This was her second attempt at traveling by day and so far it was going as planned.
The miserable shadow-obscured carriage driver who never said a word to her nor she to him, kept the carriage moving at a steady pace so that she didn't get knocked around inside and she kept herself busy by filing her nails behind the darkest curtains money could buy. Talomar's money. Which was the best kind of money to have because it wasn't yours. And that was just fine and dandy with her.
It was tempting to look outside to see what the Day actually looked like but she'd be seeing it soon enough and besides she had something else to keep her occupied. The boy in front of her. She looked to him.
"You've had a good life, yes?" she asked him with a smile.
"Yes and I intend to continue on having a good life! You're a psycho, lady!" he screamed behind the gag which had somehow gotten loose during the ride.
She clicked her tongue against the back of her fangs and reached forward to fix it. "Tut...tut...let's not be nasty, we're almost there. I want you to look yer best. Musn't get ourselves all up in a huff now."
The boy struggled and screamed some more and she shook her head. She had seen this type of behavior before in unwilling captives countless times. They almost always put up a fight until you stuffed them in a box or a cage that was built with a small animal in mind, certainly not meant for a human, and after a day or two of being shaped like a pretzel like the best of circus contortionists, they caved. This boy in particular wasn't slated to be put in a box so she would have to use her powers of persuasion and the art of a good conversationalist to get him to calm down before they reached the West End or her surprise would be ruined.
"My family lives here, you know," she said and gestured to the curtained windhole.
The boy glared at her. She shrugged. "Yeah, I know, it is very difficult being a filthy rich socialiate, wife to one of the most successful men to ever live in Rhy'Din and be a Captain of The Bloods. I honestly don't know how I manage but I do because I'm Tara and well, there only ever will be one of those," she said with a chuckle.
The carriage hit a bump and the boy wound up on his side. She tilted her body so she could look into his eyes and smile again. "Are you comfy' Wouldn't want yer muscles to atrophy enroute, you know. Maybe you shouldn't sit like that. Here, allow me," she said and making a fist, quickly splayed her fingers out at him causing him to pop right back up.
The boy blinked. He then growled. She reached up to fix her earring.
"Do I look okay, do you think"," she said, fingering the very expensive dress she had on while staring at him. "I'm going to visit my husband at work and I want to make him drool. Do you think he'll be pleased, my Talomar" Hmm' Say...what?s the matter with you? Cat got yer tongue?"
It had been years since she had helped bind a slave's wrists together, much less do it on her own, so when the boy, who was really a middle-aged man that Tara viewed as a veritable child compared to her own age, lunged forward and got his hands around her throat, she couldn't help but wonder if Brutin—who was probably on Gor right now, drinking paga and getting serviced by some naked, severely in heat slavegirl— was shaking his head in dismay at her.
It was an error, yes, but not an egregious one. It would be rectified shortly. She put her hand over the boy's face as he tried to choke her and squeezed until the pressure in his head became too much to bear upon his skull and he fell back in exhaustion and pain. She leaned forward again to take the gag out of his mouth.
"I'm sorry, you were saying?" she asked with a blank expression.
"What do you want with me!" he groaned, the fight starting to go out of him.
It was always interesting to watch that, too. An amateur couldn't spot it but she could because she had seen with her waking eyes how slaves promised to unleash all holy hell down upon their captors would have their spirits broken by the second or third day of being in captivity with no means of escape, leaving their threats at the door, unchecked, unchallenged.
Of course this boy had only been in her clutches for a few hours but she had made it rather clear that he was going to go along with what she had in mind or the consequences for his refusal would be dire indeed.
"Humans are ruled by two emotions, son," she said and produced a clove cigarette out of thin air which she then lit by way of her finger touched lightly against the end of it. She inhaled the sweet smoke and exhaled it right into his face. He coughed and waved his now free hands all around to clear the air.
"Pain and pleasure. Did you know that?"
"No," the boy said, his arms crossed, his body slumped, his heart pumping a mile a minute.
"Well, they are. I always say this but no one ever listens to me. Maybe I should write a book. Anyhoo, I'm a bit of a human researcher, you could say. I've spent a long time watching them in the wild, recording their habits, memorizing their behaviors, and I've come to this conclusion through centuries of doing this. Now if I had asked you to go with me three hours ago when you were drawing water from that well and I had not been coming up out of it, you would have told me to go to hell. Would you not?"
The boy grumbled and narrowed his eyes. "What were you doing in my well anyway?"
"That's neither here nor there. Answer the question," she said, her eyes situated on the area where his heart should be and as she gazed at it he could feel his heart thumping all the more. His eyes widened.
"Yes! Stop that!" he cried, pressing his hand to his heart with a frown. She looked away, extinguished the cigarette on her tongue, and his heartbeat returned to normal.
"See" You had no motivation to come with me at that point in time but if you recall when I took you by the hair, marched you into your home, and showed you that your wife and baby girl were hanging by their feet on that rafter over my three very hungry rottweilers, you were ready to do whatever it took to see that they remained safe, no?"
The boy sighed. "Yeah."
"So there you have it. You were ruled by the emotion of pain then just as you would have been ruled by the emotion of pleasure had you come with me if I had done this at night after you had a few drinks and promised to take you back to my bed, eh?"
"Lady I wouldn't sleep with you if you were...."
