Monsieur Loyal Resurrected
Last of the adventures of Bret Blade, martial dominatrix extraordinary
by Noël Burch


MONSIEUR LOYAL RESURRECTED

1

I know your ways of sending your victims

To pay in court the debts of your crimes

Twisting your lovers like iron wire

Tying bone to soul and hair to nerves

Leaving us for dead in a burst of laughter.

Jean Cocteau

The hall is bright as day in the floodlights, and the spectators' balcony, ten
meters from the shiny parquet floor, is jam-packed. Near the right-hand edge
of the frame, stands a fat, greasy ring-master holding a furled bullwhip which
he uses to punctuate the meaningless spiel he delivers with an accent Bret
Blade thinks might be Russian... or British.

She herself stands in the center of the covered arena, wearing a loose outfit
of white leather, knowing every gaze is fastened on her, knowing it will soon
be her turn.

In the middle of the far wall, curtains part and close again behind the
massive silhouette of a Black man, an ageless Hercules, standing naked as the
day he was born. He comes forward like a zombie, offering, it seems, the
handshake of friendship... or of fair play before a bout. Fighting the anxiety
gnawing at her heart, Bret watches him marching across the Cinemascope screen
towards the woman in white leather. The Black keeps coming, only a few meters
away now, and still giving the impression he wants to shake hands. Maybe it's
a custom where he comes from, the woman thinks, sizing himup. He smiles
timidly and she sees his huge erection. Bret doesn't know what to do. But her
body know for her : sheathed in tight white suede, her right hand darts forth
and under the thrusting scepter raised in homage to her charms, seizes the
swollen scrotum in her powerful fingers and gives it a sharp, expert twist...
Paralyzed by incomparable pain, the Black stands with head thrown back, mouth
open for a scream but no sound can be heard. "Normal" says Bret Blade to
herself, "this is a silent movie!" The five digits of her other hand, tips
gathered in a cone, strikes the exposed throat with the speed of a cobra, just
under the Adam's apple. The giant gurgles faintly and falls heavily on his
back. Bret Blade knows that the trachea has contracted spasmodically from the
shock, that the man is choking to death at her feet. A thread of saliva hangs
from his plump lips, the face is going blue. Soon the huge body ceases to
move.

Overhead, a thunder of applause.

The man in the riding coat comes on screen and feels the Black man's pulse.
Leaning close to Bret, he whispers a few words of congratulation or perhaps of
encouragement in her ear, then holds up her arm in a victory, like a boxing
referee. The applause grows louder. The picture capsizes, Bret feels dizzy,
she clings to Peter Ustinov...

...and starts up in bed, clasping a pillow in her arms, nipping vertigo in the
bud.

It was the third time this week that Bret Blade had had this same dream and it
was beginning to annoy her.

She drank a glass of water from the crystal flask on the night-table, threw
back the covers, sat on the edge of her king-size bed and took a dressing gown
from the back of a chair. Pulling open the French doors, she stepped out onto
the wide balcony and took a pack of Davidoff's and a lighter from her pocket.
She spun the little wheel and gazed at the nightscape before her.

This luxury villa overlooking lake Leman was an extravagancy she owed her
sudden inheritance. This "master" bedroom was on the top floor : she could
barely hear the faint lapping of wavelets below. Under a full moon, the water
sparkled with a thousand stars, it was the very image of peaceful eternity in
a world under control.

She thought back to that recurrent dream... and shrugged it off. Bret Blade
had certainly killed with her hands... and with her eyes and voice, as well...
but what of it? She sometimes thought it might not be unpleasant to kill
again, for those moments had no doubt been the most thrilling she had known in
a life devoted to the pursuit of pleasure. So why of a sudden these guilty
reminders from her subconscious, night after night? Bret had never known
remorse for anything she had done when her vital interests were at stake. And
actually, she experienced the dream not so much as a representation of regret
as of some strange, anguished pleasure... But why too this reminder of the
tragedy of Max Ophuls' heroine Lola Montez, that beautiful film which had
haunted her childhood indeed, but which she hadn't thought of for years? Her
Freudian readings had cured our heroin of any belief in the premonitory value
of dreams, but had also taught her that our nocturnal productions are never
meaningless...

No... what she herself called her "dreadful infamies" were no cause for
regret. Except, perhaps, for that poor idiot, Bart...

And why had she taken up smoking again? Bret Blade hated any act of hers which
was not a product of her conscious will. She flipped her hand in annoyance and
the cigarette arched towards the lake like a shooting star.

She knew tobacco was a rampart against boredom : for months now, she'd been
bored to death in this place. One costumed ball after another, countless
evenings at the opera, games of tennis, bridge tournaments or boring sex with
some clumsy young snob, such were the forms of entertainment available among
the high society of Montreux. She was doing her best to fit into this
innocently decadent world - a low profile was a safer course than attracting
attention to her non-conformist "savagery" - but it wasn't her cup of tea.

Take a trip somewhere? Rediscover the tropical farniente that had so charmed
her in the past? Too soon for her image : she was still in mourning. And
besides, it would have meant embracing all the discomforts of the Third world,
forsaking the modern comforts of this luxury villa which she had just finished
converting at considerable expense.

In fact, it was on some of those very additions to her new home that she was
counting to alleviate her boredom.... But for the moment - and it was
beginning to annoy her - she had made no interesting encounters, despite
having worn provocative fetish gear in public and made pointed allusions to
her sexual preferences.

For while Bret Blade felt immensely relieved at having abandoned the trying
profession of dominatrix, she intended to take advantage of her new freedom to
devote herself, as and when she pleased, games free of the usual limits of the
"contract", and which she hoped would at last become pure pleasure.

Within the framework of the venal Masochist contract, she had staged
innumerable fantasies of domination and violence for johns, but always within
the usual agreed limits. It was true enough that outside the contract, in the
vicissitudes of the struggle for life, she had already tasted the acrid
intoxication that comes with having the power of life and death over an
opponent... But whether contractual and fictional or absolute and real, she
had always exerted her powers in the absence of any erotic desire, at best a
passing ripple of excitement in the presence of a handsome john, for in either
case the goal had always been instrumental : a fee... a vengeance... a
treasure... Never had she had occasion to put into practice the pure Sadeian
logic of evil for the pure pleasure of it - but was sure it was a sublime
experience.

Bret Blade passed through the bedroom and descended a flight of steps. She
found herself on a large landing, lit by the bright moonlight through a vast
bay window. Facing this was a wall lined with a row of full-length mirrors,
each hung at a slightly different angle, wherein the bright disk of the full
moon was reflected repeatedly ... Bret paused before a nude bust of Medusa in
the symbolist manner, with a head-full of writhing serpents, and touched a
fingertip to one of the nipples...

The wall of mirrors sank silently into the tiled floor and she found herself
looking into a dark, shallow room where three cubical cages stood side by
side. Bret stood looking at them for a long time.

2

‘Tell me of that lady

The poet stubborn with his passion sang us'

W.B. YEATS

Diary of Lord N. -November 13 199...

Q..., in foyer of Geneva opera during 1st interval of "S[amson] & D[alila]"
calls my attention to willowy brunette, forty-odd, dressed from head to foot
in black leather! "Intimidating woman" he met at a dinner-party. Waited for
him to go on, but no. Didn't dare insist. No one out here knows my taste...

2nd interval : woman still there. Had another go: "Intimidating? How so?" He
teases me :"Interested?" Finally stops teasing and tells me what he knows :
rumor has it she whipped men in Paris for money and makes no mystery of it.
What's more : "better not run into her on a dark night: she knows some kind of
Chinese judo. Brags about it... Threw a hefty skeptic on the floor with some
kind of footwork and pinned him down just twisting his hand. Obviously enjoyed
humiliating the fellow, who kept begging her to let him up! Q... not alone to
find the sight ... disturbing.

An old eccentric seemed to be with the dangerous lady, brought her Champagne
but she paid no attention to him, just looked around.

Q...'s account, that beautiful body in black leather... Inquiries. Lady R...
knows her : she is Barbara B..., a recent widow from Paris who has bought a
fancy villa by the Lake with her inheritance.

Bret Blade was restless : she had her needs, just like any normal woman. The
night's big buck had driven her up the wall, she'd have loved to give him a
good thrashing, he was such a loser in bed!

She gulped down her third glass of Champagne that morning, rushed to her diary
and dialed a number on the phone : "Hello, is the Maison Philidor? This is
Madame B... you remember, Villa Batory... Well, would you believe it, that
faucet is leaking again!... I know, I can't understand it myself... You must
send me back that young plumber of yours, I want to give him a piece of my
mind!.. No, no, don't worry, I won't be too hard on him... Late this
afternoon? That will be fine."

Bret Blade opened the door under the stairs and went down to the cellar level.
Picking up a hammer, she strode over to the faucet on the wall and gave it a
sharp knock, then a second. Immediately, it began leaking profusely.

The estate's main gate swung open and the pickup truck passed through. The
driver was young and handsome and alone.

She sure is a turn-on the lady in the big house, thinks apprentice plumber
Samuel, but a little scary too. And anyway, it's not normal for that faucet to
be leaking again so soon! He knows his trade, for Pete's sake! He parks in the
shade of the poplar trees - the sun is hot for December - slings the heavy
leather tool-bag over his shoulder and heads for the servants' entrance...
Like the main gate, it opens automatically at his approach, which makes him
feel funny.

He heads for the kitchen, where the lady offered him a beer that first time.

She's waiting for him there.

This time, she has on a really sexy outfit, the lady of the big house, black
leather trousers and a tight black sweater. And she fills them out in all the
right places! She's no young chick any more, but she's still got a terrific
bod, probably does lots of rich people's sports...

All it takes is one look at the faucet, repaired the week before: the lady is
playing games with him. He turns to face her... "You did that yourself..." He
tries to sound severe, but can't quite make it... He's getting the picture
now... She wants to get into his pants, this one does. His eyes travel down
her leather-encased legs. Well, he has no objections to that... no sirreee...

He moves towards her. She stands waiting, a promising smile on her lips. She
reaches out and feels his biceps. She's wearing tight gloves like a cyclist's,
cutoff at the fingers, revealing long black nails that are unusually sharp.
Excited as he is by the provocative touch, Samuel finds something vaguely
macabre about the lady...

Why is she staring at him like that? She's seen him before...

"Nice biceps," she murmurs.

He blushes.

"Oh yes, you're nice and strong. It won't do you any good but it turns me
on..." She hangs back for a moment, looking at him were head cocked to one
side. Then she takes a step forward, spreading her arms as if inviting an
embrace, taking a deep breath as if in anticipation of a kiss. "Well, well..."
he thinks to himself as he sees her biceps tensing faintly under the tight
wool, senses more than he sees it a rapid movement on the edge of his field of
vision, at the same time as the carmine mouth opens wide to emit an
astonishing shout, hoarse and wild. There is a double explosion in his head, a
flash of light, and he slides into a black hole...

Bret Blade contemplated the effects of the Penchak Silat blow she had just
delivered with perfect maestria, the heels of her palms making violent and
simultaneous contact with the boy's right jaw-hinge and left temple... She
smiled as she remembered the slim martial arts instructress in Djarkarta who'd
assured her she'd used that knock-out trick on her husband to end the fight
that ritually pits Indonesian men and women against one another on their
wedding night... and in other circumstances as well.

It had been a long time since she had been able to give free rein to the
violence inside her, and she had concentrated in that single blow all the
resentment building up for months. She felt better now and promised herself to
soon renew the hygiene.

Right now, though, she had to arrange accommodations for this first guinea
pig. She opened a concealed wall-cabinet and touched a toggle-switch. A panel
in the ceiling swung back, there was a whir, and a cable fed down with a
harness dangling from it, which she had soon fastened around the handsome
sleeper's chest.

The limp body rose into the air and disappeared through the opening, which
closed behind it: her first prisoner was in his cage. She had plenty of time
to think about the uses to which he might be put.

