Wildhearts

Wildhearts Ann Vremont All rights reserved.

Copyright ©2008 Ann Vremont

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ISBN: 978-1-59596-838-8

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Editor: Katriena Knights

Cover Artist: Reneé George

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Wildhearts Ann Vremont Shaped by his creator in the form of the ancient god Cernunnos, Herne knew only the cold metal of a cage and the sharp blades of his master until he escaped into Tahoma’s forest. Now, as the first winter storm of the season gathers, a hunter has entered his woods, bringing a bound and blindfolded woman as game. Until tonight, Neva had survived as a healer in a gospel town where the monsters walk on two legs and the women do as they are told. “The Girl Who Said No,” she finds herself at the mercy of a jilted suitor and his brutish friends, with the woods her only chance of escape. Welcome to the future. Seattle lies in fog-shrouded ruins. Fantasy has become reality. Science is the new magic. The year is 2270, and it’s time to meet the real beauty and the beast.

Chapter One The roads into the Tahoma foothills were gutted. It had been decades since they had been paved and each year heavy rains and snow melt carried more of the asphalt away. Tied in the back of a sputtering pickup truck, a burlap sack over her head, Neva Andrews couldn’t see the pitted road, but every inch of her backside felt it. She focused on each sharp jolt and let the rude caress of worn-out shocks over rough ground distract her from Mathew Paylin’s clumsy fondling. “Finest looking ass in town, Nev.” He tried to keep his heavy hand shoved between her thighs, his thick fingers working to push her panties to one side. Each bump in the road sent his hand bouncing up and the game started all over again. She shivered -- not from the clumsy groping or the sure knowledge the men were taking her up the mountain to kill her. She shivered because she was cold. It was midDecember and the air was thick with the promise of the season’s first big snowstorm. Mathew moved so that his body molded flat against hers. His fingers dug into her hip and his weight pressed her down hard against the washboard metal of the truck bed. Her hands were bound behind her and pain spiked from wrist to shoulder as Mathew leaned in to taunt, “You brought this on yourself.” Mathew rubbed against Neva, his movements forcing the thin cotton dress up over her thighs. Cold air bit at her skin and her teeth started chattering. His hands slid up under her dress, tugged her breasts free from her bra and squeezed roughly at them. She could hear and feel him breathing faster, the steamed air filtering through the sack and becoming trapped. “Don’t see why you gotta die cold.” Dragging his knuckles over her lower belly, he tugged at her underwear.

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Something sharp rapped against the glass -- Daniel or Josiah’s fist she guessed, or maybe a near empty flask of moonshine. Mathew pulled away, leaving her exposed and shaking. She felt him scoot to one side, the truck shifting under his weight. His hand touched her breast, drawing back again at the sound of another sharp knock. “Fucking Josiah!” The windows were up on the cab, no talk or music escaping from the front. But Mathew swore quietly just the same -- all six feet, four inches and three hundred plus pounds of him. No one crossed Josiah, not even a mountain of a man like Mathew. But she had crossed Josiah. And now he was going to kill her for it. The truck slammed to a stop, propelling the top of her head against the back wall of the bed. Doors opened, slammed and she heard Josiah yell. “Get that bitch outta my truck!” The gate went down. Someone grabbed her by the ankles and pulled sharply. She landed on her bound hands and pain twisted through her arms and wrists. Her head struck the frozen ground a second later, nausea and pain mixing in her skull. She swallowed a scream, wouldn’t give the men that, would bite off her tongue and choke on the blood before she gave them anything. One of the men dragged her by the ankles to the front of the truck. The heat had already faded from the engine but the headlights cut through the burlap’s loose weave. There was the shriek of fabric as what was left of her dress, bra and panties was torn from her body. Rolling her onto her stomach, they stripped her crude sandals from her feet. Hands grabbed the rope around her wrists and hauled her onto her knees. That’s how Josiah liked his women, on their knees praying while the men stood. Boots crunched on the frozen ground as someone circled her and then the sack was torn from her head. Twilight filtered through the trees. She glared at the three men. Mathew, the youngest, stood with the sack in his hand and his dick hard against his jeans. He glanced away, too cowardly to look at her now that she could look back. Daniel, his brother, was just as aroused but his last hit of X glazed his eyes and made his feet unsteady.

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Then there was Josiah, a man colder than the ground that dug at her knees or the December air scraping at her lungs. She swallowed another wave of nausea, knowing his arousal would come only at the cost of her tears and blood. Buckets of both. Neva dropped her head, waited, naked, for the ground to open up and take her whole. “Get my bow.” Josiah waited a heartbeat, long enough for her to imagine the arrow-fast rip of steel through her flesh, and then he shoved Mathew toward the truck. “Get my goddamn bow!” Mathew moved like a petulant child, his steps heavy and dragging. He grabbed the bow’s case from behind the bench seat and slid it along the ground. “I thought we was gonna fuck her.” Josiah knelt, almost even with her, as he opened the case. Steam left him in a thin stream. His breathing slowed with a hunter’s reverence as he wrapped his hands around the weapon. Standing, he notched an arrow and gestured at Mathew to get Neva on her feet. “Maybe after.” He motioned Mathew to move away, and then he sighted down the length of the arrow’s shaft. “But we’re gonna let her run first.”

*** Neva’s grandmother had brought her up into the foothills, gathering blackberries, arnica, sandwort and other medicinal plants. Those childhood trips had brought her full circle to this place. A woman who could heal was a woman with power. And a woman with power wasn’t welcome in ’Coma Valley. Maybe if she’d had a husband or lover with power -- specifically, had she taken Josiah to bed instead of spurning him -- she wouldn’t be here, naked, freezing and minutes from meeting her maker. But it had always been her place to drive poison out, not call it “husband.” Slowly, she made her way onto shaking legs. With one watchful eye on Josiah and his bow, she looked above the treetops for some hint as to where in the foothills

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they were. In the small clearing, little was visible above the tall trees, but she could make out Tahoma’s cap and on its eastern flank the jagged outline of Little Tahoma. Ignoring the numbness spreading through her bare feet, Neva started to cut a slow circle around the men. She would go east, into the night, away from the fading light. She would run in the one direction they might just be afraid to follow, where the trees had turned to metal and angry ghosts were said to walk the woods. Naked as she was, with fat flakes of snow already beginning to fall, she’d still die tonight. But they wouldn’t get their fun. Not all of it. At least she would have that. She reached the edge of the tree line and Josiah drew the bowstring until his fingertip was just about even with the hard line of his smile. “Better run, bitch, or I’ll drop you now.” She risked a taunt, hoping to delay him until she could breach the tree line. “‘Bitch’? Not ‘baby’ or ‘sweet Neva’?” He’d called her both just that week. He’d tried to kiss her, too, stroking her shoulder and talking of marriage. “A witch’ll make a man say strange things.” Holding back the string’s energy, his arm began to tremble. “If you think I’m a witch, take me before the council.” She took another step closer to the towering protection of a bull pine. The trees were packed closely here, maybe ten feet from trunk to trunk. Pine needles and fallen branches covered the ground, ready to poke and trip her. “You’ve bespelled them, poisoned them so you could heal them, spent your nights whoring with demons…” His arm shook, the arrow knocking against its rest as he held back fifty pounds of pull. She worked the ropes at her wrists, slipped a hand free. Stepping back, she smiled. “If only I’d spent my nights whoring with you?” With that, she turned and ran into the forest. She heard the first arrow hit far to her left, the deadly thunk spurring her weakened legs into pumping harder. Another

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arrow whizzed by her ear, missed her and buried its tip in another tree. She heard snatches of the men yelling at one another, Josiah urging Mathew and Daniel into the woods, Mathew demanding that Josiah put the bow down first. Ahead of her, twilight moved through the woods like faeries from her grandmother’s old stories. She stayed away from the dancing golden light and stuck to the deepening shadows. What they couldn’t see, they couldn’t hit. At least, that’s what she hoped. But, what she couldn’t see, she couldn’t avoid tripping over. She fell to the ground, her ankle snagging and twisting in the joint of a fallen tree limb. She heard boots crunching on dry pine needles, more swearing and then the wild roar of a stag just discovering that its rutting grounds had been invaded by men from the valley. Josiah’s third arrow found her. The broad head sliced deep into her shoulder as she stumbled to her feet. The force flung her against the trunk of the nearby pine, and she wrapped her arms around the black and yellow bark to keep from falling again. The woods vibrated with her scream and the stag’s rage. Its hooves pounded the forest floor. Its antlers knocked against tree trunks, tore at low-hanging branches in its anger at the men’s presence. Crying out one last time, Neva collapsed bloody and unconscious to the ground.

