Black Friday

by Jan Stryvant

  Sean looked puzzled for a moment, "And here I thought I was going crazy, because I've been having strange thoughts, like someone else was in my head."

  "That's your beast. Lions tend to be dominant, strong, very focused on order and their prides; they're sort of the organizers and rule makers of the cat kingdom."

  "But," Sean looked confused, "where did he come from? Was he like, injected into me or something?"

  Roxy shrugged again, "No one really knows. Some think it's something born of your own ego, given shape by the particular strain of lycan that you become, but I honestly couldn't tell you. The thing you need to understand is that he's there, he isn't going away, and you need to accept that, to accept this new part of you, or you'll have problems."

  Sean followed all of that, and considered it for a moment.

  "So how do you know.... Wait a moment," he said, "you said 'allows us to change!" He looked her over, carefully now. "Are you a werelion too?"

  "No, werelions are rare, well at least around here they are; I'm a werecheetah."

  Sean opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, there was one way to find out if she was telling the truth or just pulling his leg.

  "Prove it!"

  Roxy smiled at him, and just like that, there was a cheetah-girl lying where Roxy was. If he hadn't had his hand on her hip, if he hadn't felt the suddenly surge of, something, if he wasn't now stroking a hip covered in short fur, he'd think he was dreaming. But the strangest part of all was that rather than being scared, that new 'part' of him was suddenly getting very excited.

  "I, I think this is going to take a little while to get used to," Sean said looking her over. She was bigger now, at least as tall as he was, and there was definitely a lot more muscle on her frame than before. She still had the blonde hair, and while her face now had fur and a muzzle, it still looked a little like her.

  "This is my hybrid form," she told him, her voice slightly changed. "Where both my beast and I co-exist in equal parts."

  "How do I do that?" Sean wondered out loud.

  He got whacked by her tail then. She had a tail! And she laughed at the expression on his face.

  "First you have to master your lion form. Then, once you've achieved harmony with your lion, and your lion with you, then you can try it."

  She shifted back then and once again, it was just him and a beautiful naked woman.

  "You look pretty hot like that, you know."

  Roxy grinned, "Yes, of course I do! But my beast is very much interested in your beast, and well, right now I'm afraid you might end up a lot worse for wear if I stayed like that."

  "I thought cheetahs and lions didn't get along?" Sean said, trying to remember some of those nature shows he'd seen.

  "While we share some traits with our native species, we're still half human. There is a certain commonality amongst all of us lycans," 'and,' she finished quietly to herself, 'some cheetahs can be terribly subby when presented with a nice big dominant lion.'

  And apparently one Roxy Channing was suddenly feeling very subby. The idea of not just having a lion, but raising him up to be just the kind of male she liked was quickly becoming rather attractive, and not just because her beast was pushing for it.

  Sean sighed, shook his head, then looking over at her he just shrugged and pulled her closer.

  "You seem to be taking this rather well," Roxy purred as he started to run his hands up and down her body.

  "Right now I'm in bed with a lovely woman who wants me," Sean said, smiling slowly. "I think that kind of overrides any other worries or problems I might have. I'm sure I'll freak out afterwards."

  "That's your beast talking," Roxy chuckled.

  "Well, at least he's got good taste and good sense!"

  Sean kissed her again, and decided to work his way south this time, and investigate that rather inviting bosom of hers. Stopping halfway, he looked up at her with a puzzled expression on his face.

  "Does this mean that I'm going to want to change into a lion at every full moon?"

  Roxy grinned and pushed his head back down, "No, that's wolves."

  A muffled "oh" was his reply.

  "Cats like to shift during the new moon, when it's darkest."

  Sean shut up then, and decided to concentrate on better things, namely Roxy's chest.

  Jump Right In

  "I'm hungry," Sean sighed as he snuggled up against Roxy, who he discovered fit rather nicely against him.

  "I know, I can hear your stomach," she chuckled.

  "Well, let's hit the shower and go get some food?"

