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Disclaimer: The following story contains explicit acts of nonconsentual sex between male anthropomorphic and taur adults. If you are too young to legally view such content, or if such content does not appeal to you, leave now.

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Note: The content in this chapter might not appeal to everyone. With that in mind, I've kept the story in The Bird of Prayer inessential to Prey No More's main plot line, for the most part, so readers don't have to suffer through this chapter to keep up to date with Ileni, Sophan, and the others, if they find any of the tags distasteful. That said, anyone who enjoyed Ileni or the darker parts of the Dreamer series will likely find The Bird of Prayer bearable at the very least (provided they also enjoy male on male erotica, of course).

Oh, and a preemptive explanation: I realize my descriptions of avian anatomy in this chapter aren't accurate. This matter may be explained in more detail later on, but for now we can assume that Charles Vanderhaus, the geneticist who began humanity's anthropomorphic evolution in this story, needed to combine avian and mammalian genes in order to successfully create the (mostly) avian anthros.

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The Bird of Prayer

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The parakeet rounded the corner into a long-deserted alley of Final York, his oversized robes threatening to trip him with every step. He could hear his pursuer's hooves clopping against the solid stone ground not far behind him, but hoped that he'd gained the upper hand when he'd found the alley; if fortune favored the parakeet, it would be too tight a squeeze for the centaur that was after him.

As he reached the dead end in the little alley, little more than a crack between two caves, the light from the centaur's lantern glared into the alley, nearly blinding the parakeet with its sudden brightness. His green feathered head lowered as he searched the ground for anything he could use to defend himself, but unsurprisingly, the stone was bare, nothing but dust motes swirling around the dragging hem of the parakeet's robes.

"That was your last wrong turn, Josem," the centaur rumbled behind him. The larger male didn't even sound out of breath, while the parakeet was nearly ready to collapse.

Josem turned to give the centaur a pleading look. "What do you want with me, Cayin?" he panted, shielding his eyes from the centaur's lantern with a feathered hand.

"I told you before, I need your help with something," Cayin said, his deep, resonant voice almost making the stone tremble beneath Josem's feet. One of the centaur's hind hooves scraped against the ground, the sound making a shiver climb up the parakeet's spine. "I have an itch I can't reach, and need you to scratch." Josem shivered for an entirely different reason, then. He knew what Cayin was referring to. Before he could think of a way to talk himself out of his predicament, though, the centaur turned to someone standing behind one of the alley's corners, out of Josem's sight. "Paolo, go pull him out of there, would you? I can't stand this itch for much longer."

"Why can't Paolo scratch it for you, then?" Josem argued meekly while a tall bald eagle stepped in front of the centaur's light, his robed form a dark silhouette framed by the lantern's illumination. "You really don't need me, Cayin."

But the eagle was stepping inexorably closer to the diminutive parakeet in the alley's deepest corner. "I can't help Cayin, little chick," Paolo said in a deceptively gentle voice, "because when I scratch, I draw blood."

Paolo's big hands reached down, then, and hoisted the parakeet off the ground by his armpits. Josem could try to fight back, but he knew he didn't stand a chance against the larger avian. The parakeet was a runt even for his species, standing at little more than three and a half feet tall, whereas the eagle was larger even than many condors in Final York, and stronger than any bird had a right to be. So Josem just dangled timidly, making sure the other avian knew he wasn't a threat and didn't need to be harmed to gain his compliance, and pleading every moment with his eyes. Paolo just turned back to the waiting centaur, though, the corners of his beak grimacing in distaste. Cayin's stare, by contrast, was lecherously eager.

Paolo set the parakeet on the cavern floor at the alley's mouth, but with an eagle positioned on one side and Cayin's long body blocking almost two sides at once, Josem knew he had no chance to escape. "So," he gulped, looking up at the centaur's face high above him, "what . . . what exactly do you need me to do?"

Cayin grinned down at him, or snarled; it was a display of his teeth, and little more. "First," he said, gesturing with his human arm back toward his equine body, "I need you to get under my robes. That's where the itch is."

As well as the loose tunics Final York's taur populace wore, they always sported voluminous robes over their more bestial halves, and in Cayin's case, it was little more than a vast, white sheet draped over him modestly. Josem gulped nervously, still trying to find an alternative that Cayin would accept. "I . . . I could find a scratching stick for you, Cayin. I'm sure you could do a better job at it than I could, since you know exactly where to scratch." He knew he was just trying to buy himself time, though. The centaur's itch wasn't something that could be remedied so easily.

"Josem," the centaur rumbled threateningly. "I'll ask nicely one more time. Will you please crawl under my robe and help me? It is a sin to turn away from those in need, you know."

The parakeet shuddered, fighting back frustrated tears. What he knew the centaur was going to ask him to do was a sin, too. How had he managed to get trapped in such a situation? There had to be a way out of this without further marring his already soiled soul.

In the end, of course, he had no choice in the matter. If he didn't obey the centaur willingly, Paolo would shove him under the sheet draped over Cayin's back by force. "O . . . okay," the parakeet stammered, lifting up the near edge of the centaur's robe and ducking under the male's equine belly. Cayin's body was so massive that the parakeet barely had to dip his head to stand under the centaur's brown barrel of a chest.

The smell inside the centaur's robes nearly knocked Josem unconscious, it was so potent. The white sheet did more than hide Cayin's sacred parts from the eyes of others; it held in all of his bestial musk. It was so potent that Josem almost didn't see the huge limb beside him, descending from the centaur's equine sheath like a fifth leg. When he did notice the half erect stallionhood, and several moments later realized exactly what it was, the parakeet clenched his eyes shut in horror. He'd been taught all his life how sacred an individual's sexuality was, and how terrible a sin it was for him to so much as think about someone else, or even himself, in an erotic manner. Now he couldn't get the image of the centaur's dangling, bell-headed shaft out of his mind's eye.

"Well?" Cayin's voice boomed from somewhere above him. "What are you waiting for, little bird? Start scratching."

Josem hardly dared to breathe for fear of the centaur's musk, but managed to squeak out, "Scratch what? You never told me what itches." He was stalling again, but every moment he managed not to smell, touch, or look at the other male's masculinity was an opportunity for a miracle to save him. If only he was worthy of a miracle!

Cayin began moving above and around him, but with his eyes clamped tightly shut, the parakeet still wasn't prepared for a heavy slap against the side of his waist, and almost stumbled from the impact. He smacked his green head against the centaur's taut belly when he jumped in surprise, but still he kept his eyes closed, praying that the warm presence pressing against his hip was one of the centaur's hind legs even though he knew better.

"Everything itches," Cayin told him impatiently, pressing that warmth against his side more forcefully. "Everything I can't reach to scratch myself. Now get to work, Josem, or I can have Paolo force your body to relieve my discomfort, whether you're willing to or not. Do a good enough job, and I might not need to resort to that."

"All right," Josem managed after an audible gulp. Everything the centaur couldn't reach himself, Cayin had said. That included his equine stomach, didn't it? Surely it wouldn't be too terrible a sin to give the centaur an innocent tummy rub. The parakeet reached up to either side of his head and began scratching lightly at the centaur's hairy stomach with his violet feathered fingers, still breathing shallowly and keeping his eyes closed. Slowly, Josem began to edge away from the warmth against the side of his robe.

Cayin snorted above him. "That just tickles, bird. There must not be enough light down there for you to see what I need, because it seems pretty obvious to me." With that, the sheet sheltering Josem was suddenly tugged away and tossed to the side, the cavern's cool air billowing in and ruffling the feathers on his head. The warmth against his side twitched twice, slapping against his hip.

"The little chick's got his eyes closed!" Paolo exclaimed from beside the centaur, clearly amused.

"You're joking," Cayin grumbled irritably. "All right, Paolo, take his robe off so that I can stuff his feathery rump."

"Stuff my what?" Josem exclaimed, his eyes opening wide. When he saw the eagle approaching the centaur's side, though, he babbled on, "No, no, I'll help. You don't need to . . . to do that." Before he could make himself think about what he was doing, the parakeet turned and grasped Cayin's equine penis in both of his feathered hands, stroking up and down the length of it while the centaur shuddered above him. Josem's head was pounding with the amount of blood rushing shamefully to his face, but he didn't stop rubbing the thick, veiny flesh, even as the slippery appendage lengthened even further under his attentions and began drooling a sticky, translucent liquid from its broad tip.

Cayin groaned in sinful pleasure, and his erection slipped out of Josem's fingers when it flexed and slapped up against the centaur's belly. Still mindful of the larger male's threat, the parakeet caught Cayin's member as it bounced downward and continued massaging it. "That's good, birdy," the centaur rumbled. "Real good. It itches more farther back, though."

Josem obediently moved a hand closer to the centaur's leathery sheath, rubbing in circles around his root's circumference.

"Better," Cayin said. "The real itch is still further, though. Back a little more . . . a little more. You know what I want, Josem."

It would have been impossible not to know exactly what it was Cayin wanted. Josem's downy hand was resting on the underside of the centaur's sheath inches away from where the thick skin stretched down to hold his enormous testicles, the dark brown pelt gleaming smoothly around the orbs in the faint lantern light. When the centaur stamped a hind hoof impatiently, Josem swallowed past the terrified, guilty lump in his throat and hefted the nearer of the two spheres in both hands, feeling hopelessly inferior. Each testicle was almost as big as the parakeet's head, but were held tightly enough by the centaur's straining scrotum that he couldn't lift one an inch without jostling its twin.

Despite his reservations, the parakeet began rubbing and gently squeezing the huge nut in his hands, provoking another slap of Cayin's erection against the big male's stomach. "Oh, that's so nice, Josem," the centaur murred appreciatively when the little avian began scratching at his balls with his blunt fingertips. "I should have asked you for help a long time ago. Use your beak, would you?"

"What?" Josem uttered in surprise, hating how it sounded like a squawk.

"Your beak, chickadee. It'll feel a lot better than just your fingers."

"But I . . . I don't want to hurt you," Josem protested, and he blinked in horrified astonishment. He'd just sinned twice with a single sentence, once by lying, and a second time by realizing just what he'd lied about. If he thought it would help him, he realized, he would be all too happy to hurt the huge bully.

"Then you'd best be very careful not to," Cayin said with an underlying tone of threat. When Josem still balked, holding the centaur's heavy testicle in motionless hands, Cayin twisted his human torso to glower at Paolo, who had been standing aside and watching the scene with a hand tucked inside his robes. "Paolo, come show our little friend what to do. All his teasing is starting to get old."

Before Josem could think of a way to dissuade the eagle, Paolo was there, reaching down in front of the centaur's powerful hind leg to grasp the back of the parakeet's head and shove it forward into the side of Cayin's musky ball sack. Josem dropped the testicle in his hands in surprise, and the genitals swayed to the side as Paolo used his face to rub against the taut skin roughly. Josem's facial feathers were quickly matted down by the centaur's wet lather.

"Mmm, that's good, but I still don't feel a beak." A contented rumble came from Cayin's equine chest beside the avians when Paolo forced the parakeet's head to turn directly toward the centaur's scrotum, moving his face up and down so that his small beak dug lightly into the thin pelt covering Cayin's egg shaped testicle. Josem gasped when the eagle forced him to look up, dragging his beak into the inverted valley between Cayin's hind leg and his sack, and the centaur's potent musk almost knocked him out. "Ohh, yeah," Cayin murmured, a resonant baritone. "There's still more that I can't reach myself, though. Paolo, could you show the little chick what to do? I don't think he wants to help enough to do so by himself."

"I didn't agree to this part," the eagle muttered wryly, but he swept an arm around Josem's waist without further protest and pulled the parakeet out from under Cayin's belly, his flexible wing not hindering him in the least. Held against the larger avian's robed chest, Josem began to take in a relieved breath until he saw where the eagle was carrying him.

Looming above Josem's head was the centaur's powerful backside, his dark brown haunches pressed together above the genitals hanging between his hind legs, forming a long, vertical canyon between chiseled muscles that were accentuated by his form hugging pelt. A long, black tail flicked back and forth as Cayin twisted his human half to watch Paolo approach with the captive parakeet, the tips of its longest hairs brushing across Josem's face.

The parakeet's body trembled as Paolo hefted him off the ground with that one arm around his middle, and he shook his head in useless denial until the eagle's free hand dug into the feathers above the back of his neck again, forcing him to look straight forward. Josem reached out and braced himself against the two halves of Cayin's rump, but his arms folded against the larger bird's strength, and his face was brought inexorably forward. He closed his eyes just before his beak was forced between the centaur's haunches, the slabs of muscles trying to crush his cheeks as Paolo used his beak to scratch at Cayin's long taint.

Josem held his breath as his face was forcefully rubbed up and down the centaur's backside while Cayin groaned his appreciation, the parakeet's green feathers becoming matted down with the huge male's musky lather. Eventually, though, he had no choice but to take a breath, and his body went limp in the eagle's encircling arm when that musk made his head spin again.

