“Calm yourself.” Dr. Ortiz admonished mildly. “Yes, I hear two, possibly three strong heartbeats. You, my dear, will have a fine litter.” He exhaled as the possibilities of the discovery seemed to slowly unfold. “Your computer, please. I must spread the good news.”
Sam directed him to the laptop on the writing desk. We held our breath as he typed out the message that would change our community and possibly the whole world forever. After sending it, he completed the examination. He apologized for having to do a pelvic, explaining he must reach in and feel to verify what a sonogram easily showed.
“Can Sam visit human doctors?” I asked as his hand slipped between Sam’s outspread legs.
His attention stayed on her when he answered. “I believe so. I say yes. I found nothing a human practitioner might suspect out of the ordinary. There is no reason why she can’t receive typical pre-natal care, but…”
“But what?” Sam asked, wincing when he touched something under the sheet covering Sam’s lower half.
“Delivery will have to be at home. Only our kind may attend,” Dr. Ortiz answered from under the hem of Sam’s gown.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
Having completed the examination Dr. Ortiz returned to the light and stood. “We do not know what form the children will take. Señora Sam’s litter is the first of its kind. Surely you can understand the risk of delivering them in a hospital. There will be a great—how do you say—commotion if they emerged as young vampires or lycans. I promise I will prepare myself and be ready when the time comes.”
I stood beside Sam and took her hand. “When is she due?” I asked.
“Again, this is a new experience for all of us but I estimate approximately five months.”
I counted forward in time on my fingers while Sam with a dreamy expression counted backward. I spoke first. “Middle of May is what I get.”
Dr. Ortiz agreed. “We assume Señora Sam’s gestation is similar to that of humans,” he enjoined.
I turned toward Sam for her reaction but her mind was in the past, reflecting on the memory of conception.
The next week a sonogram confirmed Sam carried triplets, a male and two females.
In the uproar over the pregnancy we shelved plans to get Ed out of town. He wouldn’t have gone anyway. He spent any time not at his new job or asleep doting on her. He called her “The vessel of our salvation” using the spare bedroom when he stayed overnight. Sam appreciated the treatment but, while I held Ed dear, his continuous presence grated on my nerves. True to her word, Cynthia braved the teeth of winter and took a bus to our place.
She arrived on a blustery cold Saturday morning in January, wrapped from head to mid-calf in a hooded parka. She stepped out of the cab only after the driver opened the door and offered his arm. She covered the thirty foot walkway to the front door with stilt-like strides powered from her hips, like the gait of a colt whose legs are too long for its body and not completely under control. Trailing behind, loaded down with two suitcases and a duffel bag, the cabbie struggled to keep pace. Halfway to the front door, he quit trying while Cynthia plowed ahead oblivious to his difficulties. She clattered up the stairs and paused at the door, providing the hapless cabbie an opportunity to make up part of the distance. Entering, she pushed back the hood and shook out her hair. It fell around her face in large banana curls. Then she announced herself to those present, Sam, Ed, and me, by singing out, “Miss me?”
The cabbie slipped in behind her, gratefully shedding his burden. Cynthia faced me flashing the New Cynthia eyes. “Doctor Jim, be a dear. Please take care of my man here.” Considering the matter closed she turned and addressed her attention to Sam.
I grumbled, pulling a five dollar bill out of my wallet. He took it and left. When I turned back, Cynthia engaged Sam and Ed in animated conversation. She cast the massive parka aside with a sweep of a long white arm. In the movement she seemed to state she put something behind her. It dropped in the center of a chair seat like a basketball goal made with no net. She wore a black leather micro miniskirt with matching hose and vest. The glossy sable curls falling to her shoulders bounced like springs whenever she moved. I had not completely adjusted to her post emergence appearance. The same square face now filled out with a touch of pink under the cheekbones, ruby red lips, and the overpowering stare emanating from the coal black eyes.
