Chapter Nine
It didn’t happen right away. I had to wait for my new lady. I was nervous, so I exercised the way I had seen my father do it for so many years. He would push his body up and down like a flat plank of wood on levers until he couldn’t stand it anymore, then rise up into a sitting position from reclining on the floor, often with a twist. I did my best to remember and, to my surprise, my cell mates joined me.
“You don’t have to do this,” I told them, but they just ignored me. Tina gave me a little kick.
“You’re not wandering the desert anymore,” she said. “You’re part of a team now.”
Hearing her sentiments made me sit up and twist a little harder and faster. I loved Tina so much.
Long after our second meal had finished, she appeared. My redhead had changed into a stern, woman’s suit with a sharp-shouldered jacket and a tight, short skirt. I made sure to give her a not-so-secret glance from under my eyebrows as she walked up to release me.
“Alright, Sólo,” she said angrily, “we’re going to try this again. And this time,” she stepped as close to me as she could so that her breath hit my face, “you’re going to do as you’re told.”
She grabbed my wrist and yanked me out. I played along and stumbled out even though I outweighed her by about one hundred pounds. It took all my effort not to smile. She was devoted to her new role of mean jailer, but I was struggling with my part as chastised prisoner. I was already looking forward to the next part of my big plan.
The bars of my cell materialized behind us, and my cell mates barely gave them another look. Just like we’d practiced.
We made it to the secret room, and the rock slid back with its usual rumble. Inside, there was still the same table and chairs, but suddenly it all looked very different. The whole place felt extremely volatile and dangerous. If I made any missteps, it would be.
The redheaded guard took a seat and crossed her long legs and then folded her arms. “I think you might have contraband hidden somewhere on you.”
I instantly started to sweat. How did she know? Then I realized, this was the game.
“Perhaps. I certainly wouldn’t tell you, my horrible, cruel jailer.”
“No,” she said, adjusting her weight in her seat, “you wouldn’t. You prisoners just cannot be trusted.” She jabbed the air with her chin and lowered her eyes to my waist. “Strip.”
I pulled up my worn out, white shirt slowly, letting her enjoy the sight of my sculpted abdominal muscles as I went. The sweaty shirt dropped to the floor, and I unbuttoned my fly. The pants I had on slid down slowly on their own, but I made sure they really took their time as I bent over far too much to get them off. My shoes had been taken from me the first day, so I was already barefoot. When I stood, I rolled up slowly and let her take in the view.
She shook her head with a “Tsk, tsk, tsk. What have you brought into my prison?”
She stood and walked over to me, turned me around and grabbed my cock with one hand. “This looks like it could easily be used as a deadly weapon.”
“Only on a woman as beautiful as yourself.” I tried to turn around, but she held me to my original position.
“Stay like that,” she ordered. “I don’t want any romance.”
No romance. Sure. I waited as she undressed behind me and then bent over the table. “Get over here. Do it. No small talk and no foreplay.” She looked over her shoulder at me with a glare. “Just do it hard. That’s how I like it.”
I turned around to see her pale form ready and waiting. Her legs were much skinnier than the shifters I knew. It must have been a specifically human trait. She had a very small butt as well, and it made me think of my juicy, round butt that I had sported with so much pride as a female.
Even in my male form, I still had prominent cheeks that I felt very good about. I moved closer to her and put my hands on her hips.
“You’re being too gentle,” she said over her shoulder. “Be rougher.”
I had no idea what she meant, but then I thought of my last night with Black Feather. That had not been a night of gentle love-making, but rather a round of wrestling that included penetration. I put that memory at the forefront of my mind and tried again.
With an open palm, I gave one of her tiny butt cheeks a nice slap. She moaned, so I gave her a few more, changing sides a few times. “Yeah,” she groaned, “that’s what I want.”
I pulled her hips back with a sharp jerk, then pushed her a bit more forward on the table. There was no reason to do either, but it helped fulfill her fantasy. I slid my hand between her legs and felt how wet she was, and the sensation went through my whole body. She had cast her spell on me, and I could only obey. My hips pushed forward, and I entered her with one long, forceful motion.
“Harder!”