  "That sounds like an idea," Roxy nodded, "go grab your towel."

  "Umm," Sean said looking at her, "you want to shower together?"

  She laughed, "I don't see why not. I look the same wet as I do dry."

  "I'm not so sure about that," Sean replied, laughing as well. "We might end up in there until midnight."

  "Don't worry, once the hot water runs out, so will we!"

  Sean had to admit that showering with a woman was fun. Though sex in the shower sounded better than it actually was, water had a tendency to wash away certain natural lubrications.

  They returned to her room and got dressed; Sean was actually starting to get hungry enough that thoughts of fooling around were now taking second place.

  "Let's stop by your room first," she told him.

  Sean shrugged, "Okay, but why?"

  "I want to look at the clothing you had on yesterday, that's all."

  Sean nodded and unlocked his door as she locked hers.

  "Sorry about the mess," he said a little embarrassed.

  "Eh, typical problem of the male condition," she said and went over to the pile of clothes directly under his still open window.

  "Don't you ever close that?" she asked him.

  Sean shrugged, "We're on the third floor, not like anyone can really jump that high."

  "I wouldn't be too sure about that," Roxy said and pointed to eight parallel claw marks on the outside window ledge.

  Sean gulped, "I did that?"

  Roxy nodded, "Yup," she picked up the small pile of clothes on the ground by the window, a pair of pants, mostly shredded, a shirt, mostly shredded, a pair of underwear, mostly shredded and a pair of socks that were just missing the toes. "And you did this too."

  "Well that explains my sneakers," Sean sighed.

  Roxy nodded, "Yeah, shifting is hell on clothes, part of why I wear shorts and stretchy fabric if I think I might have to shift."

  "So, you're saying I shifted then?" Sean asked looking at his clothes as Roxy started to sniff at them. "What are you doing, anyway?"

  "Trying to identify whose blood this is."

  Sean turned pale, "Those are blood stains?"

  "Yup," she turned and looked at him, "you live in Reno and you've never seen bloodstains before?"

  "Wellll, not ones that big! There must be enough blood there to..." Sean trailed off as he thought about that.

  "Kill a man?" Roxy asked.

  Sean nodded dumbly.

  "Actually, I suspect it was at least two, and there's a lot of blood from the werelion that bit you as well."

  "Do you, do you think I did it?"

  "Considering that a lot of this blood is yours?" she shook her head, "No. In fact, I'm wondering now if that's why he bit you."

  "Huh?"

  "If you were badly wounded, dying even, by biting you and infecting you, he may have saved your life."

  "I really wish I could remember now," Sean said shaking his head.

  "Well, getting infected can be a pretty traumatic experience, and it looks like you went through a previous one prior to it happening. I'm not surprised you blacked out on it. With time I'm sure it will come back to you."

  "What are you, a psychiatrist?"

  Roxy laughed, "No, game design."

  "Oh."

  "With a minor in psychology."

  "Really?"

  "Well, how else are you supposed to s
eparate the rubes from their money?" she laughed. "Let's go eat. We can talk about this later."

  They went to the Carl's Junior over by the mall, because it was cheap, close, and you could walk there in only fifteen minutes. The sun was already setting, Spring may be coming, but it hadn't gotten here yet so the days were still short.

  Sean ordered four double cheeseburgers.

  "You that hungry?" the girl behind the counter asked.

  "Oh, I'll bring the extra home to eat later," Sean said and did his best not to blush. But Roxy then ordered two with a chocolate shake right after that.

  "Track team," she told the bewildered girl who was no doubt looking at Roxy's rather trim figure.

  "Honestly," Sean said when they finally got their food and sat down, "I feel like I could eat this all."

  Roxy nodded and started in on her own food with a will. "We burn more calories, especially when we shift."

  "And here I thought it was all the sex!" Sean smirked, and then laughed as Roxy blushed rather brightly for a change.

  "That too," she whispered and then took another bite of her burger.

