Macho Sluts (44 page)

“Wall, Ah don't know what a little bitty thang like yew could do fer me,” he drawled. An out-of-towner, Iduna thought. But that was no excuse. She was an out-of-towner herself, and she knew better.

Kerry smiled. On her face, this expression signified the opposite of its usual meaning.

The fool kept on talking. “Why Ah don't reckon yew could even make a dent in my hide,” he chuckled. “Probably be a waste of time. Ah kin take quite a lot, yew know. Wouldn't want ta embarrass a lil gal like yew—yew are a gal, ain'tcha?”

Then the fatuous ass pronounced his own sentence: “Ah kin take anythin' yew kin dish out, sister.”

It took one well-placed kick to take him down. Iduna was the only one who could follow the swiftness of that booted foot. Once down, he stayed down, and Kerry kicked him in the direction she wanted him to go. The pointed toe of her boot made a crunching noise when it hit his buttocks and ribs. She hustled him to the foot of a very large ladder that stood in one corner of the dance floor. Then she put her boot on the back of his neck and pushed him flat. She bent down to speak to him. What she told him made him keep very small, then shudder and hide his head beneath his arms. Eventually, she lifted him up off the floor—literally lifted him, with one hand— and hauled him up to face the whipping ladder.

A revolving ball with mirrored facets spun a dizzy procession of colored lights over the scene. The ball was part of the special effects for the disco music played on other nights of the week. This club had a different name then, and catered to vanilla swingers. But Kerry, a master of her craft, was not distracted. She knew you must practice this despised art where you can, and disregard what is tawdry or unclean—or learn to love the dirt, the sleaze, because it represents your membership in the elite.

Now she had him remove his shirt and grab a rung far above his head. He was stretched on his tiptoes in front of her. She asked him a question only he could hear. “Ah don't want no bondage,” he said loudly. Iduna and Teddy shared a brief, unpleasant laugh. Planarians can learn.

Howard sat up and took notice when Kerry began to work on Bill's naked back with a short, suede flail. Hanging from her belt, it looked homemade, innocuous. In her hand, it was a weapon. She whirled it so quickly that there was no apparent difference between the sound it made swinging through the air and the sound it made striking skin. It was one continuous, ominous tone, a single voice that became a duet when the man began to scream. However, he did not let go. Gil leaned toward Howard and whispered that he had seen some people cut and run at this stage. Howard was still skeptical, but now he was keeping an open mind.

Everyone watched. It was what you did at the club when someone hung by their cold and sweating palms and took a beating. Granted, not all of them approved. By tomorrow night, rumor would have it that Kerry had half-killed someone. Heavy S/M is not popular with most of the adherents of light bondage and discipline. Unless you love pure pain for its own sake, it is difficult to see that deliberately administered, controlled agony retains its own severe sensuality. Iduna rocked on her bar stool, separating her legs enough to let the edge of it press across the middle of her cunt. Teddy spared a glance for her and smiled at her flushed cheeks, then ran a hand along his own erection. It had been a long time since he had played with Kerry. She hadn't been in for a while. Maybe Iduna would take a quick stint behind the bar.

The leatherwoman had switched to a longer flail. It was not suede, and the tails had knots in them. Bill's broad back was now an evenly raised mass of bruises. Kerry danced behind him, side to side, quick as a cat, cruel and exact. He was crying out continuously, twisting from side to side. He seemed to have forgotten he could let go of the ladder. Iduna swallowed a mouthful of wine and thought, how delicious, it would take only one good stroke to split that wide open. And of course this is what Kerry (wielding the braided cat now) did. Nine narrow tails whistled through the air, and the skin divided, rent, bled. She shifted her weight to the other hip and reversed the motion, criss-crossing the previously inflicted lashes.

Bill let go of the ladder and turned around as soon as the first stroke drew blood, but the woman behind him was so fast, she inflicted a dozen times nine crimson and overflowing welts, each bleeding bouquet placed an even distance from its mates, before he could get out of her way. As he turned to face her, she continued to flog him overhand, catching his shoulders, then changed direction and came down hard across both of his tits. The welts were instantly visible, even in the club twilight.

