Chapter 2: Into a Black Forest Night

A pothole bounced her awake. Gretchen felt like hands pressed against her temple, squeezing and releasing. Strong hands like Wolf's. Not a headache exactly. More a painless throb. A canteen hung beside her cot, swinging as the vehicle swung it. Tape attached a note to it saying, "Drink this." The choking chemical dryness in her mouth made the message intensely appealing to her. With groggy hands she lifted the strap from the hook and opened the canteen and drank. It tasted like highly diluted orange juice when she poured it into her mouth, the container completely vertical, and swallowed several times. Not only did it quench her, it cleared her head.

Walls glowed bluish white around her at a low wattage. She discovered tubes of light behind white transparent plastic. Four cots in addition to hers had been fixed into place in the floor of the vehicle. Four bodies slept on them covered by reddish brown blankets. A large white apparatus with knobs and small gauges and a large monitor sat at the front right shut off.

Hearing voices, she lifted her body and found it restrained. Under the blanket, she discovered the belt strap across her abdomen. It had a buckle like a seat belt which she released and sat up, her feet resting on the metal floor. A curtain draped across the front side of the space the same color as the blanket. With gingerly care she tested her ability to stand and found despite the bouncing and the steady forward motion that she could balance.

A masculine voice she assumed to be Wolf and a feminine voice and laugh muffled by the curtain made the voices difficult to translate or for the masculine voice to be identified clearly as Wolf's. When she drew the curtain slightly at the center, she saw Wolf driving and a pretty woman with straight black hair and a flattish wide face and a small nose and wide lips. The bit of dialogue they exchanged before realizing their audience still couldn't be understood by Gretchen. It sounded like Romanian or Finnish.

The woman turned to her and smiled a pleasant smile, kind and warm. She had weird golden eyes Gretchen never thought existed in humans. Wolf glanced quickly back and smiled nearly as warmly as the woman. He seemed genuinely happy in the strange woman's presence which for some reason caused a wave of jealousy to tighten Gretchen's stomach.

"Ah Gretch, you're awake," Wolf spoke the obvious.

"Unless you're in my dream," Gretchen returned.

"Perhaps we're all subjects of someone's dreaming," the woman suggested, her voice warm and sweet.

"Gretchen, meet Katarina. She prefers Kat," Wolf introduced.

"How do you feel?" Kat asked.

"Surprisingly rested," Gretchen responded with a yawn. Wolf and Kat chuckled. Gretchen bowed low and glanced into the dark night only illuminated by the van's beams. "Where are we?"

"The Black Forest," Wolf answered. "Beyond that, the whole putting you to sleep thing would be rather superfluous. We'll be home in about an hour."

"Home?" Gretchen wondered silently

A pot hole nearly dropped Gretchen to the floor. Kat immediately unbuckled and rose from her seat. "Sit here my dear." Seeing Kat's form under her white sweater and tight white pants, tall and sleek yet not thin, more muscular, with smallish breasts and subtly curved waist didn't relieve Gretchen of jealousy. Another model's body like Maria's.

"What about you?" she asked.

"There's a little nest of cushions beside you. I've been comfortable for miles. I don't mind giving my seat up for Wolf's mate," replied the beautiful and seemingly sweet woman.

The leather seat looked inviting, so Gretchen ignored the implication of Kat's statement for a moment and slipped past her, feeling a definite muscular form press against her in the tight space, and took the passenger seat.

"I'm your mate, hunh?" Gretchen finally responded. "Seems old fashioned: a poor damsel torn from her town to be subjugated by the capturing soldier."

A half smile and a glint of sadness in his steel blue eyes on that handsome rugged face made Gretchen's tummy quiver. A familiar feeling ever since they met. "I love you," he told her.

"You don't know me," Gretchen objected.

"I feel like I've known you since ... since I matured enough to desire a mate. You desire me, don't you?"

Gretchen changed the subject. "You found Beatrix?"

"You'd be surprised how thorough the Stasi can be," Wolf answered.

Gretchen shook her head and sighed. "I'm not surprised. Paranoia is never a pathological fantasy in this fucked up regime."

"You're right about that," Wolf sadly agreed.

"So they're extraction ... the troupe ... it must have been witnessed."

"Of course my love. But we're quite good at disappearing into shadows."