  They spent the next ten minutes in relative silence as they both ate, Sean really had been planning to take one of the burgers back, but his body was starving and wanted every last bit of food.

  "Man if I keep eating like this, I'm gonna go broke," he sighed and then spied a newspaper on the next table, with a picture of a rather nasty accident on the front.

  "Hey, what's this?" he said pulling the paper over.

  "Hmm?" Roxy said, and then moved around to sit next to him as he read the article.

  "Says here that a van went out of control and three people died, the driver, one who wasn't wearing his seatbelt, and another who," Sean looked up at her, "Got decapitated?"

  "Look at the way the doors are hanging off," she said pointing to the picture.

  "Oh my god," Sean said and felt the blood drain from his face, "you don't think that's connected to me, do you?"

  "Only one way to find out," Roxy said and looked at the picture again, "You know, that's not all that far from here. East Tenth and Manhattan."

  Sean looked at it, and something vaguely registered about a van, a van and blood, a lot of blood. But then it was gone.

  "Are you sure?" he asked in a soft voice.

  "I'm sure there'll be all sorts of folks out looking at the accident site. Humans are kinda ghoulish like that," she smirked.

  "No, we're not!" he protested.

  "You're not one of them anymore, Sean," Roxy said, and leaning over she kissed him! "Remember that."

  "Wow," Sean said and looked at her.

  "Oh, you'll get used to it," she told him. It wasn't like he had much of a choice after all.

  "No, I mean you kissed me, in public!" Sean looked at her, "I don't think I've ever had a girlfriend do that before!"

  "Oh well, in that case," Roxy laughed and leaned over and laid a nice long and wet one on him.

  Sean got over his surprise quickly enough, until someone coughed and mumbled something about 'get a room.'

  Giggling they separated and getting up and tossing their trash they quickly went outside. The sun had set, but with all the lights around, and the city just a mile away, it never really got that dark in Reno.

  "You must have dated some pretty lousy girls," Roxy told him as they left, holding hands.

  Sean shrugged, "Actually I never really dated that much."

  "Really? Why not?"

  "When my father died, he left us pretty badly in debt. We lost everything we had, the house, cars, hell they even took most of my clothing and all my games! If I wasn't in school, I was working anyplace that would have me. I think I've bussed tables or washed dishes at every casino and restaurant in the city."

  "How old where you?"

  "I was eight when he died," Sean sighed and shook his head. "They told us it was some kind of workplace accident. But the insurance company claimed it was negligence and effectively that made it his own fault, and they refused to pay."

  "Wow, that sucks!"

  "Then the city came around and fined us a quarter of a million dollars because of 'unsafe conditions' at his company. The EPA fined us another couple hundred grand, and well, bills came due and the government had already frozen all of our money, before seizing it.

  "Don't even get me started on the IRS."

  Roxy moved closer and leaned against him, she could hear it in his voice that he was still pretty torn up over it.

  "What did he do for a living?"

  Sean shrugged, "I don't really know. My mom doesn't like to talk about it, says it's all in the past now, and we just have to continue with our lives. I think it was some kind of research, though into what, I have no idea. I just remember being at his labs once, there were all sorts of equipment and odd stuff in the building. I couldn't figure it out then, and now?" Sean shrugged, "I barely remember enough of it to even guess what anything was."

  They had turned down Ninth Street by now and were walking under the bridge when a police car slowed down, the officer inside taking a look at them, and then speeding back up again.

  "What was that all about?" Sean wondered.

  A few minutes later, as they turned down Manhattan, another police car cruised by, only this one was already going slow, and the officer inside waved to them.

  "Okay, that's weird, what's with all the cops?"

  "Obviously there's more to the story than the one the paper had," Roxy told him, and they crossed the street, heading towards the scene of the crash.

  "Wow, that's pretty obvious," Roxy said as they looked at the splintered and broken pole. Another telephone pole had been set in the ground next to it, and there was a crew working on it, moving the power lines on the top from the old pole to the new one.

