DISCLAIMERS:
Any resemblance to Xena and Gabrielle, who belong to those lucky folks at MCA/Universal/Renaissance, is intentional. This is a not-for profit uber fan fiction. No copyright infringement is intended. The rest of the tale is mine with all copyrights thereto.

WARNING:
This story depicts scenes of violence and explicit sex between two woman with B&D/S&M aspects. If this disturbs you, please read something else. Rated NC-17.

You can also find stories by Pamela at XENADOM

Send feedback to HeronW@AOL.com

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Ice and Fire
by Pamela A. Lord (Heron)
© P. Lord, July 1999

Cold, bitter cold and a rawness under my body; I felt these sensations even before my eyes opened.

I wished I hadn't awakened. The grunting and strident cries about me came from a legion of horrors revealed in the light from more than a dozen torches that surrounded me, as I lay naked and bound to a stone slab. I looked from side to side, taking in the oddities encircling me, not bestial or human forms but more, in shape--and less in humanity.

Scaled, brownish, bipedal things half again as tall as I, mumbled to each other, bobbing about on misshapen legs. Their bulbous ochre eyes kept glancing up into the darkness and the clouds that obscured something of great interest to them. Frog-like masses jumped and squelched against each other, rutting in an orgiastic mob, their multi-limbed bodies shorter than the waist-high rock I was confined to. The taller creatures observed the indiscriminate couplings with condescending nods and nudges to each other, like parents showing off their progeny's latest pranks.

I closed my eyes and wished for the terrors to end. It's just got to be a dream. I tugged my arms in to hold myself and cried out as the ancient iron rudely abraded my wrists and ankles raw. My eyes jerked open at the feel of something cold and slimy dripping onto my thigh. One of the scaled things had turned its attention to me at the coppery aroma of fresh blood laid bare by cold iron. The wide horizontal nostrils flared at my scent. Its circular mouth was open and serrated teeth like a lamprey, descended through the thick, viscous, fetid saliva.

Another scaled sky watcher backhanded the under-slung jaw of his over-eager comrade. The drooling one wiped his face and grunted; he poked at the second and pointed up.

My gaze followed the scaled contorted limb to the churning sky overhead. The clouds lit up from above as if a netting of fire were laid over them, except these flames were black tongues with red edges. The discolorations spread and the gibbering, hooting, bactrian mass detached from one another with noxious sucking noises.

What I saw made me wish for the lamprey mouth to end it all. I felt nauseous at the sounds; dread took my voice and I could only scream in my mind as the black lightning flashed--black lightning that was actually a multi-jointed tentacle descending towards the earth. I twisted in a futile attempt to free myself but the bonds held fast. My teeth chattered from the chill and damp, as the cold perspiration of terror coated my pale limbs. I shivered, then froze, seeing an odd fog crawl towards me. Lines flickered in the animate mist, spreading, crossing, interlocking.

The scaled creatures and the little ones seemed to fear the lines, yet be drawn to them. Their bodies appeared to fade and come back into focus, like they were ghosts, but the rest of the landscape was solid and real. As the light grew closer, I knew where I was. The great blue sarsen stones, the dolmen all complete with their capstones in a solid ring. The familiar set-up, a newborn Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. I was spread out in a time long past and the cursed space above, for some hideous purpose.

A chortling chorus accompanied the next massive burst of blacklight and my voice was released anew, my shrill screams blended with the jeering mob. A huge black talon, more than a meter long, dropped down toward my heart. The chitinous surface reflected the ley lines as their power filled the blue stones.

An obsidian dagger flew through the air, cutting through the joint, dropping the claw beside the altar stone and spattering me with a gelatinous bronze ichor. A pained roar echoed into my bones deafening me, as a shaft with grey fletching seemed to sprout from the throat of the scaled leader. His drooling companion had another through his right eye, deep into his brain. The frog-like creatures squeaked and hissed as they hopped and bounded away from the slender missiles that pinned their leaders, dropping them without a sound.

A tall figure leapt over me; a deep burgundy cape and long black hair billowed behind her. The dark woman favored me with a confident wink from one cerulean eye as she tucked and rolled, snatching up the fallen blade. My avenger stood and pounded the derelict manacles with the hilt of the great knife and they fell apart, releasing me. The roiling clouds faded and resumed their usual appearance as I sat up, relief in every breath.

The tall warrior gave a wry frown as she untied her cape. "I'm Karas. You're much too lovely to keep covered head to toe, but the elements are no friend to the naked and defenseless here on the plain." The dark woman slung the recurve, black, fiberglass bow over her shoulder next to a quiver with three arrows left in it, and sheathed the knife on her thigh. I covered myself and gingerly held her hand as we stepped over the sprawled bodies of the fallen unnatural creatures.

