by Tiegan Clyne
“But what if the law is unjust, like in this series?” he asked. He wanted to ask, Like in real life? He knew the answer, though. Theo had been bred for complacency.
“Laws are written by better heads than mine, sir,” the orsid said, rubbing at his shoulder where the shots had been administered. “It’s not my place to question them.”
Christopher nodded. “I see. Well… your obedience is one of your best characteristics, and I’m very pleased with the number of samples that you’ve been providing.”
“I do my best, sir.”
“Yes, you do. And I appreciate your willingness.”
He got the brush out of his bag and groomed the orsid’s thick black hair, including the dorsal stripe that ran from this neck to the cleft of his buttocks. Theo stood and hummed in pleasure at the attention. Christopher brushed the hair on his hips and thighs, then the pelt on his chest. The orsid smiled at him, and the veterinarian combed his beard.
“May I have an extra apple, sir?” Theo asked in his deep, rumbling voice.
“Of course you may.”
“Thank you.”
Christopher put the brush away. “I’ll make a note to the handlers. I’ll give you two extra today.”
Theo’s face lit up. “Thank you, sir!”
“You’re welcome.” He picked up the books and his bag. “I’ll bring you something else to read. How about some classics?”
“Oh, yes, sir. That would be lovely.”
“Very good.”
He left the orsid’s stall and loaded the books into the trunk of his car. While he was there, he put the semen samples into the cooled storage unit built into the trunk and readied a pistol with a tranquilizer dart, sliding a small case with extra darts into the pocket of his white lab coat. There was no telling what mood the felids would be in.
Both of the Countess’s felids were females, one descended from lion shifters, the other from tiger shifters. Both felids were prone to moodiness, especially the lion felid, because she had given birth last month and hadn’t quite recovered yet.
The first stall he visited was the lion felid’s, just to get it out of the way. Other than Sebastian, she was the cryptomorph on this estate most likely to give him a headache. When he opened the door, she rushed him, snarling, barely restrained by the chain attached to her collar. She slashed at the air and hissed at him, murder in her eyes.
“Stella,” he warned, “calm yourself.”
She was beyond hearing, and the last thing she was going to do would be to calm down because he told her to. He went into the stall but stayed just outside her reach. He pulled the pistol from his pocket.
“Stella, sit down!”
“Bastard! Murderer!”
“I told you before, those two cubs were ill. They needed to be euthanized.”
“Killer!”
He shot. The dart hit her in the thigh, pumping its sedative into her bloodstream. She glared at him in accusation and hissed again. He watched dispassionately as she slumped to the floor, hitting her knees and losing consciousness. The chain on her collar held her upright, and he stepped forward quickly to move her before she strangled.
Stella was covered in tawny fur, and her face was the face of a lion’s. She had been declawed several years ago, something Christopher had done for his own protection, but she still had a cryptomorph’s strength and could have walloped him into next week if she’d connected with a paw during her rage.
He picked her up and put her on the cot, where he did a quick but thorough examination. Her genitals were a mess, the legacy of a botched natural delivery at Crown Holdings. He should have been the attending veterinarian, but Natalie had insisted that she wanted the birth to be without surgical intervention. Natalie was his direct boss, so he made his objections and then left her to it. The labor and delivery had been a disaster, necessitating in Christopher putting two sick and injured cubs out of their misery after a failed course in the ICU incubators. Stella had never forgiven him, and the Countess had added their value to the sum of his debt to her.
Christopher didn’t care. He would never regret preventing an animal from suffering.
Stella hadn’t taken the news very well and continued to take it badly. Her maternal instincts were strong, which was both a benefit and a curse. Now she had decided that she would never bear a cub for them again, and she was constantly savaging her own genitalia with whatever she could lay her hands on. He had been careful to remove anything that he thought she could have used, but he had left her cot. That seemed to have been a mistake, because it had been disassembled and one wooden leg lay in the corner, broken and slick with the felid’s blood.
He did what he could to repair the damage, utilizing surgical glue and intravenous antibiotics, but he knew she needed more care than he could give at the estate. He called the chief handler, a man named Marco, and told him to ready Stella for transfer to the Crown Holdings medical unit.
He discarded his soiled surgical gloves and went to the last stall in the barn. Patrice, the tiger felid, was sitting at her writing desk, painting. Christopher let himself in.
“Good morning, Patrice.”
“Good morning.” She looked up at him and sniffed, her golden eyes flickering over his shoulder at the stall across the hall. “She’s in a bad, bad way.”
“So she is.”
“She moans and cries all night,” Patrice complained. “It’s really sad.”
“She’s going to Crown Holdings in a few minutes,” he assured her, opening his bag and preparing for the exam, “so her noises won’t bother you starting tonight.”
The felid sighed and put her brush into a cup of water beside her canvas. “It’s not the noise that troubles me.”
Patrice was showing the early signs of pregnancy, her belly just beginning to swell. She went to the cot and lay down, ready to assume the appropriate position for a pelvic exam.
