Rain was falling that night. Not fun, dramatic rain, not refreshing, light rain, but real shitty rain. It wasn't the kind that you could ignore, either: it would soak into your clothes, get the cold right into your bones. And using an umbrella? Forget it. The wind blew the rain right into your face. And if you got smart, held the umbrella in front of you or something? Well then you could kiss the damn thing goodbye. Gotham was a pretty town, in its way - like a 20s starlet in her eighties, with a kind of craggy, worn dignity, and just a hint of the real beauty it had had once upon a time. But that night? That night it was ugly. Bruce, looking down at it, felt its ugliness like he felt the cold: in his bones. He was wet, tired, and bruised, and he hated Gotham City.
He didn't always. Most of the time he loved it like a sister, but he couldn't help hating it that night. The cloaked figure looming above the ugliness, the Batman, felt himself despising it. He'd spent the night getting the tar kicked out of him by a jewel thief with enhanced speed, and though in the end Bruce's ever knifelike wit had won the day, he'd grimly realised how easy it would have been for Clark, or Barry, or Zatanna.
"Zatanna..."
Just the thought of her almost brought a smile to his dark, grim features. If Bruce's life had been a storybook, he'd probably have been married to Zatanna by now. Both coming from money, they'd known each other a little as children, been reunited as adults in the Justice League. She was wise, powerful, and ever so slightly playful, and he knew she cared for him. He knew he cared for her. But ugliness seemed to hang over him more heavily than even his sodden cape and it just...wouldn't work. Too much had happened. That business with Doctor Light. Bruce almost getting Zatanna killed when he'd self-righteously demanded she forego magic when assisting him on a case. Even aside from all that, he wavered. She'd hovered on the edge of his world for a while: he couldn't bring himself to suck her into it.
But he wanted to see her, and suddenly he realised that he would see her, almost whether he wanted to or not. He was breathing heavily, not in excitement, but in a kind of panic. He'd dedicated his life to this...caped crusade, and so often he felt like it was about to strangle him. He was drowning in ugliness, spending his life in the company of empty psychotics like the Joker, or broken madmen like Two-Face, or Freeze, or Ra's, and never able to leave Gotham, never able to be free of its ugliness. He needed to get away, somehow, or he'd choke. He needed to see something beautiful.
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Hundreds of miles away from the grandeur and horror of Gotham, it was raining too, in a scuzzy little conurbation a few miles outside Birmingham. It was ignoble rain: weak, as half-arsed in conception as the town on which it fell. Two days' worth of grease in your hair would have been enough to defeat it. It was a shame that it wasn't a bit more dramatic, for it just so happened to be falling on a battle between two of the world's most powerful magic users, and a thirty-foot tall, fire-spewing vengeance demon.
The demon didn't notice the rain because it couldn't. To say it was a vengeance demon was to be quite literal: there was literally nothing else that it could want or care about other than revenge. It was pure malice, given form and set to task like a bloodhound, only larger and somewhat more on fire than most bloodhounds. The revenge it sought was not for itself, but it pursued the vendetta with far more passion than its masters ever could have. There were two fighting it: one was a haggard looking middle-aged man in a trenchcoat. It was odd that this was the one on whom the demon's attention was focused, because the other was one of the most beautiful women in the world.
She was of average height, but that was the only thing about Zatanna that was remotely average. She was, frankly, stunning: she had smooth, fine, pale skin; long, straight, ebony-black hair. Her features were refined, intelligent, her eyes a cold, icy blue. Her figure was delectably womanly, with curves that made every one of her graceful movements a work of art, breasts that made every breath a spectacle, long, shapely legs that made every step she took an act of seduction.
And she'd made it even harder than it needed to be not to be seduced, because as well as accentuating her legs' length with a pair of tall, black heels, she clad them in nothing but fishnet tights, leaving her lower body exposed right the way up to her hips. Above that, she was dressed much more modestly: a white blouse opened to expose generously a gorgeous, buxom bosom, topped off with a white bow-tie around her neck, a tight, white waistcoat and a flowing black jacket, with coattails flapping behind her. For Zatanna was not just a mage, but a magician, and that was what she looked like - and she had the benefit of looking like her own 'lovely assistant' as well. She was beautiful. She was powerful. And in that time and place she was angry.
She was not angry because she was in battle with a thirty-foot-tall, fire-spewing vengeance demon. She was not angry because her life was at risk. She was not even angry that the only reason she was in that situation in the first place was because a rather panicked John Constantine had asked for her help in defeating it. No: Zatanna was angry because of why the vengeance demon had been summoned in the first place.
"So it's not enough," Zatanna said, weaving between lances of flame with ethereal grace, "that you sell your soul to one demon. From you, I kinda get that. Reirrab!" She ceased her invective only to block a great stream of flame from her towering enemy. "But two of them?"
"Well if I'd only sold me soul to one of the fuckers, I'd be in Hell right now, wouldn't I?" A rough looking, dirty-blonde man with a cigarette in his mouth and a revolver in his hand hid behind Zatanna's barrier. "The whole point is that if I die, and they both try to claim my soul, there'd be a bloody war in Hell, wouldn't there? I didn't think they'd set aside their fuckin' differences just on my account!"
"Jeez. If you can't trust demonic Hell-Lords, who can you trust?" Zatanna rolled her eyes. Constantine had always been too clever for his own good. It was one of the reasons why she'd fallen for him - and part of the reason that their tryst had ended.
"You will suffer, John Constantine!" the demon bellowed. It reached into its own gullet with a burning claw, and pulled out a glob of what looked like molten rock, and stank like sulphur. It drew back a misshapen arm, ready to hurl the thing, and it screeched: "You shall pay, John Constantine, for your arrogance, for your self-righteousness! You shall pay for your crimes!"
"Fine!" Constantine growled back, before leaping out from behind Zatanna's barrier. "And you can keep the fuckin' change, mate!" he bellowed, before firing a single shot into the demon's glob of molten rock. There was a shrieking roar, as the bullet exploded with formidable magical power, destroying the glob of magma and the beast's head to boot. Constantine was a sorcerer himself - if not quite of Zatanna's calibre - and he was perfectly happy to combine the fantastical with the mundane. With a grin, he watched as his enemy's body slumped in a messy pile onto the concrete, slopping all about the ground as it lost cohesion, hissing in the rain. "It's over," John said, more relieved than anything. "Fuck," he added, when he realised how wrong he had been.
"CON...STAN...TIIIIIIIIIINNNNE!!!!!!!" The demon's mouth had been destroyed by Constantine's attack, but it still found a way to scream. It writhed, and bubbled, convulsing on the ground. Both magicians could tell in an instant that its power was reasserting itself, but while Constantine thought only of their safety and how to put the beast down, Zatanna felt something quite different: pity.
