Pam-Ann (31 page)

“And most of the lookouts know
it too,” Drake continued. “The rest of the crew and the passengers
will see it soon. The Company won’t be able to cover this up so
easily.”

“What the hell are you doing?”
Traske strained against Drake’s superior strength, which was moving
the wheel and the airship back towards the blackness. Rafael broke
the man’s grip and pushed him away.

“Eve, if the Commodore tries to
interfere again shoot him in the leg,” he said. “Try to miss any
arteries.” With a glance at Talbot he spun the wheel and steadied
the airship’s nose on a course directly towards the blackness. The
man stood immobile, still staring into its depths.

“This is mutiny,” Traske
accused.

Rafael shrugged. “Call it what
you like.”

“But you can’t risk all our
lives. That thing could tear us apart.”

“Not if what I was told is
true.” Rafael’s gaze met Pam’s and held it. “And I trust the one
who told me.”

“This is about your father and
what the companies did to him,” Traske accused.

“Maybe it was,” Rafael said, and
his dark gaze did not waver from Pam’s. “Now it’s about doing
what’s right for someone I care about very much.” His lips formed
the ghost of a smile.

Pam’s belly fluttered. He had
compromised his duty for her sake and sacrificed his career at the
same time. She was right. He was a better man than Rick. He was a
man she could....

“I won’t let you kill us all.”
Traske lunged.

Drake released the wheel,
sidestepped and let the Commodore rush past him. Eve moved like
lightning and somehow Traske was sprawled on the deck and staring
up into the muzzle of her pistol.

“You took the lady’s money,”
Drake said. “You’ll take the consequences too.”

“Rafael, how did you know…?”
Persephone began.

“You said yourself Milly will do
anything to please me.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I know
you’re not doing it for me, but thank you just the same.”

“I don’t know who you are but I
finally figured out who you’re not. It explains why you changed so
much. When I discovered we were way off course and you were on the
bridge it wasn’t too hard to guess what you were up to. I’d already
figured out why you might be anxious to leave.”

“I can’t be a slave,” the blonde
said. “I couldn’t stand it after being so rich.” Hope and joy shone
in her eyes. “And now I don’t have to.”

“Pity, I think
you have the makings of a good slave, and you certainly deserve it.
But I’d like to have the real Persephone back
where she
belongs. I hope everything works out the way you want it to.” A
thin smile played over
Rafael’s
lips
and he looked at Pam
as he took the
helm
again. “
For both of
you.
Now, let’s find that thing and get you on your
way.”

“No need,” Pam said hoarsely.
“It’s found
us
.” The blackness was swelling ominously. She
forced herself to swallow and was glad Persephone still held her
hand, even if the
blonde’s
was shaking. Pam
dragged her gaze away and looked back. Rafael gripped the wheel,
white-knuckled and with grim
determination
etched into his face. He met her eye and gave a short nod. “Good
luck, sweetheart. I wish….” His crooked smile stabbed her heart. “I
won’t forget you. I could never do that.”

“Rafael, I’m not….”

“Do you trust me?”

Pam looked deep into his eyes.
“Yes,” she said breathlessly.

“Then believe
I’m doing what’s best for you.”
He nodded, his smile still
showing the regret she was suddenly feeling too. He looked beyond
her, through the window. Pam turned away with tears prickling her
eyes.

“It’s growing,” Eve said. “God,
it hurts to look at it.” Her forgotten pistol no longer pointed at
Traske.

“You’ll kill us all, Drake,” he
said. “You damned fool, you’ll kill us all!”

“Then you’ll die a rich man.
It’s time you learned about trust, Commodore, and maybe love too,
the way I have.”

Just as it had
the first time,
the blackness blotted out the sky. There was
no jarring as there had been on the plane, only a gentle vibration
that prickled over Pam’s skin and made the fine hairs on the back
of her neck stand on end. Only then did she realise she was naked
and feel again the throb of breasts and buttocks. Some people in
her world were in for a big surprise.

“Soon now,” she said, heart
pounding. Beside her Persephone sucked in a ragged breath.

“Oh, God, let it work! Let us
find ourselves on a strato-jet instead of this airship.”

