Sea Monster's Revenge

by Laer Carroll

At the water's edge she advanced toward the mansion, then re-entered the forest and circled it once again at about a hundred yards distance.

  Finally she was convinced she knew the land around the compound well enough, especially at and near the edge of the facility. She looked for any automated warning systems, but the only system was a set of video cameras positioned inside the compound. And dogs who regularly made a round just inside the fence, traveling in pairs. They were two large black beasts who she guessed were mastiffs, though she didn't know canines well enough to be sure.

  Attack tonight? It was the right time for it, at the biological low ebb of human constitutions. Or attack tomorrow? Would she be better prepared then?

  Likely not. And what might happen to the women captives during the next 24 hours? Torture, rape, death?

  Attack tonight.

  Chapter 30 - Attack

  The monster approached the edge of the forest. It had been cut back but that had been done years ago, long enough that a tangled brush had grown up almost to the edge of the chain-link at some spots. She knelt, lay down, and slithered close enough the edge of the brush to see more of the compound.

  She decreased her metabolism. Time seemed to speed up as her body slowed down.

  This had two benefits. Motionless she would be less likely to be seen by anyone. Slow movements by others would seem fast to her and so more easily noticed.

  An hour passed. Halfway through it two dogs made another circuit of the compound near the fence, obviously trained to take such a path. If the patrol stayed to the interval she had already observed of the dogs' actions, in another half-hour two others, or the same two, would make another circuit. And so it proved to be.

  The animals passed out of sight on the third circuit. Sylvia waited till the animals were well away from her position. Then she ramped up her metabolism, gathered her feet under her, and burst out of the bushes. She accelerated, leaped, and soared thirty feet high and a hundred feet far, clearing the fence top by almost twenty feet, out of the view of the nearest video camera. Or so she estimated. She landed in grass and decelerated, slowed, glided to a face down position, lay utterly motionless.

  Time passed.

  Twenty minutes. If the dogs' circuits were as regular as they seemed in ten minutes a pair of them would return.

  At this distance from the compound's center the grass was not well tended. Out of sight out of mind apparently. It was knee-high and irregular, a good hiding place for her camouflaged as she was, her skin matching her camo clothing pattern.

  Inward beyond the outlying sheds and stables or garages or whatever she could see manicured lawn and bushes and an occasional paved walkway. And night lights low on the walkways, little stars with metal umbrellas so that walkers could see the paths and their feet but not be bothered by lights shining upward.

  She became frail sexy Candy again and stood slowly, no sudden motion to grab an eye's attention. Sauntering, hands empty at her sides, she paced through the outlying areas till she neared a two-story structure. It was a garage.

  Seeing no vidcams about Sylvia neared it, leaped, caught the roof-top edge of the garage, and flung herself upward with the extrahuman strength of her arms, but only enough to step easily onto the garage top.

  It was flat, white gravel over a tarry base. In the center there was a round air-conditioning tower, about waist high. There apparently so that the lords and masters of the mansion would not suffer for the brief time it took to enter the garage, start a car, and drive away.

  Sylvia smiled. What an extravagance! Then she sobered, thinking of the source of the money that bought such whimsies.

  Her warform self warmed toward anger and change to its full destructive potential. Sylvia cooled her emotions.

  The monster surveyed the area. She'd viewed the compound from several angles and had a rough idea of the place. The view from this height refined that idea.

  There was a three-story central mansion with a view of the lake and two two-story houses on each side of it, also with a lake view. Perhaps the two had been or were a play area and a guest house or barracks.

  She had to stash her back pack some place. It would get in the way of any violent action she might get into. She looked around the roof top.

  Below the AC's cylindrical body a pair of air conduits and several cables formed a good hiding place for the pack. She unslung it and wedged it in where it would be least likely to draw attention. Grey as it was it would not be especially attention-getting.

  She approached a roof edge opposite the mansion. Still seeing no one about she stepped off the roof, twisting to face the garage, and caught the roof edge with a hand. With it she slowed her motion so that she landed with only a slight thud of her bare feet on the pavement below her. Standing up from a deep knee flex she turned and walked toward an edge of the building where she could approach the mansion. Still ambling, leisurely, a tall but slender nymphet of no danger to anyone.

  Clicking of claws on the pavement warned her as two black—mastiffs?—left grass behind her to race toward her over a walkway to her right.

  The monster turned toward them and blew out of her mouth an odor which would warn the dogs off. The dogs skidded to a halt so fast that one lost its balance and fell. A faint yelp escaped it.

  The odor was not strong. A human would not even have noticed it, except perhaps as something vaguely medicinal, or a failed perfume. But Sylvia's still-to-her mysterious biochemical laboratory had instantly known what would make a dog ill and synthesized it and in moments grown an organ to spew it out.

  The animals reversed their course and ran back the way they had come. Only to slide to a stop as their handler came around the corner of the garage.

  "Well, what do we have here? "

  He swaggered up to her, green-and-grey camo uniform with a long-barreled automatic rifle slung over one shoulder.

