The soldier she’d glimpsed outside the mess hall knelt next to the woman he’d shot and felt for a pulse. Then he showed Allyson a grim expression and said, “She’s dead.”
Allyson nodded.
Then the world went fuzzy and she fell into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The view from the balcony pleased her more with each passing day. A small, ramshackle community was rapidly taking shape out there in that alien desert, with numerous primitive huts and a handful of prefab buildings and trailers dotting the landscape. The huts functioned as the new living quarters for the slaves. The prefab buildings and trailers-which were surrounded by a chain-link fence tipped with barbed wire-housed the Black Brigade compound. Plans for the near future included the establishment of a large, open-air marketplace, drinking halls, and places of entertainment, where the live sex and torture shows once enjoyed by the Overlords of Below would be resurrected.
Giselle’s intent was to fashion the incipient city into a bustling center of filth and decadence, of tawdry spectacle and ultimate corruption. She imagined the new community several months hence. A fully realized city of the damned. Used-up prostitutes bleeding to death in alleys, razor-wielding psychopaths prowling dark streets, murderers and petty criminals alike strung up from public gallows, children ripped from the arms of their parents and made to watch as mommy and daddy were raped and slaughtered in the streets by Black Brigade soldiers, and all-night fetish/torture sessions in a lounge reserved exclusively for an elite few in the Brigade’s power structure.
The vividly imagined atrocities brought a smile to her face.
Beyond the embryonic city, hundreds of slaves clad only in loincloths and sandals continued to work at hauling huge slabs of stone toward the steadily rising structure just visible at the edge of the horizon. The technology and machinery necessary to greatly speed up the construction process was available, but, as with so many other things, Giselle preferred to do the job the old-fashioned way. She liked watching the slaves toil. But there was a purpose to the method beyond the simple joys of casual cruelty. The human misery honored the death gods, who drew sustenance from pain and gave power to those who appeased them. The city taking shape beneath her would also honor the death gods. Giselle would provide the old ones with a veritable feast of suffering and death, a nonstop carnivale of depravity unlike anything they’d seen before, eclipsing anything from Medieval times or modern war. Her forces were working continually to cull thousands of sacrifices from normal human communities, mostly the marginalized people no one in authority cared much about. Poor people. Prostitutes, runaways and drug addicts. This in addition to the handful of societal castaways who managed to find their way here by accident every year. Ms. Wickman had largely contented herself with the random strays who happened into her territory, but Giselle had no interest in conservatism. She was determined to be bold. To do big things, bigger even than the Master had ever envisioned.
She heard a click of heels behind her. A moment later Ursula was standing to her right, leaning over the balcony railing to stare intently at the bustling, busy forms a half mile below. “Wow, Razor City is really coming along.”
Giselle glanced at her lover and smiled. “Yes. I enjoy watching it grow.”
Ursula was wearing a long, cream-colored backless dress woven from a thin, clingy fabric. It adhered to the pronounced curves of her long, slender body in a way that made Giselle’s breath quicken. Her hair was an almost white shade of blonde. It was long and straight and fell in a brilliant spray across the pale expanse of her back. Her flesh was the incandescent white of one who has spent nearly all her life indoors. That and her fine, regal features made her look like an ice queen from a fairy tale. Ursula turned her head to look at Giselle and the spray of hair across her back rippled and shifted, revealing a small birthmark on her left shoulder.
Ursula lifted an eyebrow. “Are you having naughty thoughts, Mistress?”
Giselle moved closer and laid a hand on her lover’s back, enjoying the way Ursula shuddered slightly at her touch. “Perhaps.” She moved her hand slowly over Ursula’s back. “Are you in a mood to tempt me?”
Ursula licked her lips and said, “Always.”
Giselle pulled the woman into a sudden embrace and kissed her with vigor. Ursula matched her hunger and grabbed at her hair, pulled her head back to kiss her throat and the hollow between her breasts. Then Giselle grabbed her by the hand and led her back into her quarters and the huge, plush bed they’d shared so many times over the last month. They disrobed quickly and fell upon each other in the bed, rolling over the soft sheets, limbs shifting and intertwining, mouths warm and seeking, hands rubbing and probing. A little later, when they lay sated and still in each other’s arms, Giselle said, “I feel like giving you a present.”
Ursula squealed with delight and sat up suddenly, bouncing up and down for a moment before exclaiming, “I love presents!”
Giselle smiled. “Would you like to play tonight?”
Ursula’s eyes opened wide and an eager grin made her pale flesh almost glow. “We haven’t played in days! Oh! Do I get to do whatever I want to our playmate?”
“Anything your heart desires.”
“Anything? Seriously? Even…”
Giselle laughed. “Even that.”
Ursula moved to the side of the bed and lifted a bell off a marble end table. “Should I ring for Mr. Schreck?” She shook the bell by its black handle (though not hard enough to produce a tone) and grinned. “Have him fetch one of the fresher arrivals, perhaps?”
Giselle pulled Ursula close again and stroked the girl’s long, shimmering hair. Hair the color of sunshine. “You’ve wanted a playmate and you’ll have one. But I want to properly show my affection for you. No mere slave will do.”
Ursula gasped. “You can’t mean…no, you can’t, surely not. Do you mean…” She made a sound of exasperation. “Oh, I can’t make myself say it.”
Giselle clasped hands with Ursula. The younger girl’s chest was heaving as she struggled to control a burgeoning euphoria. It was a lovely, delicious thing to see. “Darling, is there any one person you hate more than anything else in the world?”
Ursula’s eyes blazed with a degree of intense excitement Giselle normally only glimpsed in the deepest throes of passion. “Gwendolyn.”
Giselle smiled. “I thought as much. Which is why I’ve taken the liberty of planning ahead.”
Ursula clapped her hands together and squealed.“Yes!”
Giselle got off the bed and strode quickly to a nearby wardrobe. She opened the wardrobe and withdrew a pink satin bathrobe, which she shrugged into and closed by loosely knotting the white sash at the waist. Then she crooked a finger at Ursula and said, “Follow me.”
Ursula hopped off the bed and hurried to catch up with Giselle, who had just come to a stop at a blank patch of wall. “Why are we staring at this wall?” Ursula crossed slim arms beneath her breasts and frowned. “I want Gwendolyn.”
“This is no ordinary wall, dear.”
Ursula’s frown deepened. “Stop teasing me and get on with it.”
The girl’s impatience made Giselle pause a moment longer. She wanted to spoil Ursula. Wanted to pamper her, give her everything she desired. But her behavior at the moment was a shade shy of outright insolence. She considered delaying gratification for Ursula a while longer, even briefly thought of withdrawing the gift altogether.