The Selie

Aud still lay healing, fitful sleep doubtlessly disturbed in frustration at reconciling herself to her new station as a slave. I could never accept such a thing myself, but a werebeast's needs are different. Like Haydee, the selkie craved her gilded cage deeply, far more deeply than freedom. Maybe even so deep that she could deny it to herself, even as she effectively chose daily to stay.

As Edmund Dantes kept his dear Haydee, I would keep my Aud in luxury and love, until her gratitude and devotion were returned to me tenfold.

The night brought me no sleep. The morning brought me a tall blond in expensive clothes with a black leather messenger bag over one shoulder.

I was immediately struck as I'd been by the people on the bus, as though I were seeing someone wearing another person and persona like garb that never quite fit.

It's difficult to define. Like a woman who's dyed her hair slightly outside the palette allowed by her coloring. A man who's lost a leg and walks with the slightest of hitches on an extremely well crafted prosthetic. A sociopath who's looking on some terrible accident with a crowd of honestly horrified people and chosen a facial expression to appropriately match theirs.

I found the feeling utterly unsettling and thereby recognized the doppelgänger.

"Don't worry," The offputting creature acknowledged, skipping a greeting altogether. "Most werebeasts are disturbed by me. Like frightened dogs sensing an earthquake."

"Are you as wrong as you seem?" Inherently deceitful things are often disarmed by a direct question, but there was no effect.

"Yes, and you're already on my shitlist for dragging me halfway across the states instead of putting up your pathetic fight immediately like a normal werebeast." The spiteful monster sneered at me. "Maybe that shows sense for a weak-ass seal, but what the hell good is a werebeast with a brain? Nearly as irritating as the vampire that refused to shoot you and have done with it, because it 'spoils the purity' of the hunt." Grudgingly, the doppelgänger added, "Points for cleanup work on that

gangrel

and his gas station attendant though. Almost professional, that."

I nodded to accept the open insults and backhanded compliment, seeing no reason to agitate such a horrid creature. Especially in my helpless state.

The doppelgänger retrieved a camera from the messenger bag and turned my head physically for straight on and profile shots. I didn't like that, but it's at least not yet conclusively identifiable data with current technology and occasionally being caught in photos is hardly to be avoided these days.

I balked at the fingerprinting kit that was pulled from the messenger bag next. I'd been avoiding such an intentional record of my prints for years.

"Better not make me do this the hard way, werebeast," I was threatened. "Might make someone think you planned to make a run for it."

I nodded again and extended my hand.

I'd submitted to both the fingerprinting and a bite impression when the puta got a steel scalpel out of the bag next.

Back in Viricum, starting sometime before 500 BCE, I forged steel instruments myself. I also kept slaves, but never took glee in their discomfort as the doppelgänger seemed to in mine.

The tribe of lycanthropes I traveled with took over a settlement there as they found the Noric steel could be forged from iron mined in the mountains. Noric steel was especially prized as the iron used to make it naturally occurred with the right amount of carbon for a strong steel alloy. Not that we understood the science back then.

Bored with constant raiding, I took to blacksmithing. Working on the forge and creating beautiful and superior weapons captured my interest for years. But I did need slaves, for both support in the manual labor at the smithy and to help with ordering material and selling product.

Slaves were usually the non-combatants taken in tribal warfare and most often integrated fully into our tribe within a generation or two, automatically in the case of boys who proved able to "take the bite" and become Berserkers themselves.

Berserker bites are like vampire bites in that successful turning was based on genetics and successes become both extremely long-lived and infertile (although, a Berserker bite is survivable if the affected appendage is cut off immediately.) Unfortunately, the tradition was to administer a testing bite on boys' left pinkies before their first raid, which was usually before the conception of their first child. As more female slaves were taken than males, fidelity was imposed on neither gender, and paternity was based on parental relationship vice sperm success, the male carried recessive gene slowly died out in most tribes.

The proportion of male to female slaves and frequency of male slaves becoming warriors meant a lot of my slaves were female. I didn't take advantage though, because the motivation was never clear. Besides, sex between women had no consequences in that culture, so I wasn't hurting for lovers such that I'd be tempted to take advantage of those who worked for me without choice.