"We? I thought you were a Stasi agent."

"Yes I was, and I hate that you hate me for that. But I'm not anymore. That little unpleasant stint has ended."

"Unpleasant?"

"Horrible?" he suggested and Gretchen nodded. "I can't claim I didn't bring horrors to a few of your comrades, and I can't excuse myself for such cruelty. All I can say is that nearly all of my captors deserved their fate."

"All of them did, Wolf," said Kat. "Tell her."

"She'll think I'm trying to sugar coat my cruel profession."

"Then I'll tell her," Kat pronounced.

Gretchen turned in her seat and looked past the seat back studying the kind looking woman with the weird eyes. "You love him, don't you?"

Kat smiled sweetly. "You're jealous. That is good. Perhaps love is too strong a word. But if love is an amplification of positive emotion, like like becoming love or desire intensifying to that highest level, perhaps I do love him. In my case it is respect that has been amplified. And hopefully he feels the same."

"I do," Wolf told Kat. "I guess in the time we've known each other, respect has become love."

"And to think how bloodily we clawed each other at the beginning," Kat waxed strangely nostalgic.

"Ah, Kat, where else could respect have been seeded, but sewn in respectable wounds?"

Kat snorted with laughter as did Wolf.

"Maybe respect grew to love with his cock plunging into your cunt?" Gretchen suggested.

Both Kat and Wolf chuckled.

"What's funny about that?" asked Gretchen.

"You deserve her, Wolf. She's a spry little sprite," Kat smiled. "But I'm afraid even if I desired the brute, it would be impossible. Our clans can't mate."

"Some sort of incest?" asked Gretchen.

"The opposite," Kat replied.

Wolf shook his head. "You're confusing her."

"I know. All will be revealed, lovely Gretchen. Try to be patient. Let me get back to where we started. Our relationship resembles allies between one principality and another. A little wary of the neighbor during peace, sharing an enemy brings us together to combine forces, and in that comingling, we learn trust which develops into respect and perhaps love. We discover surprising similarities and acknowledge and accept differences."

"So you're like negotiators or something?"

"Closer to generals," said Wolf. "Like in the big war with Montgomery and Eisenhower and De Gaulle."

Kat agreed. "Leaders chosen by ability and accomplishment rather than by the elected."

"Is that what alpha means, Wolf?" asked Gretchen.

"You remember."

"Of course. It seems like minutes ago when you said it."

"It's exactly what it means," said Wolf. "I'm to be my clan's alpha male if I can. I've been otherwise occupied for some time. And Kat plans to lead her clan."

"Why isn't there one?" Gretchen asked.

"A war and a puppet regime," Kat explained.

"That's thirty years," Gretchen exclaimed.

"Over forty," Wolf countered.

"So it's like your father commanded before or something?"

"It's not necessarily a blood lineage, but yes," he answered without looking at Gretchen. Gretchen felt he wasn't telling her something important.

"What happened to him? What happened in the war?"

"Hitler considered us undesirables," Kat explained matter-of-factly.

"Oh. Concentration camp?"

"Before them," Wolf sighed. "My father and most of my family were shot."

"Mine too," Kat said.

"I'm sorry."

Wolf let out a breath. "We've had years to mourn, Gretchen."

She could see his tear. "It's still a fresh wound. You were there. How old are you? You would have to have been an infant. How could you remember?"

"I remember it like it was yesterday, Gretchen."

Gretchen studied this man, this force of nature that had spun into her life and literally swept her away. He had an ageless face, but thirty perhaps? Thirty-five? No older.

As if reading her baffled mind, he told her, "I'm much older than I look."

Gretchen moved away from the confusion of age. "That makes sense."

"What makes sense Gretchen?" asked Kat.

"Your joining the Stasi. After all, the communists hated the Nazis."

"The enemy of the enemy," said Kat. "Not in this case. Communists wouldn't like us any more than the Nazis. We assimilated."

"You're not Stasi, are you Kat? You certainly don't look it."

Kat smiled. "Thank you Gretchen. No, I'm a doctor, a surgeon, mostly emergency work, but I'm officially military and a communist party member. If we went to war, I'd be out in the field heading medical operations."

"She outranks me," Wolf smiled. "She's a colonel. In fact this is how we first worked together: me driving her ambulance. I was a lieutenant then. I'm a major now."