  "You and me—"

  One of her hands blurred to his throat and shut off any further words. The other caught hold of the automatic weapon around its trigger guard. He struggled but she began to slowly crush his throat. His eyes grew big. He stank of fear and crapped himself.

  The monster injected a "fall into coma" message into the flesh of his throat. Slowly he wilted, slumped toward the monster.

  She eased him to the ground and slid the rifle off his body, slung it around so it hung down her back. She turned him over onto his side so he wouldn't drown in his own saliva, or smother because he swallowed his tongue. Awakened, he might have useful information, though not any more than most of the other men she expected to capture. Still, he WAS an asset. Waste not, don't be pissed at missing an opportunity.

  One down, a dozen or two to go.

  Rounding the garage, smelling the odor of gasoline and engine oil and a dozen other odors coming from it, Sylvia halted.

  A circular driveway fronted the mansion. Inside the circle was a faultless lawn with a fountain in its center. Water pooled about its decorative catch basin but did not flow from the mouth or penis of the cherub posing on a stem rising from its middle. The driveway was lit by floodlights, as was the front of the house and lots of greenery.

  Sylvia was certainly visible if anyone was looking from a window. Perhaps not through the vidcam high over the door and to one side. It angled down toward the front steps and the near driveway. It seemed merely to be a convenience which let the occupants screen and greet visitors before the newcomers rang a door-chime.

  After a minute or two examining the scenery there was no response she could see. Perhaps this was a case of a spider waiting for a fly to enter its web.

  This fly was a scorpion, the monster thought with amusement. She walked wide around the mansion, hopefully out of view of the vidcam, and approached a side of the building from the lawn on that side of the building. She stepped onto a concrete sidewalk which led toward the back of the house, which looked south out onto the lake.

  Halfway back she came across a door sheltered by a modest overhand. Sh
e took hold of a door handled, tried to trip the thumb-latch.

  The door was locked.

  She braced her other hand against the house and ripped the handle and its lock off the door and tossed it into the grass. She pulled open the door and eased into a dimly lit hallway.

  Where would enslaved young women be kept? Was there a basement?

  The hallway led to a cross-hall. The odor of women was strongest down it to her right. She passed several closed doors and an open doorway into a sitting room. She passed up the door to kitchen smells and finally came to a door from which scents of women faintly leaked through joins around the door. Women—and shit and piss.

  There was no sound from behind the door. Sylvia stood to one side, back to a wall, and reached to grasp the door knob. It did not turn—until her steely grip snapped the lock. She pulled the door open a crack and no sound or scent came out suggesting an ambushing slaver. Not that she had expected one, but the caution came naturally to her .

  A hall with stair steps leading downward was on the other side of the door. It was unlocked. She entered, found and flipped on a light switch, closed the door behind her. Dim overhead lights slowly came on. She descended the stairs, changing to her Maria persona. At the bottom of the stairs was a single door and another light switch.

  She flipped the stair lights to off and stood in the dark, marshalling all her senses. The outhouse odors were stronger now. Inside there were light snores, an on-again off-again mumbling as if someone was having a conversation in her sleep. Someone was weeping, quietly, steadily.

  Again Sylvia had to cool her temper to keep from converting to her warform.

  She snapped the lock, using just enough force to do so to keep the snap quiet. She eased open the door and slid silently inside. Stood still.

  In a normal but quiet and calm voice she spoke up.

  "Is there anyone awake? We're here to take you away from all this."

  Despite the pitch dark Sylvia somehow sensed two then three people come awake.

  "I know you are awake. Don't be scared. We've come to take you away."

  To one side she heard someone stand and come closer. Lights bloomed in the room, bright to a normal human, revealing her tall Amazonian appearance to the captives.

  A young blond woman stood with a hand dropping away from a light switch beside the door. She was completely naked and showed signs, to the monster's extraordinary senses, of being beaten and raped.

  Some signs did not need super-senses. There was blood on the woman's groin and legs.

  This time it was harder to quell her urge to go to her warform.

  All over the room young women were coming awake. Most stayed lying where they slept, on the bare floor, simply rolling onto their sides and using their elbows to lift their heads. A few stood, one shakily using a wall to stay upright.

  One woman stayed asleep. Or perhaps in a coma.

  Sylvia hurried to her side, knelt, and touched her to send a probe into her. She covered her esoteric exam by touching the woman's forehead as if checking for a fever, then pretending to check her pulse.

  She was near death. Self-willed after starvation and at least two beatings.

  Sylvia sent healing messages inside her. The woman ceased sinking toward death and began rising toward life. Sylvia made sure she would stay asleep until forcibly awakened, straightened her body.

  Rising, she looked about her. It was a bit unnerving to see so many women who might have been her sisters—or she herself.

  "What do you mean, you're going to take us away?" This woman had turned the lights on. She looked determined.

  "Just that. But first we wanted to make sure where you were and make sure they didn't kill you when we attacked."

  The woman remained unfriendly. No doubt hope would have been painful. And there was another reason, obvious as soon as the woman spoke.

  "How do we know this is just to get our hopes up? Then you tell us it was all a trick."

  "You don't. You'll just have to wait and see. Now, tell me about the people here. How many are there? How many are armed? How many are just cooks or cleaning people who won't fight us?"

