by Hondo Jinx
But now her voice continued. “Thank you for thinking of me,” the woman said, and suddenly, she was standing in front of him.
Instinctively, Brawley swiveled, blading his body away from her and lifting the MDR.
“By doing so, you have triggered this message,” she said, and he saw the hint of a smile shining within the deep, dark hood.
Another hologram.
“It’s unfortunate that you weren’t here when I visited. And even more unfortunate that you allowed the Cosmic to track you here. I don’t anticipate his actions compromising this location, but we can’t be certain, so I can no longer reveal my own identity or real-world situation. Not until our paths cross.”
Her image wavered slightly.
“Which will be a thing of chance, I am afraid. My own life is busy now, thanks to you, busy and fraught with dangers, and I have many people relying on me.”
“Can you hear me?” Brawley asked.
“Keep coming back to this place,” the woman said, clearly not hearing him, “and I will visit as frequently as I am able. Curiously, I do not know who you are. I only know what you are, from whence you came, and the various paths you might travel from this point, along with a sense of the staggering consequences attached to those various outcomes.
“If what the Order is saying is true—a thing we can never take for granted—you have already cracked a few of your strands. That is good. You won’t stand a chance without maximizing your power, especially with the return of the Tiger Mage.
“He will stop at nothing to destroy you. And please, do not think you are powerful enough to fight him. You aren’t. Not yet.”
The woman lifted a hand, and for a second, Brawley thought she might pull back the voluminous hood, but she merely brushed the bright red curls aside in a seemingly habitual gesture that somehow humanized her.
“Use this place to train,” she said. “As you have no doubt noticed, time moves differently here. It dilates in relation to our home dimension, passing much more slowly.”
Her image twisted, as if looking back over one shoulder, and the mysterious woman sighed. “Alas, duty calls. Keep showing up, power mage. Keep working and fighting and breathing. I do hope our paths cross soon. We have much to discuss, and I have much to give you. Tutelage, the ability to read The Tome of Seven Strands, the truth of your past, and of course the third and final item your parents left for you.”
Her smile returned, a shining crescent moon within the darkness of the hood.
“I will deliver the third item to you when we meet. I have it even now, hidden beneath these robes. Until then,” the woman said. She dipped her hooded head in a subtle bow, whirled in a deep green blur, and disappeared.
Brawley stood there for a few seconds, making sure there wasn’t more.
There wasn’t.
Questions flooded his mind.
Who was she?
How did she know so much without even knowing who he was?
What was her relation to his deceased parents?
Where was she? Who was relying on her? And how had he made her life busy and dangerous?
What did she know about his parents, his truth, his future? What could she tell him about the Tiger Mage?
When would she return?
And what was the third item?
Whatever it was, he needed it. That much was clear. Just as it was clear that he needed to study The Tome of Seven Strands.
Well, he would just have to keep checking in and hopefully catch her soon.
When coming here, he would continue to show up armed to the teeth. Because she clearly thought Uno might have left a trail, or she would have set up a specific time to rendezvous.
He held all these thoughts and questions and considerations in his mind for a moment, then forced himself to focus.
When life has you on the ropes, it’s easy to start worrying and wondering rather than doing.
That’s how you get clocked.
So he pushed all these concerns aside and got down to business.
He reckoned he’d been here for around two minutes. So mere seconds had passed back at home.
All right.
Time to train.
Out of curiosity, he pulled The Tome of Seven Strands from his back pocket and opened it and saw that the text remained static yet wholly unreadable.
The woman would teach him to read it.
For now, he had a lot of things to practice and explore. Nina insisted that he start working on his telekinetic precision. Sage had shown him briefly how to create and access psi sensors, and he wanted to get those down pronto. Remi walked him through a number of Carnal tricks that he had yet to try, including rejuvenating meditation, flesh shaping, and how to adjust his vital signs, feigning death.
Over all of these skills loomed the question of synthesis. How could he combine his powers to become more than a sum of their parts?
And, of course, he needed to focus on his most crucial skill: splicing.
But tonight, he would delay splicing to explore a new ability for the first time.
He carried the chairs to the far corner and shoved the table up against the wall. Atop its surface he laid his weapons and ammunition. Then he stripped out of his clothes and set them next to his arsenal.
Standing naked at the center of the room, he calmed his mind, closed his eyes, and breathed through his nose.
He focused on his Bestial strand. As with his Carnal strand, there was no need to descend into his mind to pull this force. He accessed these biological energies more naturally, almost instinctively.
He visualized his goal, as Callie had directed.
For a time, nothing happened. Perhaps because he was also concentrating on not transforming into his super bison form.
“Come on,” he said, and a painful spasm wracked him. A second convulsion jerked him like a puppet, lifting him onto the balls of his feet. His arms spread wide, his back arched, and a bellow leapt from his mouth.
Once more, he was half-lost to pain and pleasure as his bones thickened and elongated, tearing flesh and tendons that rapidly reknitted themselves as layer after layer of dense muscle swelled across his expanding body.
His vision shifted as his eyes drifted apart, riding the spreading skull, which stretched into a long snout that gnashed and huffed. Thick horns erupted from his temples, their spear-like points curving away from his head.
