The Feathers by Rcheydn - HTML preview

A taster ….The High Priestess

CHAPTER ONE

Another general election is nearing, and the Prime Minister has been spending the last weeks rescheduling his life.

Dreams of Party immortality and political history-making have been replaced with tiny nightmares; nightmares that are not of the kind to have you bolting upright in the middle of the night in a cold sweat screaming in fear.

The tiny nightmares are more debilitating because they persist, and because they persist they have a sense of reality and inevitability about them. Tiny nightmares are far worse than the big ones created so successfully by imaginative Hollywood screenwriters.

Tiny nightmares don’t stay up on the celluloid; they come down and crawl around inside your brain like an earwig burrowing from one side of your head through to the other.

*

"Problem? Can I help?"

The young man approached quietly, not wanting to unduly startle the woman leaning into the engine of the Mercedes Benz. It was getting late and the station sedan, its bonnet raised, stood about fifty metres from where a dim orange lamp drooped from a pole set back into the tree line beside the lay-by. Twenty paces away in the other direction the girlfriend of the young man sat staring through the windscreen of their car into the headlamps of the Mercedes as her boyfriend, surrounded in a sort of misty aura, approached the apparently stranded car. Once or twice she glanced to the rear to see if there was any other traffic pulling into the rest area. Lights blazed momentarily but none turned onto the slip road.

The young man spoke again as he neared the front of the Mercedes. "Are you OK? Is there anything I can do to help?"

The woman suddenly stood upright hitting her head on the inside of the bonnet. Rubbing it as she backed out she said: "Shit. You surprised me. That hurt." Then with a nervous half laugh she turned. "Sorry, I didn't mean to say that. I mean, oh gee heck, I bumped my head."

Mark Peterson guessed she was in her early to mid-thirties. What else he noted left him temporarily speechless. She was stunning. Short dark hair, he could not tell if it was brown or black or auburn in the faint orange tinged light, clung to her scalp and curved around her ears in crescents. With a mind of their own, his eyes cascaded over her body, absorbing her bare shoulders, her full breasts, a narrow waist and long, very long legs sheathed in stone washed jeans. Nanosecond appraisal, disrobing, redressing. Stunning on reflection might not be the appropriate word. She was enchanting.

"Actually," she broke the spell, "I am in real trouble. The blasted thing began slowing of its own accord a few miles back. Then when I pulled in here to see what it might be it just stopped. Not the engine. I don't know why but I thought I should look inside it to see if I could see anything obvious that might be the problem. I can't of course. I think it's the wheels. They just began slowing down as if the brakes were on. Which they're not. At least I have not put them on. Does any of this make sense? Or am I a crazy woman affected by the full moon."

He listened to her prattle. She looked wonderful, she spoke with an educated voice, and her entire manner was relaxed. Put them together and he thought her to be the sexiest thing he had come across in a long time. An older woman but sensual as hell.

"Well," she said. "Does it? Does any of that make any sense to you?"

"Uhh. Mmmm." He coughed an embarrassed laugh. "Not right off. I, ahh, I'm no mechanic when it comes to cars, though I know a little, but not always enough." He wanted to help. He wanted the woman to be grateful to him, to recognise his abilities even if to his mind he had not demonstrated any mechanical aptitude in the past.

But a faint bell did ring in his memory.

"It started slowing a way back, you say. As if you were applying the brakes." She smiled at him then and nodded. "Did it also start pulling to one side?"

"Yes," the woman beamed. "Absolutely. It started to pull towards the left. Do you know what it is? You sound as if you do."

Peterson was not sure, but it sounded like it could be the callipers. Sometimes with a one year old car a calliper could be faulty. Even with a Merc. They gripped and tugged the car to a standstill but once they cooled down the wheels again moved and all was well until they heated again. Then it was repeated.

Peterson again laughed lightly. He wanted to share this woman's space a little longer if he could. He glanced in the direction of his own car where his girlfriend sat, no doubt wondering what was going on.

"Do you have a manual?" he asked.

"I guess so. It's probably in the glove compartment." She opened the side door and leaned in, resting her right knee on the seat. He moved around to the other side so he could watch her through the driver's window.

"No. I can't see it," she said. Her forehead smoothed as a slight frown darkened her eyes. "Wait a minute. It might be in the trunk in the back."

The rear seat had been laid forward and in the back, filling the gap along one side, was a large sturdy wooden chest, or trunk, with an anchor carved into the lid. What looked like heavy rope fishing net was piled on top.

"Oh dear," she sighed. "Would you help me. That rope stuff is like lead. Can you just shove it off, anywhere will do, and see if the car manual is inside with all the other papers. I am sure it is. It has to be."

Peterson was happy to. A while longer with the beautiful woman was fine by him. When he raised the lid of the chest it was empty and as he turned to tell her, he saw that she was half into the back with him. The swinging arm with the wrench caught him high on the cheek and he dropped like a stone.

The stunning woman had little difficulty lifting the dead weight and tumbling him into the chest, dropping the lid and piling the rope back on top. Then she backed out and rounded the side of the car and walked towards Peterson's vehicle where his girlfriend sat peering into the glare of the Mercedes' headlamps. The woman smiled, shrugged and raised her hands palm outwards in a sign of puzzlement.

*

Tina Turner's The Best blared out from the stereo as the Mercedes raced along the motorway. It was her favourite song, her absolute favourite, and she joyously sang the snatches she could remember. If she could have she would have attempted the Tina strut as well, but at a hundred and ten kilometres an hour, and with her special cargo in the back, caution prevailed. She could strut later if she wanted to. Then she would certainly have something to strut about.

Another two and a half to three hours of motoring north and she would be where she could do whatever she wanted, where the woodland was dense but she had discovered how to drive into it and all but disappear from the rest of the world. Then there was no more than a few minutes walk and nothing else mattered.

