The drugged feeling came upon her very quickly. She felt woozy and light headed. The room began to swirl in a circle before her eyes. The last words she heard before blacking out completely were from one of the henchman to Ironman: “Why don’t you just kill her, boss . . . like you did that reporter.”
CHAPTER 16
Kristin drifted in and out of consciousness during the next few days. Each time she awoke, she found herself either in the back of a rumbling truck or in some dingy roadside motel room. The weather kept growing colder with each passing day, meaning they really were taking her north to Canada, as Ironman had threatened.
She was kept constantly drugged and in almost a stupor. Often, when she was semi-conscious, she heard the two men talking to each other. Once she heard them talking about Chad over a game of stud poker in the back of the moving truck.
“How do you think he killed him, Stryker?”
“Cement overshoes, that’s what I hear. Then dropped him in the lake.”
“That’ll teach him. Ironman don’t like no reporters snooping around in our affairs.”
“It’ll teach him, all right. Terry was the one who done it. He said he was glad to get it over with. The only reason Ironman was keeping that Fleming bastard alive this long was so—”
“No!” moaned Kristin, her mouth so numb she could barely make the word come out.
“Hey, Stryker, she’s awake again.”
“No!” she cried out, struggling up from her mattress in the corner of the truck bed. They came over to her, and she tried to scratch at them, to kick them, but her body was so lacking in strength, she could barely move. “He didn’t do that to Chad!” she cried out. “Say he didn’t do it!” Her mouth was so rubbery, and her lips were so numb, the words were barely decipherable.
They put her back in the corner on the mattress she had been lying on. “I think she’s talking about that dead reporter,” Stryker said.
“Don’t you understand?” she screamed at him hysterically, her eyes wild. “He’s my brother! My brother! He can’t have killed my brother. No, nooo!”
“What’s she mumbling about?” the other man asked.
“I don’t know,” Stryker said. “I can’t make any of it out.” He had his hands full holding her wrists as she tried to scratch at him.
“Should I get out the bottle?”
“Nah,” said Stryker. “We gave her enough this morning. She’ll run out of steam any minute now and be as peaceful as a babe.”
Kristin was indeed losing her tenuous grip on consciousness. She continued struggling, but her efforts were pitiful. She was crying now. Weeping for her dear brother Chad . . . dead. Killed by Ironman. Killed by someone named Terry, at Ironman’s command.
“Oh, Chad!” she cried out once more.
“What the hell is she saying?” Stryker asked.
Kristin didn’t hear the reply. Blackness descended on her again in a warm, mellow engulfing wave, which was so familiar to her by now, it was almost a friend.
When she finally was allowed to return to full consciousness, she found herself on a large, clean bed in a spacious room with big, shuttered windows. She was dressed in only a flimsy robe. From beyond the door of her room came the rowdy sound of drunken male voices.
Kristin’s only thoughts were of grief for her dead brother. She made up her mind not to speak of it, though, for if word got back to Ironman that she was Chad’s sister, Ironman might torture her to see if she knew the information Chad was supposed to have known. She thanked God her mumbled words on the truck had been unclear.
She wept for Chad, feeling bitter grief. But soon her grief was replaced by another emotion, which blocked out all else: stark terror. Her situation, she realized, was hopeless. She had no way of knowing, then, that she was soon to come into contact with a unique, dynamic grizzly bear of a man who would alter the course of her life.
For two days straight, Kristin was raped repeatedly. It was horrible. The men were as Ironman had said, women-starved goldminers—happy, uncouth and with whiskey on their breath. They laughed at Kristin’s resistance and refused to believe her pleas for help. They had been told that she enjoyed “pretending” to resist, because it excited her.
The two days seemed like an eternity, but when they were over, she could hardly remember them. She had been drugged the entire time in a way that put her into a stupor, though did not make her lose consciousness.