"This is a military ambulance, isn't it? You guys stole it!"

"Hey, I designed it," said Kat proudly. "Why shouldn't I own it?"

"She's not only younger than she looks, but smarter. Although a few hours ago she nearly looked her age."

"What do you mean?" asked Gretchen.

"Show her, Kat."

"No thanks. I'm never going to put that shit on again."

Gretchen shook her head in confusion. The other two chuckled.

"We'll reveal everything when we get comfortably home," said Kat. "But first I wanted to make sure you see your mate in the proper light."

"My mate," Gretchen murmured.

"Yes," Kat insisted. "He's a great one. And you must be great too to have captured his soul after so many years being a lone wolf so to speak."

"I'm..." Gretchen began. She shrank into herself remembering her collapse into Wolf's arms, acting like a frightened child and how comforting he felt before he suddenly became her captor or whatever it is putting her here in this ambulance on this bumpy country road in the middle of the Black Forest.

"No question, Gretchen. Otherwise he wouldn't choose you. But Wolf..."

They heard a low feminine moan. Kat looked at her watch. "Must be Beatrix," she said. "Best to greet her with a familiar face, Gretchen."

Gretchen hopped off the seat and headed through the curtain. Kat stopped her briefly, handing her a foam cushion, explaining, "For your knees."

Trying to stand in the jostling ambulance and looming too big over her frightened friend, Gretchen quickly thanked Kat in her mind as she dropped the thick foam pad and kneeled on it. She grabbed the canteen hanging over Trix and told her to drink its contents.

Trix did and smiled afterward, "You're a sight for sore eyes, Gretch. Where the fuck are we?"

"In an army ambulance in the middle of the Black Forest. Come say high to your abductor and his charming friend."

"Wolfgang? I'd rather kill the fucker!"

"I think he's saving us, Trix."

"He fucking shoved a needle into my fucking neck!"

"How do you feel?"

Contemplating her condition, Trix's eyes went wide. "Fucking feel more rested than I have in fucking ages! Did you tell him where to find me?"

Gretchen sighed. "I might have, but he put me out before I could."

"Why... ?"

"I have no idea why I trust him. He's fucking Stasi, or at least he was before I ... interrupted his life I guess. But he knew about your little S and M studio. I never told him."

"But you would have?"

Gretchen sighed again and nodded. "Come meet Kat."

Long legs separated to ride the bumps, Trix followed Gretchen through the curtain.

"How are you Beatrix?" Wolf asked her. She growled. Then she glanced at the woman sitting on the floor of the ambulance behind the shotgun seat and saw the sweetest smile.

"I'm Katarina. Call me Kat. There are cushions behind you. It's fairly comfortable."

"Trixie," said Trixie, continuing to stare at the beatific black haired woman. "I think I love you. What did I just say?"

Kat chuckled. "I love you, too, Beatrix. Sit. So are you the S or the M?"

"Mistress Bea. I prefer giving pain and humiliation rather than receiving it."

"Pity."

"But for you, I'd switch."

Kat's golden eyes gleamed. Her mouth opened. Her tongue licked across her lips and what appeared to be fangs. Instead of freaking out, Trix became even more turned on by this complicated woman, sweet and scary simultaneously. "I never tried, but I fantasized," said Kat. "And I'm a doctor so I could soothe the wounds. Perhaps we could switch back and forth."

"I think I'd like that," Trix cooed.

"Speaking of switching," Wolf warned, "the moon seems strong tonight. Almost full."

"I'll be good, Wolf. Sorry," said Kat.

"And I know what a sadist you can be despite that angelic pretense."

"Only a couple nights a month, Wolf. We could play anytime we want, right Bea?"

"Yes Mistress," Trix murmured, transfixed.

"Can females mate?" asked Gretchen mystified by her transformed friend.

"No my love," Wolf explained with a wry smile. "At least not in the same way as we are or will be. But they can have fun and they can have a strong bond. Although it's rare in Kat's family, when it happens, it's intense, almost like a true mating. Actually her clan doesn't usually mate for life like mine, so a female bond is as close to mating as they get. Just no offspring of course."

"We share offspring," said Kat, "from the same source. You like men, don't you Beatrix?"

