Chapter 12C

"If I'm not there, anyone who answers can be trusted with a message."

"You ought to get a cell phone," she said, handing me a card to keep.

"Next thing on my list. I swear. This is early days for me, here. I'm still getting the equipment sorted out."

'Equipment' to her meant only one thing. She asked, "What sort of piece do you carry? Or is that a question you can't answer?"

I grinned and looked around for something destructible. A few feet away, there was a temporary barrier fence around a work-site where they were putting up another one of those granite benches. I walked over and picked up a five-foot long steel fencepost that was lying on the ground beside some building materials and went back to where Gail was standing near the still-horizontal perp.

"See this?" I asked, holding the fence post out to her. She took it and hefted it in her hands. It was a standard fencepost, with a W-shaped cross-section and a coat of dark green paint. She handed it back and I did my trick and turned it into a big pretzel in one smooth motion. I dropped it on the ground, where it hit with a dull thump. The ease with which I did it surprised me. Apparently, in addition to the recent improvements in my eyesight, I was still getting stronger as well. That also explained why I had gone airborne while jumping over the bench.

Gail stared at the twisted post and then she stared at me. She blinked like she thought there might be something in her eyes that was affecting her vision. While I waited for her to say something, Neeka put in her two cents.

"You show-off! You love doing that, don't you?"

"Yes, I do. I enjoy seeing their faces. It's like they suddenly wake up and find that the world is a different place from what they thought it was. Right now, Gail looks like she just found out that Santa Claus is real after all. Wait a sec, where are you?"

"Still in the garage with the bike. And yes, our range does seem to have increased. I haven't been able to read you this far away before. We've been together all weekend, so I don't know if it's a sudden thing or if it happened gradually."

"Maybe it happened Saturday, when we... merged."

"More likely it's just part of an across-the-board improvement you're having. It seems to come in spurts."

"Don't talk dirty. Did you hear Gail talking about The Torturer?"

"Yeah. It must be bad if a veteran cop like her can't bring herself to describe it."

"We can only hope."

"Hush! You be careful! I think you're getting cocky."

"He, he! Must be all that testosterone in my system."

"You think you're kidding. Maybe you're not."

"Oh, no! I hadn't considered that! I'd just been happy not to have an itchy pussy every two hours. You think all this boy-juice in me might be affecting my behavior?"

"Too much of a good thing? It's a possibility."

It was true. I was feeling a little jazzed. I had been very quick to show-off for Gail, like she was a girl I was trying to impress. Actually, that's just what I was thinking at the time. I hadn't been trying to get her to like me as a person as much as I had been trying to impress her with my speed and my strength — just like a boy.

I thought back to yesterday when I deliberately turned my clit into a small cock, and then used it to pleasure a girl. I remembered the exquisite feeling of thrusting my organ into Jolene. I remembered the heady feeling that penetrating her gave me, her expression when she felt me enter her, and the feeling of power it gave me to make her cum. Could all of that been due to male hormones?

I was so deep in reflection that I missed what Gail said to me when she got over being impressed by my macho display.

"Hunh?" I said.

"I said, 'if I hadn't seen it, I never would have believed it'. That wasn't a trick, was it?"

"No, it was real," I said, apologetically. "Please excuse me. I shouldn't be showing off like that. It isn't ladylike."

"Not ladylike, she says." Gail picked up the ruined fencepost and turned it over in her hands. "It's warm," she said.

"It's the atoms of the metal being rubbed together. They are momentarily being forced to behave like a fluid and when the metal stops moving the energy gets released as heat. It's conservation of energy, the first law of thermodynamics." I suppose that's what I get for paying attention in Physics class.

"Please don't take this the wrong way," Gail said, "but are you from this planet?"

I started to laugh out loud at that one. It was the first time someone had accused me of being an alien from outer space. I stopped in mid-chuckle when I saw she wasn't kidding.

The temptation to spin a yarn for her about me being from the planet Zygnxx-Prime in a galaxy far-far away; being stranded on Earth when my flying saucer crashed; and having to wait ten years for an intergalactic tow-truck to pick me up was almost too much to bear. I managed to resist, but a smile fought its way to my lips.

"Somewhere else you might ask that," I said. "But I think you mean, 'you ain't fum 'round heah, are ya?'" I put on my best Southern drawl for that and it came out perfectly.

Somehow space aliens and Southern drawls just don't go together. Gail laughed so hard her eyes began to water and tears rolled down her cheeks.

"OK, I guess that answers my question," she said.

A car so plain it had to belong to the government pulled up in the boathouse parking lot. Sgt Adams collected her prisoner and marched him off. Since I was already halfway around the lake, I decided to keep going in the same direction.

As I jogged along, I was still smiling over the story I had been about to tell Gail. It sounded just dumb enough to be plausible and I wondered if I might be able to use it on someone later on.

