Scene 11 – Aboard the Snatch

Two White Thighs fall to the ground, dead.

Bella’s whip retracts into its handle, which she hides again in the tool belt of the People Eater armor she’s wearing. “All too easy,” she murmurs as she slips into the empty auxiliary room and slides in front of a computer panel. She peers intently at the screen as she calls up menus.

Daniel plops into a seat beside her and spins a circle in the chair, playing with the safety on his rifle. “I can’t believe I had to shave.  Again.” He pulls off his helmet; his chin and his legs are both clean-shaven. “I thought you said body hair was the prerogative of a man.”

Bella stops him mid-spin with a hand on his knee. “Don’t sulk, Boy. It isn’t manly.” She rips her eyes from the screen for a moment to slide her finger up the inside of his thigh. “Hair or lack thereof don’t make the man, Daniel. But lack of hair does let us pass a moment longer, even if you’d never pass on close inspection.” She gently cradles the bulge beneath his skirt and rolls it between her fingers. “But you can thank my Intuition that we’ve encountered so few patrols. Well, that and the fact that they’re eating.”

Daniel’s brows furrow. “Eating?”

“Didn’t your mothers teach you anything about the White Thighs?” Bella frowned at him. “Well, I suppose that since we’re on their ship, I may as well show you. I just hope you’re man all the way through and have the stomach for it.”

* * *

They stand on a balcony overlooking the hollow of the ship – a canyon of dozens of open levels. It rings with the echoing cries of the women of Enduron. They are in pits, or cages, or chains, or tanks, or any number of other dungeonish confines. Teams of White Thighs move between them, each team following an administrator in crimson red robes. One team in particular catches the eyes of Bella and Daniel – they have chosen a cage full of women, and now slide it on rails off to a side chamber. At a subtle motion from Bella, she and Daniel slip off to a new vantage point to watch what happens.

In the side chamber, the woman in red approaches the cage while the White Thighs shift eagerly on their toes. Daniel strains to hear, but cannot – the red-robe seems to mutter questions to the women in the cage; she measures them, takes a prick of their blood and tastes it before making a note. Of the three women in the cage, the administrator selects only one and draws her out from the bars. She snaps a collar around the chosen woman’s neck, attaches it to a crackling pole, and leads her away, leaving the cage door open.

“What’s happening to her?” Daniel asks.

“She’s a new ‘recruit’,” Bella answers, half-distracted. “I never could figure out what it is they look for in a woman – maybe just that she fits into their uniforms. She’ll have her blood replaced now, and her head reprogrammed. The next anyone sees of her, she’ll be a White Thigh, as dedicated and single-minded as the rest.”

“What about those two?”

While the women inside scream, the White Thighs have sauntered forward to drag them both from the cage. The empty cage returns under its own power through the door to the main room. The women’s screams are piercing, but only mingle with the screams echoing throughout the ship.

“Dinner.” Bella clenches her jaw.

Before the door has finished closing behind the cage, the White Thighs are on the two – humping them, fingering them, biting them, licking them as they drag them to a dais that is equal parts table and bed. Limbs entwine, lips lock, and armor is discarded as the White Thighs guide the whimpering women into pleasing them, touching and kissing them back.  Beneath their helmets, the People Eater’s scalps are as hairless as the rest of them, and their eyes are white and cloudy.

As the White Thighs reach the level of excitement where a normal woman’s moans would threaten climax, their nibbles become bites that draw blood. The orgy turns to carnage, and the screams of the women are lost in gurgles, then nothing. The White Thighs tear at their entrails and meat with nothing more than their teeth and fingers. As they eat, long, protracted orgasms leaves them squirming and moaning.

Daniel covers his face in disgust, but Bella slaps his hands down and makes him watch. She hisses in his ear. “I told you before, Boy. These are the bad guys. That doesn’t mean we have a few minor differences in politics. They call themselves People Eaters because they eat people. This is the fate of the galaxy we’re talking about.” Daniel turns his head, but she grabs his chin. “How else did you think they kept such a well-stocked, obedient army? It’s not witty enlistment advertisements, I promise you.”

I hate to make him see this, to crush this bit of innocence in him. I hate that seeing it doesn’t affect me the same way it does him, not any more. Not after so many years. I want to kiss him, to go back to our time on the Beaver once more before he belongs to the galaxy. But I’ve already filled my reserves, and the Fertiles on this ship will need every last, wriggling sperm if they are to escape.