Even as these horns were spreading wide, his head lifted into the air, borne upon his growing body, and smacked into the ceiling.
Brawley grunted and dropped to all fours. He wasn’t stunned. He was just out of room and didn’t want to smash through the ceiling.
Down on all fours, he continued to grow. But this was different from his full shift. He maintained a humanoid form. When he finally stopped growing, he looked down at the mighty arms supporting him. They were thick as tree trunks and mossed over with heavy fur.
He squeezed his massive, humanlike hands into fists as large and hard as cannonballs. Experimentally, he flexed his muscles, and grinned viciously at the insane strength coursing through his half human, half super bison form.
He pushed off the ground and rolled back into a sitting position. His enormous quads tapered into lean, furry shanks that terminated in huge, sharp-looking hooves.
Dark laughter rumbled within his gigantic chest, the sound as deep and menacing as a volcano on the verge of erupting.
“Yes,” his inhuman voice growled, and he slammed a huge fist into his stony palm. “I’m a minotaur.”
Only he wasn’t, really. Because he wasn’t half bull. He was half longhorn super bison. And that meant he was fucking huge.
He would destroy a regular minotaur.
With a quick squeeze of Seeker juice, he discovered that he was fifteen feet tall and weighed eight hundred and thirty-nine pounds.
Power coursed through his body, demanding he test his great strength. Only as a minotaur, he wouldn’t be satisfied to merely sprint across the sc
rubland or smash his hoof into the earth. In this form, he wanted to kick through walls and tear enemies in half.
That time would come, he reckoned.
Yes, his gut agreed. And soon. But not now. Not yet.
For now, he must check on his women.
14
He rematerialized on the ranch and stood for several seconds, listening to the night sounds and feeling the soft breeze on his face.
How much time had passed, he couldn’t say, but the sky was still dark save for the twinkling stars. No lights shone in his trailer or down the road at his folks’ place.
The only lights were in the barn, where classic rock still played softly, Blue Oyster Cult telling Mary not to fear the Reaper.
Brawley turned toward the house. The dogs remained at their post in the driveway. They sat up, wagging their tails, waiting for him.
Glancing around, he saw no sign of Callie.
A noise jerked his attention back to the barn. It was a soft sound. Soft and urgent. Like a cry of pain half-muffled behind a hand.
Frankie…
He rushed forward with the MDR at the ready. Had the FPI tracked them here? Or, worse yet, the Tiger Mage?
He approached the door, ready to kill, but paused when he heard another sound. Or rather, sounds.
A low, mechanical humming and a soft panting that guttered into a rolling moan of unmistakable pleasure.
Frankie wasn’t being attacked. She was in there riding her super sybian.
And just like that, Brawley was jutting up from his waistband, hard as a fence post.
The beast in him roared, demanding he charge through the door, smash the machine, and take the buxom beauty.
And Brawley was tempted. Frankie was in there, riding that thing, swept into passion. Hot and wet and ready.
“Oh,” Frankie gasped. The vibrating hum of the machine accelerated, and Frankie’s voice twisted into a high-pitched stream of surprised cursing. “Shit-fuck-fuck-fuck.” Like she’d stubbed her toe.
It would be such a simple thing for him to shove through the door. Just lay his cards on the table and see how she wanted to play things.
At worse, he’d embarrass her or maybe piss her off. At best…
His erection throbbed to the beat of her pulsing moans.
But no.
He wouldn’t do it. Wouldn’t walk in on her like that. Maybe she would welcome him, maybe she wouldn’t. But bottom line, this was her moment to herself.
She hadn’t tacked an invitation to the door, and it wasn’t his place to interrupt. If they got together, it wouldn’t be like this, with him slinking up to her while she was vulnerable.
Because when you’re halfway to climax, you might entertain all kinds of crazy shit, only to wonder after you popped just what the hell you’d been thinking. Bonding was forever. He wanted her making that decision with her eyes on the road and both hands on the wheel.
Frankie sounded like she was a lot more than halfway to the top. By the way she was panting and biting off whimpered curses, she sounded like she might explode any second.
Brawley shook his head and turned away, aching bad.
He started toward the trailer, but his Seeker senses prickled urgently, demanding he turn around and check the other side of the barn.
He sensed no danger.
Only urgency.
Obeying his gut, he turned and saw Callie lurking at the back of the barn, angled close to a window, obviously peering in and watching Frankie ride the masturbation machine.
Callie herself did not have a machine, but that sure as hell wasn’t stopping her. The cat girl had shifted back to human form. She was stark naked, not a stitch of clothes on her. In the starshine, her slender nakedness was nearly as white as the snowy hair that crowned her head.
In an arousing display of flexibility, Callie had one leg pressed against the wall. It stretched above her straight as flagpole. Her other leg flexed and quivered. Her sex was spread wide open, and as she stared through the dusty barn window, she hammered her hot mound with three fingers.
Brawley shed his gear and approached silently from behind, cloaking any sound he might make, not wanting the cat girl to hear him and spoil his surprise.