*** From the trees, Herne watched the humans -- three men and a woman -intruding into his forest. Hearing their truck and smelling the stink of animal fat fueling an old diesel engine, he’d gone in search of them. He had finally found them low on the eastern slope of Tahoma, where they’d followed the old road all the way up to the small clearing that was its vanishing point. The men stank with the bitter odor of civilization, their bodies steeped in the scent of alcohol, drugs and tobacco. Smelling the woman’s freshly spilled blood and the softer, more pervasive scents that marked her sex as he tracked the men through the trees, Herne bellowed.

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The men scattered at his call, the smaller male intent on following the woman, the other two perhaps unnerved by Herne’s feral cry. A twinge of conscience told him to follow the woman -- that she was being hunted -- but the other men were unarmed and easy to dispatch. And he might take the armed one by surprise, when the man finally found his prey and foolishly put the weapon down. Extending his neck, Herne roared again, then slammed his antlers left and right, their wide expanse causing them to bang against the mighty pines on either side of him. It was a challenge, one the men would recognize, if not with their minds then with the marrow of their bones. Male to male, he let them know. You’re in my woods.

*** Josiah watched Neva dig her nails into the piney ground, her fingers closing around the tree needles as he placed a hard knee against the small of her back and pulled at the arrow shaft. “Hurts worse this way. Cuts you up twice as bad as when it went in.” He twisted the arrowhead out. Hearing the wet, sucking sounds of muscle being sliced, he groaned. He closed his eyes, wet his trembling lips. “God, that is a beautiful sound. Don’t you think, Neva?” She was too far gone to answer. She could only scream and whimper now -- like Mathew or Daniel. He could hear one of them in the distance, agonized cries of pain as the stag tore against them or stomped them into the forest floor. Placing the arrow on the ground, he shook his head and rolled Neva over. Fucking pussies couldn’t handle a buck in rut. They were on their own now. Didn’t matter to him if he went down the hill alone. He could always start the rumor that the two had been beguiled by the witch and ran away with her. Hell, he might even pinch a few extra supplies from the warehouse and blame it all on them. “Gotta take care of you first.” He shoved his hand between her thighs, rubbed awkwardly at her cunt. The whore was dry as bones left to bleach on desert sands. He wanted her wet, needed her lubricated if his half-stiff cock was going to make it past the

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ever-closed gate of her pussy. He kneaded her breasts, pinched at the flaccid nipples. “C’mon, baby. Never knew a whore who couldn’t get wet with a little slap’n’tickle.” He could cut her. Blood would make her slick. Reaching for the arrow, he heard Daniel scream his name. “Fucking thing’s as big as a goddamn truck.” Daniel fell to the ground next to him, scrambled into a low crouch as he looked wildly back in the direction he had just fled. “Gimme your bow, man.” “Shut up, asshole!” Josiah pushed him off balance. “You’ll draw it here.” He picked his bow up, notched a new arrow. “Fucking big as the truck… goddamn dope head.” “It fucking glows, man.” He inched along the ground until he was behind Josiah. “Like a million fucking fireflies around it.” “Last time, shut up or I’ll kill you myself.” Josiah waited, ready to draw the arrow at the first sound of the stag. Daniel was mumbling, his words disjointed and crazy. Neva was moaning in pain and shock. He had to shut her up, but didn’t want to kill her. At least not yet. He unnotched the arrow and leaned back, his fist ready to silence her. Light -- a fucking million fireflies’ worth of it -- flooded the space between the trees and something with all the graceful structure of a deer, but outsizing an elk, charged between the trunks. A single swipe of its giant antlers knocked the bow from Josiah’s hand and slammed Daniel against a tree trunk. There was the snap of vertebrae breaking and Daniel fell to the ground, his head oddly angled from the rest of his body. And then the thing changed. Not its mind, not its direction. It changed its whole goddamn body, the flesh shifting as he watched. The massive horns shrunk to a less formidable but still deadly span. The face shortened to something monstrously human while the front legs took on the muscles and sinews of a man’s arms and hands. The waist slimmed, the mass pushed up to the broad chest and shoulders and down to the thickening hips and thighs to where the legs ended in hooves.

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Untamed hair fell to his waist. The whole of his body seemed covered with hair that thickened and tangled the lower Josiah’s gaze fell. An enormous sheath of furred skin covered its shaft, running from the thing’s navel down to the heavy drop of balls nestled against its thighs. Josiah felt the warm stain of urine on his pants and lowered his gaze. People in the valley had claimed for years that the devil haunted these hills. He’d never believed them, only used their fears and superstitions as a means of controlling them. Now? Josiah clasped his hands in front of him, fervent prayers falling from his dry lips. “Dark Father, spare me. Whatever you ask… your humble servant.” Still the thing advanced, the antlers lowered and weaving left and right as the creature prepared to gore him. “…beg you… Dark Father. I brought the woman to you…”

*** I brought the woman to you… The woman. Even covered in blood, her scent was maddening. Somewhere in her late twenties, she was young, supple, with a ripe handful of breasts and pillowy thighs. Dark brown hair hung past her shoulders. Its color reminded him of rooting in the deep earth. His balls swelled, his cock grew thicker and longer until the fat glans emerged from the sheath. In front of him, the man gasped and then his babbling grew more urgent. “The woman, for you… brought her, Dark Father… for you.” He knew the words, could shape them with his own tongue even though years had passed since he had last seen a human. “…brought her for you…” “And damned us both,” Herne snarled an instant before slashing a sharp-tipped antler through the man’s throat and silencing him forever.

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Pushing the man’s body to the side, Herne leaned over the woman. She was still breathing -- barely. Blood soaked the pine needles beneath her, but it was the cold killing her. Cradling her, he stood and headed up the mountain. Above them, if she lasted that long, a cabin waited warm and dry. Delirious, the woman trembled in his arms. She smelled of pine and blood and other things. Things he didn’t want to think on. Her teeth chattered, her clenched hands beat a frozen staccato against his chest as hypothermia gripped her naked flesh. Herne put the woman on the ground and pushed pine needles beneath and around her. Then he folded her arms across her chest and covered her body with his. “Stop shaking,” he whispered, his lips against her ear. She only shook harder at his plea, her arms and hands wriggling against him until they were twined around his neck. She arched against his warm body. He enveloped her in his embrace, buried his face against the crown of her head. Squeezing, he tried to keep her still. Her legs parted and then he felt the row of glands around the opening of his sheath respond by producing their thick, lubricating gel. He knew his hand and the soft rub of a fur blanket. He’d never entered a woman, never felt the soft skin of one pressed against him. His life had been whips and cages before he’d fled to Tahoma and her blanket of glaciers and spring rivers. His imprisonment had been broken only by the wild hunts in which Master Wilhelm would saddle his man-horse and set the wolves on him, trumpets blaring as he chased him down, half slaying Herne only to heal him in time for the next hunt. Never had there been this soft yielding flesh or trembling embrace. He felt his sheath cream leak from him and spread between their bodies. It would take just a dip of his hips, the smallest swivel and then the cream would be slickening the folds of her sex. Eyes closed, he could see it, almost feel it as she sought to pull her knees close to her chest. “No…”

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Warmth. That was all the woman wanted, all she needed. He knew that. But then why were her legs hugging his hips, why was her mound pressed against the hard line of his sheath, rubbing along it as cold vibrated through her body? “No,” he repeated, rising up and grabbing her by her uninjured arm and matching leg. He slung her over his shoulder, positioning her so that he could run at full speed. He needed to get her to the cabin quickly, to cover the wound in fast-healing unguents, and then get her beneath the furs and away from him with her soft, needful flesh and the maddening smell of her gender.

Chapter Two Neva woke on her stomach, covered in furs with a fire roaring nearby behind a steel grate. Warmth infused her body. Careful that the throb in her right shoulder didn’t worsen, she looked around the room. Other than the fire and the glint of flame off metal, there was no light. The corners were deep shadows. She saw movement in one, detected the outline of a man wrapped in fur and sitting below the antlers of a giant elk. She blinked and slowly brought her left hand up to rub at her eyes.

