay on her back, shuddering from the orgasms the beads in her ass were sending her, her thighs wrapped tightly now around Warmth’s . . . Pretty’s head as she fucked the woman’s face. She could still hear the others even in the throes of it, actually heard words.
They’d come so close to freeing themselves, at least back to being Tribe, that some were trying to call out to Pretty as though she could still think.
But Pretty belonged to Kerry’s cunt for now, and heard nothing.
Kerry felt Mistress’ control through her body and her mind, and her horror was fused to her arousal, spiraling her to a peak she’d never known. She could share ever so slightly in Mistress’ savage joy in breaking Warmth, and as she listened to the other Tribeswomen weep and come watching her carry out the posthypnotic command, she knew why she and Warmth had been allowed to rouse them.
Now they would fall deeper. They’d seen how easily their Tribesister had been seduced and enslaved by another trinket.
Two trinkets, Kerry thought, and thrust into Pretty again. Glittering and empty and irresistible. Beads and I.
Something stronger than the joy of being tongued brought Kerry’s knees apart and drew her hand out to push Pretty’s head back. She brought her legs down and folded them to sit on, leaning forward to smile at Pretty, who crouched before her like a dog.
She stroked the face of a woman who’d been her friend in both her real and imposed selves, and saw no sign of either of them, of anything but obedience. She smiled and knew it for Mistress’ smile—she was Mistress’ glove and Mistress’ hand-puppet. Reaching down, she found the beads, hearing them click and moistening again as she saw the sound twisting Pretty into tighter submission.
Waiting until Pretty’s eyes stopped rolling back, she let them snare themselves on the cheapened sunlight filtering through the necklace as she gripped it to keep hold of its come-slicked smoothness and held it up before the other woman. Then she draped it over Pretty’s neck. Pretty smiled at her, and she thought about kissing her.
Instead she rose to stand over her, and luxuriated in the sight of Pretty kneeling submissively with the baubles and come gleaming on her. Kerry leaned forward slightly, and Pretty blissfully sought her pussy without needing to be told.
Someone was still weeping softly, but Kerry didn’t bother looking. She could hear the sound changing, blunting, as the new slave forgot what she mourned, and remembered only the way her own fingers felt inside her.
Then Kerry felt the invisible leash in her mind jerk her back. She knew she was finished, that Mistress’ will was done. She stepped away from Pretty, who just looked up at her, unable even to beg for her cleft back. She thought of putting Pretty’s hands to the necklace and letting her hypnotize herself further with it, but she had no will, herself, to do that.
She turned around, barely seeing the other Tribeswomen sprawled around the concrete, spasming or limp, whimpering or mindblown into silence. She remembered them in their power, crushing her will with theirs, but the memory of submission was empty now. The satisfaction she felt now, seeing them so weak and wrapped in ecstasy, had nothing vindictive in it. It was Mistress’ satisfaction, the sweetly insolent joy of the Others. The Owners.
More slave meat.
She walked past them without looking again.
At the door the inhibition against leaving was an almost palpable pressure that blocked her, but she waited, obeying it, feeling the low hum of arousal that obedience always gave her. A pair of slave drones walked past her, their hard stares going through her. A woman in safari kit came the other way and laughed to see her standing paralyzed in the open doorway, and it made Kerry almost as happy as hearing Mistress laugh at her. When she stood on tiptoe and turned a little to try to ride the rush it gave her, the woman laughed even harder, and the music of it, over the click of her bootheels, almost sent Kerry over the edge.
Then another slave walked by, and without breaking stride or even looking at Kerry, she reached out and snapped her fingers.
A bubble popped in Kerry’s head and there was no inhibition, nor even the thought of one. She almost floated out the door to follow the drone. She had no idea where the slave led her, just that she had to stare at the exquisite contours of the other’s ramrod-straight back.
She was standing in front of Mistress before she knew it, with no memory of the slave and her well-toned back or any care for her surroundings.
Mistress sat her in a chair and someone helped strap her into it.
“Never did give you your name, did I?” she whispered, and it was almost affectionate. “And now I have to stop playing with you and give you back to the store.
“But they will let me name you, and I’m damn well going to play with you again, later.”
Kerry sat limply in the straps unable even to turn her head. She quivered inside, needing to throw herself at Mistress’ feet. Or run as fast as she could.
“In a bit some nice slaves a bit more mindless than you are will be showing you something even more fascinating than the—whistle.” She chuckled at Kerry’s twitch. “It’ll hypnotize you even faster and send you even deeper.
“But you’ll always be the weakling who went under at just the thought of this little toy. A toy’s toy. And because I know you’ll have trouble keeping something that complicated in your head after we train you some more, your name can remind you how easy you are. Not even as complex as ‘Whistle’ anything. Too many syllables.
“No. The sound you’ll never hear it make, because just seeing it puts you to sleep.
“Your name is—Tweet.”
“Tweet.” She heard Mistress laugh as she whispered it, and said it again.
Mistress stroked her cheek and she shivered, the terror and arousal so strong they overcame her paralysis that little bit. “Not Tweetie—that’s taken,” she said.
“Besides—too many syllables.
“You’ll thank me,” Mistress said, and then her bootfalls receded and left Tweet staring ahead.
Without Mistress’ hypnotic presence to blot out the world, Tweet began to see where she was. Her chair was one of a line of chairs, and she was aware of other women being strapped into them by some of the drones.
They were going to be made into drones. Tweet knew she should be feeling something, but she was so empty now that she couldn’t imagine what it should be.
She was so tired.
Her heart was beating loudly in her chest, and she thought of Sue without really being able to focus in her. There was too much in the way, and that wasn’t entirely bad. She knew how much the memory of Sue would hurt.
The beating was louder, and she wondered if she were discovering that she shared Sue’s sickness, that her heart was about to burst.
No. The beat was outside her. It has been so subtle that it had crept into her mind and bones and bloodstream before she could really hear it, and her whole body was conforming to it. There was a sinuous whine, too, now, like smooth cold metal being drawn across her skin, tapping her pussy.
It was like the drumbeat and the flutes of Tribe, but slower, deeper, with the power of a vast machine. Tweet knew she’d been programmed already, and being hypnotized over and over at Ritual had opened paths in her mind that let this new domination push in. She relaxed, no longer ashamed to knew how used she was to being conquered and enslaved.
She was so tired.
Across the wall in front of her and the others, colors pulsed now, straight-edged shapes and shimmering fields of color dancing with each other. The fading part of Tweet that could still remember the innocence of Tribe thought of the Ritual fires and how their friendly orange glow had enraptured her, and she could barely recall the Flame of Teaching and stay out of trance—but this dimmed them to nothing.
Tweet’s mind was a twig spinning at the edge of a whirlpool, tiny now and about to vanish.
It was comforting in the end, to let the powerful current of something so much greater and more powerful take her and suck her down to dark spinning oblivion.
There was s bubble of something in the droplets that Tweet had become as the throbbing and spinning images hypnotized more deeply than ever before.
Sue. If they kill my mind now, will I be . . . with . . . you . . .?
She thought it as long as she could and then, obeyed the pulsing command and went to sleep. When she woke she would obey.