Note: You can change font size, font face, and turn on dark mode by clicking the "A" icon tab in the Story Info Box.
You can temporarily switch back to a Classic Literotica® experience during our ongoing public Beta testing. Please consider leaving feedback on issues you experience or suggest improvements.
Click here
The lanky demon spoke a little hesitantly as she looked up and began to speak in slightly broken Xer, which Rosa found was close enough to comprehend.
"I'm just a dancer and a ... "she looked down a little, "I'm a whore. I lived on the streets back home, but I was a little cute, I guess, and some males offered me a chance to make a living working for them. I had nothing else, so I agreed."
She sighed, "They paid for the work to make me look better, and ... and that's how I got these tits. I used to work the Xer bars on Merren because there's good gold in it and I had to pay them back for the operations, but there was always so much interest that it was going slowly.
The Merren in there saw me dance one night and he paid for me and took me away. He likes what I am, I guess. But not anymore." The Merren dancer lifted her hand to wipe her face and they saw what she meant. The shape and features were all feminine, but the girl was really a male with rather small equipment, though that might have been due to the chilly wind.
"What is your name," Rosa growled softly.
"Shawa, Mistress," he said, "I am called Shawa. I know that you don't know me and you probably don't care, but, ... can you help me?"
"I should bring him along for you in case you're in the mood sometime," she grinned at Tirran, but he wasn't smiling back .
"No," he said, "Do what you like, but not that. I don't like Merrens of any kind." He looked at the dancer, "I don't have anything against you, I've just developed an allergy from working for that asshole in there and I've fought in a few of the wars that Mer financed."
"We're leaving to go to the mountains," Rosa said, "You're welcome to come along, but you'll need something to wear since you have no fur on you and you know that it could get a little rough for you."
"I have no other choice," Shawa said with resignation, "I don't know what I can do that's useful, but I'll try to find something. Just please let me come. I was from the farms on Merren, but there was no way to stay alive, and after that, all I saw were the bottom of the cities, but at least I knew how it went there. Here, I don't know anything or anyone."
Maria came forward then, "He will need someone to look out for him among us. I can tell you that for nothing." She whistled for a moment and then she said, "If Tirran is going in here and we are not to be here, then you must lead us away, and for that, you will need help as well. I can help, and my male Raul as well. "she looked over at the dancer for a moment, "Him? He needs protecting, I think. Cesar can look after him until he knows a little better what is what."
She turned and the crowd parted to allow a large werewolf through. He looked mean, and when he saw Shawa, he looked even less-pleased. There were scars on him and he wasn't pretty to look at, that was for certain.
"This one will come with us and I wish to keep him close to Rosa, Raul and the two males here. Keep the others off his pretty ass at least until we get where we're going."
Cesar was about to nod curtly when Shawa jumped a little and knocked into him. When Shawa looked back there was a male there with a crooked leer, "Baby, come here. You don't need anyone but me."
Shawa was pushed aside and the creep's eyes bulged when Cesar grabbed him by the ear and drove his fist up under his ribs. As the male tottered backwards trying to keep his stomach down, Cesar only looked at him and nodded once. The others around them all got the message and backed away a step.
"You need to keep up," Cesar said to Shawa, "I gotta watch you, but I don' gotta like you. I'm for damn sure not going to carry you." With that made clear, Rosa kissed Tirran for a moment before she turned to lead them all out of Lozenjellis.
As they walked, with Shawa doing his best to keep up to the pace of the long-legged wolves, he began to notice that the group around him was always changing a little. He noticed that Cesar kept them just behind the group of leaders walking with Rosa, and he was a little confused by it. Then it came to him that they were coming to look at him, to stare and gawk a little before drifting away, only to be replaced by others.
He noticed a female walking alone, not all that far off. She looked, but she didn't stare, and she made no catcalls or other sorts of comments. In fact, she made no comments at all, she only walked near them. He looked a little when he had a chance and he was a little surprised at how different she seemed from many of the other females.
For one thing, the color of her fur was far lighter, coming a little close to a cream color, though her ears and her tail and paws were darker. She had a really long and thick black mane and she was stick thin and wiry. He couldn't even see her breasts from where he walked, other than the barest swells. He wondered for a second if she had any at all. Her face was stunningly beautiful to him, but she looked a little different there as well, and not being from here, he had no way to place her.