“We have to save them, Bella.”

“We are saving them, Daniel. Saving the Resistance is saving womankind. It will give meaning to the deaths of those who must die. Putting you into the hands of the Fertiles will save trillions across the galaxy. You fight death with life.”

“There’s so many of them.”

“Numbers don’t matter. The good side always wins eventually. Our ‘eventually’ is long past due.”

 

 
Jacquie flicked the page. “Jonas is such a tool. He pretends to be a friend to us, and this is his big statement about vampires?”

Riel nodded. “I’ve got to admit, it’s darker than I thought it would be. Especially for a Star Wars spoof. I think he’s got his markets mixed up, maybe.”

“Wait until you see the end.” Jacquie twisted in his lap so she could grin at him. She hadn’t yet reacted to the effect her wiggling rump had inside his pants, which showed an unprecedented level of restraint on her part. Or maybe she hadn’t noticed. “I helped him re-write it. Originally it was pretty stupid – the ship blew up, and there was some kind of trophy ceremony. I mean, there was a lot of sex, which was fun, but it was lame.”

“Oh it was?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t kinky. You people want kinky.” She wriggled in his lap again.

He traced one of the tigerstripes on her thighs and grinned. “Are these kinky?”

“For you they are. Apparently. I’m sitting on the evidence.” So she had noticed, and she hadn’t gone into rape mode. She hadn’t even grabbed his crotch. She was waiting for him to make the move. That, as much as anything else, was arousing. She hadn’t been all wrong about his tastes, after all. His hand slipped further up her thigh.

She responded by meeting his gaze, by bringing her face to his.

They kissed.

She’d had her lips on every square inch of his body at some point in the last few months, but this wasn’t like any kiss they’d shared before. It was a kiss between equals, a kiss between lovers, a kiss of discovery and connection. Her neck arched back, and for the first time his were the lips to trace down her throat, to nuzzle into her collar bone.

She purred, low and rumbling like a great cat, and he gasped for breath. “You know, uhm, Tiggrr, this blanket works just as well flat on the ground. If you wanted to-”

Her eyes snapped open. She was off his lap and backing away excitedly before he could finish. “Wait right here! No, on second thought, throw out that blanket for us. I’ve got the full costume in my bag back by the stairs. Even the Tiggrr tail! I’m going to give you a night you won’t forget – how’s about that for nice?” She grinned like a giddy co-ed and turned to run.

He shook his head and laughed, then checked his cameras. A warning blinked at the bottom of the laptop’s screen – movement in the front rooms of the brothel had tripped his sensor. He saw the lights in the interior hallway, the one that led away from the entertainment rooms. No new faces yet, though.  He checked his focus and made sure the mics were recording, then stood and threw out the blanket to make a bed for him and Jacquie. He settled down on the blanket, squirming until he found a spot where the plywood floor wasn’t quite so uncomfortable, then grabbed the script and flipped to the next page.

Bella and Daniel sneak to another level of the ship, away from the open chasm interior and into a network of corridors that pick up the architectural tones of the earlier dungeon and Lady Vain’s throne room. Everything is twilit or dark. The guards they evade aren’t the lavender-armored People Eaters any longer – these wear all-black rubber. The purple lights give the hallways an eerie, sickly glow.

Daniel and Bella have shed their White Thighs outfits; she wears only her semi-sheer body-stocking wrap, through which her tattoos show, and he has slipped back into a tunic skirt that displays his abs and chest. The air is thick and humid, leaving them both glistening with sweat.

Daniel stops Bella with a hand on her shoulder. “Where are we going?” he whispers. “I thought you said we were rescuing Princess Jade. She before the others.”

“We are, Boy, but she isn’t be mixed in with the general population. She’s in Lady Vain’s private cells. Shush now.”

* * *

Careful snaps of Bella’s whip end the un-lifes of the People Eater guards outside of the prisoner cell block. Inside, while the cells may be encased in bars, they are lavish things strewn with fur rugs and sumptuous pillows. Princess Jade is easy to find, as hers is the only cell occupied in this wing. She’s dressed as a slave in gold manacles, a collar, and filmy black fabric leaving her little pretense of modesty. She may be a ‘Fertile’, but she is obviously nubile. She stands, shaking free a very thin chain that bind her manacles and collar to the walls of the cell. Bella hurries forward to break each of the chains with her bare hands. “I’m pleased to find you still in such fine condition, your Radiance. But what of the other Fertiles…?”

