SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1Chapter Thirteen: Spider to the Fly
James Bond's consciousness drifted in and out; a series of mental and physical snapshots.
Fade in.
There were voices, and there were words involved, but Bond's mind seemed incapable of stringing the latter together. The verbal soup continued to bombard him; disturbing the unconsciousness he so desperately wished to return to. He said something to make the voices cease, but somewhere between his mind and mouth was a virtual fantasyland of might-have's and could-have-been's where the words were lost.
The voices continued unabated. He forced his eyes open, and was greeted by a fish-eyed lens view of the inside of a dirt floored, stone walled shelter. It was vaguely familiar, but he couldn't remember why he was there, and really didn't care to try.
He was sitting, which came as a surprise to him, he'd never really been able to sleep sitting straight up, something which had ably put to the test back during his days at Eton during a first year philosophy course he'd taken. What was the name of the blasted professor? Welby? Wellington? The old bastard had been quick with the switch; that much came back to him with little difficulty.
He could feel a trail of cool spittle, which had drooled down his chin from his mouth and was now drying in an uncomfortable patch on his face. Bond made to swipe at it with his cuff, a very non-gentlemanly move that would have certainly been rewarded with a stern whack from good ol' Welch. That had been it, Professor Welch. However, to his surprise, he couldn't raise his arm to his face. He tugged at his hands, but they had been tied behind him. What the hell was the old loon Welch up to, tying his hands to his chair?
He lolled his head about once more, having nearly succumbed again to the sea of grogginess. This wasn't Eton, these were those same dirt floors and stonewalls that had greeted him a moment before, and had been forgotten just as quickly.
He'd been drugged.
The voices droned on, and on. There was a rhythm to them if you really tried to catch it, an Irish cadence that rocked back and forth in a seesaw manner. He was trying to focus, trying to listen, but the rhythm was stronger than the words themselves, soon he was drifting.
The only unsettling thing was that the damn dog would not stop lapping at his hands, but this too, was not enough to tie him to his body.
Fade out.
Marc-Ange sat alone at the battered table in his kitchen, where just a few nights before he'd eaten sausage with James joking about the Capu's new, happier life here at Monte Paese.
The same knife was in his hand, but now it's blade was digging at the wood surface of the table as if it were attempting to rut out a knot, or some other imperfection. There were sounds of activity from the street, but instead of the sounds and smells of the preparation of a feast, sprinkled with the laughter of children, there were the roars of engines, and the shouts of men, as his own hunting party was readying to leave.
"The bitch," he muttered under his breath in his native Corsican tongue, while thrusting the blade angrily, again and again. Proud tears dripped from a face that refused to show any other emotion. There was no shame in crying for Corsican men, like their Italian cousins, they were not afraid of their feelings, and believed strongly in cathartic displays of grief and anger.
Feale had arrived back in camp late the evening before. By then, Marc-Ange was already on edge. Colleen and her man had been gone since daybreak, and as he feared when they left "to get some supplies" from Vizzavona, they hadn't returned.
He was prepared for betrayal, for although he made quite the show of faith in Colleen with James, he never really trusted her in his heart. He believed it was a woman's nature to deceive and betray men. But what he wasn't ready for was the sickening truth the McCann girl had delivered.
She'd taken him aside, sparing him the public disgrace of her revelation. But the knowledge of the thing he'd slept with ate away at him from within, whether his men knew of it, or not. The kisses that had filled his mind with renewed vigour, and a reaffirmation of his ability to attract and hold such a creature against the constant tide of younger, more handsome, prospects, was washed away, and in it's place was the nausea of knowing the monster had pressed it's putrid lips against his own, had wiled it's tongue about his mouth, had held his body about and within it.
He'd hated this Donn from the stories of abuse Feale had shared with him, and then his hatred had been reinforced when the assassin had turned on James, but now…
The knife's blade bit the table again, but this time the blade turned, and snapped beneath the force of the driving hand. A shard of the shattered blade met Marc-Ange's descending flesh, and dug deep into his palm.
The pain jerked him back to the present, and the tasks that lay ahead. Some of the men were shouting his name from the street now, calling him forth to the hunt. The old Capu stood, and brought his bleeding hand to his lips. He clenched his teeth onto the broken section of the blade, tasting the tang of his own blood, and drew forth the shard, which he then spat onto the floor.
