Valves & Vixens, Volume 2 Read online

  Dabney Bowles was already inside the saloon waiting for him, having circled around through the back while he talked with Cole. His paired Remingtons fired and Donnegan fired back, scrambling for cover behind the bar. He crouched there, trying to slow his breathing. In the mirror above the bar, he could see Bowles approaching. In a moment, Bowles would be able to see him as well. Seizing his chance, Donnegan broke cover, rose, and fired. Bowles dropped his pistols and clutched the whistling hole in his throat, grasping at it as if he were trying to force the blood back inside. Seconds later, he was dead.

  Donnegan made his way to the back of the saloon, intending to leave the way Dabney had come but a sudden shot as he opened the door let him know it wasn’t an option. Quentin’s filthy whipping boy, Rathburn was waiting outside. He supposed that Cole had now inherited his brother’s toy. Out in the main room, he could hear the sound of Cole Hauser’s boots and knew he’d been penned in.

  “Wren, you’re through, son, you know that,” Cole called and Donnegan knew he was right. He could try to shoot his way out, but both men would have their own guns trained on the doors and Rathburn was probably already on his way from wherever he’d secreted himself to keep watch on the back door to the saloon. His fight was over.

  “All right, Cole, I’m done,” Donnegan shouted.

  “Damn right you’re done,” replied Cole, entering the room and stripping him of his gun. Only a second later, the back door opened and Rathburn showed his greasy face.

  “Lemmie shoot him,” Rathburn insisted.

  “Cole, if we were ever friends, for the love of god, do not let it be said that I was killed by the likes of Ed Rathburn.” Cole laughed and Rathburn looked as if Donnegan had wounded him.

  “I’d wanted to kill you myself, but go ahead, Rat, he’s all yours.” Rathburn cocked his pistol. A low theremin buzz filled the street followed by the sound of thunder and a great cloud of dust as Rathburn’s chest collapsed in on itself with a twisting crack of bone. His eyes were wide as he fell to the ground.

  “What the fucking hell is that?”

  Donnegan laughed and got to his knees, putting his hands over his head as he lowered it to the ground.

  “All the angels in their heaven, and all the devils out of hell.” Cole Hauser never heard him finish as Miranda came around the door and the Banshee screamed again, his skull crushed inside his skin by the terrible wave of sound, his head almost seeming to deflate as he fell.

  “Sometimes, you’re a spectacularly handsome idiot, you know.” Miranda took off her dirt caked goggles and offered him her hand.

  “Spectacularly handsome?”

  “Idiot.” Standing the Banshee against the wall, she unslung the brass parcel strapped across her back and handed it to him.

  “You finished it?”

  “Last night. I was going to tell you in the morning but you were gone.” Donnegan smiled.

  “Spectacular idiot.”

  “What now?” She asked.

  “North.”

  “North? That’s your plan?”

  “The law’ll be here for me sooner or later and Canada’s supposed to be nice. Mountains full of gold up there and miners bring plenty of work for a good mender, knows what she’s doing. You could come with me.”

  Miranda leaned up and kissed him. “North.”

  The very next morning, they rode.

  Auntie Midnight

  Senta Holland

  I met the old man on the mountain path, sitting on a rock with the mist rising behind him, as if he had been waiting for me.

  I was late returning from a visit to my fiancée that day, and I hurried along the dreadful Cliff of Knives, I didn’t want to be caught there by darkness. Everybody knows that this is the place where the Girls-That-Never-Should-Have-Been are taken, so that they don’t become a burden on the village.

  Their bodies disappear quickly, and when I was younger we boys often speculated about the gruesome nature of this disappearance, but their ghosts linger on, vengeful and greedy for the life we have deprived them of.

  There were many reports of those ghosts appearing from the rocks just underneath the path at dusk, and sometimes it was worse than that. My own Uncle Long Hook disappeared here one night. So I walked as fast as I could, trying not to look anywhere but my own feet, but keenly aware of what I could not see. I wished now that I had left the house of my fiancée’s family earlier, but I wasn’t really in a position to insist. Winter Plum was only my fiancée because her brother had run away to follow the iron paths to the new cities, and the family was looking for a marry-in son-in-law for their only daughter. I would have to take their family name, but my marriage would bring a lot of honour and prestige to my parents, and younger brothers. We also didn’t have any sisters to support, a fact which was welcomed by my future in-laws but which made me hurry even more.

  I was telling myself I was a lucky boy (particularly considering that I had already failed twice to do my duty in other ways), and that it was only half an hour to the village, when I saw a shadowy shape sitting on that rock.

  I stopped. Foolish, but I couldn’t help myself. The shadow turned towards me, and I relaxed a little. Whoever this was, ghost or alive, at least it was a man.

  He wore a dark cloak, and a long grey beard.

  “Well met, stranger”, he said, and raised his bamboo stick in greeting. How old would he be? Sixty at least, maybe older. I was cautious with old men, but not afraid. Old men are just men, while old women are vicious.

  “And you too”, I said politely. “Have you come a long way?”

  “Oh yes”, he said. “The longest. But my journey is almost at an end.”

