Thrall of the Warrior Witch

Chapter One-1

Chapter One

Abduction

Posit for a moment a disembodied eye, invisible and maneuverable and hovering somewhere over sunny Southern California.

If the eye has a mind, it must be as appalled by the smog as amazed by the skyscrapers, jetliners, and densely crowded freeways. One might sympathize as the eye retreats and flees to the outskirts of all this poisoned commotion.

After all there’s plenty of lovely coastline to admire, still teeming with life if not packed so tight. Circling down, soaring in from the ocean now, the eye follows some unknown art inland about three blocks from the beach. It is drawn toward an utterly ordinary apartment complex. Roving over perhaps a dozen stucco-covered units, the eye angles in on the dwelling at the end. Despite it being brightest midday, all of the windows are blocked with shades.

Perhaps this is the home of a dissolute, still sleeping off his latest binge. The mind behind the eye doesn’t think so. It seems to sense something rare and precious behind those blinds. Possessed of powers one can only guess at, the eye passes right through the locked front door, penetrating the wood as effortlessly as it did the smog.

There’s a kitchen filled with cans of grains and gadgets. This is not the home of the average obese American, living on processed slops. The place is spotless, for one thing, as is the adjoining living area. Following whatever beacon or spoor there might be, the eye turns to a short corridor ending in three doors, two of them open.

Straight ahead is a closet, jumbled and over-spilling with athletic gear. Not all is in such conscientious neatness here. Through the opening to the left, the bathroom is clean at least, although one can see at a glance that this is a classic bachelor’s pad. The toilet seat is up for one thing and there’s a definite scent on the air from the bottle of aftershave sitting on the sink.

To the right, the closed door is no more of an obstacle than before. Behind it the searching eye finds the bedroom, though there’s really only a futon covered with paisley-patterned pillows and sheets. It’s dim in here with both the door and blinds closed but one can make out huge posters mounted on the walls. Some depict exalting natural landscapes, upstate Yosemite for example. Others are intricately detailed psychedelic scenes. The only light comes from a blue lava lamp and a half dozen feebly flickering votive candles slowly drowning in wax. Yet this is enough to illuminate the sole occupant.

As expected, this is a young man just into his prime. Rather short and slender, he is nevertheless superbly fit. Appealingly handsome, his sandy-blonde hair is rubber-banded into a short ponytail. Eyes closed, the face is blank and composed. He sits naked on the floor in the lotus position, obviously meditating.

In health-conscious California, this individual seems as ordinary as a broker in New York, a crook in the Capitol or a fish in the sea. Something indefinable has singled him out however. Joyously predatory, the eye moves in to claim its prize.

***

As a marathoner and semi-pro soccer player, Drake Green, 23, introduced himself to people as an exercise fiend. If pressed however, he’d agreeably concede that maybe ‘endorphin addict’ was more accurate.

Vigorous exercise wasn’t the only road to getting those flowing, and Drake admittedly indulged in far more punishing pursuits eagerly. Anything to get that all-natural free rush. Yet even as he placed outrageous demands on his body, Drake scrupulously took meticulous care of it – eschewing all smoking and always eating properly for example. He even took occasional colonics to purge out toxins. Yet as anyone familiar with the holistic approach knows, a healthy body is just the beginning. One must equally refine the spirit and mind.

Judicious use of cannabis, peyote and psychoactive mushrooms for example, put one on a familiar footing with the transcendent. To go beyond even that, to commune with the infinite, there was meditation.

Practiced since antiquity and possibly even before, when humans were but bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers, the benefits of meditation are many. Most ancient traditions insist it cultivates or increases one’s store of a kind of universal life-force. Known as prana by the Hindu and chi by the Chinese (plus many other names), it is independently conceived by numerous cultures to be an all-pervasive organic energy one can learn to gather and employ.

Raised an empiricist, Drake wasn’t convinced this truly existed. Like the efficacy of colonics though, he was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. And whether he was accruing anything quantifiable or not, the other blessings conferred made the effort more than worthwhile. Aside from the obvious calming, meditation was known to promote one’s tendency toward compassion, patience and acceptance, all contributing to a general improvement of self.

Currently Drake was deeper than he’d ever before reached.

Though young and inexperienced still, he was attempting a particularly ambitious form of meditation aimed at achieving an effortlessly sustained single-pointed concentration. Such is the supposed path to nirvana – not heaven exactly but rather an indestructible sense of well-being maintained throughout any trial or activity.

If the Buddhists could do it, then Drake wanted in too.

The only danger he feared was in sinking so deeply inside his mind that he lost his way back. Too much nullity had reportedly claimed others. When something else entirely claimed Drake (in his entirety), staggeringly dramatic as that capture was, it certainly represented an intervention he could never have suspected nor dreaded.

One moment he was focused on his inner image of himself as an energy receptacle (a reefer leaf in a sunbeam) to the exclusion of everything else. So profound was his trance that Drake was close to self-hypnosis. His body might never have existed, or become one with the boundless universe. The next instant that physical self was flooded with nausea.

Suddenly his skin tingled everywhere. Swiftly the sensation swelled into formication: the furious scurrying of a million tiny ants all over him. Then those imaginary insects began to bite.

