The Bride of Dagon Collection Read online

  “Got it,” said Sara and she pulled off the headset and tossed it onto the passenger seat. The rain roared against the Land Rover, a steady bash of water against the glass that made it almost impossible to see where she was going. She felt the wheels losing traction as the road turned to mud. The slightest adjustment to her steering threatened to slew the vehicle sideways into a messy skid.

  She might have played it safe and taken it slow and probably been cut off for days by flooding. Sara Chambers wasn’t the “take it slow” type. She kept the pedal down and plowed through the waterlogged road, mud spraying behind the Land Rover’s wheels as she slewed through turns and plowed furrows through the buttery muck.

  She passed over a flooded ravine and nearly slammed off the side of a bridge and into the muddy floodwater rushing at its supports. The passenger door took a bad dent, but the bridge's railing held and she did not let up off the accelerator. At one point, the flood was so close to her car that she looked in her rear view mirror and saw the rushing waters overtake the road behind her.

  “Those defensive driving courses were worth the money,” she said, at last leaving the savanna behind and plunging into the jungle. The rainfall lessened with the jungle canopy overhead and the risk of flooding diminished. Sure, the rains could still flood out the roads in the jungle, but it wasn’t going to happen in seconds. She had time to reach the location the ex-mercenary had given her for the pyramid.

  The Zhonda tribe was never known to be pyramid builders. Trap-makers, treasure hoarders, and sometimes cannibals, but not pyramid builders. Sara had plied the ex-mercenary with decent whisky at the bar, teasing him with her beauty until he showed her photos on his phone. He had been doing smuggling for the rebels in the area a few months earlier when he had discovered the pyramid. There it was on some drunk hired gun’s phone: a bloody pyramid in the biggest jungle of Central Africa.

  The pictographs and other markings on the overgrown pyramid were undeniably from the Zhonda tribe. She could think of no likelier location for the Idol of Infinite Pleasure. The sacred relic was said to open a gateway to intense dreams of pleasure. The dreams were so intense that some never woke from them, preferring to live out their short lives within an erotic fantasy. The legendary idol had seemed apocryphal until the moment Sara saw that photo on the ex-mercenary’s phone. She had slid the rest of the bottle of whisky to him and hurried out of the bar.

  She failed to notice the beautiful, hard-eyed woman following her on a motorcycle. It was not until Sara began to make the turn off the road in the jungle, along an overgrown trail, that she heard the rumbling of the motorcycle’s engine.

  Svetlana Kordova jumped her heavy-duty Ural motorcycle over a glistening boulder and splashed onto the fading roadway. She pulled alongside Sara’s Land Rover. Sara recognized Svetlana’s rain-soaked scarlet hair immediately. Several run-ins with the Russian treasure hunter in the past had left Sara with a strong dislike for anything east of Poland.

  “What do you want?” Sara shouted, recognizing Svetlana’s rain-soaked scarlet hair immediately.

  “For you to have a flat tire!” Svetlana shouted over the roaring engines. The redheaded Russian’s trademark machine pistol blurted and spat fire. Bullets sparked from the hood of Sara’s Land Rover and with a violent explosion both of her front tires blew out.

  Sara cursed as she lost all control of her Land Rover. The vehicle swerved off the road and flipped onto its roof in a shallow ditch. Floodwater began to flow against the windows almost immediately. Sara did a quick inventory of her body, making sure she was not injured, before unclipping her safety belt and dropping unceremoniously on her head.

  “Russian witch,” she said, gathering her satellite phone and pistols from the upside-down ceiling of the vehicle. The Land Rover was beginning to move from the flowing water. The brown liquid had nearly covered the windows on one side. Sara used a collapsible baton from her belt to smash open the windows on the higher side of the rolled vehicle and she climbed out into the downpour. She dropped into the mud with a grunt and pulled herself to her feet again, scrambling out of the ditch before the floodwaters sucked her Land Rover away.

  Her shirt and vest were waterlogged in seconds. Her khaki shorts stuck to her firm bum like a second skin. She ran along the road, following the track of Svetlana’s motorcycle into the jungle. It was more than an hour of running, leaping over obstructions, and swinging across flooded ravines. She was exhausted and relieved when the shape of the dark stone pyramid finally loomed out of the dense foliage.