As he drew nearer, he heard the wet schlick-schlick-schlick of her frantically pumping fingers. Her free hand was pressed to her mouth, almost but not quite muffling her urgent groaning.
Slipping in behind her, Brawley slid a big hand over the slender fingers covering her mouth. And it was a good thing, too. Because Callie jerked with surprise and cried out. But his hand muffled the scream like a gag.
“It’s me,” he growled into her ear, and Callie stopped struggling. Her big amber eyes swelled, pleading.
Softly, her tongue licked his hand.
And the schlick-schlick-schlick sound started up again.
Over Callie’s shoulder, he caught a glimpse of Frankie. Or rather, the suggestion of her. Through the dusty window, she was a curvy shadow, rocking back and forth on the low saddle, which was buzzing hard and fast now. Frankie’s silhouette humped and ground and undulated, impaled upon the pleasure machine.
He could make out the sway of her dark locks and the wobbling of her tremendous breasts, which were sadly lost to darkness, though there was something incredibly erotic about the tiny nubs of shadow poking out from the dark peaks.
It was wrong, spying on her like this, even if she was obscured by dust and gloom.
But he didn’t give a shit. Because he deserved a medal of honor for not smashing through the wall and fucking the gorgeous Gearhead cross-eyed.
Frankie cried out with orgasm, her delicious roundness bouncing and bucking atop the raging machine.
With a quick flick of telekinetic force, Brawley yanked his jeans down to his ankles. Still covering Callie’s mouth with one hand, he used the other to guide the swollen head of his throbbing erection to the steamy wetness between her legs.
Callie squirmed and whimpered and bit down hard on his finger as he filled her. Hooking one arm across her body, he arched his back, impaling the lust-crazed cat girl and lifting her off the ground.
Meanwhile, beyond the dusty window, the machine had slowed… but not stopped. And the same could be said for Frankie, who continued to moan softly as her delicious curves rocked back and forth, back and forth.
“She just keeps cumming,” Callie gasped from between his fingers, her voice choppy as he bounced her up and down on his throbbing pole. “It’s so hot. She just keeps cumming and cumming and cumming.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Brawley growled, and as he covered the cat girl’s pretty mouth more firmly, he hosed her down with raw, screaming lust that pushed her instantly and unceremoniously over the edge and straight into the erupting caldera of a volcanic orgasm.
Callie flailed wildly, reminding him of how she had clawed his chest back at Mallory Square. But this time he didn’t let go. Nor did he show mercy.
He flooded his newest wife with a fresh wave of lust, triggering a chain of orgasmic explosions. She pitched and jerked and bit down hard on his finger, but he held her tight, pumping away, and then clamped his teeth down on her neck just hard enough to mark her as he filled her young womb with jet after jet of hot seed.
“Yes,” Callie moaned, and he splayed his fingers enough to hear her words. “Fill me up.”
The shuddering cat girl went limp in his arms, and her tongue started licking submissively at his muffling palm.
“Oh, I’ll fill you all right,” Brawley said, and muffled Callie’s cry of surprise when he started thrusting again. “You thought it was hot how she kept cumming and cumming?”
She nodded.
“Get ready for the same treatment,” he whispered, and bit her again. “You’re going to keep cumming and cumming and cumming until Frankie quits riding that thing.”
Callie’s eyes swelled with apprehension, but he quickly fucked the concern out of her. Soon, she was panting again, speared upon his pumping erection.
A risky move, that. What would Frankie do if she heard them? And what would he do?
He dwelled only fleetingly on those possibilities because a second later, Callie was cumming again, and this triggered his own powerful explosion.
Brawley kept pumping away, still hard as a bison’s horn. He slammed the pretty little cat girl, using her, breaking her, taming her, making her his in a primal way that he suddenly realized that she needed.
This was more than sex. More than fucking.
This morning, Callie had still been a tender virgin. He had changed that by bonding with her.
Now this wild, animalistic rutting, this seeding and conquering, was changing the lithe young cat girl again, transforming her from a tender teen with a filthy mind to a broken feline nympho in perpetual heat, a beautiful, lust-drunk animal who would hunger day and night, waking and sleeping, to be used by Brawley, the dominant alpha beast who was claiming her roughly and mercilessly, cementing her lust and loyalty forevermore.
15
Brawley woke before first light, as was his custom on the ranch.
After only an hour of sleep, he felt completely refreshed.
He disentangled himself from the blanket of soft, warm flesh and rose from the mattress. His sleeping wives murmured wordlessly and fluttered back down into slumber.
Out in the hall he pulled on his duds, his boots, and his hat. For now, that meant wearing a damn ball cap. But soon enough, he’d get his cowboy hat back. Soon enough.
He holstered his XDS, then grabbed his old Winchester model 94 lever-action and went outside and walked down the road in the morning darkness. By the time he reached the tack barn, he was surrounded by cats and dogs, all of them pushing and shoving, trying to get close to him.
He beamed a simple command: Relax.
The animals eased back a touch, making room, and quit their whining and mewling. This restored the predawn silence, which was to Brawley a thing of near perfection.