While Cayin continued to let out pleasured wickers and moans, the eagle let Josem's head sag against the centaurs rump, grasping one of the smaller avian's wrists instead and guiding it up the right half of the equine's solid rear end until he was making Josem's fingers trace a circle around something moist and extremely warm. The parakeet looked up, and when he saw where his hand was, fought his way out of his musk induced daze. The centaur's tail was lifted high above his backside, and Paolo had Josem's hand circling the puckered ring of the taur's anus.

"Please," Josem stuttered as the eagle guided his hand in a spiral toward the center of the centaur's sphincter, much to Cayin's vocal approval. "Please, don't. . . ." He couldn't make himself finish the sentence. This couldn't be happening. Demons must have been assaulting Josem's mind, making him have a nightmare while he slept. Reality was just too horrifying to contemplate.

Paolo tilted his head curiously down at the parakeet, watching the smaller male's reaction as he pressed one finger against the back of Josem's middle knuckle, forcing that digit as deep as it would go into the centaur's tail hole. Cayin tensed in surprise, his haunches somehow becoming even more solid against Josem's face and chest as the eagle pressed him forward against the centaur.

"Careful, Paolo," Cayin growled warningly.

"Not to worry," the eagle assured him with a chuckle. "We're just having a little fun, right Josem? Besides, Cayin, you can't pretend you're not enjoying it."

The centaur huffed irritably and was about to snap an angry retort at Paolo, but whatever he'd been about to say turned into a startled whinny when Josem's index finger joined the first between his sphincter's muscles. The centaur's and parakeet's bodies both shuddered, each for very different reasons, and Josem tried to jerk his wrist away from the dominant eagle's grasp. It was no use, though. Even if he could get Paolo to release him, Cayin's tail hole had such a tight grip on his fingers, he wasn't certain he could jerk them free. And such a hot grip, too! It felt like embers were hidden behind the centaur's inner walls!

Apparently finally noticing the smaller avian's horror, Paolo looked down at Josem, his hooked beak curling into a cruel grin. "I'll tell you what, Josem. Reach under our friend and give him another good scratch where he likes it best, and I'll let you go."

Josem looked up at the eagle pleadingly. He knew the other male was probably lying, but could think of no other way to get away from the centaur's musky rump. "You promise?" he asked timidly.

"Of course." Paolo's grin never faltered as he used one of his fingers to push the parakeet's ring finger into Cayin's tail hole beside the other two.

Closing his eyes and asking for the Light's forgiveness, the small avian obediently reached his free arm down between the cleft in Cayin's tensed backside, letting his downy fingers graze across the centaur's pelt as little as possible until they met one of the heavy orbs dangling between Cayin's hind legs. Swallowing past a lump in his throat, Josem scratched the back of that oblong sphere tentatively, then opened one eye wide and stared hopefully up at the eagle's face.

"Come now, Josem, I know you can do better than that." The parakeet's pinky joined the rest of his fingers, forming an uneven wedge within the centaur's sphincter. "Remember, Cayin needs your help for this; he can't reach all of his itches whenever he wants to, like we can. Make sure he enjoys it."

"Paolo," Cayin growled threateningly, "you're about to get kicked."

Reluctantly, Josem reached his lower hand further beneath the centaur's body, letting the huge, tight scrotum drape slightly to either side of his feathered palm, and slid his thumb underneath one of the testicles. When his fingertips dug into the genitals' lathered pelt, he heard a loud thump from in front of him, the centaur's equine phallus bouncing again off of his belly. "Can I go now?" he whimpered up at the eagle, who was using Josem's thumb to rub back and forth across the curve of Cayin's tail hole below the parakeet's embedded fingers.

"Oh, I don't know," the eagle said thoughtfully, using his own thumb to slide Josem's into the centaur's anus. "What do you think, Cayin? Was that good enough?" He gave a little push against the parakeet's elbow, and with Josem's thumb and all four fingers trapped inside Cayin's tail hole, his backmost knuckles slid into the centaur's body, and the sphincter tightened forcefully around his wrist.

Cayin whinnied in indignant surprise at the further intrusion, then snarled back at them. "That's it, Paolo. If you don't get his hand out of me right now, I'm replacing him with you tonight. NOW, Paolo!"

"Well, a promise is a promise, I suppose." With another grin and a strong heft upward with the arm around Josem's narrow waist, Paolo shoved all of his weight against the back of the parakeet's shoulder, forcing the small male's entire arm to barrel into Cayin's rectum, the sleeve of Josem's robe folding up against the side of his neck while his face pressed up against the underside of the root of Cayin's long tail. Then the eagle did just as he'd promised and released Josem completely, stepping to the side an instant before Cayin recovered from his shock enough to lash out with one of his deadly hind hooves.

Cayin's scream at the full penetration sounded like it came more from rage than from pain. He certainly didn't seem to have any trouble rearing up and spinning on his hind hooves with Josem's arm still trapped inside his rump. For his part, Josem could only stare vacantly past the curve of one of Cayin's flexing haunches, his body beating against the centaur's backside as he went limp from shock. Cayin's rectum felt like it was one flex away from crushing the parakeet's arm into dust. Josem's narrow, devolved wing was completely flattened down the length of his arm, pinched up against his armpit by the centaur's quivering sphincter.

Josem's predicament only became more unbearable when Cayin began rearing up onto his hind legs and kicking with his forehooves at Paolo, forcing the eagle to back up one leap at a time. Each time the centaur's weight shifted onto his hind legs, his rump flexed ruthlessly around the parakeet's trapped arm and wing, and Josem's robed body swung out away from Cayin's haunches only to slam back into them with enough force to bruise, his arm feeling like it was being wrenched from his socket.

"What's wrong with you, Paolo?" Cayin roared, his hooves clopping loudly on the solid stone beneath him. "What are you thinking? I told you to stop! Do you actually want me to use you as a sheath instead of the chick? I warned you what would happen if you wouldn't cut it out!"

"And I warned you," Paolo answered calmly. Calmly, but no longer at all lighthearted. "I told you before we planned this not to ask me to do anything we didn't agree on beforehand. If we make one wrong move, take one wrong step, and someone finds out about this. . . . I don't need to remind you of what'll happen to us if we get caught, Cayin."

"And you think using the chick to give me a little rubbing might jeopardize your precious plan?" the centaur rumbled, stamping a hoof. His entire body trembled when the hoof hit stone, his insides shifting around Josem's arm enough to make it bend slightly the wrong way. "You were just looking for an excuse to get the drop on me."

"Well, if you trust me so little, you can feel free to get the little guy unstuck by yourself. He'll probably manage it on his own eventually, though it might take him some time unless you relax, or find something for him to use to lever himself out. Even then, though, you won't be able to find release without the medicine I found. As soon as Josem's free, you can bet he'll make a run for the city's center, or back into a cave too small for you to follow. If you manage to keep ahold of him, I'm not certain he'll be too keen to help you any more."

Josem could sense Cayin seething even as the centaur pranced uncomfortably in place, clenching his rump around the little avian's arm with every halting, jerky step. "Just get him out of me, you stupid bird," Cayin snarled, "or I swear I'll use you as a mounting cradle, and forget your cursed medicine."

"All right," Paolo said condescendingly. "But no kicking." Josem heard the eagle walking around Cayin's side, keeping his distance from the centaur as he approached the parakeet from behind. Then the eagle's big, feathered hands were under Josem's armpits, pulling him gradually out of the centaur's rectum. Paolo chuckled. "Really got you good and trapped, didn't I?" he muttered, his voice strained with the effort of hauling Josem's arm free. "Might not have been able to get yourself loose after all."

Cayin's tail hole resisted the escape of Josem's arm, a powerful suction trying to pull him back in every time Paolo paused or shifted his grip around the parakeet. Once he was exposed again to the cool cavern air down to his elbow, though, the eagle was able to yank his forearm out in a single tug, earning an angry, indignant bellow from Cayin. Josem looked up at the centaur's anus once his green and purple arm was free again, dully wondering how Paolo had ever fit so much of him inside of the stallion. Cayin's tail hole had already closed itself tightly, and though it was of a proportion to the rest of the centaur's large body, Josem couldn't quite imagine anything being stuffed up it the wrong way without severely injuring the centaur. It seemed no different than being stabbed with a blunt spear.

"Enough games," Cayin grumbled, his rump leaving Josem's view as the centaur clopped around in a circle to face the two avians again. "Let's get on with it. I'm ready."

Before Josem knew what the eagle was doing, Paolo was handing him up into the centaur's arms. "Here you are," the eagle said, his voice half mocking again. "Go ahead and unwrap your present while I get the pill ready."

Cayin grunted, hefting Josem up to eye level, and the parakeet looked back at the larger male's unshaven face vacantly, still in shock from the violation Paolo had forced him to perform. For the briefest of moments, a flash of uncertainty overtook the centaur's features, but he quickly covered it with an angry snarl and turned Josem away from him, holding the parakeet's waist in his meaty hands. "Don't know why you're making such a big deal about this, Josem," the centaur muttered, even though Josem hadn't said a word or so much as flinched. "You're helping a fellow Yorker, after all. You should be happy." One of his hands shifted over Josem's stomach and grasped the narrow, canvas belt holding the parakeet's robe shut, his thick fingers working deftly at the belt's tie. "You should be proud. There's nothing wrong with helping out a friend, right?"

Josem came back to his senses enough to reach down and take ahold of Cayin's wrist when he realized he was being undressed, but his two hands, fingers barely long enough to meet each other around the centaur's forearm, weren't nearly strong enough to pull Cayin's hand away from his robe. Josem's belt was fluttering at his sides in a matter of moments, his white robe folding open to expose his skinny, green feathered front and his purple and green legs to the lantern light. Cayin shuffled the hand around the parakeet's waist until Josem was bent over the centaur's palm, using his other hand to force Josem's arms to the sides one at a time and peel the robe off of his small form. Tossing the robe to the cavern floor on top of his own discarded sheets, Cayin's hand returned to Josem's hip, rubbing eagerly over the loin wrap that served as the parakeet's undergarment, his only clothing left.

It was a simple matter to remove the wrap, but Cayin still fumbled in his search for the clip that held the folded length of linen closed. Of course, being a taur, he would have never unclasped a loin wrap before that moment. All too soon for Josem, though, the centaur's fingers had the clip released, and were slowly unraveling the long strip of linen as if Cayin really was opening a gift, as Paolo had joked. Josem whimpered and shuddered as first his plump, green feathered sheath was revealed and chilled by the cavern air, followed by the upper base of his tail, then the pair of egg sized testicles nestled at the front of his taint between his dangling thighs, covered in the same downy green feathers as his belly and inner legs. He kept his long, violet tail feathers lowered in a last, desperate attempt at modesty, but felt his undergarment slide out from between them and his bottom slowly before Cayin discarded it, too, on the cavern floor, leaving the parakeet shamefully naked to the world.

"Stop that," Cayin growled, his fist closing painfully around the base of Josem's tail, pinching the feathers together as he tugged them up away from his rump. "I want to see you."

Josem shuddered again, imagining that he could feel the centaur's eyes on him. Short and slender as he was, the parakeet had an unusually feminine build, his hips tapering out widely from his skinny waist, his round bottom curving down plumply to thick thighs strengthened by a lifetime of running errands. Cayin didn't discover the extent of his oddities, though, until the centaur's thumb dug into one half of the green, heart shaped plumage that spread along Josem's inner buttocks inside its violet frame. Cayin used his thumb to part the parakeet's rump, then grunted in confusion and pulled the smaller male's body closer, inches away from his face. Josem could feel the centaur's breath against his most sacred of places as the big male's blunt thumb tip ruffled the tiny feathers up and down his taint, from the back of his tight scrotum to the root of his tail.

"Paolo," Cayin said uncertainly. "Something's wrong with him. This isn't going to work."

Josem's embarrassment and shame at being so exposed was only enflamed by the tears soaking his cheeks and dripping down from the tip of his small beak. No one was supposed to know about his condition, his disease. No one was ever supposed to find out. He'd been warned to keep his deformity secret, that there would be consequences if anyone learned of it. Now it had happened. He would be shunned by everyone, or worse, quarantined, to protect Final York's peace of mind.

"What do you mean?" Paolo asked distractedly. He was rubbing the contents of a small vial over an egg the size of Josem's fist beside the other two males, making the egg glisten in the lantern light, and didn't look up from the round object until Cayin answered.

"He . . . he doesn't have a tail hole."

Despite everything, Josem felt a spark of hope. If that's what Cayin thought, maybe they would leave him alone. Maybe he could go home and forget this night had ever happened.

Paolo made a contemptuous, clicking sound with his beak, holding the large egg carefully in one hand while he replaced the empty vial in an inner pocket of his robes, stepping closer to the centaur's front and the dangling parakeet. "Don't be a fool, Cayin. He's not an automaton from the stories. Here, let me see." The centaur gathered Josem's wrists in a single hand and let him hang from his upraised arms with his hips at the eagle's eye level. Josem tensed when Paolo grabbed his tail feathers just as the centaur had and yanked them upward, thumbing the parakeet's plump right buttock away from its twin. "Huh," the eagle grunted in surprise. Just as Cayin had done, he rubbed his thumb up and down Josem's soft taint before resting the white feathered digit an inch under the parakeet's purple tail, in a warm depression between Josem's butt cheeks. "I've heard of this before. . . ." he murmured, pressing steadily harder against the feather coated dimple in the parakeet's body until Josem squawked uncomfortably.