Daniel stands in the doorway, mouth hanging open as he takes in the beauty of the Princess.

Jade smirks as she allows Bella to free her, but like Daniel she doesn’t truly see Bella; her eyes are only for the male. Her gaze clings to the curves of his chest just as tightly as the fabric she wears does hers. “I’m pleased for you to find me in this condition as well, Witch Ben-Wa.” She steps forward once the last chain has been snapped, past Bella, and runs her hands over Daniel’s muscular, breastless chest. “Sooo… This is the male.” She walks around him, and her hand slips up beneath his skirt to appraise his buttocks. When she returns to the front, her hand stays beneath the hem of his skirt and find his member. She strokes it to life as though she is already very familiar with men. “I like him. Very much.”

Bella’s expression is uncertain. “That’s well, your Radiance, because as soon as we can rescue you from this ship, you’ll need to start making babies. You and however many others of your Fertiles we can find.”

Jade leads him by the leash in his pants toward her bed of pillows. “Why wait? I could put his seed to good use this very moment.”

“Your Radiance – we don’t have a moment to spare. We must find the other Fertiles first!”

A cruel voice answers from behind them, “Oh, I can tell you exactly where your Fertiles are.” Lady Vain appears in the doorway of the cellblock, and behind her are dozens of her all-black People Eaters. She licks her lips and rubs her belly, and behind her the White Thighs chortle and do the same.

Bella’s eyes begin to glow. “Lady Vain.” Her voice drips hatred, and her whip flicks to life in her hands.

Lady Vain laughs. She holds up a hand to stop her guards from interfering. “Bella Ben-Wa.” She takes a step into the room, and produces her own whip – the handle is as black and flat as Bella’s is shiny. The filament that spools out of it glows red. “Are you really still alive? What has been sustaining you all these years, my dear, with no sperm to give you strength? Though I can see you’ve had your fill recently.” Her eyes glow behind her mask, as red as her whip. “I’ve found blood to be a suitable replacement. And unlike the seed of man, it’s in such great supply!”

The two Witches trade whip cracks as they circle each other. Bella’s face is all focus, but Lady Vain struts. She runs a finger under Daniel’s chin as she passes him by, laughing when he shies away and positions himself in front of the Princess. “So this is the one who will bring balance back to the galaxy, and you’ve brought him right to me. How sloppy. How delightful.”

Vain and Bella each toss their whips, but they anticipate each other’s movements too well. They circle in the room, driving Daniel and Jade back among the cushions. He spreads his arms wide, as though he could protect the princess. When he attempts to step forward into the duel though, Bella hisses, “Stay back. You cannot aid me now.”

Vain’s strutting is ostentatiously casual, while Bella remains tense. “I see how he moves, Ben-Wa. You’ve been teaching him the positions, haven’t you?” Her whip makes figure eights through the air and tears at the stone floor. Rainbow-colored feathers float above the remnants of the pillows she destroys. “How well have you prepared him for me, Ben-wa? How many does he know?”

“I know them all!” Daniel shouts in defiance, and Jade clutches him around his waist.

“Oh… Oh do you? I think not, if you speak out of line so.” Her eyes turn back to Bella, and her red lips curl back into something between a sneer and a grin. “You couldn’t teach him The Gift, could you? You Dead Eyes never had the ovaries to accept The Gift. Had you taught him, you might have been strong enough together to survive this day.” She smirks as they trade throws again, and Bella’s shoulder is gashed. Vain’s confidence swells while Bella’s wavers. “Did she tell you, Boy, what really happened to the men?”

“She told me enough! She told me the Enraged Clits killed them!” Daniel glances worriedly at Bella. Fear glistens behind his eyes.

“No, Boy. You killed yourselves.” She licked her lips. “Oh, the mind virus might have been planted by the Empress, but it was the men who Gifted themselves to us who designed the beams, who built the greatships, who set their own extermination in motion. A Gifted man is a slave to his very last cell, boy. His mistress’s most off-handed comment becomes his most fervent wish. And that is your fate, boy. It’s inescapable. If Bella did not bond you to her, it was only because she intended you for someone else. Your Princess, perhaps?” She sneers past Daniel at Jade.

“It’s not true!”

Vain cackles.

Bella responds through gritted teeth. “Search your feelings, Daniel. You may not have the Intuition, but you must sense I have only the best of intentions.”

