Free Destroying Angel by Sam Hastings Page B

place his tag mere yards from the scene when it was still crawling with police officers. Still, stranger things had happened.
    Skinny and dressed in loose casual clothes, he looked about eighteen. Susan was sure she would be unable to catch him if he ran, yet she had no way of summoning help without risking losing him. A bold front might work, especially if he was drunk, as the nearby can of super-strength lager suggested.
    No, it was hopeless; he was undoubtedly faster and probably stronger than her, for all his scrawny body. She would probably be able to overpower him by putting him in a hold, but getting him to a police station would be a different matter. Brawn was out; brains would have to do, as usual.
    ‘You’re not really, are you?’ she asked, stepping boldly out from cover.
    The lad turned sharply and stopped, his initial expression of alarm fading as he looked at her.
    ‘Seriously, are you the Fire Ghost?’
    ‘That’s me, babe,’ he answered, straightening up and putting on a pair of sunglasses.
    ‘That’s neat,’ she said, sounding awed, even as she thought how insecure he looked in his trendy casuals and dark glasses. ‘I’m Susan.’
    ‘Hi. Like my tag?’
    Susan nodded and went to sit on a block of brickwork that had once formed part of a chimney. He returned to work with the orange spray paint. Just as Susan was about to start a careful line of questioning intended to first win his trust and then find out if he really was the Fire Ghost, another voice sounded from nearby.
    She looked round to see a second young man coming towards them with a four-pack of the super-strength lager in his hand. A third was behind him, also carrying cans. In age they were similar to the first, one tall and even thinner but with a finely formed face and bright eyes, the other solidly built and distinctly fat. They were both clearly drunk.
    The first lad, who insisted on being called Fire Ghost, introduced Susan to the others, calling them Taz and Beadle. Neither showed any concern at her presence, which increased her conviction that they were merely impressionable youths struck by the glamorous image of fire-raising. They were also beginning to make her feel uneasy, the lanky Taz in particular joking at her rather than with her. After a while he sat next to her, pointing at her breasts, making as if to weigh them in his hands, and winking at the others – all with no attempt to hide what he was doing.
    Susan made what she hoped was a suitably cutting remark and turned back to where Fire Ghost was finishing his tag. Leaving was beginning to seem like a good idea, especially as she was certain he was not the genuine article. On the other hand, she felt an odd compulsion to stay. She recalled the endless fantasies she had had about just such situations as this. In some she’d imagined herself in a prison cell with three or four sex-starved inmates. Another favourite was being gang-banged by bikers in a remote roadside café. The present situation was a lot milder than either, yet it was real, and the little voice in her head telling her to go for it was being shouted down by another telling her to get away as fast as possible. Promising herself she’d let it happen on another occasion but knowing full well she wouldn’t, she got to her feet.
    ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said.
    ‘Hey, I thought we were going to have a party!’ Taz complained.
    ‘Yeah, come on,’ urged Beadle, ‘have a beer.’
    Susan turned to him, spreading her hands in a gesture of resignation. There was a sound behind her, a light touch at her waist, and suddenly her top was up around her face.
    ‘Hey!’ she protested as Taz twisted the T-shirt and trapped her arms above her head, ‘that’s not funny!’
    ‘Get her tits out, Beadle!’ Taz cried.
    Beadle hesitated only an instant and then stepped forward, barely visible to Susan through the thin material of her top.
    ‘No!’ she shouted as rough hands closed on her breasts, fondling them