The Selie

Trigger warning: No sexual violence, but rather graphic martial/arsonous death and some glamorized prostitution.

*****

Aud eluded me in the dark water - my trickster-hearted Kuma Lisa - while I retreated blindly to her cave. A Selkie! Nothing had given me such good chase in decades, and certainly none had escaped. I'd brought down hundreds of Vampires, Berserkers, and Werebeasts without fail, but a fuzzy bantam seal battles free? Being disabled and escaped by a skittish little Selkie infuriated and fascinated me. Cunning as she may prove, I'd have the pale beauty now as a point of pride.

By necessity, Aud would emerge from the ocean before she got far. The New Moon would bring the rivetingly contradictory woman ashore. I put the Doppelgänger to finding her trail and bringing me someone to eat.

After a week of swimming steadily, hampered by my injuries, San Francisco Bay loomed at the horizon. I was running out of time. Within two days I'd become human again naturally, and I'd only covered a few hundred miles.

In yet another aspect that folklore got partially right, werebeasts do automatically morph into and remain in their animal forms for the three or so days of fullest moon in each lunar cycle. We have an exact opposite reaction to the new moon.

While still a ringed seal, I made my way up the Napa River under a sliver of remaining moon. Eventually, I found a cabin with weekend warrior tarps draped over a docked boat and

nouveau riche

decorations that suggested the house would be unoccupied midweek and have resources I'd need.

From their back porch, I tossed a softball sized rock with my rear flippers - a skill I'd developed over years - at the sliding glass door. It cracked in spiderwebs so that a series of headbutts shattered it. After a half hour with no response from neighbors, inhabitants, or security, I morphed back into my human form and crawled carefully inside.

Stealing from the short trophy wife who weekended there, I dressed myself in her ill-fitting clothes, then filtched untold thousands in gaudy jewelry and an illegally modified Desert Eagle .50 cannon with a few spare clips, stowing them in a Louis Vuitton handbag. The absurdly large pistol mayn't have been hers, but it oddly matched the oversized purse.

A '69 Pontiac GTO in the garage - albeit in an unfortunate avocado color - suited me nearly as well as the gun. Classic custom muscle cars are easy to hotwire and crazy fun to drive, although too conspicuous to keep for long. (Just as well. Nothing quite screams GTA like the regular screwdriver I'd be using in place of a key).

Still, it would get me to Reno in the morning. After drilling out the lock pins in the steering column and checking that the GTO would start with a screwdriver turn, I showered and crawled into bed and curled up around a pillow.

Sleep should have come easy in my exhaustion, and goodness knows I should have taken advantage of the relative safety of the anonymous house. But it was cold and lonely. For the first time in years, I didn't have a warm body holding me as I slept.

With nothing to distract me, the vampire's face hovered before my mind's eye, beautiful and terrible, tongue extended and flicking, teeth sharp and gleaming, black eyes beckoning me down...

I physically shook my head, trying to rid myself of the image and wondering why I couldn't. I doubted very much that I kept thinking of it due to some mystical ability on its part. No vampire had displayed that ability previously around me, and I'd always suspected that they were beings ruled by the laws of physics and nature like me or berserkers. A raging berserker is an awe-inspiring thing to see and the genesis of the lycanthrope/werewolf legends of most cultures, but not anything inexplicable or recondite.

I miss living openly among lycanthropic peoples, especially my time with the Hamrammri tribe of berserkers in what is now Belgium. (The exact year is beyond my reckoning, but I armed myself with an iron sword and javelins and my chainmail was of iron rings.)

As a raiding party, we stole through the woods as quick as armed men could move. Scouts had been sent ahead to kill lookouts. Our target was another raiding party camped out foolishly on the bottom of a medium hill, so we took the summit from the wooded area at the base. Then we cascaded down upon them like an iron avalanche.

At the time, about a quarter of the tribesmen were lycanthropes. Their elevated position within our social structure and their natural advantages of fortitude and venom came with the responsibility to lead the battle from the frontline. Seeing them furred and snarling in their rage while falling upon their enemies with their iron and teeth bared is still one of the most terrific visuals I've ever known.