She could perceive, while Constantine could not, an alteration in the being's magical constitution. It began to take a new shape, more complex, like a digitigrade, wingless dragon, smaller than before - but that wasn't what drew out her pity. It had eyes now, rather human, and Zatanna could see its hatred in them, its anger. It was terrifyingly pure, and Zatanna could sense a kind of...flow between Constantine and the demon. Whatever wretched magics had created this monster, it was tied to Constantine, its existence based on nothing but hatred for him.
"Even if it killed him," Zatanna realised, "it wouldn't get any damned peace. It'd just keel over and die." Pity did not paralyse her, though: she knew the beast had to be stopped. "Eci fo sniahc!"
The problem, sometimes, with those who observed Zatanna's magic was that she made it look easy. She just spoke backwards, and what she wanted to happen happened. It seemed more like a superpower than an artform, coming as simply to her as Superman's heat vision did to him. But there were subtle arts at work that could not be observed. A lesser sorceress performing Zatanna's spell would have just caused icy chains to burst out of the ground around them. They'd have been brittle, weak, not cold enough, and they'd probably have had to cast two or three additional spells to get them to do what their user intended, namely to ensnare their target. But when Zatanna did it, the chains manifested already coiling towards their target, hundreds of degrees below zero, and strong enough to restrain a Daxamite.
"GYYAAGHHH!!" the monster screamed, as the chains wrapped around its limbs, anchoring themselves to the ground and hauling the beast down to its knees. Heat poured out of it, but Zatanna poured out cold in even greater quantities. The creature groaned and writhed, moaning in agony. Zatanna grimaced. She shot a look at Constantine, and he must have wildly misinterpreted it, because he grinned back.
"Nice one, Zee!" he said, before turning his attentions again on his enemy. He raised his weapon, but the Vengeance Demon wasn't about to let him try the same thing again. Enraged, its eyes flashed, as it cast magic of its own, detonating the bullets in their chambers.
A normal pistol would have blown John's hand off. The one he was carrying should have erased him, and it would have, had it not been for Zatanna. With a simple cry of 'Dloh!' she captured the explosion itself, holding it still at the moment of its birth, a writhing bubble of untamed magical energy. John, and even the demon itself, were both astounded - but John was the quicker thinker. Casting a charm of his own, he seized control of the explosion from Zatanna, and threw it at the demon.
"NO!" it cried, realising what was about to happen. It struggled to move away, but the chains held it in place, and the explosion, held in stasis, was forced right into its flaming maw. Then, with a light that was almost exactly the same colour as Zatanna's crystal-blue eyes, it exploded.
Streetlights shattered. Windows cracked. Foul, grimy dust was thrown up as the demon's death sent shockwaves throughout the whole town. It had managed one last act of violent lashing-out, but the demon was vanquished.
"Brilliant!" John laughed. "You'll never get me, you hellbound fucks! D'you hear? Come up yourself next time, if you think you're hard enough!"
"Am I going to get any credit?" Zatanna asked. She approached the bubbling remains of the beast, recoiling at the sulphuric stench of it.
"Oh, yeah, right," John said, "uh, thanks, Zee." He turned around, grinning, but he didn't find a grin from Zatanna. He knew that look: she was seriously displeased with him. "Hey, I, uh, I didn't mean to drag you into it, I really didn't. And thank you. I'd have been maimed or worse if you hadn't been 'ere."
"What? No, that's not it," Zatanna said. "I'm never going to hold it over your head that you needed my help. But the way you act...getting into pacts with demons - by all rights it should have blown up in your face."
"Fuck me, Zee, I was dying of fucking cancer. The demons had to cure me to stop me from dying and starting a war: that's why I did it. If there'd been another solution, I'd have taken it."
Zatanna threw up her hands. "Yeah...no, yeah of course, I - I didn't mean to lecture you." There was an awkward silence. The heat of the battle was gone, and now all that was left was a man and a woman who'd once loved each other. She turned away from him, now angrier at herself than at him. "You hypocrite. Like you can talk about doing stupid things with magic..."
"Oh," Constantine said, seemingly to himself. "I get it." He was bent down over the remains of the demon. "It's a Hate-Spawn. They created it just to kill me." He turned to Zatanna. "It's a newborn. That's why you're so pissed off. I just killed a fucking baby."
Zatanna made a conciliatory gesture. She was about to say something along the lines of 'It absolutely had to be defeated; it's not like I did anything to stop you when I realised; it was a demon, after all' - but she couldn't. If it had been anyone else she wouldn't have even thought of blaming them. But it was John. She couldn't help resenting him, even if she knew it wasn't fair.
If only to stop herself from having to think about him, Zatanna turned her attentions to the beast's remains. Most of the creature's mass was reduced to mere liquid, but there was something solid: a spherical object about the size of a tennis ball.
"Esylalana," Zatanna said, reaching out her hand toward it. She was careful, wary that it might be some last trap for John, who'd be just the sort of person to take any weapon available for his potential advantage. Yet she was still taken off guard. Her spell was intended to tell her only two things, really: what the sphere was made of, and whether it had any magical power. She didn't discover the first, but the answer to the second was an emphatic 'yes'. She felt an incredible sense of hatred, of vengeful, bitter detestation, at nothing and no-one in particular. "Unghh!" she groaned. It was like all kindness had been sucked out of her. No - it was more like there had never been any such thing as kindness. She turned on Constantine, with every intention of killing him. She knew just how, too. She'd summon butterflies, butterflies with razor-blades for wings, and cram them down his throat, the lying, cheating, handsome, treacherous -
"No! Leas!" Recognising the emotion being forced on her before it was too late, Zatanna cast a desperate, but effective spell. Power flowed forth from Zatanna's hands, and the demon's remains were imprisoned in a cube of the first material that Zatanna could think of: fibreglass.
"What the fuck?!" Drawing a second pistol - because of course Constantine carried more than one - John turned on the demons' remains, rightly assuming that whatever was happening was because of that. But by the time he was aware of the problem, it was over. Zatanna was panting, her hand on her shapely chest. "What happened?"
"The demon's core," Zatanna explained. "A heart of vengeful rage...it must have been used as the centre of its being, or something - but I've never seen magic like it before. It almost completely took me over." There was a slight emphasis when she said 'me', and this was not arrogance. That it could affect a magician of her power and talent was evidence of a real danger.
