The Devil's Surrogate (7 page)

The effect of
the two tightly laced necklines was that Kitty found she could now
barely bend her head, and sideways movement was also severely
restricted. And to make matters worse, the eye slits were
surrounded on their outer edge by two small curved pieces of
leather that projected outward, limiting her field of vision to a
narrow arc enabling her only to see straight ahead.

'Now for these
bubbies.' Smiling, Nathan moved around in front of her, and
carefully moving the plumage aside began to pull on laces that ran
through the soft leather at the base of her bosom. As the openings
began to constrict, Kitty felt her breasts begin to bulge out and
distend, and the pressure quickly caused a reaction in her nipples,
which became even more engorged and prominent than usual. 'Now
there's a bird fit for stuffing if ever there was one,' he
declared.

Kitty bit into
the fresh leather wadding between her teeth and stared mutely back
at him, wondering if he intended to sample the bird before whatever
was to come.

Nathan,
however, was not yet finished with her costume. 'These boots,' he
said, taking up the first one, 'have iron plates in the soles, so
you'll find them a bit heavy, but that's the point; don't want you
able to run forever, else the guests are likely to become bored.
You'll also be thankful for them because at least they'll protect
your feet and legs from stones and most of the brambles.'

Each boot was
long, reaching halfway between Kitty's knee and crotch, and as she
shuffled the first shod foot experimentally, she certainly felt the
weight. She also felt her leg muscles being constricted as Nathan
set about tightening the laces, and wondered if the footwear had
been made with a far more slender girl in mind. But as she stood
peering down between the twin mounds of her bulging breasts, she
guessed the tight fit was deliberate, for her legs, sheathed now
for the most part in gleaming brown leather, had taken on an
altogether different shape from the one she was used to seeing.

While Kitty
was musing on her transformation, Nathan once more returned to the
bench and took up a short, tapering strap she saw was attached to a
set of extraordinarily long feathers. On the other side of the
strap, she also glimpsed two stubby protrusions of gleaming black
leather, the one slightly longer and a good deal thicker than the
other. Instinctively she tried to draw back, immediately
understanding where these twin phallus objects were designed to
go.

Her captor
leapt forward and grasped her fiercely by the shoulder. 'Don't be a
stupid little slut!' he hissed. 'This is your tail, and you're
going to end up wearing it one way or another, so why not save me a
lot of bother and yourself a good whipping? If I send you out to
the hunt with a red arse, it ain't going to make a whit of
difference to anyone, saving you, of course!'

Kitty's
shoulders slumped and she felt as if at least half her strength had
drained out of her body. He was right, of course. Resistance was
futile. She would not leave the barn without the two dildos inside
her, and the gorgeous tail plumage bobbing behind her. With a low
whimper of surrender, she slowly moved her legs apart.

The two
leather shafts had been pre-oiled and slipped into her easily
enough, although the introduction of the rear one to her bottom
hole initially caused an involuntary contraction of her sphincter
muscles, so that she had to make a conscious effort to relax them.
That done, it slid in with surprising ease. As Nathan finished
buckling the strap that held them in place and supported her tail,
she began to experience a peculiar feeling of warmth and fullness,
and when she took her first step, a mere half pace to keep her
balance, the feeling intensified tenfold.

'Well, there
we are.' He took several steps back and tilted his head from side
to side, stepping this way and that and bidding her turn around
slowly and display her tail feathers. 'Yes, very pretty indeed,
Titty Kitty, but then you're not Titty Kitty any more, at least not
for this afternoon. Now you're what his lordship calls a
fucky-fucky bird, and by the heavens, come midnight, you'll most
certainly have been fucky-fucked to a turn!'

'So, what
exactly are we supposed to be looking for, Paddy?' Trooper Sean
Kelly leaned against his musket and yawned.

Sergeant Paddy
Riley scratched the side of his nose. 'To be honest with you, Sean,
I'm not rightly knowing, not exactly, anyway. But a couple of
ladies being held against their will would be as likely a starting
place as any, and meantime, if we do have to knock over a couple of
those murdering bastards, I'll not be losing too much sleep over
it.'

