The Finishing School Read online

  Contents

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  For the Fellons: Jason, Linda, Justin, Trevor, and baby Regan.

  CHAPTER ONE

  From the very first moment that the warehouse lights were switched on and she first set eyes on the group of six men, Anya knew with an ice-cold certainty that she was going to have to slaughter them all.

  Each was standing with his back to her, facing the wall with both hands interlaced behind his head. It was a classic position for prisoners to adopt. They wore orange one-piece jump suits, the standard uniform of the federal correctional system of the United States.

  Three soldiers covered the prisoners with assault weapons; their digi-cam uniforms bore not a single piece of insignia, unit patch, or indicator of rank, yet she was fully aware that these men were American special forces, the cream of the crop, culled from among the small and insular community of SF operators.

  Despite the fact that Anya had never set eyes on any of them before, she instantly categorized the first soldier to speak as being their leader. "Turn around to face me. NOW."

  The prisoners obeyed, none of them dropping their hands as they shuffled their way through a complete one-eighty. Taking in their faces at a glance, she made an educated guess that four were of Middle Eastern descent, and that the remaining two were home-grown right here in the U.S. of A; one was Caucasian and the other African-American.

  No matter what their country of origin, the prisoners all had one thing in common: They were all looking at her with eyes wide and mouths agape, as though they could hardly believe their eyes.

  In fairness though, she was completely naked from head to toe...

  About two hundred feet long and half that in width, the warehouse was completely empty, from the cold stone floor beneath her feet to the rafters somewhere up above her head...save for the three SOF operators and her six soon-to-be-victims, that was.

  "Ready to rock and roll?" said a voice in her left ear. The miniature radio receiver that nestled in her ear canal was transmitting Commander Neil Wilson's voice through loud and clear.

  Although there was no way he could possibly have heard her (she wasn't wearing a throat mic) nonetheless Anya nodded and said softly under her breath, "Da."

  "I'm assuming from the nod that that was a yes." Her training officer's tone was one of wry humor. "Still, a little motivation is always a good thing, so let me tell you about the winners you'll be facing today. All six are long-term guests of the federal correctional system, and have been promised that they can have you...If they can take you down, that is."

  Anya smiled frostily. She'd like to see them try...which she probably would, once the Navy SEAL cut them loose. He was watching them from a number of hidden cameras, she was sure of it. This was yet another exercise, the latest of many tests that made up her training to become a field operative of The Agency — and if she was lucky, the final one.

  "Let's start with the African-American gentleman standing at your two o'clock position. That would be Leroy Charles. Mr. Charles is responsible, both directly and indirectly, for putting heroin into the veins of an estimated five thousand residents of Detroit...some of them just kids."

  Her eyes flicked across to the man in question, sizing the prisoner up in a fraction of a second. Charles was tall and appeared muscular beneath the orange jumpsuit, if she was any judge; it was just a fraction too snug for him, with discernible pinch points in the crotch and beneath the armpits. His own eyes were roving, sizing up Anya's naked body in an entirely different way.

  "The white guy may look scrawny, but I wouldn't underestimate him. That's Gary Dunn. Ever hear of him?" She shook her head. "Serial murderer out of Orlando. Likes to torture and sexually assault his victims before choking them to death. The press calls him 'The Theme Park Strangler,' mostly because he picked his victims up at theme parks and resorts at the peak of tourist season. Catchy name. Leastways, it stuck."

  The skinny Caucasian couldn't have weighed more than one-ten, one-twenty tops, Anya estimated, but she wondered just how much of it was lean muscle; certainly there was little in the way of fat on that sparse frame. Two weaselly brown eyes regarded her hungrily, along with just the slightest hint of a barely-concealed leer. This man wanted her, Anya knew, and would be less than willing to share her with the others.

  Unbeknownst to him, The Theme Park Strangler was going to get a lot more than he bargained for when the gloves came off. Anya despised rapists above all the other types of scum that were out there, and she was very much looking forward to getting to grips with this one.

  "Last but not least, these four assholes to your left. And no, I'm not calling them assholes because they come from the Middle East; done more tours out there than I can count, and met a lot of damned fine people while I was out there. Then again, I killed a lot of 'em too...but only the ones who were throwing lead my way.

  "Anyhow, these motherfuckers are all captured terrorists. Most of 'em were kept in Gitmo, at least until they shut that place down; we tried 'em out at sea in international waters. Now they spend their time in a Supermax out in Colorado. Every one of them has the blood of American servicemen and women on his hands, not to mention more than their fair share of innocents. Take it from me, the world ain't going to miss 'em...not one little bit."

  Three of the four permanently averted their eyes, as though her very nakedness itself might infect or sully them somehow. The fourth was taking sneaky sidelong glances at her whenever he thought he could get away with it, no doubt copping an eyeful of her creamy white skin.

  "Alright, that's enough talking," Wilson's voice crackled in her ear once more. "Time for business. Connolly, let's go."

