The Devil's Surrogate Page 9

  Did Hannah still labour under the misapprehension that Crawley was holding her granddaughter and preparing to execute her? If the old woman had been in any way connected with swapping herself for Matilda (perhaps she had paid Jane and her friends to do the deed in the first place) might that not explain the old woman's disappearance? She and Matilda would surely be many miles away by now and unlikely to return until long after they were sure Crawley had left the area. In that case, there would be no attempt to pay a ransom, and even though it was obvious Crawley did not intend to release his prisoner anyway, if the money he demanded did not arrive, he would be very angry.

  Harriet shuddered.

  Isobel de Lednay was not only beginning to regret her impulsive wager (she had begun to regret it even before the maid finished fitting her bird tunic and mask) she was beginning to regret not withdrawing from it before it had become too late to do so.

  Now, with a gag strapped into her mouth beneath the beak (she had protested and tried to resist this, but to no avail) further argument was impossible, and she knew there was nothing for it but to run with the other bird girls when the order was given.

  The guests had watched her humiliation with a curious mixture of anticipation and stunned silence. Even the usually brash and obnoxious Bressingham seemed at a loss for words and made no comment when Grayling insisted she wear these awful nipple clamps with their attached bells. He pointed out that as the other girls had nipple rings it would give her an unfair advantage if she also were not obliged to wear them. 'At least I'm not insisting your teats be pierced, my sweet,' he had murmured as he tightened the round clamps, 'but we can't have totally silent birds in the woods, otherwise how will the hunters know where to start looking?' He then completed her ensemble by tying a length of ribbon between the rings, which would distinguish her from the other birds so only Bressingham would be permitted to hunt her.

  'However,' he announced to the gathering, 'if any other hunters see this pretty bird, they are at liberty to let Bressingham know where she is lurking.'

  A large hourglass filled with sand had been brought out from the house and set up on a small table in the centre of the lawn. Isobel saw the glass had been marked in several places, both at the top and at the bottom, and that the sand currently in the lower section would apparently take four hours to run through. She, however, only had to remain at liberty until the first hour's passing was marked.

  'When the first hour is up,' Grayling announced, 'I shall instruct the bell in the tower to be rung ten times. Its sound can be heard everywhere in the grounds and a good deal further, so there will be no mistaking when, or if, the wager has been completed.' He turned to where the actual hunters had gathered. The deadly-looking Oona squatted before a black-garbed figure who held her leash, and Isobel realised it was a female, although she was tall for a woman and her breasts were either small or bound flat against her chest beneath the leather jerkin. 'And now it is time. The birds are allowed a head start of four minutes. I shall count to two-hundred-and-fifty at a steady pace to make sure.'

  The bird-girls shuffled uneasily, eyeing each other as if wondering whether or not they should already be running and glancing at Oona, whose hands had been encased in strange glove-like pouches from which a steel claw projected at the end of each finger.

  Isobel turned her head to peer out at Grayling from her bird head, and he seemed to be looking directly at her.

  He raised a hand, and glanced back at the spectators, playing the drama to its full. 'If we're ready then,' he said, and dropping his hand with a flourish cried, 'Run, you little feathered whores!'

  Sarah nearly collapsed when Ross finally released and lifted her down from her terrible perch. Her knees buckled, the strength drained from every muscle by the prolonged and wracking orgasms her captor had inflicted upon her. Now, as he indicated for her to kneel before him, she was only too willing to obey. His manhood rose up straight and stiff despite the rigours to which it had subjected her as he leaned forward and unbuckled her gag strap, pulling the sodden and chewed wedge of leather out from between her teeth. She knew without being told what was now expected of her.

  Closing her eyes, she bobbed her head forward until she felt the head of his weapon bump against her lips. Slowly, she allowed her lips to slide over his taut, hot flesh until she had taken his head entirely into her mouth and it was pressing firmly against her tongue. The taste of it was at once salty and sweet, and Sarah realised she must in fact be sucking on her own juices. Ross grasped her head, forcing himself further into her reluctant mouth, and she all but gagged as his shaft pushed towards the back of her throat.

  'Make some effort now, my little bitch slave.'

  Reluctantly, she drew back until only the tip of his erection was between her lips, and then she plunged forward again, sucking firmly as she did so.

  'That's more like it... just keep that up, there's a good girl.'

  Sarah screwed her eyes tightly closed and began to work at the task with a slow rhythm that was rewarded by matching strokes of her hair by his fingers.

  'That's very good,' he said, and it seemed his voice had risen somewhat.

  She wondered if he was going to show the same restraint and control he had displayed during his prolonged fucking, or if he was now going to pay her the ultimate insult, having refused to come inside her body only to spend in her hapless mouth. Her answer was not long in coming.

  'Faster now,' he urged, thrusting forward to meet her movements and almost choking her in the process. 'That's it... damn you, you little bitch, but you have a soft mouth!'