“It’s no hallucination.”

His voice was like bark covered in honey, rough and smooth at the same time.

Fascinated more than afraid, she tried to push up on her left arm, remembered that she was naked and slid back down between the warm layers of fur. “You’ll leave… when the storm has passed.” There were little breaks between the words, like he hadn’t spoken in a long time, had no need for nouns and verbs or any of the other trappings of civilization. “I’ve got nowhere to go.” Using her good arm, she wrapped the fur around her, lifted her lame right arm just long enough to tuck one end beneath it, and then rolled into a sitting position. “Not… my… problem.”

“I’ll freeze before I ever get down the mountain.”

“Take the furs with you.” He tossed a ball of twine and smaller scraps of animal

skin next to her. They’d make fine shoes, better than the ones she’d been brought up the mountain in, at least. But they wouldn’t keep her alive. “Why wait? Why not just send me out now? I’m dead anyway.”

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“I’m not those men.” The honey smooth quality of his voice was gone, leaving only the rough bark. She looked at him, seeing now not a man in furs beneath the antlers of a once great stag but the stag himself. “No,” she whispered. “You’re not.” Neva turned to the fire. She wrapped her fingers around a poker, let the weight of the iron in her hand comfort her as she poked through the grate. “But it’s still murder, sending me back down.” “You’ll leave in no worse condition than I found you.” With her back turned to him, she could picture him as a man. Not having to look at him, she could listen and reason with his words as if he were a man. “That’s not true.” With her good arm, she poked at the fire, freeing bits of burning ash to swirl in the air around the hearth. The image sparked a memory or a hallucination -- she couldn’t say which. She saw a stag in the forest. Fairy lights danced around its head and powerful antlers. Blinking, she saw Daniel, his neck broken, and then Josiah kneeling before her host. Neva dropped the poker, drew the fur tighter to her skin. He’d killed them so effortlessly. Would her words prove any better defense? Holding back her tears, she looked at him over her wounded shoulder. “I didn’t have hope.” He stood then, towering in the corner. His antlers brushed the ceiling and she heard the clop of a hoof against wood flooring as he stepped forward. He stopped at the sound, remained motionless. Neva looked back to the fire. “You ran. You had to have hope.” She heard the return slide of his hoof along the flooring and the scrape of his antlers against the wall as he settled back into the corner. Risking a glance back, she saw him, his massive arms folded across his chest, his head tilted down as if he could ignore her presence. She shook her head. “I thought I could control the manner of my dying, that’s all.”

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“You still can.” He grunted, and the blunt escape of air extinguished her hope of convincing him tonight, even before he laid out her choices. “Go down the valley to your people, or go over the mountain and risk the settlement on the other side.”

*** Herne shifted in the corner of his one-room cabin. Snow was piled up outside, the storm having raged into the next day with no end in sight. And the woman was driving him increasingly insane. She didn’t mean to, of course. She probably didn’t even realize it. Her senses were all too human. She hadn’t been “enhanced” in Master Wilhelm’s labs. She couldn’t smell him the same way he could smell her. With his body hidden in the room’s shadows, she couldn’t see enough of him, either. Only the restless shifting hinted at his agitation, his need. “Herne?” She glanced at him over her shoulder at the sound of his moving. Telling her his name had been a mistake, even bigger than learning her name. Neva -- Latin for snow. He grunted in her general direction as he tried to shake the sensation of a ripe snowberry on his tongue, of pressing against its fruity flesh until it popped against his upper palate and flooded his mouth with its juices. Her juices… “You haven’t eaten all day --” She stopped, her expression silently noting all the other things he hadn’t done since she’d woken. He hadn’t moved from the corner. He’d only reached forward to fill a small glass with water or point out the larder filled with wild vegetables and dried meat. Otherwise, he’d remained withdrawn and turned away her attempts to bring him food with a reaction that bordered on violence. It wasn’t that he wanted to hurt her… Seeing that she was spooning stew into a second bowl, he growled low in his throat. She ignored him, her back to him as she searched for another spoon. Her body shook with the effort of holding the full bowl.

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Her wound was healing quickly, packed with secrets that no one else outside of Wilhelm’s lab knew. But she had lost a lot of blood on the forest floor. She should be sitting, eating her food, and not trying to bring him something he didn’t want. He growled a second warning as she turned and approached him, her wounded arm struggling to keep the roughly fashioned fur shift in place. The hand holding the bowl jerked and threatened both their bodies with a spill of hot liquid. “Why do you persist?” She was near tears again and the realization added a rough edge to his question. Before her, he’d known only the weakness of his own tears. Master Wilhelm had beaten that flaw out of him. But here she was, her cheeks shamelessly wet. “Why do you?” she asked, her gaze lowered. She was fragile and stubborn all in the same breath. He snatched the bowl from her hand and slammed it on the table next to him. “You should be preparing to leave.” She smiled, the movement sending a fresh cascade of tears down her face. “Storm hasn’t let up. Maybe it won’t end… like in my gran’s fairy tales.” “Fairy tales?” He roared the words at Neva as he stood, grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. Those were Wilhelm’s words, even if she’d spoken them softly, without the old master’s mocking tones. “You’re hurting me, Herne.” He dug his fingers in more roughly. Of course he was hurting her. He was a beast. There was no curing him with a kiss if that was what she was thinking. Was she? He shook his head. Master Wilhelm had promised him a lifetime as an outcast, an oddity built to be hunted for the old man’s amusement. He gave her another rough shake and her shift fell to the floor. His gaze dropped with it, taking in her lovely pale skin and the flesh that was plump in all the right places. His juicy snowberry. I brought the woman for you. His gaze crawling higher, he moaned at the sight of her hard nipples. Breathing deeply, he caught the scent of her arousal. Not arousal, but fear, he told himself.

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Women would run in terror from him. That had been another of Master Wilhelm’s promises. But she’d brought him food, and hadn’t flinched at his touch. Nor was her breathing that of someone who was frightened. It was deep, measured. Each intake of air lifted her luscious tits to brush tantalizingly warm against his forearms. Each exhalation brought their teasing retreat. She tilted her head, the movement bringing the rest of her body closer to him. “Please, don’t send me away.” He studied her face, looked for the thread of deceit in her expression. “Is that what you think? That if you offer yourself to me, I won’t make you leave?” His stomach tightened at the thought. “How can you possibly think you’d want to stay?” “I wasn’t…” She faltered and her skin flushed. He knew that warm creep of red across her skin as an admission, but of what? Not that she wanted him, surely. He studied her another few seconds and the color only deepened. Manipulation, then. Well, he could cure her of that quickly enough. Herne dropped his hand to her nipple, gently tugged at it. She moaned and he smelled the fresh rush of cream between her legs. He stopped an instant, wondering if he’d misjudged her. But heat quickly overcame his curiosity. Sweet heaven, he wanted to fuck her. He walked Neva backwards to the small table against the wall. The back of her legs touched the piece of furniture and she whimpered. The sound sent an instant pulse of blood to his cock, bringing the swollen head out of the sheath. “Look down, Neva.” She shook her head. Now her breathing seemed frightened, but she didn’t struggle against him. He turned her slowly so she faced the wall. Ignoring her injured shoulder, he raised her hands up to where utensils were hooked to the wall. There was twine on the table and he used some to bind her hands in place.

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“Maybe it’s best if you don’t look at all?” It was an ugly question. He meant it to be, wanted her to cry out, to tell him “no.” But she stayed mute and trembling and wet. Taking a strip of suede, he blindfolded her. From the knot of fabric, he ran his hand down the center of her back, over the muscled curve of her ass, and touched her. He touched her down there, down at the wet juncture of her thighs. He wanted to lick her, taste her, to run his tongue from clit to cunt to ass. But he couldn’t risk the sharp tips of his antlers against her skin. He brought his fingers up loaded with her juices and sucked them into his mouth. Sheer perfection and his for the taking. At least until she cried out for him to stop. And she would. When the fear of him overcame the uncertainty of going back down the mountain, she would beg him to stop. How could she not? He reached around, filled his hands with her breasts and squeezed. He milked them slowly, tugging long and hard on the right breast before pulling at the left. He ended with a drawn out twist of her nipples as he memorized their textures. She moaned and Herne jerked his hands away. “Don’t tease me, woman.” Christ’s bones, but it had sounded real enough, its release as slow as his caress and starting deep in Neva’s chest. She didn’t defend herself, just rested her forehead against her good arm. He watched her bite at her lower lip before she sucked it into her mouth, her chin trembling the whole time. Herne dropped his hands to her thighs, pushed them apart and began stroking the lips of her sex. They were swollen and slick. He parted the labia, thumbed the tight muscles of her cunt. She kept biting at her bottom lip, her hips beginning to move with his hands. He glanced down to the swollen head of his shaft. Most of his erection was still hidden in the sheath of thick skin and he wondered how much her body could take. Certainly not all of him. He slid a finger in, then two. She clenched around him and moaned his name.