When she arrived she said she planned to stay only for supper but we convinced her to move into the second bedroom, bumping Ed to the living room couch. She could help with Sam but more important she could hunt. From the beginning we decided exposing Sam to Kutzu was out, so I killed the old way. I drank the blood, cutting up the rest for her. I needed to kill almost once a month to keep up with Sam’s rapacious and growing appetite. Cynthia would be a big help. We spent part of the evening reacquainting Cynthia with Sam’s tools and procedures, including the location of the cutlery, the bath tub where we dissected kills, and the containers for blood and fluids.
She went to work the next night. Leaving at dusk dressed in a skimpy outfit, she returned around midnight with a well-dressed, drunken young man. She called him “a player.” I grumpily left a comfortable bed to let them in.
“Who’s this?” Cynthia’s companion asked, “your dad?”
“No,” she mumbled in a feigned slur as if drunk, too, “He’s my roommate’s old man. He’s cool.” Leaving me standing in the dark, they bumped their way into Cynthia’s room, closing the door. I caught a glimpse of the tea pot on the dresser with a plain wax candle burning beside it. Sam brewed the potion before going to bed and put the pot on a hot plate to keep it warm.
For the next two hours the noises of their lovemaking kept me awake. Cynthia used all of her formidable wiles to arouse her companion. At first nothing worked, because of how drunk he was. I heard her cursing under her breath at his lack of response, but she didn’t quit. After an hour the alcohol must have begun to wear off and Cynthia’s efforts prevailed because she made admiring comments about the size of his manhood. Her voice seemed loud in the silent apartment. Blame the hyper hearing of our kind.
Soon it was off to the races. I pulled the pillow over my head a couple of times in a futile attempt to shut out their sounds but, in spite of myself, I began to eavesdrop. I felt like I cheated on Sam who lay beside me sleeping through it all. After filtering out the background noises of the bed’s motion, I heard their sounds alone. I listened to the growing urgency of both voices and the repetitive murmur of their movements. I knew from Cynthia’s frank descriptions she kept a string of 24-karat gold beads handy. She inserted them one at a time into the victim’s anus while they made love. At the beginning of his climax she yanked the string out. The abrupt exit of the beads provided exquisite resistance to the contracting anal muscles, intensifying the pleasure. At one point he cried out as if in pain, but Cynthia’s orgasmic howl easily drowned him out. Silence filled the apartment, broken by the soft hiss and vent of lungs as the victim’s heart, pumping at full tilt, distributed the drug in the tea to all parts of him.
Across the courtyard lights in neighboring apartments winked on. Throughout the night, Animal Control received several complaints. The next morning a day long search for a feral dog commenced.
Sam didn’t budge.
I tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t because the sounds I expected to hear next, putting the kill in a body bag and carrying him to the tub in the hall bath, didn’t happen. After five minutes lying on my back wide-awake, listening to the silence coming from Cynthia’s room, I got out of bed, threw on a robe and went to investigate. I knocked lightly on the closed door.
“Is everything all right?” I asked quietly.
“Come in, Doctor Jim.”
I entered, expecting to find her dressed and processing the kill. Instead she stood naked over the bed, facing away in the dim light of the candle burning by the teapot. The image stopped me in my tracks. Her erect shoulders pulled her back into a tense arch. She fully extende
d one leg, firmly planting it on the floor while the other knelt on the mattress as she calmly surveyed the cooling corpse. In spite of myself my eyes were drawn to the black tuft of hair dusting the two soft pink lips protruding high between milky buttocks. From the relative strength of the scents seeping from them, he must have had an abundant climax. I hoped he enjoyed it.
“I broke a nail,” she said quietly but in the absolute silence her voice resonated throughout the room.
I tried to ignore her nakedness. I really did. I concentrated on the kill lying on his stomach, partly turned away with one hand dragging on the floor. His smooth, well-muscled pale skin had only a touch of tan except for the butt. It shone white, hard and round, but still was a shade or two darker than Cynthia. On each cheek she etched four parallel gashes. Darkened by blood they stood out vividly against the much lighter flesh.
“What’s this?” I asked pointing to the wounds. Blood trickled from a couple of them.
“It’s my mark.” She said, “I always mark a guy when I do him.”