  Sarah whimpered around her flesh-and-blood gag, but now she did not dare stop, and having come this far she began fiercely telling herself it no longer mattered, that anything was better than the punishments she had both received and witnessed. The air in this gloomy and bizarre little chamber seemed more oppressive than ever, and the only thought she now had was to please this beast and hopefully get out of this place as soon as possible.

  'That's it,' Ross gasped, and an instant later she felt her throat being sprayed with his hot, salty seed. She tried to pull back, but his hands grasped the back of her neck and held her to him, and she knew he would not release her until she performed the ultimate act. With a choking sob, Sarah swallowed.

  Matilda stumbled several times during the first few yards of her run, but she quickly realised that haste meant less speed and so she reduced her run to a short striding canter and began to take greater stock of her surroundings.

  Already the house and lawn were well hidden from view. The trees were tall and grew close together, and the undergrowth ranged from low-lying brambles to large, sprawling bushes taller than she was. The place truly was a wilderness, and but for pathways cut fairly clearly by human hands, she could have been in the depths of the most remote countryside weeks away from civilisation.

  The bells hanging from her nipple rings kept up a constant jingling as she ran, and there was no way she could bring her arms around far enough to suppress the sound. She tried calculating how much time had passed since she began running. She guessed maybe half of the four minutes must have elapsed, yet the time could just as easily be up and the bells would give her away if she was still moving once the hunters began approaching.

  She staggered to a halt, panting heavily and looking wildly around. Before her the trail forked left and right, but unless she wanted to risk remaining on the open pathways and offering no option to her pursuers other than a simple this way or that, she would have to risk making her way through the forest itself. Perhaps, she thought, there would be other turns after the fork, but there was little time now in which to find out. Assuming the hunters could run twice as fast as she could, she had less than five minutes before they would be able to hear her, and once they got a bearing on her position, she was unlikely to escape their clutches for long. Turning, she began to lope along the pathway again.

  All the bird-girls had been directed to enter the woods at different po
ints, so there was little chance of a hunter who chose her route stumbling across another victim to distract him. She had to find cover, but there seemed no way to make progress through such dense foliage. Praying the trees would thin out a little before long, she hesitated only for a moment when she came to the fork in the path before swinging off to the right. She almost cried out with relief when only a few paces along her chosen path the greenery on her right suddenly thinned out. A long clearing stretched at right angles to the path, and unless she was imagining things, several other narrower trails appeared to lead away from it at irregular intervals.

  Breathing hard, Matilda ran into the middle of the clearing, cursing the jingling bells and the constant pulling and jerking on her tender nipples. She had tried all along to ignore the hard leather phalluses, but as she ran they seemed to come alive inside her. Air whistled through the holes in her mask as she paused to try to get some air back into her aching lungs, and she used this brief interlude to try and think. She counted seven different paths leading away from the clearing, none of them very wide, and there was no guarantee they might not all peter out after only a few yards. However, if she kept thinking like this then she might as well give up now, and she had been warned what became of girls who allowed themselves to be caught too easily.

  Whether the paths led anywhere, more important was whether her pursuers knew if they did or not, or if their knowledge of the grounds was as sparse as her own. If the latter was the case, then the seven routes offered Matilda odds of seven to one, odds that, with any degree of luck, should give her a reasonable chance of remaining at large for more than an hour, perhaps even two. If she did choose a dead end, then she would go to ground and try to lay quiet in the hope that anyone who happened to follow the same path might not feel inclined to search too thoroughly.

  The last exit seemed the obvious choice since it would take her the furthest away from the hunting area... too obvious, she decided, for if she was followed this far, the hunter might realise her initial choice at the fork had been made with exactly this thought in mind. Two pathways to her right seemed to lead back in the approximate direction of the house, so she discounted those as well, although not before she allowed herself another couple of seconds to consider whether this fact alone might put off a would-be captor. In the end, she decided it would be too confining if she did go back that way, and after only an instant's hesitation she plunged down the central path to her left. She almost caught her foot against a trailing tree root, and flapping wildly to keep her balance silently cursed the bells, the tree, and above all the wickedness that had brought her to this pass.

  All the while as she ran, the image in her mind of the awful dog-woman began to grow, the fang-like teeth appearing to elongate in her mental picture, the baleful, predatory eyes seeming to shine with a sinister light...

  Isobel was faring no better than Matilda even though she began her run where the trees had seemed a little thinner and there was less growth underneath. However, after the first minute or so the forest began to close in on her, so when she came to the first turn she decided to take it in the hope that it would bring her around away from the denser areas.

  For about another two minutes it seemed her tactic had been a success, but although the trees remained well spaced, the bushes and brambles began to close in on her now and she was forced to slow to little more than a walk. She also had to jump over several tangled outcrops, an action that set her breasts bouncing uncomfortably and the attached nipple bells ringing loudly.