  The lead SOF operator nodded curtly, receiving the same radio transmission that Anya had. He raised his voice, addressing the six male prisoners.

  "Alright you fucksticks, listen up! Take a good, long look at this lady over here. You all see her?" There were a few desultory nods. Even the terrorists were staring at her now, no doubt thanks to the amazing motivational power of the three assault rifles that were being pointed in their direction. "I want her taken down. One of her. Six of you. Do the math. If you can hold her, you can have her...have yourselves a good old private party, if you know what I mean. She's all yours. Go get her."

  CHAPTER TWO

  The three professional shooters backed away, each moving to a different corner of the room. They maintained a casual but attentive stance, letting their weapons hang downward from their slings.

  For a moment, nobody moved. Although she didn't actually breathe any longer, Anya still hadn't gotten out of the habit of sighing when she was frustrated. "Well, come on boys...what are you waiting for?" she purred, taking a step backward and spreading her arms wide in invitation. The motion made her exquisite breasts tremor just a fraction, drawing their attention lik
e moths to a flame.

  That did it. Dunn was the first to take the bait. There was no subtlety there, no finesse; he simply came at her like a bull in a china shop. With her finely-trained eye for detail, Anya saw that there was a bulge in his crotch. She tutted. Thinking with the wrong head. That’s going to get you killed… "Don't make this any harder than it's gotta be, bitch." The Theme Park Strangler leered at her, showing a mouthful of ruined meth teeth. He was coming on fast, arms outstretched, ready to claim his prize.

  Anya smiled sweetly in return, deliberately giving her breasts just a little extra jiggle to entice him on. He was only ten feet away, and the ripple of her soft flesh distracted him at precisely the right moment...just as she intended. Launching herself into the air, Anya hooked the back of one thigh around the side of his head and neck, using her momentum to force the serial killer to the ground. He hit the concrete hard, knocking the wind out of his lungs in a whoosh of exploding air.

  Maintaining her leg-lock on his head, Anya twisted in place and adjusted her position until she was sitting on the his face, feeling the tip of his nose nuzzle against her vagina. The astonished prisoner began to thrash beneath her, fueled by a mixture of rage at being taken down so easily by a mere woman and frustration at the fact that she was stark naked and should have been within easy reach of his questing fingers.

  Reaching behind her, Anya grasped his flailing right hand in her own and gave it a sharp twist. A loud crack informed everybody present that she had just broken Dunn's thumb and three of his fingers. He screamed into her vagina. She squirmed back and forth, riding his face, relishing the waves of pleasure that rippled across her clitoris, a blissful counterpoint to the pain she had just inflicted.

  The prisoner slapped at her with his good hand.

  "Still haven't learned your lesson? I tried to tell you once already..."

  She broke that hand too, snapping the thumb backward 180 degrees and then, purely on a whim, fracturing the wrist for good measure. Another scream. Anya closed her eyes, loving the sensation of warm air teasing her nether regions.

  Looking up, she saw that the remaining five men were fanning out, starting to enclose her in a semi-circle. Better make this quick...Pressing her knees tightly together, she enclosed The Strangler's head in a vice-like grip between her thighs. Tensing her muscles, Anya braced herself and jerked her hips sharply to the right. Accompanied by a sickening crack, Dunn's neck snapped cleanly between the second and third cervical vertebrae in a neat approximation of the hangman's fracture.

  The serial killer began to twitch spastically like a man having a seizure, going into immediate respiratory arrest now that the impulses which normally told his chest muscles to breathe could no longer navigate his traumatized spinal cord. Anya rode the dying man's face as if it were a bucking bronco, allowing his death throes to bring her to the point of orgasm. She came hard, which made the whole experience worth it. For a short while after she had first been reanimated as an undead walking corpse, Anya had feared that she had lost the ability to pleasure herself sexually...fortunately those sensations had come back after just a few days, as she had discovered to her great delight when she was relaxing in her bunk after a long day's training.

  Her howl of pleasure sounded more like a war cry as it echoed from the warehouse walls, which was exactly the impression she had intended. The instructors who had taught her unarmed combat techniques had instilled in Anya the value of a loud and violent battle cry. Sure enough, it threw the approaching group of prisoners off their game for a split second, just long enough to give her back the advantage in this fight.

  "Come on, boys,” she cooed, “There's still plenty of me to go round...”

  A guttural, strangulated death rattle from behind her signaled the end of Dunn's life. It was followed quickly by the stench of piss and shit as the dead man voided his bowels and bladder for the last time.

  The next closest man to her was the drug dealer, Leroy Charles. Anya feinted in his direction, stepping forward onto her left leg, but then suddenly pivoted and launched herself off toward the rightmost prisoner, one of the four jihadists. His eyes widened in surprise; partly, she suspected, because of the sheer speed and suddenness of her approach, but also because he had almost certainly never seen a sinuous white woman charging toward him in all her naked glory.