He wrapped the gash, forgoing stitches for a later time, there were more pressing wounds to be addressed.
The two remaining Humvees and a battered jeep were directly outside his front door, with seven of his most competent men aboard, all wearing the black balaclavas of the FLNC and each equipped with Colt automatics. The only unmasked figure was Toussaint, who did want to waste time on costumes, and whose ancient wrinkled hands now gripped the wheel of the jeep which was positioned to lead the convoy into the hills.
"Once more into the breach?" Le Pouf asked Draco as he climbed aboard. "But where is Emiliano?"
"I think we both know the answer to that," Marc-Ange replied with a humourless smile. It hadn't taken an overly observant man to notice the time Emiliano had been spending with the Irishmen.
Rather than express his disgust with words, the old man settled with turning the ignition of the jeep. They moved through the arch of the gate, and out into the field that lay between Monte Paese and the mountains to the north.
They had gained half the distance to the game trail that cut through the surrounding forest when shadows from above blocked the morning sun and a roar drowned out the engines of the autos.
Toussaint held out an open hand to the other drivers, and the caravan came to a halt.
Two huge attack helicopters were descending on their position like giant, deadly vultures.
"It is the French!" a voice rang out from the second Humvee in the middle of the pack. In response, all of the men lifted their carbines to the sky.
"The bastards," Marc-Ange muttered, raising his own small Beretta to join its larger cousins, realising they were hopelessly out-armed when he saw the huge 30mm chain guns mounted to each gunship.
An aged hand laid itself upon his outstretched weapon, and levelled it back to the ground.
"I think not," Toussaint's voice assured him. The old pilot, who studied aircraft with the same passion most men reserve for beautiful women, was shaking his head.
"Those are Westland Apaches. They are not French, they're British," he assured his old friend.
* * *
They were about their task for a several minutes, Troy doing as he was told, as Donn put the steady hands that had gained him so much wealth, to an ulterior, but just as delicate, task.
Several of the men they'd practised on had squirmed at this time, either the result of the wrong dosage of the drug, or the delicacy of their media. Either way, it had literally been a bloody mess.
Bond's insertion went smoothly.
* * *
Someone was touching him "below decks". Couldn't the damn woman leave him be? James Bond's body was aching, and demanded the sleep it had been deprived. But then the voices began again, grating his waking ears like sand in an open eye.
"What if he comes out of it too early?" a man said.
"Not a chance," was a woman's reply. "With the Succinylcholine cocktail he'll be in and out until we hit him with the restorative. Until then, his body will just be clay. He can even feel us touching him, but his nervous system is repressed to the point he could barely sneeze if he had to. A few more cc's and his heart would stop."
He wasn't sure whom they were speaking about, but he felt damn sorry for the fellow.
The strange hands continued to probe his lower regions, and it was not an entirely unpleasant feeling. At least the dog was no longer licking his hands and wrists; that had been maddening.
"Where did you manage to find these things anyway?" it was the man's voice again.
"Amsterdam," she replied. Colleen, his mind whispered to him, her name is Colleen. "If you look hard enough, you can buy almost anything there. I can't imagine there would be too many uses for them."
"What kind of sick bastards are there out there?" his name is Troy, the same silent voice told him.
"All kinds, my good sir. All kinds."
They were silent then, for a while, and his world remained dark, but for now there would be no drifting back to unconsciousness for him. There was a peculiar feeling coming from his groin area, a feeling that lingered long after the probing hands had left. Once again, it wasn't really unpleasant, but it was enough to keep the tides of sleep at bay.
And then the blasted dog was back, lathering his hands and wrists with affection. James Bond tried to jerk his hands away, but they seemed to ignore his mind's wishes. He was still sitting, and he had a dim awareness that his hands were both behind him, behind the back of the chair.
"Down, Boy!" he attempted to shout. But what came from his mouth was little more than a weak mumble.
The dog blissfully ceased for a moment, as if it were pausing to see if he would attempt to say more, but then it was back at its work again, this time more exuberant than ever.