The enemy formed up quickly, but two fell to my javelins before ever wetting their blades and more still to the javelins of others. The non-berserker male warriors fought alongside me and the other female warriors, adding numbers to our lycanthropic core. Our berserkers broke their ranks fully, and the chaos of open battle reigned as we poured in behind them.

I drove my blade under an enemy's chin and out the back of his neck while simultaneously blocking an incoming thrusting spear. Klothilde jumped forward and hamstrung the spearbearer, effectively removing him from the fray and from any future fray.

"You owe me, Seehunde." The tall golden blonde woman shouted to me over the din as she turned to kill a swordsman to her left with another swift and powerful stroke. I hadn't the time for a clever retort as I blocked another blow and ran through another warrior.

The battle ended as quickly as it began, but with no one on their side still standing. As a healer, I walked the battlefield with my medic kit and sharp dagger; tending to our injured and ending the suffering of those who wouldn't be leaving the battlefield. Others walked among the dead and dying for the latter reason or to ransack the bodies of friend and foe alike. Occasionally, one would call me over for a verdict before performing a mercy killing.

"Seehunde!" Klothilde called out to me. She didn't have a candidate for me, but looked to be leaving the field with some new gear and valuables. "I leave you to your business for now. You can pay off your debt to me tonight." She grinned at the warriors walking with her and looked at me again. "I'll like you better after you wash off the battle anyway."

Though savages, the hierarchy of the tribe - nearly to each individual member - was poorly defined but perfectly understood. As an immortal fighting healer, I certainly ranked the reckless young warrior, so her publicly and loudly making demands on me was more than a little brash.

I liked her brashness though, enough that we'd casually slept together with fair frequency for most of her twenties to that point. "See you then, Klothilde."

We were the aggressors in the battle with position and number, so only a few of our warriors took damage. Cleaning, bandaging, sewing, and medicating wounds still made for slow work, but the close friends and relatives of the injured stayed behind to help hold patients still as I worked, hold poultices of calendula, comfey, yarrow, and garlic over wounds, and hold waterskins to drink and mandrake to chew for the few in bad shape.

Hours later, the last of the savable were saved and the rest were good and dead. After tramping back to our own camp with the last of my patients and comrades, I washed the muck and blood of battle and its aftermath off in the stream nearby. Klothilde asking me to clean up was largely irrelevant. I'm natural disinclined to remain covered in gore.

Brash without being hypocritical, a freshly bathed Klothilde sat by a fire waiting for me with her friends, Aldo and Minna. She smiled when I approached and leapt to her feet. "Finally."

Amused at her eagerness, I followed her into her small tent and knelt behind her as she sat crosslegged. She'd rebraided her lovely golden hair, not for any practical purpose. Klothilde knew how much I enjoyed unbraiding it.

I untied and carefully loosed each braid, then brushed her long tresses languidly for a notable portion of an hour. She preened, enjoying the personal attention.

Her beautiful hair only kept my attention for so long before I stopped to undress her equally beautiful body and then mine. I kissed and massaged her neck and shoulders, producing groans at the welcome relief for her tired muscles.

"Lay on your stomach." I instructed. "I want you completely untensed." She obeyed instantly. Such a constitutionally antipodal girl, she was audacious and bellicose everywhere else in her life, but as biddable and devoted as a puppy in the furs.

I retrieved some rosemary and lavender from my medic kit and crushed them into a quick liniment. Then I swept her thick locks out of my way to rub the warming liquid from the back of her neck to the heels of her feet and back several times.

As my experienced hands traipsed over her defined calves, thewy thighs, firm buttocks, and smooth back, she groaned further into the relaxation and pleasure she found. I spent a longer time on her strapping shoulders. The developed shoulders of a woman who regularly carries the proud weight of heavy armor are so damned sexy.

Convinced that she couldn't possibly get more relaxed from simple massage and that I couldn't want her more, I tugged at her ankles so that she'd flip over onto her back for me. Like a puppy, she flipped instantaneously.

I slid my face along the inside of her thigh, finding my way to her warm and humid center. Wet and waiting, her sweet pussy called to me.

As my tongue found her wetness and her deep scent invaded my olfactory nerves, she moaned happily and whimpered needfully.

My hands left the strong quadriceps they'd rested on. One trailed back and forth between her large innie bellybutton and her mound.