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How could she do that -- how could she say his name with such heat, with such a greedy, wanting tone? “Neva.” He rubbed a shaking hand over his cock head, brought it back slick with his body’s lubrication. He coated her pussy with it, worked it deep into her with his fingers. She jerked, cried out in pain from her shoulder but begged him to continue. “Please, Neva. Tell me to stop.” She jerked her head from side to side, squeezed his fingers with her cunt. “Once it starts…” He let his words trail off. He wasn’t sure what would happen. He’d climaxed before, but never feeling like this. His skin and muscles felt like acid had been dripped onto them. His balls were tight, loaded with cum, and the glands in the sheath were in overdrive, the gel dripping from him. He rolled the thick tube of skin down over his shaft. At his widest, he was as thick as one of her wrists, the head a narrowed fist. Slowly he pushed into her, concentrating on the way her body gripped him, the feel of her cunt as she gave her hips a small roll. He would never have this again. She would never offer it. Neva shuddered, releasing a squeak of pleasure. “Don’t move.” He’d come undone if she moved like that again, or if another one of those small, excited noises escaped her throat. Her throat… the thought carried with it images of her lips, her mouth opening to kiss him, her tongue, wicked and red and pressed against his cock. But most of all he pictured kissing her, of leaning down as she stood on tiptoe and feeling the soft press of her fingertips against his cheek as she steadied herself. “Neva.” He repeated her name, inside his mind, running the syllables over and over as a talisman against the lure of her body. He pushed in five inches, almost half his length, and reached between her legs. He stroked her clit, paid attention to which spots drove her to wild moaning. All the while he kept his thrusts shallow, never venturing deeper than those five inches, letting the thick head of his cock caress her interior. He wanted to please her, was afraid of hurting her. Make her come, make her tremble against me with ecstasy.

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And then she did, her cries of “Herne” releasing a flood of tension within him. His cock pulsed, emptying his seed into her as she tightened around him and tried to push deeper onto his shaft. He grabbed her by the hips, dug his fingers into the plump flesh and forced her body still. “Untie me.” He met her request halfway. He loosened the rope enough to unhook her hands. Tightening the rope back up, he pulled her onto the pile of furs she’d been sleeping on since her rescue. She reached for the blindfold but he gently blocked her hands. It wouldn’t do for her to see him while her body was still flushed with passion. “Please…” He placed a fingertip against her lips. “Nothing’s changed.” He meant he was still inhuman, his form unchanged by the tight kiss of her cunt, but she misunderstood. Her lips trembled as she rolled away onto her side. “You still want me to leave, then?” God, no, but he couldn’t tell her that. So what if he did let her stay? She’d abandon him eventually. One day she’d look down, her passion interrupted by the sight of his feet or maybe the careless toss of his head would mutilate her. And if she didn’t flee, he’d be damning her to the same isolation that had become his life. Closing his eyes, he cleared his throat and answered. “Yes.”

Chapter Three The cabin was filled with stories -- not in the form of books, but with carvings. Neva had noticed them and their intricate beauty even on that first day of consciousness when pain had gripped her body. The fireplace pictured Hansel and Gretel in twelve panels that marched up and around from bottom left to bottom right. The goose girl lived on the edges of the small tabletop and its chair. On the larder doors, the wolf had ensnared Little Red Riding Hood while even darker creatures lurked in the forest awaiting her return. At first, Neva wasn’t sure what hand had carved the images onto the furniture. But on the morning of her third day, digging through a pile of furs, she had found the freestanding figures and smaller panels. They ranged in size from no larger than her thumb to one block that was a cubic foot in size, each face carved with a different scene. Some pieces were time-worn, maybe a decade or older. But some, like the cube, were freshly carved. Given the fresh carvings, Neva assumed someone had told Herne these stories long ago, perhaps when he was a child. And, faced with long nights alone in these woods, he had faithfully depicted the tales. But for some reason he also hid them away, like chopped up pieces of his soul that he could no longer bear to look upon. Sighing, she lifted the cube and carried it back to the pallet of furs. With her back to the cabin’s only door, she sat down and pulled a fur blanket around her. She was naked underneath the blanket despite the rough suit of clothes she had fashioned from the furs Herne had given her. It would anger him to find her like this -- naked and holding a piece of his soul. She flipped the cube in her hands, noted that it had been carved by a romantic, if somewhat wild, heart. Each side of the box showed a young woman, girls whose stories

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Neva’s own grandmother had told her as a child. Along the four sides there was Snow White in her glass coffin, Sleeping Beauty surrounded by thorns, the Girl of a Thousand Furs, Rapunzel with her long cascade of hair down the tower wall. At the top, there was the restoration of the Girl with No Hands, while the bottom showed Ash Girl sitting beneath a tree. But the women were not alone. At the edge of the carvings hovered the soon-tobe lovers. Some waited to rescue with a sword, some with a kiss. All were shadowy, vague figures far less distinct than the heroines or villains. She fingered the prince on Sleeping Beauty’s panel, noting the overhang of thick thorns above his head. She traced the thorns, wondering if Herne had noticed, even intended, the resemblance to his antlers. Behind her, the cabin door opened. She straightened, both from the onrush of cold air and Herne’s entrance. The storm was long past. Almost two weeks had passed since he’d tied her against the wall and taken her. He hadn’t forced her to leave, but he hadn’t touched her since. He barely looked at her, either, spending most of his days outside. He returned in the evening with fresh meat, and then he sat rigidly silent in the corner while she cooked. Most of her attempts at conversation were rebuffed with reminders that she should be preparing to leave, that her journey away from his cabin was inevitable. At least he could no longer hide in the shadows. With an artful placement of pans and random sheet metal, she’d managed to direct light into all but the smallest crevices. She could see him better now. He had a wild mane of black hair that he kept loosely combed. He wore it in a way that hid his ears most of the time. They were more fairy than faun, fixed close to his head with small lobes and long, narrow tips. His eyes were a dark green, like the pine needles outside, but they were set at a sharp slant and spaced further apart than usual. His nose was broad and flat, the mouth wide with a certain thinness to the lips that demanded kissing.

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The thought of his skin and its soft mat of hair sent a shiver of need racing over her body. He had a rough brush of beard covering his jaw line. A trellis of hair covered parts of his chest and back. The strands grew thicker and shorter further down his body. They looked black in the low light but were a dark earthy brown that felt like velvet. The memory of its brush against the back of her legs and across her breasts as he had fucked her made Neva wet all over again. She heard Herne’s sharp intake of breath, wondered whether it was because he had noted her nakedness or scented her arousal. Perhaps it was just her possession of the cube. “Neva.” She closed her eyes against the warning. She’d tried this before. Once. She hadn’t thought it through that time. Now she had moved the furs closer to the door and had her back to it. He would have to pass close by her naked body again if he wanted to run away. Eyes still closed, she ran her hands over the block. “Where did you learn these stories?” “What kind of question is that?” She shrugged, not enough that the fur would fall from her, and answered, “A genuine one.” “You’re naked, Neva.” “Oh, you noticed.” She opened her eyes and turned her head in his direction. He was leaning against the mantle, his back to her and with a slight tremble infecting his large body. He clenched his ass and thighs and a shudder ran up to the broad shoulders. “Christ’s bones, of course I noticed.” “Well, you can’t see me, looking away as you are, and it’s not a good reason for not answering, anyway.” “You’re naked,” he repeated. She saw the tilt of his head and realized he was, indeed, looking at her through the warped reflection of one of the pieces of sheet metal she’d placed against the wall.