  She came to a halt, her winged arms hanging limply at her sides, air wheezing in and out of the narrow nostril openings in her mask, and was astonished to feel a surge of heat shoot upwards from her groin. She staggered sideways, all but losing her balance, and gasped around her gag as she realised the sensation was a fierce orgasm brought on by the dual attentions of the dildos Roderick Grayling had inserted into her with such enthusiasm. Tottering away from what path there was, she fell against the nearest tree, leaning on it for support as the waves of painful pleasure began to subside.

  Damn Grayling and his leather cocks, she thought, and damn her own body for surrendering so easily to their presence. At this rate she would have no hope of outrunning Bressingham, and aside from the interruptions her strength would also soon become completely sapped. With a groan that was as much determination as discomfort, she straightened up and looked around, but the second she tried to walk again the two shafts lodged inside her immediately threatened to cause another collapse.

  Isobel shook her head and tried desperately to concentrate on which way she should go now, telling herself to ignore everything from the waist down. She should be able to control her own body, especially when the things inside her were not in any way real. Finally, after what felt like several minutes but which in fact was only twenty seconds or so, she tried to walk again, biting deeply into the leather gag as she began moving towards what appeared to be a thinner area of bushes.

  The heat was still there, but now thoughts of Bressingham - who must even now be starting after her - began to override all other considerations. When the tangle beneath her boots eventually did give way to grass and hard mud, she found she could manage a brisk trot.

  Jane Handiwell had been fascinated by the dog-woman, Oona, since the very first time she laid eyes on her, although she knew that to describe the wild creature as feminine was not exactly accurate. Oona's firm breasts, flaring hips and prominent sex made her gender obvious, but Jane had seen her when she was aroused. The first time the sinister brown shaft began to emerge from the little African's vagina, she had assumed it to be just a malformed and overdeveloped clitoris. However, when the monstrous thing continued to grow and stiffen until it stood out, and up, a good eight or nine inches, Jane realised that Oona was equipped with as superb a cock as any man, and that she was that great a rarity - a genuine hermaphrodite. Oona not only possessed the equipment she also possessed a great appetite. The faintest scent of a female in a state of arousal was enough to bring a growl from her throat that gradually rose in pitch until it became a predatory howl that sent shivers down the spines of all who heard it.

  For the moment, however, Oona loped along in her usual curious fashion, not quite running on all fours but bent forward at the hip so her clawed fingers all but scraped the ground before her. The long leather leash from her collar led back to where Jane had wound it about her wrist, and as Ellen suggested, she carried a whip-cane in her other hand with a short but heavy whip coiled at her hip. Oona was human enough and intelligent enough to know the difference between hunter and hunted, but Jane was not taking any chances.

  The pair had initially chosen one of the more central paths, accompanied by a male hunter, but when the path divided the fellow decided to take the left turn and Jane had not bothered to suggest to him that Oona's nose was probably a far better guide than his instincts.

  'Hold there, Oona!' she cried now as the dog-girl suddenly lunged forward. She pulled firmly back on the leash, jerking the creature's head up, and when the baleful eyes turned towards her she lifted the cane in an unmistakable gesture. 'Steady, I say!' she snapped. 'No need to rush, you stupid animal. You may find it easy enough to run over this ground, but I most certainly do not. Now, let's see where we are.'

  Oona squatted obediently, waiting for the command to move off again as Jane turned slowly in a half circle, trying to fix a map in her mind. She knew these woods as well as anyone and knew also that it was possible to run around in circles almost blindly and miss several short cuts. From where they were - in an area that was not quite a clearing, but certainly not anywhere near as overgrown as most of the surrounding area - Jane knew there were only two real routes their quarry could take. Oona seemed to want to go right, but that way became a path barely two feet wide and with no obvious ways off it for perhaps a mile. At the same time, it wound around in a great loop and came back around to where the path on the left could take them by a far more direct route.

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sp; 'We'll let the silly bitch run her legs out,' Jane said dryly. She gathered some of the leash and tugged Oona around, pointing with the cane the way she wanted to go. To her surprise, the dog-girl seemed not only to understand but also to agree, panting and growling softly in the back of her throat. 'Not quite as dumb as they treat you, I see.' Jane chuckled. 'Well, maybe you're even a lot cleverer than that. You'd know these ways by now, probably almost as well as I, so let's move on and head our girl off around about where the stream rises from the foot of the hill. And don't worry, my little pagan beauty, you shall have first reward with her when we catch her. After being skewered on that fine cock of yours, she'll be nice and docile for me.' And probably grateful enough to have been delivered from Oona's clutches to do just about anything she demanded of her, Jane reflected, unable to suppress a grin of anticipation.

  Paddy Riley's eyes almost popped out of his head when the curious bird woman suddenly burst out of the bushes before them, explaining the curious jingling sounds he knew should have been enough to warn them to proceed with more caution. He was so taken aback that for a moment his military training completely deserted him and he stood frozen in astonishment. Behind him, both Sean Kelly and Toby Blaine were similarly brought up short.

  Before any of them could react, the woman turned and dove back into the undergrowth, the ringing of her bouncing bells echoing in the air behind her, and then gradually fading into the twittering of birds in the branches high above them.