First Species

by Tamara Rose Blodgett

  Narah laughs, flicking all those tiny braids behind her shoulder. “Yup. Growing up is nifty as fuck.”

  I laugh too. “So this is worse.”

  “Well, if you think about death as the alternative, it's certainly more final.”

  Narah lowers her body until her butt touches her heels, lightly resting her hands on my knees, the expression she wears is her version of earnest. “A First and prehistoric male pair will have to change you, Paige. It beats dying, and you can have a family. Doesn't that matter? Women are infertile. You can be like all the women out there reading fiction novels about being the “rare one” who can become pregnant. Clearly, there's a bunch of women who would like to be in your shoes right now.”

  “I took my test. I was infertile, Enforcer Adrienne—like all other chicks.”

  “Until you went into supe puberty.”

  I lift my shoulders, slightly defeated. “Yeah, until then.”

  “Yʼknow, it's not just Mutables you have to worry about. You need to insert human men into the equation.”

  I shiver. I'd heard about that as well.

  “Packs of men running the streets and having ʻrape parties.ʼ They think if they force themselves on enough women, it'll ʻstickʼ and somebody will get pregnant.”

  Our eyes meet. “I'm careful. I carry a pulse weapon.”

  “That's great, Paige—they do too.”

  Now I'm just defensive. “I use mandatory transport.”

  “Like I said, it's good that you're preemptive with your actions, but now there's people who might know you're a transition. If they're loose-lipped, there will be a horde at your house.”

  “You make it sound like zombies.”

  Narah's grin is genuine. “What a crock of shit that is. Zombies. That's a special slice of lame bullshit? Pfft.” She stands, crossing her arms and looking bored.

  I sorta like those apocalyptic stories, but I don't muddy the waters telling her. “Anyway, maybe.” I think of those jerks in the bar I went to high school with. Would Chuck, Dave, or Scott do something awful to me? Would they use the excuse of the world's population in a deadfall to commit rape?

  Maybe. If any man knew that I was the real deal, would he justify rape for the “betterment” of the future of the world?

  Her eyes slim down on my expression. “You know a few losers who'd like to stick their wick without permission?”

  Slowly, I nod. “I guess it's possible. If they knew I'm-uh... viable.”

  They know. Everyone who was in Spinal Tap knows. Pretty clear cut when the bounties come and pick you up and you don't come back.

  “Definitely.” Her chin hikes. “We weren't given women's intuition to ignore it.”

  I bite my lip, thinking about confessing my secret. Should Narah know I see people's auras? I know if they're supernatural. I know if they're a transition. Hell, I even self-deluded when I saw that iridescent, pearly aura taking shape around myself.

  “Ya got something to add?” Her eyes never leave my face.

  After a pile of heartbeats, I make a quick decision. “No.”

  Better to wait—or never say. I don't want the complication of being labeled a Random by the government so I'm on their radar as well. I'm damn lucky I missed the testing because I was a teeny bit too old. I'm not the only one who did, but there's so few of us that aren't duly cataloged—for future use whether we want a role or not. “Maybe this is Mother Nature's reset.”

  “Well, she sure as hell ain't being selective.” With a wink, Narah unfolds her arms and sticks a hand out for me to take. “Come on, let's check on that First and see if the prehistoric has shown up yet.”

  I grab her hand, and she effortlessly hauls me up. I look down on her, noting the four-inch height difference.

  Narah smirks, easily reading me. “I know I don't look like much.”

  “You're very petite,” is my neutral comment.

  Narah bares her fangs. “I was a lot when I was fully human, and I'm even more now.”

  I retreat a step. “I don't need any convincing.”

  “Sorry,” she says, opening the door. “I've never been able to dial it back. It's just who I am—who I always was.”

  I don't even know what I'd do if I was that fierce.

  “Hey,” I say as we're walking down a long corridor.

  Enforcer Adrienne's restless eyes pause their crawl and seek mine.

  I change my question from the ʻyou're just wearing your braʼ to the more neutral. “What about your babies? What are they eating if you're not with them now to feed them?”