Nobody else knew about it. It was her secret place, hers alone, and she would be able to entertain herself for hours before she would have to retrace her steps south, changing the tyres on the way home, and once there work out for a time before getting ready for another totally normal everyday day.

You are the best! rasped Tina as the Mercedes swished along the macadamised road surface.

*

Mark Peterson came to to find himself immobilised.

It did not take him long to remember every detail of what had gone before, and to realise that he was standing erect with his back against the rough bark of a tree. A rope bit into his flesh as it circled across his chest and under his arms, and another wound twice around his belly and a third bound his legs to the base of the tree. A wadge of material filled his mouth and was held there by a bandanna knotted at the back of his head.

He was somewhere in a forest, that was plain. It was dark, obviously late at night, some hours since he had pulled into the lay-by and seen the stricken station sedan, but his mind was clear enough to recognise his surroundings. And despite the throbbing to the left side of his face his eyes quickly focused and he saw Norma Clark sitting on the ground to his side, her hands thrust under her.

To the other side the driver of the Mercedes sat leaning back in a canvas backed chair he had last registered as being in the back of the station sedan. She was smiling, the moonlight giving her face a silvery sheen and dusting her eyes with sparkles.

Peterson realised he was naked and started to panic very seriously.

"Well, how is our young stud there? Feeling alright are we? Just a little sore no doubt. Sorry about the slug to the face, but you do understand I'm sure. Had to be done. You wouldn't have just gone along now would you?" The woman’s voice was no longer the defenceless female. Now there was a confidence lacking before.

Turning to Norma Clark she feigned a scowl. "See," she said. "I told you he would be alright and that there was no need for you to worry." A smile quickly returned. "Your young man is strong and can take a punch. Just like a professional pugilist. As long as he's not hit with a steel wrench of course." She tittered. "Even our Lenox would probably have gone down with that."

Norma Clark began to blubber. Her wrists were still red and raw after spending hours bound and trussed in the filthy rope netting. She had not been hit, just securely tied and wrapped after being shown her boyfriend's bleeding body lying motionless in the chest in the back of the woman's car. The woman had pointed a short barrelled pistol at her, the one she could see resting in her lap as she sat with her feet tucked up under her, and threatened to shoot her there and then if she did not do exactly as she was told. Now here she was with tears and mucus streaming down her face, too frightened to even remove her hands from under her buttocks.

"Oh please," chided the woman. "Here, use this to wipe away those awful tears and make yourself presentable." She held out to her a white handkerchief with a little floral pattern in one corner. "Come on. I am not going to bite you. Come and get it."

Peterson had watched the exchange with terror mounting in his breast. He felt like wetting himself. Worse, if he wasn't careful his bowel would empty itself. There would be nothing he could do to stop it.

As if she sensed his thoughts the woman turned to him and gave him her sweetest smile. As if to reassure him that he needn't have a worry in the world, as if they were all friends out for a midnight picnic and only some minor irritation had occurred which she was easily rectifying.

It was this casual attitude which Mark Peterson feared suddenly. The woman was without normal warmth. The smiling lips and eyes were turned on unhesitatingly but there was nothing behind them. They were superficial. Below the surface was emptiness, a coldness. Heartless. The word struck him blindingly. He believed the woman to be without a heart.

"There," she crooned to Norma. "That's a lot better. You look beautiful again. I can really see what he sees in you. You are a lovely young woman. But there is a lot more isn't there. There is much, much more that he likes about you. Let's cheer him up shall we. Come on now. Show him some more of what you have." She distractedly picked up the pistol and waved it in the air. "Start with the slacks. Then your blouse. We'll see where we go from there."

Norma Clark shook her head slowly from side to side. Why was this happening to her? Why her? What did this horrid woman want with her, want her to do? It was impossible. It couldn't really be happening. It was a terrible, terrible dream that she would wake up from soon. She would open her eyes and they would not be almost blinded by the salt, her head would be quiet and not ringing, the ache would not be blocking her tubes deep inside her breast. It would all have gone away.

But she knew it was real and she dreaded what might come.

"Please," Norma pleaded. "Don't do this to us. Please let us go. We won't tell anyone. Don't hurt us. Just let us go."

The woman smiled her sweet smile and nodded gently, soothing, like she would to a child upset by something that was simple to make go away. "First the trousers. Then the top."

Norma Clark unbuttoned the waist and pulled the zip down at the front. Awkwardly she began to push the trousers over her hips, down her legs. They clung and it took a great effort.

"Wonderful. See. That wasn't all that hard was it. Now the blouse."

With unsteady fingers and streaming eyes, Norma opened her blouse and slipped it over her trembling shoulders.

"Look at that would you." The woman beamed and pointed the pistol at Mark. "Look what you have done to him. There he is all tied up, feeling sorry for himself a short while ago, and now look at him. Your man is beginning to show his mettle." She gave a little giggle. "My what fun we are going to have."

The woman took a very deep breath, exhaling it audibly. "Oh yes," she said, "You two are going to give me the show of shows. I just know it."

She rose from her chair and walked across to Mark. Taking him in her hand she looked over to Norma. "Come here my sweet. Show me how you make your soldier stand rigid to attention."

*

Two hours before dawn the woman who called herself The High Priestess turned onto the motorway and pointed the Mercedes Benz south. She was sure that it would be a long time before the bodies were found. They would have decomposed so much or been tormented by wild animals to such an extent it would be extremely difficult to identify them, let alone determine with accuracy the cause of death. It may even take a little while to realise that some missing body parts were not down to animal interference.

By then she would have found others to entertain her.

And she would have already begun experimenting just as he had.

The High Priestess is coming to Amazon soon.