"Paolo, please stop!" he cried out, then sagged in surprised relief when the eagle did just that, pulling his hand away and letting Josem's body swing slightly in the centaur's grasp.

"Don't worry, Cayin," Paolo said. "Everything's still going according to plan."

"What are you talking about?" Cayin demanded, shaking the parakeet's arms slightly in frustration. "I know what I saw Paolo. The chick doesn't have an anus; it's all smooth feathers from tail to balls. How is that a part of your plan?"

"Not a part of it, but not at all a detriment, either," Paolo said confidently, and Josem let out a little sob. The eagle knew. "Here, flip him over. I'll show you."

Without hesitation, the centaur swung Josem's body up like a pendulum and grabbed one of his gnarled, yellow ankles with his free hand, letting go of the avian's wrists and holding him upside down by that one leg. Josem didn't know what to do with his hands, now that they were free, so he feebly reached up his body and covered his genitals and sheath from view. It didn't make any different. Those weren't the parts of him the other two males were interested in.

Paolo had the centaur rotate Josem around until the parakeet's butt was facing Cayin, then squeezed Josem's rump cheek, his fingers prying it apart from its twin again. "He has a tail hole," Paolo said, one of his fingers reaching down to prod underneath the base of Josem's tail. "It's just not bare skin, so you can't see it with all the feathers covering it." The finger found the small indentation that marked the rim of Josem's sphincter, a stronger warmth rising from that spot underneath the parakeet's downy pubic feathers. "It's right here," he said, withdrawing his hand when Cayin reached down to feel for himself.

"Are you sure?" the centaur asked curiously, his blunt finger pressing hard against Josem's hidden anus. "It doesn't feel any different to me."

"Of course I'm sure. Just push down a little harder."

Cayin wasted no time in following the eagle's advice, and though Josem was clenching his inner muscles as tightly as he could, once the centaur began pressing against his hidden sphincter with real force, he could do nothing to stop it. The blunt digit crammed itself down into his body, the parakeet's feathers sealing seamlessly around it, as though Cayin was puncturing a new hole beneath Josem's tail feathers. That's what it felt like, too; Josem cried out in pain as his muscles were suddenly pushed ruthlessly open. The centaur didn't stop penetrating Josem until his finger was inside the parakeet's body up to its last knuckle, and it felt to Josem like that single, meaty finger was as deep inside him as Paolo had pushed his arm inside Cayin.

"Now that's just plain bizarre," Cayin muttered, jabbing his finger in and out of the parakeet, much to Josem's discomfort. "It feels like there are feathers all the way inside him, as far as I can reach."

"That would match what I've heard about the condition," Paolo said absently, his attention back on that pale blue, glistening egg. "I'd be willing to bet his penis is feathered, too. Kind of surprised his beak isn't, actually, but I guess the disease only sprouts from the skin."

"Disease, huh?" Cayin repeated, his finger coming to a halt deep inside Josem. "It's not contagious, is it? I don't want to start sprouting feathers out my arse after tonight."

"I don't think so. If I'm remembering it correctly, it's genetic." Paolo took the back of Josem's head in his free hand and turned the parakeet's face up to look him in the eye. "Is that right, Josem? You got the disease from one of your parents?"

If only he could lie and tell them it was contagious after all. If only it really was contagious, then he'd never have to worry about anyone abusing him this way. But then, he would be quarantined, or banished, and never see a friendly face in his entire life.

"M . . . my mother," Josem whimpered, then gasped when Cayin's finger began moving again.

"Oh, good," the centaur said. "This is going to be one weird experience, then."

"And then some." Paolo let go of Josem's head to pat the parakeet's rump, the soft muscles bouncing slightly under their purple and green feathers. "But then, it was going to be weird no matter where the little guy has feathers. Let's see what this pill can do."

Cayin pulled his finger out of Josem's body, then, and Josem could feel his sphincter practically snap shut behind it as the centaur wiped his finger through the feathers on his hip. The parakeet was given no time to recover, though, before Paolo began dragging that egg, his enormous pill, up and down between Josem's buttocks.

"Hold him steady, now," Paolo cautioned, rubbing the egg's tip around in a tight circle underneath Josem's tail, directly over the sore muscles that Cayin's finger had just escaped.

Josem tensed again, clenching every muscle in his body when he realized what the eagle intended to do, his round butt cheeks clamping down around the huge suppository and the other avian's hand. "Paolo, don't! It's too big; it won't fit!"

"Oh, it'll fit." Josem felt the pressure increase against his tail hole, but not enough yet for any of the slick, round object to part his sphincter. Paolo was just rubbing the oily liquid that he'd used to cover the pill into Josem's feathers, making them cling together in slick clumps. "I doubt it will feel all that pleasant, but you'll thank me once Cayin lets you soothe his real itch."

"You don't really mean to. . . ." Josem stammered, shivering at the thought. "That will kill me!"

"Not after this works its magic on you," Paolo said, tapping the top of the egg with a finger, each tap pushing it a little harder against the parakeet's tail hole.

"M . . . magic?"

"Oh, not real magic, of course," the eagle assured him. "Just as forbidden, though, so don't bother thinking of telling anyone what happened to you tonight, Josem. You'll be banished just for being within a hundred yards of this pill, for even knowing it exists, let alone having it used on you. It's replicated from an ancient science, from a human medicine that all but vanished with the Great Collapse."

As soon as he heard that, Josem abandoned his attempt at covering his crotch from view and reached behind himself to grab the eagle's wrist, tugging at it desperately despite knowing how much stronger Paolo was than him. "You can't do this!" Human technology, especially the creations from shortly before the Collapse, were known to all as the greatest of abominations, the most terrible of evil. It was human technology that took away the world's sanity and drove the last sentient creatures underground, into their last haven, Final York. And here he hung suspended from a centaur's fist with such an abomination nestled under his tail feathers like an egg about to be laid in reverse. "Please, you have to stop this! Just throw the . . . the pill away. I'll help you, Cayin, I promise. I can still use my hands. I'll even use my beak, just. . . ." Josem snapped his beak shut when he realized what he was offering, but he couldn't make himself take it back. Not if it would make Paolo pull that cursed egg away from his rump.

"Oh, I don't think so, Josem," Paolo said with a mockingly sympathetic tone. "We've gone too far now to let you get away with something so simple. You know about the ancient medicine, and you know that I'm not supposed to have it. If we let you go without using it on you now, you wouldn't be banished for telling someone what happened. As soon as this little egg's inside of you, though, chick. . . ." With that, the eagle pushed down so hard against the slick pill that Josem was afraid Cayin's unyielding fist around his ankles would rip his legs off. Once the end of the egg shaped suppository squeezed past the parakeet's tight opening, the rest followed in a single instant, popping down into him under the force of Paolo's shove. Josem tried to cry out, but all the muscles in his body suddenly locked in pain and shock. If Cayin's finger had felt like it was skewering him, this felt like it was tearing him in half, even though it was only three inches long. "There," Paolo said. "That's the worst of it. And now there's no going back."

Josem wept, his tears streaming down his beak and dripping onto the cavern floor below his head. As humiliated and ashamed as he was, the pain was worse. He would have done anything the other two males asked of him if they'd just make the pain stop. Desperately, he tried to push the egg back out of his body with his internal muscles. It felt like what he imagined a female went through when she gave birth, but would have succeeded if Paolo hadn't planted his fingers overtop of Josem's tail hole, blocking the pill's exit.

"Cayin, keep the chick from laying the egg before it's finished its work, would you?" the eagle asked politely.

"And what are you going to do?" the centaur asked, though he did as Paolo suggested and pressed against the speck of pill peeking from the center of Josem's feathered tail hole.

"Sit back and watch, of course," Paolo replied happily, stepping back and doing exactly that. Once he was comfortably cross legged on the stone floor, he added, "I want to see how this medicine is supposed to work."

"You mean you don't know?" Cayin asked, surprised.

"Well, it didn't exactly come with instructions."

"Guess that makes sense," the centaur muttered, rubbing his blunt finger in circles around the rim of Josem's sphincter where the pill was still parting the muscles slightly, shifting the parakeet's pubic plumage into a spiral pattern. Josem kept pushing, but he was tiring quickly. "How long is this supposed to take? It doesn't look like it's doing anything."

"It should be pretty quick, I think," Paolo told him. "It probably just needs to be deeper inside him. Has to work on his stomach, too, after all."

"Easy enough." Cayin pressed down with his finger, shoving the thick egg brutally the wrong way through Josem's rectum, until he was past his second knuckle into the parakeet's rump. Josem cried out in a loud squawk that was cut off with an agonized gasp when he felt a sharp cramp in his lower abdomen. His rectum began spasming around the pill, tugging it deeper into his body and making him feel like his intestines were rupturing with every quivering pull. Cayin pulled his finger out of his bottom hastily when his muscles began squeezing around it in sharp flutters, but the centaur kept his free hand on one of Josem's rump cheeks, keeping his buttocks parted so that he could watch.

As Josem's core cramped and convulsed, he felt a hot, damp fullness travel through his insides in both directions from the pill. Cayin's hand darted away from his rump suddenly, his soft cheeks closing together with a wet slap. The centaur kept Josem held at arm's length away from him. "Uh, is he supposed to be foaming? His arse is blowing bubbles."

Josem's stomach suddenly felt as full as if he'd had a three course meal, and a strange tingling at the back of his throat made him gag, tasting a terrible mix of soap and bile. He spat in disgust, flinging white suds from his mouth to the cavern floor.

"Yeah," Paolo said, replying to Cayin, "it's just cleaning him out first. Has to make him sanitary before it does . . . well, whatever else it's going to do."

If the centaur made any further comment, Josem didn't hear it. Feeling like it was right below his stomach now, or above, rather, since he was upside down, the pill suddenly broke in half inside him at a sharp squeeze from his insides. The parakeet screamed shrilly when whatever was within the pill seeped into his body and the muscles in his abdomen began writhing as if they were little demons trying to escape his skin. He arched his back so sharply that Cayin lost his grip around his ankles, and when he landed hard on the cavern floor, he gratefully blacked out.

When he opened his eyes again, he was on his back, looking up at Cayin's hard yet frightened features. Josem was still screaming; as far as he could tell, he hadn't taken a single breath since being dropped.

". . . Supposed to be doing that?" Cayin was asking, bellowing to be heard above Josem's screeching.

Josem arched his back again as Paolo hurried over to stand above him beside the centaur. The parakeet's body lifted up off the stone ground between his head and his feet, something below his stomach feeling like it was popping out of place.

"I'm not sure," the eagle shouted back worriedly. "I knew he wouldn't enjoy the process, but I didn't think it'd be this bad."

As quickly as his back had arched, it collapsed, and the parakeet was tucked into a fetal position as if invisible cables tied to his elbows and knees had suddenly yanked his limbs together. When he moved, he managed to take in a fresh breath, but somehow kept screaming even while he inhaled, the noise rising a full octave before returning to its normal pitch. Lying on his side, now, moisture pooled under his face and lower leg, a constant flow of liquid streaming from his tail hole and the corner of his mouth.

Cayin growled and bent down next to Josem, lowering himself down on bended forelegs. "Someone's bound to hear this if he keeps it up," he muttered, reaching a hand toward Josem's small beak and clamping it shut. When the parakeet just kept screaming through his nose, Cayin slid his palm over the nostrils at his beak's back edge, and Josem's body thrashed and bucked under his hold, terrified now as well as in agony.

"Careful," Paolo cautioned. "We don't want to smother him."

"Better that than getting caught," Cayin growled at him.

"And then what would we do with the body?" The eagle shook his head angrily. "Murder is the only unpardonable sin, Cayin. You know that. Whatever else I agreed to, I'll have no part in murder."

"I know, I know. I'm not trying to kill the chick, just keep him quiet." His hand slipped back down over Josem's beak enough for the parakeet to breathe again, and a whistling whine was interrupted by a sharp gurgling noise just before Josem sneezed out a spray of hot liquid, his body convulsing. Unable to escape his closed beak, the fluids drizzled down his beak from his nostrils, soaking the edge of Cayin's palm. The centaur made a disgusted noise, but kept his fingers clamped around Josem's beak all the same.

For a long time Josem was lost in a sea of agony, the centaur's lowered withers a dark brown wall blotting out his vision. He heard the two large males speaking to each other distantly, warring with a hazy blur of sounds and echoes, and a shrill, escalating ringing in his ears. Feathered hands touched his belly, and he shrank away from them, but couldn't move far enough to keep them off of him. They pressed against his body, moving and probing down beside his sheath and back up to his navel, but they brought no more pain than what was twisting and unraveling his insides beneath them. Occasional bursts of flavorless liquid spouted from his nostrils and anus, spraying the solid earth around him, until, exhausted and dehydrated, his body went still underneath the oppressive males' hands, his muscles twitching slightly in a series of short, uncomfortable aftershocks.