She growled and backhanded him. He flew back against the seat. She continued.
"You would have come with me just as you would any other willing young female, son, because you're a man and as a man you have certain needs. You think with your penis and not your brain. It's a fact, why you don't know this is troublesome but I suppose in an hour or two it really won't matter what you know or don't know. Your penis has no wife, boy. It only knows what it wants and that's to get happy. Doesn't matter how it gets happy, only that it does. Understand" Don't deny it, there's nothing to be ashamed about and really, if you think about it, you lucked out."
"How's that?" the boy said, glaring anew.
"Well...I thought you might ask that," she said with a grin and moving to the seat next to him, put her arm around him. "If I had come to you at night, you would not still be sucking oxygen as you are now but would be laying in some gutter somewhere, gasping for air, and dying a slow death because I'm very very impolite at night, you see, and seeing as I did not do that and you and I are here, now, sitting in my husband's carriage bound for a very bad part of town, and you're still alive, I'd say you made out pretty good. Don't you agree?"
"What are you going to do with my wife and child?" he asked, glancing askance to her, his body tensing.
"Do with them, son' What do you mean what am I going to 'do' with them?" she asked, giving his shoulder a little squeeze.
"You know damn well what I'm talking about! They have nothing to do with this! Let them go!" he snarled, between his teeth and looked her straight in the eye.
She frowned. "Oh you wound me, son. Do you honestly think that I would have anything further to do with yer wife an' child after I am through with you here today?"
"You tied them up didn't you!"
"Yes, but as I already explained to you that was only a means to an end. Now that I have achieved that end I really don't see the point in giving them another thought. Why do you?"
"Because I love them, that's why! Do you understand the concept of love"!"
She tapped her finger against her bottom lip for a few seconds and thought on this. "Love, you say?"
"Love! L O V E! Even you must love someone, ya crazy bitch!"
"Well of course I love someone. For example, I love my husband, Talomar, he's a Count, you'll meet him soon enough. An' our child, his name is Marius, you won't be meeting him I'm afraid. Then there's all my friends...I love them too but is it really necessary to list them all, we might be here all day..."
"Oh shut up!"
She blinked. "You are rude," she said and took hold of his nose.
"Gah!"
"I do not like rude people. Like impoverished unproductive members of society, I have no use for them."
The boy began to slap at her hand and tug on it in order to get his nose free when the carriage door opened and they both stopped to look at it. She spoke first. Of course.
"Move!" she said and shoved him out of the carriage, onto the ground. She then got her black umbrella and opening it, stepped out into the light for the first time in many years. She squinted at the brightness of it and used her foot to nudge the man on the ground toward the door.
"Here we are. S.E.C.T.O.R. This is my husband's business, he tells me. No, no, no, now don't bother to get up. You won't be needing your legs anymore," she said and attached a leash to the studded dog collar she had placed around his throat earlier.
If she had had more time she may have used a more sophisticated collar but she didn't have that available when she had first spotted the man, coming up out of his well, and could only use what was on her person at the time, which was one of her dog's collars. She had brought four rottweilers with her and only three had stuck around. The fourth one took off after a rabbit it saw and she was left holding his collar in her hand. It simply had to be put to good use after that and the man that was laying on the ground, kicking and screaming, was the next likely choice to put it on.
She made a quick examination of the brownstone's facade and then went to knock on the door when she spied an interesting looking box. To the modern day observer it was an intercom but to one like Tara who was perpetually in the dark ages, it was just an interesting looking box with buttons on it.
She ran her fingers over the box and sniffed at it.
"Hmm," she said, tilting her head. "What a curious thing."
"It's an intercom you moron!" the man, who was obviously used to such things, said to her from the ground.
"An intercom' Whatever in the multiverse is that?"
"You press a button, speak your peace, someone on the other side hears it, and they buzz you in," he said and started to laugh. Though his very life was in mortal danger he found humor in this situation. The woman bested him, she did, she tied up his wife and child and kidnapped him all on her own but when it came to getting through a door, she was clueless and he couldn't believe he was helping her. "And if you're wondering why I'm doing this, it's out of pleasurable motivation, because you are the dumbest woman I ever met," he said.
She looked down and then kicked him in the rib. He cried out in pain. "Am I?"
He clutched his side, continuing to laugh, and nodded. "Yes, you are."
"Well, we shall jus' see if you feel the same once you meet my husband," she said and began to rapidly press the buttons on the intercom while speaking in a series of tongues the man on the ground had never heard before in his life. "I do hope I remember to ask ye before ye lose consciousness," she said, reverting back to Common, after abusing the intercom unmercifully. She may have even broke it. She didn't care.
He stared at her in abject fascination. "You are the devil in the flesh," he whispered, suddenly finding the situation to be as serious as it first was and no longer funny.
She slid her eyes down to him, grinned and shook her head. "Nay but I was his lover once...he came to me in the form of a slaver named Daemon Flagg and while I realize that name may be foreign to you, many 'round here knew him almost as well as I did and you better hope that He doesn't show up. Or you'll learn a whole new gamut of emotions you never thought possible, you pitiful, ungrateful, little prick."
The man on the ground started to scream again for help and all Tara Rynieyn-Longden could think about was getting through the opposite side of the door so she could be with her Talomar.