Upon her return to the living room, the phone was ringing. Bret Blade sighed
impatiently : another of her new social connections - a bridge tournament, a
dinner party... Now that she was preparing to devote time to her favorite
games, she was going to need an unlisted number.

The man's French at the end of the line was impeccable, but the accent was
undeniably British.

"Madame B...? Lord N... speaking... You don't know me, but we have friends in
common, especially the Marquis of Q... He's told me you're quite bored to
death here on our gorgeous lakefront. Which is why I am taking the liberty of
inviting you to you a costume ball I'm giving on my estate at Vevey..." The
tone became just a shade more confidential. "The truth is, our friend spoke of
you in terms which I found most intriguing, and in fact I actually caught a
glimpse of you at the opera-house in Geneva a fortnight ago... I found your
attire on that occasion... quite... delightful." He deliberately emphasized
the words.

"OK, so he's one of them," she thought to herself. There were so many of them
round the world, especially among older men. But then this one was a lord! She
thanked him diffidently, her acceptance depending on a number of other
obligations which she made up on the spot, and rang off. She looked at her
watch, slid back a concealed wall-panel revealing a video monitor and pressed
a button. The screen glowed, providing a bird's eye view of the cage into
which she had just hoisted the unfortunate plumber. She had carefully
calculated the force of her blow and as she had foreseen, the boy was just now
regaining consciousness. Bret wanted to study her prisoner's initial reactions
: this was a first for her. True, she'd had at least one unwilling prisoner in
her Paris dungeon, but her late husband had not been an appetizing man.

Plumber Samuel opens his eye : his head aches something terrible and he can
scarcely move his jaw... Where can he be? He can hardly see a thing, the light
from an invisible source is very faint, but he can see the steel bars only a
few inches away from his nose. Why? Why should he be in jail? What has he done
to deserve this? Nothing! Nothing at all... And then it comes back to him...
The lady in the big house, the faucet she'd broken herself, that exciting body
of hers... But mostly he remembers the bizarre way she hit him, that awful
explosion in his head, she had to know some karate, what else? He tries to
stand up and his head makes the painful discovery that his cell - or rather
his cage - is not high enough. And when he tries to stretch his legs, the
result is the same... He must stay as he is, lying on his side with his knees
to his chest, like a foetus waiting to be born... For how long?

"Welcome to Hell" says a voice in the darkness. "My own little Hell... Poor
man, I'm afraid your luck has run out, because it is my pleasure to take you
back to the Middle Ages...Nasty times those were... If you were better
educated, you might have been wary of my home, because it bears the name of a
female Bluebeard who lived in Hungary four centuries ago and who believed she
could preserve her youth by bathing in the blood of her victims... I have no
illusions of the kind, but before I do grow irremediably old, I wish to amuse
myself, amuse myself immensely...And for me, amusement consists of taking
young lovers upon whom I can inflict any form of suffering I may wish..."

The voice falls silent. Samuel does not grasp more than a fourth of what he
has just heard, and imagines he is dreaming... Yes: this has to be a dream...

But after touching his swollen temple, tested once again the solidity of the
bars around him, this holder of a plumber's and mechanic's diploma, knows full
well that this is not a dream...

He would scream for help, if it weren't for something in the lady's voice
which told him that no one could hear ... What's to become of him? She really
was sexy in her leather pants, the lady... But to think he'd imagined...What a
fool he is!

Suddenly, tears well up in his eyes: he has only just realized the full extent
of his helplessness.

The situation is like one of those American comic-books he loves. But he's not
enjoying this one at all.... And here the young man's brain quite literally
ceases to function: faced with a situation quite beyond him, his mind is
paralyzed.

.

Bret Blade spent an hour hiding the pick-up truck from the Maison Philidore in
a lean-to at the back of the garden and effacing tire-tracks all the way to
the paved highway. Then she rang the young man's boss to complain that her
plumber never showed up.

3

I imagine passionate copulation

in which I lay his body to waste,

seize him and possess him till I draw blood.

I cannot desire any longer than that,

this much energy cannot last,

I will take him into my service like a dog,

forever making him wait for me.

Nathalie Gassel : Eros Androgyne

From Lord N...'s diary :

Very successful soirée. Pretty costumes, witty costume contest... New Lausanne
caterer, very stylish... handsome youngsters to occupy Bella. But most of all
: SHE came... after midnight, had given up hope, suddenly there she was ...
Everyone stared. Black leather again : long cape, boots, mini-dress with a
spectacular décolleté down the back : amazing. Politely silent, a bit distant
during the hour she stayed... Hardly had a chance to talk with her BUT she
agreed to let me visit her! Bella noticed nothing, fortunately young R...
finally arrived about the same time.

Bret Blade had paid a great deal more attention to her evening's host than she
had allowed him to see. Aside from the overly thin lips (Bret hated these, saw
them as an infallible sign of sensual failing), he was a handsome,
well-preserved sixty. And he was very rich. His home, overlooking Vevey and
the lake, was practically a castle. And as it happened, the acquisition of her
villa and the transformations undertaken there, had practically exhausted the
nest-egg "willed" her by her late husband, a nest-egg which had turned out
considerably smaller after taxes than she'd imagined. It has been easy to see
that there was nothing more between the Lord and his Italian wife. And she had
obviously made a hit with the husband. All of which was very encouraging and
put her in a playful mood...

She slid back the hidden panel and studied the surveillance monitor. Her
plumber was eating the meager ration she allowed him twice a day - adequate
for his survival but only just: no point in fattening him up the prisoner.

Elated from the moment she awoke by the prospect of spinning her web around
the rich Britisher, Bret Blade had felt her need for heady violence growing
stronger through the day. The time had come to carry out an experiment lurking
at the back of her mind ever since she'd acquired a certain drug in Bombay....
A few drops had gone into her prisoner's food in lieu of the powerful daily
tranquilizer and by now the subtle poison was seeping through the walls of his
stomach into his youthful bloodstream.

She went into the bedroom, opened a closet and hesitated : her victim would
need no visual stimulation for what was to follow, but it could do no harm...
And Bret loved to fetichize her body, to make it irresistibly attractive to
the men she dominated - it was another form of domination. In the end, she
settled on a rather obscene piece of gym-clothing which dated back to the days
of old Leopold (and the memory of the man who had betrayed her and paid the
price carried a twinge of nostalgia). A long-sleeved black Lycra leotard, very
tight and very tough, cut low in front and so high on the hips that stray
pubic hairs were visible on either side of the narrow strip that served to
hide the sex - and whose rapid removal was facilitated by two discreet snaps
in the event of other gymnastics...

She completed the outfit with calf-high smoky gray nylon socks held up by
invisible garters, flat-heeled lace-up booties of soft black suede and riding
gloves whose palms and finger-tips were covered with spongy latex, ensuring
inescapable twists and holds. She adjusted a black leather headband to hold
her hair in place, approached a full-length mirror and admired her image: she
had achieved, she felt, a perfect balance between feminine allure and athletic
proficiency...

If young Samuel had been a more imaginative being, he would almost certainly
have gone insane by now. However, after a few days in the soothing penumbra,
with food enough to calm the pangs of hunger - and somewhat strangely, after
each meal, his nerves as well - he has come to accept his fate... whatever it
may ultimately be... He only wonders from time to time just how long he may
have been here. When he first woke up, his watch was gone, so how can he know?
Since that one time when the lady of the house - the ding-dong, rather! -
spoke to him, time has flown by, smooth and uneventful. Has he counted 18
meals? He has no way to be sure... And how many meals does she give him a day?

At present, however, as the minutes go by, Samuel feels very differently from
usual after a meal, as if he were coming down with the flu. He feels dizzy...
And now, shit! Here he is getting a hard-on! Thus far, he hasn't even thought
of anything like that... Besides, he's not much of a wanker, but... well... He
unzips his fly... The mere friction of his underpants against a suddenly
hypersensitive penis amplifies the unfocused desire rising within him, like a
morning hard-on with full a bladder ; his cock is already so swollen it almost
hurts! This isn't normal, he says to himself, what's going on? But then his
hand closes over the distended member, and he feels comforted ...

The lights go up suddenly, blinding him. When his eyes adjust to the
dazzlement, the wall in front of him was vanishing silently into the floor,
like a garage door, only faster. And there before him, as if she were posing
for some advert against a postcard view of the lake, stands a woman in kinky
attire, posing with hand on hip like that go-go girl in a bar in Zurich the
year before, while he was still in technical training school.

The woman immediately sees where his hand has strayed and her voice cracks out
like a whip : "None of that with me, young man! This is where it's happening
!" She points a remote control in his direction and the front of the cage
sinks quietly into the floor, as well. At first he fails to recognize the
ding-dong in her new get-up, but as she comes closer, he sees she is indeed
the female serial killer who knocked him out and caged him. But he's already
seen this story in the movies and he's not really afraid. The hero always
escapes. So she caught him unawares that first time, knocked him out with one
blow - what the hell was that, karate? he wondered - and thinking back on it,
he feels ashamed and wants revenge, he hates for sure her as hard as he can,
and yet... and yet he's also dying to fuck her, fuck that woman standing there
in the weird costume, throw her on the floor and screw her right then and
there, and in fact for the moment that's all he can think of doing when he
finally overpowers her... Samuel crawls out of the cage - which he already
thinks of as "his cage"- climbs unsteadily to his feet and lurches towards
her, still suffering from the stiffness in his legs...

"That's right, handsome, come and make love to me..."

And he keeps on moving, feeling really strange now, like at the dentist's
after the injection... But nothing can defer the desire burning in his gut...

He comes out into the space of light before a bay window: outside he sees the
lake and freedom, but he doesn't care, he feels like an animal in heat, eyes
glued on a single objective : that thin triangle of black cloth.

Now the coveted body is close at hand. He hasn't quite forgotten what the
ding-dong did to him once, but he can't help reaching for those perfect
breasts, only half-hidden by the stretch material.

But the supple body artfully evades his grasp and with the palm of her hand
she cuffs him sharply on the sternum, knocking the wind out of him and putting
him off-balance, while the edge of her hard rubber sole sweeps the back of his
ankle, dropping him square in his tail-bone. ... The pain is great but to his
amazement only increases the urgency of his need. He hears musical laughter :
"How do you like my tuy-shoo, little plumber ? It is the art of the nuns of
China!... You're stupid and clumsy, you'll have to do much better than that if
you want to relieve your poor prick inside my pretty pussy... And not like
that!" With these last words, the smile has gone out of her voice and the edge
of her foot cracks into the guilty wrist with terrible precision. Samuel
screams and releases the cock he's been stroking unawares, putting the injured
wrist to his mouth... "You hurt me", he complains and again the evil laughter
rings out...

The woman stands over him, hands on hips, knees slightly bent, her pubis
insolently thrust towards his face. "Come on... Get up..." and the superb
creature backs away, provoking him beyond all expression...

And Samuel climbs to his feet, fear overcome by desire.

This time, however, she gently takes his hand in both of hers, presses it to
her chest, slides it from one resilient breast to the other, down along her
flat muscular belly... "Do you like it?" But Samuel knew it was too good to be
true... The wiry fingers sheathed in leather came insidiously to life... and
suddenly he fell to his knees, paralyzed by excruciating pain : with an evil
smile, the woman showed him the hand she held captive by the middle finger
alone, which was folded towards the palm in a certain way, held in the vice of
her gloved thumb and forefinger, an elegant, almost delicate grip, but the
pain was incomparable... His whole body was at her mercy through that one
finger... "Just a little jiu-jitsu... see how easy it is make a strong man
helpless?" Through the veil of pain that focused all his senses, through the
shards of his desire, a rebellious lucidity returned : this ding-dong had done
something to his head! But how? And why?