Vroman, a sharp-nosed humorless man who ran the bordello, had come in twice a day to force her to drink from a bottle of pale pink, sweet tasting liquid. Often Stryker came in with him. Stryker was his second-in-command and had been visiting Ironman earlier only to report on how the business was doing. The potion they forced Kristin to drink was mostly alcohol, she could tell, but there was something else in it too. It was this extra ingredient that kept her woozy and rubbermouthed and made everything spin about. Vroman told her that it was codeine or morphine or something similar sounding. She couldn’t remember; she had been too drugged at the time.
After the ordeal of her first two days was over, she was left entirely alone for a day. They had something special in store for her and wanted her to have time to recover. Kristin was aching and emotionally traumatized from all she had been through, but still, the day of respite was sheer bliss. She lay in bed on clean sheets and let her body recover, waiting for the moment when she would be strong enough to plan an escape. While she had been drugged, any thoughts of escape were futile. Aside from not being able to even walk straight, she had not been able to think straight either. Now things were getting better.
Her room was surprisingly clean and comfortable. In fact, it was much better than what she would have expected for a bordello. It contained a private bathroom and shower, large windows—which, in her case, were shuttered and locked—and a firm, large, fourposter bed. The building in which the brothel resided was once a hotel, which had been abandoned during the early 1900s, when the original Yukon gold rush had ended. Then, when a new gold vein and new methods made both placer mining and drill mining profitable again, the hotel was taken over by Vroman. He turned it into a brothel for Ironman, who was the absentee owner.
The morning after Kristin’s single day of luxurious freedom, Vroman came into the room, followed by Stryker carrying a tray with breakfast. Kristin spied the familiar pale-pink bottle protruding from Vroman’s coat pocket, and she shrank back fearfully. “Oh, no, not that again!”
Vroman laughed meanly. “You don’t know how lucky you are, girl. Lots of people would pay lots o’ money for this kind of narcotized liquor. It’s damn hard to get around here.”
“Don’t drug me anymore. I can’t stand it.”
“Yeah, you hate it, but you’re a lot easier to manage when you’re woozy, that’s the fact o’ the matter.” He removed the bottle from his pocket and uncorked it. He sniffed from it, closed his eyes with pleasure and recorked it. “Besides, this isn’t just the ordinary stuff. I added a new ingredient that’ll make you enjoy yourself a bit more . . . physically.”
The thought repulsed Kristin. It was not only of what he might have put into the bottle, but also of having to endure more forced relations. Her eyes darted to the door. Stryker, a strong man with long, dirty hair under a derby hat, immediately moved in front of it to block off any chance of her trying to escape.
“Eat your breakfast now,” ordered Vroman. “Then we’ll give you a drink o’ your favorite medicine here. Afterward, we got a real surprise for you.” He grinned lewdly. “You’ll love it, girl. I absolute guarantee. You ever hear of Guy Faraday?”
Kristin had heard of him. Every young girl in America had heard of him. Along with Valentino and John Barrymore, he had been the reigning male idol of the silver screen a few years back. The three of them had had women moaning in their seats each time their presence graced the screen. Valentino and Barrymore were still major stars, but Faraday had disappeared from films a year or two back as the result of some scandal. The details had been h
ushed up, but Faraday had been blacklisted, never to work for a major studio again. Kristin remembered him as having been the most dashing, charming and handsome of the three “heartthrob stars,” as they were called by the gossip magazines.
“Well,” said Vroman, “you’re going to have a chance to meet Mr. Guy Faraday, personal like. If you’re nice to him, he may even give you his . . . autograph.” Stryker broke up in laughter at this comment. Kristin watched him and felt frightened. The man looked dangerous and unsavory even at the best of times. Seeing his face contorted with laughter only made him appear more so.
Kristin did not know what they had in store for her, but she did know that her only chance of escaping was now, before they forced her to drink more of that vile narcotic liquid. She picked up her dish of hot soup from the tray Stryker had set on the bed and pretended she was about to eat from it. She squinted at it and asked, “What’s this in my soup? Specks of gold dust?”