"We have to destroy it." John leaned down. He narrowed his eyes, and a longstanding charm of truesight he'd placed on himself took hold. He should have been able to see even more than Zatanna had done with her quick spell, but he didn't get anything more than what she'd already told him. "Shit," he hissed.
"What?"
"I don't know how we destroy it. Not safely. If we do it wrong it could go off like a nuke." He squatted down next to the cube. "I'll need to talk to a few people, see if they know how to dispose of something like this safely." He stood up, ran his hand through his messy, blonde hair. He took a cigarette out of a crumpled pack and lit it with a snap of his fingers. Carefully, he lifted the imprisoned demon-core in his left hand. There was a glimmer of a smile on his face, though, which Zatanna found a little disturbing. He had a lot of love for this sort of thing, for the dark and the dangerous. He had seen how powerful it was. But Zatanna couldn't pretend she wasn't curious either.
"Is it okay with you if I take it back home with me?" Zatanna asked. "I know this sort of thing is your expertise, but I want to take a crack at myself. Maybe even get Doctor Fate to have a peek at it."
"Oh yeah," John said. "Makes sense."
There was a moment, just a moment, where it seemed as if John was going to take it and run. A tinge of resentment, of a conscious insistence that Zatanna had treated him unfairly, and an unconscious guilt that made being around her so...tense. But the moment passed quickly enough. He saw her crystal blue eyes light up, saw in them the thing that had drawn them together in the first place: a shared passion for just this sort of mystic mystery.
"Knock yerself out," he said, before presenting it to her. Carefully, she took it from him, still able to feel the demon-core's power even through the fibreglass. It really was quite entrancing, like a ruby trapped in glass.
"Gnidloh fo gab," Zatanna said, and swept the cube aside into a little pocket dimension that she used to store dangerous objects.
"Right," John muttered. "I'll, er, see you around, I s'pose." He began slinking off, in countenance very much like a tomcat forced to retreat from a bigger one.
"John," Zatanna said, quite softly. He looked back round at her, and saw her smiling, slightly. "Take care of yourself, yeah?"
"Mrrhh," he grumbled, not quite able to smile back. He turned away, but quickly looked back again. But it was too late: she was gone. Again.
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It had only taken a word. A word, and the slightest of gestures, and Zatanna had escaped the murky doldrums of Northern England, and had exchanged them for the somewhat murkier doldrums of Gotham City. She could move between continents as easily as one might move from one's bedroom to one's lounge. Which, incidentally, is exactly what Zatanna did. She'd stepped through a shimmering portal of light, and appeared in a small, dark room, a closet filled with treasures of a storied career as a magical hero. Enchanted jewellery, weapons confiscated from enemies, her old magic wand - it brought back a slew of memories. But the collection was about to get a new entry. "Nepo," Zatanna said quietly, and reached into the same space she'd stored the demon-core, taking it and placing it in a small container, a kind of magical safe. Even the brief contact her gloved hand made her feel a little angrier, though the sensation was much weaker than it had been before. She breathed a soft sigh of relief, and stepped out, sealing the door behind her with a magical lock.
Zatanna let out a long breath as she stepped into her well-furnished, expensive high-rise. Something about that whole experience in England had been...draining. Seeing John again. Fighting the demon. Knowing what it was - a baby, as Constantine had put it - and having to let it be destroyed all the same. She suddenly found it bizarre, this life that she'd chosen for herself, this life of constant adventure, danger - and of violence. It was stimulating, but it was also frightening, and a little lonely too. She wondered how all the old superheroes managed to cope with such a life for so long - but then she realised that there just weren't any old superheroes, excepting Alan Scott, perhaps.
"I could have died today," she thought. That frightened her. She felt still that there was much that she'd never really had, and it was entirely her own fault.
But her return home brought her more than just ennui. Despite the fact that Gotham City's crime rate was nearly five times higher than that of the town from which she'd transported, Zatanna felt safer as soon as she was home, and not just because she was literally in her own house. She heard the rain, and she could smell it through an open window: it smelled comfortingly familiar. She could feel Gotham's scar-crossed history, the twisted knot of magics fair and foul that had left their marks over the years, the decades, the centuries. She strolled over to the open window, on the fourth floor of the louche apartment building, and looked out. A cool breeze stroked her smooth, pale cheeks, made her night-dark hair flutter. Away from there, away from him, she began to feel lighter, freer. Indeed, the curvaceous magician felt that there was only one thing that was really wrong.
"I never left the window open."
Two or three spells of defence came into her head within a second. She'd have cast them, and possibly done someone some serious harm - but then she saw the little piece of paper on her windowsill. Saw the symbol on it. She felt a little tingle, and she smiled.
"Come in, Bruce," she called out. "You know you're always welcome." She heard a soft thump as someone entered from the opposite side of the room. She grinned. She could hear soft footsteps, from one accustomed to stealth. A slight creak of leather from his suit. She turned around, and saw a figure still framed in shadow. She could barely even make out his silhouette, just the vague outline of 'someone' - a creature of darkness.
It was funny: compared to John, Bruce should have seemed much more threatening, even frightening. His whole manner was designed to intimidate, after all. She had seen criminals literally faint in fear upon seeing him, had seen enemies who, by all rights, would have had a pretty easy time actually fighting Batman one-on-one still balking at the prospect of crossing his path. She remembered the Elongated Man, one of her colleagues in the Justice League, joking that Batman was just the cowl, and 'Bruce Wayne' was just a rubbery doll that he stuffed into it. Indeed, quite a few heroes who'd worked with him expressed the same sentiment, even the ones who didn't know his real identity: Bruce Wayne was an illusion, and the snarling, fearsome vigilante was the only true reality.
But that wasn't how Zatanna felt. She'd known Bruce for a long time, and she saw what few others did: he was a gentleman. Yes he could be brusque, yes he could be curt, but he had an old-money dignity and charm about him too. She liked that this was known to so few. She liked the idea that there were things about him that only she saw.
"You know you don't have to be so enigmatic, Bruce," Zatanna said, walking - no, sashaying - towards him. He didn't approach her, still almost completely hidden in shadow. "If you want to pay me a visit, you can always give me a call."
He was still silent.
"Oh, boy, you're really feeling the strong-and-silent thing, huh?" She smiled, put one hand on her curvy hip. "Seriously. Why are you being so mysterious? If we're not talking again," she said, painful flickers of the Doctor Light incident flashing into her memory, "then maybe you showing up is sending mixed messages."
Still there was nothing but silence.
"Okay, did someone curse you or something? Circe give you a pig face or...?"