Vain takes advantage of the moment to strike, and Bella barely manages to throw her whip in response; the two whips spiral around each other while the air around them crackles. Bella uses her shoulder to wipe blood from her cheek, but they are close enough that Vain’s long tongue can nearly flicker through the space between them to lap at the trickle. “You know as well as I, Vain, that he will overturn the order and slay the Empress. She Intuited it herself.”

“Of course she did.” They yank their whips free of each other.

They trade throws again, and this time a gash appears on Vain’s thigh.

They trade throws yet again; Bella is caught and yanked against Vain, who grabs her from behind into a crushing squeeze. The White Thighs in the doorway murmur with excitement.

Bella gasps. “Strike me down Vain – it doesn’t matter now whose hands he’s in. He’s here. You cannot prevent what has been Intuited.”

“As you say.” Vain runs an eager tongue over the cut on Bella’s cheek, then sinks her fangs into the Witch’s neck and drinks noisily and messily.

Riel flipped to the next page, then flipped back. The rest of the pages were a different font, the paper a different weight. At the top of the page, Jonas’ flowing cursive read ‘Jacqueline’s Revision’.

Blood erupts from behind Lady Vain’s lips as though the Witch’s veins were pressurized. Still Vain nuzzles into the wounds she’s made, letting the blood spray past her cheeks to stain her armor. Her fangs sink into the soft flesh of Bella’s neck again and again, like a lover’s phallus penetrating. Her tongue laps and lashes, reveling in the rush of blood. Vain clutches the Witch closer as her dying body trembles. There is so much life for it to give up.

Even after Bella’s eyes have gone glassy, Vain continues to feed. Her teeth have minced the flesh of Bella’s neck, but she only bites deeper, looking for fresh arteries to suckle. Bella’s leg has slipped limply between her thighs, and Vain grinds eagerly against it. Her moans are blissful.

The People eaters gibber with delight, and Daniel can do nothing but watch in horror, trapped as he is.

As Bella’s lifeless body is finally allowed to slump to the floor, her whip auto-retracts and rolls from her hand to Daniel’s feet. A torch has passed. He snatches it up and tries fruitlessly to extend the filament. “Stay behind me, Princess!”

Lady Vain licks her lips, though her face is smeared with blood well beyond her tongue’s reach. She steps slowly toward Daniel, a smirk growing on her face.

Jade’s arms wrap tighter around Daniel’s bare chest, and behind his shoulder her eyes narrow wickedly. She whispers into his ear, baring fangs of her own. “I will.”

 

* * *

 

Among the dark infinity of columns that is Lady Vain’s deck, a bed shrouded in black-silver lame rises from the polished floor. Daniel writhes in that bed, tormented by the cruel kisses of Princess Jade. Each of her kisses leaves a trickle of blood for her tongue to chase. Her body uses his for her pleasure; her nipples slide against his chest, push into his mouth; her thighs twine through his and squeeze.

 

Lady Vain comes. Her all-black People Eaters are her bridesmaids trailing behind her.  They remove her armor as she approaches, leaving only a patchy black Lycra bodysuit, conveniently slit to expose her anatomical interests. Like the white thighs she is completely hairless. Her eyes have no irises, only sharp, incisive pupils that drink in the sight of a naked Daniel. She kneels at the edge of the bed and the princess makes way for her, removing herself to one of his wrists to kiss and nibble.

 

Vain stares intently at Daniel’s erection, her attention something between disbelief and worship. Then she falls upon it, devouring it with her mouth, lavishing it with kisses. Her tongue curls and laps around it, flickers away the slightest budding of pre-cum, and though her fangs are long and sharp, she never bites.

 

Daniel continues to writhe from the mingled torture of corrupted pleasure and the horror of who is inflicting it upon him.

 

At last Vain mounts him, settling into a simple cowgirl position, and draws him up against her breasts. Her eyes glow red, and her evil laugh echoes through her infinity of columns.

 

 

 

Riel’s brows furrowed. Leia betraying Luke? Vader winning? This really was dark. Jonas – or Jacquie – had taken a hard left away from Star Wars somewhere and gotten lost in an entirely different kind of plot. And hadn’t Jacquie been saying something about writing vampires as single-dimensional villains? Still, this made the script a little more interesting – Riel actually wanted to continue reading now.

Where was Jacquie, anyway?