“Strato-jet?” The mad fluttering
in Pam’s belly increased.

“Oh, I never thought I would
ever long so much to see Croydon Airport again in all my life,” the
blonde said, voice quavering.

“Croydon?” Pam’s
anxiousness
was no longer only about the blackness.
“But they haven’t used Croydon since World War Two.”

“World War what?” Persephone
asked distractedly, gaze fixed on the black phenomenon hovering
ominously
beyond the window.

“Oh my God!” Pam said.

Chapter Fourteen

“Persephone, if there’s one time
I think I need your Venus Dust, this is it,” Pam said hoarsely,
head
spinning with the awed realisation that the
blonde was not from her world at all but another one
entirely.

Persephone
gave a nervous giggle. “Oh, that. It’s just
black pepper and baking soda. I give it to all my new girls. It
never fails, but the effect is all in the mind. Oh, shit, here it
comes!”

The blackness was engulfing the
nose of the airship almost too fast for the eye to follow. It would
fill the bridge in seconds. Pam tore her gaze from the impossible
darkness
, her hand from Persephone’s,
rushed to Rafael and flung her arms around him.

“I don’t want to go. I want to
stay with....” Her skin shivered hot and cold at the same time.
Darkness
surrounded
her. She closed her
eyes and waited with her heart in her mouth for the smothering
breathlessness, the heaviness and weightlessness she had felt the
first time. An arm encircled her waist and pulled her tightly
against a hard-muscled body.

Long, desperate, despairing
seconds passed. It had been her all along. The emotions, the
longings, the indescribable pleasure and pain, and yes, the love
she had felt, had all been real. Only the Venus Dust had been
false. And she had given it all up to return to the barren
emptiness of her own world, with its aimless flying from one
destination to another, its lonely nights in bland hotel rooms, its
friendlessness and lovelessness and emptiness.

“Are you okay?”

Pam opened her eyes and looked
into a familiar face. It smiled at her. Her breasts were aching
from hugging someone so tightly.

“C… Captain Todd?”

He laughed softly. “We’ve had
this conversation before, sweetheart.”

She felt the wool of a frockcoat
under her hands and its brass buttons pressing into her flesh.
“Rafael! It
is
you!” Heedless of her pain she hugged him
even tighter, her heart swelling with joy. “Oh, thank God! But why
am I still here?”

He eased himself from her grasp
and brushed his lips over hers. “I’ve no idea, but no one could be
happier about it than I am.”

“Except me,” Pam said, and
tears brimmed her eyelids
.

“Mister Talbot, take the wheel.”
Rafael offered a hand to Traske who had risen to his knees. “We
need to talk,” he said, and the Commodore nodded and let him help
him to his feet.

“Mister Drake.” Eve nodded
towards the
trembling figure that stood
staring
out of the window at where the blackness had
been.

“Persephone
?” Drake asked.

The girl turned, staring
wide-eyed around the bridge and at the people watching her. Her
lower lip was trembling. She
looked identical to
Persephone, except that
she was naked
but
for a tiny, semi-circular piece of leather
suspended from a thong around her hips.

“Persephone
?” Drake repeated
uncertainly
. The girl hurried to kneel at his feet and
bowed her head.

“My Lord, wh… what’s happened?
Where are we?”

* * * * *

“So the patents for the Spanish
and Austrian Empires are in place, which only leaves the Russians,”
Alex Riley, formerly chief engineer of the
Empire’s Triumph
said. “I’ve got men working on it but you know the Czarist
bureaucracy moves slowly, and takes cash to keep its wheels
turning.” He held his glass out to one of the slave girls he had
brought with him. “More ice, Sue.”

As the girl went to the cocktail
bar, Pam watched her bottom wiggle and felt a twinge of envy. It
was striped red from a recent caning. Rafael had not caned her for
over a week and then it had only been a
half
-dozen and not very hard.
With
distinctly mixed feelings,
from her kneeling position beside
him she glanced up at
the man who made her call
him ‘Master’
, but he was looking at Riley.

“I really appreciate you putting
my name on those patent applications along with your own, Alex,”
Rafael
said. “It couldn’t have come at a
better time.”

