At the Sound of the Bell Pt. 03

We returned the toast.

"Now, there is a rather spectacular Principality to take by storm tonight ladies. But first, there is a lovely room full of very special new machinery downstairs that needs a long and arduous test drive. I suggest you go and make full use of it before the boys all arrive tomorrow."

Livvi looked at her. "Not joining us then?"

Amanda smiled. "Not today, Liv. There is a room booked at the Hotel de Paris for me this afternoon. I'll see you there later!"

Keisha laughed. "You know girls, I swear three week ago, Aaron had cock over one foot long. Now poor boy been worn down so much by 'Manda he down to nine inch!"

As we stood laughing, Amanda scowled and put her hand to her throat. "Out you lot. Leave an old perv to her fantasies for fuck's sake. I was denied the boy for almost a year. I mean he's so fucking hot I might even let him come on my face willingly!"

I took Livvi by the arm. We had a lot of unfinished business and I was dying to get to know her better. She cuddled me in and looked down from her lofty height, that bee-sting mouth pouting as it did from the homepage of the Pegasus website.

I narrowed my eyes as I stared up. "Got your nipple clamps and inflatables?"

She shook her handbag. "Never leave home without them! Got a vape pen?"

"No, but I'm sure we'll find one somewhere in this one-horse town!"

She linked Katie in her other arm and we left the room.

We took it slowly to start with and it felt wonderful pedalling along with a viewscreen on the handlebars showing a gentle country lane. I glanced across at Katie as the gradient began to increase. She began to pedal harder and I could see the mechanism firing the dildo into her through the hole in the saddle. If it was anything like mine, she would be in heaven.

I sighed as large, soft hands gripped my hips and slid gently up my sides before squeezing my breasts. I gasped as little rubbery grips were attached to my nipples. No weights – just a gentle tugging that sent little electric shocks through me.

Livvi gave me a smouldering look as she lowered herself slowly onto the Sybian. Therese and Su-Li were entangled on a yoga mat and Keisha was gently rocking on the rocker.

We all turned at the sound of the voice from the doorway. "See you later ladies – my forbidden fruit awaits. Just give Aussie-girl a retirement party to remember, eh?"

She tossed me a vape pen. "Thought you may need that darling."

Livvi purred as she turned her dial hard to the right. Her body went rigid and she forced out the words. "Maybe later, ja?"

"Deal!" I turned back to Katie. "First one to the top?"

She stopped pedalling for a moment. "Thanks to you I'm already at the top, babe!" She held her hand out to me.

Slightly breathless, I let my feet hang for a moment and kissed her fingers, tears in my eyes. "Me too Katie. I love you so much."

Livvi looked at us from behind a veil of blonde hair. "Hey, you two lovebirds - start pedalling again or I'll start putting weights on those clamps!"

I blew a little plume of vapour in her direction and winked at her. "Maybe later, ja?" I looked back to Katie, a huge smile on my face. "Ready?"

The look on her face made me just melt with joy. "Steady?"

An English, an Australian and a German voice all shouted out in unison.

"GO!"

Epilogue: Sophie

I rolled over and looked out at the view from the huge picture window overlooking Rushcutter's Bay in Sydney. This new lifestyle was still taking some getting used to and I could have watched the boats in the harbour going to and fro all day. Katie and I had spent hours on the ferries visiting Circular Quay, Manly, Rose Bay, Watson's Bay and Mosman. I was totally in love with the place and after four weeks of touring across the country from Katie's home in Fremantle I was still in awe every day. I couldn't wait for the Barrier Reef and the stopover in Singapore on the way home to spend some time with Keisha and Su-Li.

After that, Katie would be taking charge of the Huntress and I was going on a short farewell tour of small West Country festivals with Armourgeddon before hanging up my five-string bass. I'd then become deputy to Simone who was taking Katie's old job as senior duty manager.