"How did you find me? This isn't--"

"Shhh--" Karas cocked her head. The world burst above us and suddenly, we were running from a storm of heat and fiery rain. Through the ditch and closer to the end of the ring to the scant safety of the Slaughter stone. Karas pushed me ahead of her and gave a curse when the earth jumped, as she went flying--and didn't land.

A whirling vortex held the warrior suspended above the ground. Karas swung the bow off her shoulder but the arrows had fallen from her quiver. She yanked the knife from its sheath as a great growling voice shook the air and an unseen fist slammed into her head. Both bow and knife dropped. I was terrified but I couldn't run away. I saw Karas turning slowly, half a dozen meters above the stone, her long raven tresses swirling about her noble features in the eerie wind that failed to move the grass beneath my feet.

"Karas!" I'm sure she heard me below her, but her head must have been pounding so, she could barely see.

"M...I...N...E..." said a low tone reverberating over the mound. A red tongue ripped down from the amorphous cloud into Karas' back like a viper, striking again and again, shredding her grey suede vest and gouging into her. I saw a fine mist of blood spray off at every strike. Little sharp grunts came from her then the crimson viper vanished and Karas fell. I ran to my wounded warrior.

"Get--the--dagger--" Karas ordered, staggering to her feet. I plucked up the blade and held it out. Karas leaned on the long rock. "Get up-- On it--" She took the black blade and pushed me to lie on the Slaughter stone. The haggard woman knelt by me, her azure eyes fierce.

"That --thing--" she took a deep breath, "doesn't belong here in this space, and in this time. No matter what you think you see, believe in me, believe in this stone and the spirit that is the Earth. Don't leave the Slaughter stone. Will you?"

I nodded, terrified but strangely, I trusted her. Karas reached out to hold my red-gold hair gently, kissing me. The air closed in, in heavy menacing waves as the ambiguous color from space surrounded us.

Karas ripped open her vest, exposing herself. She smirked at me as I gasped at the magnificent view. Karas nodded then stood and turned to face the formless entity in the gnarled mix of formless space and inchoate time.

"You don't belong here." She turned the obsidian blade inward, "I know it in my heart--"

"NO!" I screamed when I saw Karas' arms fold in and the lava glass plunge into her breast.

"And-- the blood-- never lies--" Karas yanked at the hilt and a fountain of bright blood burst out into the shadow wind that was not of this world. The thunderclap and shockwaves threw the warrior back on the stone, still with the black dagger in one hand as her life pumped in slow waves over her toned stomach. I held her close, thinking this was our last moment.

The air was still. The night was cloudless with a lush topaz moon bright enough to read by.

I was sobbing over her body when I felt Karas stir. "Your tears are kind of ticklish but this rough stone is hell on my back." She grunted and sat up.

"You're alive! We're alive!" I placed my fingers over Karas' freshly healed breast. "I don't understand."

"Well, I believed that beast from the vortex had no right to be here in our world. And it didn't believe I would escape before it could rip me apart forever where time doesn't exist. That's as much explanation as I can give you. More to the point what in Tartarus were you--?" Karas saw the rumpled bedroll, knapsack and other items scattered about.

"It--it was a bet--" I stammered.

Karas eased herself off the rock and placed the still bloody blade down on the wide blue stone. "On the Equinox, when the planets are in an alignment not seen in over 1400 years, and in one of the hottest nexus sites of ley lines." She picked up off the turf, my liter and a half bottle of Irish Mist with nearly a quarter gone and shook it. "You got a little bit waxed to keep your courage up. And when you take ANYTHING that changes the composition of your mind in this setting... " She shook her head, "You just sent an engraved invitation for Ragnarok."

"That thing? "

"No-- Ragnarok. Armageddon. End of the world. Last one out, turn off the lights. By all rights, there should be a pit stretching from Moscow to New York and half the Atlantic sucked dry. I don't want to know what the bet was for." She let the whiskey bottle lie by her blade.

"I'm sorry, Karas." Tears filled my eyes yet again, "I didn't know." The cape had unwrapped as I slid off the stone and looked beseechingly into the warrior's eyes. The curves of my firm body caught the glow from Diana's orb and a surly smile came to her full lips.

"Losing the arrows I don't mind, not to mention my favorite vest but--" Karas grimaced as she took off the remnants of the charcoal suede that was sticking to the half-burnt gashes on her back. "I lost some skin and a bit of the red stuff that works much better inside my body, because of you." She ripped the vest into strips.

"I'll get my keys; my Rover's just down there. I can get you to a hospital." I bent to rummage for jeans and a top. Karas grabbed my arm.

"No...Karas' icy gaze slowly moved up my body, lingering at the apex of my thighs. She tied my wrists with a piece of vest then pushed me to my knees. Leaning back on the Slaughter stone, she nudged my thighs apart with the tip of her right grey suede boot. Karas lifted her toe and rubbed against my cleft.