  She slides her jaw back and forth, pale blonde brows drawing together. “Blood.”

  I stop walking. “What?”

  “These aren't for looks, sweetheart.” Narah taps a fang. “I have vampire children.”

  Don't they bite her boobs?

  She shakes her head as though I had asked the question aloud, the beads at the ends of her long hair making porcelain music as they mingle with the motion.

  “No, we're instinctive creatures. You don't harm the food source.”

  “Okay.”

  Adrienne's lips twist as she pivots in the direction we'd been heading.

  I follow with the most strung-out case of nerves I've had in my entire life.

  Chapter 12

  Dirk

  D irk is pissed. As usual, Seiger gave him a shit detail. He never gets to nail a female with the beef fuel injection though he's required to stay... watching.

  Well, his watching has finally proved fruitful.

  He has not seen a female, but he can practically taste female cunt on his tongue. Not that he would ever lick one. He gives a small shiver of revulsion as he walks the colony's catacomb toward the mongrel Lycan. Of course, after a female has been well and truly rutted, there's nothing but a cum-drenched hole—who wants to clean that up?

  A small bray of humor escapes his thick lips as Dirk clomps down the uneven stone of what used to be the illicit underground trade of Sioux Falls—before it was overtaken by his colony.

  No, Dirk is disallowed from breeding a female find. That's saved for the higher-ranking chimera. He's left to rut the human females. Who seem to have an innate sense of his true nature and generally will not lie with him.

  Willingly.

  Though, he thinks on the rare female, Talbot Cline, and how as she lay dying, Seiger allowed Dirk to sink his flesh deep within the female as a reward, for he, and he alone—had found the female through sheer perseverance.

  Dirk is certain his cock had tapped her tonsils. A smirk stretches his flat broad lips taut at the memory. That was a sublime moment in his otherwise miserable existence. Though there had been three dozen before him who had emptied their balls inside her, it was still the most wonderful fuck he'd ever partaken in.

  There is nothing to compare to a fertile female who has the blood of the First Species.

  Too bad they could not make that female last. To think there was only one female who had been produced from all the breeding preceding that final rut. Dirk understands that she'd been partially ruined by her time with the humans, the idiots. Talbot Cline had unfortunately already had two offspring—whereabouts unknown—and her female parts were excised.

  A protracted healing had been performed before there was a hope to breed her. Seiger had announced they were lucky to have even been able to heal the female, much less get a true breed out of that one. Then they'd had to wait out her four-month pregnancy. It had been torture on the males, who could not wait to savage her after the offspring was born and she was healed up enough to fuck and gain the possibility of multi-forms—which was not a guarantee.

  Now, that offspring is marked as Seiger's future breeder and heavily guarded. He keeps her under lock and key. Though he does choose to have her execute certain odd tasks.

  There had been some unfortunate outcomes when females that were true chimera were unprotected, so Dirk considers Seiger's latitudes afforded the immature female lax.

 
Males get greedy. Period. They'd forget the end-goal and rut the female to death instead of making sure their seed stuck to perpetuate more of the ideal Mutable: chimera.

  Sometimes, Dirk is disgusted by his own kind. If they would just take turns, the female could be used for years. Just thinking of that potential makes his dick hard.

  Shoving his cock into a more comfortable position, he continues to make his way to the cell that holds Mutable interlopers.

  Most Mutables tow the hard line. In other words, they do as their Alpha commands, but there is always some who are too wild, or their forms lend themselves to Alpha-type behavior, and they compulsively buck the system that has worked flawlessly since time began.

  Dirk's hard-on finally settles down into a dull roar, and he halts in front of the cage.

  Like a circus performer, Dirk takes a short club of abuse, something similar to what the human police used throughout the 20th. A third of a meter long and the diameter of a large hot dog, it is a baton of old. This weapon is now outlawed.

  But to this day and for the right price, any weaponry can be bought.

  Giving a hard flick of his wrist, the foot-long textured hard metal slides out, making a hard crack as its termination.