“Jesus,” Iduna heard Howard say, “this is a bit sick.” Gil sighed again.

“I'm sorry!” Bill screamed, falling to the filthy concrete floor. “Please stop, please stop, please stop!” She jerked her arm back, and the incomplete stroke came back into her own stomach. He was crawling now, reaching for her hand. Despite being an out-of-towner, he must have heard enough of Kerry's legend to know that she allowed select victims to kiss her ring. But Iduna knew he would never receive that boon, even after taking all that punishment. He had promised her he could take
anything
, and then he had tried to get away. Kerry didn't like it when they moved, let alone tried to get away.

Indeed, a boot in the face stopped his progress, and its owner removed her silver shades to give him one hard stare that shut his whining mouth. There was something funny about this, since she wasn't even looking into his face. She was looking at the blood that ran in thin but eager trickles to the floor. In the middle of his renewed and tearful apologies, she spun on her heel and made for the door, tucking the blood-stained cat beside its fellows. “Shit!” Teddy said, and slammed his beer down on the bar. He turned to complain to Iduna, but she was not there.

Kerry was not pleased to be intercepted between the coatcheck and the door by her personal, self-appointed voyeur, wine glass in hand. She made quite a provocative picture, this full-bosomed, very pale woman in her black dress, but she was in the way and a nuisance. Then she became impertinent. She tilted the glass to her lips and let a half-swallow of wine run out of the corner of her mouth. It was just a little too purple to be blood, that tiny rivulet, the few drops clinging to her lips.

Kerry snarled and went sideways to get by, angry, almost pushing the woman who had arranged this strange tableau for her. A man who had behaved that way might have gotten a broken jaw for his bad manners. But she was known for her chivalry. It was part of a code she thought all true leathermen (regardless of gender) should obey. Let women make do with their feminine wiles and plots and foibles. She did not want to become entangled in them. This creed of Kerry's took a form that dismayed many of the heavier masochists in the scene: she could rarely be persuaded to treat women like sides of beef. Only men were usually that stupid or lucky. In her lofty unconcern with women's untidy minds and manipulative ways, Kerry had somehow omitted to learn who this impudent blonde (whom she had certainly seen many times before) was. Ignorance is bliss, but we are rarely allowed to remain in that happy state.

There was another club, Roissy, just three blocks away, closer to the docks. That was where Kerry headed now, whips swinging at her hip, the knife scabbard bumping the small of her back, her boot heels making a satisfying tempo on the pavement, a rhythm that confirmed that she was in motion, making progress, getting away from those thin scarlet streams, the smell of life that made her mouth water and her jaws ache.

She knew immediately that she was being followed. She also had no trouble detecting that the person behind her was wearing spike-heeled shoes, and so she knew who was following her. The why of it bothered her, and the notion that anybody in spikes could keep up with (let alone catch or combat) someone in boots amused her.

She cut through an alley, thinking, ‘Let's see if the bitch will come into the darkness and teeter around in the trash and rubble for the sake of a closer look at me.' Besides, it was a shortcut to Roissy.

Surprise! There at the mouth of the alley was her pursuer, somehow ahead of her and once again blocking her way. She was wearing a satin cloak with a red lining, and a sudden gust of wind (uncharacteristic for the season) lifted it and spread it out until it fluttered about her like wings. Her breasts gleamed like alabaster, even in the absence of street lights and moonlight.

Kerry had reached for her boot and belt and unhitched her blades the second she realized she was being followed, despite her contempt for the mettle of her opponent. She did not consciously plan to use them on the other woman. She was sure she could take her with her bare hands, if a physical contest was necessary. But that seemed unlikely. No, the blades were for others, stronger and more dangerous, who might come upon them and interrupt their tête-à-tête.

Silence poured into the space between them, filled it up, then spilled over into speech.

“Why are you running away?” purred the woman in the black dress, red flames playing all around her. She was very sure of herself.

Startled, Kerry blurted, “What the hell are you talking about?” then bit her lip and repented not keeping silent. She knew she was about to be laughed at.