  Taking full advantage of the bearded man's shock, Anya leapt up and delivered a spinning kick. The ball of her right foot connected with her target's throat, crushing the larynx and trachea at a single stroke. He dropped like a sack of shit, his skull bouncing off the hard concrete floor. The man's eyes bugged out of his head and his fingers clawed desperately at his shattered windpipe in a futile attempt to protect it. The damage was already done. In seconds his face turned crimson, then purple, before finally segueing into a pale and sweaty grey hue.

  He was as dead as a fish dropped out of water and left to guppy-breathe on the river bank. Anya dismissed him from her mind with a simple, Two down, four to go. The surviving trio of terrorists and their American-born companion seemed to have decided that the best form of defense was attack. Almost as one, they rushed her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  She was ready for them. Diving toward the closest pair, Anya hit the ground, tucked her arms in close to her body, and threw herself into a spinning roll that bowled them both over. Both men landed on their asses. She ignored them for now, prioritizing the two who were still on their feet as the more immediate threats and targeting them accordingly.

  Anya leapt to her feet and angled toward the closest of the two, who just so happened to be the last remaining jihadist. He swung a clumsy, sweeping punch at her as she darted past him, connecting with nothing more than empty air. Planting her right foot firmly on the concrete, Anya lashed out with her left, making solid contact with the back of his left knee. The prisoner squealed, feeling the joint forcibly dislocate. He went down on that same knee, sending jolts of agony shooting outward from his displaced patella.

  From the corner of her eye, she noted that the man's two fellow jihadists were clambering awkwardly to their feet. They could wait for now. A pair of beefy arms closed on her from behind, catching her up in a bear hug.

  Leroy Charles. Of course.

  The man wasn't lacking for raw muscle, she had to give him that. It felt like being caught in the grip of a puffing, sweating, giant boa constrictor, one that was crushing her own arms against her side and threatening to break them into pieces. Not for the first time, Anya was glad that she didn't have to worry about breathing any longer.

  Charles rocked backward on his heels, lifting Anya off her feet in order to exert a little more pressure...and hopefully break her back. The tendons stood out on both sides of his neck. With an ordinary woman, the tactic might have worked...but Anya was far from an ordinary woman.

  Her upper arms and chest might have been pinned and crushed, but Anya's forearms still had some range of motion left. She reached back with her left hand, groping blindly until she found what she had been seeking: A soft, vulnerable part of the male anatomy.

  She gripped.

  She squeezed.

  She twisted.

  All with supernaturally-enhanced strength.

  Charles went from grunting to singing soprano in seconds, shrieking at the top of his lungs as his prey suddenly turned predator. He could feel iron-hard fingertips pushing their way through the fabric of his prison-issue jumpsuit, their grip cold and unyielding around his vulnerable private parts.

  He couldn't help but loosen his grip, so intense was the pain. That only allowed his intended victim the opportunity to gain even more leverage, and with one final twist and jerk she ripped the cock and balls free from his body in a torrent of blood that drenched her lower back.

  Releasing her from the bear hug, the wounded drug dealer began to hop and prance, clutching desperately at the ruined mass between his legs. What remained of his testicles and his roughly severed prick lay in a pool of rapidly-expanding blood on
the concrete floor. One of his feet skidded in the mess, sending him sprawling onto his back. Despite his frantic efforts to stem the flow of blood, Anya was absolutely certain that he was going to bleed out and die.

  Good. Those who would hook children on drugs and then continue to supply their filthy habit are the lowest of the low.

  She would shed no tears for Leroy Charles.

  The surviving three jihadists were half-heartedly trying to encircle her, Anya saw. Despite their heavy black beards, she could see that each one wore an expression of frightened doubt. They had seen what she had done to their companions, all in the space of just a few seconds, and could not have failed to be impressed by just how inhumanly fast she was. All three must finally be realizing that this wasn't a soft and vulnerable naked woman after all; this was a predator, and they had been thrown into an enclosed space with her...without being given any weapons to fight back with.

  Poor little boys...

  She waited patiently, bracing herself for the inevitable attack. When it did not come, she let out a frustrated sigh.

  "What is the matter, boys?" she taunted. "Pussycat got your tongue? Scared to show me what three grown men can do to one poor helpless girl?"

  One of the waiting soldiers chuckled. She ignored him, focusing on her trio of opponents. None of them responded. They weren't buying the vulnerability routine any longer.

  She would have to go on the attack herself, Anya finally decided.

  Bunch of pussies.

  Jihadist number one never knew what hit him. He had been positioned slightly further away from his two fellow terrorists, and that made him a more tempting target. Five quick strides and Anya was on him, striking before the man could even bring his hands up to defend himself. She punched him square in the face, breaking his nose and teeth with a satisfying crunch that she both heard and felt. The man staggered backward, his face pissing blood. Anya kicked him in the testicles for good measure, then dismissed him, pivoting on the balls of her feet to face the last remaining pair. Both were backing away, but suddenly stopped dead in their tracks when the soldier in the nearest corner raised his assault rifle. The message was clear: Fight or die.