I created a vivid picture of him frantically plunging into her heated core while she held a butt cheek in each hand. As orgasm approached her grip tightened and she pulled the cheeks apart as far as possible. She dug wickedly honed nails into his flesh. As they raked across the skin when the butt cheeks returned to their normal position, there must have been an exquisite mixture of pleasure and pain that brought him to the edge. Pulling out the love beads finished it. Approaching, I surveyed his chiseled young face, frozen in death. I thought of how only a few hours ago he lived in anticipation of a memorable sex filled night, and now lay stone dead without even the power to brush away the fly scampering across the lip of his open mouth.
I waited until it took flight and snatched it out of the air, crushing it. I opened my hand, offering it whimsically to her. “Demitasse?”
She threw back her head, laughing. “Thanks, but it’s not my flavor.”
Almost without realizing it, I returned to staring at her nakedness again. Reluctantly, I pulled my head away, back to the kill. I opened the body bag Sam folded and placed on the dressing table. I spread it on the floor beside the bed, rolling the kill into it. While squatting down to zip the bag an erection pressed hot and hard against my inner thigh. Across the room Cynthia’s black silhouette reposed, casually inspecting a handful of fingernails lycan vision permitted her to see in the sputtering candlelight.
“Help me,” I ordered, lifting one end of the bag.
She must have expected me to carry the kill by myself. Moving an adult corpse posed no problem, but I had enough of her haughtiness going back to when she cavalierly ordered me to tip the cab driver. With a pout illuminated by the candle next to the teapot, she bent forward to lift her end.
We dropped the package in the tub. After sliding the body out, I put the bag in with the dirty clothes. While I washed my hands in the utility room sink, Cynthia approached from behind and rubbed firmly against me in the dark. “Doctor Jim wants little Cynthia doesn’t he?” she asked in a slow teasing voice.
The feeling of her lanky soft fleshed torso and warm portal of young womanhood sliding back and forth over the back of me prompted the front of me to full attention.
“No,” I protested, refusing to face her. “This is wrong.”
“I know you want me.” She cooed in my ear. Her warm breath made me lightheaded as she grazed her fingernails down the back of my robe. “I saw how your eyes never left me.”
In the back of my mind I told myself I was crazy to turn down such an offering. As I turned and pushed her away, the light went on. Sam stood in the door frame, arms folded with the baleful expression of God’s avenging angel on her face. Cynthia slowly backed away and stood erect.
“I didn’t mean anything,” she meekly offered.
“I heard every word. We need to talk,” Sam replied. Turning toward me she added, “Just us girls.”
From the expression on Cynthia’s face I don’t think she looked forward to her prospects. I felt relieved to be out of the line of fire. “Be a dear and brew us some fresh tea,” Sam cheerfully said to me. “Cynthia and I will process the kill.”
I clattered around in the kitchen while they talked on the other side of the bathroom door. The three of us knew a closed door and the sounds of carving the kill posed little barrier to a lycan or vampire who wanted to eavesdrop. I promised to give them privacy as a show of respect to Cynthia, now full-fledged lycan. The days of public reprimands were over.
Like hell I wasn’t going to listen!
I heard Sam ask, “What did you think you were doing?”
“I couldn’t help myself Sam. You know what I’m going through.”
Cynthia had a point. Sam told me for the first ten years after emergence her sexual appetite knew no limits, the so-called hot pants or horny decade. She compared it to finding a wondrous misplaced toy and continuously playing with it to make up for lost time.
“Cynthia, you have to understand while I am pregnant I need Jim, all of Jim. Afterward I will share him if you like. You deserve the best and he is as good as they come.” The sound of a large joint of meat plopping into the tub echoed from the bathroom. Sam’s last statement warmed me inside. Top that, David.
“Don’t I know it? He’s the best.” Cynthia agreed, probably remembering what I did to help her control morphing.
“As I said, I am willing to share, but not right now. Do you understand?”
After a long silence I heard Cynthia’s voice. “Okay, I’ll lay-off. I promise, but it’ll be tough. He is a yummy man.”