“What?” exclaimed Stryker, coming near. Vroman came close too. Kristin heaved the hot liquid at Stryker’s face when he was near enough and leaped out of the bed. She ran for the door. She was through it, running down the hall!
But then her shoulder was grabbed by Vroman, and she was jerked backward onto the carpet of the hallway. She screamed and struggled, but it was no use. Stryker held her down, straddling her as he sat atop her. He was furious, his face and derby still splotched with remnants of the soup. Vroman was kneeling next to her, forcing her mouth open by squeezing her jaw hard. Then the liquid was pouring into her mouth, and she had to swallow to keep from drowning in it. Only when she began choking and sputtering did they finally let her up, afraid she would suffocate from lack of breath if they did not.
She became so drugged that she felt as if she had somehow left her body and was hovering above, near the ceiling, weightless, careless, totally free. It was a not at all unpleasant experience, unlike any she had ever had. Vroman and Stryker were speaking to each other, but she was so far removed, she could barely manage to keep her mind on them enough to notice.
They carried her down the stairs into a large area that contained an indoor swimming pool. They removed the flimsy bathrobe she wore and were now dressing her in what seemed to be a strange sort of costume. The pants had gossamer silk leggings that billowed widely; the portion that fit around her hips was of more substantial material and was encrusted with large, beautiful gemstones—enormous red rubies, green emeralds, blue sapphires—which Kristin was certain had to be fake.
Her stomach was bare. The top part of her costume was a deeply cut halter top, also of the heavier material and encrusted with brilliant gemstones. The jewels were so closely clustered together, the fabric beneath was not even visible. Billow sleeves of gossamer silk covered her arms. A jeweled tiara was placed upon her head.
Kristin shook her head to clear it, to try to think straight through the fog imposed by her drugging. Her throat was dry as she tried to speak. “Why are you . . . dressing me like. . . .” She could not finish the sentence. Her mind kept wandering. The room and the people swirled before her eyes.
Two more men appeared from the door at the other end of the large indoor pool. One was extremely handsome and dashing, wearing the metal armor plating of a Roman soldier. Kristin recognized him. This was Guy Faraday, the famous actor. At the moment he seemed dressed for a role in a film. His metal helmet was golden and of the Roman sort. A sheath of purple plumes lay across its top, running from front to back. A flange of the helmet projected down in front and over his nose. His body armor was of a golden breastplate, and a chainmail skirt extended down to his knees. Sandals adorned his feet, and a jeweled sword swung in a scabbard at his waist.
“She really is beautiful,” Faraday said, addressing Vroman while staring at Kristin. His voice was booming and rich. He came up close to her and stared in admiration. “What a fine slave princess you’ve secured for me.”
“Nothing but the best for Julius Caesar,” said Vroman. He was holding Kristin by the arm, more to keep her from weaving about and falling down than to stop her from escaping.
The other man who had come in with Guy Faraday wore a beret and had a red scarf around his neck. He had brought in a mechanical type contraption on a tripod, which Kristin had barely noticed, her eyes having immediately been attracted to the handsome movie star. Now that she looked, she saw that the contraption was a camera, and the man in the beret was setting it up near a makeshift bed of a dozen or so pillows. The pillows were large, overstuffed and covered in brightly colored exotic material.
The cameraman was moving around in a high state of agitation, plumping up the pillows, testing the light in the room with a meter, setting up the camera just exactly the way he wanted it. He came up to Kristin and held a meter next to her skin, squinting at the reading.
“What’s that for?” Vroman asked.
“The light setting will change when she’s naked,” said the cameraman. “More whiteness due to her fair skin means more reflection. I must take it into account.”
All at once it dawned on Kristin what this was all about. They were planning to make a movie, and it was to be pornographic, and she was to be the female star.
“No!” she cried out in protest. “You can’t! I won’t let you!”
Stryker, who was guarding the entrance door at the side, suggested to Vroman, “Maybe we should drug her more. She’s still down enough to resist.”
It was Guy Faraday who objected. “Don’t do that,” he said, peering at Kristin with domineering eyes that savored what he knew was in store for him. “I like them resisting. If you drug her so she’s in a stupor, it won’t be any fun for me.”