She was. The laugh was rich, full of private enjoyment and secret knowledge. It was not mocking, but it was too intimate, and it made her hate the intrusive blonde whose name she wished she could remember, so she could chew her out properly.

“You haven't fed for months now. You still draw blood, but you don't allow yourself to taste it.”

This time, Kerry held her tongue, put her hand onto her dagger, and watched to make sure the other did not come any closer. If she had spoken, she wondered if she would be able to hear herself talking over the noise that her blood was making, roaring in her ears. This was starting to feel like her worst-case scenario, hardly a fair price to pay for a little mayhem at a braggart's expense.

“I think I'm the only one who noticed. It's so much a part of your legend, this penchant you have for flaying someone with your cat-o'-nine-tails until the walls and innocent bystanders are spattered with blood, or using your knife to release the hot, sticky, salty fuel that feeds the heart, the lungs, and the brain. It appalls everyone so much that they don't realize you've ceased to put your lips to the wound, to swallow what you've set free, or clean your blade with your tongue. But I do. I do. And I wonder why. Would you like to tell me why?”

The leatherwoman shook her head so hard that the gesture looked painful. The nerve! What could they possibly have to talk about? She owed no one any explanations. When she spoke, it was not to the point: “Stay right where you are.”

“I'm not here to assault you!” The tone was hurt surprise. “I'm not going to approach you without permission. I just want to have a little chat. I may want you to come to me, later, when we understand one another better. But I promise I won't move one step from this spot, no matter what happens.”

Was this some crazy kind of come-on, then, from a dominant who wanted to bottom for her? Kerry had received many invitations like these. Perhaps she was being paranoid. But if that was the case, her rule was that the other must make an explicit request. It would be insulting to anticipate such needs in a colleague. So they watched each other in renewed silence, taking measurements, making calculations.

Like most women, the blonde did not seem to be able to hold her tongue. Kerry had braced herself when she saw that whorishly lipsticked mouth, with its bee-stung lower lip, open. But the woman only said, “I was in such a hurry to catch up with you that I left my cigarettes at the bar. Would you happen to have one?”

A pack was extracted from a leather shirt pocket and went flying toward Iduna, closely followed by a silver lighter. She caught them both in the same hand, took a cigarette, lit it, and tossed both packet and lighter back. They were caught and returned to the breast pocket. Kerry waited two heartbeats, then relented and fished them out again and lit a cigarette for herself. Iduna smiled. It was a minor triumph, a small victory, to have them share even this much common ground—a quiet smoke together in a dark alley, with rats just out of eyeshot, telling each other their tribal stories about eating garbage and tormenting human babies, fucking their mothers and devouring their own succulent children.

Smoke curled around her fingers as she resumed talking. “I have been an archivist of your legend ever since I came to the city. In fact, your legend is what brought me here.” Kerry gave her a brief nod, accepting this as her due. “I've been collecting all the stories about you, verifying what I can, making observations of my own. I'm always interested in legends even if the people who inspire them are not really of mythic proportions. But when I realized just how legendary you truly are, I began to keep very close track of you. As far as I know, James was your last … shall we say, completely satisfying experience? It's a little less cold than calling him a meal. He says you tied him down, took a scalpel, exposed an artery in his thigh and partially sutured it, slit it between the sutures and drank nearly a pint of his blood before you pulled the stitches tight and closed the incision with butterflies of surgical tape. All with his permission, of course, and he says it made you quite sick to have that much at once. He was close to passing out, so he may have been hallucinating. But I don't think so. Was his blood bad? Is that what stops you now? A fear of tainted blood? Disease, perhaps? Or did you get enough from him to last you all this while?”

Now they both knew the game, her question and the answer, and Iduna saw the mirrored shades removed for her benefit, saw herself regarded by cold eyes, eyes surrounded by darkness, eyes that already saw her dead in six different positions. “James,” said Kerry hoarsely, “talks too much.”

“Don't be hasty,” Iduna cautioned, smiling and blowing smoke up at the moonless sky. “Surely you haven't lived this long by being rash and impulsive.”