"What-- " I started to move the boot away, "Ahhh-- No, you're hurt-- "

"Stop right there." Karas lifted her foot hard. "That little near-sacrifice got you all hot and bothered, didn't it?" She moved it again.

"Y--Yes." The weeds and sparse grass didn't cushion my knees very well but the building sensations between my thighs overrode that discomfort.

"All those things, slithering and rutting into each other. Didn't matter that they weren't human, or even of this world. You just listened to all of them buggering each other. They've got six or seven orifices and at least that many sexes." The flexible fabric of Karas' boot rasped against my thrumming center. I gasped and began shifting about for a richer contact.

"You wanted it bad, didn't matter from whom, or what... Right?" The woman lifted her leg a fraction and tilted it.

"AH! Yes!"

"No." Karas removed her foot and let her boot sole rest on my left shoulder. I could smell my scent from the dampness on the brushed leather but she would not allow me relief. "Unzip me."

"What?" My disappointment made me want to finish myself but I realized disobeying the angry wounded woman wouldn't be very smart. I saw the zipper just under Karas' belt. Awkward, because my hands were bound, but I did manage to undo it. It was long, running from the front, between Karas' legs and up to the back, ending just before the belt again. Very convenient, I thought as I managed to hide my smile. The older woman was clean-shaven and I could tell the fight and flight had excited her as well. I inhaled slowly, enjoying the musky scent.

"Now you're going to make me forget how my shoulders got all ripped up." Karas twisted her waist length hair into a knot, bringing it over to her front.

"I've got a medic kit in the boot..." My voice faded seeing Karas' full breasts rise and fall with her arms; all that strength and power, the aureoles hard and dark, challenging me.

Karas picked up and uncapped the bottle of Irish Mist. "Disinfectant."

"But -- the septic poisoning from that thing that hurt you--"

"Let me worry about that. Begin."

I didn't need a second invitation. I pressed my lips in a soft kiss to Karas' smooth mons then, as well as I was able, I opened the woman's nether lips with my thumbs and forefingers. My nose brushed against the slight swelling then my tongue licked over it. I felt Karas twitch above me and I smiled as I extended my tongue to the length of Karas' slit. I laved the inner folds alternately, avoiding the swelling bud.

Karas held to the top of my hair, feeling me trying to please her, and not doing too badly at it. The glass clinked against the stone and from the corner of my eye, I saw her lift the bottle. She couldn't afford to lose a drop. All that alcohol was going to be needed badly. And then she was going to feel it, badly.

My cheek slid against the soft suede over a well-muscled thigh as I thrust my tongue deeper inside Karas, then drew it up and circled the nub, repeating that action several times. I heard a soft growl, almost felt it more than heard it. I found one side of Karas' clit was more sensitive as it protruded further from its hood. Teasing, I spent more time on the less sensitive side as the warrior's hips jerked into me.

The bottle rose and angled as Karas positioned it over her back, ready to pour. I felt her inner thigh muscles twitch as I tucked two fingers inside her, drawing high on the front wall. My lips pulled at her clit; my teeth grazed the base then I pulled with my lips, drawing it deep and flipping my tongue lightly over it.

Alternating between nibbling bites and leisurely sucking, I felt Karas trembling. I rotated my fingers in the wetness from her cleft and felt the pulse beating faster. The woman's hand was firm on my head and the sweetness of her juices flowed over my chin. Karas' fingers clenched tighter as I hummed and swirled my tongue around my thrusting, sticky fingers before delivering an erratic gentle gnawing around the throbbing bud.

The proud head lowered as Karas upended the eighty-five proof and let it pour out. Her fingers dug into my head mashing my face into her crotch. She screamed long and hard as both the implacable climax and the burning alcohol on the jagged lacerations, struck at the same time.

Karas' arm came down suddenly, smashing the Irish Mist bottle against the Slaughter Stone in reflex. The glass shattering startled me and I fell back, instinctively shielding myself with my still bound hands. Karas shook from the feel of liquid fire eating down through the tissue to bone. I clambered to my feet, distraught at the woman's pain.

"What can I do to help?" I reached out to touch Karas' pale sculpted cheek. I pried open the clenched fingers and tossed the broken bottle neck aside. I was worried; Karas' eyes seemed to focus on something beyond my ken. Blindly, she stretched behind her and snatching up the blade, sheathed it on her hip.

"This--" The woman ripped off the cape from my shoulders and tossed it over the wide flat stone. She picked me up and half threw me face down on it, with my hips on the edge and my feet on the grass. Karas turned and held one hand on the small of my back.

"Hey--" I wriggled, unable to get up.

"I'll share the pain with you," and Karas brought her hand down sharply. My cries of outrage turned to hurt as the woman's callused palm alternated bright bursts of heat and more. Once again, I felt myself responding with a carnal pulse, my buttocks getting hotter and tighter as my sex was nudged repeatedly into the rough stone.