  Now the tapered end to the base measures nearly a meter.

  Dirk stares inside the cell. Slowly revolving amber eyes take up an ugly face that glares defiantly at him. The mongrel Lycan is not just any run-of-the-mill Lycan—but First as well. An infant found on a raid; his mother was bred to death. An unfortunate spoil of the raid as she could have produced chimera. However, as Dirk was musing previously—males are greedy.

  Dirk's thick lips flatten. It's been a bit of fun to keep her offspring, using him for only certain tasks.

  Mutables do not want a First Species mixing with an acquired female.

  The colony uses this male for sport. It is a special treat to have the female from the loins of Talbot Cline serve him his rancid food each day.

  Knowing he can never empty his balls as he's meant to. As every male is meant to: inside a waiting, fertile female.

  Dirk taps the slim tip of the baton between the bars of his cage.

  The creature inside roars, straining against shackles meant to hold the strongest of them all. Mastodon and other prehistorics have not been able to escape, even with the most clever of torture treatments. No matter what the pain, they could not relieve their agony.

  Casek, as he was named by the First female they raped to death, glares at Dirk.

  “You are needed.”

  “Fuck you,” he spits.

  Yes, Alpha-type tendencies. Though Dirk holds a weapon of punishment, the male defies.

  Incredible.

  “I have been sent by our Alpha for you to nose out a possible female, mongrel.”

  “Tell Seiger to stick it up his gorilla ass—or whatever form he's choosing to take right now.” Casek's scar pulls in a bloodless line across his cupid's bow with his sneer, realizing he makes fun of the Mutablesʼ Alpha as he cannot take First form—only gorillan. “Maybe he's a unicorn at the moment?” Casek makes a mock show of contemplation—most difficult given he’s hanging from shackles pegged from the ceiling of the cage he's held in.

  Stringy, filthy hair hangs like sad dreadlocks to his shoulders. Strong features are laced by healing scars, both old and new.

  “I am not without compassion. Do not make me beat you.” Dirk can hardly contain his glee.

  “Yes, you are. Utterly without.”

  A fragrance like ripe melon and the first hint of spring on the air wafts, reaching Dirk's nostrils.

  Casek does not acknowledge the female's presence though the scent must be even more heady to the part-Lycan.

  Dirk trembles, stepping back as she approaches. “Jael.”

  The female is not yet ripe. His Alpha had told them all she would not be ready for another year. But when was the last time a female of First blood had mixed with a Mutable Alpha chimera?

  In Seiger's lifetime? No. It had been a century since one such as this before him.

  Dirk almost drops the baton.

  The tension is thick, and his mouth begins to salivate. He hastens a glance at the female from under his ridiculously long eyelashes.

  Beautiful. Too young, certainly, but on the crest of fertility.

  He looks away, shuttering the memory inside his brain like an old-fashioned camera photo from the 20th before pulse technology stole everything away from them. Using the technology of the 21st means giving their position away, an impossibility. No matter, they have their instincts and motives.

  It is all the Mutable has ever needed.

  “Get away from me, Dirk.” Her voice only shakes a little. “You know I have to feed, C—the mongrel.”

  Dirk's chin rises, and he studies her unabashedly, forgetting how dangerous it is to stare too long at something he cannot have. It would not matter if she were gorgeous.

  A ripe female is a thing of beauty regardless of physicality.

  It just so happens Jael is. Her mother had been hard, used by human men, but the daughter is fragile, with luminescent, milky green irises and red hair, so bright in color it is a flame which illuminates the dim corridor they stand within.

  Her breasts are small and slightly undeveloped. But coming along nicely, Dirk notes.

  “Don't look at me.”

  He drops his eyes, visions of the light freckles marching over the bridge of her nose filling his mind.

  Dirk swallows hard. “I will beat the mongrel, Casek.”

  “Why? I have his food. What has he done?” Flies lazily circle above the sack she grips that contains spoiling meat.

  Dirk smiles. “He will scent out a female believed to be like yourself.”

