Pn1 (15 page)

following game you know." Sebastian stood up and shuffled over to

Gillian, pulling her up by her hair. "So is she any good?"

Patryk rocketed to his feet. "Let her go."

"You do have a voice, nice to know." Sebastian shook Gillian's

head until she yelped then let her crumple back into holding her

knees.

Patryk pranced back and forth huffing. "Why did you do this?" He

sniffed the air. "You're terrifying her."

"Why did I do this? Come on, it's payback for years of you

haranguing me. You have all these stupid rules and wait you don't

even follow your own. I mean it is a stupid superstition not to sleep

with someone the night before, but if you're going to cage my dick

you can't wag yours around as a play toy." Sebastian licked his lips,

and adjusted his balls. "If you get to play with pussy, shouldn't I get

to?"

Gillian whipped her eyes back and forth between them. "I don't

know what kind of sick fiends you are, but I'm not sleeping with you,

either of you."

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Patryk hunched his shoulders and stopped his pacing, his foot

pawed at the tile.

"Aw your girlfriend doesn't seem to like you anymore. Maybe

she'll like me better." Sebastian undid his belt and let the buckle hang.

Gillian bellowed and made a beeline for the door, thudding it with

her body until she was drenched in sweat and too bruised to give it

another go.

Patryk thundered towards Sebastian and tackled him into the wall.

"You touch her again and I'll kill you."

"Come off yourself. You are barely bigger than me. You make a

measly, pathetic excuse for an alpha, and everyone knows it."

Sebastian blew into Patryk's eyes.

"Then why aren't you trying something, pretending to care that

we're brothers?" Patryk leaned forward and pushed his forehead into

Sebastian's crown so he was forced to slide down the wall, still

pinned.

"Waste of effort. Check the time. It would be pointless to try with

the minute or two I have after you start changing to follow suit."

Sebastian showed off his watch. "Even through her skin you should

still be able to tell the time." He jabbed his wrist into Patryk's chest as

the watch alarm went off. "I love being right."

Sebastian moved out from under Patryk. "Hey girl the show's about

to begin."

The back of Patryk's shirt busted open even though there weren't

any seams. His shirt blew out like a popped balloon, but instead of air

gushing out a tirade of barbed hairs filled the air, sticking to anything

that had sweat for adherence.

Gillian sputtered and exchanged screams for an attack of sneezed

coughs as mucus membranes inside her nose and mouth tried to shed

like a molting animal. She started to hyperventilate from the

coughing that took the place of inhalations, and ended up throwing up

a liquid saliva mix to wash out her mouth and throat.

Her eyes watered to the point of blindness, tears draining down her

cheeks, the streams mingling with her dripping nose. By the time she

could wipe herself dry with the back of her hand and sleeve, she was

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beyond screaming and suffering from a dissonant mix of anger and

shock, each taking turns at the sight of Patryk.

She didn't possess an adult vocabulary for what she saw; all she

could do was backtrack in age to a little girl listening to fairytales or a

teen pretending to be scared when boys told horror stories on the farm

over summer. The problem was neither fairytales nor horror stories

were ever supposed to impact her life in a living, breathing, killing

sort of way.

Her brain stuttered trying different tactics for weighing the

situation. She didn't even care anymore about being the weak one or

the loser, she cared about rational sense and coming up with four

when adding two and two together with or without a calculator.

Just to make sure she closed her eyes, tried to blank out her mind

with a Buddhist mantra, and opened her lids again. Shit, this was

more Tibetan territory of demons and monsters from the lower karmic

realms than fairytales.

Patryk's shirt was no longer a garment but shreds of fabric draped

over an expanding form that held on until gravity overcame audacity

and got hold of the cotton strips. She let go of watching Sebastian as

well, because she knew at this point her body was well trained to alert

her of his upcoming presence before her mind could process the

incoming sight of his approach.

She closed her eyes and decided to start from scratch as if friends

were watching a horror film and she had just entered the film halfway

through after the buildup and background was established.

One man was on the floor chuckling. She'd call him Sebastian and

for the moment label him deranged or a psychopath, but she'd have to

get back to him. On second thought maybe he was a mad scientist

gone insane. With the white tiled room that could certainly be

possible.

Now for the other man, no creature, he had a pseudo human form

that seemed to be blowing up or being electrocuted in torture. The

man, thing, or creature was screeching and howling as if on the brink

of dying from pain. The sounds underneath the screams sounded like

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branches being broken, and her gut reacted with a mouth of liquid

expecting to see bones jutting out from the mass of undulating fur.

The red would have been shocking even in normal situations, but

against bleached white it was jolting. She smelled the iron infesting

the air and pulling at her tongue, bringing up her gorge. Later she'd

deal with why blood tantalized her tongue without being cooked first,

but her shoulders rose up in expectation for a kill. Shaking her head,

she screamed with Patryk when his skin blistered open, fur shooting

out of once smooth flesh.

His normally large size grew by nearly fifty percent, taking up

more air that sizzled with blood fumes and downy hair. A circle of

blood, skin, and fur surrounded him that matted the floor in a carpet of

life gone wrong.