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He couldn’t see her smile with such an imperfect mirror but she dipped her head all the same and answered, “So are you.” “It’s not the same.” “How so?” she challenged. He wouldn’t answer. She thought he might offer that he wasn’t human, but clearly some part of him was. Only had someone altered an animal to human form and intellect or altered a human to animal while leaving intact the soul and mind of a man? Did he even know? “Is it terrible, my wanting to know something about you?” she asked quietly. He turned to her, his gaze steady on her face. “It’s pointless.” Herne walked past her, to the door, but did not leave. Instead he opened it only long enough to pull inside a pack fashioned from animal skins, twine and branches. “The passes are clear and will be for the next few weeks. You’ll be able to carry enough supplies in this --” He had turned back to find Neva naked and standing, the box thrust forward, her finger tapping on the panel of Sleeping Beauty and her prince. “Was it a bad fairy that did this to you?” Herne grunted and took the box from her. “There is no magic, only science. It was a man and his science that did this to me.” “Science is magic to most folks. Like the berries and leaves I know to pick and how much of them to give are magic potions to the people down in the valley.” She placed a hand on Herne’s shoulder, her tone turning bitter. “It would have been an easy thing for Josiah to paint me as a witch to those people.” He had flinched at her touch but did nothing to shake her off. She stepped closer, standing on tiptoe just to be at shoulder height where she could whisper in his ear. She let her hand trail up the back of his neck to one of the massive antlers. “The person who gave you these stories, they did this?” He inclined his head slightly, never completing the nod as he looked sideways at her.

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“Master Wilhelm,” he said at last. “But I think that was his little joke, not his real name. There was a girl… like you, I guess. She called him ‘father’ and he called her ‘Dieanira Kimera,’ as if that were her name.” “Kimera Labs,” Neva said. “In the ghost city to the north.” “Seato, yes.” Herne put the box on the mantle, and then he dropped his hands to his sides. “They say the Devil lives there.” He turned, and a hard, dry smile marred his beautiful face. “Not anymore.” She wanted to touch his face, to reshape the smile into something softer with her fingertips. Instead, she gestured at the box. “It’s funny. If it were my story being carved, from before you rescued me, it would be about the Girl Who Said No. Now…” She let her words trail off, afraid to let him know how much she wanted him. She knew beasts, had almost been raped and murdered by three men with the hearts of savage boars. But Herne thought himself something terrible -- the Devil or the Devil’s own prodigy and, perhaps, his creator’s murderer. How could he respect any woman who wanted him, who thought he was a forest god reborn in times when the gifted were called freaks? He grabbed her by the chin, forced her to look at him. “This is not a fairy tale, Neva.” She licked her lips and stepped closer to him, letting her body brush softly against his. “It’s not for you to say what tomorrow’s fairy tales are, Herne.” She would kiss him this time. She wouldn’t let him step away again. She snaked her hands along his chest, up into the tangle of dark hair. She wrapped her fingers in it, sliding up his body as she pulled his face down to hers. “I want you. I want your kisses, I want you in me again and driving me crazy with your touch.” Her tongue darted out and slowly licked the center of his top lip until he opened his mouth to her. She knotted her fingers more tightly in his hair and groaned once as she plundered his mouth. She maintained an unsteady balance, standing on tiptoes to kiss him, her body rubbing against his as she strained upwards.

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He wrapped his arms around her bottom and pulled Neva up hard against him. She dropped her hands to the broad shoulders, caressed them as she sought to spread her legs and cradle his hips in their embrace. She could tell that he was secreting again, the skin around his cock emitting a special fluid because he was excited -- because she was exciting him. The fluid was translucent amber and smelled like honey but was slick. He’d coated her pussy with it that first time and now she could feel it spreading warm against her belly. She moaned and tried again to spread her legs but he set her down on the floor. Hand trembling, Herne brushed his palm against her eyes, gently forcing them shut. “You have to stop this.” “I won’t!” She shook her head against his palm but he kept it in place. “You’ll have to throw me outside, naked. And I’ll still pound on the door. You won’t be able to go outside without seeing me like this.” His free hand grabbed her breast and pushed it up, squeezing the handful of flesh while he pinched the swollen nipple. “It’s not my seeing you, Neva…” Groaning from the sheer rough pleasure of his touch, she grabbed his arm and coaxed him to a harder, faster caress. “Then blindfold me, tie me up again. Anything so that I can have you near me again, touching me like this, talking to me… sharing… oh, God…” She shuddered, unable to finish her sentence as she came.

*** Herne watched, his hand still stroking Neva’s full breast, as she tilted her head back. No longer capable of speech, her lips stayed parted and her eyes closed. She jerked forward, her warm breast pressing fully into his hand, and then she trembled as small shockwaves spread out from the epicenter of her hips. Smelling the fresh burst of her climax, he wanted to part her lush thighs and enter her then. Instead, he ordered her onto the furs. She staggered forward, fell onto her knees and wrapped her arms around her chest.

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Wildhearts

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“On your back.” He wanted to see her legs spread, the pearl of her sex dangling in front of him, those heavy, luscious tits overflowing her chest. “Eyes closed.” He cast his gaze around the room and found a makeshift blindfold and scraps of cloth to bind her. He settled on tying her arms to the back of a chair. Then, with the blindfold in place, he pushed her legs apart and knelt between them. She was wet, her sex glistening with the juice of her orgasm. He placed a fingertip against the top split of her labia and slowly trailed it down the spine of her clit, circling the dangle of flesh once before reaching the circle of her pussy. All the while, Neva’s muscles jumped and jerked, her ass and perineum tightening, pushing more fluid from her pussy as she lifted her bottom off the ground in search of more. Moaning, she bent one knee and placed the sole of her foot on his thigh. He pushed two fingers into her, stilling her for a second. Then her foot began a slow stroll up his thigh muscles, zeroing in on the base of his cock with its sheath of heavy skin and fur. With just her toes and the ball of her foot, she stroked him. Leaning into her touch, he thrust his fingers more deeply into her while the pad of his thumb pressed firmly against the hood of her clit. Her whole body contracted, the force of her pleasure pulling the chair she was bound to a little closer. She ran her foot higher up his sheath until her toe found where the bottom of the flared head protruded. Herne clasped his free hand against her foot, holding it there while he teased her cunt. He caught a glimpse of their bodies bathed in firelight in one of the metal sheets she’d positioned around the room. He’d been half furious when she had put them up, but he liked watching her move in the light too much to make her take them down. Now he watched the reflected synchronization of their bodies -- the thrust of his hand inside her, the stroke and grip of her foot along his shaft, the way her free leg stretched and twisted to bury his fingers deeper, while a cry tore from her throat. Pulling his gaze away from the sheet metal, he pushed Neva’s leg back down and palmed a thick coating of his cock’s lubrication. He rubbed it around the tight ring of her cunt, pushed three fingers in to smear the walls of her pussy.

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Wildhearts

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She had asked for all of him, every last inch. He wanted to give it to her. She wasn’t a small woman, not in height or in the way her succulent white flesh was full of womanly curves. But tight was tight and here she was so very snug. Snug and coming again as he prepared her body for his cock, rubbing the lubricant into her three and sometimes four fingers deep. She called his name, twisted against the rope binding her wrists to the chair as she lifted her hips and ass off the furs. “Please, Herne.” She squeezed her cunt around his fingers, imprisoned his wrist with the hard press of her thighs. “I want you in me again. Completely.” She was almost crying, not quite. There were no tears -- at least none that he could see with the blindfold covering her eyes. But her voice was jagged, needful, and he slid his fingers from her. Placing his palm against her mound, he forced her back down to the furs. He pushed her legs apart, again marveling at how wet she was and wanting nothing more than to bury his mouth against the sparkling wetness of her labia. He shook his head and felt the heavy weight of the antlers pulling at his neck muscles. He’d tried sawing them off once. There’d been all but unbearable pain and blood and then more pain as they regrew in the space of a week. “Herne?” He pulled back from the memory. “Shhh… I’m here, just looking at you.” He ran his hands over her thighs and was reminded again of snowberries and their flowers, with the hot pink center of the petals paling to white edges. With one hand pressing her open, he pushed down on the skin sheathing his cock and started to slowly sink into her. Shifting, he planted an arm on each side of her, his hands gripping at the furs as he fought for control. “Mmm… yes.” Neva gripped her knees against his hips, her feet stroking the backs of his calves. Knowing she would soon reach the hooves, he wanted her to stop, but then she arched against him, crying out his name and entwining her legs around his until he couldn’t tell where he ended and she began.