The ringing in Josem's head slowly subsided, and though he was still too disoriented to move any part of his body in a straight line, he was able to make out what Paolo was telling Cayin. " . . . Were able to mate with partners of any size after the Great Metamorphosis, but unlike females, males' anatomy went unchanged, for the most part. At least, their insides did. I heard that the person who created this medicine was a mouse, or something small, who had a bull elephant lover, and he wanted to take his lover like a female would."

Josem knew he had misheard, or that Paolo must have meant something other than what it sounded like. Lovers were evil, sinning against the sanctity of marriage, but they weren't uncommon. Lovers of the same gender, though, were as terrible as thieves and rapists, completely defiling the natural order. So the High Priest taught, and the High Priest was the infallible voice of the Light. But then, everyone knew that humans and anthros before the Fall were horrendously evil creatures. It was their sin that people today were born with, a latent evil that soiled every action they took. Why shouldn't one have invented a pill that allowed a pair of sinners to twist nature itself?

"I still don't understand what it does, though," Cayin said, slowly taking his hand off of Josem's beak when it was clear the parakeet was done screaming, "other than torture someone, at least. It would have been easier on the chick if I just took him as he is."

"As he was," Paolo corrected. "I think the medicine's done, now. And as hard as that was to watch, it was necessary. You're too big to take any male normally, Cayin. You'd hurt most females; a male Josem's size wouldn't survive the attempt, even if you could manage to squeeze inside of him."

"He can survive now, though?" Cayin asked.

"I think so. The medicine seems to be finished."

A heavy hand grabbed Josem's shoulder and flipped him onto his stomach. "How do we know for certain?" the centaur asked. Josem felt the male's thick fingers prod his rump roughly, making a squishing noise against the soaked feathers as the parakeet's green and violet cheek bounced under the hand's attentions.

"You just try, I guess," Paolo answered. "If he starts bleeding, we'll stop. It shouldn't make him bleed, now that he's taken that pill. At least, that's what I'm told."

Cayin's fingers ventured into the green cleft in Josem's round bottom, searching under the parakeet's tail for his feathered entrance. "At least he's good and slick, now. It would have been rough if we did this dry." Josem whimpered when the centaur's middle finger found and stabbed into his tail hole again, his body trembling in another fit of small convulsions. "Still as tight as ever, though," Cayin muttered. "But I've waited long enough."

The finger withdrew from the parakeet's rump, and Josem tried to roll himself over when forehooves as big around as his thighs clopped up in front of his head on the ground. He was too weak, though. Josem could barely move his arms beside his face, let alone push himself onto his back. He was at the other males' mercy, and he now knew without doubt that neither of them had any.

"Get him up," Cayin's voice rumbled from somewhere above Josem's head.

"I don't know if you've noticed," Paolo pointed out beside them, "but you've softened up quite a bit. I never agreed to get you horny again."

"But you did agree to hold him steady for me," Cayin growled back at the eagle, his voice high above Josem's head. "Just get him in position; I'll do the rest. I'm not completely helpless, you know."

Paolo made a noise that might have been a quiet laugh, but a moment later Josem felt those strong, feathered hands grip his upper arms and haul him off the ground. Not fully upright, of course. The centaur's equine barrel of a chest kept the parakeet hunched over slightly, and as he guided Josem backwards, the eagle pressed a hand against Josem's lower belly, just above his sheath, to bend him over at the hips.

Another halting step, with Paolo supporting most of his weight, and Josem felt the crown of the centaur's gargantuan penis thump against the small of his back, inches above his tail feathers. It didn't feel soft, to Josem. As big around as the parakeet's thigh, the round, equine tip rubbed slowly up and down his violet-feathered back as Cayin shifted his hind legs. Josem could only stare numbly at the centaur's forehooves, standing on the solid earth in front of him. He didn't have any tears left.

While Paolo held the parakeet securely, Cayin's penis flexed at the sensation of soft feathers massaging its crown, flopping up and slapping against the centaur's belly before slapping against the side of Josem's face and draping over the parakeet's shoulder. Cayin groaned, a low rumble above the small avian, and began slowly thrusting his reforming erection through the crook of Josem's neck, sliding his bare flesh over the parakeet's downy shoulder plumage. Josem tried feebly to pull away from Cayin's heated flesh, but Paolo's hands didn't budge an inch.

"This isn't taking long, at all," Paolo said, his eyes following Cayin's tip as it flopped down in front of Josem's chest, then bounced back up as the member firmed. "Hold still a moment, Cayin. The chick's not tall enough; I'm going to have to prop him up."

Cayin snorted in eager frustration. "Just be quick about it."

With seemingly little effort, Paolo pressed up against Josem's belly, lifting the parakeet's feet straight off the ground while the smaller bird grunted in surprise, and hefted his body upward until Cayin's penis was pinned between the centaur's underside and Josem's feathery back. Josem felt the phallus pulse and twitch on top of him, growing even while Paolo held him against it. The eagle slid his limp body back, then, until Josem's tail feathers were pressed down against his rump by the centaur's leathery ball sack. Cayin rumbled appreciatively as his scrotum pushed firmly against Josem's butt through the thin veil of the avian's tail, each testicle easily the size of the parakeet's rump cheeks. To Josem's horror, he could see Cayin's tip jutting out half a foot or so past his forehead.

"By the Light, bring him forward," Cayin gasped, his huge balls bouncing against Josem's rear as he stamped a hind hoof. "I can't wait any longer."

Without a word, Paolo complied. A thick drop of liquid dribbled onto the back of Josem's head as he was dragged up past the centaur's tip, his ruffled feathers sticking together along his spine as Cayin's pre continued to drizzle down his body. The equine penis sprang downward through Josem's tail feathers once it was past his rump, only to bounce back up at a flex from Cayin and smack painfully against Josem's green sheath and genitals. Paolo carefully lowered the parakeet's hindquarters the few inches needed to line him up with Cayin's shaft, letting the thick phallus climb up Josem's short taint and lift his tail feathers up between itself and the centaur's lower chest. That broad crown spurted a glob of pre against the inner slope of Josem's left buttock before rushing forward and smearing the thick liquid through his feathers as Paolo centered his body. The equine penis was far too broad to fit between the feminine bird's buttocks, but as its smooth ridges pushed against the inner curves of Josem's rump, another stream of hot pre squirted directly against his anus, coating the downy feathers that covered the parakeet's tail hole inside and out in a fresh layer of fluid.

In a final, distantly felt desperation, Josem turned his face toward Paolo pleadingly. "Don't do this," he whimpered.

"It's too late to turn back now," Paolo replied, without a shred of sympathy. Shifting his grip on Josem until he was holding the parakeet's slender waist in both hands, he made Josem's bottom give Cayin's tip a little nudge.

It was all the encouragement the centaur stallion needed.

His first lunge forward was so sudden and powerful, it nearly knocked Josem cleanly out of Paolo's grasp. Josem squawked out in pain; it felt like his taint had been kicked by . . . well, by a horse.

Laughing, Paolo lined him up a second time. "Easy, Cayin," he said as the centaur's twitching crown tried again to squeeze between the parakeet's rump cheeks. "We're going to have to go slowly, at least until you're a good ways inside him."

Above Josem, the centaur was panting with two sets of lungs, apparently too eager to say anything coherent. Cayin pushed forward again, more slowly this time, but with no less strength behind the motion, and Paolo squeezed his hands painfully around Josem's waist just above the parakeet's pelvis, shoving his bottom back against the equine erection. Cayin's crown somehow burrowed between Josem's buttocks, stretching the parakeet's muscles before his flesh even reached the avian's sphincter. By the time Josem felt the centaur's penis against the back of his taint, his tail hole was already parted slightly just from having his butt cheeks spread so widely. The phallus's tip was broad enough that its upper edge brushed the roots of Josem's tail feathers while its lower rim was nudging the parakeet's green scrotum forward between his thighs.

Grunting with effort, the two dominant males pushed again, and Josem screamed. It felt like his entire taint was being shoved up into his body, the insides of his rump's muscles being pulled inward along with Cayin's girth. With an audible, wet pop, the centaur's smooth ridge passed beyond Josem's feathered tail hole, and the parakeet realized that his taint had, in fact, caved in, like a trap door on a hinge beneath his scrotum. He could still feel the underside of Cayin's shaft sliding against the backs of his egg shaped nuts.

Cayin groaned in deep counterpoint to Josem's cries and whimpers, a long, drawn out, "Ohhhhh."

"Wait just a second," Paolo cautioned, and when the centaur reluctantly held still, the eagle slid one hand underneath Josem and rubbed against the backs of his balls, ruffling the moist feathers an inch below Cayin's shaft. Pulling his hand back, the eagle brought his fingers up to his beak and sniffed at them. "Just the medicine's fluids, and your own, Cayin. No blood." He almost sounded surprised. "I guess it's safe enough to keep going."

Cayin immediately began pushing forward with his haunches again, and Paolo had to take a step closer to the centaur's front when Josem's body was merely carried forward underneath the huge male's chest. His face between Cayin's forelegs, the parakeet stared down at the centaur's hooves with his beak gaping slackly as Paolo leaned into the shove he gave Josem's hips. The centaur's crown slid another inch and a half into Josem's rump, and when Cayin pulled his haunches back, completing the slow humping motion, Josem's body was tugged back beneath his stomach as well.

"Is he clenching?" Cayin grunted, and Paolo slid one hand down Josem's hip to feel the parakeet's bottom. The round muscles were solid as rocks underneath their purple and green feathers.

The eagle made a "tsk" noise with his beak, settling his hand on the side of Josem's waist again. "You need to relax, Josem. There's nothing stopping Cayin from plowing into you, now that he's as far as he is, and flexing is only going to make it hurt worse."

Josem just shook his head mutely, his beak locking shut at a slight prod from the centaur's shaft. It was a different kind of pain than what the eagle's forbidden pill had inflicted, stretching rather than twisting, but he still couldn't imagine it hurting any worse. Maybe Paolo was right, though. Maybe if he could make himself relax, it wouldn't hurt as much, but at that moment, relaxing was as far out of the parakeet's reach as flying with his devolved wings.

When the other two males began pushing again, Josem tried to make himself take long, deep breaths, but in his agony, could manage only a frantic series of panicked, hyperventilating gasps. Paolo was right about one thing. As tense as the little avian's body was, the centaur's shaft still barreled another inch deeper.

"Easy, Josem. Easy," Paolo murmured soothingly when Cayin's lodged shaft tugged the parakeet's body back again, for all the world as if he was trying to calm a wild animal. The eagle even began petting Josem's outer thigh with one hand. "The pain's only temporary. Just as soon as you've finished helping Cayin, it will be better. We can all go on with our lives and forget this ever happened. But the more you clench, the longer this is going to take. Don't you want to be done with this?"

Incredibly, the hand stroking Josem's leg actually seemed to be working. The parakeet managed to slow his breathing until he drew in a long, shuddering breath that filled his lungs. His inner muscles softened slightly beneath their feathers.

This time when Cayin moved, his penis slid straight into the parakeet's gut, and when Josem couldn't help but clench again, his body seemed to pull the shaft another inch deeper before the little male's muscles locked around it. He could feel its broad crown stretching his stomach lining, having burrowed through a straight tunnel when it should have been blocked by coils of intestines. Looking down his front in baffled shock, Josem could see the bulge of Cayin's erection clearly outlined by his green belly feathers, the skin distended in a wide cylinder stretching up from behind the parakeet's sheath.

Beside the barrel of the centaur's chest, Paolo was staring at the bulge with his eyes as wide as they would go. He lowered one hand just in front of the tip's swell and reached back to graze a finger along the lower rim of Josem's sphincter again, not bothering to tell Cayin to hold still this time. As the centaur pulled back for another unstoppable lunge, Paolo held his finger in front of his hooked beak. "Still no blood. Josem, how are you holding up, little chick? Does anything feel broken inside?"

Josem opened his beak to answer, but all that came out was a high pitched screech when Cayin barreled into him again, stretching his insides further and knocking him away from the eagle's hand under his belly. Without Paolo supporting him, the parakeet fell to the stone floor between Cayin's forehooves, tugging down on the centaur's erection and barely stopping his fall in time with his forearms. Cayin whinnied, startled, and his penis gave a flex powerful enough to lift the parakeet off the ground and smack his back against the centaur's ribs before dropping him again. Josem scrabbled at the bare earth with his feet, but his legs were spread and all but paralyzed by the column between them, and couldn't support his weight. He crashed against his forearms a second time. Cayin's shaft flexed again with a groan from the centaur, but this time Paolo caught the parakeet when the abused male hit Cayin's chest again.

"Hurts," Josem gasped, in answer to the eagle's question, then repeated himself more clearly. "It hurts. More than . . . anything."

"Hmm." Paolo rubbed a hand underneath the pillar bulging out the parakeet's stomach feathers, groping and prodding at Cayin's tip through its living scabbard. "If anything had ruptured, I don't think he'd be able to speak. Everything seems to be going well."