  Slowly, a few women first spoke up then more and more, so many she had to put her hands up and call for silence. Then she asked her questions again.

  After a few minutes of this one woman, who had not spoken before, lifted a hand to get Sylvia's attention.

  "Did you know this room is bugged?"

  Sylvia had not, had not even thought of it. She glanced around the room. And found video cameras.

  There were four, one in each corner of the ceiling, disguised to appear just a part of the molding.

  She smiled and nodded at the woman she was speaking to as if she had noticed nothing. She let the woman talking to her finish her point.

  Then calmly she said, "Now I have to go. I'll leave the doors unlocked, but stay here till I come back for you."

  Outside the door she closed it and raced up the stairs, changing to her harmless-seeming Candy persona. But when she emerged from the underground she saw two men coming quickly toward her from around a bend. They were clad in camouflage shirts and pants and brown boots and carrying guns. They began to raise the weapons.

  Sylvia was already ramping up her metabolism. Time slowed still more. She let her anger find full expression.

  Her body changed into her warform so quickly it seemed rapid even to her slowed time sense. To the men it must have seemed that she exploded, one moment a blond Lolita, the next a matte-black monster racing toward them.

  One swipe of her claw hand nearly sliced the nearest man in two at the waist and flung him like a broken doll thudding against one wall. The other had time for a scream and a trigger pull which sent pistol bullets from the semiautomatic weapon chewing up the wall closest to him. His near-severed head bounced off that wall, his body spewed blood out of his neck. She sped by him, the torso collapsing behind her .

  At the T junction of the hall to the cross hall she crashed into the wall in front of her, her claws digging deep into the plaster and drywall. With her hands she pushed her body in the direction from which the men had come.

  She followed their scent down the hall to an opening door. She jerked the door open and a twin to the two men she had killed spilled into the hall. Before he could regain his balance the monster punched him in the side nearest. Her fist rammed halfway through his chest, flinging him many yards further down the hall.

  She was into the room where a second man fired several bullets into her chest with an semi-automatic pistol. The bullets made as little impression on her as a hose of water would have. She grabbed his throat, crushed it, dropped him.

  Another man was standing up from an ergonomic chart in front of a panel of video screens. The monster grabbed his neck with one hand and choked him, clasping his gun hand to the holster from which he was trying to draw a pistol.

  She ease her grip on his throat. Rather than tearing it out with her claws or breaking his neck she sent him slumping into a coma and eased him back into the chair. He would be more valuable alive than dead.

  She surveyed the room. It was the size of a living room. In its center was a control console. There were two rows of view screens on the wall in front of the console, thirteen screens in each row. A quick glance showed that no one was visible on any of them.

  Sylvia retracted her claws, wiped the worst of the blood and other fluids off her hands onto the clothing of the corpse, and took the gun from the slumped man. She set it on the console and pulled the doghandler's long automatic rifle around to her front. She surveyed the controls, unfamiliar to her but similar to those on the weapons she and her policeman brother had fired on the police firing range. It was set to three-shot bursts from the long curving clip beneath it.

  She took it by the pistol grip, finger outside the trigger guard but ready to pull the trigger, and with her thumb snapped off the safety. The heavy weapon felt like a toy in her hands.

  She returned
to the doorway where the door was open about a foot. Listening at it with her hearing turned high she detected no evidence that anyone had been disturbed by the weapons fire. She exited and looked both ways. No one was sneaking toward the room so stealthily that her ears had missed them.

  Perhaps they were hiding in their rooms. Or had really not been disturbed at all, or enough to come investigating.

  Of course, she had no way of knowing what telephone or internet communications were being made.

  She changed to her Maria airform as she re-entered the security room, locked the door, and walked quickly to the doorway into an adjoining bathroom. She washed her hands clean, approached the comatose man, pulled a second ergonomic chair close to him, sat in it, and began to study the control console.

  It was fairly simple to operate, though there likely were sophisticated capabilities available to the trained user. A double row of buttons let her select one of the two-times-thirteen video cameras. A knobbed joystick let her pan the cameras left and right and tilt them up and down. Push the knob down and the camera zoomed in on its view. Pull it up and the view zoomed out to a wider view.

  She stayed alert to sounds from outside the security room, but put most of her attention onto the camera views. Ten minutes gave her basic mastery of the console. It also gave her a better idea of the layout of the compound. This was helped by a printed map on the console which showed each of the buildings, paths connecting them, and the location of vidcams.

  Four of the cameras showed the prisoners' room. The women there had settled down, most lying still. A few sat in a cluster, backs against a wall, and talked. A microphone control let her listen in on what they said if they spoke above a whisper.

  This warmed her anger again and she glanced at the man beside her. He was awake. He sat perfectly still, watching her, horrified and fascinated, his hands white on the ergo chair's arm supports. She cooled her anger so that she could think efficiently.

  Time to make use of the man.

  "What's your name?" she said.

  "R-Raul."

  "We let you live so that you could tell me interesting information. I will not kill you slowly if you answer me truthfully. WHETHER I kill you will depend on many factors."