They hadn't even gone ten miles before Shawa's legs began to give him trouble. He'd never walked this quickly in his life for more than a few moments. To him, this was just short of needing to trot. He tried that, but the increased demands on his heart and lungs didn't make it worth the expenditure. He just couldn't keep up.
When he slowed with a stitch in his side and cramping thigh muscles, Cesar looked as though he could have killed him.
"Get onto my back," he growled and Shawa hesitated.
"Last chance," the large werewolf said through his teeth.
Shawa was mortified after that, having to hang onto the back of a werewolf who plainly wasn't pleased at having to carry him this way. His ass hung out there in the wind and his genitals were crushed against the strong, bouncing, bobbing, back. The fast walk of these creatures was relentless and to them it was very smooth, but it was anything but smooth if you were an unwanted piece of luggage who had to concentrate on hanging on -- and willing away the beginnings of an erection.
A pair of males noticed and stepped closer as they walked along, making comments and stroking Shawa's ass, even reaching to tease his scrotum and penis, making comments all the while that Cesar had better watch out now.
Cesar just walked, snarling low down and softly promising himself a little bit of hopefully quiet murder when he got the chance.
All of a sudden, there was a commotion behind them. Shawa heard a stream of curses in a female voice, and then a few yelps of surprised pain in rapid succession.
"I got them off you," the odd female said to Cesar quietly and with more than a little pride as she sheathed a short sword and a long knife in the scabbards that she carried behind one shoulder. Cesar thanked her and Shawa lifted his once-again tear-streaked face to say his thanks as well. He'd been thoroughly humiliated.
"Ain't no thang," the small female said with a smile as she patted his thigh only once, "We all need a little help sometime. Next time, it might be me, yeah? I'll walk wittchu now, if it's ok."
Cesar nodded but said nothing and the girl fell silent as well, concentrating on saving her strength for the long haul, since she didn't know how long they'd be at this walking.
---------------------
He made his way inside a little furtively and reached the small cutter in a few minutes. After pullng the master power switches, he pulled open a pair of panels and got busy. The first thing that he disconnected was the locator beacon. There weren't any other Xer ships here as far as he knew, and no other Merren ones either, besides the frigate waiting at the outpost.
He opened the case of the beacon and found the two backup batteries, ripping the leads off them as well. After that, he pulled out the destruct charge. This was a charge which could be triggered remotely in the event of an emergency by someone high enough to have the transmitter. Since he didn't have it, he had a good idea who it was who carried it. He pulled off every lead from the battery and then closed up the panels again.
He had an idea then, deciding that he might need a ruse during the critical seconds of his departure, so he stepped to the flare panel and made a few alterations to three of them before he stepped to another panel at the other end of the craft. He was panting a little from the exertion and tension, but he was a little happy. If this worked ...
With everything closed up, he closed the main switches and the cutter's system began to initiate a self-test routine. There would be errors found. He knew that, but he had workarounds for them and stepped outside with a bundle under his arm.
-------------------
Evening found them in the Sanberndino forest and the first of the hunting groups were beginning to return with food for everyone. Shawa sat near to a fire that Cesar had made before he'd gone off to hunt. He looked around. Everywhere there were werewolves, and he didn't know much about it, but they weren't the same as they'd have been in the city. Here, there was an air of being on a bit of an adventure and finding themselves in a place where they fit somehow. Some of them were eating, and a few of the younger ones were singing a little and clapping their hands together in rhythms that Shawa found pleasing in an odd way.
He sighed as he looked down into the flames of the fire. Very few of them paid him any attention, other than the stares that he got from some of the males and the long wondering looks that he sometimes saw from some of the females. No one spoke to him or even acknowledged his existence very much.
Cesar came back with four rabbits and he sat down without looking over as he drew a knife from somewhere and began to prepare them. Shawa only looked into the flames.
"I'm sorry," he said softly and Cesar looked up for a moment.
"Everyone here looks like they're at least a little happy. I'm only feeling foolish. I don't know what's good to eat here and I don't even know much about hunting for myself. I think that you'd be happy too if it weren't for me."
