Chapter Seventeen: Shaken From his Cage
As Thera settled on the seat of the spare sedan that Evan had stashed in the barn, Bane made one last trip into the ranch house to light a fuse that led to a veritable field of nuclear reactors.
Bane snagged a felt-tip marker from a kitchen drawer of miscellaneous scraps of paper, pen caps and tarnished coins.
Even with his mask firmly affixed in place, a peculiar expression was painted on his visible skin as his eyes filled with fire.
He pulled the ranch house door closed behind him after the dark green marker had served its purpose.
Bane felt a smile pull at his lips as he returned to the car and slipped behind the steering wheel. His eyes landing first on Thera's beautiful face before briefly drinking in the dazzling ring on her left finger.
As Bane maneuvered the car off the ranch house property and away from the mountain that cried out for the injustice of slaughtered innocence, back in Gotham City, Samantha and Kirov made their way to the 37th floor of Wayne Enterprises via the freight elevator.
Talia had been crystal clear about keeping as many eyes as possible off of them, so Bruce wasn't alerted to anything amiss.
Samantha smeared a thick shiny gloss on her lips, painting them a wet candy apple red.
"Let's go capture that fucking boy bat," Samantha said with a curl to her bright, lush lips and winked up at Kirov.
He grunted and dutifully followed Talia's spitfire cloaked in designer fabric that reeked of money, her every footfall gave a resounding click-clack on the polished floor of the 37th hall outside the pampered billionaire's office.
The double oak doors opened before Samantha and Kirov reached the plush carpeted waiting area.
Bruce had cleaned up and slid into a Kors for men suit and led with his right hand extended and a breast-fed, swaddled, affluent smile plastered on his rich face. His straight, white even teeth boasted pink healthy gums and Samantha could see why Talia so eagerly climbed on top of the billionaire's stick.
"Ms. Vogel?"
Samantha fixed a demure smile in place and shook Bruce's hand. "Pleasure to meet you Mr. Wayne, Miranda speaks so highly of you. Please call me Gaia, this is my associate Petrov."
"Anything I can do for Ms. Tate and please call me Bruce," he said and then shook her associate's hand.
"May I have someone bring you some coffee?" Bruce asked as he led them into his spacious, seemingly never-ending corner office.
Samantha blinked deliberately and widened her smile, "no, thank you. I'm just so grateful that you were able to make the time to meet on such short notice. I know a man like you must be constantly pulled in so many directions."
Bruce enjoyed Samantha's ego stroking and gestured to a pair of leather chairs in front of his mahogany desk that was modeled after the Resolute which sat in an oval room further south of Gotham.
"Well, like I said, Ms. Tate is a breath of fresh air to sweep through Gotham and her benevolence will save this city," Bruce said, his mind pulling him back to lustfully pounding away at Miranda that very morning, finding his stamina tested by her gluttonous sexual appetite.
Bruce turned his attention back to Gaia as she unrolled a set of blueprints that belonged to a completely make-believe machine that would desalinate seawater and improve greenhouse gas emissions to rebuild Gotham's infrastructure and save the flailing economy.
Bruce looked over the blueprints and plan specs before speaking. "Can I hang on to these? I'd like to have another set of eyes go over them," he said thinking about Fox reviewing the project details.
Samantha fixed her Gaia expression into one of obvious understanding and nodded as she shifted her leather cross-body purse onto her lap.
Bruce's eyes didn't even see her hands unzip the pricey, buttery soft leather purse. His eyes were drawn to her lips and the thick, glossy red lacquer she had painted them with. His brain was being pulled in too many directions to realize it was the same shade Miranda Tate wore. His cock remembered the shade being spread on its rigid flesh when Miranda's mouth swallowed him whole and gave a distracting twinge behind his designer label zippered slacks.
Bruce's brain caught on too late as Samantha pulled the tranquiller gun from her purse and fired a potent dart that slammed into the middle of his chest and knocked him backwards into his luxurious swiveling chair.
"Talia al Ghul sends her regards as well as an invitation," Samantha whispered as she returned to her real self regardless of her philanthropic façade.