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Wildhearts

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Herne looked again to the sheet metal, where the reflection held no hint of hooves or horns, only impassioned flesh twisting and thrusting. Neva’s breasts rose as she arched her back. She pushed her weight forward onto her hips to drive his cock deeper into her. He forced her back down, kept one hand between the generous breasts. He rocked against her, bone to bone, sinking an inch deeper with each bump until he was completely buried inside. He could feel the sensitive skin of his sheath sliding over him as it pushed down to the base of his cock. He felt the brush of his hairs against the delicate, aroused folds of her labia. They were both panting, deep in their separate moments as their bodies peaked and started to tremble and jerk. He watched their reflection, his gaze skimming from the twining of her legs around his, to the tight, grinding juncture of their hips, to where she became wholly, beautifully her own with the hourglass of her waist to the spread of heavy breasts and the bound arms. Watching their union, he came, his throat tightening with the wild roar of a stag, the same roar that had sent the men running in the forest. The call froze Herne’s thrusts. He dropped his head, his gaze instantly on her face. Horror gripped him as he saw the slipped blindfold and her half-opened eyes. He saw the tremble in her lips, didn’t want to wait and hear it turn into a scream. Her legs were still knotted around him. He pushed at them, dug his fingers into the soft flesh of her calves and pried her legs apart when she refused to release him. “Herne. Don’t…” He shook his head. He wanted to bellow, to roar again but in rage. Rage at Wilhelm and his lab of the macabre. Rage at Neva -- at her inevitable rejection of him when the effects of their rutting wore off and her mind was clear again. “Herne, don’t leave me.” She was on her knees, her body twisted around as she tugged at the knots that kept her bound to the chair. He brought his fist down, splintering the wood, freeing her the first little bit but not enough that she could immediately chase after him.

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And then he ran. Outside, into the night and the woods. He hit half a dozen steps, willing the change to come on him. Four hooves hit the ground; the antlers expanded to knock low-hanging branches to the ground. Light erupted from him -- the golden halo of fairy dust that had always made it easy for Wilhelm and his wolf pack to find him. He ran faster, carrying his light far enough away that she would never see it, never find him.

Chapter Four Lying atop the furs, Neva looked at the backpack next to the door. It was about the same size as the first, but its sides bulged with smoked fish, wild berries and dry furs. Over the course of the last few days, Herne had built and stocked it and, like a thief in reverse, left it outside the door sometime last night. Other than the faint smell of smoke on the night winds, it was the first sign of him she’d had since he fled the cabin. She turned her face until it was pressed into the fur bedding. She breathed deeply, searching for the smallest trace of his scent. Finding nothing, she moved lower until she was in the center of the loose pile. There an intoxicating musk lingered and she raked her fingers through the soft fibers. Rolling onto her back, she ran the hand over her face and down one breast, sighing. If she stayed, he would go deeper into the forest, if not completely off the mountain. He’d leave his home, his carvings, the trappings of his humanity for something more feral. She couldn’t do that to him, as much as she wanted to stay and as afraid as she was of following the trail he’d once explained to her down to the valley on Tahoma’s other side. Standing, she moved around the room and gathered a few more items. He had two water skins and she took one. There were bone blades, half a dozen of them, and she took one with a serrated end. Traps hung on the wall near the door and she studied them for a few minutes before taking the simplest one -- a bit of rolled sheet metal with a closed end that popped off to hold bait and another open end that allowed the insertion of a small paw. An inversion of sharp metal flaps kept the animal from pulling its paw back out and a small punched hole allowed twine to be threaded to secure the trap to a bush or tree.

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Grabbing some flints, Neva stuffed everything in the backpack before turning to the far corner. It was stacked high with more furs, proof of how successful his traps were and how long he’d spent in these woods. Sinking onto her knees, she dug through the pile and pulled out the small box of carvings. They were all beautiful, but she coveted only one. She left him his hawks and hounds, his trout and field mice. Finding the desired piece, she put the box back and walked over to the fire. Bending closer to the light, she turned the carving in her hand. The body stood seven inches high, with the antlers adding another two inches. Everything was intricately detailed, from the thick strands of his dark mane to the sinew and veins of his arms and legs. Celtic swirls and knots had been added to the horns. She traced the larger patterns before running her fingertip over the rugged face and muscular torso. The features were exact, suggesting he’d looked long and hard in a mirror -- the cause, perhaps, of the slight hint of defeat in the carving’s posture. She blinked and a tear splashed against the piece to sparkle in the firelight before falling to the hearth. She wiped a second tear away with the back of her hand and moved to the pack, where she wrapped the figure in a piece of cloth before shoving it deep inside. Shouldering the bag, she stumbled under its weight before canting forward and tottering to the door. Outside, the mid-morning sun filtered pale through the trees, unable to melt the thick ground frost from last night. She could see the heavy press of Herne’s tracks but ignored them as nothing more than a tease. Ahead of her, she saw fresh axe marks on a tree and assumed he’d placed them as a trail for her. A dozen or more trees down, another tree was similarly scarred and she followed on.

*** Neva had left her mark on the cabin in ways both big and small. Herne knew they would fade, over time. First to go would be her scent -- overwhelming that first day back in the cabin. The things she had organized would return to their wild state, just as he would return the carvings she had placed around the room to their small dark box.

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Wildhearts

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He stared at the bedding and the pile of blankets he had painstakingly stitched together from the skins of smaller creatures. He gathered it all in his arms, intent on hanging everything outside where the cold would rid them of her scent. Instead, air, ripe with her smell, caressed his face. She’d laid on it that morning, pressed her lush body against the tickle of hairs. He dropped the bedding to the floor and grabbed his cloak. He’d follow her at a safe distance, make sure that she found the trail and stayed away from the dark part of the woods. Maybe he would follow her as far as the other side of the mountain. That would buy him time. When he returned to the cabin, the stink would be gone and he could finally concentrate on restoring the room to its original state.

*** Neva stopped early and made camp in a clearing with plenty of dry wood and close to the stream. A hundred years ago, she never would have made it so far in a single day on foot. A glacier had covered this part of the mountain for ages before mysteriously disappearing. Ask a room full of people and each would have a different story to tell as to the glacier’s disappearance. Some said a meteor hit it, releasing a flood of waters that wiped out most of the old ’Coma Valley. Not everyone believed that story of the city’s destruction. There were plenty who claimed the flood was caused by a tsunami generator the Chinese had built, and still others said it was the original flood, the one Noah had ridden out in his cypress boat. Others said a great flying machine hit the side of the mountain, evaporating all the ice in a ball of flame that reached into the heavens. And then there was the story of a black fog that had settled over the mountain for six days. When the fog cleared, the ice was gone and the woods hadn’t been right from that day forward. Settling in front of the fire, Neva pushed those old tales to the back of her mind and drew the bundled carving from the bag. She held the package in her lap, slowly unwrapping it while she listened to the woods beyond the clearing. She could hear the

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trickle of water and the evening call of birds. Beyond that and the crackle of fire, the woods were silent. Watching the flames, she nervously stroked the carving, the small curve of its back perfectly shaped to her thumb. She set the figure on a flat stone and slid deeper into her bedroll. She’d told herself all through the day’s long walk that he wouldn’t let her leave, that she’d hear a twig snap on the trail behind her and turn to see him following. Now she wasn’t so sure, and she had only his talisman to watch over her as she slept.

*** Another day, another clearing -- Herne watched Neva’s makeshift camp from the woods with his cloak pulled tight around him and its special hood up, with its slits and ties for his antlers. The weather was turning bad and they had maybe two days at best before the storm hit. When it came, it would be big, like the one that had brought her to him. And if she didn’t hunker down, gather extra firewood and build shelter now, she would be in danger when the snow and biting winds shrieked through the forest. Did she know? he wondered. Had her grandmother taught her to read the skies and the wind and the frenetic activity of the birds before everything quieted in an intervening silence? Neva had, after all, stopped earlier than the other days and gathered a larger pile of wood. He shook his head, and then stretched the sore back muscles. It didn’t matter if she rode out the storm. She’d be low on rations afterwards. She hadn’t replenished her meat with the trap, had gone so far as to pry back the sharp metal edges and release the one rabbit she had caught. After that, the trap had remained in the bag. He rubbed at his tight jaw. He’d sent a babe into the woods, packed her bag and set it on the doorstep in the middle of the night like a coward. But she’d chosen to leave, like he knew she would. He had given her an out, made it as convenient as possible, and within a few hours she’d been on her way. He didn’t owe her anything.