  “Pictures didn’t do it justice,” she murmured, marveling at the scale of it reaching up into the high jungle canopy. The pyramid was surrounded by the ruins of smaller structures that had nearly disappeared into the vegetation. Here and there, as she prowled carefully towards the pyramid, she glimpsed Zhonda pictograms carved into ancient chunks of basalt.

  Sara followed the path Svetlana’s beefy motorcycle tore through the jungle and found the machine overturned. She touched her fingers to the engine and found it still hot. Drawing her pistols, Sara continued towards the looming entrance overgrown by the roots of a massive cycad. Some of the mighty roots had actually broken through the stone and grown into the temple.

  She switched on her torch and dialed it down to the lowest lighting level. She gripped the torch alongside her off-hand pistol as she entered the temple. Only a few feet in, the beam of light swept across a small red character daubed over a pictograph. It was a message, though not one meant for her. The symbol was from the Zhonda tribe and depicted a man carrying pots. It meant, literally, that all things of value had left. A second symbol nearby warned of danger to the body.

  “They’ve cleared out their temple,” whispered Sara, running her fingers over the red symbols. “Recently, by the looks of it. And I thought the Zhonda tribe was extinct.”

  Just then she heard a crash and a scream echoed up from deep within the temple. Svetlana had discovered one of the traps left by the builders. Sara was not so black hearted as to wish death upon her rival, but if she happened to perish to a trap, well…

  “I won’t be so fortunate,” said the British treasure hunter. “Svetlana Kordova is the worst sort of tosser. The sort too lucky to get herself killed.”

  Sara holstered her pistols and backed out of the temple, retracing her footsteps in case she had been lucky and avoided a trap herself. The rains had subsided and the jungle was singing with birds and insects. A faint buzzing high in the trees alerted Sara that Baxter’s drone had survived the storm. A moment later, the satellite phone on her hip began to vibrate.

  “Baxter,” she said, “had a bit of a run-in with Svetlana Kordova. Your pyramid is empty, I’m afraid. The Zhonda tribe has cleared things out.”

  “But they haven’t been sighted since the revolution in the 1950s,” said Baxter, tapping away on a keyboard.

  “They’ve gone to ground,” said Sara, searching around the perimeter of the pyramid, “and they’ve taken the Idol of Infinite Pleasure with them.”

  It occurred to her that if the Zhonda tribe left a warning in their own language at the entrance of the pyramid that meant this part of the jungle must be within their hunting grounds.

  “I think they’re nearby,” said Sara. “Do an incident search for the area for any missing poachers, stolen equipment, that sort of thing. Maybe we can triangulate their loc—“

  “Sorry, missed that last bit,” said Baxter. “Say again.”

  “I will give you a ring in a bit,” said Sara, lowering the phone slowly from her ear. She was staring down three spear tips held only centimeters from her face. The Zhonda hunters holding the spears had the hard eyes and ritual scars to mark them as experienced killers. She could see more of them standing in the trees.

  “Alright,” she said, holding her hands up in surrender. “Not looking for a scrap.”

  One of the hunters spoke in a series of Zhonda clicks and vowels. Sara knew their pictographic language well enough to read it, but had never heard the language spoken. However, it bore similarities to other Bantu languages. She let the hunter repeat himself several times before answering him in what she hoped was the right manner.

  “Not an enemy,” she said in her best guess at their language of clicks and vowels.

  The hunters were taken aback by a blonde white woman, a quite fetching one at that, speaking their language. They spoke quickly to one another – far too quickly for Sara to decipher – before the lead hunter said in their language, “Take.”

  She was not in a position to disagree. She was marched through the jungle at spear point. The Zhonda tribesmen did not prod her or otherwise menace her, but the threat was obvious. She could only hope that these men no longer engaged in cannibalism.

  There were six men in total, ranging in age from late thirties to late teens. She guessed the eldest among them was their tribal leader based on ritual scars on his back and shoulders. All six men were lean, muscular, with kinky, close-cropped hair and dusky brown skin. They were handsome and their ritual scars added to their aesthetic, with designs under their eyes, on their arms, and covering the chests of the older hunters.