There were even fewer people in this section of the park than there had been near the garage and the picnic area. I didn't see anyone other than a Sanitation worker with his trash-barrel on wheels and his broom. He was sweeping up some trash on the path ahead of me, so I slowed to a walk so as not to trip over the broad-headed broom.

He glanced up as I stepped past him and I nodded as I went past. I had only gone a couple of steps further when a hand clamped a cloth over my face and yanked me off my feet.

For an instant I was too startled to react. Since he seemed to be threatening to smother me, I took a deep breath to get some oxygen. I knew as soon as I did so that it wasn't a good idea. The sickly-sweet smell from the cloth told me he had dosed it with some sort of drug intended to render me helpless.

"I can deal with that," I thought. "I just have to crank up my metabolism and I'll burn it off before it can take affect. I just..." At that instant, everything went black.

I woke up with Neeka screaming in my head. Her lovely voice had acquired a distinctly unpleasant shrillness and I wished that she would be quiet and let me wake up without being screamed at.

"Sam! Sam! Thank goodness! You were..."

"Unconscious? Yeah. Thanks. I got that part." I swam closer to wakefulness and examined my most recent memories for clues to my condition. "Some guy chloroformed me. I just woke up. Ugh! How long was I out?"

"About an hour. I was so worried. I could hear you, but you weren't thinking or even dreaming. It was just black. Are you all right?"

"I don't know. I haven't opened my eyes yet. My eyelids feel like lead. Hold the line a minute."

"'Hold the line'? I was woozier than I thought. I concentrated hard, took several deep breaths and dumped adrenalin into my bloodstream to try to neutralize the drug. In books, everyone wakes up from being drugged with a bad headache. I seemed to have a more considerate kidnapper. Whatever he used left me with only a dopey feeling and a bad taste on the back of my tongue. While I concentrated, the fog parted and the fuzziness faded. Soon, I felt able to peek out at the world and see what was going on.

From the moment I opened my eyes, I knew I was in deep shit. The wooden beams, the rock walls, the glowing brazier, the smell of charcoal, hot iron, stale sweat and other, more disgusting things; all of this told me that I was in the hands of someone truly dedicated to his hobby. What kind of person builds his own medieval torture chamber? I was afraid the answer to that was obvious — the kind of person who is really into torturing people.

"Where are you?" Neeka asked.

"In a dungeon, as far as I can tell. A very authentic-looking one, too. It's got rock walls and torches and there's a big iron thing with hot coals and what looks like branding irons in it. Where are you?"

"Riding around the park, looking for you. I can't get a fix. You could be anywhere."

"In an hour, he could have taken me just about anyplace."

"Maybe not. You faded out when I got more than a mile away from the park. You're probably still in the area. He wouldn't risk carrying his victims very far, would he? I bet you aren't more than a few blocks away from where he grabbed you. Can you move? Can you get out?"

I tried to sit up. I tried to raise my arms. I tried to lift my legs. It was all a no-go. I could move my hands and feet, but not my arms or legs. I could raise my head, but I could not sit up because there was a wide strap across my upper chest and shoulders. I felt another one across my hips and there seemed to be one on each thigh and each calf and both my upper and lower arms. I was pinned very effectively to what felt like a metal examining table. There was worse news, however.

"Neeka? I'm naked. He took my clothes. I can lift my head, but that's about it. It feels like I'm strapped down on a big metal table. I can just see the edge of it. It looks like it's made in the outline of a person."

"Is he there?"

"Not at the moment. I can't see behind me, but I don't hear anything but the fire burning in the brazier. You might look for the smoke. With all the fire, it's pretty warm in here. It feels like being at the beach in July."

"Can you get free?"

I tried. I tried very hard and I tried harder than that, but I got nowhere. The straps looked like the nylon webbing stuff that seatbelts are made of; only these were at least six inches wide. Regular seat belts are made to hold against thousands of pounds of pull. These straps didn't even need to be very strong, because I could not get any leverage to push or pull against them. It seemed like the restraints were there as much to keep me from hurting myself as I struggled as to keep me from getting free. I tried to decide what that implied about what was going to happen to me, but I was still to groggy from the drug to think clearly.

"No. I'm strapped down so tight, I can't move an inch."

"Do you want me to call for help?"

I thought about it. Help would be nice. Rescue would be wonderful. For a moment, I indulged in the luxury of hope. Then, the reality of my situation sunk in.

"No. Unless we can figure out where I am, it would be useless. Remember, they've searched before and found nothing. He's been at this for long enough to feel safe and maybe he's so well hidden that we'd have to turn the whole city upside down to find him, but maybe he has also gotten complacent. Maybe he'll make a mistake and I can get free. I'm OK so far. Let's just wait."

"OK, it's your call. I'm going to park near where you were when he attacked you. I'll be ready if you need me."