I slammed myself into her, and she began to laugh like a madwoman. I didn’t know why, but it made me want her more and want to obey her more. The moment took over, and I felt some movement in my mouth. The ring I had hidden in my cheek had slipped back toward my throat. I coughed it up onto my tongue but it slipped out. I caught it before it hit the table and kept it in my hand.
Still pumping into her, I leaned over and put my hand on the table next to hers, the ring hidden underneath. I hoped and prayed this would work. One of my knees went up on the table, and she moaned her approval so I kept going. She stopped me with a hand. “Let’s get up here,” she said between gasps and motioned toward the table.
I helped her up and then kneeled behind her. Then, it happened; she reached out and grabbed my hand with hers, and I felt it. The ring I needed was right there on her thumb.
Making sure not to look, I gently slid the ring off of her finger. While she had her eyes closed, I put it under my hand and slid out the second and left it on the table as if it had fallen there. The real ring went into my cheek where the fake one had been. Then, I focused my efforts on the task at hand and pumped into her with such force that she nearly fell forward several times.
“Let’s move to a chair,” she whispered, and we got off the table. From the top of it, the fake ring sat and watched us as we moved into one of the hard, metal seats. I sat, and she climbed onto my lap and rode me with a vicious, angry rhythm. “Don’t you dare come before me,” she whispered into my ear. “I tell you when we finish.”
Again, I was powerless. She both repelled me and enchanted me with each statement she made. It was thrilling and terrifying all at once. Somehow, just knowing how angry she would be if I didn’t do as I was told was enough to help me maintain myself and stay hard for her. She worked herself up and down faster and faster, grunting and panting as she went. After several minutes, she was sweating hard. She threw her head back and let out a loud, triumphant cry.
“Yes! Oh, yes! Oh, that’s what I like.” She went limp against me for a moment, laughed her madwoman laugh again, and then patted my cheek. “Okay, you can come now.”
With her permission, I had a huge, explosive orgasm that came up from my toes and ripped through me. I pumped into her and then collapsed myself. She looked into my eyes and gave me a kiss, then something happened.
I didn’t feel it at first, but I saw my reflection in her eyes. There, in my reflection, I saw my face morphing into something else. My redhead moved back with a pale, slack face.
“What...what are you...What is this?” She grabbed her clothes and held them in front of her. Her new, false ring clattered to the floor and she quickly picked it up.
My change happened fast. Before too long, I was female Larissa again and stark naked in the room with my jailer who had counted on – needed, in fact – for me to be male. I held up my hands in a show of trust.
“This is just something my body does sometimes. Please, don’t be scared–”
“You are all a bunch of freaks!” She shoved her ring on and quickly stepped into her skirt and angrily buttoned up her blouse. “I cannot believe this is happening. I just needed one little thrill, just something to get me through another night with my husband, and this is what I get!” She threw her jacket down and tried to collect herself, but she was boiling over with rage. “I’m a good person,” she informed me. I nodded, hands still in the air.
“Get dressed. You’re going back to your cell.” I quickly moved to get my pants and shirt, but they felt odd on top of my curves. The pants barely went over my ample butt, and the shirt was sleeveless and let the sides of my breasts show. My guard didn’t care, she just slipped her ring on and went to open the door.
‘This is it. This is my moment,’ I thought. However, my moment didn’t come. The door just opened the way it always did, and my heart jumped up into my throat.
I had mixed up the rings.
She turned to me with a look of disgust and jerked her head at the door. “Well, come on. Don’t just stand there, freak. We need to get you back in your cage.”
I couldn’t move. I just stood silently, looked at her, looked at the door, then before I could think about it another moment, I flung my head to the side and spat the fake ring out at her face.
“Gah!” She put her hands up, and I leapt, shifted mid-air and, using my giant fossa paws, I tackled her to the ground. She slammed into the doorframe with a hard smack and then went limp. Maybe she was dead, I didn’t know. I just knew I had to work fast.
With my teeth, I scraped her ring from her thumb and then ran out with it at top speed to the cell where Tina was waiting. I threw it with a quick head jerk, but to my horror, the second ring flew out at her as well. One bounced into a grate on the floor while the other hit the wall behind her. She looked at me with open-mouthed shock; what had happened?