Still squatting, unable to sit or stand, the humiliating grip obliges him to
waddle after the lady as she retreats with feline grace, leading him to the
huge bay window till his nose is pressed against it:

"Look out there, little plumber, look at the sails, the smoke, that is normal
life... You'd like to be out there, wouldn't you? Not locked up in your cage
any more, not hurt any more - and he screams like a baby, because she has just
sprained his finger - but still you want me, don't you, and the more I hurt
you, the stiffer you get! Isn't that amazing? Isn't that quite
incomprehensible? Well, actually it's a drug I put in your food. But of course
knowing that won't help you fight the effects... So we are going to play some
more..."

She lets go of his finger and he puts it in his mouth... Before he can stand
up, however, she seizes his neck from behind and once again he feels the
strength and the extraordinary skill of those steel finger ; crushing pressure
under his ears immediately brings on a dizzy spell : his temples are
throbbing, he feels faint... This ding-dong sure knows a lot of dirty tricks!
Irresistibly, she draws the captive head towards her crotch: "Sniff me,
puppy... Do you smell the heat, I'm very excited little plumber, your body
excites me and in a little while we're going make love... my way. But first, I
want to excite myself more." Brutally, she jams the palm of her gloved hand
against the corner of his jaw, and seizing the lobe of his opposite ear,
twists his neck and turns him right around, torso bent backwards, unable to
fall or stand. His skull is cradled against the firm tummy of the graceful
athlete, and Samuel can see face-on the object of his irresistible desire...
except that she is upside down. He feels his cock pop out of his open fly and
the lady utters a mischievous little shout. Still controlling the man's body
with the pressure beneath his chin (now her thumb is agonizing some sensitive
spot in the hollow of the jaw-bone), she leans forward. Blindfolded by the
black stretch-cloth, Samuel feels the brief contact of a tongue with the tip
of his glans, just a lick... then comes a familiar sensation, as wiry fingers
roll a condom down the length of his cock...He hasn't even had time to be
surprised by the new turns of events when she suddenly releases him and pushes
him away. He can finally stand up straight but even before he can turn on his
tormentress in angry desire, he feels himself seized by the sleeve and collar
of the sweaty jacket he still is wearing while firm buttocks are jammed
against his crotch, cruelly flattening his stiff cock; his feet lose contact
with the floor and he panics to finds himself hurtling across the landing to
crash head first down a flight of stairs and momentarily lose consciousness
...

Bret Blade experienced a quasi-necrophilic thrill as she snapped open the
clasps on her leotard and squatted above the man who lay whimpering at the
bottom of the steps, huge prick standing stiffly to attention. She took it
inside of her with a little shriek of pleasure and it was an effort to keep
from coming immediately... She wanted it to last and her movements had to be
very restrained, such was the excitement derived from exerting absolute power
over a beautiful male body. Yet, however strange it might seem, for aesthetic
reasons which she alone could fathom, it was important to Bret that this
involuntary and barely conscious lover, should climax at the same time as she.
"I have more consideration for the Other than most rapists " she called out
proudly to no one in particular. She applied fingertip pressure to the boy's
epiglottis : he choked and emerged from his half-faint...

"Open your eyes, fool, your dream has come true!". He reached up, trying to
clasp her to him... or grapple with her, perhaps? She chopped his arms away
and went on gently moving her pelvis. The irresistible desire to cause pain
returned, and at the risk of compromising her fantasy of a shared orgasm, she
"lovingly" slipped three fingers under her stallion's clavicle and squeezed
the sensitive area with all her might. Her science drew an inhuman screech...
which triggered her orgasm... In the élan of her pleasure, she tightened her
grip even more, counting on the shock induced by this qin na grip to bring
about the man's orgasm at the same time as it would make him lose
consciousness. And while the miraculous spasms, so familiar and yet so fresh
seemed to travel up her back and explode in her brain like so many flares, she
thought to herself that one of these days, whenever she wished and however she
wished, she would turn this subjugated body into a corpse...

And yet the session left Bret Blade more frustrated than ever. And filled her
with self-hatred. She was behaving exactly like sex starved men with their
inflatable dolls! Even by Bret's very broad standards, it was unhealthy. She
decided to put her slave to some other use and concentrate on catching Lord
N... in her net.

In the meantime, what was keeping the police?

it was precisely within the walls of the Hotel de Police in Lausanne that Bret
Blade's destiny - tragic as she had always known it would be - was at that
very moment taking shape. Just as the trainee plumber Samuel screamed with
pain and fainted, ejaculating into the high-priced condom provided by his
jailer, a captain from the Paris homicide squad, bearing rogatory letters,
entered the office of a high-ranking civil servant... His mission was
motivated by the discovery, in an abandonned well near the capital, of the
corpse of a retired professor, an investigation recently extended to include
the strange case of a car that had driven off a freeway at high speed for no
apparent reason, causing the death of the driver and two passengers.

the civil servant into whose office the French police officer stepped was in
charge of the surveillance of foreigners residing in the Canton of Lausanne...

4

The rose is ageless

she has her beaks, her gloves

and the papers mention her

along with acrobats

Jean Cocteau

Bret Blade had made inquiries : Lord N... had immense mining interests in what
was once Tanganyika; and not only had he and the second Lady N... - twenty
years his junior - slept in separate bedrooms for the past two years, she was
often seen in public with gentlemen friends. The husband, on the other hand,
was a reserved, even timid man who had no known affairs with anyone of any
sex. Bret began to glimpse an unhoped-for occasion of providing for her old
age.

At the moment, she was standing nude in her wardrobe closet, gazing into the
mirror at her best weapon, in both combat and seduction. On that score,
everything seemed in order, she thought to herself. Exactly one hour from now,
she would be playing hostess to Lord N., who was coming to tea. The clothes
she wore would be of considerable importance, and she hesitated between some
heavy artillery - black leather, perhaps - and something more subtle. She took
out a sheath-dress of moiré green rubber and held it in front of her to judge
the effect. Pooh! There would be time enough for that, she mustn't rush
things. And she chose an embroidered silk trouser suit - mauve jacket, pants
and slippers, with a broad red sash - an elegant stylization of a Chinese
martial arts outfit.

Thus bedecked, she went down to the spacious kitchen below stairs where a maid
in uniform was sitting at a long wooden table, stiff as a fence-post, eyes
staring into space. As she approached the domestic, Bret admired once again
how alluring Samuel looked in female dress and makeup. As he was "programmed"
to remain silent, the visitor shouldn't suspect a thing. And if by any chance
he did notice the disguise; 1° he was too well-behaved to say anything and 2°
the discovery might well make Bret seem even more exciting to him. For of one
thing, Bret was sure: from the way the man had looked at the leather gown
she'd worn to his party from the few words of admiration he'd murmured on that
occasion, she knew he was resolutely "kinky", as are so many upper-class
Englishmen. And she was determined to make the most of it.

She lay her hand on the maidservant's forehead and spoke a word in Chinese.
The body came suddenly to life, like a mechanical doll.

"Listen to me, Célestine: in this box you will find pastries which you will
arrange nicely on this silver tray. Then you will make the tea: three pinches
of tea from this tin for thee deciliters of boiling water. When I ring, you
shall serve the tea. Nod your head if you have understood.

The hypnotized man nodded: even on close inspection, the shadow of a beard was
barely visible under the foundation cream. And she would explain to her guest
that the poor maid had lost her voice as a child.

Bret patted "Célestine" gently on the top of the head and went upstairs to put
on her war-paint.

Behind his impeccable manners, Lord N..., was clearly very nervous as he sat
perched uncomfortably on the edge of the sofa, tea-cup in hand. Knowing that
English aristocrats are very keen on continental eccentricities, Bret Blade
sat facing him in lotus position in a roomy armchair: the thick silk of her
trousers emphasized the delicately muscled curve of her thighs. While
successfully affecting utter composer in the presence of that body which
aroused him immensely - sensitive as he was to the martial implications of his
hostess' attire - he found difficulty in keeping up his end of the chit-chat.
No more than five minutes had elapsed before he gave up trying. Mustering all
his nonchalance, he crossed the Rubicond... in tones he hoped were casual:

"My friend Lord Q... happened to be at a soirée where you gave an amazing
demonstration... Is it the case that you actually... defeated... a powerful
man in single combat?

Bret was taken aback for a second, then guffawed : "Oh, well... Yes, I had a
lot of fun that evening, it was all very droll ! Everyone laughed and that was
my revenge. But the man was utterly hateful... I didn't really hurt him,
though..." Her tone changed subtly, as she added : "But I could have done...
If there hadn't been all those people about, I'd have left him something to
remember me by..."

Lord N... strove to keep a note of playfulness in his voice : "Then you really
are a dangerous woman...?"

"When necessary..." she said, fastening her gaze on her visitor. "I spent
several years in China, where I studied several martial arts assiduously. I
had stopped training for the past few years but now that I have more free
time, I've taken up jiu-jitsu... It's loads of fun it and comes quite easily
... I've already earned a brown belt..."

She lowered her gaze and saw the trouser swelling that confirmed her
suspicions about the lord's secret predilections : besides having a leather
fetish, he was a "viragophile". She had never had any among her paying
clients, generally that kind tended to move in different circles, where
muscular females indulged their taste for "domination wrestling". Yet she had
already noticed, especially outside the S-M world strictly so-called, that
while most men, when they learned a woman was expert in some "mysterious
combat art" tried to hide their anxiety with lame jokes, there were others who
were overtly fascinated, as their crotches immediately attested upon the
revelation of her skills. She'd expected this aristocrat to be a banal john,
fond of leather, perhaps a little whipping. But in fact he was a rare bird and
she promised that when the time came they would have fun together.

She smiled : "Do I make you feel afraid?"

No, no, she didn't frighten him in the least he protested, almost jovially....
And she knew he spoke the truth, the feeling she inspired in him was certainly
far more complex...

Her next move was a hardy one, the candor meant to disconcert: "I have a quick
temper, dear friend, no one must stand in my way... And just between the two
of us, I like hurting people... when there's a passable excuse... Some people
deserve to be physically humiliated... and hurt... badly hurt." Was there
something derisive in her voice? Her exalted words had been calculated to
worry her guest and she saw she had been successful. "Across the world, there
are a men whose bodies will have retained permanent traces of my anger... ",
she went on with an ambiguous smile... "But your tea is cold!" And she poured.
"Go on drink, it's excellent tea.." Again her tone changed: "I'm sure you've
never heard of a martial art called qin na..." She pronounced it in the
Chinese manner and Lord N... asked her to repeat the word but still failed to
recognize it and she seemed amused by his perplexity. "It consists of locks
and grips and nerve-pinches that paralyze an opponent, render him quite
helpless with relatively little effort. Chinese police officers have used the
techniques for centuries... How about a little demonstration?" she asked,
rising from her armchair with lithe gracefulness and approaching his Lordship
where he still sat stiffly on the edge of the sofa.

"Well, I don't know..."

But she was already close, had already taken his left wrist in a cool delicate
hand, so gently he had not even noticed the move, and now she was lifting the
arm as in slow-motion, her grip seemed feather-light and yet the movement was
irresistible. In the meantime, her other hand had been caressing the manly
chest with reassuring fingers... that suddenly clamped around the pectoral
muscle like a steel trap.

"My God, that hurts!" he exclaimed in utter delight.

"You see? I'm not squeezing very hard but already your arm is numb and weak,
is it not? If I increase the pressure...so..."

The Englishman choked violently. She released him immediately, patted his back
and chest with her palms in a way that ended the coughing fit.

"Now you know just how dangerous I can be... if it behooves me to hurt
someone." She calmly took her lotus position again, but now she sat on the
sofa beside his lordship, with only centimeters separating her supple,
athletic body from her suitor, he fairly trembling with excitement and wearing
an idiotic smile on his face.

"What on earth did you do to me then? I couldn't breathe for a moment there."