The last sparks of the day flew off a new blade I hammered as Cera walked up to my workshop wearing a loose gray dress and brown leather sandals. I tossed the hot blade in cool water with a smile. Cera only ever came to see me for one reason.

"Hello, stranger," I greeted her teasingly. Both of us knew very well that she only visited my shop while her husband was out raiding and he'd only just left again after spending months at home with her.

"Don't be mean," she sauntered in and put her hand on my bare shoulder, smearing the sweat and soot down to my bicep, "you know I get lonely."

"You should have married a farmer instead of a warrior then, huh?" I set down my hot hammer and tongs to give the sexy little bronzed brunette my full attention. "Have yourself a warm bed every night of the raiding season."

"What farmer could afford to buy his wife jewelry like these, though?" She showed off her shiny and intricately detailed torc and bracelets.

"Whore," I accused jokingly. Everyone knew that she and her husband were childhood sweethearts.

"If that's what you really think," Cera put her other hand on my other shoulder and laid her head against my shoulder blade, "You can certainly pay me before we get down to it, if you want."

I laughed, "I've had you for free for far too long to start paying for it now, Cera."

Turning to her, I took her arms in my hands instead, leaving inverse smear marks with my dirty hands on her clean biceps.

She stood up on her tiptoes to kiss my waiting lips. I kissed her back, pulling her into a comfortable embrace. Then I paused as I felt something I hadn't expected to feel.

"You're pregnant?" I asked stupidly, laying my hand flat on her growing stomach.

"Yes," Cera confirmed, putting her hand over mine on her baby bump, "four months now."

"That's lovely," I kissed her again, more gently. I'd been with many pregnant women before, so I wasn't nervous and knew I needn't be delicate with her. Delicacy simply always seemed right when a woman had life developing inside her though. "Come with me."

"Come where? You're not...?" We normally fucked right there on the dirt floor of my shop, so she worried in her insecure state that I wasn't as attracted to her.

"I'm very into you and you've never been more beautiful," I wrapped my long arm around her shoulders, "I'm taking you to my bed so that I don't hurt your back."

Cera smiled in response and let me lead her.

Back in my little hut behind the shop, I sat Cera down on my platform bed and worked to get a good fire burning in my little fireplace. While she waited, I asked her questions about how her pregnancy was going. It was her first, so her every experience was a revelation about life.

As I mentioned, I'd had pregnant women before. So I let her talk. And when she wanted to keep talking after the fire burned bright, I knelt before her, took off her sandals, and rubbed her feet while she told me about her changes in physiology and diet.

"Hey," she pet my long white blonde hair, "we were going to have sex?"

"We were," I set one of her feet on my shoulder and massaged the back her calf and thigh, "Still interested?"

In answer, she hiked up her dress and pulled it off over her head. I smiled and lifted her by her ankles, twisting her to lay her on her back in my bed.

Cera interlaced her fingers behind her head and kept her legs well spread.

I kissed her thighs, her tummy, and her mound, caressing and fondling her ass and thighs as I got her ready for more.

She nodded to me, biting her lip and squeezing her own nipples between her eager fingers.

I nosed into her heated sex, breathing in her feminine scent as I extended my tongue to taste the intoxicating flavor of her leaking quim.

She grunted, trembled, and squealed. How her sex noises changed while receiving oral during her pregnancy legitimately fascinated me. Not enough to keep me from moving things along as her widened hips rose from my clean cloth sheets.

Cera needed more than my tongue. I brought her right leg over my shoulder and purposefully slipped two long fingers into her warm wetness.

She groaned as I slowly fingerfucked her overly-horny beautiful body. I returned to kissing her belly and her breasts. And added thumbing her clit for good measure to make her hit those high notes.

Actually that horny, she didn't hold out for long. Her squeals got breathier, her body temperature spiked, her legs shook. She needed her release.

My skillful hand sped, driving my stiffened fingers in and out of her pulsing pussy. My strumming thumb hammered on her lovely clit like a more gentle version of my real hammer shaping a blade in my forge.

She came, keening in freed pleasure as her beautiful body received that release that she needed so desperately. I pulled blankets over us and spooned her tenderly, enjoying both her warmth and the natural feelings of protectiveness that her condition inspired in me.