“Move!” I ran down to the other end of the hallway where I could hear guards coming in through the door. No alarms were going off yet, and I could only pray they wouldn’t. The footsteps came down, and I crouched in the shadow just below the stairs and reminded myself that this was the moment to be patient, not to pounce. I hunched into a ball and listened as the steps descended.
“There is no way we can take in any more shifters. We’re at capacity.”
“You think Bachmann cares? If he finds another one, he’ll insist we lock it up. Even if it’s a baby.”
“You’re crazy. The little ones need extra care. Besides, just like with animals, when shifters don’t have their mothers, they die. Problem solved.”
“Whoa, hey. What’s that?”
“Oh no.” The two ran over to my unconscious redhead and knelt down. One of them pressed the small button in his ear and asked for help. He looked around and saw my eyes in the darkness.
“Oh no. No, no, no…” He meekly tapped his friend’s shoulder and swallowed. “You see that?”
“What? What are you…?” He turned and saw me, and then his knees turned to water. He kneeled on the ground and covered his face. “Please,” he whimpered, “please don’t kill us.”
I flicked my tail and focused on them with my best, most terrifying stare. Slowly, I prowled out just enough to let the light illuminate me a bit more. My tail snaked back and forth, and the two of them watched it just like I wanted them to.
I saw one of them start to go for his taser, and I leapt. Using the wall near me, I propelled myself through the air and landed on the first. I grabbed his taser away with my mouth, while he screamed and turned his head to one side, his high-pitched yells bouncing off the walls.
“Please don’t kill me! Please don’t kill me!”
His voice was going insane all over the walls and hurt my sensitive ears terribly, so I zapped the side of his neck with his own taser, and he went limp. I looked at his friend, and he reached out for his own taser. I shook my head, and he just gently set it down and then kept his hands in the air. I nodded slowly to let him know that, yes that was what I wanted.
“Larissa,” a voice said behind me. I turned to see a group of shifters, some in animal form and some in their human shape, standing behind me. Wolf Tina was at the head of it and giving me her fang-filled grin. “Get their passes so we can get out.”
I walked up to the first, unconscious guard and slipped his pass out of his pocket with my teeth. No rings for these underlings. I wondered briefly what could have come to pass with the first two jailers I took on. They must have been released, possibly executed. This would be the fate of these two as well. I waited to feel bad about them, but the emotion never came. The pass slid out of his breast pocket, and I turned to give it to a human-form shifter. Clarice walked up and took it from me. “Good fossa,” she said sarcastically and winked at me. The comment made me a little weary on the inside. I was actually nervous for her to find out I was no longer male.
Clarice took over the lead, and we left our captors on the floor as we headed up the spiral, metal stairs. I started to call out to stop everyone for a moment, to warn them what would be waiting for us, but no one seemed too concerned. Clarice just opened the door and stepped through.
At the top, the hallway was quiet. This threw me as the memory of my last run was full of busy workers bustling around the hallway, talking into their communicators and avoiding one another. Where had they all gone?
The group turned to look at me. I took a deep breath and tried to clear my head.
“Okay. Let me think.” I looked up the hallway with my fossa eyes and zeroed in on a slightly open door. “There. That door can’t close. Tina, get down there and see who’s behind that door. Two other wolves go with her. Then…” I looked around the group, and my eyes landed on Black Feather and two of his airborne friends – a male hawk and a female redtail. “My fliers. I need you to go out a window and take stock of the situation. Try to vary your flight as much as you can. Be careful.”
They nodded and walked away, the hawk and the redtail shifting as Black Feather went to push the window open, then joined them in the flight outside.
Tina’s growl from down the hall reached me. “What did you find?”
“Humans,” she called back. “What do we do with them?”
I looked around the group. “All predators, shift now. We’re taking the humans hostage, to keep us safe. They can get us into whichever room Bachmann is hiding in.” A few more animals took form nearby; a panther, a bear, a mongoose. Together, we joined Tina and found a group of government workers packed together in some sort of storage space. I looked at the walls and saw several extra devices hanging, some clipboards stacked, and some pieces of paper. I had no idea what a group of people would need with so many extra things.
“You’re coming with us,” I informed them. “We won’t harm you as long as you do what we say. Understand?”