During this time, his eyes never opened; he had been content to just watch the swirling colours playing on the backs of his eyelids. But now, along with the almost unbearable affections of the dog, had come the persistent feeling of being watched.
He struggled to open his eyes. Finally they fluttered, and he was greeted with the now familiar dirt floor and stonewalls of the hut. For a moment, he tried to remember what he was doing here, but all concerns were swept away when he saw the woman sitting before him.
Sam, he started to say, but once again all he received for his efforts at speech was a thin line of drool, which escaped his lips along with a little less than a groan.
She sat before him, wearing the same simple, yet stunning dress, she'd had the last time he'd seen her.
Something horrible had happened that night, hadn't it?
The question hadn't been spoken, but the expression the woman who sat across from him wore soured, and she nodded.
The smile, her eyes, the hair; why did it hurt so for him to look at her?
The drug clawed at his body again, and his eyes lapsed close. When he fought them open again, the woman was still there before him, but it was a different Sam entirely.
The pallor of her face had darkened to grey, matching her dress, and the eyes he'd seen dance with so many different emotions and passions somewhere in the past were clouded over with a milky haze.
Bond had seen enough death to recognise it, even in his incapacitated state, but never had he seen a corpse animated, raising its once beautiful hands to the festering wound on its chest, or point to where the bullet had scarred the face he'd kissed so readily less than a week before.
Donn, he knew. Donn had done this.
The thing that had been Sam nodded.
The damned dog began to lap at his hands again. He attempted to turn to kick at the animal, but all he managed to do was tip his body to one side. The chair caught his weight and his fall. His mind had cleared enough to inform him he was tied to the solid metal frame of the chair.
There were voices outside the hut, stirred no doubt by the noise he'd raised in his motions.
"Colleen," the man who his mind insisted on calling Troy shouted. "Your new boyfriend doesn't like his love bonds."
There was a pause, during which Bond had the chance to remember who Colleen was, and who her new boyfriend might be.
"Give him another injection, we're going to need him incapacitated for this next bit," a woman's voice replied.
Troy, if that was his name, turned back to Bond, who somehow managed to keep the man in eyesight, even though he was half off the chair, with his head lifelessly lolled to one side. Troy grabbed him by the shoulders roughly and set him upright on his throne, and Bond happily realised he could feel the pain of where the man had grasped him.
"Waste of good drugs," Troy muttered quietly, apparently more to himself than to Bond. The tall, thin Irishman, with the strapping frame, took Bond's chin in his left hand, cradling his wobbling head, and then pulled back his right hand in a scarred and ugly fist.
James Bond's eyes were open the entire time, following Troy's clenched hand as it fell to his face, wondering what the man was up to, right up until the moment of impact as the fist descended. The world went dark again, a strange dreamland where a dead woman was fondling him in a very private manner, whispering warnings into his ear along the way.
* * *
When Donn re-entered the shepherd's hut, Troy watched as the assassin quickly took inventory of the sparse surroundings.
The table, littered with Donn's playthings, was still the centrepiece of the room, with Bond strapped to the chair beside it. In the corner behind Bond was the barely breathing body of the doctor. Now, with both Donn and himself in the room, it had become rather cramped, but it would still suit their purposes.
"Help me with his clothes," Donn informed him. Following Donn's lead, Troy took one of the scalpels from the top of the wooden table, they were surgical steel, and were the same type used in many hospital emergency rooms to remove the clothing from injured patients. He and Donn had practised the next part back in Bangkok countless times. After Donn had finished with the men, they'd drugged them just as Bond was now. They even attempted to single out men of a similar weight, age, and body type as Bond, so their dosages would be correct.
The clothes came off like overripe fruit peels beneath the gleaming blades, and soon their unconscious victim was naked before them. Troy hadn't expected the sea of pale scar flesh that awaited his eyes beneath the garments.
"Holy Christ," he muttered aloud. "This sorry bastard must be one tough bugger."
Donn was making his own appraisal of Bond, and Troy wondered if he was seeing him through a man's, or woman's, eyes.
"Funny," the assassin said. "I spent most of my childhood being terrified of this glorified bobby; waiting for him to show up one night to finish the job he'd started with my father. Sitting there in nothing but his skin, he looks just as silly and harmless as any other naked man. I went through hell for this sad, little piece of flesh."