He peered through the plastic sheets closing off the stairwell, but when he didn’t see any movement, he glanced back his monitor. The brothel was coming to life. Or unlife, or undeath, or whatever. All of the hallway lights were lit, and now lights were flickering on across the length of a room he hardly ever saw them use – the conference room. He zoomed and refocused on faces he recognized – the Liannii, the Thervistii, the Dianians. These weren’t brothel deadgirls – these were functionaries. They wore their formal makeup – their facepaint, their stripes and dots and eyelids like butterflies. Kathy hadn’t been lying, after all. None of these were family mothers,though – just street-level fangers. So far. He angled the camera back on the door to the conference room, to catch faces when the mothers entered. This would be the night he’d have faces for Shibboleth, he knew it.

Only then did he hear movement through the sheets. Such bad timing. It hadn’t escaped him that this was the second time someone had dressed up as Tiggrr for him. The first time, Melody had ended up dead. Or undead, or whatever. She got him into this mess, anyway.

He expected to hear the clicking of Tiggrr’s plastic claws on the plywood, or maybe the flick of her tail through the plastic, but instead he heard the clomping of heeled boots – and more than one pair. He flipped to his back on the blanket, and looked up from a forest of lavender and purple plastic to see Lady Vain and her four White Thighs looming over him. “Again?” He shook his head. “Jacquie…”

“You know I’m a ‘me-first’ kind of girl. I told you, I promised them a taste of you! I owe them. And this time there’s no bedroom to lock me out of. Nowhere to run.” She produced a bullwhip of red-dyed leather from beneath her cape, and flung it out with a practiced crack.

“Look, Jacquie-”

“VAIN!” The whip snapped in the air a few feet from his head.

Riel closed his eyes rather than flinch, and opened them slowly. He gave her the look – the one that meant he was serious. The one she always ignored. “Jacquie, now’s not a good time. In fact, it’s the worst possible time.” He motioned toward the monitor to show her what was happening across the way, but she cut him off with another whipcrack.

Her features had hardened to something cruel, something that fit Vain. Her lips curled in a sneer, exposing fangs long enough to dig into her lower gums. “It’s never a good time with you, is it, Boy?” She motioned her four lackeys forward. Riel didn’t put fight when they fell on him to pin him to the blanket. One of them was close enough to reach his utility built, and within moments they’d spread the wealth of tent stakes and zip-ties he kept in the loops. They drove the tent stakes through blanket and plywood both in a single thrust, as easy as pushing a stick into beach sand. They tied him off to the stakes before thinking of removing his clothes, so there was a little bit of growled argument behind their masks before they finally decided to both pull down and push up his jeans until they were crumpled around his knees.

Then they bit. They were like maggots on a corpse, squirming over him, never leaving a gap between their mouths and his exposed flesh. They bit only deep enough for taste – only to spill his blood out of the smaller vessels in his forearms and calves, to paint his skin with his blood so they could lick it away without closing his wounds with their saliva. Where they’d bitten him – and where they bit him again, and again – burnt with a localized ecstasy like the reversed reflection of pain. Riel still didn’t fight as their ecstatic groans escaped their feasting; letting them have their way was his best chance to keep them from knocking over the tripod with his camera and laser mic; he was still recording everything happening across the road. Beside, as much as he hated giving into Jacquie, this wasn’t the worst sort of diversion.

He knew the effect his blood had deadgirls. They’d be sated before any of them had a pint, and be blooddrunk in minutes if they tried to take more.

One of the People Eaters moaned and finally drew her mouth away to wipe a smear of blood from her lips, then crawled up his leg to wrap her hand around his bare erection.

“There, Boy. Not the worst way to serve your betters, is it?” Jacquie-Vain clopped a half-circle around him to stop at the edge of blanket. She threw out the split skirts of her costume and knelt behind his head, framing it with her knees. With the claws on her gloves, she tickled his cheeks and beneath his jaw, and laughed when the People Eater leaning on his hips greedily shoved his erection into her mouth. When Riel gasped, Jacquie scooted herself forward and pressed her cool sex down against his face. It was a casual gesture, as it had been every time before, as casual as a businessman’s handshake. She lifted herself only for a moment to tug her panties to one side.

Jacquie released a long breath – a pent-up sigh that was almost a moan – and began to rock. “Oh, look,” she purred, and reached off to the side of the blanket, where the curled-up script sprawled open. “You got to the last scene. That’s the one I helped write.” She patted him on the chest. “And since you are unable to speak, it’s my turn to read aloud. You just make sure to show me how much you appreciate the entertainment, hmm?”