My other hand tickled the top of her slit, folds, and clit, while only my questing tongue drove inside her. Her knees came up and her legs closed hard around me, trapping my head, arm, and hand like a failed triangle hold. Enough room remained to continue my plunder, but it did get a touch cramped in there, so I hurried things along.

Her tunnel continued to be plumbed by my active tongue and my thumb diddled her clit. She groaned loudly and her legs clamped much harder, squeezing my shoulders and affecting my breathing. Still, it was an unmistakable sign that she'd neared her apex.

"Seehunde, fuck me, Seehunde!" She screamed, completely unconcerned and probably turned on at the idea of being overheard by sleepers nearby.

I couldn't really respond if I wanted, but I didn't want to do anything other than her in that moment, in the moment that I pushed her over the edge, my tongue got pulled by her contracting muscles, and a fresh gush of liquid released from her quim. I stayed right there, lapping from the source, until her legs eventually relaxed and released me.

She summoned the strength to rise far enough to grab my free arm and yank me up the bedroll to her side, despite my reluctance to leave my prize.

Her lips found mine. I loved the sudden surge of aggression she displayed right after she came. Her tongue claimed my mouth and I sucked gently on the warm wet organ.

Klothilde's palm slid back and forth over my hip, slowly increasing her speed as her post-orgasmic energy returned to her otherwise spent body.

My lips left hers, moving over her jaw, cheek, and finally her ear, biting and tugging playfully. This of course made her growl and roll on top of me.

She bit my neck in her ardor, not lightly. I groaned out, ridiculously loud. I also didn't especially care if we were overheard, but wasn't nearly as braggy about our coupling as Klothilde was.

Her fingers inveigled their way into me, two at first, then three calloused and strong digits pumped in and out of me with an aggression that verged on a sense of ownership.

I whimpered as her teeth continued to find soft flesh to bite and her fingers kept savaging my sex. She unrelentingly drove me past any mental or physical barriers and up over the rainbow. She didn't stop though and her rough hands and mobile lips brought me off a second time in short order before she let me rest. I never stopped kissing her skin wherever my lips could find the smooth, sweat-salted flesh or rubbing her powerful back and shoulders.

"How are you so good at that?" She asked me, rhetorically really, as I panted out my approval.

I answered anyway, "Lifetimes of practice." Lazily, I kissed her strapping trap muscles.

"Always forget that." She honestly did. Lived very much in the moment, did Blothilde. It was one of my favorite things about her. "We're throwing in to get new armor when we get back and maybe our own hut, Aldo, Minna, and I. We're doing extremely well on loot on this campaign."

"Congratulations." It was an important milestone for a rising warrior to set out on their own on their own property. "You'll still visit mine now and then?"

Her hands ran down the curve of my lower back and squeezed my ass. "Try and stop me."

I sighed, pleased with the world in her arms.

"The moon waxes. You'll need to change soon?" She asked, regret at the inconvenience of my condition clear in her voice.

"Yes. Tomorrow." I, too, regretted that my alternate form wasn't always a voluntary alternative. "I'll stay here at in the stream for a few days and then catch up to you all back at the hall on your return."

After a pleasant three days in the stream - catching fish and avoiding larger mammals - I returned home as promised.

Aldo and Minna greeted me on arrival with news of Blothilde's death. They assured me that she'd died honorably by a javelin to the throat at the very start of battle, that there would have been nothing I could have done for her as either a comrade or medic. I nodded and took my leave.

I couldn't summon the anger I'd feel later at Johanna's death. Blothilde had lived and died by the sword by preference and an honorable death in battle was what she wanted, though not so soon obviously. I just felt sad.

Some people have told me that they love having dogs as pets, but would never own one again as the passing of their beloved canine hurt them so deeply. I'm not saying the Blothilde was like a dog to me. She was so much more complex and provocative; I knew her dreams, her worries, her worldview, and her laughter. How much more the fool am I for forming a caring attachment to be inexorably severed by one of the four horsemen?

Enough of a fool that I did it again and again. I might wait a year or two after a lover's end, but I'd inevitably grow lonely and take another, each time admonishing myself to not take a personal interest and each time failing to a lesser or greater degree. I crave a human connection to the world I'm forced to inhabit and I hate to sleep alone. My restlessness drives me to find another when loneliness besets me again, and again my heart breaks with the finality of mortal death..