Donn paused, and then reached his hand out to the bloodied nose of the man in the chair.
"What's this?" he shot Troy an accusing look that carried death with it.
Troy had seen the look before, and he'd also had to help clean up the results of that look, all the way back to Saint Pete's.
"He must have struck his face when he fell from the chair," was all he could manage as he felt the blood drain from his face. He wondered if he'd made a fatal mistake. Why should it matter? Unconscious was unconscious, after all.
There was another pause from Donn, and then, "Very well. Let's get to it."
* * *
After so many years, the stage was finally his.
The needle slid easily into Bond's forearm, and almost immediately the tethered man began to stir.
Donn quickly placed the empty syringe back on the table. Much like an actor slipping into character, the assassin began to shirk back into his female persona. It was still an uncomfortable skin to be in, but it was no longer a strange one. Lately, there were times when he actually could feel Colleen wanting to come out. Donn, who had never been one to question his manhood, nor his sanity, had written this off to the damn hormones he had to pop like a junkie, rather than schizophrenia.
Now, fully immersed in Colleen, Donn sat back in his mind, watching the woman within him do her dirty work.
She motioned to Troy to step behind the man in the chair, and as Julian did so, she watched him give a kick to the lifeless doctor whose body was lying in the rear corner of the hut. Colleen wanted it to be her, and only her, the agent's eyes encountered upon awakening. Seeing Bond's lids begin to flutter, she came forward and cooed into his ear.
"Charmian, Charmian, can me oul flower Jimmy come out and play?" she whispered. She finished with a gentle tug of his ear lobe with her teeth.
He came back to life much quicker than she'd anticipated.
With the tug, Bond's eyes flew open into full consciousness, like blinds whose guiding hands had gone astray. Colleen, using her experience had positioned her beautifully chiselled face a few inches in front of his. The eyes that greeted her were alert and aware, and worse yet, recognised her for what she was.
Before she could pull away, Bond spat full into her face.
"Whakindasicfuru?!" he slobbered out at her, the words uncertain, but their meaning clear.
She was enraged, but Donn's wolfish killer's grin never left her collagen-enhanced lips, even as she stood up and wiped the saliva away from her face. Colleen licked seductively at the hand she'd used to wipe clean while shooting a private glance at Troy who stood silently back in the shadows behind Bond. The glance informed Troy that she knew he'd failed to deliver the second dose of the sedative, and promised of reprisals to come. Visibly shaken, the man took a step further back, making himself flush with the wall.
"I'll take it the little bitch has already ruined my million pound surprise, Mr. Bond," Colleen informed him. "But the good news is … I still have a few more."
She spoke slowly, knowing his mind would still be dancing with the cocktail and would only be able to handle so much.
"As your body allows, take a look around Mr. Bond, and let me know if you should happen to spy anything unusual with those heightened, master spy perceptions of yours."
Bond did as he was told, lolling his head from side to side to the best of his ability, at first doing nothing more than drooling on himself from his slackened mouth, but as the restorative shot did its work, he was finally able to hold his head upright.
* * *
There was something wrong, that much was for certain. His arms were still restrained, but he doubted if he could have raised them even if his life depended on it, and it most certainly did. Bond's body from the neck down felt as if it had fallen asleep, and was now tingling with restored blood flow. He could now feel the sweat running down his bare chest, induced by what must have been midday heat pouring through the door less entranceway to the rough shelter.
How long had he been lost in the drug-induced fog? Had it been a day, two, a week? He rubbed his chin against his chest feeling the stubble residing there; no, it had been only for the evening. If Feale had been true, then Marc-Ange, or even his own people might be on their way.
"Thoughts of rescue, 007?" the creature before him purred, enjoying herself far too much. "You still don't get it, do you? I don't care what happens to me," she held her arms out at the sides of her body to demonstrate. "There isn't much of me left here to begin with. I have no exit plan, no grand escape. Since the age of eight, my whole life has been leading to your death. Once that goal has been achieved, I'll end it myself rather than let some motherless British Molly take the credit. But one thing is for certain; you will not be around to see it. No, you're going to go out in a glorious blaze of pain."