"No, you couldn't..." she answered matter-of-factly. "Pinching that muscle in
a certain way causes a shock to the nervous system that compressed your
lungs... I could have made you lose consciousness... or worse. The ancient
Chinese studied the connections between the different organs, whereas the West
has mistakenly treated them separately... But never mind... I possess,
literally at my finger-tips, a large repertoire of techniques capable of
ending a physical confrontation with the strongest man in seconds... You are
interested in such things..." It was not a question but an observation, half
mockery, half promise."

"Do you think so?... Well, in any event it's a most unusual skill for a
woman..."

He was still trying to feign casual indifference, but without much success.

Bret forged ahead. "Would you like to hear about a little adventure I had in
San Francisco?"

He nodded with a smile that seemed rather forced.

"It wasn't much, really. I came back to my hotel room unexpectedly and found a
huge black man rummaging through my wardrobe. Since he was at least three
times as big as me, I thought it best to resort to ruse. I screamed and
pretended to panic, but when he came at me to shut me up, I kicked him with
the tip of my shoe... just there! "Leaning forward she applied her thumb to a
very precise pressure-point over the ankle. Lord N... said "Ouch!"

"Sensitive, isn't it? With leather shoes, it's an instant knock-out, draws the
blood from the brain. I had only sneakers on, so he was simply bent double
with the pain. But it gave me the opportunity to finish him off..." and so
saying she put her arm around the lord's shoulders where he sat thrilling with
apprehension, seized a muscle in his neck and dug in her thumb. Again Lord
N... let out a cry of pain. "This is the jianjing cavity on the gaul-bladder
meridian. I'm not pressing very hard but already your shoulder is numb, isn't
it? If I press harder, you pass out... want me to show you?"

"No thanks, I think I understand, it's like acupuncture."

"If you like..." She smiled and withdrew her hand. "In any case, that's what I
did to that Black and he woke up a few hours later in jail..."

"Your hands seem extraordinarily strong for someone so..."

"Yes, don't they? I exercise the muscles for twenty minutes every day,
kneading wads of paper with my finger-tips."

Sensing her guest was beside himself with excitement, she suddenly changed the
subject : he'd been sufficiently aroused for one meeting.

She became more distant, and was soon ordering the maid to bring the visitor
his hat (the Englishman seemed to have noticed nothing unusual about
"Célestine" and Bret congratulated herself on her makeup skills). At the front
door, she gave him her hand. His kiss was a bit over-ceremonious, but she put
on her haughtiest air and let him have his way. She promised to ring him "one
of these days", giving him to understand that from now on, the initiative no
longer belonged to his lordship.

From Lord N...'s diary :

Tea with HER. Terrifying woman indeed, knows unimaginable tricks ! Stopped my
breath just pinching my armpit, frightened me to death. Immediately became the
fondest of memories! She makes my most secret dreams come true, the ones I've
never owned up to with Bella, never satisfied by the pros, either, all so
commonplace with their whips and paddles. SHE dominates with her hands alone,
graceful, elegant, unstoppable moves, skills that border on magic! Something
disturbing about her too, though, something beyond sex. She really likes to
hurt people... How much and how badly? Guessed my weakness, trying to seduce
me, why else the demonstrations? Will she ring soon? Will she ring at all?
Knows I'm rich... What am I letting myself in for?

She has a transvestite maid... Her slave?

"You performed your duties very well, Célestine, you deserve a reward."
Célestine, from whose mind Bret Blade's hypnotic powers had erased the memory
of having once been a man named Samuel, was visibly happy to have pleased
"her" mistress. "She" was also a little worried, however, about the promised
reward, for the mistress' rewards closely resembled punishments.

And indeed, Bret Blade now executed a kung-fu spin quite in keeping with her
pyjama costume and a silk-shod foot slapped her slave viciously across the
face... "Come on Célestine, defend yourself, prove to me you're still a man!"
She feinted with her fist, the mais instinctively raised an arm to parry, and
she deftly caught the tip of the little finger and pressed hard with both her
thumbs on either side of the nail. Célestine's arm was paralyzed and "she"
screamed with pain. "Here's a trick that seriously upsets the chi, my lord,"
Bret murmured to herself, releasing in imagination her frustrations on the
handsome Englishman. Célestine whimpered like a tortured animal, "she" was on
the verge of fainting. In complete control of the lifeless arm, Bret whipped
it around behind the feminized man : with her free hand, she gripped the
muscle at the base of the neck dug and in her thumb : the slave's screams grew
weaker, its breathing came in gasps, then ceased altogether. The knees went
weak and the victim was unconscious before it hit the floor.

"And that, my lord, is the jiangjin cavity," Bret hissed passionately. She
released the limp hand. Célestine lay pale-faced on "her" back. Earlier, in
the presence of the attractive aristocrat, Bret had frustrated herself out of
respect for the rules of etiquette but mostly because of the longer term
strategy she had in mind. And so now she was taking it out on her domestic.
She was aware in some part of her mind that this was not a very nice thing to
do. However she was so aroused that without even removing her clothes, she sat
on the face of the unconscious man, placing her clitoris against his nose.
Through the thick silk, the pressure was just right : she moved her pelvis
rhythmically, vigorously, lasciviously; after a few seconds she writhed in
ecstasy, fell face down and lay still.

5

Men are brutes,

she despised the young ones as much as the old,

the uncles as much as the husbands,

the lovers as much as the husbands.

Rachilde : La Marquise de Sade

From Lord N...'s diary :

It's Pierre Louy's "The Woman and the puppet" here! She's driving me mad...
Fifth meeting today and not even a kiss. Made one last attempt at the gate
(very delicately, I thought) and she made some of complicated move and there I
was, ridiculous in public, arms crossed and locked, her prisoner. She laughed,
did some fancy footwork, and down I went! Pinned me for a few seconds with my
arms crossed on my throat so some hikers would notice and giggle... felt
mortified... told me it was kung fu for women - told me the name, couldn't
catch it - learned that in China, too... Almost shot my wad...

But at least now I know : she won't be mine till I've started divorce
proceedings. A great bore. Hadn't meant to leave Bella, but this woman is
driving me mad. Speak to Bella tomorrow... Delicate business, but we only live
once...

Bret received a visit unannounced from a police officer. She concealed her
panic with difficulty till she learned the man was from the canton office of
aliens. Merely a routine check-up, no mention of the disappearance of a
certain trainee plumber. However, a formality required the agent to borrow her
passport for a few days. Against an official receipt, of course... Bret's
suspicions were again aroused but what could she do?

A fortnight went by without further incident. She invited his Lordship to tea
just once again, and made it quite clear that she was not interested in an
affair with a married man.

She didn't hear from him for several weeks after that and was beginning to
despair. The day, the unexpected occurred. She had returned home from her
jiu-jitsu lesson in a very bad mood. A clumsy student, unintentionally brutal,
had hurt her stupidly. She'd only barely restrained herself from giving him a
lesson in qin na. It had spoiled her day, and she thought of giving up the
class.

Then came the phone call she'd stopped hoping for : Lord N... had convinced
his wife to file for a divorce! Bret invited him to dinner that very evening
to celebrate the auspicious event... and to see with her own eyes the papers
authenticating the procedure.

"Why my darling," he said with his inimitable drawl, " you don't trust me! But
of course you're right, you're so right!" And he rang off. His lordship had a
wry sense of humor, which was to Bret's taste. And the more she saw of him,
the more she appreciated too his unmistakable resemblance to Lawrence Olivier.
But what kind of a lover would he turn out to be?

A caterer had delivered a sumptuous repast. Bret had given Célestine all the
necessary instructions and was now busy priming her body. She was keen to
reward this man - already in her mind something more than merely her latest
prey - for to please her he had taken a step which cost him dearly. This
night, she would make him her lover... but not before she had created an
atmosphere to her taste... and to her future lover's as well, perhaps, though
Bret Blade knew she would win either way, since a reticence submissive
invariably stimulated her appetite... and thus eventually his own.

She had decided to wear the outfit he had admired from afar at the
opera-house, a matte black tutti cut from calfskin by a famous Milanese
couturier. The design was classical, but with a special twist, for this
cat-suit and its accessories were all of a piece : the bottoms of the legs
became supple booties clinging to her feet and the sleeves ended in gloves,
with cut-away palms and cut-off fingers equipped with non-slip pads. For the
moment, a large collar fell softly about her neck and throat and over her
shoulders. However, an invisible zipper transformed it into a skull-hugging
hood, covering covered forehead lower face - a forbidding and depersonalizing
mask. Finally, another near-invisible zipper, with a secret finger-tip release
that she alone could operate, bared her lower abdomen in an instant : her sex
and erogenous zones became freely accessible while yet she preserved the sense
of power and voluptuousness provided by the soft black armor she wore. And for
the submissive lover - always the object of some consideration, if only out of
venal motives - the obvious advantage was to preserve, even in intercourse, a
suitably dehumanized, terrifying fetish-figure.

The suit also had several hidden pockets designed to hold useful accessories :
a tiny whip, thin and flexible, which could inflict considerable pain in her
skilled hands; thumb-cuffs she could attach with a single hand and whose
ratchets made bondage a torture ; subtler still were the thin leather laces
which Bret Blade also used in connection with a qin na or jiu-jitsu hold to
put the strongest man into bondage against his will in a matter of seconds.
Her cupboard contained other more lethal accessories: a short yawara stick
with rounded ends, a truly murderous weapon in skilled hands. And then there
was the fan...a Chinese fighting fan. Bret Blade was curious about all the
martial arts, had practiced the iron fan several years before. She had even
reached a certain degree of proficiency in this very stylized discipline
wherein suppleness and a sense of rhythm were primordial. However, she had
ultimately grown impatient with the archaic quality of the tradition weapon.
What she now held in her hand was a considerably lightened and improved
version which she'd had made specially: no less deadly lighter than the
regulation iron fan, it was considerably lighter, for its razor-sharp blades
were made of a strong magnesium alloy. She slipped the weapon into a pocket at
the back of the suit : it would provide an introductory episode to the evening
ahead. She also slipped a yawara stick into a pocket by the calf and a few
cunningly knotted thongs into another. As a preliminary to their love-making,
she wanted to acquaint her new fiancé with the delights of fear.

Thus equipped, she went into the living room and put on a CD of traditional
Chinese music.

Two hours later, in the spacious living room, dimly lit by hidden lights, and
where dark zones of shadow subsisted here and there, Lord N... sat patiently
waiting on the sofa, whilst Célestine silently poured Champagne for him. On
the coffee table, a generous supper was laid out - caviar, smoked salmon,
tender spinach leaf salad, French cheeses and various fruit... But the meal
was for him alone... He felt slightly anxious as he tapped the engagement ring
in a pocket - an emerald to match the color of Bret's eyes : it had set him
back 50 000 Swiss francs at Mappin and Webb's. But why had he been left to
take his meal alone? He nibbled absent-mindedly, hardly aware of what he ate :
he was walking on air. This was to be the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. He
sensed in Bret an authentic passion to dominate the Other, which made her at
once a creature of dreams and a woman to be truly feared. His present
apprehension however was soon gradually allayed by the Champagne which
Célestine served him, emerging now and then from the shadows with never a
word.

An hour had gone by. Célestine had opened a second bottle and his lordship had
ultimately done justice to the food on the table. But the Chinese music which
droned on and on was beginning to get on his nerves.

Suddenly, before his eyes, the heavy drapes at the end of the room parted and
Bret Blade stood there, just as she had appeared to him in the foyer of the
Geneva opera-house on that fateful evening which had changed his life: swathed
in black leather from head to foot. He leapt to his feet to hide his
emotion... and its physical manifestation. Out of the corner of his eye, he
was aware that Célestine was standing stock still in one corner of the room.

"My dear, you do look splendid!" and he strode jovially towards her.

"I know I do, there's no point in telling me that ... And stay where you are."

Her voice was surprisingly hard and the man was disconcerted. Had me made some
gaffe?

"Get down on your knees, we must clarify certain matters."

