Page 34 of Feral

Fraser

Myentirebodyfeltlike a live wire, every nerve ending was firing, my muscles tense and shaky. I’d run out of Daphne’s apartment and into the cool night air as if something truly terrifying was chasing me.

And in all honesty, it was terrifying. Just not in the way most would see it.

I needed something to take my mind completely away from the knowledge that was slowly dawning. I couldn’t think of it without fighting every instinct in my body. If I wasn’t careful, I would run back into that flat and finish what we’d started.

I needed something ugly, something difficult to channel these feelings into. And there was only one thing in this city that I knew of that would do.

I ran to the nearest underground entrance and down the stairs. It wasn’t so late that it was deserted, but the crowds were light and either made up of tired people on their way home from work, or couples too caught up in one another to notice a large Scotsman charging around like a bull.

I found the door marked “No entry. Service only” and let my glamour slip just in my eyes. A red light came up and scanned my retinas; a second later the lock on the door popped and I stepped through. My glamour was completely stripped as soon as I crossed the threshold, which was fine by me.

When the door shut, the passage way was completely dark for a brief moment until the low lights that ran along ceiling came on. It wouldn’t have mattered if they had stayed off, I could see very well in the dark. I made it down the bare, gray hall to the door at the end where a short Orc stood guard, his biceps as large as my head.

“Password?” he asked.

I cringed. This month’s password was truly awful.

“Venus of the lovely buttocks.”

As I stepped through the door, the stench of sweat and beer and too many different supernatural species all crammed into a tight space hit me and made my eyes water. Behind the smell, the air was thick with the excitement of illegal betting and the inherent tension of a fight in progress.

These kinds of supernatural fight clubs were in every major city in the world, and somewhat regulated to prevent too many causalities. Most of us knew, however, that when we crossed that threshold, we took our lives into our own hands. I’d never been afraid to wade into the fray, as it were. My family was big and liked to brawl to blow off steam. So when I finally took to the ring in these clubs, I knew how to take a punch more than most, and how to find the weakness in an opponent. It didn’t take long for the other fighters to learn not to underestimate me.

There was a large crowd tonight, and I wove my way through the beings loitering near the door. The room was one big circle, with makeshift stands to my left and the simple canvas ring in the center. To my right was what passed for a bar in these places and that’s where I headed. I needed a drink, and then a good and bloody fight to wipe Daphne from my senses.

I knew I wasn’t thinking straight but that lass had turned my head. After tasting her skin and blood I knew that she didn’t have a drop of supernatural in her. She wasn’t even attuned to magic very much.

That left only one thing, one reason why she had affected me in such a way and it was something that I couldn’t allow to progress. No, I had to smash these feelings, bury them under the pain of a brawl. And, if that didn’t work, there was plenty of cheap Fae whiskey to be had.

I slapped some money down onto the sticky counter of the bar.

“Whiskey, and I don’t wanna see the bottom of the glass.”

The Fae behind the bar, a male with close cropped white hair and bright pink skin, nodded as he set the first drink down.

I stretched my neck and flagged down the fight coordinator to put my name in for a bout. Everything here was meant to make the outside world a distant thing so that people stayed far too long and spent far too much. And it usually worked for me. But no matter how many times I breathed deep of the stench, no matter how much I tried to watch the fight in front of me, or how fast I drank the whiskey, Daphne’s smell, her face, the feel of her was sharply present.

She’d been so soft in my arms, pliable and responsive. I’d wanted to nibble on her breasts and find out if she liked her nipples suckled. Would she like my tongue through her soft folds as much as she seemed to like it in her mouth?

And dear god, the taste of her skin. It was sweet and rich, like wine on a Beltane night. I could be drunk just from running my tongue over every inch of her. Her ass grinding against my cock had driven me to the edge of self-control, I was seconds away from bending her over and rutting her hard and thorough.

Then I’d hurt her, just like monsters tend to do with fragile Mundanes.

I winced and tossed back the whiskey. I would get a hold of these feelings, I would.

They would not control me. They would not make me act the monster with her. If I had to drink the entire time, if I had to busy myself day and night to stay away from her, I would do it. And then the moment she found the item causing all this trouble with my clan, I’d bring in the witch to undo this.

The thought made something in my chest crack and I let out an involuntary whimper. The desire to keep her was deeply embedded in me already, another sign that she was…

Don’t even think it, Fraser MacDonald! Don’t acknowledge this insanity.

“I thought you didn’t fight anymore,” said a familiar voice behind me.

“And I thought ya were gonna to meet me at the pub,” I shot back as I turned around and looked at the huge Gargoyle behind me.

James was seven feet tall and wide enough in his true form that fitting through doors was an issue half the time. His wing span was enormous, and rightly so in order to bear him up into the sky. In crowds like this, he glamoured them away so that no one touched them. His chest was bare, the tattoos of his clan in twin sleeves on his arms. His slacks were always fitted perfectly, a trick of his glamour I’d assume, especially since they always had a hole for his thick, long tail that was constantly twitching to alert him to enemies. And his clawed feet clicked on the floor as he closed the short distance between us. His dark hair was slicked down and pulled into a tight que at the back of his neck, his horns curling on either side of his head and giving off faint little glowing pulses as different supernatural creatures drew near to him.

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