There were no lapping dogs or dead women filling Bond's head now, his mind was sharpening, even though his body was lagging far behind. Judging from the breathing, there was at least one person behind him, most likely Troy, standing guard over a man who could barely raise his head, much less defend himself. On the table next to him were several syringes, apparently armed and ready to go, and a can of Café Malongo that Bond's instincts assured him held something much worse than La Grande Reserve of Arabica beans.
"We'll hear your friends coming, trust me," Colleen continued.
"Wha ave ooo dun?" he struggled forth.
More smiles.
"Well, while you were napping, Julian and I were busy laying enough AP mines around the surrounding grounds to give Saddam Hussein Mot's crossbar. Speaking of which, have you noticed anything yet?"
And so he had.
The sleepy tingling of his body had begun to give way to true feeling, and something unhealthy was stirring in his lap.
The discomfort was slight, but his eyes followed Colleen's down to his own nakedness, and an erection that wasn't. His uninspired manhood stood at attention, as if marionette strings had been attached and were holding him aloft. But it didn't take "master spy" perceptiveness, as Colleen had put it, to spot the thin glass tube protruding from the tip, and from the burning feeling starting to eat away at his crotch, and his sanity, he could only imagine how far it went down. His whole body recoiled at the violation and sickness he felt, and he strained against the ropes holding his arms and legs against the chair. There seemed to be some play at the binds on his wrists, but in his weakened state, they might as well have been iron.
"Mind yourself, Mr. Bond," Colleen now said. "I would severely advise you not to struggle. Your little glass tube there is only slightly thicker than tissue paper, and I didn't take the time and trouble of getting it in there so that you could mank things up and make a mess of yourself. There are many Thai men who paid the ultimate price so that I could thread your needle that neatly, don't let their sacrifices go in vain."
"Your insane," was all Bond could mutter, his speech almost free of impediment now, but he followed the thing's advice and calmed his movements.
Colleen took his comments in stride.
"To a degree, but it is a very special type of insanity, and one you helped nurture. It's as much your child as it is mine. One nice thing about my chosen vocation is that it allowed me an occasional side dalliance with torture. For years I've known this moment would come, and that I'd be standing here with you helpless before me. Twenty years to ready myself, to study, and to practice, just so I could help you reach that ultimate high. When I read your file, I knew it would take something special, to push you. As Troy was so eager to point out, your body is a roadmap of those that came before me. Chemicals, scalpels, carpet beaters, it took a true student to come up with something original."
"But I'm sure you managed, somehow," Bond muttered dejectedly, his voice nearly free of impediments. He was looking down at himself, attempting to will the glass tube from his body, or at least will it to stay in one piece.
"Actually, yes," Colleen obviously wanted to bask in her cleverness, and Bond was willing to let her go if it meant buying a more precious moments. "It was something of an epiphany I had, and once again, it was inspired by your file. Outside of your blind allegiance to Mother England, you live a particular lifestyle, Mr. Bond; twice as bright, half as long, if you will. You smoke those foul smelling Turkish blends like an industrial chimney, you drink liquor as if your kidneys were just another criminal to be punished, and most of all you use women like a drug. That's why this beautiful piece of flesh is standing here now, I knew if I wanted to get close enough to you to cause you real pain, to screw you like a Brasser, I would have to be a woman. You pick the poison to suit the man, and if there's anything I learned from the play yard at St. Pete's, it's that if you want to hurt someone, you take away their favourite toy."
"Bitch," Bond muttered.
"Why, yes," Colleen agreed. "Bitch, bastard, whatever; I get a little confused myself sometimes. But you, Mr. Bond, Mr. High-and-mighty-moral-high-ground, Mr. Killer-of-children's-fathers, Mr. Destroyer-of-little-boys'-lives, you are a bastard, and there is little doubt about that."
"As I was saying, when I read about all the women in your life, it brought to mind this little trick you see before you. A bit of living history from the Nazis, the good doctors Horst Schumann and Joseph Mengele at Auschwitz to be exact. In the camps they would try all sorts of things to "cure" or sterilize Jews and other undesirables, many of whom were sick because the Nazis had injected them with the illnesses to begin with. Well, one Bonnie day they came across a clever idea to "cure" homosexuals. We'll just shove a glass tube up their penis, get them all hot and bothered, and then let Mother Nature do the rest. Do you know how many nerve receptors there are in a man's penis?"
