Don’t kill Household Transforms. Rule number 34. Sellers held it in his mind.
“Sadie, you’re up,” a female voice said.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m working on it. The door’s stuck.” Sellers heard the thump of a heel against a door, and the creak of a door opening. A not particularly attractive woman, with brown hair and no makeup, got out of the second car. She came to within ten feet of Sellers. He had never before been so close to a Transform he didn’t intend to kill. He stepped back, despite the fact he recognized her scent. Her scent had been all over Master Occum when his Master saved him from an ignominious death. He took a deep sniff through his still-far-too-canine snout. Yes, despite his many changes, his fuzzy memory still remembered. These Transforms once hunted him, and later saved him by driving him into Master Occum’s arms.
His people.
She stopped. “I’m Sadie,” she said. “You’re Rover?”
“I’m Robert Sellers. Are you a Transform with a Focus?” He had practiced the question ahead of time, to make sure it was clear.
She frowned at his odd question. “My apologies, Mr. Sellers. Shall I call you Mr. Sellers?”
“Yes.” He hadn’t yet earned his nobility. He was still of no use to anyone. “Are you a Transform with a Focus?”
She nodded. “My Focus is Lorraine Rizzari. I thought you knew that.”
He presumed. When the Rules got involved, it was important to know. Instead of speaking, he nodded. He needed to bury his naturally touchy nature around these Transforms. He owed them, and debt was a part of responsibility he fully understood.
“Let me introduce the rest of us,” Sadie said.
The rest exited the cars and trucks. Jim, Tim, Tina. Ann, Eileen, Bill. Others. Ann was the leader. He was surprised to find a female leader, but he already knew this quest would provide shocks and uncomfortable moments. Otherwise, what would it prove?
“Are you all Transforms with a Focus?”
Sadie appeared puzzled by his insistence on the odd question, but she answered. “Yes, all of us are in Focus Rizzari’s household.”
“The two there?” He glanced at the far car, where two Transforms waited. Sadie hadn’t introduced them.
“Connie and Doug,” Sadie said. “Connie won’t be coming with us. She’s our household president.”
Another female leader. And here only to look at him, for why else would she come here but not further?
Connie stepped out of the car when Sadie introduced her and Sellers took a startled breath. She was beautiful.
The other women of this Focus household were ordinary at best, but Connie was blonde and shapely and entirely suitable for amorous attention. Sellers grew hard and the urge to take her in the parking lot gripped him.
He considered. Rule 1, ‘No Raping Master’. Connie wasn’t his master. Rule 34, ‘Don’t kill household Transforms’. She was a household Transform, but he wouldn’t kill her, merely rape her. There was no rule against raping household Transforms. He would be doing nothing wrong if he raped her now.
He hesitated, though, as some niggling worry crept up from his subconscious, some sense that his logic wasn’t sound.
Ah, Master Occum also said, ‘no fiascos’. He took a deep breath and considered consequences, a new skill he struggled with on occasion. If he raped their leader, these other Transforms might object. They would have responsibility for their leader, and so, in fact, they might object strongly. Strongly enough they might even create the fiasco Master Occum feared.
Unfortunate, but he would not risk even a small chance of ruining his quest. On the other hand, if she consented…
“We can fuck?” he asked Connie. He considered consequences again, and after a short hesitation, also offered: “We can go behind a tree.” Women sometimes liked privacy, he thought he remembered from some former life.
Several of the Transforms murmured in what sounded suspiciously like offense. Sadie winced and Ann rubbed her forehead.
Connie blinked, her emotions now hidden from him. “No,” she said. “We can’t fuck.”
Too bad. He would have liked to fuck Connie. He observed the reaction of the household to his conversation with the beautiful woman, and sighed one of his doggy-style sighs. He had been correct in his fears about consequences. These Transforms would react badly if he raped her. He would have to go without in order to avoid fiasco.
He turned away from Connie and faced Ann. “You are acceptable. Take me to the Monster.”