  "What happened?" Sean asked one of the workers standing around with a flag, waving it at the occasional car that came down the side street.

  "Some tweakers in a van hit the pole yesterday."

  "A van did that?" Roxy asked in a sweet and innocent voice, almost making Sean choke.

  "Yeah, they must have been going like a bat out of hell. People heard a bunch of gunshots, and saw some folks running away afterwards. The crew that put in the new pole said there was blood everywhere before the fire department came and washed it all down. Probably some gang bangers fighting over drugs."

  "Wow! This close to the uni?" Roxy said, still using that innocent little girl voice as snuggled up closer to Sean who put a protective arm around her.

  "Oh that ain't the worst of it," the guy chuckled and winked at Sean as he waved his flag at another car.

  "How does it get any worse than that?" Sean asked.

  "They found an extra arm! Somewhere out there, there's a guy missing his arm!" The flagman laughed, "He's probably dead by now, they've been searching for his body all over the place."

  "Unn, thanks," Sean said as Roxy started to tug him back the way that they had come.

  "What's up?" he asked her as soon as they'd gotten out of earshot.

  "There was a guy sitting in a car across the street that was paying way too much attention to you," Roxy whispered steering him back the way they'd come.

  "What?" Sean said, stunned.

  Roxy sighed, "Sean, you have all these heightened senses now, you see better, hear better, and can even smell faint scents and learn things from them. You need to start using them!"

  "Hey!" Sean said feeling just a little defensive, "Yesterday I was a perfectly normal human! Give me a break; it's only been a day! I didn't grow up with this, you know!"

  "I'm sorry," Roxy said dragging him over to the bus stop, she could already see the next bus down the street a few blocks away, "but it doesn't look like you're going to be able to use that excuse for long. Something's going on, and you're in the middle of it. Besides," she said and looked him up and down with a bit of a smirk, "now you're perfectly normal."

  Sean sighed and smiled weakly back at her, "Y
ou would think that, wouldn't you?"

  Roxy grabbed his hands and put them on her ass as she faced him, pressing her chest against his, "Oh? And you don't?"

  Sean blushed as he remembered just how the day had gone, more importantly, the entire afternoon. 'see how much better your life is with me?' floated through the back of his head.

  "Un, yeah," Sean conceded and leaning down he gave Roxy a kiss that was happily returned.

  "Better," she said when they finished. "Now, let's catch our bus."

  "Won't this make us easier to follow?"

  "Only if we're really being followed," she pointed out to him. "But the last thing we want right now is something happening with lots of witnesses around."

  "But, won't that stop them?" Sean asked as he followed her up the steps and into the bus. They both flashed their college ID's and bus passes, and he followed her to the very back of the bus, where it was darkest.

  "They're not the ones who are being stopped," Roxy said and then gave him a grin that was all teeth and pure predator.

  Sean's eyes got wide and suddenly he felt his beast sit up and start paying attention.

  "Welcome to life at the real top of the food chain," Roxy giggled. "Now, start watching out the windows and see if anyone's following this bus."

  They had just turned on to York when Sean spotted the car. A large black Ford Flex and it was definitely following the bus.

  "I see them," he told Roxy.

  "Hard to follow a bus through a neighborhood and not be seen, isn't it?"

  "You sound like you've done this before," Sean grumbled.

  "Hunting and tracking are two of the biggest games I used to play as a child," she shrugged. "We have all the advantages, it's just learning how to best use them, while keeping everything out of sight of the norms. Right now, they think they're hunting us," she smiled showing her teeth again in a shockingly feral grin, "and we're going to let them keep thinking that, right up until the moment it isn't to our advantage anymore."

  Sean suddenly realized that Roxy was probably thinking about killing the people in that car following them. This wasn't a game of hide and seek, or tag. This wasn't going to end with words, or a fistfight and maybe some bruises. This was for real, this was life or death, and she seemed more excited than worried.