'Well, they
shot Hollis without even giving a warning. I'll not be having any
doubts about what needs doing. Only thing that worries me, though,'
Kelly continued thoughtfully, 'is that this place belongs to some
earl, and us just a couple of humble troopers.'

'Humble or not, we're following a direct order from an
officer, and it'll be his head on the block if there's trouble. We
just make sure we keep our hides in one piece, and
his
,' Riley added, jerking
a thumb at Toby Blaine, who was standing quietly by the side of the
lane, head cocked to one side as if listening for
something.

'Yeah, well,
I'm not sure it's such a good idea to have the lad along,' Kelly
muttered. 'He's not much more than a babe. Look at him, will
you!'

'I've had
troopers only a few months older than him,' Riley said blandly.
'The lad knows the lie of the land hereabouts, which we two don't.
Isn't that so, young Toby?'

Without
turning to look at them, Toby nodded. 'I know most of it, Mister
Riley,' he confirmed, 'but not right into the estate. There's areas
that are fenced off and patrolled by keepers all the time, so we
never push our luck, not when there's rabbits enough
elsewhere.'

'Sensible lad,' Riley grinned. 'Never go further than the
pot's needs, that's what my da' used to say, probably still saying
it, the old bastard. And yes, Sean Kelly,' he grinned fiercely at
the trooper, 'I not only
have
a da', he actually did marry me ma and I do know
him, contrary to certain stories going the company
rounds.'

'Sure, and I
know that, sergeant darling,' Kelly smirked, 'and didn't I grow up
only a spit and a toss down the road from you anyway?'

'And probably
listened to a few rumours there, too.' Riley shook his head as he
turned back to Toby. 'Well then, lad, it's time we started on the
serious stuff. We're relying on you to be a good scout and keep us
out of trouble as far as possible. Reckon you can do that?'

'I'll try my
best, sir,' Toby replied. 'And if Mistress Harriet is in there
somewhere, I'd recognise her a half mile off, don't you worry none
about that.'

Aye
, Riley thought,
and you're as sweet on the lady as a puppy for a
lamb bone
. As they moved off single file
into the trees, he tried to prevent his mind from straying back to
thoughts of another young boy, and a certain married farmer's
daughter in Kerry County.

Sarah felt as
if she had been stuffed close to the bursting point so the
slightest motion sent searing spasms she could not identify
coursing through her body. She scarcely dared move a muscle as she
sat perched on the edge of the seat, and she made no effort to
resist when Ross took each of her arms in turn and drew it out to
secure it at the wrist to the horizontal beam that ran at shoulder
height behind her. Once the wrist straps had been tightly buckled,
another was passed about her throat and yet another about her waist
so that, from the seat up, she was now held completely immobile.
Beneath the seat two more beams projected out at angles just above
the ground, and to the ends of these Ross shackled her ankles so
her feet no longer touched the packed earth and her legs were drawn
apart to lewdly display her naked and shaven sex.

Sarah made a
futile effort to close her thighs, but even though she was still
able to move her knees, doing so placed a terrible strain on her
muscles and she quickly abandoned the effort. Blinking through the
eye slits, she watched Ross where he stood before her, his face
impassive save for a slight flicker of feeling in his eyes.

'How does your
new throne feel now, princess?' he asked softly. 'I must say, you
suit it beautifully, and now you must enjoy it for a while.' He
started to turn away. 'I'm afraid I don't have any subjects for you
just now, my lady,' he said mockingly, 'but I shall undoubtedly
return to pay homage to your true crown before nightfall. Meantime,
I shall leave you alone to enjoy some royal thoughts.'

At first Kitty
found the heavy-soled boots most awkward, but as she moved along
down the path ahead of Nathan, she discovered herself growing
accustomed to their weight and the unusual angle at which they held
her feet, so that she was soon moving with surprising ease and knew
she would be able to run when the time came. How long she would be
able to keep going, however, was a different matter altogether and
she did not doubt Nathan's assertion that eventual capture was
inevitable. She began to wonder if it was worth making any real
effort to run in the first place, but as if reading her mind,
Nathan quickly banished the thought.

'Fucky-fucky
birds that are caught too quickly end up getting a special basting
for the table,' he informed her. 'I've seen sluggish girls with
their entire bodies looking like they've been baked in an oven for
a couple of hours, with not a pink stripe between all the red ones.
They never get caught quickly a second time.'