Over the next few months, Cera came to see me fairly often, always a welcome visitor at the end of a long day. Eventually, the walk became too much for her, and I went to see her a couple times platonically as she neared her due date. We had little in common outside of sex however, so my visits to her were sparse.

Although trained as a midwife, I wasn't practising at the time and I didn't generally like to deliver the children of lovers in any case. I wish I'd made an exception for Cera though.

I heard only the following day that she'd died in labor in the night, or I would have come sooner. I didn't examine the body and don't know if my intervention would have helped. Childbirth remained an incredibly dangerous event - even with the best and brightest medical care - until the modern age.

Guilt hung about me in her death nonetheless, and so I undertook the raising of her boy, Donogb. I even began working as a warrior and battle medic again when the lad took the bite and became a Berserker. He grew to be a valiant fighter and a wise chief.

Chief Donogb died childless though, and in the same failed raid on Illyria that took me to my life in Greece.

My mind brought back to Greece again, I found metaphorical stones and decided to make a rather rude suggestion as to what the doppelgänger could do with the shiny silver scalpel instead of cutting some part of me open.

The doppelgänger intended me pain and harm in any case. Might as well insult the sadist, since I lacked the physical capability to literally fight back.

"What are you doing in my lab, doppelgänger?" Thankfully, Geber returned. He was incensed himself this time at the apparently interloping doppelgänger.

"Vampire business, hellcat," the thing sneered at Geber while leering at me, giving me the strong impression that I would have been peeled like a potato had the good doctor not returned, "And I still need to take blood, skin, and tissue samples. Maybe bone marrow, too?"

"The various DNA samples I've already taken are more than sufficient, so now you're done," Geber answered sharply, inserting himself bodily between us. "So fuck off and don't hurry back."

The doppelgänger scowled and left, pissed at the malevolently enjoyable torture being interrupted.

"Hello, Geber," I greeted my new friend. "I can't tell you how welcome you are."

"Glad to be welcomed by someone," he returned my friendly sentiment, "I'm here to check on you once more before you turn. I lack the specialization to evaluate seal health," Geber chuckled affably. "You're cute like that though. So pudgy and fuzzy."

I shot him a look.

He laughed aloud. "How can you still be sensitive about that?"

It's a weak point, but I'm still unhappy at my alternate form. It's just not scary. I changed the subject. "What's with that doppelgänger thing?"

"Violent-minded sociopath. Give it wide berth."

"Are all of them that way?"

"Dunno." Geber shrugged as he looked in my ear with that flashlight thing modern doctors use. "I've only met the one and I'm not looking to meet more."

"I can concur on that." A certain level of understanding can be held for vampires that must kill to to eat and live, but that evil thing wasn't even a natural predator, just a base sadistic murderer. Still, I was curious as to what was behind Geber having to bow and scrape to Marika, but gave him the authority to curtly dismiss the doppelgänger once "vampire business" was finished. "Meanwhile, how is it that you can send the 'sociopath' away at will?"

"The doppelgänger's talents as an identity thief and industrial spy are valuable, but mine as a scientist are more so, at least for the time being. Until that changes, I have more status than the doppelgänger and can therefore pull rank."

"Are you that important?" I wasn't trying to be rude and Geber didn't seem a braggart, but it was hard to believe that a nest of vampires would put more emphasis on R&D than on CAPEX.

"Fairly important," which, correcting for Geber's modesty, meant extremely important, "Or the project the Rada has me working on is to important to them anyway. Marika had to exert some influence to divert me to your medical care at the expense of focus on my other duties."

"'Rada?'" Marika's care and concern weren't lost on me, but the term "Rada" eluded me.

"Old Slavic word for a council of elders. Led by the Kneginja, an Old Slavic word for chieftainess."

"So are you on the Rada?" I honestly hoped to understand the pecking order in my new involuntary community, the complicacy of which was becoming apparent.

"No. The vampires have a strict internal hierarchy with the dozen or so in the Rada at the apex, but the newest fledgling would still be top tier compared to the rest of us. Next would be the employed specialist immortals other than vampires, like me and the doppelgänger. A long rung down would be the unskilled immortals who mostly serve as domestics. And, at the very bottom, you werebeasts are completely without authority over yourselves or anyone else. Paradoxically, you're the best kept as the vampires like their meals happy."