Ann blinked and raised her eyebrows, but Sadie said, “Go with the flow, Ann. He’s helping us. Go with the flow.”
Ann took a deep breath. “Right. So come on over here, Mr. Sellers and you can ride with Jim.” Sellers ignored the appalled look on Jim’s face and followed Ann to the passenger side of a banged up green pickup truck. He peered down into the tiny space beyond the door and stopped.
“No.” He wouldn’t trap himself in such a tiny space without Master Occum around to keep his urges down. No killing household Transforms.
“Now look, Mr. Sellers,” Ann said, but Sadie interrupted her.
“Take a breath, Ann. He’s got different rules. Work something out.”
Ann took the breath, and then a second, while she studied him carefully. She rubbed her forehead again.
“Okay,” she said. “You are a little unusual looking, but if you keep low, you can probably ride in the bed of the pickup without anybody noticing. Just don’t let anyone see your face. They’re normals. They probably won’t react well.”
Sellers regretted again his inability to adopt a fully human appearance. Too much hair, a face with more snout than mouth and chin, he still couldn’t pass as human. Someday, he would do better. He hoped.
“I will keep face hidden.”
Ann nodded doubtfully. “Probably good to keep the rest of you hidden, too. You’re a bit big for a human. Let’s find you a blanket. Or something. To cover your clothes.”
Sellers understood the issue with his face, but his clothes were fine, an old huge t-shirt with extra-large sweatpants. The sweatpants were intended to be full length, but on him they came to just below the knees. They even came from one of the nicer sections of the Boston municipal garbage dump.
Hiding felt unnatural, but he would hide. No fiascos.
“Alright people,” Ann said, after he settled into the bed of Jim’s pickup, on top of weaponry, shackles, tarps, a couple of coolers, and various other supplies he didn’t recognize. “Load up, we’re heading out.”
The evening breeze brought the scent of wilderness to Seller’s nose, heaven after so long in the claustrophobic confines of Boston. Beeches and birches, pines and firs. Chipmunks, deer, even the scent of a far off moose. Decaying pine needles, jewelweed, ferns, moss and fungus, the roads lined with the gold, red and purple glories of New England autumn. They had left I93 an hour ago for the narrow forestry roads of White Mountain National Forrest and the green silence of pines and furs.
Sellers gave up hiding miles ago. At first, after he sat up, he stuck his head into the airstream and enjoyed the motion and the scents, until the little memory voice in his head reminded him of Rule 11 (‘In man form, act as a man, not like the beast you are in your Beast form’). Chagrined, he tucked his lolling tongue back into his mouth, leaned his back against the cab of the pickup and reveled in the odor of freedom.
He had caught the first scent of Monster a half hour ago, drifting through the forest on a pine scented north breeze, almost too faint to detect. She laired miles away, well out of metasense range, he guessed maybe 15 or 20 miles north northeast.
The crew of Transforms encountered several forks in the network of forestry roads and always chose the right one, drawing closer to the Monster. Until now. The road split into two rutted dirt roads, equally untended, and the Transforms took the right fork, cars and trucks bouncing over the ruts with a squeak of springs.
The Monster was north, not east.
Sellers turned around and banged on the ro
of of the cab. Jim hollered, but Sellers kept pounding, leaving dents in the roof. Jim pulled the truck to a bouncing stop by the side of the road and got out. The other vehicles pulled over around them.
“What the hell are you doing?” Jim shouted. “You’re going to collapse the damned roof!”
Sellers’ temper rose at this insolent Transform who dared to shout at him, but he kept his voice even. “Wrong direction.”
Jim shouted some more, and people came over from the other vehicles and some of them shouted, until Ann hollered over everyone, “Alright, people, calm down. What’s going on here?”
Jim explained, his words coming too fast in his anger for Sellers to follow. He hoped this wasn’t his Master’s feared fiasco. He would have liked to confront Jim, argue loudly and quickly himself, but the changes caused by his transformation prevented him. Someday, perhaps, but not today. He would make do with the talents he was able to control.