Again lord N... cast a nervous glance at the servant. "You needn't worry about
Célestine, when I so wish, she's as deaf and blind as she is dumb..."

He was struck by the strangeness of her words but did not have time to ponder
them...

She raised her voice and uttered two brief words in Chinese, clearly intended
for Célestine ; the servant closed her eyes and her body stiffened
imperceptibly.

"I imagine you have brought the divorce papers?" From an inside pocket, Lord
N... produced a fat envelope which he held out to her. "Put it on the table,
I'll look at them later. And now the ring? I take it you have the engagement
ring, since it is this evening that you are to ask for my hand. Which makes it
the proper time for me specify one thing which goes without saying but must
nevertheless be said once and for all: when we are husband and wife,
everything that is yours will belong to me, and this includes your body, which
will thenceforth be mine to do as I please with it... and not the other way
around : my body belongs to no one. In short, there will be no Wanda-Leopold
contract between us. Is this perfectly clear?"

Lord N... answered "Oh, yes" with a kind of religious fervor. At this point in
time, he would have agreed to put his hand into boiling oil.

"And now... the ring..."

Without a word, petrified with anxious anticipation, he took the little jewel
case from his pocket, laid it on the table and, after a moment's hesitation,
opened it.

"Looks pretty enough from here", was the somewhat disdainful comment. "How
much did you pay for it?"

"50 000 francs... Swiss..." then he added sheepishly... "mistress..." This
after-thought, which Bret Blade grudgingly approved with a movement of her
eyebrows, was a remembrance of his escapades in the "dungeons" of London and
Paris.

"All right, you may come here... on your knees, of course!" - a wave of her
hand kept him on the floor - "and slip it over my finger... And if it is not
the right size... you will be in for it, my lord!"

Lord N...had come to the conclusion that Bret was playing with him, displaying
her considerable talents as a Parisian dominatrix... And yet however lucid he
felt he was, this affectation of cruelty inspired genuine fear. For her act
was flawless, as smooth and impetetrable as that suit of black leather that
encased her slender figure, made her a fearsome human reptile, shimmering in
the soft light.

Only when he had crawled close to the feet of the slim, haughty figure and she
had offered him a condescending hand, did he become aware of the surprising
continuity of the leather that encased her limbs to the tips of her toes and
fingers, rendering her outfit hermetic indeed. The reality of his dream became
overwhelming...

With delicate caution, Lord N. solemnly slid the platinum circle onto the
ring-finger of Bret Blade's left hand, relieved to find that the craftsman had
respected to the micron the dimension provided. The woman glided towards a
light source, inspected the jewel with the eye of a connoisseur and appeared
satisfied. From where he kneeled, her next movement escaped his eye, but now
the haunting, nasal music which so irritated and disturbed him grew louder.
And from her ample collar, she drew... a fan. Lord N... was disappointed. What
had he expected? He had no idea...

It was certainly a pretty fan, made of lacquered wood he surmised, but what
was it doing there in Bret Blade's hand at this particular moment on this very
special evening? And why was she holding that accessory in a manner which he
found so affected? She opened and shut the fan several times... Was he having
an auditory hallucination? In spite of the loud music and the slight deafness
which afflicted him, he thought he heard a metallic clicking...

Bret Blade began to dance.

"Come and dance with me! Come on, move your ass, my lord!" Bret Blade's voice
was totally different now, warm and sensual. The change of tone dispelled his
lordship's anxiety - although the charm she now deployed had an even more
artificial ring than her earlier coldness - and he rose to his feet and moved
cautiously towards the leather snake writhing before him, waving her fan. At
times she would hide her face behind it like some Spanish coquette, wheel it
through the air in precise and complex arabesques, while torso and legs bobbed
and twisted... These movements were as warlike, he decided, as they were
terpsichorean, her dance was clearly inspired by the Asian martial arts, it
was the kind of choreography one sometimes encountered at the ballet... Seeing
women in leotards miming the movements of combat had always secretly aroused
him, spoiling the "pure aesthetic beauty" of the show.

Thinking he was now on familiar ground, Lord N... abandoned himself to the
intoxication of the Champagne, he was "letting go" at last, moving his hips as
he had done in the years before his first marriage, when he'd haunted the
clubs of Knightsbridge and Camden Town in the Swinging Sixties.

"Come dance with me!" He moved closer and tried, clumsily, to imitate Bret
Blade's complicated steps... although considering his age, his lordship was
still a passable rocker. She moved towards him, backed away, weaving and
spinning, deploying a strange brand of defiant sensuality: she teased him thus
for long minutes and the atmosphere grew heavy with shared desire.

But suddenly Bret Blade's dance took a worrisome turn: steel barbs that seemed
to spring out of the ribs of the fan playfully caught at the sleeve of his
jacket and a sudden pull broke his balance; as he staggered forward, his chin
raised reflexively, the ample arc of the fan suddenly accelerated, flashing
just past his exposed throat... before slicing through a bouquet of gladiolas
protruding from a vase. The effect was that of a guillotine, scattering the
severed flowers across the carpeting. At a word from Bret, Célestine arose
from her lethargy, picked them up quickly and quietly. Lord N... took a long
time recovering his poise: this woman had nearly slit his throat... At this
very moment, his life could have been ebbing away through a gaping wound. The
edges of that fan she handled so dexterously were razor-sharp!

Bret danced close to him, cheerful, exalted, a little drunk perhaps : "Come
on, dance with me! dDon't worry, I shan't hurt you, but I want to frighten
you! You'll see how exciting fear can be... Especially when you never know...
I'm pretty handy with this thing, but..." And she laughed. "Well, are you
coming?" She backed off again with an ambiguous smile, her slightly angular
forms undulating in the black leather casing, and now he followed her, rocking
and swaying as best he could, at the height of excitation himself: the
dangerous game, the proximity of the fetichized body had liberated at last his
deepest urges.

Having registered his consent, Bret Blade's movements became even more
voluptuously aggressive, broader and wilder, more deceptive and bewildering.
Her hands, her thighs, her elbows her knees repeatedly came in contact with
his body, now to encourage him, guide his steps, now to jostle him, cause him
to stumble. He would tense up, expecting an attack which often failed to
materialize. She would strike "for real" only after many feints, and then
without warning : the deadly blades would zip past him, millimeters from his
cheek, his chest or his throat, which they might have opened like a side of
beef on a butcher's block...

At the end of a series of movements so quick and complicated it made him dizzy
to follow, she darted the weapon straight at his face, chopping aside the arm
he had instinctively thrown up to protect himself: he heard a click and
terrifying points had suddenly appeared as if by magic, only to hang now
motionless in mid-air, so close to his eyes that he could no longer see them.
This time he couldn't hold back a shout of terror, which had drawn an
affectionate little smile from Bret Blade.

Then the fan vanished into its pouch and Lord N... received his first kiss
from the redoutable woman, a kiss as violent as it was knowledgeable - how did
she manage to tickle his glottis like that? But she broke off the kiss "too
soon", and this, he sensed, was as deliberate as the rest. He was beginning to
understand that this perpetual blowing of hot and cold was at the heart of
Bret Blade's eroticism.

"On your knees!" Again it was the brusque, cold, disquieting voice. She
fingered the leather at her waist and with a single sweep of a hidden zipper,
bared the crotch of her willowy body. Centimeters from his face, he saw Bret
Blade's plucked pubis and quivering sex, its lines enhanced by a trace of
rouge and eyebrow pencil. ... The glistening dampness of the swollen lips
attested to the fact that contrary to all appearances, she had not remained
unmoved during her martial dance routine.

"You are now going to make me come with your tongue. If you are equal to the
task, you shall be rewarded. If not, you shall be trained..."

Lord N... leaned forward and with great circumspection, stuck out his tongue.

Bret Blade soon had to admit to herself that on this score, his lordship's
skill was unusual for an Englishman. He had a delicate touch, a feeling for
variety and unpredictability and above all, a keen knowledge of the erogenous
points, which is a delight to any woman but which is generally found only
among Latins and Orientals. No English male, she was sure, could have learned
all that by himself... He had already made her come once, but she hadn't let
on... She had other plans for the evening.

"No, no, stop that," she said, hypocritically pushing him away. "You're
hopeless, my lord! Hopeless." The man backed off, looking sheepish and
perplexed. Bret Blade turned to Célestine and spoke a word of Chinese. The
maid opened "her" eyes and obediently joined the couple.

"You're going to practice on Célestine!"

"But Célestine is a man!"

"Ah, so you've finally noticed, have you! And so of course right away you
start to complain! Defying your beloved mistress!" Her sarcasm gave way to
stinging reproaches, but the play-acting of domination rituals could be
detected in her voice : "Oh là là, you masochists! Never prepared to admit
your bisexuality, your deep homoerotic urges! We mistresses always have to use
force... Naturally enough, because you love it when a woman uses force, don't
you! All right then... Célestine, take off your apron. His lordship recoiled
when he saw that beneath the apron, the maid wore nothing but a huge soft cock
dangling between two hairy thighs.

"Go on, lick it, take it in your mouth, you know how, deep down inside, all
men know how! Make it hard, make him come in your mouth!" Lord N...
hesitated... a little too long. And suddenly let out a blood-curdling scream
because Bret Blade had seized with her ten fingers the muscles on either side
of his throat, draining his resistance, stopping his breath and his blood, and
despite his piteous pleading, he could only let his mouth be guided towards
the tip of that monstrous member...

The pressure on his neck lessened slightly, but the gloved fingers were still
dangerously probing his flesh.

"I'm going to tell you a secret - one of my secrets that it would be worth
your life to betray, do you hear me, my lord? This creature here is in deep
hypnosis and I put him there. For the moment, and for as long as I wish, the
rest of his life perhaps, he has only residual consciousness, he is a
vegetable... Now go on sucking, or I'll hurt you again... Tell yourself it's
like sucking a monkey's cock... if that!"

Lord N... did as he was told, despite an overwhelming urge to vomit. He had
little choice. And soon, to his surprise, he found it was possible to overcome
his nausea by imagining he was sucking... his own penis, as he had once seen a
contortionist do in an exclusive orgy at Hampton Court.

Bret Blade, however, was not satisfied. The man was carrying out her orders
but he was neither enjoying it nor suffering. What was the point? It wouldn't
matter if she cut off his air and the blood to his brain till he passed out,
he was inside a hermetic bubble of revulsion and detachment. She was beginning
to regret having neglected the black leather strap-on that went with her
cat-suit... when an idea came to her. Entwining tapered fingers in a tuft of
short hairs on the nape of his neck, she drew the yawara stick from its
pocket. First she rubbed the tip of the black hardwood against her moist sex,
rekindling her own excitement and lubricating the converted weapon for her
lover-victim. Taking the stick between her teeth, she leaned over the kneeling
Englishman, absorbed in his repugnant task, unbuckled his belt, and jerked his
trousers down. Taking the yawara in hand again, she began stroking the rim of
his anus with the deadly tip.

Lord N...'s mind boggled when his rectal intimacy was suddenly violated... His
first reflex was to stand up, but a hard rubber sole, planted
accidentally-on-purpose on a pressure point in the center of his calf, drew
another cry of pain and pinned him to the spot, while at the same time he had
the impression that a piece of his scalp was about to detach itself from his
skull! He started to moan, but from a mixture of pain and excitement he had
never known before.

"Going to behave yourself ?" asked the voice at his back almost gently.

He could only capitulate and carry on with his revolting activity, aware that
the foreign object was moving again deep into his entrails, working its way
forward, spreading the sphincter in a way that was at once painful and...
stimulating...

Bret Blade was gently pushing the yawara, worming her way according to a
special technique which she had mastered, tickling the prostate as she went...
Her "patient" 's breathing grew quicker and deeper...

"See how good it is. I love buggering men... But I know how to hurt them
too... Just there... If I press a little..."

She didn't press hard at all : he cried more from fear than pain...