Bruce's hands fluttered uselessly at his chest as the tranquilizer was quick to subdue the billionaire. Samantha walked around the desk and slid on to Bruce, straddling his lap as she dialed Talia and watched Bruce actively lose consciousness as the call connected.
As Bruce succumbed to the powerful drugs that had hijacked his central nervous system, the phone rang in Talia's hand as she drew closer to the Mt. Clover ranch house. She looked down at the caller ID before answering Samantha's call.
"Do you have Bruce secured?" she said as she answered.
"Yes," Samantha said as she watched Kirov situate the billionaire into a sturdy oversized rolling suitcase with reinforced metal casters. "We'll be on our way soon."
Talia smiled and pressed the accelerator to the floor after she ended the call and looked over at her regal uncle. "It won't be long now."
Laz nodded, pleased at his niece's plans seamlessly coalescing. "I will raze the defectors to the ground," he said and glanced over this shoulder at the brightly wrapped package leaning against the rear bench seat.
For the next several hours, every living chess piece in Talia's deadly live-action board game was in motion. She continued to encourage the large engine to consume the road, her fury only fanned when she had to stop for needed fuel.
The hours passed the same for Kirov and Samantha as they also headed to Mt. Clover where Talia believed Bane and his pet doctor would be caught off-guard.
As everyone believed the false narrative that Talia painted, Bane was headed further from the mountain that had never stopped mourning with Thera seat-belted next to him.
Bane was so focused on how he was going to reduce everyone in pursuit to neat, folded piles of wet skin and broken bones that he hadn't realized that she was speaking until Thera settled a hand over his that rested casually on the console.
"What're you thinking about over there?" Thera whispered until he shook himself out of his fugue and blinked a few times.
"I was just thinking about our life together once the running is over," Bane said as he spared a glance over at her beautiful face.
Thera gave a small smile as she traced her index finger in small circles on the top of his strong hand.
"When will the running be over?"
Behind his mask, Bane pressed his lips together as he considered his answer. He glanced at the clock in the hopes of giving her a better estimate for exactly when all the lives in pursuit of them would succumb to complete exsanguination.
"Soon," he murmured and enveloped her hand in his. "Soon," he repeated as he squeezed her hand and glanced down at the odometer as the miles passed.
As Bane continued to a destination he knew of without a map, Talia and Laz arrived at the Mt. Clover ranch house. The moment the large utility vehicle began the ascent of the mountain that held the bones of the eviscerated innocence, belching its toxic emissions, the soil of the blood-soaked ground cried out in righteous indignation at the murderous interlopers.
"It's not much farther uncle," Talia said, her voice beginning to tremble with the anticipation of confrontation and doling out pain and suffering. She shivered envisioning that she would soon be ripping Bane's whore doctor apart before she broke his mind and made him prostrate on the ground before her and lick the bottom of her boot.
Laz nodded in satisfaction, his years on this earth, gave him the ability to mask his emotions but inside he was as giddy as Talia at the prospect of dispensing punishment to the turncoat.
Laz reached back and pulled the gaily wrapped package towards him.
Talia watched from the corner of her eye as Laz al Ghul methodically unwrapped the bright packaging and peeled away the layers of paper to reveal a katana that had been forged five thousand years before and passed through the centuries.
Talia felt her breath catch in her throat as she recognized the folded steel twin blade to the katana her father was buried with. Both katanas were allegedly forged in the fire of an active volcano and passed from sets of powerful brothers throughout history until the current moment.
The folded steel vibrated with energy, it existed to ravage and devour the very souls of the lesser.
Talia cut the headlights and stopped the rumbling engine close to where the GPS indicated the ranch house that she believed was currently holding Bane and his pet physician.
She dialed Samantha as she exited the aggressive vehicle and outfitted her own arsenal.
Samantha picked up on the third ring.
"We'll be to you within two hours," she said as she answered.
Talia nodded. "That will be fine, we're going to secure the house."
Laz and Talia's eyes met, and he nodded his approval as they took off in the growing darkness through the trees towards the vacant ranch house.
Talia felt a flood of adrenalin when the ranch house came into view, she narrowed his eyes at the house that was blanketed in darkness.