Karas' hand must have tingled from the intense impact of forty, then fifty spankings administered to each upthrust ass cheek. That near numbness must have taken the edge from the slow lava searing her back. She turned and straddled my left thigh, then started squeezing the inflamed globes before her. I was moaning, whether from pleasure or pain, Karas really didn't care. She leaned forward, rocking hard, crushing her breasts against my back.

"What--ah, oh my..." came from me as her hand slipped into my cleft and up into slick darkness. Karas' other hand went between the rock and my pelvis where she parted the velvet folds and pulled at the turgid bud. Karas was still wet and she slid easily up and down the back of my thigh, grinding into me. I felt the sides of the zipper rasping on my leg. She brought her fingers out of my tunnel and splayed them at the opening then narrowed her hand into a cone and just kept pushing until her entire hand was forced inside of me.

I was in tears with the penetration, I was so narrow, and now I was so filled as if Karas could reach up and grab my heart. The thrusting action rocked my breasts through the thin material of the cloak over the blue stone and my nipples felt raw, shooting spasms down into my core. All I could do was grunt every time Karas' fist went in and gasp as she pulled back. Karas' juices kept coming out all over my leg and the rolling and pinching on my abused clit was monumental.

Two screams rent the air as we went over the peak together. Karas felt my inner muscles clenching and she withdrew her hand in easy stages with the contractions. She kept circling the little pearl, afire with need and my hips bucked under hers. Her right hand free, Karas pulled back my hair and my head, bowing me up.

"This is the last thing I'll take from you--" Karas' lips almost touched my left ear. Her teeth scraped my neck in front of the muscle that ran back at an angle from the side of my jaw to my shoulder. I pushed up with my hands, trying to rise further to alleviate the pulling on my hair.

"Wha--" I gasped, stunned as Karas bit into my throat, tearing into the soft skin. Her inexorable pressure on my clit drove me hard into a second, and shortly a third orgasm in waves of agony and ecstasy. Karas sucked at the jagged wound, drinking in the explosion of sensations with relish. The warm salty fluid trickled out of the corner of her lips, down my neck. I was whimpering, inundated with the harshness of my most delicate flesh being mistreated and the shock of the biting.

The dark woman licked the edges of the wound as the clotting began to slow the welling drops. It wasn't at the carotid, so I wouldn't bleed to death by any stretch. The warrior gave one last swipe with her nails over the protruding hypersensitive tip at my core and I flinched. I heard Karas chuckle as she propped her foot on the edge of the rock and zipped up her pants. Then she snatched at the strip of suede and freed my hands.

"Another day, another battle." Karas stepped back, wiped her mouth clean and watched me get slowly off the stone. I was wary, watching the insatiable banshee. I winced as I moved; I wouldn't be able to sit easy for a fortnight. I gingerly fingered the hole at my throat; the wound wasn't nearly as bad as it felt. The dawn was spilling into the night sky as I picked up my jeans and gingerly pulled them up over my still smarting backside.

Karas shook out the cape and settled it over her own shoulders, not seeming to care about the chill and dampness as her lush bare breasts rose and fell in a tantalizing manner. She ignored me with no more care than if I were as the rock and peat she just vented her lust upon. Her heavy-lidded violet interest was on the picturesque stone half-circle and the way the light licked up the pitted slabs; everyday, ordinary occurrences. There was even the drone of a jet heading up to the base by the North Sea.

"How did you find-- those things, and me--" I waved my arm around before I pulled on an oversized Oxford sweatshirt. I stopped, "This place was brand new and some of those creatures--they seemed to shift, and waver like they weren't all there. How were you able to see to shoot?"

Karas tapped above and between her brows, "Pineal gland, where the third eye is." She gave a disgusted snort and shook her head. "Scientists have no idea what it does, and if they knew..." The older woman ran her fingers through the long midnight tresses, loosening and freeing them from their bindings. "Compared to what might have happened to you, hanging, drawing and quartering would seem like the misericord, the mercy stroke."

I shuddered and reached for my sneakers. I tried to balance on the dewy grass and slipped, falling hard on my much-abused ass. I rolled to my knees to relieve the pain. Gasping from my exertions and angry that I could be used so and discarded, I finally turned on Karas who was slowly walking away.

"What makes you such an almighty authority on all this?"

Karas stopped and looked back at me. Mists curled bonelessly around Karas' ash-colored boots like a cat nudging for a meal. Her eyes seemed to vanish as she leaned her head back and inhaled the scent of musk and blood still coming from me. Then her head lowered in a cold soulless expression. For a heartbeat, in a trick of the new dawn light, I thought I saw Karas' cobalt eyes turn red.

"Because I was the one that didn't get away."

[End]