She couldn't have known. Couldn't have known that Bruce Wayne had been there, and had been the one to leave the card on her windowsill. But he'd arrived there an hour before she'd got back from England, and he'd had plenty of time to decide that he was being self-indulgent, and that he should leave - and he had. She couldn't have known, not until they stepped out of the shadow, not until they dropped the drape they'd been using to mimic Batman's cowled silhouette, that her guest was not a bat - but a cat.
"Selina? Is that -" All too late. Too late to realise that it was Selina, the thief who'd been far more entangled with Bruce than Zatanna had ever been. Too late to see the scowl on her face. Too late to see the weapon in her hand. Before Zatanna could pronounce one more syllable, Selina fired, and Zatanna yelped in pain, clutching her neck. She realised, to her horror, that a feathered dart had pierced her long, white neck.
"Evening, Zee," Selina said. "Lovely place you've got here." She stepped out into the light for the first time. Her body, tall and lithe, was clad in form fitting black, highlighting her slender curves, as well as having some clear practical benefit. A pair of orange goggles covered her eyes, and pointed ears moulded into her headgear framed her sly, pretty face. It was Catwoman - and she'd just hit Zatanna with a tranquiliser dart.
"Fh...hhh..." Zatanna tried to cast magic, but her tongue was heavy in her head. She couldn't speak - and as long as she couldn't speak, she couldn't use her powers. "Why...why is she here?!" Zatanna stumbled backwards, her tall, black heels making it difficult to balance. Her head was swimming, her vision getting fuzzy. She tried to pull the dart out of her neck, but she could barely lift her arms.
"Easy there," Catwoman said, her voice dripping with false concern. "I'll get that for you. You've had more than enough sedative to keep you nice and compliant." Striding slinkily towards her victim, she deftly plucked the dart out, and turned Zatanna around, bringing them face to face.
"Ooh...ooohhnn..." Zatanna swooned, her pale blue eyes already fluttering. Selina gripped her tightly by her shoulders, pressing them in against her body. Already they felt so heavy, like lead weights had been tied to her wrists. Even her fingers felt too heavy - she couldn't move them at all. If she could write, even using water or blood, she could make spells that way too, but she had nothing to use. She was powerless. "Wh...wh...yy...?"
"Oh, no reason, Zee." Selina's eyes were covered by her goggles, but she was clearly smiling. If she'd had more strength, Zatanna would have balked at Selina being so familiar as to call her 'Zee', but quite rightly she had other things on her increasingly addled mind.
"Er...eruh..." Zatanna was trying to say 'cure' backwards, to heal herself, but even if she had managed to say it, it took more than just speech to activate her power - she had to be able to concentrate, and her mind was growing less and less and less focused by the moment.
Holding onto her shoulders tightly, Selina pushed Zatanna up against a wall. With the magician's voluptuous body so weak, and in those heels, it was all too easy for Selina to rough her around. She was much taller than Zatanna, and physically significantly stronger.
"S...st..." Zatanna mewed, but she could barely even lift her head, much less speak. "Unhh..." Her long, womanly legs were quivering, too weak to hold her up. "So...weak...what did she...drug me with?" She realised that if Selina hadn't been holding her, she'd have collapsed to her knees, so feeble that she had to lean on her assailant for support.
"I didn't originally mean for this to be a face-to-face, Zee," Catwoman said. She pushed herself a bit closer, and Zatanna felt one of Selina's long, toned legs rubbing against her own, ever so slightly. "I was just going to pop in and help myself to a few trinkets...but I convinced myself a home invasion would be more entertaining than plain old burglarising."
"I don't...understand..." Zatanna knew about Catwoman, had even encountered her a few times, and this seemed wrong. If she really just wanted to rob Zatanna, why the hell would she wait for Zatanna to show up?
But she could not ponder. She could barely do anything. She was all but paralysed, in a sensation that was eerily similar to astral projection: it felt like her own body was slipping away from her, like a puppet-master losing the hold on her puppet's strings.
"Don't worry, Zee," Catwoman said. "Just relax...relax..." As if to mock her, as well as to cajole her into unconsciousness, she began stroking Zatanna's long, black hair. "I'm not going to hurt you. Just gonna help myself to a few odds and ends, m'kay?" She laughed softly, and teased her fingers through Zatanna's silky tresses.
"Uh...hnn..." Zatanna wanted to complain, but not only was she too weak, she couldn't quite muster up the energy to be angry.
It was so relaxing. Not just the feeling of the sedative sapping her strength and making her limp, but the way Selina was touching her. Her skilful hands were soft, and Zatanna felt herself tingle from the contact. As her eyes fluttered, as her vision darkened, she felt herself imagining it was someone else who was touching her. Someone strong. Noble. Hurt. She realised that she wanted this more than she'd realised: even with John, he'd been passionate...but never tender. Bruce had tenderness in him, Zatanna thought, and she realised that her life of mystery, darkness and danger had denied it her for too long. This thought seemed in itself to weaken her, and she moaned, feeling her head slump forward onto Selina's chest.
Catwoman laughed, ever-so-slightly sneeringly, at Zatanna's helpless affection. "That's the way, Zee. Just give in...just sleep..."
"Hhhn...nhh..." Zatanna breathed, feeling her sizeable bosom pressing against her assailant's body. She was slipping. Slipping down, slipping out of consciousness. But Selina didn't let her fall. Not in the first sense, at least. She didn't have to do much, holding her up simply by pushing her body against her to prop Zatanna against the wall. But she lifted her victim's chin with her thumb and forefinger, holding it up so she could see the light going out of Zatanna's eyes. She wanted to watch her succumb.
And succumb she did. Zatanna's strength had held out impressively, but it was truly exhausted now. The tranquiliser had more than done its work, and the claws of slumber were dug firmly into the buxom mage. Her head wobbled back and forth, her crystal-blue eyes fluttering, and then rolling back with an almost sensual gradualness. Smiling, Catwoman perceived that Zatanna was falling, and opted to let her fall completely. She stepped back, and Zatanna's limpness instantly became clear. She dropped like a stone, her head flopping from one side to another as she plunged down to her knees. She mumbled out something that sounded like a soft, helpless 'no', but it was too faint to be clear. But she was helpless, and she was soft, and she fell forward at Catwoman's feet, completely unconscious.
Selina waited a moment before proceeding. Zatanna might have been canny enough to fake unconsciousness, so Selina poked her with her foot. She pushed her hard enough, in fact, to turn her onto her back.
"Hhnn..." Zatanna mewed almost inaudibly. One of her hands had fallen onto her buxom chest, the other lying at her side. Her long, fishnet covered legs were crossed at the ankles, her ruby-red lips parted slightly. "If only Bruce could see you now," Selina chuckled, with just a hint of venom. "He loves a good damsel in distress. And speaking of which..."