"Mostly professionally, but a nice cock comes in handy every once in a while so to speak."

"I know what you mean," Kat purred.

"Uhm, Katarina, you were going to tell us about my heroic so called mate," Gretchen interrupted the weird love fest behind her.

Kat cleared her throat. "He is your mate and you know it Gretchen. The quicker you realize it the happier you and Wolf will be. I've known Wolf for a long time, a lifetime really, and I know his heart. He seems the beast sometimes, especially when he's riled, but even then he walks a righteous path. He's killed. He's a soldier after all. But every one of his victims deserved to die."

"Only the human ones," Wolf interrupted. "Those poor boars never did an evil deed."

"But we must eat, my friend. They are sacrifices to our needs. We live in nature and it's inherently cruel. But see? He's even compassionate about those savage little creatures he hunts for his family. But as far as humans, as a Stasi agent he managed whenever he could to let the good ones slip through."

"What are you talking about?" Gretchen growled. "He hunts subversives. He hunts down people like me and tosses them into the hands of torturers."

"How many subversives have you been successful in capturing on your own?" Kat asked Wolf.

"Six."

"See?"

"Why?" asked Kat.

"They were full of shit," said Wolf with a menacing growl.

"What made them full of shit?" asked Gretchen. "Because they wished to end the tyranny?"

"A couple raped their fellow revolutionaries," Wolf explained. "They both liked high spirited women like you, Gretchen. Two worked both sides for profit. I made sure my bosses thought they eventually chose the wrong side."

"And the fifth?' asked Kat.

"The fifth," Wolf spat. "He was worse than the fucking SS so called 'werewolves'. He liked watching people die. He played terrorist, blowing up party functions, thriving on the blood and the mayhem. He had fucking cum in his pants when I caught him."

"And last but certainly not least..." Kat led.

" ... Chomsky, the so called White Russian."

Trix's eyes went wide. "You caught that motherfucker?"

"Who's Chomsky?" asked Gretchen.

"Didn't Michael tell you?"

"I'm not as close to him as you."

"Michael had a friend in high school," Trixie explained. "They learned to be gay together. Sammy. Sammy was even more rebellious than Michael. He disappeared and a couple years later they found..."

"What?" asked Gretchen.

"It's incredibly gruesome," said Wolf.

"Tell me."

Wolf sighed. "Chomsky had a room he kept locked. His study. It was lined ... with his victims. Their faces and their ... assholes like leather walls, skins stripped from their bodies and stretched."

"Oh my God.," spat Gretchen. "Fucking government. I bet they knew about gay men disappearing and never warned anyone! How many?"

"Fifteen known victims," Wolf growled. "All teenagers. All gay. Chomsky managed to appear the devout anti-communist, proselytizer of the first order and obviously used his skill to attract his victims. I made sure he was singled out as a dangerous subversive and led the police to his monstrous study. How did Michael find out?"

"Sammy's mother. She was a burr in the police's boots insisting they pursue his disappearance. She found an investigator's ear."

"Kessler. I made sure he led the discovery. We became good friends and swapped favors more than once."

"But only six?" asked Gretchen.

Wolf chuckled. Gretchen actually smiled back admiringly, but quickly pouted.

Kat answered. "You met Maria. Her and Wolf mostly worked on black marketers."

Gretchen continued her pout. "Using sex I hear. Quite effectively, at least Maria."

"Me too," said Wolf enjoying the jealous rage he wrought in his cute dynamo's face. "But that's all done, my love. Only you reap the reward of my well honed skills."

"Suddenly, after making love to countless women, you'll only fuck me?"

"You have that reversed. I never made love to any women. I fucked them. I very much look forward to the first time I make love and everytime after, my love, to only you."

Despite her fierce look, she nearly came from his statement. Wolf's highly effective olfactory sense bathed in her sweet libidinous odor. His tongue craved the taste. His fully engorged penis tightened the crotch of his pants uncomfortably. He displayed his hunger for her on his face. It effected her, softening her expression and changing it to desire, subtler than his but clearly visible. It became less subtle when she glanced down to his crotch and saw the long thick hill created by his tumescence. The plum sized glans hinted there made her lick her lips imagining licking it as it filled her mouth or opened her pussy to its fullest, causing all kinds of wonderful friction.