"Agreed," Cayin grunted, his breathing frantic. Josem could feel the centaur's equine heart thumping behind his shoulder blades, racing almost as fast as his own. This time when he surged forward, Paolo pushed back against him again, and he sank impossibly behind Josem's diaphragm and between the smaller male's lungs, pushing the organs aside.

Josem's head and shoulders were pushed past the centaur's withers again, but this time, Cayin used his forelegs to catch Josem behind his armpits, squeezing tightly around his narrow chest. "Let him go, Paolo," the centaur growled in a voice deepened even more than usual by lust. "I've got him."

"Are you sure?"

"Oh yeah," the centaur moaned slowly, beginning to pull his haunches back while keeping Josem pinned between his forelegs. "He's not going anywhere."

Paolo took his hands away from Josem's midsection while the parakeet's insides collapsed in pursuit of the equine phallus's withdrawal, only to be forced wide again by a brutal shove that re-lodged the penis between the parakeet's lungs, knocking his breath out of him. The eagle stepped back to make room, and Cayin began moving in a painfully slow rhythm, squeezing slowly out of Josem's body until his tip was behind the parakeet's sheath, then slamming into Josem's chest as hard as he could, forcing his shaft an inch or so deeper up the little avian's gullet with each lunge. Josem could only gasp and cringe, knowing that half of the centaur's thick penis still remained outside of him behind his punctured rump. He tried to relax, but the effort was useless. Every time Cayin thrust forward, Josem's muscles clamped down around the invader of their own volition, and seemed to tug it even deeper inside.

It wasn't until the centaur's shaft was plunging up into the base of Josem's neck, painfully forcing him to look straight forward at the apex of each thrust, that Josem first realized that he might not survive being raped by Cayin. The bulge of the equine phallus sliding up and down his body cut off his breath every time it surged past his lungs, distending his throat like a pelican's with each lunge, until its broad tip was hammering against the base of Josem's skull. Each blow sent a shockwave of agony down his spine, making his limbs spasm in sharp jerks. Cayin could go no farther without killing the parakeet. He was just too big.

Too big. And yet Cayin's lunges weren't letting up in the slightest. Each thrust coursed through Josem's body with more power behind it than the last, each blow against his skull hitting harder, until Josem was sure the next would crash through the bruised bone and finally end his life.

The Light help him, though, Josem didn't want to die this way. He'd never be able to repent for letting the other males do this to him, not if he was killed in the act. What would happen to his soul, if Cayin managed to kill him now?

He had to stop the centaur somehow, that was all there was to it. Only the same problem that was a few thrusts away from killing him made it impossible for Josem to do anything to restrain the centaur: Cayin was simply too big. Josem couldn't have hoped to crawl away, even if the other male hadn't been gripping him around his waist with his huge forelegs. With Cayin's thick shaft keeping the parakeet's hips raised against his equine belly, Josem's feet couldn't even reach the ground.

Josem was running out of time. Between his breath being cut off whenever Cayin filled him and his nerves being pinched behind the massive erection, his toes and fingers were beginning to go numb. It was worse than pins and needles; every time the centaur thrust into him, he lost all feeling in his extremities, as if they kept getting disconnected from his body in the instant that Cayin's crown smashed into his skull. Those humping thrusts were still driving forward with ever more powerful determination. If Josem had been Paolo's size, or if Cayin had been almost any other taur in Final York, the equine shaft would have been able to squeeze the last few inches through the parakeet's throat and escape into his mouth.

Sobbing silently, Josem kept his eyes staring blankly forward and waited for the lunge that would end it all.

Then, finally, when Cayin shoved himself into Josem's neck one last time and didn't pull back, pushing ever more forcefully forward, his broad, swollen tip squeezed between the backs of the parakeet's jaws, forcing his beak open wide and making his eyes bulge in surprise and a confusing mix of relief and dismay. He was still alive, but that only meant he had to endure the rest of the centaur's rutting. Josem could feel the other male's leathery sheath nestled between his impossibly stretched rump cheeks, the centaur's round scrotum pressing against Josem's bottom and the backs of his thighs.

"Wait," Paolo suddenly said, moving closer to the centaur's front, where Josem was trying his best not to suffocate. "Hold still a second."

Grunting with the effort, Cayin did as he was asked, and when the eagle stuck his fingers inside Josem's gaping beak, the centaur's entire body shuddered, his shaft brutally shaking through the parakeet's insides. "Am I in his mouth?" Cayin gasped in breathless amazement. When Josem rolled his eyes upward, he could see the centaur's face staring down at him, the other male's forehead glistening with a sheen of lust's sweat. Paolo must have been touching his glans inside Josem's mouth.

"You are at that," the eagle said, sounding every bit as impressed as Cayin. He pulled his fingers out of Josem's mouth and leaned closer, until he was squinting a scant inch away from the parakeet's beak. "You must have bunched up some inside him, though. I would have sworn you'd be sticking out past his beak by the time you hilted."

As the centaur let out a loud groan, his leathery testicles sliding up against the plumage on Josem's backside as they drew close to the larger male's body, Josem felt Cayin's crown flaring out even more broadly between his jaws. The tip of the equine penis would have swelled even further if Josem's mouth could have opened any wider.

Paolo must have known what that flaring meant, but he was still too slow to dive out of the way of Cayin's first climactic spurt. The centaur's phallus clenched inside Josem's body and shot a river of sperm out past the parakeet's gaping beak like a canon. The geyser was so powerful, it actually knocked Paolo off his feet when it crashed into the eagle's face.

Before the first gush of centaur seed tapered off, the next flew in an arc out of Cayin's crown and Josem's mouth, sailing over the stunned eagle while Paolo landed, sprawled on his back. The arc of sperm fell through the air to splatter in a vertical stripe down the front of Paolo's robe, further drenching the eagle.

The third torrent nearly traced the second one's path through the air, while the next spurted straight onto Paolo's chest before the stunned eagle could gather enough wits to roll out of the way. Cayin, heedless, was hunching his haunches as hard as he could against Josem's rump. Josem could feel the pulse of each oversized squirt flow up through the centaur's urethra, could taste nothing except the bitter, salty tang of the gooey liquid flooding his mouth as each shot tapered to a drizzle before the next. Cayin's sperm pooled in the recess of Josem's lower beak, flowed down past the corners of his stretched mouth and dripped in strings from his chin.

Getting unsteadily to his feet, Paolo looked down at the front of his soaked robe, sheets of centaur sperm flowing stickily over his cloth belt, and flicked his feathered hands at the ground while the last of Cayin's orgasm leaked out of Josem's mouth. The eagle looked like he had a thousand biting remarks to throw at the centaur when he looked up again, but all he said was, "You've been holding that in for a long time, haven't you?"

"You have no idea," Cayin breathed. Josem rolled his eyes upward again, hoping that the centaur would finally let him go, but he found Cayin opening his own eyes for the first time since he'd begun to climax. When the centaur saw Paolo standing slightly to one side and realized where so much of his sperm had gone, one last, quick jet of seed flew out his penis and splattered against the cavern floor. "Light, Paolo. You should have gotten out of the way."

The eagle just grimaced. "If I'd had a little more warning, I might have. We should get moving as soon as you're ready. I'd hate for someone to come looking for the three of us right now."

"Not just yet," Cayin rumbled. "We put so much time and effort into planning this, I'm not about to let it go to waste."

Josem's jaw popped audibly when the centaur pulled his still-flared glans back out of his throat, his small beak clacking shut hard enough to hurt if the rest of his body wasn't already in such pain. His lungs and diaphragm slowly began to return to their natural positions as Cayin's thick phallus escaped from between them, but Josem's eyes widened in dismay when the giant penis retreated just behind his navel only to push forward once again.

Cayin wasn't done with him.

"Fine, fine," Paolo said, flicking his hands downward again. "I'm going back to the fountain around the bend to wash up. Wouldn't want to have to explain walking through the city looking and smelling like this. Don't take too long."

The parakeet tried to fight back another sob as the eagle turned and walked around the rounded corner of an abandoned cave-home, but he just couldn't take the abuse any more. Cayin would take his time, now that his first orgasm had slaked his immediate lust, and who was to say the centaur wouldn't keep riding Josem's body through a third climax, or a fourth, or more? Josem was going to be raped to death, after all, and it wouldn't be the quick death of having his head popped off, now that Cayin was able to cram himself all the way into the parakeet's mouth. All taurs had legendary stamina, and centaurs had even more endurance than most. Josem's torture could very well last hours before it ended, and the parakeet just wasn't up to surviving that long. Not with the pain of his innards being displaced by a horse's engorged erection.

It was only a matter of time before Josem's body would break open entirely, no matter what was in the forbidden pill Paolo had forced up his rear end, but as he sobbed and choked on Cayin's phallus, he could barely find the will to care anymore. Surely his mind was broken already.

At least the centaur was no longer trying to force his way past the base of Josem's skull. The leg thick penis still coursed from his feathered tail hole into his throat with every lunge, but it stopped just short of the back of his jaw. Still, Cayin was humping him now almost as vigorously as before the centaur's climax. Strange that Josem could still feel the other male's scrotum bouncing off of his rump with every lunge. The equine shaft must have been getting even more bunched up within the parakeet's insides than before.

Not that that mattered, though. Josem still felt like he was being pistoned into by a sizeable tree trunk where nothing was ever supposed to venture in the first place.

"About time you loosened up," Cayin grunted above him, and Josem could only sob his disagreement. As far as the parakeet could tell, his body gripped the centaur's erection as tightly as ever.

Gasping for breath every time the centaur pulled out, Josem stared at the ground beneath him. In his daze, he only realized then that a thick rope of Cayin's sperm still connected his beak to the stone cavern floor, and he began spitting the thick gunk out of his mouth in disgust. It didn't matter that he'd only be filled again with Cayin's next orgasm in a few minutes; spitting out the semen made him feel like he was fighting back in some small way.

The centaur must have changed his position slightly, hunching his hind legs more than he had been before, because Josem's clawed feet were suddenly scraping against the stone beneath him again. A moment later he was finally able to support his own weight, pushing up against Cayin's belly so that he wasn't simply dangling from the centaur's thrusting phallus any more.

"Starting to get into it a little, are you?" Cayin murmured at the pressure against his stomach. His hind hooves clopped loudly against the cavern floor as he shifted his stance again to press his weight more heavily down against Josem's back.

Josem's only answer was a sob. Against his better judgment, he looked down his front again, cringing at the sight of Cayin's erection pushing through his body in a cylinder of distended feathers. What horrified him, though, was when he noticed that his own sheath was plumping up in the start of an arousal that he couldn't possibly be feeling, the conical tip of his purple-feathered penis peeking out of his sheath's green entrance, its urethra hidden behind an unusual veil of moist, violet plumage. How could he be reacting like that to being almost fatally raped? It had to be a side effect of the pill Paolo had forced him to take. It had to be.

And yet, as Cayin's weight settled even more heavily against his back, forcing his legs to bend slightly, he couldn't help but notice a spark of something tingling between his legs every time the centaur pulled past a certain spot inside him, just behind his sheath. Those couldn't be thrills of pleasure shocking his body. That was impossible.

Impossible. But within just a few more strokes of the centaur's shaft, Josem's penis was as shamefully hard as he could remember it ever being. It still hurt enough to bring tears to his eyes, but the wet friction ramming in and out of his tail hole was beginning to spread a warmth through his body that a small, vile part of himself wanted more of.

That vile part of him was granted its wish. Very, very slowly, the pain that wracked the parakeet's body began receding to be replaced with that warm, glowing pleasure. Cayin's girth was still far too large, would always be far too large to naturally fit within Josem's rectum, but as uncomfortable as the centaur's rutting still was, a low, whimpering moan escaped Josem's little beak against his will. He was only grateful that Cayin didn't notice the quiet, lustful noise above his own labored breaths.

A few heated thrusts later, and the centaur shifted position slightly again, moving his forehooves one at a time further back behind Josem's shoulders and using the legs to hug his feathered chest, squeezing the breath out of him. Cayin pressed yet more of his weight down against the parakeet's shoulder blades, making a part of Josem's mind wonder exactly what he was doing. It was only a small part, though, with the centaur's shaft plunging between his lungs and the big, leathery testicles brutally slapping his own balls with each lunge. Light, but that equine scrotum was huge!

The forced pairing became a blur to Josem, a hazy cocktail of fading pain and growing ecstasy. Clutching the centaur's forelegs under his armpits tightly, he looked down his front again, watching the bulge of Cayin's erection pushing forward and backward through his abdomen. The parakeet's own shaft, solid within its plumage and fully extended, bobbed up and down with the centaur's brutal thrusts, slapping Josem's thin belly each time a lunge knocked him forward, just before the broad cylinder within him retreated past his navel, flicking the front of Cayin's penis through a thin layer of larger feathers, skin, and muscle. Josem thought he must be close to passing out. At least, he was definitely beginning to hallucinate. The centaur's penis looked like it was stopping just short of the middle of his ribs at the apex of each lunge, but that equine ball sack was still pounding the parakeet's plump bottom and upper thighs. Cayin was still hilting himself with every buck of his haunches.