She whispered in his ear : "That's a Chinese torture... I would tie you face
down on the ground, your legs would be spread and tied to stakes, your belly
propped on a cushion, your ass wide open... I would be wearing a ceremonial
robe and I would have a long ivory rod with a little ball on the end... and I
would do this..." And the pain was sharper... "After a few hours, the
technique is said to cause impotency... But the subject always loses his mind,
first..."

At that very moment, there was a gurgling sound in the vegetable's throat and
"Célestine" ejactulated with a moan inside the mouth of Bret Blade's captive
lover... She removed her foot from Lord N...'s calf but seized two fingers of
his left hand, twisted it behind him and with a vicious pull on the hairs she
held, forced him to his feet. He tried to spit out the sperm dripping between
his teeth but a canny knee-strike on the tip of his pelvis sent an electric
shock through his whole body and he gave up the attempt.

"Now you are going to take the stick out of your ass yourself and lick it
clean..."

She experienced an acute Fradenscheud at the revulsion she felt pulsing
through the man's body.

‘Want me to break your fingers?" She tightened her grip as she stepped back to
reveal the cute little stick peeking out from between the man's buttocks.

With his free hand, the man removed the shit-smeared yawara, and could not
help gagging as he started to lick it.

"If you throw up on my carpeting, God help you!"

The sucking sounds ultimately ceased.

"Is it good and clean? Hand it here... Now, you see? When you want to make the
effort... If you give me pleasure by and by, I'll put it up your ass again,
I'll make you come with this like you've never come before... But it's too
soon for that ..."

She put the stick back in its pouch on her legging whilst he stood facing her,
his piteous eyes full of love. She showed her affection with some playful
sadism, breaking his balance with a tuy-shoo ankle sweep that dropped him on
his back.

"Pull down your trunks again, let me see your cock..."

He arched his back to obey her.

"Hmm, not bad... A little soft right now though, don't you think? What am I
going to do with that? Punish it, I expect..."

She stooped swiftly and grabbing his trouser bottoms, wedged his ankles under
her armpits, clasping her half-gloved hands across her waist and planting a
firm rubber sole on the Englishmen's naked genitals.

"My God!" he exclaimed, delighted and terrified.

"Try and get out of this one! Jiu-jitsu! Simple but inescapable, any man's a
goner with this. But you'll see, you're getting hard already! Just look at me
and think how easily I did this to you! I can push your balls right back up
inside you now, it's very unpleasant!" She laughed happily and leaned
backward, pressing his scrotum towards the pelvic cavity with her heel... "It
just takes knowing the right angle..."

Lord N.... was experiencing ecstasy such as he had never known, wherein pain
and pleasure, fear and desire did indeed fuse into one. The pain was already
unbearable and yet the marvelous sense of infant-like helplessness under the
foot of a gracefully frail-looking woman molded in expensive black leather, a
woman whom he outweighed by at least 30 lbs. and yet who could overwhelm his
defenses whenever and however she chose - all of this indeed made his martyred
penis swell, as though some secret élan made it leap to embrace the inexorable
pressure. If he could be said to be suffering it was not from the mild pain
she caused him but from his inability to touch the leather encasing the
slender leg that held him at its mercy. The jiu-jitsu technique was calculated
precisely to keep the punishing foot out of her victim's grasp, and any
attempt to raise his torso, to reach out towards the sacred hide, was greeted
with an infinitesimal increase of pressure that instantly lay him back howling
with pain.

At length, she released him with a laugh, and his member sprung from his loins
like a jack-in-the box. She squatted and with a smooth, supple movement,
impaled herself unerringly upon it.

The leather-clad torso now went into a different kind of dance, slow and
powerful. It lasted a long time and solely though her own efforts - maximizing
her pleasure and incidentally rewarding a lover she had just mistreated - she
gave herself five successive orgasms... all the while exerting a constant
pressure with her thumb on a certain spot beneath her partner's pubis, a trick
learned from a Japanese prostitute that kept a man from either coming or
losing his erection so long as the woman wishes. Consequent upon this
frustrating treatment, Lord N... was in a state of utter frenzy and when his
mistress finally released his orgasm, it was long and loud.

Their love-making lasted late into the night. In spite of an occasional lapse,
Bret Blade had no cause to regret her choice of a fiancé. This was a man whose
ardor she could rekindle at will, who displayed a real aptitude for learning
in the rare moments when his knowledge of female anatomy proved wanting. If
the globe-trotter she had always been was at last to settle down, this rich
man offered, in every respect, an ideal haven.

And as for Lord N... himself, he experienced that night the most unforgettable
hours of his life.

Sadly, never again were our two lovers to know such ecstasy.

6

Your beauty can leave among us

Vague memories, nothing but memories

W.B. Yeats

It was around 4 AM when Bret Blade awoke. She'd fallen asleep on the carpet,
still wearing the leather suit. By her side, Lord N... was sleeping off his
Champagne and the strenuous night of lovemaking. His cheek bore a blood-red
mark where his dangerous partner, in the midst of a shared orgasm, had given
his trigeminal nerve a vicious pinch - a "love-bite" in the Bret Blade manner,
one she often bestowed upon her lovers. She smiled as she recalled that last
long scream, the ultimate fusion of agony and ecstasy...

She took advantage of the coital panel in her suit to answer the call of
nature and then, intending to remove the outfit, headed for her bedroom.
Drifting lazily across the landing with the great bay window overlooking the
lake, she cast an idle glance outside... and immediately saw, by the last rays
of the setting moon, that something unusual was going on: a scant twenty
meters from the shore, two police launches were moored side by side and men in
uniform were conversing from one to the other.

She remembered the visit from that police official... Had her "dreadful
infamies" already caught up with her?

She ran through the darkened apartment to a window overlooking the park and
its iron fence. Three police cars, a dozen men... and the flare of an
acetylene torch : a workman was cutting through the massive lock !

Whatever the circumstances, Bret Blade was not a woman to panic... Yet never
in her life had she been caught so unprepared.

She thought of Lord N... and of the future she'd been dreaming of hours
earlier. In a flash of lucidity, she saw the absurdity: a quiet life for a
woman with a destiny such as hers. The moon had set. It was that hour of the
early morning, just before dawn, when the night is darkest. They were probably
waiting out there for the sun to rise, she thought, as the law prescribes in
France as well...

Without a second's delay, she hurried to the ground-floor pantry, zipping shut
the pleasure-opening in her suit. She felt vaguely ridiculous in this gear,
but also thought it might prove useful and had no time to change in any case.
A thought went to his Lordship and his sad awakening in a house full of
policemen. She even had a thought for that silly Célestine, who could now
never hope to become Samuel again and would no doubt spend the rest of "her"
days in a psychiatric ward: none but Bret Blade could put an end to the trance
she'd induced, without irreparably damaging the subject's mind... And all that
because one day a trainee plumber had been sent to repair a leaking faucet at
the home of a bored Erzebet Batory...

She left the villa by a side door. No one in sight... But, going cautiously
around the back, she suddenly dived into a shed among the rubbish-bins. At the
edge of a little wood, there was a third police car, parked on a little-used
drive that led to the main highway a few kilometers away and which she often
used for her daily morning jogging.

One policeman was still sitting in the car, another was smoking a cigarette
close by and a third stood further way, drinking coffee out of a plastic cup.
This last was a Black man, a rare enough sight in Switzerland, Bret said to
herself - who seemed more attentive to the beat of the music on is Walkman
than to what was going on around him. From time to time she heard the faint
crackle of a radio.

None of these men seemed especially on their guard, assuming the object of
their siege was inside the surrounded villa, and Bret Blade knew she was
looking at her getaway car. She spread her leather collar and shaped it into a
hood about her head, the perfect adherence of the supple leather to her skull
ensured by a simple zipper : her face was covered to the eyes, her silhouette
almost invisible in the darkness before dawn.

She broke into the silent run she'd learnt in China, bending low behind the
trimmed hedge that led to her first prey. As she ran, she reached into the
pocket in the back of her suit...

The black policeman threw away his plastic cup and felt an urge to pee. He
walked over to the great oak tree that stood there, "Must be a hundred years
old," he thought, opening his fly... His member emerged from his trousers at
exactly the same moment as there emerged from behind the great tree an
apparition so startling that he froze with penis in hand and gaped: it was an
undeniably a female figure that stood there, she might have been poured into
that leather cat-suit, she was like some masked super-vilainess in those U$
comic-books he still glanced at from time to time. Of her face, he saw only
shining eyes beneath a cupola of black leather, for she held a fan ovber the
lower part, coquettishly hiding the imagined sensuality of the lips.

"Good evening" said a deep, sexy voice from behind the fan.

The woman slowly raised the other hand, the half-gloved fingers swaying like a
belly-dancer on TV. He watched the weaving hand without thinking, saying to
himself he should alert his colleagues to this unexpected intrusion... But
when he opened his mouth to call out, it was already too late: a sweep of the
fan that he'd failed even to see had severed his vocal chords and trachea. No
sound passed his lips, but with what remained of his ebbing strength, he tried
to draw his gun. Bret ended his suffering with a smart elbow to the temple.

She held on to the dying man, preventing him from falling, and propped his
large frame on the far side of the tree, where it would be invisible from the
patrol car. She peeked around the tree trunk. The Black's colleagues seemed to
have noticed nothing... which as much as made them walking dead men. Both the
one in the car, the one standing near it, had their backs and all their
attention focused on the house ... Still, there were two of them, they were
together, and they were armed. Besides which, she must act quickly, before the
other team entered the villa and the radio announced that the bird had flown.
She slipped the murderous fan back into its pocket Thanks to her perfect sense
of body balance, she managed to edge the Black's limp body - probably a
cadaver by now - around to the other side of the oak-tree (she had often
admired its girth, never suspecting that one day it might save her life).
Keeping as well out of sight as she could, she lifted the man's arm to
shoulder-height, as if he were waving his hand.

The policeman outside the car was just finishing his cigarette when he heard
his black colleague's voice : "Hey over here, there's something funny". The
voice didn't sound quite right, but when he turned around, there he was,
leaning against a big tree, beckoning to him urgently. The white cop was
intrigued and started forward... his revolver in its holster.

When the second policeman was close enough, Bret Blade pushed the Black's body
with all her strength so that it would fall on him. He dodged in time, but it
put him off balance and this was all the advantage needed by the mistress of
martial arts. Stiffened finger-tips unerringly found his solar plexus before
he could even think of calling for help. Bent double, gasping fruitlessly for
air while he gaped at the spectacle of this willowy female figure in black
leather who had just made him helpless with a single blow and was preparing to
finish him off. And indeed the woman slithered up to him with what could
almost have been a sensual movement - it was the poor fellow's last
consolation - wedged one gloved palm under his chin, the other at the base of
his skull, feinted a twist to the left, then "yielded" to her victim's
resistance and broke his neck to the right. Death was instantaneous. "That's
jiu-jitsu : using your opponent's strength against him!" she said silently to
number two, dragging his corpse behind the heaven-sent tree to join the first.
She recognized a familiar elation: it had been a while since she had last
killed with her own two hands, and she'd missed that very special thrill.

Now she was up and running towards the car at top speed, there was no time to
waste. The third policeman presumably saw her in the rear-view mirror and made
the mistake of leaving the car without taking time to draw his gun from its
holster (and he was now having some difficulty doing so, Bret observed, while
calculating that he probably hadn't had time to use his radio). He raised the
weapon. She was still three meters away but took advantage of her momentum to
hit the earth for a perfect somersault. The gun exploded but the bullet passed
harmlessly over her curled and rolling body. Her legs shot out like pistons at
exactly the right moment and her hard rubber heels struck the officer on his
cheekbones and he fell backwards, dropping his gun. When her acrobatics were
completed, she was lying between the man's legs, which were trapped under her
armpits. She brought her heels down on his chest, knocking the wind out of
him, wedged the tips of her boots under his armpits. She had him in a
classical jiu-jitsu hold and now easily rolled him over on his face, rose on
her knee and pinned him face down with an ankle-twist leg-lock. The man had
recovered his power of speech and gotten over the embarrassment of calling for
help against a woman, but damp sandy earth filled his mouth and he could only
grunt.