Catwoman bent down next to Zatanna's prone, helpless body and pulled her arms forward, placing her wrists in her lap. She didn't waste time with anything fancy: she just needed to make sure her captive remained her captive. With that in mind, she pulled out a small, but strong, plastic zip-tie. She looped it quickly around Zatanna's wrists, before pulling it tight, the zip growling aggressively, binding her wrists. The resulting posture Zatanna was forced into, with her hands folded in her lap, was amusingly meek. Her peaceful, slumbering face only served to emphasise this. Indeed, she seemed so soft, so delicate with her pristine, pale skin and curvy, feminine body, that Selina almost felt bad restraining her further. Almost.
Seizing Zatanna by the calves, she straightened out the damsel's scarce-covered, supple legs, enjoying a pleasant 'swish' sound as her gloves danced over Zatanna's tights. She couldn't help pausing to admire Zatanna's legs: even though she was a fair bit shorter than Catwoman, the way she dressed made it seem like her gams just went on forever. But Selina's time did not, and so soon Zatanna's ankles felt the firm, sharp bite of a zip-tie, binding them together, and pinching into Zatanna's skin. Then another, just above Zatanna's smooth knees, pushing her thighs together as well, keeping the magician from doing anything with her legs at all - other than providing eye-candy, of course. It was cheap. It was simple. But it was perfectly effective. Zatanna wasn't going anywhere. The only thing missing - in a way, what all these zip-ties were in service of maintaining - was a gag.
Catwoman leaned forward, and with a devilish little smile, slid one of her hands up over Zatanna's chest, to her neck - or rather, to her bow-tie. Undoing it with slim, dextrous fingers, Selina took the bow-tie - which now amounted to a long, white ribbon - and pulled it between Zatanna's plump lips.
"Mh..." Zatanna mewed quietly, as Selina gagged her. The tie was hardly long enough to reach all the way around her head, but Selina just about managed it. It was better this way, actually. The more tension on the cleave gag, the more it would restrain Zatanna from moving her tongue, and the safer Catwoman would be. Selina lifted her goggles, observing her handiwork. She smiled: with the ribbon between her lips and the peaceful, slumbering expression she wore, she looked deliciously obedient - less the damsel in distress, and more the submissive.
But she was still unconscious, and if Catwoman wanted her going anywhere, she'd have to do it herself. So she took Zatanna by the waist and then, almost like a tango in reverse, she pulled her up to her feet, Zatanna's waist pressing against hers, the beautiful magician bending backwards, her arms swinging slightly, her head craned back. She really did look like Selina's dancing partner for a moment - but only for a moment. Selina bent down and, with a soft grunt, hoisted Zatanna up and over her shoulder.
She flopped down over Selina's body with a satisfying 'thump', her breasts bouncing against her assailant's back. Her legs were draped down over Catwoman's chest, long and smooth and womanly in proportion. Selina began lightly stroking them with one hand - she could hardly help herself: they were right there! Zatanna's legs were so soft, so long, a perfect admixture of smoothness, slenderness and curvature; and they were so frequently on display that Selina could hardly pretend that she hadn't noticed before. So, gripping one of Zatanna's soft, yielding thighs with one hand to hold the helpless magician in place, she began stroking her legs in earnest with the other, as she carried Zatanna across her apartment. She felt the way Zatanna's skin yielded to the pressure of her fingertips, the delicate balance between firmness and softness in her captive's long limbs. She enjoyed, too, the tactile sensation of running her palms over Zatanna's fishnets, even if it was muted a little by the fact that she was wearing gloves.
How had she got here? Why had she confronted Zatanna personally, much less drugged her, much less tied her up, instead of just helping herself to her treasures and leaving Zatanna none the wiser? What she'd said was true: someone had approached her asking for magical artefacts, and Zatanna had seemed like the perfect source. So her interest in the beautiful magician had been almost entirely mercenary. But, then, of course, she'd seen him. Bruce Wayne - the Batman. She'd seen him coming to Zatanna's house in the middle of the night. There could have been all sorts of reasons why. They were both members of the Justice League. They were both Gotham superheroes. They were old friends.
And yet, in their long on-and-off history, whenever Bruce happened to mention Zatanna in conversation, there was always a hint of wistfulness in his voice, and Selina couldn't ignore it. The problem was that Zatanna was everything Selina was not: respectable, unambiguously good, and, well, rich. She was much more like Bruce himself than Selina was - one of the upper classes, the élite. In every sense she was a much more natural fit for Bruce than Selina was. She couldn't help but be jealous, and on this night, this dismal night, she couldn't help letting that jealousy take hold of her. So she decided she would give Zatanna a little taste of her skill. Just enough to make this an embarrassing memory for her. Just enough to make her wince whenever she thought of her. And as the tall, lithe thief bore her soft, feminine burden to the closet she'd seen her come out of, she felt that jealousy within her itch.
She felt it burn.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Mh...mhh...?" Bleary-eyed and disoriented, Zatanna felt herself waking with an uncomfortably familiar sensation. "Oh...god damn it, not again!" Whether it was just because she was a superhero, or whether it was because her voice-based powers gave her a very obvious weakness of which to take advantage, she'd found herself bound and gagged many, many times over the course of her career, and it never got any less frustrating. Her hands and ankles were bound with plastic zip-ties, her mouth gagged with...some kind of cloth? She couldn't tell what. All she could tell was that she couldn't speak, and she couldn't move.
"Mphh...mmrrghghpphh!" Zatanna moaned, as she started struggling in earnest. She'd been plopped down against a wall, sitting upright against it. Since her hands were bound in front of her, she thought she might be able to reach up and pull her gag out, but no such luck - Catwoman had added one more zip-tie when she'd put Zatanna down, tying the bonds around Zatanna's wrists to those around her thighs, fixing her arms in place. The awkwardness of the posture just further rubbed in what had happened to her, emphasised the humiliation that capture always carried with it. "Dhhm hhhht!" She tried to lift her hands anyway, drawing her legs up to her chest, but she couldn't twist her wrists back far enough to let her fingers reach the gag. "Mmrhhmph...mm-mmmpphhhh!!" Zatanna wriggled her curvy body with as much strength as she could muster, but truth be told, she just wasn't very strong.
"Didn't expect you to wake up so quickly." A silky voice, with just a tinge of malice, came from Zatanna's right. She turned to see her captor, the lithe, black-clad thief who had subdued her so quickly. Only now did she get a good look at her. She was tall, true to her name in catlike litheness and grace. Her leather suit clung intimately to her body, and though she barely showed any skin at all, she oozed sex appeal that even Zatanna wasn't blind to. She was lissome, strong, and intimidatingly beautiful. And, as it happened, she had a small duffel-bag in her left hand. "I guess you're tougher than I thought."