Before they could answer, several of the humans sniffled a bit as tears rolled down their faces. One man close to me suddenly reeked of urine, and when I turned my head I could see that he had wet his pants. “No one will attack you. You have my word. We want to be taken to Bachmann. Now.”
“Okay,” he whispered. He stood and led the group out one by one. I took the lead, and my fellow predators surrounded them, keeping them penned up in their space so that they couldn’t disappear. As a unit, we moved down the hallway quietly, all of us on high alert for different reasons. I knew the president’s personal guard would descend on us as soon as they could, I just wasn’t sure which direction they would come from.
We turned a corner and met with a fork in the hallway. “Which way?” I asked the man with the wet pants. He paused, and his eyes darted back and forth. I knew right away that he was desperately trying to find a way out of the situation. I put a paw on his foot. “Don’t lie to me,” I reminded him. “If I find out you’ve tricked me, I’ll devour you in three bites.” He looked into my big, black fossa eyes and shakily nodded ‘yes.’ He would comply. “Tell me now.”
“Left,” he said, still shaking. “The president’s office is that direction.” I noticed a few of the other humans let out a sigh as he said it – a sound of disappointment. He was telling the truth.
“Thank you.” I angled to the correct hallway. “Let’s go.”
As we walked down the hallway, we started to encounter new humans. I managed to get most of them away from us with a snarl and a flash of my long incisor teeth. They threw up their hands and ran away as fast as they could. Others froze. Soon, an alarm was sounded, and an automated voice boomed through the air.
“WARNING! WARNING! THE PALACE HAS BEEN COMPROMISED. PLEASE EVACUATE THROUGH THE NEAREST EXIT. WARNING! WARNING!” The voice repeated itself over and over. I looked over at Tina, who looked just as uncomfortable as I was.
“We have to move faster.”
She nodded and pushed the human in front of her with her muzzle, and we got the group moving at a faster pace. Then I saw them – the men in black uniforms with the guns.
The president didn’t keep a lot of security around. Usually, he didn’t need it. The population was so highly controlled and so paralyzed with fear that state-level problems were almost non-existent. But, Bachmann was still Bachmann, so he had a highly-specialized squad of fighters that trained in some kind of ancient practice called Swat. They moved like machines, emotionless and expressionless, and each one had ways of silently communicating with all the others. Even their guns were highly specialized and designed to shoot with just the tiniest sound so that even as they attacked they could advance unseen and unexpected. Everyone was afraid of the Special Forces, and, at that moment, I understood why.
They came out, and immediately I doubted my own vision. Their covered faces made them seem less real and therefore less threatening, so I didn’t react right away. A bullet whizzed by my head and got Clarice in the leg. I quickly pulled down the man closest to me and raised my paw up to show that I was ready to strike. “Put your weapons down or these humans will be mauled and killed.”
They didn’t listen. They simply took a synchronized step together and continued shooting. The whole group scattered, and I rushed the nearest shooter. ‘His bullets are the bugs I ate in the desert,’ I told myself as I dodged and rolled under the flying bits of metal. ‘I know their flight; I just have to be aware of what direction his hand is pointing in.’ He aimed low, and I jumped high, right into his face, and sank my teeth into his skull.
I had never killed someone before. Sure, the redhead may have died, but that was by accident. That first man was intentional, a kill I meant to complete and wanted to see through to the end. His skull snapped and cracked inside my mouth, and the blood poured out. I bit all the way through to his soft, jelly-like brain as his body fell to the floor. By the time I lifted my head, all kinds of chaos was taking place around me.
The other shifters had followed my lead, some to their deaths and others to victory. Those of us who made it killed the shooters who had been aiming at us and quickly shifted into our human forms to shoot the guns ourselves.
I aimed my gun with straight, bare arms and squeezed the trigger, but the gun just gave an impotent click in my hands. The man I aimed at smiled and lifted his gun to kill me, and I saw it; he had a special ring that activated his gun. I looked down and saw the ring I should have thought to check for on a dead, limp hand. For a moment, I started to lean down, then I heard the shot and went still.
My eyes squeezed shut, and I stayed halfway down and halfway hunched. It took me a moment before I realized that I wasn’t dead. Once I did, I tentatively opened my eyes and went low on the ground. From my crouched position, I saw a naked Tina in front of me with a gun in her hand and a ring on her finger.