"Thanks." It was with a great amount of reluctance that I cut off our mental contact. But I knew that my best chance of getting out of this alive would be to focus completely on my situation and exclude any outside distractions. Neeka understood this too, and while I was certain she listened in to what I was thinking, she kept perfectly quiet so as not to distract me.

I experimented by trying to move in various directions to see if there was any slack that I could exploit. The table shifted slightly as I struggled. It seemed to be hinged in various places to allow it to bend and the legs to pivot independently, but I could shift it only a fraction of an inch in any direction. Whoever built it had gone to a lot of trouble and taken his time doing it. This guy was very detail-oriented.

I tried twisting my head around to see more of the room. There were wooden trestle tables with what looked like tools on them. There were also boxes and bins. A row of pegs on the wall held an assortment of whips in various lengths and types. I hoped that those were just set dressing, like I hoped the brazier of hot coals with its cluster of metal rods sticking out the sides was also just a prop. With my head turned as far as I could get it, I noticed that there was a big bellows-thing on the floor under the metal brazier. It looked like it could be operated by foot to blow more air into the glowing bed of coals. Apparently red-hot wasn't good enough for this guy. He needed things hotter; and that was another bit of information that I could have gone without knowing.

As much as this place looked like a movie set, I kept remembering that whoever built it was not into play-acting. He had done some very real and very nasty things to some very unlucky girls, and now it looked like I was going to find out for myself just what those nasty things were.

If this were a movie, that would have been the bad guy's cue to come into the room. This wasn't a movie, however, and I had a long time to wait. A knot of fear grew in the pit of my stomach until it threatened to crawl up my throat and choke me. I started breathing so hard I almost hyperventilated myself into a faint. With a certain amount of difficulty, I got control of that before I passed out.

It came to me that maybe I wasn't as smart or as brave or as strong as I thought I was. I had fallen into the same trap as every other girl this guy had captured and now I was stuck on his working table, waiting like a fly in a spider's web for him to come along and devour me. Neeka was right. I had gotten cocky. I had lost much of the fear of things that I should have stayed afraid of and now that looked like it might just be a fatal mistake. The thought that I might die in this awful place scared me almost as much as the fear of being seriously hurt by some lunatic and I started hyperventilating again.

While I was working to control my breathing, I became aware of my heartbeat. It sounded like a drumbeat inside my head. The more I listened to it, the louder and faster it got until I felt that my heart would explode in my chest. That brought on another bout of paralyzing fear, since I knew I was quite capable of doing things to myself that I might not be able to undo before it killed me. That was humiliating. If my captor didn't do me in, I might let my own fear do it for him.

The understanding that I was falling victim to my own psychosomatic reactions was a nice intellectual victory, but I still had to fight to regain physical control. Every time I thought I had managed to get on top of things, something else distracted me. The sound of the coals cracking and metal popping startled me each time it happened. I imagined that I heard things crawling and slithering around me, just out of my sight. The flickering light from the torches made everything in the room seem to move and I jerked my head left and right, expecting to catch something in the act of creeping up on me.

When I heard the door open behind me, I jumped in surprise and almost screamed with both terror and relief. At last I would get to see the person behind all this.

When he stepped into view, I didn't know whether to scream or laugh. He was dressed completely in black leather with black metal studs all over. His head was completely enclosed in a leather hood with a studded flap across the mouth, and he wore heavy leather gauntlets on his hands. If he held his head at the right angle to the torchlight, I could just make out his eyes through the rectangular slits in the mask. He was the perfect image of Hollywood's version of a medieval torturer. It was almost funny, but very disturbingly real.

"Where am I?" I asked, more to get him to speak than from any hope that he would really answer the question and I could tell Neeka where to send the cops.

He said nothing. He went over to the table and opened a box and reached inside. he came over to me and held something up in front of my face. It looked like a big ring with straps on it.

"Open your mouth," he said. His voice was soft and high-pitched. It didn't go at all with the leather and the studs.

"Why?" I asked, trying to keep him talking.

Instead of an answer, he reached out to the brazier and pulled out a short metal rod with a sharp point on it. The point and about three inches of the rod was glowing cherry red. He held it directly in front of my eyes so I could get a nice close look at it. My face prickled from the intense heat and my eyes started to tear up. It was a very convincing argument for my cooperation and I opened my mouth wide without making any further comment.

He put the hot iron back into the brazier and held the ring in front of my mouth again. I strained to open my mouth wider, and then wider still when he didn't move. Finally, with my jaws about to unhinge, he dropped the ring into my mouth, where my teeth closed on it by reflex.

He fastened the straps behind my head, pulling the ring even further into my mouth. Then he bent over and looked through the ring into my mouth — what for I had no clue.

"Rules," he said, tersely. He had a slight lisp as well as a high voice and the hiss was starting to creep me out. "You may not talk. You may scream if you like. I expect that. If you try to talk there will be pain. Do you understand?"

Without thinking, I said, "Ah unuhhanh" and realized that I had just broken the first rule. Now I was going to suffer the consequence.