  They spoke very little to one another and she could only understand every few words. She did hear the word for flower, which also often meant pretty, and caught one of the men looking at her breasts and her nipples straining beneath her damp shirt. She smiled at him and one of the other hunters clucked his tongue with disapproval.

  She estimated the journey was less than three kilometers, which put it less than five from a fairly major road, but their village was so well-camouflaged it was no wonder it had escaped the notice of poachers, smugglers, and other explorers. There were a dozen or so huts built into the lower branches of jungle trees and a single longhouse th
at actually straddled the trunk of a kapok tree at a height of over ten meters. The tree trunk seemed to pierce the longhouse and rise another fifty meters above it.

  “Pyramids and tree houses,” said Sara, admiring the craftsmanship. “The Zhonda are more interesting than I thought.”

  More men and a number of bare-breasted women and children emerged from the tree houses. Some of them clicked excitedly, but the men stared down warily at Sara and the hunters. The senior hunter who Sara thought of as the tribal elder urged her towards the base of the kapok tree. He spoke several words and she understood “up” and his intention that she climb the tree. Ancient handholds were carved into the massive tree. The first three hunters climbed the tree easily. The others seemed impressed when Sara followed them up the tree with similar ease.

  “Parkour training,” she said with a smile at the elder.

  He smiled back at her and motioned for her to approach a small bench. There, beside the bench, was a simple altar of banyan wood and the curvaceous feminine figure of the Idol of Infinite Pleasure. It was breathtakingly beautiful, so detailed and yet so abstract that it seemed to be a distorted image of a real person that moved depending on where she moved her head.

  “Statue is very pretty,” she said, using Xhosa words she knew and what little Zhonda vocabulary she had picked up from listening to hunters.

  The elder put a hand on Sara’s shoulder and said to her slowly, so that she could understand his words, “We sleep. We dream of pleasure. It is good.”

  She made a bold offer, “I want statue. I give you plenty.”

  There was no Zhonda word for money, just the idea of not wanting for material needs, but the elder seemed to understand.

  “Only want pleasure,” he said and slowly placed his hand over her breast. He did not fondle her or squeeze her chest, but the placement was intentional. He clicked and said to her, she was fairly certain, “Create a baby.”

  So he wanted sex? Men were all alike, even in supposedly long-dead tribes. But desire was a powerful tool and she was more than willing to work with it. Especially since the elder was so handsome. Like if Barack Obama had been raised by wolves.

  “Give statue,” she said and motioned from the idol to herself. “Make baby with me.”

  She squeezed his hand against her breast and let him feel the stiff bud of her nipple through her top. The elder hunter smiled, staring down at her cleavage and her shapely body. He understood the offer and began to speak to the other hunters. Several more men had joined them in the long house.

  The men replied excitedly. She heard them say the phrase “create a baby” and several of them laughed or ogled her with barely-restrained lust. After a brief conversation, the elder sent the other men away with a stern bark of “go out of from here.” He wanted his privacy to make his arrangements with Sara.

  Once they were gone, the elder took Sara’s hand and placed it on his muscular chest.

  “Lonwabo,” said the elder with clicks standing in for the consonants.

  “Hello, Lonwabo,” she said and stroked his chest from one pectoral to the other. She lifted her hand and brought his back to her soft breast. She looked into his brown eyes and said, “Sara. My name is Sara.”

  “Sssare... Uhh,” said Lonwabo.

  “Close enough,” she chuckled. Communicating with Lonwabo was difficult enough that Sara saw little point in trying to negotiate the finer points of her agreement with the elder. Instead, she shrugged out of her vest and began to unbutton her shirt. He watched her raptly as she revealed her thin bra, still soaked with water and sheer because of it, her pink areolas and nipples revealed and her creamy mounds squeezed by the tight, lace-fringed cups.

  “Pretty,” he said, his word familiar to her.

  “Yeah? You like them?” She freed her breasts from her bra, teasing the reveal by covering her mounds with her hands for a moment. His eyes widened at the sight of them. The tribseswomen she had seen had lovely breasts, many of them as large as hers, but pendulous with motherhood. Sara's breasts were pert still. They had never swelled with milk and her pink nipples, though plump, were not the thick nipples of a nursing mother.