  Now I was in a pickle. I knew I should invite him to the village, but I didn’t want to. We would have to entertain him and feed him. On the other hand I couldn’t very well say no if he asked.

  “Are you travelling on tonight, Uncle?” I said reluctantly.

  “No, I don’t think so”, he said. “But I believe you are...”

  I thought I could hear a strange noise reverberating across the mountains, like a remote thunder.

  “I am only going home to my village”, I answered. “from the house of my fiancée, the lovely Winter Plum”.

  “Are you looking forward to your wedding?” he said.

  “Yes”, I said. “I am looking forward to becoming a real man.”

  “Oh well”, said the old man, looking up at something behind me, “is that what you want? In that case, you may be in luck tonight...”

  The noise grew louder, and as I turned I could see a dark shape rising over the cliff top, something that was definitely not a shadow, though it might still be a ghost, but of enormous proportions.

  In the fading light, it looked like a conglomeration of strangely shaped buildings, roofs and walls and crooked windows all huddled together on top of the wide, ugly bow of a floating ship.

  A floating ship!

  My heart threatened to stop. A floating ship! It was unnatural. The spirits of the dead are said to travel in a ship, at least according to my Auntie Vinegar. But that’s a narrow boat, crossing a lake.

  The ship came closer, and the noise increased. Steam rose from the chimneys of the huddled houses, and there was a strong smell of something burning.

  It seemed a strange getup for the dead who are said to prefer silence but what did I know? I’d never been dead before. and I wasn’t dead yet...

  The old man said nothing but looked away. The floating ship hovered in front of me, only a few feet away. Looking at it, it did remind me of something I had seen before. Too late, I decided to run. The old man stuck his stick out and tripped me up. I didn’t even make it to the ground - a large black net closed around me and I was lifted up into the air like a fish out of the water. Helplessly struggling against my fate.
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  ***

  All I could see was a foot. A foot that kicked me, repeatedly, until it succeeded in rolling me over, tightly bound by the ropes of the net I had been caught in.

  “Welcome aboard”, a voice said, and laughed. It belonged to one of three very grimy girls who were standing above me, looking down. I had never seen anything like this before. Girls are clean! Winter Plum would have fainted at the very thought.

  The second girl squatted down, like a fisherman checking his catch. She experimentally squeezed my muscles, here and there.

  “This one’s going to need a lot of work”, she said.

  The third one hitched up her grimy pants and came down on all fours. She lowered her body and slowly rubbed it against mine. I could feel her hips and breasts through her clothes and I am sure she could feel me, too.

  Although my actual experience has necessarily been limited (I wished so much that I could see Winter Plum without her relatives, never mind without her clothes), I am, most times, perfectly ready to go and the close presence of these girls hardened my shaft. I still didn’t know what they wanted from me, but I knew what I wanted from them. I had no idea where I was and I should have been mortally afraid - but the truth is that other matters overtook my mind right then - and even more so my body. I told myself I could always be afraid later.

  The girls gave another laugh, not altogether friendly, and dragged me off along the floor, still in my net, and deeper into the bowels of the floating ship.

  The ropes cut into my flesh and my shirt was crumpled up to my shoulders. This part of the floating ship was a dark, noisy place whose walls reverberated with a mighty beat of something big and caged. The girls moved without shame and without grace, like men, and I could see they had strong muscles under those boyish outfits.

  All the girls I had seen before were slender and frail. Girls can not work and can not do much of anything except sit and smile. This is why only a family as wealthy as Winter Plum’s can afford one of them. Other families, who kept their Girls-That-Never-Should-Have-Been out of weakness and sentimentality have been destroyed or at least lost all their possessions to uselessness and dowry.

  Even the village fox lady who in a sense did work for a living was thin and when I embraced her, as all the young and not-so-young men in the village have done at some time, she never did anything active, just let me mount her, as quickly as possible, her limbs soft and yielding, her movements kept to a minimum.

  These girls were very different.

  They pushed me down onto the vibrating floor, right into the filthy layer of grease that seemed to stick to every surface, and then they jumped onto me without another word.

  Well, that’s actually not quite true, they did talk, rather loudly, but not to me. Instead, they shouted to each other, commenting on my body and my responses, comparing me to other men they had taken before, and taken possession of.

  “Nice abs”, “pert bottom, let’s see what happens when...” and, turning me on my front again with that sharp, kicking foot, the first girl hit me, once, twice, three times, with a thin, strong bamboo stick. It stung and I tried to wiggle away but the other girls laughed uproariously and held me firm inside my net, one sitting on my feet and the other one sliding underneath me from the other side, squeezing my head between her thighs. And that was a great place to be, I discovered. So when my body lurched involuntarily under the bamboo stick, I did my best to stay still, because on no account did I want to lose that wondrous closeness of the third girl’s thin pants to my face, and her lower lips unfolding just underneath them.

  Every time my body jerked in response to the hot, burning strokes, the girls laughed. The third girl slowly peeled her pants down until she was naked. I could see her purple orchid in all its glory. I started to smell her juices.

  The beating got harder and faster. My ass burned. Then she started to hit me in the same place twice, a precise, sharp cut...I couldn’t help it, I started to scream. The girl who sat on my feet told me to scream louder. I needed no encouragement. The third girl gripped my hair and raised my head until she could stare at me.