“Hey, it was only right,” Riley
replied
, accepting his drink from the
slave. “If it wasn’t for your girl, there wouldn’t have been
anything to patent and we wouldn’t be on the verge of making
millions.”

Pam felt a glow of pride and
satisfaction. She liked being thought of as Rafael’s girl.
A pang pricked her heart. She was less happy about
being his
slave
girl.

“But you said we’ve already made
over five million dollars, and it
hasn’t
even
been three months.”

Riley grinned. “That’s only the
beginning. I’ve got factory owners breaking down the doors of the
New York office, begging for a piece of the action. And we owe it
all to Pam and her skirt. The world can’t get enough zippers.” He
raised his glass in her direction.

Rafael smiled at her. “Here’s to
Pam then,” he said, and raised his own glass. As far as most people
were concerned he had changed her name when he had bought her.

Despite the enormous mansion on
the Southern Californian coast that Rafael had let her choose, and
all the other luxuries, Pam still had trouble believing something
as simple and mundane as a zipper could have made it all happen.
Yet all she need do was look out from the vast lounge to the patio
and swimming pool, and the gardens and estate beyond, to know that
it was true.

She had been worried for Rafael
after the blackness had gone, and for herself too, afraid he would
be arrested and that the Company might not let him buy her, but
Traske had calmed down once his fear had passed. There had been no
mutiny charges. The
Empire’s Triumph
had not been damaged,
nor any of the crew or passengers hurt, except maybe Persephone. No
one could be certain about that, but Pam was sure
the blonde mistress was alive and… somewhere. In the last
moments before the blackness had engulfed them, Pam had understood
that Persephone, or Kathy Martin as she had formerly been, had
never lived in the same world that she herself had been plucked
from. Perhaps that helped explain the young woman’s wanton lust and
needless cruelty. After talking to the identical-looking girl who
had appeared on the airship’s bridge in Persephone’s place, Pam was
also sure the blonde had not returned to Kathy Martin’s
world.

Those who had been on the bridge
had agreed to say nothing about
what had
happened
, and even after promising two million dollars to
Talbot for his silence Traske had still had thirteen million
reasons for wanting as few enquiries as possible to be made into
his conduct, or into anyone else’s. They had kept their story
simple. The airship had been driven off the normal route by strong
crosswinds, just as had really happened on their outward trip.
While correcting their course they had encountered the black
phenomenon. No one at the Company had been surprised that the
Commodore had given in to Persephone’s strange request for a
private tour of the bridge. They all knew she frequently misused
the influence her large shareholding in the
Empire Star Line
gave her. The new Persephone,
who was no more the
real one than her predecessor had been
, had proved
completely passive. Dressed in the old Persephone’s clothes she had
accompanied Drake, Eve and the slave girls when they had
disembarked in London, kept silent and done as she was told. The
board of enquiry that had looked into the incident had not even
bothered to call her,
a mere woman
, as a
witness.

Rafael had been right. The
companies could not cover it up. The furore that had accompanied
the stories the passengers had told the press after they had landed
had spurred the enquiry to the speedy conclusion that, though there
was no evidence the phenomenon was a danger to airships or people,
it should be avoided by both. They had imposed a two hundred mile
exclusion zone in the skies around the area where it had been
encountered. Other than that, flights were continuing much as
before and people were still booking passage on the Trans-Atlantic
airships, despite the lurid and exaggerated accounts of what had
happened, which continued to appear in some of the newspapers.

Rafael seemed satisfied with the
outcome. His father’s health had improved and the older Drake was
now gaining fame and a certain notoriety by giving interviews to
the press and popular public lectures about his own encounter with
the phenomenon, much to the chagrin of the companies who were eager
to have the affair forgotten as quickly as possible. With that
objective clearly in mind, the directors of the
Empire Star
Line
had not enquired too closely into the actions of Traske or
his first lieutenant, and had willingly accepted the Commodore’s
resignation after the board of enquiry had published its
recommendations. Traske had immediately cashed Persephone’s cheque
and
unobtrusively
left by sea for
Australia.