It was all happening because Josem was so small. That's what had drawn Cayin's attention to him in the first place, the parakeet knew. As backwards a notion as it seemed, it was impossible for such a small male to keep a low profile in a city full of taurs and birds of prey. Other avians were little, too, finches and jays and such, but aside from a pair of hummingbird twins, Josem didn't know of anyone in all of Final York as short and slender as him. Bullies like Cayin and Paolo had always been drawn to him, no matter how he tried to avoid attention.

If they just weren't so much bigger than him, the parakeet would never have been in such a situation, fighting an internal war between agony and that terrible, sinful arousal. A war that he was quickly losing, he realized with horror. There was almost no discomfort left to distract him from that electric friction rubbing behind his erection, driving him so close to the brink of orgasm.

Cayin kept shifting himself above the parakeet, simultaneously making Josem wish that the centaur would just finally finish with him, and that the other male would aim himself to press more against the spot behind his loins that kept lancing pleasure through his body. Just when the centaur began leaning his lathered chest down against Josem's shoulder blades so heavily that the parakeet had to lower his hands to the cavern floor to keep from falling on his beak, just when he was beginning to think the centaur was trying to bear him all the way to the ground, Cayin slowly began to ease off the pressure against Josem's back. The centaur still humped as madly as before, though he definitely wasn't thrusting very far into Josem's body any more, and Josem felt like he really was beginning to loosen up around the other male, especially when he relaxed his lower abdomen.

"Cayin!" Paolo's sudden shout shook Josem out of his guilty stupor. "What under the Light is happening?"

"I should think that's pretty obvious," the centaur grunted. He must have been very winded; his voice had changed from a ground-trembling baritone to a pitch similar to Josem's.

"Open your eyes, Cayin!" Paolo yelled, rushing toward the two of them in his rinsed and dripping robes and grabbing the centaur's haunches, trying to pull the larger male off of the parakeet.

"What . . . ?" the centaur grumbled, but his voice dropped off as he and the parakeet beneath him realized the same unfathomable thing at once.

Cayin had been shifting around so much because he couldn't keep his hooves in the same spots on the cavern floor while his body shrunk.

Paying so little attention to anything save the sensations coursing through his body, Josem hadn't even noticed when the centaur's forelegs had moved back around his chest to his waist, or that the centaur was now rutting against him in the same position that he could with another horse, his front side lifted off the ground while he hugged the other male's hips. With his equine chest nestled into the small of Josem's back, Cayin's front hooves dangled several inches above the ground, and his hind legs were scrabbling against the stone as he stretched to keep his haunches at the level of Josem's rump. The parakeet had even been gradually bending his knees without realizing it once Cayin's full weight settled on top of him.

"I . . . I don't understand," Cayin said weakly, though he never stopped humping Josem's backside. With his eyes closed the entire time, he'd evidently been as unaware of his diminishing size as Josem was.

"Understand later," Paolo said, his feathered hands slipping against Cayin's sweat slickened flanks. "Until we figure out what happened, playtime's over. Pull out, Cayin."

It was at that moment, when the centaur finally came to his senses and tried to back himself out of Josem's bowels, that the parakeet's resistance to the mounting pleasure finally gave way. With a whimper, Josem's downy feathered balls twitched between his thighs, and a long squirt of avian sperm shot out of his erection, barely hindered by the feathers covering his tip and splattering against his wrist and the granite beneath him. The parakeet's rectum locked down around Cayin's shaft, and with each rapid pulse of Josem's orgasm, his body clenched anew, the flexing muscles somehow tugging the centaur back into him to the other male's root, pulling that leathery sheath back between Josem's rump cheeks.

"Stop playing around, Cayin, you're still getting smaller!" Paolo planted his palm against Josem's soft butt, wedging his other arm between the parakeet's thighs and Cayin's haunches, and tried to pry the centaur away from the smaller avian. One last clench of Josem's insides, though, made the equine tip inside of him flare and further lock the centaur within him while Cayin's scrotum, little larger than Josem's own sack now, drew up close to the centaur's groin between the parakeet's buttocks. A soothing, liquid warmth filled Josem's bowels, then, making him want to melt in his afterglow despite the torturous pairing.

A moment later the large eagle staggered away from the other two as if burned. When Josem peered back over his shoulder in hazy confusion, he didn't see anything out of the ordinary until Paolo shook his arm in front of his face in amazement. The eagle's hand was hidden behind his robe's white sleeve, and the hem of the garment dragged several inches against the cavern floor.

"It's him," Paolo whispered hoarsely, then said with more strength, "Cayin, it's him! Josem's the one that's doing it!"

That was enough to shake the centaur out of his own afterglow. Cayin began thrashing in a wild panic, trying to remove himself from Josem's insides, though the parakeet's body was finally relaxed, gripping the softening penis within it no tighter than it would have a long, thick finger. When Josem realized with morbid astonishment that Cayin's real struggle was to reach the ground with his hind hooves, he lowered himself fully to his knees, then slightly further, until the centaur scrabbled back off him and backpedaled past Paolo.

"What did you do?" Cayin snarled, terror quickly transforming into rage now that his body was no longer shrinking. "What in the flaming pits are you, runt?" Standing less than three feet tall, his voice was now a thin alto, but he still managed to look threatening to Josem when he clopped out from behind Paolo's loose robes.

"I . . . I didn't do anything," Josem protested, fresh tears blurring his vision. This new strangeness was too much. After all that he had been put through, he had finally lost his senses entirely. That was the only explanation he could reach. Turning on his knees to face the other two males, he knelt awkwardly, his backside too sore for him to sit, but his legs too weak to support him. Even after his brutal rape, he lowered his hands between his thighs modestly, covering the slender avian penis that refused to retreat fully back into his green sheath.

"You didn't do anything? This sure looks like something to me!" Cayin roared, his voice climbing nearly to a soprano. Trotting forward threateningly with his softening phallus bouncing beneath him, the centaur faced Josem from a few feet away, eye to eye with the kneeling parakeet. "Now you listen to me, chickadee, and you listen good. Whatever you did, you're going to change me back, or no threat of exile will keep me from killing you, understand? I'll skin you alive if you don't fix this. Now!"

"But . . . but I don't understand . . . what happened." Josem's vision blurred as confused sobs overcame him, but he was knocked out of his emotional fit when the centaur's sharp hoof clipped the side of his chest with enough force to knock him onto his back, tearing feathers out of his skin and leaving a long, red scratch.

"I said now!" Cayin bellowed in his diminutive voice, and when Josem looked at the male again, all he saw was a pair of sharp hooves falling toward his head.

He reacted instinctively, grabbing the centaur around his equine ankles and twisting Cayin onto the ground beside him. The other male wasn't injured by Josem's surprising reflexes, but landing hard on his flank only further stoked his temper. "Let go of me, bird!" He began kicking and thrashing franticly with his free limbs, but rather than release him, Josem rolled behind the centaur and hugged the smaller male to his feathered chest.

Incomprehensible as Cayin's transformed size was, it was all but insignificant to Josem now. "I don't want to be hurt anymore," the parakeet whispered, watery eyes wide and staring almost vacantly over Cayin's head. In his grasp, he could feel the centaur shrinking once again. "If I let you go, that's what will happen."

"We're done hurting you, Josem," Paolo said from a few feet behind him. The eagle had moved closer, but stayed well beyond Josem's reach. "All we want now is to go home. If you let Cayin go and change him back to his real size, maybe we'll forget about this . . . this possession."

"Like Hell we will," Cayin snarled, reaching back and trying to tear out a handful of Josem's chest feathers.

"Possession?" Josem repeated, wincing at Cayin's tugs before looking back at the eagle, even more confused than before.

"What else can it be?" Paolo asked, nodding down at the grappling males significantly. "This is obviously some sort of dark magic. I'm sure that's what the High Priest will decide when we tell him what you're doing. After that, you'll be quarantined at the very least, maybe even exiled."

"Exiled! But exile is reserved only for the unforgiveable sin!" Josem couldn't believe what he was hearing. He was guilty of becoming uncontrollably aroused when Cayin had raped him, but the Light forgave all but the very worst of sins. So did the Priests of the Light. Surely he wouldn't be exiled, even for somehow suddenly being able to shrink people at a touch. But then, it wasn't natural, that was certain, and what wasn't natural was without question evil. . . .

"You mean murder?" Paolo asked, but he was being rhetorical. Everyone knew what the unforgiveable sin was. "Some have been exiled for crimes other than murder before, Josem, when they've shown that they're incapable of stopping. You know that. If you can prove to us that you can stop, the High Priest might only keep you quarantined until the demon can be exorcised."

"No!" Josem squawked, panicking all over again. "You can't tell the High Priest about this, Paolo. Please! I don't want to be quarantined."

"Then change Cayin back," the eagle demanded persistently.

"I don't know how!"

"Then I have to tell the clergy, Josem. You understand, don't you? I won't be able to live with myself if I don't help you when it's clear a demon is taking control of you."

Paolo turned toward the inhabited areas of Final York, deeper inside the cave complex, but Josem leapt to his feet with a dog-sized Cayin dangling in his arms and tackled the eagle, tucking the centaur under one arm and wrapping the other around the larger avian's waist. "No!" the parakeet shouted again while his momentum carried all three of them to the ground. "Please, Paolo. I'll figure out how to change him back, I promise. I just don't know what's going on. You have to give me a chance."

Josem was babbling hysterically, he knew, even after the eagle began hitting him hard in the chest and stomach and trying to pry himself free. Fortunately, the blows were softened by the cloth of Paolo's increasingly oversized sleeves. "Get off of me, you little freak!"

They rolled across the cavern floor, one of the three of them gaining a bruise with every twist and flail, but neither Cayin nor Paolo could manage to get the parakeet to release them, though Josem soon sported a swollen eye from the eagle's fists and several gouges from Cayin's hooves. The prospect of exile filled him with such stupefying horror, he thought he'd rather be beaten to death, even raped to death, by those two bullies than ever risk the High Priest's judgment.

It went on for no more than a minute before both avians stopped their struggling. Between their two bodies, Cayin had begun to thrash and convulse uncontrollably. Now the size of a small kitten, less than a foot from head to hind hoof, the tiny centaur looked like he was choking, or drowning.

"Cayin! What's wrong?" Josem asked with a brand new worry. He'd never needed to mind his own strength before. Had he squeezed the centaur too hard, broken something inside the little male?

Cayin didn't answer. As his body shrunk down one more inch, his convulsions changed to a full body tremor as every single one of his muscles locked up at once. This lasted perhaps ten of Josem's racing heartbeats before a tiny trickle of blood slid out of the centaur's nose and the corner of his mouth. Then Cayin went limp in the parakeet's grasp, his eyes staring up at Josem's face in unblinking accusation.

Cayin was dead.

"Light," Paolo breathed while Josem was still gaping down at the centaur's lifeless body, stunned. Mortified. "Light, Josem, you've killed him."

There was only one unforgiveable sin.

"Let me go!" the eagle shouted suddenly, trying again to twist out of Josem's grip. He was no larger than the parakeet now, though, seeming a child playing dress up in an adult's robe. Josem had his waist and both of his arms confined in just one of his own. "I said let me go! Now, Josem! Stop touching me!" Every exclamation was louder than the one before it, until the eagle was shrieking in a full blown panic. If that kept up, someone from the city would hear, no matter how far away it was. Sound traveled amazing distances underground.

Josem was shaking his head in denial, rubbing his thumb over Cayin's equine chest, trying to will at least one of the tiny centaur's hearts to start beating again, but it was no use. He couldn't take back what had happened. He didn't mean it, he'd never meant to hurt anyone, but Paolo was right. He'd killed the male that had raped him. Josem was a murderer.

He couldn't let anyone find out. No one could ever learn how far his soul had mired itself that day. If Paolo kept screaming like he was, though. . . .

Josem moved without a conscious thought, and only after he pulled his hand away from Paolo's face did he realize what he'd done. Paolo stopped thrashing and screaming at once, staring back at Josem in flabbergasted surprise. Josem had shoved Cayin's body head first inside of the eagle's wide-open beak mid-scream, and now the last three or four inches of the centaur's equine half dangled out of Paolo's mouth like a rodent caught by a feral bird of prey.

"You have to be quiet," Josem pleaded while the eagle was still stunned silent. The parakeet had to force the words out past the anguished lump in his throat. "Please, Paolo. You can't tell anyone. Nobody can find out. If you promise not to make any more noise, I'll pull him out and let you go, okay?"

As if mesmerized by a cobra's gaze, the eagle nodded slowly, but as soon as the parakeet gingerly tugged Cayin's body an inch out of his mouth, Paolo let out a wordless, half muffled shriek. Hastily, Josem shoved the lifeless centaur back in, but this time he was more forceful than he'd meant to be. Paolo's predatory eyes bugged out as he gagged, the centaur's human half plunging into his gullet. His gag reflex tried to push Cayin back out, but Josem kept his hand around the centaur's limp rump, holding his body in place.