“You’re okay,” she told me. “Grab his ring, and the gun will work. I think these open doors as well.”
“Thank God, you are so intelligent.” I pulled the little piece of jewelry from his thumb and put it on my own. I held the gun pointed down at the ground. I couldn’t shift if I wanted to use the weapon, but it would serve a purpose. I looked around the space and saw that we had taken out all the members of the Special Forces, but they had killed some of ours as well. Clarice was dead on the ground, as was a female boar and a panther. We still had a decent number, but it was a blow nonetheless.
Our captives were all gone. I imagine they scattered at the first opportunity, and I worried that one of them had gone to help the president.
“Let’s go! Bachmann must be close!” Tina and I led the group, our guns out and pointed at the ground, ready to lift and shoot at any moment. We walked quickly and then broke into a run. A big door loomed in front of us, and we got ready to burst through it, but suddenly we were blocked.
Several older shifters appeared in front of us and crossed their arms, standing their ground with wide-set legs. We slowed down and faced them.
“Get out of our way.”
An older, male mole moved forward and scratched his human chin with an extremely long claw extending from his finger. “Why would we do that?”
“Because,” I said, “President Bachmann is dying today, and you’re in my way. I won’t spare you.”
“You know,” he said, “that I am personally sworn to defend and protect the president, even if it means laying down my own life.”
“Why would you?” Tina challenged him. “He’s done nothing, but make us his scapegoats, starve us, and imprison us.
He shrugged. “What would all of you do to the humans if you were in charge? Kill them? Imprison them?”
“No,” I said, moving forward and towering over the mole. I stood so that our noses were nearly touching. “The humans forgot about us. I would simply return the favor. We live how we want; they live how they want.”
“Sure about that?”
I nodded, and a smile broke out across as his face. “No more killing? I have your word?”
“You do.”
“Alright, then. Let’s go tell Bachmann he’s been dethroned.”
Behind him, the doors were opened to reveal a big, ornate office with a huge chair covered in animal skins. The space was empty. We all paused in the doorway for a moment, then gradually trickled in one by one. I noticed another set of doors across the room, and I asked our new friends about them.
“We don’t know where anything goes,” the mole explained. “Our movements within the palace are highly restricted. We can only come, work, and leave. I imagine these doors just go to other parts of the building.”
We opened everything and found passageway after passageway. Tina noticed a dent in the floor and moved the floor covering to reveal a secret door below our feet. I lifted it to find a kind of tube that a grown man could easily slide down were he to need a way out of the room. I sighed at the sight of it, and Tina patted my shoulder.
“Bachmann’s a smart man. And he’s been in power for a long time. Those at the top are always planning for a possible revolt. He probably had this put in place his first day on the job.”
I stared down the black hole and felt a breeze drift up and brush my cheek. I could have jumped down and slid after him, but it would have been a big risk. I had no idea where it would take me, but I knew right away that it was a mistake.
“Hey,” a voice called out, “check this out!” I turned to see Black Feather pulling the curtains down from the window and wrapping them around himself…well, almost. He had stripped off his usual clothes and laid the curtains on top of his naked body. A few of the female fliers were gathered around him and whooping their encouragement. A bear ambled through the room and went up to a statue of Bachmann, turned, and used the nose of it to scratch his back. He scratched so hard that the whole thing just toppled over, and the white, shiny sculpture hit the ground and shattered.
“Yeah!”
“Well done! Down with Bachmann!”
Soon, the whole room was chanting the words together in a steady rhythm. “Down with Bachmann! Down with Bachmann!” During the melee, Tina and I made eye contact, and she gave me a tentative smile. Like me, she was naked, covered in blood and brandishing a gun. She looked terrifying until she moved forward to join the group and pumped her right, unarmed hand in the air. “Yeah! No more Bachmanns!”
A motion caught my eye, and I turned quickly to see who it was. Without even thinking about it, I pointed my gun at the intruders. I nearly pulled the trigger, but the greeting of the older woman stopped me.
“Hello, daughter.” My mother raised one hand and put the second on Harper Bachmann’s shoulder. Harper, the first daughter, stepped forward a little and looked around.
“Could someone please tell me what’s going on?”