"What about skilled werebeasts?"

"Oh, honey," Geber lamented, amused and apologetic at once, but making no move to touch me. "You could crack faster-than-light travel and still be considered more useful to them as a blood donor."

"That's encouraging." I'd always enjoyed delving into changing professions and sciences. Navigation, medicine, blacksmithing, whatever the skill, I liked to feel accomplished and instrumental.

"It's not to say you mayn't be able to pursue loftier aims as well, but you'll primarily serve as a source of sustenance," he paused, "I don't know how to say this without sounding bigoted, but I've never heard of a werebeast undertaking anything lofty anyway."

"Well, you haven't heard-" We both paused as the door opened, fairly certain of who'd be coming. Marika must have been able to tell somehow when I woke. Whether her method was biological or technological, I couldn't know.

Marika stode in purposefully - but not wrathfully - to my side and addressed Geber while stroking my hair, "How is your patient?"

There were no mirrors in the laboratory where I healed, but I imagined how silly my growing white blonde hair must look with its browned tips.

"Excellent. Vertebra and pelvic bones are fully healed, along with associated organ damage. Femur, lower leg, and arm bones are mostly mended. Torn tendons and muscles will start improving much faster from this point. By the time she turns again, she should have no more than light scarring."

Marika nodded and seated herself at my bedside, staring at me. Geber bowed and left, rightly assuming he was dismissed.

"Hello," I greeted her belatedly, uncomfortable with the silence.

"The doppelgänger knows now not to bother you again," she declared, apparently in answer.

"Thanks." It wasn't exactly a standard answer for 'hello,' but still a relief to know.

"You are welcome. Those creatures tend to discomfort your kind. The feeling is natural, but I want you to be comfortable." Her eyes and fingertips caressed my skin.

"You...sensed...my discomfort?" Up to that point, I'd thought her talk of smelling my mood from a distance was largely bragging.

"Yes." She let the silence hang again, giving me time to think through the implications of not being able to hide emotions from her.

Everything I learned about my new environment made escape a more remote possibility. The implied recordkeeping of the doppelgänger's identification collection, the well-funded laboratory and drugging of Geber, the empathic capabilities of my primary captor, my casual dismissal by the other vampires who'd seen me, and the sheer size and structure of the nest, those factors all demonstrated the evident and likely layers upon layers of impediments to self-extraction. The whole made even envisaging a successful bid for freedom daunting.

"That one in particular revels in behaviors that you will not be subjected to in my house," she referred to the doppelgänger again, "And I took care to make myself clear on that point."

"How?" I disliked the doppelgänger intensely, but I wouldn't wish even that sadist to be harmed on my behalf.

"An abuse to you, especially from a lowly transmortal, is an unacceptable offense to me and to my station. There is no need for you to worry over how I deal with offenses to me, though, dear Aud," Marika explained gently and pressed lightly on my good shoulder with her cool palm. "When will you turn?"

There's not a specific moment at which all werebeasts change at once. I assume it's based on relative mass and position on the earth, but it can vary over about a twelve hour period between individual werebeasts and even for oneself on successive months.

"3, maybe 4 hours." Although I won't know the moment until a few minutes before, I can usually gage the hour with some accuracy.

"Tell me then, other than vampires, what supernatural creatures have you met in your travels?" It felt weirdly like a first date question.

"Just one other werebeast," I glossed past Phixidis, not thinking that story appropriate to the moment, "And a few lycanthrope tribes."

"Berserkers," she spat, rage contorting her features.

Her sudden vehemence put me off balance and I waited.

"I just hate them," Marika said by way of apology. "We hate them, I mean, as instinctively as Zuen hated Nergal. No living pack has been spotted for a millennium though."

Out of a now ancient sense of loyalty, I didn't correct her. Besides, for all I knew, lycanthropes may really have died out. "Understandable. They're long-lived mortals, but become sterile after they're bitten and the predisposition is genetic."

"Really? And we were all so proud of hunting them into extinction," she mused.