A rabbit carcass landed in his lap.
When he looked over, Cesar still wasn't looking at him. "That one's for you and I'll teach you in a minute," he said.
He looked up and stared a little, "You don't know why everyone's like this, do you?"
Shawa shook his head, "No. It's a little good to see, but I don't have any idea."
"What's it like -- where you come from?" the large one asked.
Shawa shrugged as he felt the softness of the rabbit's ear with his fingers, "It depends on how much gold you have. It can be nice and you live in a good place. If you're like me, you live in the same thing that we left. I did what I had to so that I could live. If I couldn't dance and get a few people to want to fuck me every night, I'd be dead. I don't know what I'm going to do now."
Maria and Rosa came over then and handed Shawa a thick cut of meat, hot and steaming on the wooden stake that it hung from. He thanked them and they walked away, looking for others who couldn't take care of themselves.
Shawa looked at it and set the rabbit carcass down carefully as he stood up and brought the meat to Cesar. "Here," he said, "this is for you. When you're done, I'd like it if you could teach me as you said."
Cesar took the stake and looked at the meat. Somebody had obviously found a steer somewhere. "Why?"
Shawa sighed, "Because I know that you don't like me much, and you've been told to look out for me. I know that you said that you don't have to carry me, but you did anyway after I couldn't keep up anymore. A lot of the others laughed at us, me especially, but you had to carry me anyway. I just want to show that I'm thankful for what you're doing."
Cesar nodded and quickly cut the meat in half, "It's alright. I don't like you a lot, but I don't dislike you either. The ones with the loose mouths, I'll fix later, don' worry 'bout that. Here, let's eat this while it's still hot. The bunnies can wait."
There was a fight beginning not far off, and Shawa couldn't see much of anything in the darkness because of the many spectators in the way.
"Why are you here?" Shawa asked him, "What's making you come along?"
Cesar shrugged, "I work for Maria and Raul most often when they need somebody big and stupid. I used to have a pretty ok life," he said, "I had a wife and two kids once. You know -- the working hard for the ones you love bullshit. Then I was bitten one night trying to protect my family from something like what I am now. My shotgun ran dry and she got to me before I got it reloaded. She kicked the hell out of me and only bit me, but it was enough to put me on my ass. I think what saved me was that I kept getting up. She left after a while.
My wife was thankful until I changed later."
He looked away across the distance and Shawa knew that he wasn't seeing anything of the others and the way that a few of the females had begun to dance to the clapping rhythms.
"She threw me out."
He sighed, "I came back the next night after I was stable, but I found one of the neighbor's teenaged kids eating my wife's throat. She was still twitching then. Everywhere else, ... "
He looked down and was silent for a moment. It was a few seconds before Shawa noticed the way that his massive shoulders shook a little, so he came over and sat down next to Cesar. He wanted to put his arm around the huge werewolf, but he had to get to his knees to do it, and so he did.
Cesar's voice was little more than a whisper, but it came out from between his teeth in such a tortured way that Shawa swore that he could feel the pain.
"Pieces of my kids," Cesar said as he sobbed only a moment longer before he had himself a little under control again as the sounds of the fight turned a little frenzied. Shawa saw only a little from where he knelt and what he could make out was that it was only a spinning ball of bodies. They were so fast. But the one called Maria waded right into the fray, beating down a couple of those involved.
When she stepped out of it, Maria was dragging the female who had helped earlier by the arm, and the girl wasn't pleased, "I can HANDLE it, Maria!"
Maria stopped after she got them out of earshot of the rest and let go as she turned, "You'll get yourself killed one day, Noriko. I've told you before -- you can't get through life with only a big mouth and the pair of brass balls that you wish you had."
She seized the other one's arm before she could react and began to walk again, dragging the other one over to where Cesar and Shawa sat. She flung the girl in the direction of the pair and Noriko almost fell on her face in the dirt from the force of the throw. "Stay with them," was all that she said as she turned to walk off. It was how the girl knew that Maria's famous temper was at just that point, so she held her tongue.