Paolo's throat muscles acted of their own volition. When he couldn't force Cayin out of his beak, his body reacted instinctively to clear his airway, swallowing sharply around the centaur's torso and tugging the lifeless male into his mouth until only his hind legs dangled from his beak.

Josem released Cayin's rump in surprise, then watched, dumbstruck, when Paolo swallowed again. That wasn't at all what the parakeet had intended.

Desperate to breathe, the eagle gulped in a frenzy, pulling Cayin's corpse fully into his mouth and clenching his beak shut as he lifted his head upward. His neck's white plumage fluffed out as his gullet tugged the centaur fully into his throat, but Josem could still clearly see the bulge of the eagle's accidental meal travel slowly and jerkily down past Paolo's collarbone. A few swallows later, and the eagle gasped, then immediately let out a deep belch that belied his diminished size. The scent of centaur on the little eagle's breath was unmistakable.

"Let me . . . let me go now," Paolo said quietly between pants, regaining his breath after having to hold it for so long. "If you keep holding me, I'll die, too, just like Cayin. You don't want to kill twice, do you Josem?"

Shaking his head, the parakeet hastily dropped Paolo, and the eagle fell more than half his height into the concealing folds of his robe. The fall couldn't have been more than a foot high.

After a moment of rustling, Paolo freed himself of his oversized garment and stepped away from it, naked. Some two feet tall to Josem's three and a half, he stared up at the parakeet for a second or two, then bolted in the direction of Final York.

"Paolo, wait!" Josem dashed after the eagle, his longer strides quickly overtaking the shrunken avian's. Slipping his hands underneath the eagle's armpits, he hefted Paolo off the ground like a toddler. "Please. You can't tell anyone what . . . what I did. I don't want to be exiled, or quarantined."

"What am I supposed to say when they see me like this?" Paolo snapped back at him. "Unless you've decided to change me back?"

"I told you, I don't know how. I would if I could." If he could, Josem would have taken back everything he had done that day, starting with stepping underneath Cayin's robes. "I . . . I'll figure it out, though. There has to be a way to fix this, doesn't there? I'll just . . . hide you until I learn how to change you back. Okay?"

"You'll put me back down right now, is what you'll do," Paolo shouted. "Right now, Josem! I'm not about to let you kill me!"

The parakeet pulled Paolo tight against his chest and reached up to clamp the other male's beak shut, but the eagle kept letting out muffled yells. His body was the size of a large doll's, now, little more than a foot tall. He wasn't very much larger than Cayin had been when the centaur's convulsions had begun.

"Just promise me you won't tell anyone," Josem begged, but Paolo was in a frenzy now, not convulsing, but thrashing and kicking and jabbing Josem's chest with his elbows all the same. "Stop it, Paolo. Please. Someone might hear if I let you go. Please, be quiet." It was no use. The eagle seemed determined to hurt Josem just a little bit more in the last moments he had left to live. Rather than make a simple promise to save himself, Paolo preferred to inflict a few more seconds of pain on the parakeet. "Just stop!" Josem yelled, every bit as loudly as Paolo had.

Josem wasn't sure what surprised him more, that Paolo actually did as he was told, or that his body stopped shrinking in the same instant as the parakeet's outburst. Tentatively, Josem uncurled his fingers from around the eagle's beak, ready at any moment to muzzle the other male again, but Paolo only drew in a tremulous breath. Holding him under the armpits again, Josem moved the eagle out at arm's length and watched him carefully, making absolutely sure that Paolo was staying the same size. "I can make it stop," Josem whispered wonderingly. "If I can do that, I should be able to make you grow."

He started concentrating on trying just that, when a familiar, feminine voice echoed through the cavern from the direction of the city. " . . . Know I heard something this time, Father," he was able to make out. "It sounded like someone was in trouble."

Josem almost wet himself in his sudden fright. Someone was finally coming! What would they do if they saw him holding a foot-tall Paolo? What would they do if they saw him naked! Somehow the latter concern was more distressing than the first, and Josem darted to where Cayin had tossed his clothing earlier, holding Paolo around the eagle's waist in one hand while awkwardly looping his hip wrap between and around his upper thighs. He pushed Paolo into one sleeve of his white robe and out again through its cuff, then looked at the tiny eagle consideringly without cinching tight his belt strap. "You have to hang on to my feathers," he told Paolo, breathing frantically in his near panic. "Hold onto me, and stay quiet. Okay?" He tucked the eagle underneath the folds of his robe and waited until he felt the little male grasp the plumage under one of his nipples. When Josem let go of the other male, though, it was all he could manage not to squawk as the loose feathers tore out of his skin and Paolo slid down between his body and his robe.

"I think it came from this way," the newcomer's voice echoed. It was closer now.

Fumbling for Paolo through his robe, Josem drew a miniscule grunt from the eagle when he pinned him roughly against his thigh. Turning his back to the would-be rescuers to hide his movements should they come within line of sight, Josem squatted down slightly to keep Paolo from slipping any further and carefully reached down into his robe to retrieve the eagle. Rather than pull him out into the open, though, he did the only thing he could think of on such short notice. He loosened his loin wrap slightly and shoved Paolo down the front of his crotch.

Josem cinched his wrap even tighter than before, plastering Paolo against his scrotum tightly enough to restrict the other male's movements. "Quiet now," he reprimanded when the eagle let out a muffled squeak, but Josem had to fight not to whimper himself. The front of Paolo's torso was nestled between the parakeet's testicles, the green balls parting slightly around the eagle's chest and arms. Paolo's head was twisted to one side to avoid digging his beak into Josem's taint, for which Josem was grateful, even if the eagle only wanted to keep from tasting the parakeet's feathers and Cayin's lingering flavor. The musk down there must have been overpowering; Cayin's sperm had leaked a great deal out of Josem's tail hole after he'd been raped, matting down the feathers between his thighs, and by the squishing sensation of Paolo's body against his pubic plumage, it still wasn't dry.

At least the eagle wasn't squirming. Josem knew he was still alive only by the rhythmic swelling of the other male's chest against his feathered sack as Paolo breathed. If he started to move any more than that, Josem didn't know if he'd be able to handle it. Paolo's legs were sticking up to either side of the parakeet's sheath, the eagle's clawed feet trapped between feathers and cloth some inches below the parakeet's navel where Josem had tightened his wrap around his lower waist, and Josem could feel the eagle's own sheath and balls rubbing against the feathers where his plump sheath and scrotum met.

Josem noticed the creaking rumble of a cart's wheels against stone behind him an instant before he heard a gasped, "Josem! Is that you?"

How his heart could skip a beat when it was pounding so fast, he couldn't understand. Gulping down a few breaths, he slowly stood upright, wincing when the bases of his rump cheeks squeezed down around Paolo's head and shoulders, trapping the eagle's face with warm flesh to every side. Just as slowly, the parakeet began to turn around, but suddenly remembered that his robe's belt was still flapping loose at his sides, and with a silent, wordless whine, he tied the strap of cloth in a hasty knot. Then he turned the rest of the way around.

Just as he'd feared, the voice belonged to his best, and maybe only, friend. Liahi.

Even with the lantern she held in her free hand, the panther taur would have been all but invisible were it not for her own white tunic and taur-tailored robe hiding most of her body. Her black nose twitching at the scent of so much male rut, she glanced at the long splashes of centaur sperm on the ground, then hastily averted her eyes, returning them to the parakeet. "Josem, what happened?"

"Are you all right, boy?" Father Betlam added from his perch behind Liahi. The old, gray pigeon looked genuinely concerned where he sat on his small cart, his bent, slate walking stick appearing as dull and humble as it always did beside his resplendent golden robes of the clergy. Josem had never seen anything save a frown on Father Betlam's face, and indeed his small beak was still frowning, but for the first time ever it seemed to be from worry rather than his usual muted anger.

"I . . . I. . . ." Josem stammered, hugging himself with his loose fitting sleeves. What was he supposed to tell them? What possible excuse could he have for venturing so far beyond the city's boundaries? "Cayin. . . ." No! He couldn't bring Cayin up, not after what he'd done to the centaur. How could his beak be so out of control?

"Spirits of Light," Betlam swore. "He's been raped."

Josem couldn't trust himself to say anything else. He just stared at Liahi's big, black furred forepaws, clenching his beak shut until his jaw began to ache. He didn't dare move, either, lest his unwilling passenger slip free of the hip wrap's hold on the eagle's feet.

"Don't just stand there, girl," Betlam said briskly, "bring him here."

Liahi was moving before the pigeon finished speaking, lowering the bars of the cart swiftly and crossing the few yards between herself and Josem. "You're going to be okay, Josem," she said quietly, her voice quavering on the edge of tears. "Can you walk?"

"I think so," the parakeet whispered. He cringed away from her despite himself when she hunkered down to his height and tried to put an arm around his shoulders, and the panther taur stepped away from him as if she'd been slapped. Josem's gut writhed guiltily, but he couldn't let Liahi touch him. He couldn't risk doing to her what he'd done to Cayin and Paolo, and even though he was still very much touching the shrunken eagle, he didn't understand what would trigger the evil power, the curse. Josem was too dangerous now to chance even an accidental graze, especially with Liahi.

The parakeet carefully took a step toward Father Betlam's cart, keeping his arms hugging his own chest so that he couldn't reach down to cup his crotch through his robe, as his hands instinctively wanted to do. Paolo's body was jostled between the parakeet's thighs with every movement, but the eagle wasn't going anywhere. He must have looked like he was about to fall over, because Liahi was right beside him every step of the way until he stood next to the seat of Betlam's cart.

The old pigeon scooted to the side of his narrow bench, but Josem just looked up at him helplessly. Walking might have been safe enough, but he would have to hike a foot to his waist's height to climb aboard the cart

"Help him up," Betlam told Liahi. "The boy's in shock."

"Yes, Father." Before Josem could protest, the panther taur grabbed him under his armpits from behind and hefted him straight up onto the cart's narrow footrest, making him squeeze his thighs and rump around Paolo's head and shoulders in surprise.

"Sit, child," Father Betlam said, his voice too gruff to be soothing. "Be at your ease. All is well, now; your suffering has passed."

That was when Paolo finally decided to begin struggling, much to Josem's horror. The eagle was silent about it, but he suddenly began squirming frantically, trying to push himself out from under the parakeet's rump, shoving his hands against Josem's taint and the back of his balls. Josem was in a crouch halfway to the bench when he froze at the abrupt stimulation, and Father Betlam cleared his throat uncomfortably beside him.

"Take your time, lad," the old pigeon said awkwardly, blessedly misunderstanding the parakeet's reluctance to sit.

The eagle in his underwear writhing futilely all the while, Josem slowly slid his tail feathers into the wide slot between the thick bronze seat and the bench's back, using his obvious yet shameful excuse to settle himself gingerly beside Father Betlam, staring fixedly at the cavern wall a short distance in front of him the entire time. Truly, he was sore enough to warrant his hesitation without worrying about the male between his thighs, but it was his entire body that ached, thanks to the forbidden medicine he'd been forced to take, not only his backside.

The parakeet's weight pressing down on top of Paolo wouldn't have been so terrible, but all of the eagle's struggles had made Josem's taint stiffen somewhat, as well as plumping out his sheath all over again. Josem squeezed his eyes closed and turned his head away from Betlam shamefully, then turned his head again to look straight down at the footrest beneath him when he remembered that his taur friend was still standing next to the cart. How could he be getting aroused again, after everything that had happened? Maybe there really was a demon inside him. Maybe he really had been possessed by a sentient evil. Cringing inwardly, he squeezed his buttocks together to take some of his weight off of his taint and the foot long eagle pinned beneath him. That only clamped Paolo's head and shoulders firmly between Josem's rump cheeks, but at least it kept the eagle from being crushed by Josem's taint.

"Liahi, girl, get us back to the city," Betlam ordered. "We'll have the boy taken care of after evening chapel. Right now, his spirit needs more healing than his body."

Too true, Josem thought, wanting to hug his knees to his chest and rock back and forth, but only able to sniffle and press his arms around his chest while seated on the cart. It was only too true.

The trip passed in uncomfortable silence, Liahi easily pulling the cart behind her and glancing over her shoulder at Josem what seemed like every other step. Father Betlam kept his eyes turned away from the parakeet beside him the entire time, as if Josem carried some disease that the pigeon was too polite to draw attention to. Paolo, for his part, barely moved, only squirming a little here and there to stretch and flex his legs around Josem's sheath, his stomach and lap squishing through the centaur sperm coating the underside of the parakeet's balls each time he moved. The eagle seemed to be resigned to following Josem's plan of staying hidden until Josem could figure out how to return him to his proper size. That, or Paolo had simply lost consciousness with nothing except centaur and avian musk to breathe.

Soon enough they were rolling down narrow, high-ceilinged tunnels carved through the bedrock, a giant anthill of shops, restaurants, and residential caves, each with a metal or stone door set along their corridor. The chatter of a hundred conversations rose around them, channeled through the convoluted network of intersecting tunnels, but a predominant, rhythmic chanting gradually began to drown out the other noise, thousands of voices reciting the evening prayers under the High Priest's guidance.