  “Lick”, she said. Then pushed me down again.

  Now, I had never done this. I had heard of it, certainly. Men making dirty jokes behind the fox lady’s house, never about themselves, of course, but about stories they had heard, from a distant cousin, from those who ran away to the big city. Our fox lady would never dream of letting anyone lick her lower lips, even touching her there cost extra (and I did invest in it once or twice, she was just so deliciously soft and secret...). Back in the village, I might have hesitated even now. Not because I didn’t want to (oh no! I wanted to, believe me!) - but because it was like crossing into a forbidden realm where people lived in stories. Dirty stories. Well, and hadn’t that happened already?

  Girls number one and two held me down firmly, and gave me a few more strokes of encouragement with that vicious thin cane. My shaft responded with an intense, almost painful but also highly lustful tug, my buttocks strained against the net I was still caught in. The forbidden scent of the third girl’s purple orchid filled my nostrils. It flooded my brain.

  Besides, it was a little late to worry about being dirty. I was already covered in grime from head to foot. My pants were somewhere around my ankles, and my shirt rolled up around my collarbone. The first girl gave me an extra hard stroke across my hips. My body rose as if to meet the stick. I yelped and my pelvis contracted. The second girl leaned over and put her weight on my thighs. I could feel my hot member straining under us.

  So I licked.

  The girl had firm, wide outer lips. My tongue tried to explore everything at once but the girl leaned over, pulled my hair and barked directions at me.

  I did my best. I learned that there were certain ways of licking, and sucking my way towards the stem of her Lily and I realized how much more I had to learn.

  When she was finished with me, I was rolled on my back again. I groaned as my bottom, sore with welts, slid along the grimy ground but forgot it all when the second girl descended on me, took my hard cock in her hand, and roughly pushed it inside her. She squeezed herself around it and started to ride me like we ride our tough little horses. And, like a good little horse, I responded to a good, harsh rider. With all my strength and with a lot of enthusiasm.

  I knew I wanted it to last. Most definitely. The girl was controlling my thrusts, which was just as well since, left to my own devices, I would have spent myself far too quickly. Every time I rose, I could feel her strong muscles control my progress inside her, and every time she pushed me to the floor I felt my sorely beaten bottom scrape along the iron surface. The pain made me want to rise again, but I only could when she would let me.

  My mouth still tasted of the inner lips of the third girl.

  When I finally couldn’t hold on any more, I had the biggest orgasm of my life. Well, my life up to then...

  The girls left me, but not before they had tied me firmly to a steel girder. Of course, since we were on a floating ship, there was no way I could escape. But I suppose it was convenient for them, because they came back a little later, when I had recovered my strength, and this time the first girl was able to use me for her pleasure. She was the strongest and tallest of them, taller than many men, and she laughed and shouted and waved her arms in the air as she fucked me, sitting in my lap, pushing me against the wall.

  ***

  I don’t know how long I spent in the bow of the ship, because there were no windows to tell the time by, and I didn’t know how long they let me sleep. But when I woke, I realized that, if we had been moving all the time (and there was no reason to suppose otherwise), we must now be a long way from the village. And even further away from Winter Plum and my old life.

  Who were these girls? They must be demons, or maybe those fabled foreigners that had come to the Middle Kingdom. I was
captured, and barely comfortable, but I was strangely unafraid. Besides, what can’t be helped can’t be helped. I had heard our aunties and uncles say so many times.

  And then of course the was little time for speculation, because they put me to work. Oh, yes, work, and plenty of it.

  I was led, by my rope, to a wash-room, and then down an even dirtier corridor where the noise increased to a level that swallowed even the laughter of those girls.

  Down, down we went until we arrived in a big hall made of iron, where naked men stood in a row, shovelling coal into big mouths of fire.

  I did feel fear spiking my heart then, and ripping the breath out of my chest.

  Were these finally the greedy mouths of hell? They could be. The girls who had beaten me and fucked me in ways that no respectable man should ever be fucked (and of course no man should ever BE fucked, he should do all the fucking necessary and proud to do so) (and yet I could not stop my shaft from twitching in excited remembrance of those unthinkable acts I had experienced) could really only be demons or ghosts. But then one of them touched my thigh and I thought to myself, well, if I am to be fed to the mouths of hell, at least I have tasted what the world of the living can bestow. Literally.

  But it seemed it was not my time.

  I was led to one of the gaping, fiery mouths, my rope was exchanged for a heavy, but not uncomfortable chain on my leg that gave me plenty of room to move, and then the guy next to me, who looked at least ten years older, pressed a shovel into my hand and, so to speak, proceeded to show me the ropes.

  And that became my life then for a long time.

  During long, hot shifts, I worked feeding the fiery mouths, naked, together with the other men, and I got to know them well, both the mouths and the men. The mouths, whatever they were, seemed like living beings, or at least if not living, then beings of hell animated by some otherworldly power that I could not even guess at. They sighed, and they sputtered, they gave off big roars of power and they whispered like tired children when they had not been fed enough and were dying down, deep red and exhausted.