It had been Sandra Thomson, a bottle-blonde tart of 16 who had taken her on in a catfight when she was 13. Big and blousy Sandra had waded in, kneeing her in the crotch, knocking the wind from her. She remembered the nails grabbing her plaits and pulling back her head to take the savage chopping punches with the side of a hand. Her head rang with each blow, her eyes were muzzy and blurred, her smashed nose spilled scarlet blood down her lolly-pink boob-tube, her upper lip was crushed against her top teeth and split in two. A knee to the crotch again and she doubled over only to take a vicious punch in her bare belly that landed her on her back, head cracking on the pavement: there she lay, sprawling in defeat, her vision bleared by two black eyes, her face a bloody mess, her tartan ra-ra skirt up around her panting midriff, displaying the stained once-white knickers and her torn and laddered tan pantyhose, the thighs streaked with silver snail-trails of dried semen. She had vowed then that no bitch would ever beat her again. And no bitch had: she had learned how to use her red-varnished fingernails on a girl’s eyes, how to bring her bony knee up into an unsuspecting groin, how to twist and pull hair, how to smash a pretty face into the tarmac of the streets or a waiting shop window.The flick-knife and the lead pipe were her weapons and many a girl was marked for life after tangling with her. By the time she was 16 she was top bitch: she had left Sandra with a deep scar from cheek to lip and no-one even looked twice at her as she sold her quim to the horny young yobs on the streets. She was no gang member, no gang leader: she was an alley-cat who walked by herself.

Until one summer night, pissed, reeling back after a party, knickerless and well-screwed, she had stumbled across her English teacher. Miss McManners, had tut-tutted and taken her home to her own flat, bathed a bloody nose and bruised cheek and generally fussed over her as no-one had done before.

"That bruise, dear! Just look at it!" she sighed.

"You should see the other cow," she had laughed back.

That was when it had happened: her teacher, a short, plump, fluffy blonde in a floral dress and white nylons, had touched her bruised cheek tenderly and then kissed her. She had stuck her own tongue deep in Miss McManners’ mouth pushing her hand up the floral dress to feel wet satin panties. Soon her own leather mini was around her slim hips and the blonde woman’s face was buried, slurping noisily in her naked crotch. After years of knicker-ripping, jack-hammer sex that left her sticky but unsatisfied, she had experienced her first wonderful orgasm. It rippled gloriously through her heaving, lat midriff, bubbling up into her heart and throat, bursting out in a wild squeal of pure, pulsating bliss. When they woke up in the morning, their pale breasts smeared with each other’s lip-stick and saliva, they were totally in love. And so Elaine, as Miss McManners became to her, changed her life. No ore whoring, no more solvent abuse, no more mindlessness. She became the school champion in karate, swimming and athletics; she got to university and did well. She became an expert archer, fencer and horse-woman as well as taking a good degree. She went on to complete a PhD in the Norse sagas by the time she was 25. She and Elaine were a deliriously happy item: minds and bodies matched, they would attend a play or opera in the evening then, in the ecstasy of soixante-neuf, spend a long Saturday night muff-diving.

That summer was hotter than usual; several smaller off-coast islands had disappeared beneath the waves; oil was rapidly running out; an epidemic of flu hit the country. While evangelical friends spoke of the Tribulation and she and Elaine joked that that was the only Rapture the ugly cows could expect, things spiraled into total collapse of government, of order, of control. One sweaty night, Elaine had been unwilling to make love, complaining of a headache. While she sat reading, dressed only in black silk thongs, she worried about her lover. Could this be more than flu? There were rumours….But the night was humid, airless, stifling and she was soon asleep. Near dawn she woke and made her way to their bedroom: her lover was dead, flopping from the edge of the bed, totally nude, face down in her own vomit, the sheets between her legs smeared with shit. Stunned, she paled completely, reeling for support against the door-post, horrified and bereaved, nine years of her life wiped out…by what? She dressed without thinking, pulling on a singlet, pedal-pushers and trainers. She rushed out of the flat to get help: the street was deserted save for a few pitiful corpses or the occasional victim spewing out his life. That was when the Apocalypse hit. Terrified, she grabbed the car an headed for the north, miles of empty road spooling like a black ribbon as she sped away from that hideous stench and sight on the bed where so often they had achieved the peaks of sexual delight.When the tank ran dry she abandoned the car and took to the hills and the forests. And there, she survived.

Survival, at first, meant safety in numbers and she attached herself first to a group of Bikers. In early adolescence she had been a biker-groupie, initiated into some pretty potent sex, and learning how to use a length of chain as well as the next beer-bellied thug in leathers. For two years she had led a gang in raids on other tribes, fighting just to keep alive. She got to learn woodcraft, to swim underwater with an improvised snorkel, to hide and to stalk. Others were not so quick to learn and she eventually found herself alone. Her skills with a garotte commended her to the tribe of Punk assassins and two years with them taught even Draca a great deal. She relished the memory of her first underwater kill. Clad only in an orange lycra thong, breathing through a piece of salvaged rubber hose-pipe, she had moved sinuously through the warm, green salt waters off the west coast. Through the shimmering undersea light and the waving of bladderwrack, she had spotted her target: Leila, the gipsy queen, her waist-length black hair streaming behind her, her full breasts carried proudly as her lissome legs propelled her through the bunching weed. Draca came out of nowhere, her long fingers fastening round pale, slender throat, her ten-inch blade striking under the slut’s left pap.The gipsy’s slender back arched in agony and she pissed herself, a cloud of murky yellow shooting out from between her gorgeous legs. The blood frothed and smoked up from the deep wound that reached Leila’s heart and Draca let the naked body go, limply floating to the surface in a torrent of blood and air-bubbles. But she soon realized that she was numero uno in the Punk tribe and, never one to be subordinate, she took off on her own.

She found the strategically safe islet and built her twenty foot high tower as a stronghold from which she could set out on her missions of destruction. Her two trusty mute slaves, initiates in the deadly art of Thugee, guarded it in her absence and devotedly tended to her needs. Life was good…for Draca, if not for her victims. So she stood on the threshold of a new adventure: five foot ten inches of lithe, sinewy womanhood, full breasts cradled in pale hide halter-top, fringed with buckskin; her flat, taut belly bare, navel pierced with a silver stud; her crotch sheathed in black and white leopard skin pattern satin thongs; her slim calves criss-crossed by the black leather straps of her sandals. Her shiny copper-red hair was cut in a gamine bob, her ear-rings two ivory skulls she had carved one winter, the eyes red garnets, her slender pale throat ringed by a brass-spiked choker. Her wrists were covered by guards of gun-metal blue chain-mail. Her eye-shadow was midnight blue with flecks of silver glitter and her full, lush lips were glossed in midnight blue lipstick. Tattoos told of her turbulent teens: a double strand of barbed wire in blue circled her left upper arm; the head of Anubis decorated her right; a green lizard crawled on her right shoulder and a winged dagger was needled in red on the white slope of her left breast. Scars, too, told their tale: on her left cheek from ear to lip; a puncture wound puckered her right breast, another two her left thigh, while a great spear-gash sawed across her right thigh. Her emerald-green eyes coolly took in her equipment: the studded belt from which hung her shortsword, balanced by her cairngorm-pommelled dirk; the old flick-knife from her street-fighting days attached to her halter under her left armpit; a sgian dubh tucked into the straps of her right sandal just by her knee, and, finally, slung across her back a multi-action crossbow of her own invention, capable of firing four bolts before there was any need to reload. She picked up a broad-bladed boar spear and set off: she had a very important visit to make before she headed off to find her targets.