Stinging agony grew to searing excruciation. It was as if his body was now being dissolved in acid. There was not even a chance to question what was happening. Already the pain was simply too great to withstand, even for a masochistic marathoner. Without ever opening his eyes or emerging from his trace enough to take one last look at his home, Drake Green’s grasp on reality failed completely.

***

Consciousness returned rather quickly. Comprehension would have to wait.

Things Drake knew to be true were few.

He knew who and what he was, and that his body was breathing and alive. He was no longer at home but physically in a different place, now sprawled across a hard wooden surface rather than sitting on a mat spread over his bedroom floor. Nor was he dreaming or emerging from some sort of fugue.

He was naked yet, his skin still tingling as the earlier burning faded away. The only change in him from moments ago was that the rubber-band had disappeared from his hair; the sandy locks lay loose around his face. As he blinked teary eyes clear Drake could see every tiny line in the grain of the highly polished hardwood surface supporting him.

No mental invention could boast such specificity. And the hardness under his aching frame was far too tangible. He could also smell incense, a heavy miasma on the much stuffier, hotter air. This was no brand with which he was familiar. In fact its musty pungency was completely alien to him. Beyond the air the lighting had changed as well. The coolly soothing blue was gone; the flickering yellow richer and far stronger. What on earth had happened, and where the f**k was he? Drake lifted his head and felt his jaw drop in response.

He was in a huge tent crowded with women. He’d arrived on a round dais set up in the center. Light and heat poured from regularly spaced braziers – no wait! These were tripods made of slender metal rods supporting shimmering golden dishes the size of serving platters. And the yellow flames roaring there hovered inches above emptiness. Neither consuming visible fuel nor emitting any smoke they blazed away in befuddling constancy.

Only marginally less mysterious were the murmuring women.

All wore only thin robes of identical cut, embroidered with a stylized design representing an all-seeing eye. Most of these garments were starkly scarlet sashed in black, though a few of pure white stood out. There was a sense of accomplishment and exhaustion about the crowd; most of the ladies were smiling and sweating heavily.

A few were elderly, but the majority of the women were middle-aged or younger, and the way those thin robes clung to damp torsos made Drake wonder briefly if this really wasn’t some weird erotic dream. But then he detected a presence just behind him.

Taking command of his transplanted anatomy at last, Drake flopped over. Two feet away, sitting in a lotus position of her own, was the most striking girl he’d ever seen.

A girl was all she was, maybe in her mid-to-late teens. Too huge to be jewelry, a large clear crystal hung from a golden chain about her neck. Suddenly noticing, Drake jerked his gaze away from the sight of her soaked white robe plastered transparently to her belly and breasts. Wan and dripping, breathing as if from prolonged exertion, she smiled in triumph at meeting his eyes.

Where Drake’s were ordinary brown, the child’s irises were a stunningly brilliant pink.

Jesus, she was an albino, her long flaxen hair stringy with sweat but otherwise snowy white. Likewise below those gigantic, magnetic eyes her plump cheeks and small, fey features were unblemished alabaster, at least where that perfection of complexion wasn’t tinted with a rosy blush of effort. Petite as she was, considerably smaller than even Drake’s measly five foot-six, the strange waif seemed to radiate some imponderable might even in her current weakness. Drake was searching for the courage to address her when three of the surrounding crowd descended on her solicitously.

The women helped her up, speaking incomprehensible words of praise, thanks and comfort. They enfolded and led her away. Mounting the dais in their place, Drake faced two figures that again made him question whether this just wasn’t his twisted mind’s insane invention.

After the stuff he’d been getting into with Shanelle, it might not be that surprising. What if he’d died in a CO leak or something, and their recent exchanges had somehow earned him an ironically appropriate hell?

Staunchly atheist Drake pushed the question away.

Only the weak-minded believed in a real, physical life after death, obscure universal energies notwithstanding. Still he could only gape at what were clearly shackle-bearing captors closing swiftly in on him.

Wearing not robes but scanty leather harnesses that separated exposed breasts and girded each crotch as if habitually fitted with a dildo, these beauties were burly and bosomy both. Heads shaved and tattooed like bikers, they exuded an intimidating ferocity. At their approach Drake finally found his voice.

“What is this ma’am? What’s happening?”

He didn’t really expect his desperation to earn an answer. He hadn’t yet understood a word said in his presence. Yet a retort came immediately, and in crude if contemporary English.

“Shut now! You, male, are thrall, property of the Sisterhood. Speak again, we take your tongue. Fight our will, we take your thumbs. Offend us with eyes, you gouged out blind.”

Well that was clear enough.

Drake closed his eyes and slumped back flat on the dais. At least they didn’t say anything about castrating him. Of course no sooner had this thought crossed his mind than a rough hand seizing his genitals caused his eyes to fly back open. Rather than a knife though he saw the larger of the two women expertly lock a small metal cage about his c**k and balls.

Fuck, that’s a chastity device!

Having a bit of experience with the kink community (of which his ‘workout’ partner Shanelle was an enthusiastic advocate) Drake was familiar with such things. Under no circumstances (or so he’d sworn) could he ever permit such an infliction, regardless of its reputed lifestyle benefits. I mean colonics and related indignities aside, get serious. Now however he’d gladly take it over amputation. Sighing with conflicted relief he closed his eyes again and stayed deliberately limp as his ankles and wrists were shackled next. He remained that way until the women hauled him to his feet between them.