Laz disappeared from her side and circled the house from the rear. It was soon apparent to them both that the house was empty.
Talia gave a war cry and stalked from room to room, finding every nook and cranny devoid of life except for a few brown, furry spiders and dust bunnies that might've had teeth.
Laz al Ghul slipped away to check out the barn and left Talia alone in the house.
She walked into the bedroom and her nose first detected the raw smell of sex in the air and then her eyes fell on the tangled bed linen. She stomped to the bed and yanked at the rumpled sheets, nearly shrieking when she saw the glistening semen stain that was still damp nestled in the middle of the messy sheets.
Talia backed up from the bed before the flickering nightlight in the bathroom caught her attention. She turned on the overhead lights and felt her gut tightly clench when the words crudely written on the mirror came into focus.
"I own the darkness and can now travel within the light; your reign nears its end."
Talia held her breath as she picked up a folded piece of paper leaning against the silver tone faucet.
Her eyes ran over the haphazardly drawn map of an area east of the mountain.
Talia punched the mirror, creating an epicenter of sharp shards as the glass sliced up her knuckles. She swore in a foreign language as she twisted the cold-water knob and hissed when the tepid water hit her open wounds.
She rooted around under the sink and wrapped her hand in rough paper towels, the blood drops spreading into red blossoms before she shoved the map in her pocket and jogged towards the barn where her uncle had discovered the fate of the previously dispatched men.
Talia dialed Samantha and told her to proceed to the ranch house, her anger was boiling over and seeing Bruce would be a wonderful misdirection for her frustration.
Samantha ended the call and glanced back at Bruce who was hogtied, gagged and still unconscious as the vehicle lumbered along towards the mountain that wanted no more of their kind of visitors.
Talia's fury only continued to build as she waited for Samantha to arrive with the subdued spoiled billionaire, Laz had only needed to pry the steel lid off one of the industrial drums to know her well-paid men had died painful deaths.
As Talia paced on the dusty barn floor, Bane drew closer to the place he had marked on the crudely drawn map.
The area he was leading Talia to, was a small clearing dotted with blue forget-me-nots and rudimentary carved wooden crosses marking the places of unknown burials. The simple markers served as the only monument for the faceless and nameless planted beneath the soil.
"Where are we headed?" Thera asked as Bane took an uneven dirt road, the trees growing denser with each passing mile.
"Somewhere with no unwanted witnesses," he said as he maneuvered the vehicle around an outcropping of rocks.
"Witnesses to what?" she asked.
"To the guarantee of our safety and freedom," he murmured as he thought about the dry soil which would soon lap up the spilled blood like mother's milk.
Thera nodded as he continued.
"I'm going to need you to stay hidden while I secure our future," he started and rolled the car to a slow stop when the tree line suddenly fell away to the abandoned clearing of the forgotten dead, the only mourners, woodland critters who nibbled on the grass that sprouted at the base of each hand placed cross.
"What is this place?" Thera asked when he engaged the emergency brake.
"The beginning and the end," he said cryptically and reached for her hand.
Thera watched his eyes began to empty of warmth and be replaced with a shroud of darkness, his whole being seemed suddenly cloaked with the intensity of a category five storm. Thera felt her breath leave her lungs as he unclasped her seatbelt and yanked her into his powerful embrace.
Bane couldn't pull her close enough, couldn't draw her warm scent deep enough into his lungs.
He fumbled with his mask until he could rip it free from his face and capture her lips. Thera moaned into his mouth, for a few moments they exchanged and survived on the same air.
"You're the light I suffered for in the darkness," he murmured when he lifted his lips. "You're the light that set me free," Bane whispered raggedly and buried his face in the warm curve of her neck, feeling her carotid pulse pound under his lips.
Bane reluctantly moved away from her, knowing time was of the urgency and getting Thera to a safe hiding spot was paramount before the bloody main event could begin.
He affixed his mask back in place and took a few deep breaths, pulling the narcotic inhalant into his body, urging it to both soothe and energize his central nervous system.
Bane waited until he felt the nerve endings of his fingers tingling from the opiate's potent kiss before speaking.