The first couple of months after the demise of the not-so-gentle man we had come to know merely as 'Voldemort' (due to the fact that no-one could bring themselves to say his name anymore) were quite fraught for a number of reasons. Firstly, the full impact of what we had done hit us hard despite the hideous creature he had been. We were all quite shaken for a while as the press eulogised about the monstrous man and his great deeds. Amanda had played the grieving widow at the funeral and had spoken eloquently to the press about her loss. She said she was handing some of the ownership of the hotels to the staff who had been most loyal to her over the years, and that the future of Hunter Enterprises would be decided in due course.

She then asked them to respect her request to grieve quietly and immediately began her new life as a free woman almost constantly impaled upon a nine-inch erection attached to a gorgeous young man called Aaron.

Katie had decided her rehab needed to be extreme so she picked a place so remote in the outback of Australia that you couldn't even find it on a map. It was a hard few weeks for her – no internet, no contact with the outside world. Just the tough life of a cattle ranch that just so happened to double as a short, sharp shock centre. They worked them like slaves, denied them every comfort and made them forget about anything they may have once craved.

It was hard for me too. It was purgatory not having any contact with her for so long and many a night I feared that when we were re-united it would not be the same Katie.

I needn't have worried. When she met me off the plane in Perth, it was the same, bubbly, gorgeous girl I had come to love so much; only this time hopefully free of her habit. We cried like babies when we saw each other at the gate and on the drive back to Fremantle she had to stop three times so we could make up for lost time.

We arrived at her family home late and I was glad it had been a first-class flight else I would have been falling asleep within seconds. Her folks were wonderful and within a minute of arriving we were sat in their huge back garden and I was gripping a beer with a funny little sleeve around it to keep it cool and my hand from sticking to the stupidly cold glass. Katie had been there for three days and they thought she had been visiting friends before that. She was trying to pluck up the courage to tell them about us but was more nervous about that than anything else we had encountered recently.

It felt wonderful to be back with her but awful to have to sleep in the spare room. The next morning we headed into Perth and took in the sights before getting a ferry back to Fremantle. Knowing my love of heavy metal she took me to the Bon Scott statue and I paid my respects to one of the greats before we tried to drink Little Creatures brewery dry.

We got back to her place and her dad Phil was in full-on Aussie mode, poking at the barbeque and taking piles of meat from the 'fridge. Her older sister and brother were due later with their partners and kids for a big family barbie. Katie went straight through to the garden and I went up to grab something from my room.

As I entered, I did a double take. All of my gear was gone and the room was completely empty.

I walked back down bewildered. Katie was chatting to her Dad, beer in hand and he passed me one as he greeted me. "Hiya darling. Just getting set up for fair dinkum Aussie barbie – show you Poms how it's done properly!"

Katie smacked him on the arm. "They have barbies in England, Dad!"

He grinned. "Yeah, I've been – Ashes series 1981. Bad result, even worse barbies and don't get me started about the bloody beer!"

Katie's mum Meagan was sitting in a deckchair sipping wine. She looked at me quizzically. "Something wrong, Sophie love?"

I nodded. "Yeah, my stuff's gone from my room. Just a bit puzzled."

She nodded back, her voice curt. "Yeah, I took it out this morning."

Katie narrowed her eyes. "Why, what's wrong Mum?"

She took a sip of wine. "Not having that girl sleeping in my spare room."

It was completely out of the blue. I was shocked and Katie spluttered into her beer. "Mum, what the...?"

Meagan shrugged. "Not been honest with us have you, hon?"

Katie was seldom lost for words but she looked horrified. "Mum, I was going to tell you... honest... it's just..." She looked at me but I was even more dumbstruck than she was.

Meagan put her wine down and got up from her chair. She walked over to us and took us both in her arms. "Katherine Emily Winters – I have known you for twenty-four years and I have never seen you happier. I may be the wrong side of fifty, but I still know love when I see it. Sophie's stuff is in your room where it belongs. You've got yourself a little beaut there."

Phil laughed from behind us. "Yeah, a little beaut - bloody Pom or not!"