A male walked past and made a lewd comment. Cesar did nothing and Noriko flipped him off, but Shawa looked up, his eyes glazed over and shining brightly. The werewolf's expression changed to fear and he ran but he ended up high in a tree anyway, quivering as several others stared at Shawa, who knelt beside Cesar with his small fist outstretched in the direction of the one in the tree. He looked around and opened his hand. The one in the tree fell thirty feet to the ground and lay there groaning.
"Why did you do that?" Maria asked as she ran up.
"Fuck that," Noriko grinned, "HOW did you do that?"
Shawa looked up, "Cesar was telling me about his family and that one had to say something which I could not allow to go by. I'm sorry. I'm happy to be here with you all, but I'm getting tired of the jokes. Cesar doesn't deserve to hear things like he's had to because of me. He didn't deserve what was said either -- not right now. If it weren't for me, he'd be fine."
Maria's eyes blazed and she ran to the one on the ground, kicking him viciously and stomping him a few times before she reached to grab him by the ear. She said a short phrase and it ended with another which was a question. He nodded in reply and began to sit up very painfully as she stepped back.
Then she changed her mind and kicked him in the face to walk back to Cesar. She glared at the thin female and motioned over her shoulder with her thumb, "Noriko!"
The girl flashed past Shawa, her silver blades out in a heartbeat, and the beaten werewolf sagged to the ground a moment later.
Maria looked at Shawa for a moment, "Right here," she said, "right now, this is a little fragile, ok? There are two groups of us here, mostly, and we've never gotten along well. The peace between us is a little strained, so be careful who you piss off, alright? We've been talking among ourselves, trying to find ways to leave the shit behind us in the city." She looked at Cesar who seemed to have it together a little and was trying to figure out what had just happened.
"My cousin is still a little broken," Maria said, "I think that I did the right thing to put you guys together. Noriko will stay with you now. Maybe you can all help each other." She tousled Cesar's head and kissed his cheek. "Cesar's always been the kind who would help anybody, so it's not good for me to see him in the dark place that he always carries around like a cloud. You did the right thing, Shawa. Just try to keep it a little more on this side of murder the next time, ok?"
Shawa nodded and got up to go back to the fire. He sat looking at the flames again as Cesar looked at him in silence for a minute before he and Noriko stepped over and sat down. He offered his share of the good meat to Noriko, who split it further with one of her knives after nodding to him in thanks.
Why do you have to stay here with us," Shawa asked, trying to understand.
Cesar shrugged, "Maria is keeping all of the misfits together where she can keep them out of trouble."
"Aya," Noriko nodded as she looked up from the meat that she was gnawing on, "Thass us, for sure, I guess."
When the beef was gone a minute or two later, Cesar went back to the rabbits.
"See here?" he said as he made incisions around all of the paws, "This is how you do it if you want the pelt. We got no way to do the skins up right, but if I can, you'll both get a little bit of fur to wear, Noriko if she wants it and you because you got none, Shawa and it gets cold here later at night, I thnk. If you keep what you got out of sight a little, maybe you'll attract less shitheads."
He found a flat rock and used it as a cutting board to remove the heads before he made a long incision and with one pull, he had the body in one hand and the fur in the other.
"Now you do it," he said.
Come on, baby," Noriko said a few minutes later, "Let's get these bunnies washed in the stream and then they'll cook up nice in a few minutes -- if I don't burn 'em again."
She sighed, "I usually burn my meat 'cause I get distracted too easy. Next thing I know," she grinned, "I got me an excellent source of dietary carbon, but at least I don' gotta fight anybody off when I eat it."
She looked over, "If ya don' mind me askin', why you got tits AND a dick? I never seen somebody like you before -- an' I ain't even talkin' bout them horns and all."
Shawa tried to explain it and it caused Noriko to laugh a little, "Well I like you," she grinned, "I just don' think I'd know where to start on you."
They stood in a cold stream washing the bit of fur from the meat and as Shawa stood bent over a little, he suddenly froze as he felt cold fingers slip up under his tail to leave little caresses for a moment.
"I think that you're more Cesar's kind of girl though," Noriko sighed as she leaned over his back with her arm across his hips, "I'm just giving you a little tease here, thass all. It kind of makes me a little sad in a way," she said, "I might not be real clear on what you are, honey, but I like you right off the hop." She washed Shawa carefully and a little quickly before she squatted down in the stream and washed herself.