“Okay, so why?” Ann asked him once she heard Jim’s explanation and calmed Jim down.
“Wrong direction,” Sellers said, and pointed. “Monster is that way.”
“You metasense the Monster? How close?” Her voice held a hint of panic, and several of the Transforms took up defensive positions around the vehicles.
“No, no metasense. Too far.”
“Mr. Sellers, if the Monster is too far away for you to metasense, how do you know where it is?”
“I smell her.”
“You smell her. From more than a quarter mile away?”
“No, Ann.” If they couldn’t smell the Monster, how had these Transforms been following her? Bah. Too difficult a question to contemplate, and far too difficult a question for him to ask. “More than 5 miles away.”
Ann pointed to a Transform man. “Bill, get a map. Seriously, this Monster is 5 miles away and you smell her?”
“No, 15 or 20 miles away. Maybe more.”
Ann rubbed her forehead. “I thought you just said… No, I don’t want to know. The Monster is 15 miles away. People, you can stand down. We’re not about to get attacked just this minute.”
Oh, that was why his putative allies had suddenly become so hostile. He was glad their hostility wasn’t his fault.
Bill, the Transform Ann had sent for the map, returned with a stack of several Park Service maps and a flashlight. At Ann’s nod, he laid them out on the ground.
“Okay, Farsight,” Ann said, referring to him. “Show us where this Monster is.”
Sellers blinked at the maps, befuddled. Master Occum had recently managed to recover his ability to read, and Sellers was able to read the words on the map, but nothing else made sense. He would need to ask Master Occum to recover his ability to read maps. He pointed north north-east. “That way. 15 or 20 miles.”
“No map?” Ann said, sounding woeful.
“No map.”
The Transforms crept through the open spaces under the pines, almost silent on the soft pine needles. They arranged themselves in four small groups of 2 or 3 each, 2 groups on each side, attempting to herd the Monster toward him. The Monster was only a few hundred feet away and he metasensed her agitation. She knew they hunted her. He could empathize. She should worry. From experience, he knew these Transforms would never give up.
She was a boar Monster, weighing 300 pounds or so, with giant tusks capable of tearing an innocent normal into bloody shreds. She had run twice, but each time Sellers and his small army caught up. His army of Transforms hummed with tension of their own. This Monster was an old one, at least a year old, and far more dangerous than some fresh female Transform barely past her Monster transformation. Old Monsters had killed companions of his companion soldiers in the past – he had heard them discussing it.
This time the Monster tried something different. As the groups around them attempted to surround her, instead of fleeing again, she charged them. Fast.
Uh oh.
Time slowed as he reacted, or so it seemed, his mind moving so fast his muscles acted like cold jelly. His mind, and his metasense, placed everyone around him into a mental map. Sellers didn’t like what he figured out. The Monster’s charge would bowl over Jim and Eileen, standing two long strides to his left and one behind him. The Monster’s charge would rip them to shreds.
He couldn’t allow that to happen. He forced his jelly muscles to move, oh so difficult, and stepped himself two long strides to his left. What appeared so slow to him, though, was instant-fast to Jim and Eileen.
Jim and Eileen both shot. In his adrenaline heat, Sellers had forgotten about the guns. Giant, Monster-stopper guns. Jim’s round hit him full on in the side, tearing through and leaving a chasm where his ribs should have been. Eileen’s round hit as he began to fall, taking off his right hand halfway up the forearm. The guns from the other soldiers in his army shattered the silence, but the others shot from various bad angles at a swiftly moving Monster. Two shots hit, but only one did major damage, to the Monster’s rear right hip, and not a mortal wound.
Sellers hit the ground like thunder from the power of the shells that hit him. He kicked up with both legs at the charging Monster, and she flew through the air, over her attackers, and continued, limping, into the pines.
Fury rose inside, a terrible anger at his attackers, the people he thought he protected. Firearms had wounded him before, but never so badly. Blood poured out, to soak the needles and turn the dirt into red mud. He staggered to his feet anyway, ignoring the wound, in the grip of fury, and growled.