We were both utterly lost for words. Katie had been dreading telling them and to hear such approval made me well up. I hugged Meagan. "Thank you – that means so much to me. I love her so much it hurts."

We hugged and cried and said all sorts of silly things for a very long time and my heart was singing. Finally we subsided and got back to as normal a conversation as possible following a mother outing her daughter. Meagan looked at Katie then me. "Jeez, when I think of those no-good yobbos you used to date. You two are made for each other - took you a while, but you finally got taste girl!"

Katie breathed a huge sigh of relief. "Jeez I thought we were out on the street!"

Phil had been fairly quiet so far but now intervened in typical Aussie style. "So, Sophie. You're not, you know... a... a..." He nodded to the pile of meat he was in the process of setting fire to. "You're not a..." He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Not a... veggie, are you?"

The smell was incredible and my tummy was rumbling. I was about to say 'no' when Katie quickly cut in. "No Dad, she's a vegan and she's converted me. Got any quinoa going?"

He stood there with his barbie tongs aloft looking horrified until Meagan cracked up laughing. "I think were even now, Phil, eh?"

A big smile crossed his face. "My daughter's girlfriend? Fine with me. Bloody Pom? Yeah, can live with that. But bloody vegan? Now ya really would've been out on the streets!"

The rest of the evening was a blast. Katie's family were so lovely and half-way through the little gathering she called everyone to order. She stood in the middle of the garden and beckoned me forward. We stood with the family around us, the kids playing somewhere with Barney, their mad dog and out of earshot.

Her voice sounded nervous. "Folks, today Sophie and I were sitting in Little Creatures drinking a beer flight." She paused. "Apropos of nothing, I asked her a question." She looked at me and squeezed my hand.

I could sense tension in the little group facing us, drinks in hand.

I swallowed hard. When Katie had asked me, I thought I would never stop crying. I started again now and blurted out, "I hope you are pleased to hear that I said 'yes.'"

Katie grinned and shrugged. "Romantic huh? I ask a girl to marry me in a brewery in an old crocodile farm!"

The rest of the night was a blur as Aussie bubbly was cracked open and my new fiancée and I sat under the Southern Cross with big, silly grins on our faces. I thought what Amanda had said about having mind-blowing experiences and sent out a silent thank-you to her across the miles hoping that she was giving Aaron another good seeing to.

Since then we had done the Margaret River, Adelaide, Uluru and Melbourne and taken the Ghan train to Darwin and done Kakadu. Now we were in Sydney and the villa was amazing. One of Amanda's friends owned it and she had called in a favour. We'd had it for two weeks and we had done Taronga Zoo, Darling Harbour, the Opera House and Katie got a bucket-lister of her own ticked off with a tour of the Sydney Cricket Ground.

Sometimes we were by ourselves in our own little cocoon – sometimes we had people back for some fun. We just went with what felt right and it was wonderful.

The previous night it had just been me and Katie. We had talked until the wee small hours about the last few months and made love as if it was our first time.

When I looked at the view that morning, I was on cloud nine. Little did I think that in a few minutes I'd be on a cloud a few miles higher.

I groaned as my smart watch beeped to tell me I had a message. I reluctantly rolled away from the view and squinted down at the tiny text. It was on our 'P7' message group, from 'LAH'. It was the group we used to communicate between us Pegasus girls who had been there on that fateful night - or in Su-Li's case, very much there in spirit. If it was from Lady Amanda Hamilton, it demanded attention.

I got up trying not to disturb Katie and picked up my tablet to get a better view of the message. There was a webpage link that looked utterly random to me but beneath it there was a single, huge smiley face.

I clicked the link and read the article from a British newspaper. I was utterly bewildered. Why had Amanda sent an article about some tragedy in Belarus?

I was aware of Katie stirring behind me. She rubbed her eyes and smiled sleepily. "Hey babes, whassup?"

"Dunno sleepyhead. Amanda sent a link. Read this and see if it makes sense."