How to finish this one off? Bret Blade remembered the yawara stick next to her
calf. In a single flowing movement, she drew the ebony stick from it's sheath
and drove the rounded point deep into her prisoner's left kidney... Writhing
with pain, her victim offered no further resistance. Releasing the prostrate
policeman's leg, she kneeled by his side, seized his right wrist and jerked
his arm up and away from his body, took a deep breath and as she expelled it,
stabbed the stick deep into the exposed armpit. The victim's gulping for air
and the spasms that shook his chest, told her he was dying of a heart attack,
brought about by that qin na strike with her yawara : "In short, a
sino-Japanese co-production" she thought cynically to herself. She sniffed the
stick, which still smelt faintly of her lover's shit and she smiled at the
thought that he had had his revenge on those who would deprive him of his
goddess.

Bret was perspiring and out of breath, as much from a night of dissipation as
from her more recent exertions, but she did not dare rest. She disdained the
fallen revolver: she despised firearms. On the other hand, she quickly scooped
up her latest victim's wallet - she hadn't thought of it for the others and
now it was too late - and sank into the driver's seat, relieved to find the
radio still silent. The keys were in the ignition, the car started easily and
quietly. She drove along the narrow road in low gear, almost without a sound:
at this speed, the BMW was virtually silent.

As Bret was slowly approaching the highway, the sky was growing light and the
radio came to life: the main team were about to enter Batory villa - she shed
a tear for her beautiful home - and were trying in vain to contact the team
she had just slain. She stepped on the gas : it was imperative she reach
downtown Lausanne before the road-blocks went up. It was her only chance.

7

I run to death, and death meets me as fast,

And all my pleasures are like yesterday

John Donne

It was scarcely 6 AM when Bret Blade drove quickly past the prosperous
lakefront villas of Ouchy and up the steep streets of central Lausanne to the
Cathedral, abandoning the police car in a dark alley nearby.

Without a moment's hesitation, she walked straight into the deserted cathedral
and quickly found a hiding place behind the altar. She knew her next move
would have to wait till nightfall. But she needed time to think and above all
to sleep. Yoga enabled her to overcome the nervous tension and slip into
refreshing slumber.

The vesper bells awoke her : she had slept twelve hours and recovered her
strength! She was hungry but it was not her main concern. She peered
cautiously out of her hiding-place and saw a few older women here and there
absorbed in their God-stuff. She needed a long coat and none of those
true-believers wore one. She was making her cautious way towards the
Presbytery when she found herself face to face with a young priest,
flabbergasted by the shocking, surrealist vision of this masked and fetichized
body of a woman in the House of the Almighty! Bret Blade had no love for
priests, and without the slightest compunction, she gripped his upper lip
between thumb and forefinger and brought him to his knees. The young man was
trembling with fear in his robe. "Where's your dressing-room, " she whispered
urgently, "and be quick about it!"

"At the end of the hall on the right", he said with difficulty. Bret hesitated
a fraction of a second. Ever since her tormented childhood with the Jesuits,
she had always wanted to kill a priest with her hands. But this one was
terribly handsome... She contented herself with a symbolic death, seizing his
collar with crossed wrists for a judo choke, rolling her knuckles into his
carotids till he passed out imploring her with his almond eyes. She hurried to
the priests' dressing room and found the ideal piece of clothing : a long
cloak of the kind older provincial priests still wear over their robes in
winter and which was going to enable her to venture onto the streets in
daylight. The cowl fell so low over her face that she wouldn't even have to
remove the leather hood that masked her features, and as the cloak was too
long for her, all that was visible below the hem were the anonymous booted
feet. As she left the cathedral, no one paid her any heed. She made her way to
a small park overlooking the lake and spent a couple of hours on a bench. A
strange transformation had taken place inside our heroine. Since the encounter
with the police from which she had emerged victorious, her most savage
instincts had risen from the depths of her soul. Once again, she'd tasted of
blood and death, and had found them delicious. She had already giving up the
idea of finding street-clothes, she would be sheathed to the end in the skin
of the beast!

"The Cat of Nine Tails" was a bar located not far from the Cathedral, just
behind Nieffnager's vast restaurant, where the burghers of Lausanne ritually
dined after the theatre or took tea following their Sunday stroll by the lake.

The "Cat", however, was patronized by quite a different set, for it was the
only S&M bar in the city or indeed the canton.

It was early on a weekday evening and there were few patrons. Sitting at the
bar were a handful of dominatrix, withered and unappetizing (although masos
are less demanding on that score than your average john). A few would-be
postulants too, timid men drinking alone, each at his table, without really
looking at the women at the bar and their display of fetishist gear, their
handcuffs and whips. But all of these men - all three of them - did glance now
and then at another woman, seated in the darkest corner of the barroom,
nursing a gin and tonic, nibbling a bag of crisps. An oversized cloak of rough
wool opened at the front to reveal a torso clad with expensive black leather,
and if one peered into the shadowy depths of the cowl she wore, one could see
that she was masked.

No doubt about it, she gave them ideas, this woman, but thus far no one had
dared accost her.

Now the door opened and a skinny young man in his early twenties came in, went
straight to the bar and ordered a beer. After looking over the women on offer,
his eye fell on the woman seated in the shadows, and he no more than any of
the others could detach his gaze from the mysterious figure.

The young man's name was Leon, he was from somewhere in North America, he'd
fled to Switzerland for obscure political reasons, and for the moment he was
washing dishing at Nieffeneggers. He had just finished the day's service and
was exhausted... But he was there because he had just gotten into S&M
seriously and after a day of exhausting work, he needed to decompress.

A second beer helped dissipate his last inhibitions. He climbed down from his
stool, went straight over to the mysterious woman's table and asked politely
if might sit down. She spoke not a word but gestured with a hand wearing a
glove that seemed attached to a leather sleeve: he was to take the chair
facing her.

Bret Blade had come into this bar only once since she had been living in
Switzerland. But from the moment disaster had struck in Montreux, she knew she
must make her way here. This was because the outfit she was wearing would not
be out of place at the "Cat", might even prove useful to her there, and
because for once in her life that she needed help, she knew that in such a
place she could obtain it, by hook or by crook...

The barman at "The Cat" was as bored as his customers that evening, and at 8
PM gratefully turned on the big TV set for the evening news. For the first
time in her life, Bret Blade saw her face on a television screen. The photo
was an old one, quite flattering, she thought, but she was certainly
recognizable and felt thankful for her mask. The young man sitting opposite
her reacted like the others when the announcer said that this woman, suspected
of 7 murders and actively sought throughout the Confederation, had previously
been a professional dominatrix in Paris. "Great care is recommended, for this
women is dangerous : she kills with her hands. If you happen to see her, take
no personal initiative, call the police."

The news item broke the ice in the bar. The dominas began talking to the
barman, a man left his table to join in their predictable exchanges. Bret
Blade touched the young man's arm, her gaze boring into his :

"Do you have any experience?"

"Uh, well... a little, with a girlfriend..."

"I could give you pleasures you never dreamed of before...". The voice sounded
mechanical.

"It's just that... I haven't got much money on me..."

Bret Blade had made a strike and she wasn't going to let this fish get away,
no matter how impecunious he was. But she had to make the transaction
credible...

"How much?"

"Uh, well..." he glanced at his wallet under the table... "Three hundred."

She made a face for the sake of appearances and dropped a disdainful "O.K."
Then, after a moment's hesitation :

"Well, aren't ypu taking me home ?"

The young Yankee looked embarrassed. "My place? But I live in a maid's room,
it's tiny... There's not enough room... How about a hotel room? I've got a
credit card..."

Bret Blade took note of this, but a hotel room didn't fit in with her plans.

"We go to your place," she said with a note of finality in her voice.

Leon lived under the rooftops of a massive bourgeois apartment house on avenue
d'Ouchy. And the room was very small indeed.

When the unknown woman removed her long cloak, he went weak in the knees.
Never had he seen a cat-suit like that, except in specialized magazines, and
even then... And when he realized it was all of a piece, with "built-in"
gloves and boots, his enthusiasm overflowed.

"You're so beautiful!"

"Thank you... You like this outfit? So much the better... Let‘s start, shall
we?... Take off your socks and shoes." He obeyed with alacrity. He'd been
waiting for this all his life: a beautiful woman in black leather ordering him
about. She drew from an invisible pocket a tiny thong tied in slip-knots, then
gave him a brusque push with the flat of her hand, aimed at just the right
spot on his chest and with just enough force to send him sprawling helplessly
onto the bed. In this simple gesture he could sense unusual skills and powers.
She rolled him onto his stomach with equal deftness and then, before he even
realized what was happening, she'd twisted his arm behind him, jammed one foot
against his behind and tied his big toe to his right thumb. He was completely
helpless.

"You're a bondage specialist, I see" said the boy, terribly excited but trying
to keep his cool, show how blasé he was (when in fact no woman had never done
anything like this to him before, as Bret Blade well understood).

"Among other things..." was the laconic reply.

He rolled over on his side to look at her again. "Do you always keep your mask
on?"

"Always!" she answered sharply, then went to the window overlooking the
rooftops, glanced at the tiny balconies on either side, seemed satisfied with
what she saw and returned to where he lay.

"All right, I see no reason not to tell you the situation. My name is Bret
Blade and I'm the woman they're looking for on television. I have indeed
killed seven people including three police officers last night and so you will
understand that I would not hesitate one second to kill you as well if you
fail to do exactly as I tell you. It is also true that I am skilled in several
martial arts and killed several of those people with my hands.

Leon assumed it was all a joke.

"I guess this must be part of your act, but don't you think you're overdoing
it? I can't believe you for a second, you don't frighten in the least...
You're too delicate, too feminine to have done all that..."

"Really?" she said with a sad little smile. "I see you need a
demonstration..."

She took his free hand kindly in hers, felt for a second between the knuckles
of the ring and little finger... and acquainted Leon with the powers of qin na
: his shriek of pain was scarcely more than a sigh, for he immediately lost
consciousness.

When he came too again, the woman was going through his things.

"Is there a phone in here?"

He was still woozy as he answered : "No...no phone... Gosh, what did you do to
me just now?"

Without even looking at him, she answered : "I pressed the zongshu cavity on
the meridian of the Triple Heater... pretty name isn't it?" and she smiled at
him reassuringly for the first time. "That's a fairly harmless pressure point,
others are terminal... Do you believe me now? Are you afraid of me? Because
you'd better be..."

She took Leon's silence for acquiescence.

"I don't suppose you have a car? Naturally not... How much money in your bank
account? And don't lie, I'll know if you're lying... and of course I have ways
of getting the truth out of people... So?"

"Not much, maybe 2 000 francs... But I need that for..." he broke off, aware
he was about so say something stupid.

"Well, anyway that's not the most important thing... Right now, we're going to
sleep... I'll take the bed."

She doubled a blanket, spread it on the floor, helped the boy in bondage to
lie on it, lay down on the bed and turned out the light.

"After about three minutes, Leon started to complain. "I can't sleep tied up
like this, it hurts."

There was silence, then Bret Blade sat up in bed.

"You're absolutely right, this can't go on, it's time for stage two."

She turned the bedside lamp on again and placed it on the ground behind him,
then kneeled down and taking his head in her hand, bent towards his face.
"Look deep into my eyes, I want to see if I can trust you... If I can, I might
untie you... Look at me, that's right, keep looking... I'll soon know where I
am with you..."