I couldn't find any rest in the present either. After twenty more minutes of tossing and turning in the empty bed of the modern weekend warriors, I gave up and left.

The 80 took me to Reno by midnight. A greedy pawn shop owner traded all the tacky yet valuable jewelry and the Louis Vuitton for a small fraction of their monetary value. Across the street at a 24 hour box store, a small fraction of that money allowed me to purchase a full-face motorcycle helmet, gloves, a leather jacket, cargo pants, thick socks, and jack boots that hurt my healing foot, along with a new bikini, tank top, mesh shorts, and flip-flops. I also bought a pair of leafbladed handless knives, a few protein bars and bottles of water, sewing materials, brown-iris contacts, and a large waterproof haversack.

After that, an all-night salon shaved and styled my hair into a brush cut and dyed it and my eyebrows an ash brown shade, despite the stylist's protests that I was "so pretty" with my long blonde hair.

I parked the GTO in a casino's garage, wiped it down for fingerprints, and popped in my brown contacts. I sewed a leather snap holster for the Desert Eagle, two sleeve sheaths for the knives, and four pockets holding $3k apiece into the leather jacket. (The remaining $4k and change I tucked in my cargo pants.)

With that money I could simply buy a vehicle, but not without a passable driver's license that would take either time or contacts to acquire. So I threw on my new clothes and haversack, grabbed the screwdriver, and headed to the motorcycle section.

At 3am in Reno, no one around was sober enough to question my actions, so I felt along likely bikes until I found a black Kawasaki Ninja with a California plate and a spare key taped to it. I switched that plate with the Nevada plate of a fat canvas-covered Harley that looked like it hadn't moved in months. Then I jumped back on the 80 on my new Ninja heading east.

Aud further impressed me tactically, making the Queen of Scots seem a poor escapist by comparison. Even only ten years earlier, the slippery Selkie would have disappeared without a trace. But nature bloggers reported a ringed seal on the banks of the Napa River. The Doppelgänger tracked down security footage of my new favorite Werebeast leaving a residential break-in in an ugly green car, which was found in a parking structure in Reno where a black motorcycle was stolen and could be seen heading east via satellite.

My poor Aud. Technology rarely favors the hunted...

As the sun rose over the Nevada/Utah line, I saw a sign telling me about a ranch of a particular type. Still being exhausted, I justified stopping for some much needed sound sleep with a gorgeous woman.

Putting my helmet, jacket, and haversack in a locker, I pocketed the key with the four grand or so in my cargo pants. Those sorts of establishments don't usually prefer female clients, but I flashed the money and apparently it was green enough to suit them. It also stood up to a UV light.

Having worked as both a madam and a prostitute myself, I have no moral reservations about utilizing the services of such women. Nonetheless, I eschewed the lineup to wait in the lounge for one of the ladies to come to me. I naturally disliked the idea of choosing women like cuts of meat or slighting one woman with rejection in favor of another.

More importantly though - like most humans - I wanted a lover who showed honest affection, or at least convincing insincere affection. I wanted a woman who wanted me back on a basic level.

I ordered a 100 proof double and then a second. I've difficulty getting tipsy by nature and wanted to get especially relaxed and sleepy.

"Not nervous, are you?" One of the ladies asked as she brushed her fingers through my short, messy hair.

She was in her mid-to-late twenties with long tousled toffee hair, a classic hourglass figure, and shimmering blue eye shadow that set off her cornflower eyes. The sexy-as-hell just-fucked look may have been more than just expertly applied makeup in her case, but I didn't care after a good look at her body. Her painted red lips smiled invitingly and reassuringly without guile or extended canines.

I smiled back and shook my head.

"I'm Crystal," she introduced herself, both hands in my hair.

"Dani," I lied back just as effortlessly to the welcoming woman.

"Well, Dani, what are you looking for so early on a Friday morning?"

"A warm woman's passion and a few hours' sleep. Preferably with you."

"Let's go back to my room and talk."

She led me through a hallway with a plethora of fetish/fantasy rooms, glancing back at me - as I'm sure she's trained to do - to see if any drew my interest. "Crystal" smirked and put a bit more wiggle in her step when she saw that my eyes were politely glued to her ass.