  Lonwabo could not keep his hands from her breasts. He fondled them, rubbing his rough fingers over her nipples before leaning down and kissing her soft breasts. He said the word for milk, perhaps thinking she had some to give, and he began to suck at one nipple and then the other.

  “No milk,” she said in his language. It did not deter his warm mouth on her mounds, moving from one to the other and roughly licking her nipples. She moaned and held his head against her creamy flesh as his hands moved lower, stroking her hips and sliding around to squeeze her bum through her tight shorts. Sara responded by reaching a hand down over Lonwabo’s chiseled abs to the rust-colored loincloth he wore around his waist. She gave him a squeeze through the wrapped fabric and there was no mistaking his straining hardness of his cock. She moaned in English, “You have a beast stuffed down your trousers, Lonwabo.”

  “Lonwabo,” he said, lifting his face from her breasts and flashing a big, white smile. He crouched before her and watched her hands as she untied his loincloth and freed the cinnamon-brown serpent of his cock. It was quite long and twitched with need as she held it in her hands.

  She wanked his cock gently for a bit and then rose to her feet. He watched with delight on his face as she moved her hips and wiggled out of her shorts. The hunters had never bothered to confiscate her guns so those thumped heavily to the ground as she shed her holsters down her shapely thighs. Naked, her cunt shaved, she returned to Lonwabo.

  “Make a baby,” she said in his language. She was on birth control and had no intention of making an actual baby with Lonwabo. She doubted that was his chief concern either as he grabbed her hips and pulled her closer, burying his face between her muscular thighs and running his thick tongue over her throbbing cunt. She rested a hand on the back of Lonwabo’s head and thrust her hips towards him, moaning, “Ohhhhh, you do have a taste for it.”

  The muscular tribal elder licked her just enough to leave her gasping with pleasure. He stopped short of making her cum and picked her up in his strong arms. She cried out and laughed as he carried her over to the altar to the Idol of Infinite Pleasure and lowered her onto her back on a reed mat on the floor.

  “All done with foreplay?” She asked rhetorically, looking from his determined eyes to his gently swaying length of brown cockmeat. She decided that suited her as well and she parted her shapely thighs and ran her fingers over the glistening groove of her quim. “Come on then, big man. Give us the whole thing.”

  Lonwabo knew what he wanted and he took it, dropping to his knees and lining his fat cockhead up against her delicate folds. He took her in a single thrust, hilting his long cock in Sara’s tight, slick channel. He grunted savagely and fucked her in powerful strokes that made her soft breasts heave. She reached around him to his muscular bum, squeezing his cheeks and pulling him deeper as his heavy balls nestled against the divot of her arsehole.

  “Ooooh, that’s good,” she gasped. And repeated the word for flower she had heard them speak before. Lonwabo laughed and agreed, leaning over to kiss her passionately. Some tribal cultures had an aversion to kissing. Evidently, the Zhonda tribe was not one as he thrust his tongue into her mouth to match the powerful piston strokes of his hard cock.

  The intensity of her pleasure built with Lonwabo’s. Sweat poured from Sara’s body in the humid long house. It dripped and spattered from Lonwabo’s face and onto her breasts and neck. He wiped one droplet away when it fell onto her face.

  “Ohhhh god,” she gasped. “You know how to use that spear, don’t you? Mmmmmmmm!”

  She wrapped her powerful legs around him, drawing him deeper still. She felt his balls tightening against her and she knew he was close.

  “Cum for me,” she gasped, kissing him again. “Cum inside me.”

  As Sara’s orgasm surged and her pussy tightened around Lonwabo’s thrusting cock, she loudly cried out the Zhonda phrase for, “Make a baby.”

  The handsome tribal elder cried out something about a stone turning into a salty sea that Sara did not quite understand. Then she felt his body stiffen and his cock throb deep inside her slick pussy and she got the gist of what he said. His cock gushed deep into her tightly squeezing pussy and he slowed his strokes to almost match each throbbing pump of his spunk.