Through the oval in the leather mask, points of light sparkled in Bret Blade's
eyes, which looked to the young man like infinitely deep green pools. He'd
never seen such beautiful eyes. Leon was madly in love with this refugee from
a Peter O'Donnel novel who'd dropped into his life, he didn't care a hoot what
she'd done or why. For him, the eye-game was an exquisite form of eroticism
and nothing else mattered... It even occurred to him she might be hypnotizing
him - which aroused him all the more, even as his mind began to drift...He
could scarcely hear the words she was uttering in a soft voice that droned on
and on... his muscles relaxed... the pain caused by the diabolical thong
vanished... He felt wonderfully well...

"... that's right, let yourself go, you're so tired, let yourself go in my
arms, feel how I'm holding you, supporting you, your body is heavy but I won't
let you fall, just let go... there... that's right...

It took only forty seconds for the boy's eyes to glaze over. She lifted one
lid and examined the pupil, raised his arm and had the satisfaction of seeing
it fall limply back : he was in deep trance. "A perfect subject", she
concluded," I can do whatever I want with him. She removed the thong, spent
five minutes planting a number of post-hypnotic commands, and finally ordered
him to sleep.

And now Bret herself could sleep as well, feeling slightly more confident
about her future.

In the middle of the night she dreamed about Lord N... and awoke feeling sexy.
She called out to her host in Chinese, threw back the sheet and bared her
loins. He came awake immediately and in a matter of seconds she felt the boy's
tongue on her clitoris. It was an inexperienced tongue, but Bret Blade's
senses were hyper-stimulated and it didn't take her long to achieve a passable
orgasm. She sent the boy back to sleep with a touch and a word and herself
returned to the arms of Morpheus.

Next morning, Leon awoke fresh as a daisy. Bret was devouring a package of
biscuits and listening to the morning news on his tiny transistor : "The
karate murderess is still at large."

"Nothing else to eat?" asked the masked women. She was still wearing the
cat-suit and the slender body enthroned on his bed reminded him of Musidora on
the posters for Louis Feuillade's 1913 serial, "Les Vampires" (Leon was a
"foof"... a friend of old films).

"Maybe an apple" and he fished one out of his back-pack. "There's half a stale
baguette in here, too." She ate everything, then ordered him to dress quickly.

She already had on her cloak and was about to hurry him out the door when she
changed her mind.

"No, wait... we need another demonstration, so you won't do anything stupid.
You don't remember it, but last night I put you under hypnosis and conditioned
your mind : you are an extraordinarily susceptible subject and you are now
completely in my power. In case you again think I'm bluffing, and since I
haven't time to argue, here's some proof. She spoke a word in a language he
didn't recognize and suddenly he found he could not breathe. Overcome with
panic, he clung to a chair, was about to faint... He thought he must be
dying... She spoke again, and his lungs could function normally again.

"Convinced? That was a post-hypnotic trigger, I need only say a certain word
in Chinese, and you cannot help holding your breath, you'll hold it till you
die if I don't cancel the order. This way, I won't need to rough you up in
public if the need arises, or even keep you in trance. As long as I'm within
earshot of you, you must obey me... And there are other orders implanted for
when I won't be around any more, you'll find out about those later..."

For the first time since Leo had fallen in love with this dark angel, he fully
understood the perils of his situation and began to feel genuinely, if
thrillingly, frightened...

An hour later, Leon withdrew all his meager savings, and gave them to Bret
Blade outside the Banque de Genève where she'd been waiting. With the long
ecclesiastic cloak and cowl, she scarcely attracted attention : her appearance
had something reassuringly religious about it.

She stuffed the bills without counting them into a pocket of the cat-suit.
She'd been wearing it for over 36 hours now, and it was beginning to exude a
powerful mixture of leather and sweat, attenuated only slightly by the eau de
Cologne she'd found in the boy's room. However, as the odor filled her
nostrils, Bret found it admirably attuned to the feeling of bestiality that
was gradually stripping away her civilized veneer with each hour that passed.
The same scent also excited the boy enormously, each time he came close to his
terrifying companion.

"I'll need more money", she said half to herself, as she observed a
timid-looking man in his fifties coming out of the bank. There was something
about his bearing that told Bret he had just withdrawn a large amount of cash.

"Wait for me here." Confident now that the boy was hooked on his "kidnapper",
she took no special precautions to subdue him as she started after her prey.

No post-hypnotic command seemed to prevent Leon from overriding her
recommendation and he began to follow the woman in the cloak, out of sheer
curiosity, just to watch this "terror" in action : "In for a penny, in for a
pound," he thought to himself. But his temerity was also due to the notion he
still retained that this was all some sort of game, in spite of the proof
she'd given him of her awesome powers.

Two blocks away, the man stood waiting at a bus-stop and Bret Blade joined the
queue behind him.

It was not until she was inside the bus and happened to look back that she
realized her young admirer was following her. She could only frown behind her
mask and concentrate on the matter at hand.

First she had to get close to her prey, who was sitting in the last row of the
crowded bus, next to a window. It was obvious he'd settled down for a long
ride. Which was just as well, she told herself. Either the seat next to him
would be vacated in time, or she would deal with him in some quiet street in
the suburbs. She surveyed him discreetly... And soon the seat beside him was
vacant and Bret sat down. A few seats away, she saw Leon watching the show out
of the corner of his eye, doing his best to be discreet but obviously thrilled
by what he saw.

A few stops on, she leaned towards the man and started speaking into his ear,
ostensibly propositioning him. He made no reply and appeared rather annoyed.
Bret quickly concluded he was a poor subject and that her attempt at oral
hypnosis would fail. So she resorted to more drastic measures : grasping the
man by the elbow, she leaned over and kissed him on the mouth - several
passengers smiled, others averted their gaze. However, Bret Blade's kiss was
actually a gag, for as soon has her lips had sealed his, the man felt intense
pain at the elbow, as when one accidentally bumps the funny-bone, but far more
intense. His heart literally skipped a beat and a coronary attack paralyzed
his lungs and vocal chords. Still digging her thumb relentlessly into the
hollow of his elbow, Bret Blade deftly relieved her victim of his wallet, then
rose to her feet. The man had fainted but thus far no one had noticed a thing,
except of course for Leon, who left the bus behind her at the next stop. She
paused to let him catch up.

"Are you looking to be punished? Is that it? Why didn't you wait as I told you
to do?"

"I was afraid you wouldn't come back... And I wanted to see how you'd do it."

"Do what?"

"I don't know, steal his money, I suppose..."

"Yes, well, I stole his money and probably killed him as well! Coronary, poor
fellow, which the autopsy will show was perfectly natural but which I gave
him." She grasped his elbow, she was visibly annoyed. "You want me to show you
how it's done?" He made no effort free his arm, but tried to catch a glimpse
of her eyes in the depths of the cloak.

"That's what you did in there? While I was watching?" The boy himself was
disturbed by the way admiration mingled with the horror in his voice.

"I did". She pulled him into a doorway and counted the bills in the wallet :
"I was right : 30 000. And now for a car..."

"Couldn't you have just... put him to sleep?"

She turned to him then and threw back her cowl so her eyes behind the mask
were clearly visible. And her answer came loud and clear: "I could have done,
but this was safer. Besides, I had a strong urge to kill that man. Understand
me : I'm like a sheepdog who's tasted blood and kills every sheep she meets.
The shepherds shoot a dog like that on sight, do you understand?" And she
looked deep into his eyes. He felt a familiar vertigo starting to submerge
him, but she freed his gaze, pulled the cowl up over her head and led him
further down the residential street in that middle-class suburb.

Several minutes later, Bret Blade approached a man getting out of his car,
rendered him unconscious with a harmless palm-strike to the rib-cage - Leon
had pleaded with her : no more killing - and soon they were on the freeway in
a comfortable Mercedes. Bret Blade was driving fast, with her usual expertise.

"I want you to know little Leon that my reason for keeping you with me a
little longer, is to have you bear witness for me, so to speak. You will be
the last to remember me if I fail to make it. I might arrange to erase this
whole episode from your memory, but I shan't do that, I want you to
remember..."

Their destination was a small flying club by the lake, not far from Montreux.
She left the freeway long before the exit she would normally have used and
made her way to the field via narrow back-roads. She encountered not a single
road-block and was surprised at her good fortune : the Swiss police seemed
less efficient than she had expected.

When they reached the flying club, she threw back the cloth cowl and unzipped
the leather hood, revealing her face to Leon without any preliminaries. He
found her very beautiful but much older than he had imagined from the strength
and agility of her slender body. She laughed : "Well, Leon, am I too old for
you?"

"Oh no," he replied with adoration in his voice.

"Oh, my little maso you're just like all the others, looking for the ideal
mother! And that's me all right! Bret Blade! Bad mother and uterine mother all
rolled into one! Lola Lola and Mother Gin-Sling, body and soul! You probably
don't know what I'm talking about and it doesn't latter." She gave him a
vigorous kiss which he would remember all the rest of his life and got out of
the car.

She went into the flying club cafeteria where she met a pilot, the owner of a
Cesna 39 who took people up for their first flight. After a long discussion
during which Bret Blade looked intently into his eyes but also gave him a wad
of banknotes, the transaction was concluded.

Bret joined Leon in the stolen Mercedes.

"All settled and nobody's dead for a change. Happy? As soon as they've filled
her up, I'll be flying away in that little plane you see over there."

He looked at the aircraft. "But it's only for one person... Do you know how to
fly?"

"I've had my license for years. When I was young, I used to fly drug-smugglers
over the Andes."

And Leon heard a note of nostalgia in her voice.

As she climbed into the plane, she got rid of the cloak and zipped the hood up
over her head : whatever happened now, she wanted to be in character.

Only a few minutes after the little plane had vanished in the distance, a
fleet of patrol cars arrived on the field, sirens screaming. Leon was
immediately arrested but would never say a word about the 24-hour dream he had
just lived through, in spite of threats to deport him.

Bret Blade was still over Lac Léman when three fast helicopters supported by
an airforce jet overtook her. "That's a lot of hardware for a chit of a
woman!" she laughed.

The warning came over the radio : she would be accompanied to Geneva
airport... or until she ran out of fuel.

Bret Blade would have liked them to shoot her down with a missile, that was a
death she would have enjoyed. She climbed higher and so did her escort. When
the Cesna had reached its maximum ceiling, she slipped into a nosedive. An
immense exaltation ran through her whole being. "Thus ends the tragic destiny
of Bret Blade" she said aloud with a touch grandiloquence. "It's like a film
noir from the good old days, when movies had unhappy endings!"

And the cold waters of the lake rose up to meet her...

8

Why should not old men be mad?

W.B. Yeats

Bret Blade swam slowly beneath the surface of the water. Light filtering down
haloed the black leather that still rendered her invulnerable. There was a
strange music in her ears... She looked up and saw the bottom of a little
boat, an ancient wooden rowboat, silhouetted against the brightness of the
sky, with the figure of a man calling down to her, holding out a long oar...
She grasped it easily and soon lay in the bottom of the boat... She was
saved... The man - a little old man who looked strangely familiar - bent over
her.

"Oh, Bret my dear!"

"Why, you're Leopold, my old Leopold, what are you doing here, you're dead by
my hand at the bottom of a well.."

"Oh yes my Bret, you killed me and killed me well, and it was the joy of my
life, but you forget I'm the one who devised all this, and now I'm here to
save you, to have you all to myself forever..."

He leaned forward and touched the tip of her breast through the leather, and
she saw how closely Leon and her old Leopold resembled one another.

"Oh, Leopold, is that what you really want? My poor old Leopold, you know that
cannot be : no one can ever have Bret Blade all to themselves, Bret Blade can
belong to no one..."

"Oh, Bret, I know that well enough, but what can I expect? ‘Nobody's perfect!'
", her former cleaning-man reminded her, as he began rowing with surprisingly
powerful strokes towards the distant shore.

Up there, the police helicopters circled and circled again, but the men
peering down at the surface of the lake could not see the little rowboat...
only the wreckage of a private plane drifting with the current.

THE END