"Mhhghmph! Mmmrrhhghhmphh!!" Zatanna protested, writhing as much as her bonds would allow. But with her limbs so restrained and compacted, that allowance was hardly significant.
"Not much tougher though, huh?" Selina winked, and strolled over to a couch, where there was already another bag, fully loaded. She set the one in her hand down, and Zatanna saw, to her dismay, that Selina hadn't given up the art of burglary: it was filled with treasures taken from her gallery. Magical artefacts, weapons she'd taken from enemies - a dangerous arsenal of rare and valuable items.
"Phht thhss bhhk!" Zatanna growled.
"Oh, please," Selina laughed. "I'd think being strapped up and gagged might give you the idea that you're not the one giving orders here."
"Mrghhmph..." Zatanna growled, but she couldn't help but feel that Selina had a point. She was powerless.
"Don't worry," Selina said, "I'm not taking everything." She produced something from her pocket, an unidentifiable electronic piece of hardware. It could have been anything from a tracking device to an MP3 player. "Picked this up in Seoul. It's a kind of...magical geiger counter." To prove her point, she waved it over her loot, and it started making a frantic buzzing sound. "I've left behind anything which seemed too magical. My buyers aren't exactly angels: wouldn't want to give them a magical nuke or anything." She pocketed the device, and began walking towards her strapped-up captive, but to her surprise, Zatanna didn't look at her. Her eyes were still focused on the sacks of magical loot. Out of curiosity, Selina followed her line of sight, and realised that she was looking something in particular.
By far the least impressive item in Selina's loot was a small black cylinder, about an inch across. Or rather, it was mostly black, but each end was painted white. To put it more simply, it was a classical magic wand.
"Oh that?" Selina laughed. "I was surprised a mighty sorceress as you would have something so normal...but it does actually have magical power, doesn't it?" She didn't imagine that it would be all that important to her captive, but found that for the first time Zatanna was looking at her with something other than frustration or anger. Her eyes were wide, almost pleading.
"Nhht thht!" she mewed. "Plhhs nhht thht!"
Catwoman narrowed her eyes. "Really? It's that you're attached to?" She suspected Zatanna might have been trying something, that if she touched the wand to take it out, it would curse her or jinx her or something. But no: she'd handled it perfectly safely before. What, then? "Oh..." Selina realised what it was. Part of the reason - most of the reason - why a sorceress like Zatanna would cloak herself in the trappings of a stage magician was that her father, Giovanni Zatara, had been one too. The wand, Selina realised, was a memento of Zatanna's beloved father.
Selina certainly had her dark side. She could be spiteful. She could be jealous. She could be selfish, unpredictable, hard-hearted...but never cruel. She couldn't take this away from Zatanna, no matter how envious she might feel.
"Alright, Zee," Selina replied. "You can keep your pop's wand. I...didn't realise it was so important to you."
Zatanna was surprised by her captor's sincerity. "Well if she's being nice enough to let me keep the wand, you'd think maybe she wouldn't have done this to me in the first place!"
Catwoman was bent down over the bag, reaching in for the item in question. She clucked her tongue in frustration when the item slipped down between some other treasures, so she opened the bag wider. She saw it now, nestled between an ornate, jewelled necklace, and a strange fibreglass cube, which was slightly cracked from being jostled about with the other treasures. She reached down, her fingers happening to brush the box as she did.
"Nnghh..." Zatanna grumbled, a little tired of the sensation of the gag suppressing her speech. She hated this sensation, not only being gagged, but of being bound, her limbs pushed in and restrained. It was so embarrassing: a couple of bits of plastic keeping her all but helpless. She wriggled her legs, but the zip-ties severely restricted her range of movement. She looked up in humiliated frustration at her captor, and saw something rather strange.
Catwoman was frozen in place, her hand reaching down into her sack of loot. She wasn't moving at all. Zatanna wasn't even sure she was breathing. The bound magician didn't understand what had happened: there was an item in Selina's loot that could have induced such an effect if mishandled, but she could clearly see that it wasn't in the bad Selina was reaching into. What, then?
"I take it back," Selina said. The sudden change from frozen silence to normality was so stark that Zatanna almost flinched. "Why... why should I let you keep it?" The thief turned, slowly, threateningly on her captive. "You didn't earn it. You don't deserve it. Everything here was just handed to you." Her pretty face was twisted into a snarl. "You don't deserve it. You don't deserve him."
"Whhhdhh?" Zatanna's eyes widened. "What the hell? Is...she talking about Bruce?" As Zatanna was contemplating how Selina could be jealous of a woman that Batman hadn't even so much as kissed, and how Bruce could be attracted to someone so shrewishly capricious, Selina took her goggles off. That made Zatanna really start to worry. Not because of the act itself, of course, but because of what it revealed. Selina's eyes. Selina's pretty, dark eyes. Selina's eyes which glowed with a burnished, demonic red. "Oh," Zatanna thought. "Shit."
Something had happened. Something was affecting her, and Zatanna now felt that humiliation might be the least of her worries.
"Little Miss Perfect," Selina hissed. "So much better than me, right? Perfect, pretty, pale princess, that's you, right? Not like me. I'm damaged goods. The only reason he's with me is because he thinks he's not good enough for you. The only reason I get him is because he thinks you're too innocent! He has to fix me! He has to turn me into you!"
"What the hell is she talking about?" Zatanna could imagine how Selina might be a little envious of her, but not to this extent. And this whole thing about trying to turn Selina into Zatanna...it was nonsense. As much as Zatanna knew she and Bruce had chemistry, this was a massive overstatement of their importance in each other's lives. It would have made a little more sense if Selina was talking about Vicki Vale, or Julie Madison, but not Zatanna. It was like she'd taken a genuine feeling, and artificially transplanted onto Zatanna, almost as if she was reaching wildly for some reason to hate her. Slightly envious? Maybe. But enraged? Vengeful? That didn't -
"Wait..." Zatanna thought. "Vengeful...oh - oh no!" She remembered what had happened, back in England, when she'd tried to analyse the core of the demon she and Constantine had vanquished. She remembered the rage it had infected her with, a sudden, irrational hatred, so powerful that she might have been about to kill Constantine for no good reason. "I must have not sealed it properly...or she damaged the container," Zatanna thought. "If I'm right, then both of us are in danger!"
Catwoman gave every reason to make Zatanna think she was right. She strode over to her victim, almost - it seemed - about to lope into a run.