The hunt was
scheduled to start from behind the house itself, a huge, two-winged
building of dark stone with what appeared to be a recently added
third wing of red brick jutting out at a most peculiar angle. The
original structure formed a perimeter on three sides of an
expansive lawn that was bounded on the fourth side by well-kept
flowerbeds. Behind them were more tall grasses, bushes and trees
that grew closer and closer together the further away from the
house they went until eventually they merged with the main
woodland.

As Nathan
prodded her forward across the grass, Sarah saw that she was not
the only quarry of the day: four more equally bizarre birdlike
creatures stood in a group watched over by two liveried footmen,
while a fifth female crouched on all fours, her features, except
for her mouth and lower jaw, hidden beneath a wolverine mask, her
entire body, save for her breasts, buttocks and crotch, swathed in
a skin-tight suit of short fur. Kitty saw that where the fur did
not cover her, the girl's flesh was a musky brown colour, and
guessed she was probably of foreign origin, although not as dark as
the African slaves she had seen in the past few months.

'That's Oona,'
Nathan told her, noting her interest even though Kitty had tried to
conceal it. 'Comes from the Indies and she's one of the master's
favourites. She's a good hunting bitch, and they reckon she can
sniff a warm pussy at two hundred paces if the wind's blowing in
the right direction. If she catches you first, those teeth will
make yours sing, believe me. You'll be glad of the cunt strap then,
and you'd better pray the hunters come up before Oona gets it off
you.'

Kitty felt
herself turn cold as she stared at the wolf-girl. Oona, seeing the
newcomer, looked up and bared her teeth, her long tongue lolling
out of her mouth in a doglike fashion. Kitty bit into her gag and
barely managed to stifle a whimper of terror as she turned her head
away to avoid the piercing, primitive stare with which the girl
seemed determined to pin her. If anything could encourage Kitty to
run, and keep on running until the last dregs of strength drained
from her legs, it would be the memory of those eyes and teeth.

When the
shadowy figures first burst into the crypt and began stripping her
bondage from her, Matilda Pennywise felt a surge of relief course
through her body, but her rising spirits were just as swiftly
dashed on rocks of despair as she realised she was simply
exchanging one captivity for another. And this one, even though the
threat of imminent death had apparently been removed for the
moment, was in many ways more frightening, and certainly more
bewildering than what she had experienced at the hands of Crawley
and his minions.

As she stood
beside the other bird-girls now, despite the warmth of the steadily
climbing sun she felt herself shivering with trepidation. She
wondered what it was she had done to offend her Maker that he had
thrown her into yet another pit of depravity and terror. At first
she assumed these people must have something to do with that awful
witchfinder, but as she listened to snatches of conversation, she
came to understand that her new captors were something else
entirely. Furthermore, as the women unmasked once they were away
from the village, Matilda had been astonished to recognise one of
them as Jane Handiwell, the innkeeper's daughter, and yet another
as Lady Ellen Grayling, the daughter of the earl and younger sister
of Sir Roderick.

Both physically and mentally exhausted from her ordeal at
Crawley's hands, it took Matilda some time to realise the full
import of her new situation. She had never seen Grayling Hall close
up before, but she had glimpsed it several times from the hill
across the wide valley, so she recognised its outlines. Looking
about her now, she began to understand just why the Graylings kept
the place so well guarded. This was a different world altogether,
and a world no normal person would ever believe existed. Where
Crawley's wickedness was based on a brutal greed, this was a
reality founded upon lust alone, or so it seemed. It was a place
where human beings were reduced to the status of animals, or even
worse to helpless playthings for the amusement and satisfaction of
people to whom morality was an alien concept. Their attitude
towards their captives was impossible to describe. Matilda knew
that not one of the men she had met so far had the slightest
interest in her as a person. All she was to them was an object, a
creature, a
fucky-fucky
bird as the fellow had called her when he forced the leather
plug into her bottom and tightened the strap from which her long
tail now sprang. She was a creature to be harried and hunted, and
after that... she shuddered again, more violently than before, and
fought against the salty tears springing into her hooded
eyes.