"I need you to drive deep into the woods, there's another clearing just under three miles from here to the north east. Do not leave the car until I return," he added as she watched him pull a 9mm from the glove compartment. "This is loaded and ready to fire, you won't need to use it."
Thera opened her mouth to speak, the stark feeling of fear kept her words from forming.
"Promise me you'll be here when I return," he demanded on a groan as he was suddenly torn between fantasies of opening those pursuing him from stem to stern or fucking her on the front seat.
"I will, I promise," she said before a gasp slipped from between her lips when his strong hands were suddenly tugging at her clothes, seeking her bare skin and wet center.
"Swear it," he growled and felt his reptilian brain collide with his remaining humanity as he nearly ripped the fabric of her pants in an effort to touch her nakedness.
"I swear," Thera managed before he shifted them both on the seat until he could roughly push her thighs apart and fumble at his zipper. She could feel the charge running through his limbs, translated into his hands urgently moving over her, capitalizing on every patch of her exposed bare skin.
Bane knew from the first frenzied thrust that his lust was going to make him come faster than he'd like and increased his rhythm until he could drown in the sound of her ragged sighs and moans.
He squeezed his eyes shut and tightened his grip on her hips until his touch turned near painful. Thera closed her arms around him as he buried his masked face in her neck right before his cock spasmed inside of her and filled her wetness with his hot stickiness.
Bane's breath came fast behind his mask and he let himself come back to the present moment and her warm, open body underneath him. He chuckled at his expediency and trailed his fingertips along the line of her jaw until he could trace the outline of her lips.
"I'm going to return as soon as I'm able," he murmured and extricated himself from her warm bare body.
Thera slowly nodded and reached up for the straps and clasps that kept his mask in place. Bane held himself rigid as she pulled the metallic face covering free and pulled herself up to find his lips. "Please come back soon," she murmured when she broke contact.
"I swear it," he vowed.
After Bane emptied out the arsenal from the car, he watched Thera drive away until the vehicle was swallowed by the trees.
As three miles ticked by on the odometer, back at the Mt. Clover ranch house, Samantha and Kirov pulled their diesel fume belching vehicle to an abrupt stop. Kirov wasted no time hopping from the vehicle and hefting the billionaire over one broad shoulder and carrying him to the barn where Talia remained pacing in the doorway.
A cruel smile contorted Talia's lips as Kirov dumped the pampered man bat at her booted feet.
Talia nodded approvingly at Samantha and gestured towards the same chair that her fuck boy Kyle had died on. "Put him there," she said and watched Kirov haul the unconscious rich boy to the chair and arrange his floppy, flaccid limbs just so, until he'd stay upright in the chair.
Kirov zip-tied Bruce's wrists and ankles to the chair, the thick nylon straps dug deeply into the billionaire's exfoliated skin.
Laz narrowed his eyes at the sleeping affluence, "this is the one responsible for the end of my brother's life?"
Talia nodded. "Yes uncle," she said solemnly.
"It is still your right to end his life," Laz murmured as Talia broke apart an ammonium carbonate inhalant under the sleeping billionaire's aquiline nose.
The aromatic ammonia spirit attacked Bruce's olfactory system and pulled him from the depths of his drugged coma. He coughed and shook his head as his senses were first bombarded by the dusty floor and then the restraints lacerating the skin of his wrists as he began to struggle. The odor of the recent chemically induced deaths remained in the air and he blinked rapidly as he tried to focus on the people surrounding him.
"You; Go…. Gi …Gaia?" he sputtered when Samantha's full red lips came into focus and the memory of her presenting blueprints for the preservation of Gotham City's life.
Bruce swiveled his head to the right and ascended rapidly from his foggy confusion.
"Miranda?!"
Talia smiled and stalked towards Bruce.
"No Bruce. Talia, Talia al Ghul," she murmured, still speaking in the cultured dulcet tones of Ms. Miranda Tate.
Bruce frowned and stuttered as his still drugged mind tried to make sense of everything. His brain receptors reacted to her words, lighting up his corpus callosum like the starry night sky. Fireworks flew between his brain's hemispheres as Talia raised a hand to cup his privileged face.
"This is the end," she whispered before raising her voice and speaking in a foreign tongue. Her eyes never left Bruce's as she ordered everyone out.