Bond had never been one of those Freudian basket cases that dwelt on their own endowments, although there had been more than one personality profiler in the service over the years that had tried to brandish him with that tag because of his romantic escapades. He had always felt his own physicality was just a road that took him the places he wanted to go; from mission to mission, and sometimes, from bed to bed. But somewhere in the back of his mind, there was a primitive terror that wanted to cower from any threat to his manhood.
As with most men, however, dwelling on thoughts of his sexual self, tended to make things stir, and James Bond realised with horror that that part of him was beginning to come to life.
"Ah, yes," Colleen coaxed him along with a sensual voice. "You see, Mr. Bond…or shall I call you James? Considering we're about to be very intimate, indeed, I think I'll stick with James. There was a little more than just a restorative in the hypo I gave you a few minutes ago. For starters, there was some Ecstasy, a special mix of my own, guaranteed to make every thing you feel intensify tenfold, and then there was a little bit of a prescription performance enhancer that makes Viagra look like a cold shower."
The sweat on his body had cooled. He'd spent his whole life being witness to the horrible things men were capable of doing to one another, and trying to right some of the grievous wrongs he'd seen. And now, out here in the middle of beautiful nowhere, he was going to go from being the butcher of villains, to being butchered himself by this maniac.
"As good old Doctor Chansue would tell me, I'm going to give you a beautiful Ferrari of a body, and I'm going to give you the keys, but it is going to be up to you to learn how to drive it."
As she spoke, Colleen ran her splayed fingers through her hair, combing it into a dark, wild mane that went down her back. Bond realised she was posing for him, and her intent was becoming clear. He hadn't even begun to guess at how sick and twisted Donn's mind had become.
"So, I had to study, and find just the right way to walk to draw a man's eyes to me, how to hold myself so my new feminine wares could be put on proper display, how to coo a man to attention, and groan in mock pleasure. And of coarse, I had to learn how to f***."
"You're a sick and sad thing, Peter," Bond told him, trying so hard to distance himself from the unwilling fire growing in his loins. It had little to do with Colleen's coarse display and language, which was actually making him ill, and more to do with the chemicals his body had been dealt. James Bond tried to let his mind drift away from the stale, little hole. There was a breeze coming from the opening to the hut, one of the cool mountain breezes Che Che had literally been singing the praises of the day before. Would that same air be working its way down the mountain soon, to Feale, to Marc-Ange, closer to the ones he cared for, and farther away from this monster.
Colleen had continued as if he'd never spoken.
"It certainly is hot in here, isn't it?" she said, unbuttoning the top buttons to the basic, green fatigues she wore. The curvature of her sculpted breasts were now on display, as if they were playing a child's game of hide and seek beneath the loosened fabric. With ample amounts of self-loathing and alarm, Bond felt his body begin to respond. The cold sweat poured forth from his face and torso. How much longer would it be now before the first break?
"Anyway, once the scarring started to heal enough, I started picking up men on the street and bringing them back to deserted apartment where Troy and I had set up mattresses and whatever other accoutrements we would need. It was rough at first, actually quite painful, not to mention disgusting. My body was still trying to put itself back together, there was blood most of the time, but I got through it, and when the pain got bad, I just thought about you, James. Hate can help you through hard times. They would call me beautiful, and I would coyly laugh. They would buy me dinner, and make pretence of complementing my fashion sense, and I would demurely look away like a shy schoolgirl. When they laid their hands on me, I wanted to rend the flesh from their living bodies, but I would remain calm and mimic the passion their egos required. And then, of coarse, I had the pleasure of killing them when I was through, that made it a little better."
Her hands wandered down the remainder of her top, displacing the buttons as they went. Soon, she shirked the shirt off and onto the dirt floor like a dead skin, and her magnificent, perfectly formed breasts were on full display.
"Never could get used to wearing a bra, though, they are the damnedest, most uncomfortable things. I still don't see how women do it. I'm sorry, how other women do it. So, how do they look?"