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Wildhearts

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So why was he out here freezing his own ass off, with no fire, no flint, no extra pile of furs? He could go back. In his other form, he could beat the storm and maybe find the cabin less alien than when he’d left. Restless and cold, Herne stood and circled the clearing until he found a spot where he could see Neva’s face. It was night and a full moon cast its rays through the hole in the forest’s canopy until she seemed positively lit with the moon’s glow. Keeping his gaze slitted, he moved closer to the tree line. The breeze blew past her in his direction. He lifted his nose in the air, his chest muscles seizing. She was sick. Or not. He couldn’t be sure. There’d been no sickness in Wilhelm’s labs, only injuries. Herne lifted his nose again, breathed more deeply. Something was changed. He could smell that much. He needed to get closer to her scent to understand just what was wrong. Closing his eyes to keep the firelight from reflecting in them, he settled against a tree. He’d wait -- until she had gone into the woods to clear her bladder for the night or was sleeping and wouldn’t hear his approach. Waiting, he listened to the crackle of fire and continued to breathe in the mix of smoke and Neva’s scent. The thought that she might, like the animals in the forest, be coming into some kind of heat left him terrified and aroused. He had no idea if human females experienced such things. The girl at Master Wilhelm’s had been too young, as had the ambiguously gendered creature at the lab. He’d only been a few years into his manhood when he’d escaped. But if Neva was in heat? He shook his head and then froze at the sound of antler scraping against bark. He risked opening his eyes to see if she had heard. She was standing, stretching, and her makeshift cloak had fallen open against the cold. The thin suede top clung to her breasts, the sight forcing his eyes shut before he betrayed his location. Worry had driven him this close to her. He should have stayed back. He opened his eyes again to find her moving toward him. She stopped before entering the trees

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and pushed the loose pants down her hips. He saw the flash of her pale skin and the dark line of her sex and then she was squatting on the ground. In less than a minute she was quickly making her way back to the fire and deep under the blankets. He waited to move closer until he saw her place the small horned carving on a rock as she had done each night. He stayed hidden behind a tree as he scented the ground. There was still too much light from the fire and moon to risk low crawling closer. But even at a distance of a few feet, he could smell the smallest hint of blood. It wasn’t the blood that made his chest tighten -- it was the overwhelming smell of woman. Something had changed drastically in her body, multiplying and enhancing the supply of chemicals that made her odor distinctly feminine. Suppressing a groan, he backed slowly away, deeper into the trees. He didn’t know what the change meant. But it filled him with an overwhelming need to hold her, to protect her and, at this moment in time, to slowly fuck her until they were both bound in oblivion.

*** Neva opened her eyes to early morning and the fire still burning strong. Opposite the fire from her sat the reason -- Herne quietly feeding small branches to the flames. She blinked, sure for an instant that she was dreaming. But he was still there when she opened her eyes. Then the smell of dead rabbit hit her and she bolted upright, her face straining with the need to vomit. Watching her with a side gaze, Herne placed an improvised roasting spit over the fire, complete with the rabbit carcass. “Must you?” she asked, ready to spill last night’s dinner on the ground in front of her. He looked at her and rolled his eyes before answering. “Fresh game, need it to keep from running out of supplies before the storm.” “The storm?” She looked up to find the sky above the clearing cloudless and bright.

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“Yes, isn’t that why you stopped?” “No.” Reluctant to elaborate, Neva poked at the fire. “I changed my mind about leaving the mountain.” Herne snorted and tore a cooked leg from the rabbit. He placed it on the single plate she had brought and handed it to her. “What? Were you going to build yourself a little house here in the clearing?” When she didn’t deny it, he snorted again. “You’d be dead in a week.” She pushed the plate, its contents untouched, back in his direction. “Not… your… problem.” “When the storm passes, you’ll come back to the cabin.” He pushed the plate back toward her with a second leg on it. “At least until the spring thaw. Then we can decide --” “You’ll decide nothing.” She dug around in the backpack for the tin cup. She filled the cup with water and a sprinkling of leaves she’d gathered the last few days of hiking and then sat it close to the fire to warm. “Not your problem, not your decision.” “I meant you can decide then if you want to stay.” Repositioning a log in the fire, he watched Neva with a sideways gaze. “I already know what I want.” She took hold of the cup using a folded cloth and scooped the leaves from the top with a twig. She flung the leaves onto the fire where they died in a small aromatic burst. She stared into the cup and blew on the steaming liquid before taking her first drink. “You said there’s a storm coming?” “Yes, and too soon to get you safely back to the cabin before it hits.” She shrugged. She wasn’t concerned about the storm, had known she would face them if she tried to winter on the mountain. She took another sip, waiting for the herbal effects to calm her stomach. “Time enough, then,” she said as a stray leaf floated to the surface of her tea. He stopped poking at the fire and their gazes met straight on when he asked, “For what?” “For you to show that you’re ready for my return.”

Chapter Five Neva had sounded ominous when she issued her challenge and he had bought time by constructing a lean-to that would fit them both. He still wasn’t sure what she meant but it seemed to involve his answering questions, many questions, most of which made him uncomfortable. Finally eating the rabbit he had caught and cooked for her, she wanted him to talk about the lab. “I was the first,” he answered. “At least, the first success.” He shuddered at the memory of stasis tubes filled with a glowing blue gel and the little monstrosities they held in eternal preservation. The bodies they contained were like him -- young boys with hooves and horns -- and failed combinations with the anatomy of a horse or bird. “Later there were Nessus and Flame.” “Were you born like…” He shook his head, quick to assure her. “I was five when my grandfather sold me to Master Wilhelm as a ‘lab boy.’” He pushed down the early memories of when the lab had been clean and welcoming, before the “vitamin” shots had started and the injections that made his head buzz with an alien presence. “He said he’d started too late with the others, too late with me for what he ultimately wanted, but no one would sell him a baby.” They were sitting shoulder to shoulder within the lean-to and he felt her shudder against him. He drew his legs closer to his body and suppressed the need to put an arm around her, to sniff at her skin and ask her if she was sick. She certainly wasn’t acting like she was in heat. She was calm, almost serene except for that last little tremble of flesh. “Are you cold?” he asked.

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“No.” She scooted closer to him. “I was just thinking about that man getting his hands on a baby.” She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “But then, you were little more than a baby.” He shrugged. “The change didn’t hurt. It scared me, of course. It was the hunts that started later, after the wolves and Nessus were older.” “Wolves?” He shook his head, unwilling to tell her that the wolves had come in as pups, how he’d played with them before they’d started receiving the injections and learned to walk and hunt on two legs. She shifted the direction of her questions. “What were the labs like? Or the city?” “The labs were filled with gleaming metal, everything ran on fuel cells. But outside the labs, the facility’s buildings were in decay.” He paused, remembered the last night when he’d found a breach in the electric fence and escaped into the city beyond. “The rest…” He shook his head. “I just don’t know. It was night, foggy, and I ran as far and fast as I could. When I woke, I was in the woods to the south.” “Fuel cells, huh?” She offered him a sip of her tea but he shook his head. “We had a couple scavenged cells down in the valley. Never more than what would heat the meeting hall.” Setting the cup down, she pulled the fur blanket covering her tighter. “You are cold.” He lifted his blanket in an offer to share. Neva slid closer and rested her cheek against Herne’s chest. “Maybe a little.” “And sick?” “No.” He put an arm around her and rested his chin against the top of her head. This close to her, her softness pressed against him, he struggled to keep his breathing calm. The odd intimacy of their conversation only heightened his need for her. He’d never spoken to anyone like this, had always been separated from the others in the lab. He’d been different from Wilhelm’s later successes as well, both of whom could -- more or less -- find their human forms.