The growl echoed through the woods and came back to him, stronger, louder, and he added to it and sent it out again. Rage, danger, slaughter, the beast at the throat. He fed himself to it and recognized that even the juice inside him contributed, a growl of murder, fury, and magic.
He had never before growled with the magic in it. The Transforms froze, in the grip of awe and terror.
Sellers moved on his attackers, trailing blood and bits of internal organs, slow because of his wounds but faster than the Transforms could react. The Transforms stared as he gripped Jim’s throat in his remaining hand and squeezed.
As his attacker stared back at him, helpless in his grip, a small voice of reason bubbled up from the depths of the fury gripping him. Jim and Eileen hadn’t had time to stop shooting. They were all Transforms together, but as Master Occum kept trying to pound into Sellers’ thick head, he was a Major Transform. A magical Beast Man. Magically quick.
The Transforms shot at the Monster, not him. They didn’t understand they were in no danger from the charging Monster. In their foolish ignorance, the Transforms assumed she posed a danger to them. They tried to kill her in order to protect themselves.
Fools, but their intent was good.
He took a deep breath and tried to force the fury down. Took another. A third.
“You will not kill the Monster,” he said.
“Yes, we’re going to kill the Monster,” he heard from behind him, a female voice in the grip of her own fury. Ann. “We’re on a God damned Monster hunt. We’re here to kill the Monster.”
He let Jim go and turned. Sellers’ bleeding had stopped, and he already felt the pain of major healing in progress, but he needed food, water, rest, and some Monster juice to complete the job, preferably from the Monster who just fled from them.
“No,” he said. Ann glared at him from 5 feet away, fury only made worse by the terror that held her a few seconds before.
“We had a deal, bastard. You help us hunt the Monster, we get the bounty, you get the juice.”
“You help me capture the Monster, you get the bounty, I get the Monster.”
“That’s not the deal, asshole.”
“That’s the deal.”
Ann glared. Sadie stood by her, almost hopping with anxiety, but not daring to speak. The others watched silently, weapons held carefully ready for use. Jim lay on the ground and rubbed his bruised throat.
“What the hell are you getting so excited about?” she asked, finally. “That’s a Monster.�
��
Ann’s question stopped his thinking in place. He considered, trying to ignore the dizziness and pain. The wound would heal. He hoped.
“It’s a woman.”
Ann rubbed her head and Sadie let out a sigh. “If the Monster attacks us, we’re going to defend ourselves.”
He nodded. “If she attacks you, you may shoot. Do not shoot if she attacks me.” Growl. He didn’t need protecting. He protected.
Ann nodded slowly, and the others relaxed. “All right, we have a deal, but no more changing the rules. And we still get the bounty.”
“We have a deal,” he said. He wondered if he would last long enough to keep it. “Do you have water and food?”
The Monster didn’t go far, not even out of his metasense range, before she found shelter under a cluster of fallen pines and curled up to heal. She tried to run again when they came close, but her injury made her slow and he caught her easily, even with his own wound. He shed the remnants of his clothes as he came close and jumped on her back, starting the drain as soon as their skin touched.
She fell and thrashed as he drew, as he carefully sorted the élan from the juice and dross to the best of his ability. Heaven, glory, ecstasy, she gave him gifts past imagining and he gave her ease from the pain of her Monsterhood. When he finished, she still lived, far healthier in her juice than the younger Monsters of his existing family.
She bit his shoulder, in the grip of the overwhelming sensations of the draw, and he recognized her lust rising, a faint echo of his own. He growled, this time with no magic except lust, and twisted her around underneath him, to take her from the rear. She let lose a porcine squeal and they passed into the realm of no thought.
He healed the worst of his wounds with the élan she gave him, but he could do nothing for her except be gentle. Sometimes he almost seemed to see a way to heal her, but then the insight faded before he grabbed hold of it. When they finished, he did the magic trick Master Occum had taught him with the élan to make them family, and she collapsed into an exhausted pile among the branches. He rose to face his companions.
The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Three Page 9