“We’re not doing that today,” Christopher assured her. “We did one yesterday.”
She looked surprised but sat up. “May I stay dressed, sir? I’m chilly.”
“Of course. Do you want to be brushed?”
“I can brush myself if I require it… sir.”
Most cryptomorphs were natural nudists, but Patrice was modest. She had been wild-caught in the Badlands, and she remembered her days of freedom when she’d been just another person living in the region’s only town. Christopher stepped out into the hallway and adjusted her thermostat, raising the temperature in her stall by five degrees.
“Thank you,” she told him when he returned.
He examined her amber eyes and tufted ears, then listened to her heart. She was strong and fit, and he was well aware of her coiled power. She hated him, and he didn’t blame her. She ran her hand along her collar and watched him closely.
Christopher finished the exam and went back to his bag, stowing his materials away. He glanced at the picture on the desk. It showed a desert city with colorful flags flying in an unclouded blue sky.
“You’re very talented,” he complimented. “This is lovely.”
“Thank you.” She looked down at her canvas. “This is Kristal.”
“Is that where you lived, before…?”
“Yes.”
Kristal was the capital of the Badlands, and it was a wild, dangerous place. Everything that could be sold was for sale there, and that included virtually anything that wasn’t nailed down. Christopher had been to Kristal several times, and every trip had left him disgusted by the depths that sentient creatures to go to just for money.
He snorted softly to himself. Pot, kettle.
“I recognize the citadel,” he told her. “Very nicely done.”
“Let me go back.”
The plea was spoken in a quiet but fervent tone. He sighed and closed his bag. “You know I can’t do that.”
“Just get me to the border,” she begged. “You don’t even have to cross into the Badlands. Take me to the edge, and I’ll find my way back ho
me myself.”
She put a striped hand on his arm, and he looked at it, then up into her eyes. She pulled away quickly.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
He nodded and walked toward the door. “I understand that you want to go home, but you must realize that things are better for you here. You aren’t hunted, and you don’t have to fight for your food, and you’re not surrounded by murderers and thieves and rapists all day.”
Patrice softly snorted. “Really?”
He sighed. “Warm, dry, relatively safe place to sleep at night. Time to do watercolors. Food brought to you, clothing provided to you… It’s not that bad.”
“Spoken like a human… or whatever you really are.”
Christopher froze. “What did you say?”
“We all know it, sir. We all know you’re no human. You can’t fool a cryptomorph’s nose.” She watched him forthrightly as he closed the stall door and walked closer. “But we’re all too smart to say anything, so your secret is safe… for now.”
He felt a flash of anger on the back of his neck. “Are you threatening me?”
“Do I need to?”
He narrowed his eyes. “I am not taking you to the border.”
“Then…”
Christopher grabbed her face in his gloved hand and squeezed, silencing her. “If you breathe one word about what I am or am not, I will see to it that all of your cubs are taken to Sovina and sold to Prince Almodar for his canned hunts.”
Her eyes flashed with fear, but she pushed him away, her claws drawing pinpricks of blood from his chest. Her cheeks bore red marks from his grip. “You and your Countess… you’re monsters.”
He stalked back toward the door and told her, “You’d do well to remember that.”
Chapter Eleven
The other stables were more routine, and Christopher finished his rounds before noon. He drove back to the main house and went to his lab, which was in the south wing, opposite the living quarters. He took a random sampling from each vial and confirmed that the genetic material was viable, peering through a microscope to watch the sperm swimming across the petri dish.
“Everything up to code?”
It was the Countess’s voice, and he stiffened when he heard it. He picked up a pen to make one last lab note and answered, “The samples are good quality.”
He kept his back to her, a subtle display of disrespect that she recognized. Her high heels clicked across the tiled floor, and he turned to face her just as she reached him.
“You changed your door lock code.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“I wanted him to be able to rest without any undue demands.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Without any demands from me, you mean. I’m sure you’ve been making plenty of demands of your own.”
Christopher sighed. “Believe what you like.”
Her hand shot out and grabbed him by the throat, her sharpened nails digging into the flesh on either side of his trachea. He kept his face blank and stared back, even as she tightened her grip.
“I could tear your throat out here and now,” she growled at him.
“I’m well aware.”
“You would die.”
“I would consider it a mercy.”
Blood dripped down his skin, and she pulled her hand away, leaning in to lick the scarlet rivulets away. She grabbed his hair and yanked his head back to give herself better access, and he did not resist. Her sharp nails found new purchase beneath his belt, and he held very still.
Her tongue lapped at the wounds she’d made, but she seemed frustrated by the slowness of the flow. He heard the popping sound of her fangs emerging, and then the pain of being penetrated by those ivory spikes filled his mind. He gasped, and her hand on his penis tightened. He hardened beneath her grip, and the pain of being bitten faded into the bliss of being fed upon. He grabbed her by the hips and held her close. She drank until he saw stars, and then she pulled away, leaving him with a healing swipe of her tongue. The wounds closed as if they had never existed.
She released her hold on him and left him trembling, leaning back against the lab bench. She chuckled.