The site was too horrific to turn her gaze away from. She was

mentally desperate not to miss a second of the travesty in case she was

drawn into the energy that rippled off him and split the oxygen around

him into ozone that gave the smell of being lost at sea during a

hurricane.

Sebastian broke up his laughter with hoots and howls that were a

complete opposite of the howls Patryk spit out in rapid fire. One was

a college student gone wild in the bar, the other was a war captive

being flayed alive. Whatever war Patryk fought, the man she'd known

biblically just the night before was losing much to Sebastian's

amusement.

Gillian knew she should be shocked senseless, but the problem was

the more she saw, the more the odd power both men, if man was a

good adjective for them, held over her made sense. She could pride

herself that there was no way she would have ever won against Patryk

the other night. She wasn't weak, but human. Humans and monsters

were on such different playing fields that only with the highest

handicap would she come close to being an equal in sex or war.

She covered her mouth so neither Sebastian nor Patryk would see

here smile. There was no way she was ever going to appear to side

with Sebastian. Both were monsters, but Sebastian was a psycho no

matter what species was under discussion.

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As Patryk's nose and face extended to resemble a wolf's, claws

sprang out where neatly trimmed nails once were and Sebastian was

spackled with drool and saliva whipping through the air in concussive

streaks of gelatinous goo.

Gillian heard before she saw Sebastian's change. Widening her

gaze to now cover them both, she spotted that wherever the drool hit

Sebastian the air began to emit heat waves that blurred his form,

erasing boundaries she normally considered crucial to existence.

Patryk no longer remained in the room, instead an amber and grey

wolf slunk to all fours and crept into a corner cagily watching them

both. Sebastian sped down the same track as Patryk had been

committed to, but the sounds he filled the air with were lighter and

involved more yips and snuffles.

Sebastian bounced up and down during his disfigurement and

reassembly, but Patryk was still backed up into a corner, paws

prancing.

Fear was a given, but part of Gillian's mind tread down a new angle

of thought. She was a potential goner even when they were both

human. She was no match for either alone and together.

Between them the arrow pointing at her saying prime target blinked

neon backed by a dripping red paint spill. It wasn't a pleasant,

comforting thought but it was the best analogy in a world that no

longer played by what she was trained to think as given. Still, no

matter what the setting, strength and agility always won out, and she

possessed neither in comparison to them.

So her goner status hadn't changed which meant it also hadn't

diminished or increased. She was where she would be no matter what

form they took on, and there was an odd sort of comfort to that. A

very odd tantalizing comfort, because that might mean they would

overvalue the change and be sloppy. She was used to bullies and their

dire need to over emphasize abilities.

Patryk clearly wasn't happy about the change, and Sebastian on the

other end of the spectrum relished each bone splitting alteration to his

dimensions. She made the assumption she knew how Sebastian

would react to her. Maybe the change only prodded latent desires and

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needs once the human censor could be eradicated, but how would they

react to each other?

If Sebastian was right about Patryk being alpha then he probably

resented it. If she got between the two, would they turn their anger on

each other and leave her to come up with a defensive strategy? If ... if

... if...

The change made Sebastian more feral, but Patryk no longer

swaggered around trying to convince the world to stay away, instead

he hid in a corner. Did that mean he was scared? If scared, scared of

what? Scared of her, of himself, of Sebastian? Was there something

she could use here?

Sebastian's change added to the detritus ring of sprayed animal

parts on the tile. She looked at Patryk; he appeared to be spitting up?

The behaviors of wolves were not in her fact book for mental recall,

but it didn't look like a healthy behavior or an enjoyable one; and the

further Sebastian went into full monster wolf form, the more Patryk

growled and prodded his nose in his direction.

Did that mean Patryk wasn't interested in her, or that his feelings

towards Sebastian were stronger? Gillian didn't think asking him

would be a wise move, but her head spun from all the unanswered

questions. She preferred his attention stay glued onto Sebastian,

keeping her out of the equation for as long as humanly possible.

Was there anything she actually understood? She got that she ran

on adrenaline laced fear and that pretty soon mental functions might

go offline and leave her a babbling, incoherent idiot running like a

chicken with its head cut off. However, she did seem to be doing a

fairly good job of piecing her situation together despite copious

amounts of terror. Or was insanity kicking in, defiling her mind with

unwarranted hope? For all she knew their change was putting

psychedelic particles in the air to disarm any threat she might possess.

Any further thinking ceased, because Sebastian was now a smaller

copy of Patryk, the same amber toned grey fur and amber eyes. From

her vantage point she could see how wet his muzzle was from saliva

and licking.

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Sebastian pushed out his chest and angled his head back, snout to

the ceiling letting out a howl that made Gillian come close to peeing

her pants. Only muscles honed from holding it in during long city

transit times kept her pants as dry as her constant sweating allowed.

Sebastian brought his head down slowly, fixing his stare on her.

His chest fur puffed out and his legs stopped rocking. He started to

shrink in towards his spine's center, coiling up for a spring.

All previous intentions flew out of mind, and Gillian tried to deflate

into the wall's non-porous surface.

Sebastian sprung off his hind legs and leaped into the air.