for unease and distrust. Now it felt like a haven compared to the outside environment, simply because of how she was dressed.
Sylvia quickly donned her mask and shoved the boiler suit and the carrier bag into a biometric locker.
She supposed she ought to go straight to where she’d been told. Quite possibly the bouncer had a radio to communicate with the other staff, and would let Victor know she’d arrived. It would raise suspicion if anyone caught her poking around. This didn’t feel safe at all. Vaughn ? She thought it would just be Victor, and maybe the Hermaphrodite Twins. In a way, she did kind of like Vaughn, at the same time as being scared of him, as irrational as it seemed to afford trust to someone who dressed as a fetishized version of a medieval executioner and had a tiny skull attached to his nipple. Yet she couldn’t escape the feeling that he’d somehow been able to recognize her at the auction, and before in the dungeon, and that he might either blow her cover or do something horrible to her in his dungeon to teach her a lesson for coming here to spy on the Sideshow.
Another sign at the top of the stairs read, Live interactive torture today! The displays from the day before had been cleared away and harsh, unforgiving spotlights shone where a stage had been set up and numerous unpleasant metal racks and Iron Maiden typed-things stood in wait. The rest of the room was crowded with spectators.
“Whores and bastards!” Vaughn spread his arms wide. “Welcome to my dungeon!”
The people cheered.
Vaughn’s gaze lit upon Sylvia. “Just in time! Would you all please welcome my new apprentice domme for this first scene!” Vaughn gestured to Sylvia. “Madam Butterfly!”
A cacophony of cheers and a few wolf whistles broke out. Sylvia could feel her face getting hot under her mask again.
“Now, for our first scene, Madam shall be co-domming with me. Will you please step up here?”
Vaughn had already begun to speak as Sylvia ascended the steps to the stage. She estimated it to be about two feet from the ground. She could just see herself tripping or stumbling in these impractical boots and falling off. Crap. Now what was going on? Where was Victor? Vaughn had said she was meant to be co-domming, hadn’t he? That presumably meant he wasn’t going to try to tie her up.
“In the good old days, if the king of the castle didn’t think his court jester was funny enough, that jester would end up down here, with me.” Vaughn flexed the many whips of his cat-o’-nine-tails into a horseshoe shape between his hands. “Bring on the jester!”
A curtain to the side of the stage opened, and the Hermaphrodite Twins led out Victor, dressed in the same costume he had worn yesterday. He also wore a thick leather collar around his neck, with a dog’s chain leash attached to a D-ring at the front.
“You shan’t be needing this !” Vaughn got hold of Victor’s jester costume at the back. It must have been fastened with barely visible microvelcro, because it tore clean off him when Vaughn yanked it. As the crowd roared with amusement, the dungeon master tossed it to the Hermaphrodite Twins, who stood to one side of the stage, leaving Sylvia standing beside a medieval executioner and a very fat man who was naked apart from a jester hat and a collar and a pair of ridiculous boots with bells attached to the ends. She’d never thought when she’d signed up to join the police that she’d end up in this scenario, yet at the same time she struggled to keep her eyes off Victor’s body. What was Vaughn going to do to him?
“Now then, this is Victor.” Vaughn held the chain close to where it connected to the collar, tightening it a little so Victor stood straight, and turned him from side to side for the audience as though exhibiting a prize pig at a farmer’s market. “I think you’ll all agree that he’s a gorgeous slave. For one thing, he’s got lovely English rose skin.” Victor yelped as Vaughn
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