"You want it back?" Selina hissed. She plunged her hands into the sack, drawing out the wand. "You want daddy's memento back, Zatanna? Well here's what I think of it. Here's what I think of you - and here's a prophecy for you." She gripped the wand tightly in both hands, and then with a groan, snapped it cleanly in two. "This is what's in store for you when I'm done with you."
Zatanna did not cry out. She did not growl, or protest, or cry at seeing the precious heirloom of her beloved father being destroyed. For one thing, for a magician of her calibre, repairing it would be simplicity itself. For another thing, what had angered her was seeing Selina set the wand aside to begin with - because breaking it was precisely what she'd been trying to bait Catwoman into doing all along.
The destruction of the wand threw up sparks into the air, surrounded with a kind of magical dust. Selina jumped away from it with catlike agility, alarmed by what she'd released, but the stuff itself was not threatening. What was a problem for her was that once the charm was free, Zatanna did not need to move, or even speak to take control of it. It was, in a sense, the manifestation of a spell she had already cast, and it answered her commands implicitly. She only had to think, and the sparks launched themselves at her - or rather, at her gag.
"No!" Catwoman cried out, as she saw Zatanna's gag dissolve. She went for the weapon she'd used to tranquilise the magician, and quickly fired another dart at her.
"Esrever!" Zatanna pronounced in her newly freed voice. The dart shot back in the opposite direction, so quickly that it actually grazed Selina's arm even when she tried to dodge - though not enough to reach her skin through her bodysuit. But the deed was done all the same, and with another word, Zatanna's bonds burst apart, and the beautiful magician stood tall once again.
"Selina," Zatanna said, "I know you're under the influence of something right now, so I'm going to try not to hurt you too badly. On the other hand," she said, clenching a fist, "it's not like you were being controlled when you decided to break into my house, drug me, tie me up and steal my stuff, so...I don't think I'll be trying that hard. Sniahc!" A torrent of metal links flew out of Zatanna's hands, swinging in dizzying arcs, ready to snag the slinky thief who opposed her. As they slashed through the air, though, Catwoman fell back on her formidable finesse, and jumped forward, into the maelstrom. She weaved with remarkable talent through the flood of metal, assuming - rightly - that Zatanna would have trouble tracking her movement in the flood.
Zatanna realised this herself, and dashed across the room, her high heels tacking rapidly against the wooden floor, to get into a position of greater vantage. But as she did, she saw that her wand was not the only thing that Selina had plucked from her bag of loot. Stuffed in a small pouch slung by her hip, Selina bore the core of the demon.
"Selina!" Zatanna called out. "That cube - it has the soul of vengeance demon inside it! That's what's making you act like this!"
"Don't give me that shit," Selina spat - literally, drops of spittle flew from her mouth as she spoke. "I'm going to make you pay for being what you are: nothing's going to stop that." She lunged forward, drawing her favourite weapon, her near-prehensile whip. She struck out with it, surprising Zatanna with her speed, and its range - but it wasn't sufficient.
"Ezeerf!" Zatanna pronounced, making a 'crushing' motion with her right hand. The whip stopped in mid air, not literally frozen, but deprived suddenly of all momentum. This applied to the handle as well, so when Catwoman kept running, the whip would not come with her: it stayed frozen in mid air, forcing Selina to let go of it.
"I'll get you for that, you bitch!" she shouted, leaping away.
Zatanna frowned. Obviously the whole situation was rather distressing, but seeing the way that the demonic influence had changed Selina's personality was one of the worst parts of it. She'd always carried herself with a slinky, femme fatale dignity, but now she was reduced to this...gnashing, vicious animal, almost. Zatanna's ambivalence transformed into genuine sympathy for what was happening to her assailant. The most merciful thing Zatanna could do was to end this quickly.
And so she summoned up a maelstrom of magical power, a storm of wind around her, a ring of near-deadly lightning, tendrils of water and cosmic sorcery, her very eyes aglow with strength. She muttered under her breath a complex incantation, a mixture of her usual reverse-magic, and old magic. Her apartment was being torn to shreds, planks of wood being ripped up, books flying off shelves, furniture overturned. She fixed Catwoman with a stare that would have given even a New God pause...but not Selina.
With eyes full of hate, with teeth bared like a dog, she ran through the maelstrom, leaping, diving, ducking and dodging through wave after wave of magical attack, apparently surviving on sheer instinct and agility - but she couldn't keep it up forever. Eventually Zatanna would overpower her. She was a feral cat going up against a goddess of magic: her dark hair flowing in the wind of her storm, her eyes aglow, every word a word of power - and Selina had nothing. Not even guile, not with the demon's core controlling her.
Except, while it was certainly influencing her, it was not controlling her.
"Catch," Selina growled, a more familiar, refined smile etching itself on her cheeks. With that, she plucked out the fibreglass cube containing - barely - the demon's power...and threw it up in the air.
Zatanna couldn't help herself. Her eyes followed the cube. She was suddenly afraid that she might damage it, and make things worse, unleashing its power or bringing Selina further under its duress. But she did not realise, until it was too late, that she had become a victim of every good magician's first weapon: misdirection.
"You fell for it!" As the cube flew up into the air, and Zatanna's eyes followed it, Selina plucked something else from the small pouch at her hip, ran forward with speed that would have made Roger Bannister blush, closed the distance between herself and Zatanna in a second - and slapped a thick strip of silver duct tape over Zatanna's plump, red lips.
The effect was instantaneous. The wind faded. The streams of water collapsed with a pathetic 'splish' onto the floor. The lightning ceased to strike, and Zatanna's eyes faded back to their pretty, pale blue - and the fibreglass cube fell right back into Selina's hand.
"Mh...!" Zatanna almost couldn't believe it. She'd been completely tricked, and robbed of her powers. She reached up with her gloved hands in disbelief, not even trying to pull the tape off, just to check that it was really there. It clung tenaciously to her mouth, completely preventing her from parting her lips. She looked fearfully into Selina's sly, burning eyes - and she whimpered.
"Gotcha," Selina said, and her word seemed to break a spell of its own. Now Zatanna did try to prise off the gag, but Selina didn't give her the chance. She seized the magician's wrists, and forced her backwards with her superior physical strength, pressing her up against a half-ruined bookshelf.
"Mph!" Zatanna cried out, as Catwoman held her wrists above her head, pressing into her, restraining her. "Mmphh! Mm-MMPPHHH!!" She bucked, and struggled, but Selina was significantly physically stronger than her, and she couldn't break her grip. She tried kicking at her, but Selina deftly hooked both of Zatanna's shapely legs with one of her own, holding them together, using the bookshelf behind her to keep Zatanna's lower body restrained as well.