"Miranda, what is this?" Bruce asked, confusion palpable in every spoken syllable.
"Shhhh," Talia said and pressed her fingertips to Bruce's lips.
She let her fingers remain in contact with the mouth that had brought her such hedonistic pleasure.
Talia looked away from him briefly to ensure everyone had left as she'd ordered. She turned back towards Bruce, satisfied with their solitude.
"My name is Talia al Ghul," she said proudly as Bruce's eyes widened and he barely shook his head, trying to make sense of the words coming from the woman whose body was an oasis in the desert.
He flinched as much as the nylon zip-ties would allow when her hand fell away from his lips and landed on his crotch. He couldn't move much under the restraints as she pulled open his pants and closed her hands around his soft cock.
"Oh Bruce," she tisked, "you're not the strong man I thought you were," she added in a cruel mocking tone.
"Miranda, I don't understand," Bruce sputtered before Talia cut off his words with a sharp open-palmed slap across his face.
"I am Talia al Ghul, you stripped my father of his life," she screeched and delivered another stinging slap across his spoiled face.
Bruce had no words as Talia began stroking the length of his cock, she spit a healthy glob of saliva on her hand as she increased the friction and his cock had no choice but to rise to the occasion.
"You're easy, predictable," she hissed and yanked her pants off until she could straddle his lap. "You're a puppet, pliable. I recognized that the moment I saw you," she added and smiled dangerously, venom dripping from each word as she tightened her grip on his rigidity and slid it up and down her wet intimate folds.
"You've been my pet bat since the start," she growled as she impaled herself on the cock that only ejaculated money and high-yield stock bonds.
"I've kept you locked in that cage you call Gotham," she said as she lifted up and let herself slide down the length of his hardness until their intimate flesh kissed.
Bruce struggled in vain against the nylon ties, the thick restraints biting further into his skin, blood running down the length of his fingers and stippling the ground with the fat, falling drops.
"Do you remember the blueprints my associate showed you?" Talia purred as she kept her rhythm even, sliding up and down his pampered flesh stick.
She didn't wait for him to reply as she continued, her cunt squeezing and sucking his engorged under protest shaft.
"It is indeed for the people of Gotham but not to desalinate and save, but to poison and kill," she moaned as her climax approached. "I'm going to level Gotham and turn its entire water supply to a drinkable chemical weapon," she purred against his ear.
"Miranda don't do this, I can help you," Bruce stammered.
"No, Bruce," she said before her orgasm swept through her and she shuddered before continuing. "I'm going to help you from this world, just as you did to my father."
Talia reached inside her jacket pocket; closing her hand around her Boker Swiss dagger, steeped in the deadly design that could be traced back to the 15th century.
The handmade blade was crafted from hand-selected cherry wood branches. The handle was smooth from her frequent grip and heavy usage while spilling blood over the past decades.
She craved the sweet closeness that kind of life-taking would give her, close enough that she would be able to smell death approaching and leaving.
Talia slid the C75 carbon steel blade slid smoothly into Bruce's belly, parting the flesh like butter. She continued to sink the dual-sided sharpened blade into his midsection until she severed his abdominal aorta.
Bruce's belly filled with blood and spilled forth as Talia pulled the blade from his body. His body spasmed, his lungs gurgling as he drowned in his own internal fluids. Dark arterial blood coated Talia's hand as she wiped the blade clean on Bruce's shoulder and replaced it inside her coat.
She leaned forward and pressed her mouth against Bruce's forehead, leaving a red lip print on his still warm skin. "Fly away to that cave in the sky now little bat," she whispered and slipped back into her pants, leaving Bruce alone in the barn.
Hours and hours later, the smell of the freshly dead billionaire would emerge from the barn and catch the nose of several nocturnal carnivores who had a field day feasting on the dead man bat.
As Talia shouted out orders to Kirov and Samantha and they packed back into the sturdy vehicles and headed towards the meeting place Bane had mapped out, he was standing in the center of the clearing, staring up at the clear sky.
"Not much longer," he said to the stars that began to twinkle, the only witnesses to murder would be millions of light years away.