He would not give her the satisfaction. He was far too busy following that breeze.
"What do you think, Julian?" she sought a second opinion.
"Damn fine diddies," came the reply from somewhere behind Bond.
"He should know," she remarked flippantly. "It was a good thing to start with Thai men, they aren't always the best endowed. But once I'd gotten better at the whole sex thing, I let Troy take a couple of test drives. In fact, he and that crotchety father-in-low of yours are the only ones who've lived to talk about it, and that's probably a temporary state for at least one of them."
Colleen kicked off her boots, pealed back her socks, and then slowly wiggled out of her pants, giving far more of a show than was necessary to accomplish the task.
And then she stood before him in all her glory, hands on hips, not more than an arm's length away from Bond. Colleen had a statuesque quality, not the cheap, voluptuousness of a Page Three girl, but a more Athenian, classical and muscular beauty. Bond couldn't blame Marc-Ange for becoming entangled in this dark, sensual beauty, and it took every fibre of his being to avoid the trap himself. He thought of financial reports, he thought of long rides in the countryside, he thought of cards with M at the club, he thought of anything but the beautiful woman before him.
She came in close again, bending down just in front of him so that her hard nipples brushed against his face.
"Amazing stamina, 007," she whispered in his ear. "Now, where are you hiding in there?" She stood again, and walked away from him, allowing him to observe that her heart-shaped, high riding hips were as well formed as the rest of her. Then she turned as if a thought had come to her.
"So how did you like Feale?" she asked. "Isn't she amazing? You should have seen her when she was younger. You know, after Tom had grown accustomed to the idea, he let us share our own apartment at St. Pete's. This was long before we lived together at Tech Duinn. During the week, we helped with classes, and meals, and the like. But the weekends were our own. There were times when we'd practically spend the whole weekend in bed. Ah, but to be a teenager again. I happen to know for a fact I have run my tongue along every inch of that beautiful, translucent skin of hers. God, those little noises she used to make."
There were certain things that people couldn't control. Certain involuntary reactions that were possibly within the grasp of Tibetan monks, but to average men and women could be held back now more than breathing.
The first crack came, and James Bond's world exploded. He had told himself he wouldn't give Donn the satisfaction, but when the time came there was no point in holding back the screams that tore from him.
It was quickly followed by a second break, and then a third, and then countless others, each bringing a new hell of blood and agony. He screamed until his throat was raw and his voice shredded. The whole time there was a small oasis of sanity in his mind, a place where he could sense the monster standing there before him, watching him, and gloating as decades of hate found their cathartic striking point.
Finally he could feel his body was loosing its sweat-drenched grip on reality, and he began to slide into blissful unconsciousness.
But then the hands were upon him again, waving an ammonia tablet beneath his nose, and shoving a fresh needle into his arm.
They were not going to let him go.
On and on it went, the sounds of snapping glass punctuating each blinding burst of pain. In the past, when he'd been tortured, there was always a point where the pain had just become a blinding wall and lost its edge. He'd once met a man named Sun, who had created an art of fluctuating degrees of pain, so that new heights could be reached. By juxtaposing pain with pleasure, he'd created much greater peaks and lower valleys.
But now this chemical nightmare had refused him a retreat, and the pain went on forever, ever increasing, ever bringing him closer to madness. He imagined talking to his aunt at one point, and then making love to Tracy, only to look down in the middle of their passion to find his manhood had been turned into a shredded stalk of pale, bloodied, ribbons.
And then, when he thought things could be no worse, a husky feminine voice came to his ear, speaking clearly though the hurricane of pain and insanity.
"You never had her, you bastard," the voice croaked. "I told Feale to sleep with you. I told her to think of what I couldn't do to her anymore when you touched her, to make your hands, my hands, your sex, my sex. She's going to lead Marc-Ange like the tethered old goat he is, and any other fool stupid enough to follow, right into my minefield. You see, she's willing to die for me."
What could not be made worse, was worse, and Bond's last vestige of sanity began to sink beneath the waves.
Then two harsh hands closed about his bleeding manhood and testicles, and began to twist and knead it so that every last shard of glass was crushed to a bloody powder. By the time they were done, Bond had finally slipped into the black where even drugs could no longer reach him.