I heard a muffled voice from the bed. "Ain't got me goggles in here - read it to me."

"It's from the Times. No idea why she's sent it. The headline is 'Belarus Explosion – New Evidence Emerges.'" I began to read. "Following the explosion at a petro-chemical plant in Belarus last Tuesday, new evidence has emerged that throws a sinister new light on the disaster. Authorities in Minsk have now confirmed that the bodies of the co-owners of the plant were found in the burned-out office complex which was destroyed along with two-thirds of the plant."

I looked at Katie and she shrugged. "Bit off the wall – go on..."

"Forensic evidence has shown that the badly burned bodies were not killed in the blast, but each had a single gunshot wound to the head. Ballistics have proven that each man was killed by a shot from the other's gun. It is conjectured that one of the gunshots may have ruptured a gas pipe, leading to the catastrophic explosion."

Katie was sitting up now. "Fucking weird. No idea so far..."

I went on but stumbled over the names of the men. "A theory in the Belarus capital is that the two men - Aleksandr Pavlyuchenko (49) and Piotr Kutusov (51) - were locked in a power struggle for sole-control of the multi-billion dollar business and killed each other in a shoot-out that led to the destruction of the company they had owned for decades."

Katie stopped me; all remnants of her sleepy demeanour now gone. She was kneeling up on the bed like a meerkat. "Whoa, rewind. Those names again?"

I said them again, once more making a right hash of the surnames.

She rushed across to me and hugged me. "Fucking hell, Amanda is amazing!"

I felt like I had done right back at the start of this when Katie had to tell me who Lady Amanda Hunter was. "Lost. Whoosh. Over my head. No fucking idea."

Katie squinted at the screen. "Piotr. Aleksandr. Ring any bells?"

I went cold. Now she said it, they didn't so much rings bells as cause earthquakes. I felt myself trembling. I recalled Voldemort the last time I had suffered at their hands saying, "Piotr, Alex – let's take a ringside seat, shall we?"

I also recalled Amanda telling Voldemort that once we had done with him, she was going to come after his cronies.

Katie was jumping for joy. "Yay! Pegasus three, bastards nil!"

A few months before I had been brutalised by an English Lord and what I now knew to be his two Belarussian cronies. They were then going to torture me and kill me on a yacht in the Mediterranean Sea. They had broken Su-Li's jaw along with other nasty injuries. They had probably killed some poor unknown street girl for good measure.

Now, half a world away, I knew they were all dead.

There were a few more left out there but I knew in my heart that Amanda would find them and bring them to some kind of justice.

There is no place in the world for people like them.

Katie and me? Amanda and the other Pegasus guys and girls? Believe me, the world would be a better place if we were all like that.

I put my arm around her and looked out over the incredible view. "Let's take it back, Katie. Let's reclaim this beautiful, godforsaken fucking planet for humanity!"

She pulled me back towards the bed. "Right there with ya, kiddo!"

I almost jumped out of my skin as Amanda's voice echoed throughout the apartment. "Alexa, ask Sophie and Katie to make love for me. Slow and gentle. They have a lot of celebrating to do!"

Katie put her hand over her eyes. "Fucking hell, Hunter. Is nowhere safe?"

An amused voice came back. "Absolutely nowhere darlings. Make love. No spanking - on my order!" A long pause then, "Oh fuck, Aaron that feels so good."

I began to laugh. The woman was just amazing. "Can we watch you too?"

Her voice was now distinctly wobbly – none of her usual suave gravitas. "No darling – I'm the boss. I get to watch you. I'll keep audio on though. Oh Aaron, jeez that tongue is nearly as good as...!"

My fiancée and I forgot all about Lady Amanda Hunter and the divine Aaron and lost ourselves in each other.

We had survived. We were Pegasus.

We reacted to The Sound of The Bell and we revelled in it.

We would probably never change the world, but we'd give it a fucking good try.

And do you know what the great thing was?

We knew now that we would never die trying.