“Foolish boy. Your morose little declarations are nothing more than lies, and you know it. You would never want to die and lose the chance to feel the things I make you feel.”
Any vampire could make him feel that pleasure, but he was wise enough to keep that thought to himself. She rubbed her palm against his erection, and he groaned.
“Did you enjoy my dragonel, Christopher?”
“No,” he admitted. “He… ah!... he’s badly wounded.”
She smiled and purred, “I know. His pain was delicious.” The Countess unzipped his trousers, and her hand reached inside to pull him out into the open. She smiled when she saw it. “Such a pretty little cock. Do you like it when he sucks it?”
Her fingers danced lightly along his length, and she dragged her fingernails along it, scoring him ever so slightly. He gasped and gripped the bench. “He hasn’t.”
“But he will, won’t he?” She held him in her hand and flipped her thumb over the slit, drawing a ragged breath from him. “You’ll see to it.”
“I…” He struggled for control. “Please stop.”
“Why?” She pulled the sharp tips of her nails along his shaft again.
“Because… the lab…” He swallowed hard and regained a modicum of self-control. “We don’t want to contaminate the samples.”
She released him and stepped back, still smiling. There was a mocking quality to her expression. “On the subject of samples, I want that dragonel expressed again soon.”
“He’s still in a great deal of pain and distress from what happened,” he objected. “I don’t think that would be healthy for him, mentally.”
“Since when do their mentalities matter? They’re just articulate animals, Christopher. Don’t let your attachments to your pets make you see them as more than what they are.” She went to a hand sanitizer pump and squirted the ice-blue gel into her palm. She rubbed away all traces of him as she said, “He would be considerably less trouble to me if we just sent him to Crown Holdings in a medical coma and had them express him twenty-four seven.
He frowned. “First of all, gathering that many samples in so brief a period of time will end up in him only producing seminal fluid. His body needs time to replace the sperm cells.”
“It’s in my economic best interests to sell samples that are less dense than the ones I keep for myself. I improve the chances that I end up with the largest stable of golden dragonels while still making a killing selling weak product.”
“The longer you keep him immobilized, the lower his hormone levels will go,” he warned. “An unconscious male dragonel is one whose body turns all attention to survival instead of toward breeding. If you want good, dense samples, he must be active, happy and healthy… just like with all of the other species.”
“Then inject him with replacement hormones. Isn’t that one of the things you veterinarians do? Don’t tell me I put you through school for nothing.”
He sighed. “No, Your Grace. You did not.” He tucked himself back into his trousers and took a deep, steadying breath.
“I want to see him.”
“He is heavily sedated,” he warned. “He won’t be aware of your presence, so any fear effects you choose to apply will be wasted.”
“I don’t want to frighten him. I just want to see my prized possession.” She raised her chin. “Take me to him.”
“Let me clean up my station first, and then I will.”
She waited patiently while he got the samples prepped for shipping to Crown Holdings, and then when he cleaned and sanitized his equipment. He stole a few sidelong glances at her while he worked. She was curiously poking in his bound books of lab notes and examining his ongoing experiments. He doubted she understood what any of it was for. The Countess was extremely intelligent, but her expertise was limited to finances and tort
ure. It made her a perfect capitalist.
When he was finished, he nodded to her. “Come with me, please, Your Grace.”
He took her through the well-worn path between his lab and his apartments. He had walked this same route a thousand times, and she had walked it with him for most of those. They left the lab, took a door that led to a small garden filled with medicinal herbs, and followed a paved path. The path led to the door he’d first brought Sebastian through the morning of the party, and from there it was a short walk to his door. He typed in the new code, shielding the keypad from her view, and the door clicked open. Christopher opened the door and stepped aside. The Countess swept into the darkened room. He followed her, but he didn’t bother to turn on any lights. As demons, they were both perfectly capable of seeing in the dark.
Sebastian was lying on his stomach on the bed, still in the grips of the heavy sedation that Christopher had administered. He was uncovered so that the sheets wouldn’t stick to the salve on his wounds, and the temperature in the room had been raised to compensate. The Countess sat down on the edge of the bed, peering into the dragonel’s sleeping face. She touched his nose, then ran her fingers into his hair, which Christopher knew was as soft as silk.
She continued exploring the inert cryptomorph, her nail lightly tracing the scales on his shoulder. The Countess ran her hand down Sebastian’s spine, following more scales as they dipped down toward his abused buttocks. When she reached the welts from the caning, she swiped her hand over them, feeling the heat from the inflammation. It annoyed Christopher to see her touching Sebastian this way, exploring him so possessively. When her hand reached his wounds, even though he did not awake, his back twitched in response to her touch. The response made the Countess chuckle.
“Unconscious pain, or subconscious pain?” she asked.
“Does it matter?”
“Not a bit. Pain is pain, and it’s all delightful.”
She pried Sebastian’s buttocks apart so she could look at his torn and bruised opening. She clicked her tongue. “That was self-indulgent of Ashmar. Will he heal?”