  “Oh,” Jael says in a low voice. A voice that is on the verge of womanhood, Dirk can't help but notice.

  “Jael.”

  They turn to the voice coming from the cage. “Set the food down. Leave. Dirk will have his time of shameful, cowardly fun, and I will eat afterward.”

  Dirk's mouth falls open. “He speaks.” His tone is derisive. “Where are your guards?” he asks Jael.

  “Jael, go.” The mongrel says.

  Dirk hates the way he says her name like a caress—hay-ehl like he owns this female who will fuck his Alpha when she is mature and bare him chimera.

  Dirk determines to give Casek extra attention with the baton for behaving as though he knows her. He might ram the punishment rod in the male's anus.

  A favorite exploit of Dirk's.

  The mongrel has no rights. Yet, he must live long enough to find this female that Dirk cannot because he simply doesn't have the nose of the Lycan, though certainly, he scents better than a lowly human male. Dirk's chuff is contemptuous. Nor does he have some of the superior attributes of the First.

  Which pisses him off more, of course.

  “My guards are outside the door.”

  Interesting, Dirk muses. “They leave you alone with the mongrel?”

  Jael hikes her chin defiantly and sets the food sack down at her feet. “I do not answer to you, donkey.”

  He snatches her delicate wrist inside his grip, and she tries to yank it free.

  “Do not touch her!” Casek roars.

  “He will kill you,” Jael says.

  They both know which “he” she speaks of.

  But Dirk is drunk on the scent of her fear. His cock and balls throb. He can't think straight. All he can think of is the too-young female defying him. Though he might be a lowly donkey, he is a male Mutable and much stronger than even the strongest female.

  His free hand digs into the female's rich bright hair, jerking her head back. Pale sunlight infiltrates through a narrow, wide window at a high point that intercepts ground level, offering a low-level illumination.

  “Pick up the sack, female,” he grits.

  With his hand in her hair, he forces Jael down to the sack, and she grips it. He bends at the waist, speaking against
the rim of her ear. “Scream, and I will beat you.”

  An empty threat because if Seiger caught wind his precious young cunt was being shifter-handled by anyone but himself, Dirk would be executed in the most gruesome of fashions.

  “Walk,” Dirk commands, and with a kick of his partial hoof, the cage door swings open before them. “I believe you like this mongrel.”

  He shakes her tiny body, and she moans as her small hands try to grip the one who holds fast to her hair. “No,” she gulps.

  “That is why you ask the guards to wait at the door. Seiger sends you as subtle torture to a virgin male. A male who will never know the pleasure of stabbing his fleshen sword deep within a female. He is too dangerous to breed—too dangerous to release. He has not been raised as a First but as a Mutable.”

  Jael struggles, sending her hands back in an attempt to stab and claw at his eyes.

  Dirk laughs as they approach the mongrel, who he gives no mind to.

  Held fast in his special shackles, Dirk will toss the female at Casek's feet and let the blood from his body cover her as he whips the baton head to toe over the mongrel First. Definitely a finale of anus stabbing will be in order as well.

  He'll heal.

  Sometimes Dirk is pleased over his own deviousness.

  Jael gasps, dropping the sack.

  Dirk scowls, releasing her hair, and drags Jael by the wrist, dumping her at the feet of the mongrel. Dirk will then impart the fun news this one will have, escorted by ten hyenas to keep him in line, while a female he can never fuck lays at his feet as Dirk administers a physical humiliation.

  Perfect.

  Except... Dirk looks at the girl, her shoulders shaking as she sobs, holding her forearms in front of her face in clear defense.

  With a very donkey-like snort, Dirk twists too late as a strong arm, heavily muscled and no longer Lycan, plows through Dirk's neck, partially severing his head from his narrow shoulders.

  Dirk tries to hee-haw. But bubbles of blood are all the noise that can escape.

  A chain, torn from its station, wraps around the tendons that remain, frantically attempting to reform their connections and heal the terrible damage inflicted by the partial decapitation.