"That's more like it," Selina trilled. All trace of her animal viciousness seemed gone, just an alien undertone of malice remaining. "I'm not stupid, you know. I know something's...affecting me. But I also don't care. I want to do what it's telling me to do." She snorted with derision. "Did you really believe the whole 'grr and argh' act? I didn't think you were so gullible, Zatanna."
"Mmph...mmphh!" Zatanna felt hot - she was aflame with embarrassment. Selina had completely hoodwinked her: and now she was caught again.
"God, that's got to be inconvenient, Zee," Selina said, lowering her voice, and leaning in close. "Being able to have your powers stolen just by someone gagging you? Can you imagine if Superman had that problem? No-one would've taken him seriously for a week." She leaned in closer, her nose just a centimetre from Zatanna's. "You know," she said, speaking in an almost intimate undertone, "as pathetic as it is... that someone can just slap a piece of duct tape over your lips...and turn you into nothing more...than a curvy...leggy...soft little damsel in distress...I have to admit..." She leaned in closer, to whisper in Zatanna's ear. "I find it...really...pretty...sexy."
"Mph..." Zatanna whimpered, a tingling sensation running up her thighs. She couldn't help it. Caught, gagged, depowered and dominated by a tall, beautiful woman...it had a sensuality to it that Zatanna began almost to fear. Suddenly, she was very aware of every part of her body that was in contact with Selina's.
"I still think you need to be punished, Zatanna," Catwoman said, now pressing her bosom against Zatanna's yielding, buxom chest, feeling her captive's increasingly heavy breathing against her own, "but I'm starting to change my plans on how."
Before Zatanna could ponder what she meant, Catwoman spun her around, forcing Zatanna's arms together.
"MMPPHH!!" the captive sorceress cried out, aghast to feel her wrists again forced together, this time behind her back. "I have to get out of this!" she thought. "God knows what she's going to do with me..." Again she felt a threatening sensuality - and it only increased when she felt her new restraints: not plastic this time, but rope. Flexible, white rope, twisted with frightening skill around her wrists, snaking with preternatural speed up her forearms. "MMMPHHH!!" Zatanna cried, as Catwoman pulled the rope tight, pressing Zatanna's arms together so tightly that it was as if she'd fixed them into one limb.
"You're not going anywhere, Zatanna," Selina said, pushing herself up against her wriggling captive. "I need to make you understand just how much you deserve this." There was a tinge of pleasure in her voice as well as anger, and Zatanna wondered if this shift from rage to a kind of...aggressive seductiveness was Selina's personality fighting back against the demonic influence, creating a more fluid melange of thief and demon as time went by. Whatever the case, she had Zatanna firmly in her clutches - and she tightened them now, lashing rope around Zatanna's torso, looping it round and round, subsuming her midriff beneath the coils of cord, completely pinning her arms: Zatanna didn't have a hope in hell of moving them now. But Selina kept going, looping more and more and more cord around her, overwhelming her curvaceous captive, binding her right up to her plump, heaving breasts.
"No...no!" Zatanna felt her arms pulled tighter against her back, her shoulders cinched back further with every restraining loop. As galling as it had been to wake up bound with plastic straps, there was something different about this, about being tied up with ropes. It made her feel somehow more...feminine.
"Mmhhphh!" Zatanna protested, as Selina spun her around, face to face with her captor again. She wriggled her shoulders, which were pulled back by the strict bondage of her arms, making her seem even more defenceless, even more passive. Almost panting at the humiliating rapidity with which Selina bound her, she tried again to wrestle herself free, but she was just too tightly tied up. Selina had her. But she didn't give up. Again, she tried using her legs, aiming a knee at Selina's groin, but her attack was quickly suppressed.
"Those legs are dangerous," Selina crowed. "Guess I'd better do something about that, too."
She knelt down, and before Zatanna could do anything about it, she'd wrapped her left arm around the magician's supple calves, hugging them tightly together.
"Nnmmhhh!" Zatanna's cry was half protest, half dismayed whimper. She couldn't wriggle her calves free, and as she looked down, she saw in anguish as Selina began binding her legs - twisting rope around them, taking away what little of Zatanna's physical freedom was left to her.
"I don't know what you're complaining about," Selina said, pulling the bonds around Zatanna's ankles tight. Her fingers danced over her captive's calves, up towards her curvy thighs. "I mean, if you don't want people paying attention to your legs, don't go around dressing them in nothing but fishnets and high heels. I mean, you're not even wearing a skirt."
"Mph!" Zatanna gasped, as Selina coiled cord above her knees, squeezing her thighs together as well. "Mmphh...mmmhhhhhhh!!" She was panting in earnest now, her cheeks hot, her skin beginning to go damp from the sweat of her helpless struggles. Demon core or not, she'd been defeated by a completely normal human - outwitted, robbed of her powers, bound and captured. She was hot with humiliation, aflame with it.
Selina stepped back, looked Zatanna up and down, enjoying - or so it seemed, at least - the sight of the voluptuous magician all roped up and gagged, so beautiful - so helpless.
"I suppose that's how you do it," Selina said, looking at Zatanna's legs, shown off all the way from her feet to her hips, her prominently displayed bust. "You play the innocent, and dress the seductress. That's how you've tricked him."
"Mmmhhhph!" Zatanna growled back, growing sick of these accusations. "Grrmm - MPH!" The last whimper had been a gasp of shock, as - quite without warning - Selina had seized her by the thighs, and tossed Zatanna over her shoulder. "NNMMMPHHH!!" Zatanna cried out, wriggling and kicking her supple, bound legs, as Selina gripped her tightly with both hands, by the thighs and - gallingly - by her round, shapely behind. She began carrying her, and as Selina took her away, Zatanna writhed with all the strength she had, inadvertently rubbing her ass against her captor's palm.
"Naughty girl," Selina half-laughed, half-hissed. She gave Zatanna a short, sharp smack on her behind, and the magician moaned with humiliation, her pale cheeks going beet red.
She took Zatanna all the way to the nearest window, the one she'd found Batman's card on, and pushed it open.
"You've made a mess of things here, Zee," Selina said. "If we're really going to punish you...let's do it at my place."
"Whmmhh?!" Zatanna mewed. "Wait, what? She's - she's kidnapping me?!" She didn't even have time to lodge another protest before, with one more domineering smack to her captive's rump, Selina leapt out into the night, bearing her gorgeous, wriggling prize over her shoulder, her heart burning with false vengeance...and with desire.
To be continued...
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