What did my old Navy buddy say? Ride the bus. Don’t step in front of it. I could be patient.
“Tea’s ready,” I called out from the kitchen
“Place it on the dinette.” Sam answered. “We’re taking a break. Be there in a second.”
They washed up and came out, each carrying a plate with about twenty plastic bags of cuts. After putting them in the freezer we sat down for tea. When we finished Sam said to me, “Go to bed, dear. I’ll be along after Cynthia and I finish.”
I fell into an exhausted sleep. At dawn I stirred when Sam got out of bed. “Sam,” I started to say, “You know I would never…”
She turned from the dresser with a small object in her hand and returned to me. “I know,” she whispered, putting two fingers over my lips as she did on our first night. “I heard it all. You were wonderful, and I love you for it.” She threw back the covers and sat next to me, holding a jar of sweet smelling personal lubricant. “Now you get your reward.”
* * * *
We invited Ed for supper. Cynthia said the four of us getting together reminded her of the old times in group. Ed asked if anyone heard from Jethro Lee. Cynthia made a couple of anatomically impossible speculations regarding where he ought to be.
Suddenly, Sam sat erect with a start. “They’re kicking,” she announced. “Ohhh, are they kicking!”
Ed got there first, practically running Cynthia over. Sam lifted her blouse exposing a prominently round stomach. She placed Ed’s hand right below the navel. After a few seconds his face lit up. “My God,” he exclaimed with a crack in his voice. “I feel it. I feel it.”
“Let me see,” Cynthia snapped, trying to push his hand aside to touch the spot herself.
“Don’t fight children,” Sam chided gently. “There’s plenty to go around. Here Cynthia. Put your hand here.”
As they felt the fluttering movements in Sam, she shifted her attention from the small torrents in her stomach to me. “Do you think I will ever get my shape back? Will you be upset if I don’t?”
Benefiting from five month’s experience on how to answer loaded questions from pregnant women I said, “Sam, I’m sure everyone here agrees with me when I say you never were more beautiful than you are now.”
At first doubtful Sam stared at each of us as we shook heads in agreement. “Really?” she asked at length, as she started to cry.
Chapter Eleven
A couple of nights later I had to stay after class to counsel a particularly disturbed freshman. The session didn’t end until after dark. By then a chilly fog had closed in. Sam took the car that day to run errands. I thought about calling her to pick me up but reconsidered after seeing the fog. Remembering this was the night Ed made deliveries near the University, I called and asked for a ride home.
Five minutes later the fuzzy amber and white cylinders of Ed’s truck lights rounded the corner, pulling to a stop in front of the large marbled columns of the Mathematics building. I darted across the cold, damp open space to the warm humid refuge of the truck cab.
“Awful night, isn’t it?” Ed suggested.
“Yeah, I’ll be glad to get home.”
Ed put the truck in gear with an awful grind of metal gearing and we took off. About a mile later a panel truck pulled onto the road. It was several blocks ahead but because of the fog, no human eye could see it.
“That asshole doesn’t have any lights on,” Ed noted.
I peered ahead. “You’re right, not even parking lights.”
I heard a faint female squeak, suddenly cut off, followed by the slide and slam of a van door. Ed and I turned to each other. I spoke first. “Something’s not right.”
Ed killed the lights on his truck. “Let’s see what’s up with this.” And he set off in trail.
After making its pick up, the van turned on regular lights and set out at moderate speed. Ed’s vision allowed him to see traffic from a far greater distance than humans, making it easy for us to navigate our way along. After a few minutes, trailing along in the fog began to seem pointless. Then the van extinguished its lights while taking an abrupt right hand turn.
“I’m sure it’s nothing, but we’ve come this far. Let’s check it out.” I said.
A minute later Ed hushed me with a spidery finger to his lips. “Hear that?”
The noises of a young woman’s struggles faintly broke the night silence. Then a much louder male voice growled, ordering her to shut up, followed by a sharp slap. The van had turned down a dirt road leading to small clapboard house set far back behind a growth of bamboo.
The Other Kind (The Progeny of Evolution Series) Page 12