Now Kristin remembered what the scandal had been about, which had resulted in his being banished from the industry. He’d been accused of attacking the young daughter of the head of his studio! The man obviously had urges that were uncontrollable. If he had been able to control them just a little bit, he would have confined his affairs to the starlets who worked on his pictures. Nobody would have minded that or made a big deal about it—not in Hollywood Babylon, as the film industry was referred to. But to attack the daughter of a studio head? Such a thing was unforgivable.
Kristin tried to break away from Vroman’s grip. But she was too weak and woozy from the drugging. Vroman even let her go to demonstrate how incapacitated she was. She aimed herself toward the exit door but weaved about so much on her rubber legs, she almost fell into the swimming pool. Vroman lifted her up in his arms and carried her over to the bed of pillows, where he lay her down.
“All right, Guy,” Vroman said to the actor. “Do your stuff.”
“Wait!” said the cameraman, who fancied himself to be a great artistic director, despite the fact that his medium happened to be pornographic movies. “I must explain the story line. His motivation must be—”
“Oh, can it,” said Faraday wearily. “Just start the film rolling and let me at her. The jerks who’re going to watch this film in their grubby, smoke-filled basement rooms aren’t going to give a damn about my motivation.”
“You’re Julius Caesar,” persisted the director, speaking quickly, hoping to set the scene up before Faraday silenced him again. “She is an Egyptian princess, captured as a slave. You’re on the bank of the Nile about to—”
“I bloody well know what I'm about to do, you pompous fool! Jesus, you give a man a camera and right away he starts thinking he’s D.W. Griffith. Just start rolling, will you?”
The director sighed with resignation. He bent down behind his camera and aimed it at the bed of pillows. “You’ve got eleven minutes, Guy. That’s all we can get on one reel.”
“That’s all you can film,” Guy corrected, his eyes lighting up as he looked at Kristin sprawled out on the pillows. “That doesn’t mean I’ve got to stop, though, just because you run out of film.”
Vroman laughed and said to Stryker, “What a life! An actor, that’s what I want to be when I grow up.” Kristin’s mind was whirl
ing. Everything seemed to be spinning in circles before her eyes. She felt dizzy and weak. Finally she found her voice. “Stop it!” she shouted. “You can’t take pictures of me without . . . without my clothes on! You can’t . . .”
No one paid any attention to her. The director began turning the film in the camera, exposing it to the scene that was unfolding. “We’re rolling!” he declared.
Kristin tried to stand, but could not manage it. She got onto her hands and knees and began crawling away from the pillows. This didn’t do any good, though, for the camera just moved to follow her. Guy Faraday came forward into camera range. He moved in front of Kristin, blocking her path. She tried to crawl to the side to go around him. He reached down, grasped her by the hair and pulled her up to her feet.
Kristin tried to break away from him, but he maintained his grip on her hair. He bent her head back, and his lips descended on hers. It was then Kristin understood what Vroman meant when he had said earlier that he’d added a new ingredient to the liquid nar cotic—one that would make her feel more susceptible physically.
Susceptible was not the word! Kristin’s skin suddenly began churning up with a feeling of raw sensuality as Guy Faraday held her tightly in his arms. The feel of his lips pressing against hers nearly made her swoon. His hand went to her halter top and squeezed her breast. Kristin moaned involuntarily, her eyes half closing at the tingling pleasure his caress brought. A wave of melting sensuality passed over her, making her entire body excruciatingly sensitive.
Faraday ripped at the front of her top, tearing it open. Rubies and emeralds went flying. Her naked white breasts were suddenly exposed to the whirring camera. Kristin blushed and screamed for them to stop. Faraday laughed at her horror and caressed her naked breasts. When his warm mouth lowered to her nipple and began teasing it wetly, she threw her head back and stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, breathing rapidly and shallowly She cursed the horrible drug that had made her body so responsive to his touch.
Passion's Wicked Torment Page 15