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“You don’t see it?” she asked, looking up at him, her eyes once again brimming with tears. Her emotions had kept shifting through the length of their conversation, leaving him unsure of the nature of her tears. Seeing the slight upturn to her lips, he quirked an uneasy smile at her. “See what, Neva?” She threaded her fingers through his and lifted his hand up to his horns. Where the edges had been sharp and deadly a few weeks ago, they were now rounded. She rose up and straddled him. Releasing his hand, she traced the edges of his horns to their ends. When she reached the tips, her arms only half bent, he realized his antlers had become diminished. She ran her hands back down to his face. The hair was altered, sparser and more like that of a man. She rubbed her cheek against his and then placed her hands against his chest and pushed until his back was against the ground fur. He’d been a fool to think she would test him with words only. Leaning over his face, she peeled her shirt away, letting her breasts brush the sides of his face. He turned, groaning as he took a nipple in his mouth. She guided his hands to her waist, used them to push at her pants. He stripped them off her and then held her by the hips as she rubbed against his sheath. Riding the hard line of his erection, she closed her fists around the base of his horns. She pulled herself higher, his mouth still suctioned around her nipple. She broke the seal, brought her hands down to his chest and nestled her cunt against the exposed head of his cock. She pushed a finger into his mouth and teased his lips open. He sucked at the tip, his tongue flicking the edge with a quick promise if she would just move higher. Or let him slide lower. Neva rose up off her haunches and exposed her cunt to him. Slowly, she guided him down between her legs and lowered her bottom until her flesh gently brushed against his lips. He swiped his tongue against the sides of her spread labia, stopping to suck her clit into his mouth. As he sucked the swollen pearl, his fingers found the circle

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of her sex and pushed into her. He could feel her stretching, reaching, the jerk of her body as she tossed her head back and moaned. She squirmed against his mouth, tightened around his fingers. Herne watched Neva over the curve of her mound. Her hands roamed her body, pinching at the hard nipples and drawing them taut. She rocked against him and he pushed his fingers deeper, pumping at her pussy with long strokes while he licked the swollen ridge of her clit. She called his name and dug her nails into the soft flesh of her legs as if she was trying to keep her building climax from reaching its peak. He kept his mouth firm and unrelenting, stroked her pussy three fingers thick as his other hand found and played with the tight quiver of her ass. She bucked against him and a rush of cream covered his lips, wetting his palate. He abandoned the soft dangle of her clit and used his fingers to widen the circle of muscle. He pushed his tongue into her cunt and tasted her as she bucked again. “Can’t… breathe…” Neva choked the words out with another jerk, another gush of her climax. Slowing his strokes, Herne gently brought her back down from orgasm. Leaning back, she brushed her labia against his face as her hands found his cock. Turning, she slid down his body, pulling the sheath with her to expose the length of his erection. She pushed the sheath forward again, played a game of hide and seek that had him twisting along the ground and ready to impale her. When he thought he would burst, she slowed and exposed him to his base once again. Shifting forward, she positioned herself over the head, rubbed her pussy against the tip and its heavy layer of lubrication. Oh-so-slowly she pushed her way onto him as her hands continued to restrain the sheath. When she at last had him buried inside her, she locked her arms behind her head and began to grind her hips. Forward, side, back, side. Front again. She fucked him with a maddening slowness, each locked into position or a moment before she would whimper and hit the next.

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Herne grabbed the heavy tits, tugged at them until she forgot the larger rhythm and started to hit only the front and back marks. Perspiration glistened along her skin, formed little beads of temptation. Letting go of her, he propped himself on his elbows and began to lick at her swollen nipples, tasting their salt. She grasped his shoulders and bounced harder along his cock, her body alternating between long and fast strokes but always with a fierce downward thrust in her return. Words flew from her mouth, dirty, primal commands that left him grunting and moaning with her. And then her whole body shook in release. She threw her arms around his shoulders, curled her neck until they were cheek to cheek. “Don’t stop.” She breathed the plea in his ear. “Don’t stop. Not yet.”

*** Herne had Neva on her belly, with his stomach pressed against her back. He worked his arms under her shoulders, locked his hands behind her neck as he pushed all the way into her cunt. She spread her legs, canted her ass harder against the muscled plane of his lower gut. He rocked against her, the sensation so deep it almost sent her mind into delirium. She forced her legs up alongside her body so that her knees were level with the sides of her breasts. Herne groaned, his breath hot against her neck as he cinched her tighter within his grip. Slowly he began to bump against her. His heavy balls slapped at her flesh, the jolt causing her labia to slide against her clit. Already, she could feel another climax building. She bit at her lip, wanting to hold it back and stay with him until his release filled her. He was close, she could hear it in his breathing, feel it in the way all of his muscles trembled in their fight to keep control. She called his name and tightened around him. “Fuck me” slipped past her lips again. She had wanted to offer him something more refined -- “fill me” or “love me” -but her throat had translated her needs to their most feral expression. “Neva!”

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Feeling Herne’s climax ripple through his shaft, she stopped holding back her own. She screamed it at him and thrust hard against him to keep his cock moving inside her. He let go of her neck and grabbed her hips. He pulled and pushed her body along his flagging erection until she cried out and buried her face against the furs, her torso and legs jerking uncontrollably. Still inside her, Herne rolled them onto their sides and drew a blanket across their bodies. He rubbed her arms and chest, trying, she guessed, to calm her sensitive flesh. It only served to renew her arousal and she clutched at his arms, pressed them hard against her chest. When he nuzzled her neck, her body spasmed with another aftershock. “You are in heat?” It wasn’t so much a question as a request for confirmation. She shook her head. “No, not heat. Just highly aroused… by you.” “Is it not the same?” He eased from her, then pulled her closer to him, hugging her more tightly. “No. Believe me.” She turned in his arms and buried her face against the hollow of his neck. “Human women choose their mates.” She thought a moment before adding, “If they are lucky. And, again, if they are lucky, they choose when they will make love.” The sound of his pulse thudded in her ear, lulling her toward sleep. “I thought you were in heat, or sick, something in the way you smell…” he fumbled at the end, as if he were afraid of insulting her. Neva laughed. Her grandmother had taught her the signs. Morning sickness, implantation bleeding, the change in the way a woman’s urine smelled. “No, not sick.” She paused, wondering if it was too soon to tell him. What if she was wrong or the thought terrified him? She’d known enough “normal” males in the valley who had half lost their minds upon hearing that their wives were pregnant. “What then?” He was holding her slightly away from him and staring into her eyes. “What aren’t you sharing?”

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She smiled at his question, mostly at the way his quick mind had caught on to one of her own methods and used it against her. “It could be nothing… I might be wrong.” His grip on her tightened. “Tell me anyway.” She pushed her lips out at him while she discarded every string of words that came to mind. Finally, she tugged at one of his hands, pulled it low onto her belly and watched while understanding crept into his expression. He touched his forehead against hers, his palm trembling along her stomach. “Are you sure it’s even possible?” She offered another laugh and then ran her lips over his. “My grandmother used to say ‘nature has no use for man’s possibilities.’ Never knew her to be wrong about anything.” “She’s gone… your grandmother?” Neva could hear a second question layered beneath the words of the first and she molded herself to his chest. “Yes, going on five years now.” He had proven himself adept over the weeks at shutting himself off -- a casting of his eyes to the side, a turned head, a narrowed gaze. He did none of those things when she looked at him this time. Placing a palm against his cheek, Neva promised, “All that I need -- all that I want -- is right here on this mountain.” Herne searched her expression for a few seconds, and then his eyes slowly closed in acquiescence and he dipped his head until their foreheads touched. “At last I can say the same.”

Ann Vremont Ann Vremont is a mother, wife, licensed attorney, technical writer, high school dropout and former Russian linguist for Army SigInt. She’s called Bingo for a living, waitressed at a strip club, scooped ice cream and conducted political surveys -including for the wrong party. She maintains that, if she hadn’t dropped out of high school, she would probably be a mineralogist or a geophysicist. Ann further maintains that if she had never met her husband of seventeen-plus years or had their son when she did, she would probably be making her living illegally -- or, if unsuccessful, sitting in jail. She has a large collection of minerals and a growing collection of lighthouses. Having been born and partially raised in Arizona, the mineral collection doesn’t surprise her, but she’s still puzzling the source of her lighthouse fetish. You can find her on the web at wwww.annvremont.com.