Josem was so caught up in fighting back his thoughts before they could surface, fighting back the sensation of having a living creature tucked under his crotch, that they were in the Great Chapel before he knew it, the cavernous assembly hall with its domed roof arching hundreds of feet above filled to bursting with thousands of avians and taurs of all shapes and sizes. Truly all sizes, or very nearly, once Liahi pulled the cart into the enormous cave, even if Josem and Paolo were the only two avians who knew it.

People made way when they saw that the cart carried a clergyman, so despite the crowd, Liahi was able to slowly weave her way into the heart of the cavern, some fifteen rows of kneeling birds and taurs back from High Priest Iyan, an old jay whose blue feathers had long faded to gray. After setting down the cart's arms, Liahi moved back to its side and offered Josem a hand down. He took it, but the cart's floor was too high for him to reach the ground without hopping, and as careful as he was Paolo still slipped an inch or two down his hip wrap when he landed.

Josem stood rigid, afraid that a single movement might dislodge Paolo and that the eagle would slip out between the cloth and Josem's thigh. Liahi's back was soon turned to join the supplicants in the row before them, and everyone else was kneeling with their foreheads against the stone floor, Father Betlam closing his eyes as well in prayer. Josem used the opportunity to give his hip wrap a swift tug through his robe, tightening it even further against his groin, but his thighs and buttocks tensed all over again when he felt Paolo's new position. He wondered if the eagle could tell, with Josem's unique genetic disorder, that his beak was tickling the feathers of the parakeet's sphincter. He was gripping the feathers along the inner curves of Josem's rump with an iron grasp, but that might only have been from surprise at the sudden tightening of the cloth beneath and around him.

When his panther taur friend looked back at him worriedly, Josem followed Liahi forward with tiny, uncertain steps, every slightest movement rubbing Paolo against him. Kneeling between Liahi and a taur raccoon was even more precarious; when he moved down to his knees, Paolo's body pressed hard against his taint and balls, and the eagle's face was forced against the heat of Josem's clenching anus.

Trying desperately to ignore the constant contact against his sore flesh, the parakeet lowered his forehead to the ground and began murmuring the long memorized words of the evening prayers' closing benediction along with everyone else in the cavern. On any other day, the prayer would have been a soothing balm, but after what he had done, the words seemed to mock him gratingly.

"Light embrace us, despite our flaws; Holy Sun, burn away our sins; Holy Moon, grant us your forgiveness; Holy Stars, guide us in death to paradise. . . ." They were beautiful words, speaking directly to the celestial heavens, which no mortal save the scorned and cursed anthro mammals and reptiles had seen since the Collapse ages ago. Josem didn't deserve to speak their sacred names.

The prayer went on in a litany of self-recrimination, the wishes of hundreds of thousands of sinners for forgiveness from the heavens, and when they were over Josem murmured the prayer again, tears soaking cheek feathers that were already matted and crusted from so much weeping. Paolo's body mocked every word, conforming to the curve of Josem's taint and the bulges of the parakeet's sack and sheath. Gradually, though, the familiarity of the prayer calmed Josem, and he repeated it a third time, then a fourth. He would have gone on throughout the night, maybe forever, if a heavy hand hadn't landed on his shoulder and made him jump to his feet in surprise.

What he felt within his hip wrap in that moment made sparks swim across his vision, and his entire body went rigid in horrified shock. He had been relaxing, kneeling with his rump pushed back against his robes and Paolo pressed tight along his crotch. With his feathered sphincter no longer clenching, the sudden movement from kneeling to standing changed the shape of his tail hole in a single instant from a slight pucker to a soft wedge between the slopes of his buttocks, and as firmly as Paolo's face had been plastered against it. . . .

The eagle's head was suddenly sticking halfway into Josem's tail hole, his sphincter clamping down in a ring around Paolo's crown and chin. When the parakeet tensed up as soon as he was on his feet, the eagle's head had only two directions it could slip, and as hard as Josem was clenching it was bound to be squeezed one way or the other.

To match the luck of Josem's evening, it wasn't at all the direction he was praying for.

"Sorry, Josem," Liahi said soothingly, standing only feet away and looking down at him without bothering to hide her concern, and all the while his tail hole was secretly locked around an eagle's neck. "I should have said something. We're going to get you to a doctor, okay? Make sure you weren't . . . hurt too badly."

He stared past his friend's face without responding, not really seeing or hearing her. His rump should have been in agony, being invaded again after what it had been through, even by something as small as Paolo's head, but what had his body locked up wasn't pain. Between the eagle's knees, the parakeet's sheath plumped up of its own accord, and he could feel his undergarment's cloth against the front-most feathers of his emerging penis. Clenching his beak shut, he shook his head in denial of the pleasure.

"Josem?" Liahi said worriedly, leaning down in front of him until they were eye to eye. "Josem, what's wrong?

"I . . . I can't. . . ." His beak snapped shut again without another word, his eyes widening even further. Paolo was hardly waiting patiently to be freed. Panicking far more than the parakeet he was stuck inside, the eagle was alternately punching and shoving at the innermost curves of Josem's rump cheeks, his little fists flicking at the feathers and tender skin around the parakeet's anus. What made Josem gasp, though, was when Paolo wedged his fingers to either side of his encased jaw and tried to forcefully pry the parakeet's sphincter apart. The diminutive eagle was far from strong enough to compete with the muscles in Josem's rump, though, and as soon as his hands had slid to either side of his face, Josem's body gave an involuntary spasm. To a lesser extent, it felt just like when Cayin had been raping him, and his insides had tugged at the centaur's erection. Now, though, it was Paolo's hands that his feathered flesh pulled at, yanking the eagle's arms straight into Josem's rump.

"What can't you do, Josem?" Liahi asked, clearly beginning to realize that the parakeet's distress was being caused by something immediate rather than the shock of being raped. His only answer was an undignified squeak as he squeezed down around Paolo's arms and face again, trying to stop the eagle's entry but only managing to tug him in up to his armpits. Liahi looked past Josem to the cart behind him. "Father Betlam, something's wrong. I don't know what's happening to him, but I think we need to get him to a doctor as fast as we can."

"No!" Josem yelped out, far more loudly than he meant to. He couldn't let anyone know what he'd done to Paolo, or worse, to Cayin. "I just need to go home," he managed to grate out, "but . . . just. . . ." Light, how could Paolo's thrashing inside his rectum feel so good?

"But what, boy?" Father Betlam asked impatiently, hobbling over to Josem and Liahi with the walking stick he always kept in his cart. "You're beginning to draw attention." It was true; most of the crowd from the evening prayers was still lingering in the assembly cavern, and those nearby were darting curious and disapproving glances their way. Those who weren't staring outright.

"Just . . . wait, please," Josem said with a grunt. Straining as hard as he could, he pushed with his inner muscles as if having a bowel movement. A relieved smile twitched at the corners of his beak as he felt Paolo's trapped arms begin to shift in the right direction, but it lasted only a moment. Still struggling wildly, the eagle's clawed feet suddenly dug into the underside of Josem's scrotum, hard enough that the parakeet was sure the small scratches had drawn blood, and a confusing wave of pain and pleasure overwhelmed him. Without realizing what he was doing, he let out a loud squawk and arched his back, pushing his butt back as if presenting himself for a mate. Paolo's arms were sucked back into his tail hole, along with the eagle's upper chest and back.

"Josem!" Liahi hissed, taking the parakeet forcefully by the shoulders. "Whatever you're doing, stop it! You're beginning to scare me."

"This can't be happening," Josem muttered, trying with his last shred of will not to lose himself to the euphoria. "It can't be happening."

"Oh, Light," Liahi cursed, "the High Priest's noticed us. Stand up, Josem," the last was whispered as High Priest Iyan approached, and the panther taur used her grip on Josem's shoulders to tug him upright again. He yelped, the sudden motion making him clamp down around Paolo's body all over again, sucking the eagle into his rump another inch.

"Is all well, Father Betlam?" the aging blue jay asked serenely, his hands clasped in front of him as he stepped beside Liahi.

Another twitch of Josem's insides, and the eagle's beak suddenly scraped across a spot within him that blinded him with bliss, making the last few inches of his feathered penis shoot out of his sheath. By the time the muscles in his rump stopped fluttering, he was distinctly aware of Paolo's balls squishing up against the lower curve of his sphincter.

All at once, the situation's severity dawned on Josem. At Paolo's first intrusion, he'd only feared that he'd begun a humiliating experience that the eagle would never forgive him for. Now, though, he realized that if he didn't do something very quickly, Paolo wouldn't live long enough to make him pay for it.

Whatever the consequences to himself, Josem wasn't going to kill again.

"No!" Josem interrupted Betlam's response. "I'm sorry, you have to help me," he babbled, "I'm so sorry. . . ." His litany of apologies continued flowing without a breath as he shook off Liahi's supporting hands and hastily untied his robe.

When the garment fell to the ground, though, leaving Josem in no more than his lewdly bulging loin wrap, the High Priest took a disgusted step back. "What is the meaning of this?" he demanded. "Someone restrain this boy." With Josem's hands a blur in his haste to remove his underwear, of course, Iyan couldn't see the thrashing that jostled the thin fabric between the parakeet's thighs.

Just as he had the last fold of his wrap undone and dropped the sperm-stained garment onto his discarded robe, a pair of strong paws grabbed his upper arms and lifted him straight off the cavern floor. Whatever taur had picked him up, though, its hands recoiled as if burned when it saw two avian legs protruding and thrashing from between his green rump cheeks.

Josem stumbled when he landed, falling onto his side and instinctively tucking his legs up to his chest to lessen his body's pressure around Paolo. A sizeable crowd had followed High Priest Iyan to the afflicted parakeet, more than a hundred avians and taurs waiting for the jay's personal blessing, and with Josem's position on the ground, every single person behind him had a clear view of his backside and the trapped eagle talons.

Josem had reached such a level of shame by that point that he didn't even feel it any longer. Only one thing was important.

"Someone stop him!" the High Priest shouted in a strangled voice when Josem reached down with one hand past his rump. As soon as the parakeet's trembling fingers began to wrap around Paolo's kicking feet, Josem's wrists were both caught in a firm grasp and pulled out to his sides, away from his body. He was tugged onto his belly, his erection scraping painfully against bare stone, while his bottom was forced once again to tighten down around Paolo's thighs, Josem's buttocks rubbing against the eagle's calves and nearly concealing the gnarled yellow feet. "Bind him," Iyan ordered breathlessly. "Tie his hands and feet, and make as little contact with his skin and feathers as you possibly can. The boy has been possessed. There is a demon among us."

A collective gasp rose around Josem, and many avians and taurs fainted on the spot. Many others already had, he realized when he darted a panicked glance around him. The ring of open space between him and the crowd widened in that moment by several paces.

"No!" Josem protested while a short rat taur stepped forward and picked up the parakeet's robe, tearing the cloth into strips as quickly as he could. "I'm not possessed! It's Paolo! Please, you have to help me. He'll die if you don't!"

Craning his neck, he saw Liahi in front of him turn her horrified eyes toward Iyan. "High Priest, what is he saying?"

"Lies and deception, girl, as are a demon's constant tools. Avert your eyes, everyone, and do not listen to his words," the clergyman demanded. "Gag him as well, so that he cannot corrupt us."

Josem was still protesting, yelling at one of them, any of them, to grab Paolo's feet and pull the eagle free, but his eyes bulged out in surprise when the rat taur stuffed his wadded up hip wrap in his open beak and tied its ends around the back of his head. With the taste of Cayin's seed and his own, lighter musk filling his mouth, he could only let out muffled pleas and screams, so much of the cloth shoved past his beak that his cheeks bulged with it.

In short order, the parakeet's hands were tugged above his head and his legs straightened and pulled together, making his butt clamp down around Paolo's body in an iron grip. The eagle's legs kicked all the harder while Josem was bound, the three inches of them that were free to do so, and all the while the writhing within Josem's bowels and against his prostate kept his shaft firm and throbbing against the stone beneath him, the feathers on its tip soaked in his pre.

He was hauled into the air as soon as his wrists and ankles were secure, his feet dangling half his height above the ground. The taur who held him was a wolf, he thought from his few glimpses of the male, and even larger than most canine taurs. The idea emerged suddenly that Josem might be able to shrink the wolf down small enough that Josem could escape, but he fought the notion off viciously. He wasn't about to use that evil ability again, however he'd come by it.

"High Priest," Liahi said plaintively, "you must be mistaken. You have to be! I know Josem; there's not a purer, more innocent spirit in all of Final York. He would never fall victim to a demon. Not him."

"Some evils are strong enough to corrupt the most righteous of us, girl," the jay told her solemnly. "The pure spirit you think you knew has been cast aside, leaving the demon this shell. Your Josem is dead."

Josem shook his head in abject denial, trying to shout the truth past his musky gag. Liahi was right; Iyan was horribly mistaken. But how could that be? The High Priest was the voice of the Sun and Moon and Stars themselves, the very will of the Light in their underground haven. To question him was to question the Light itself.

"I believe I said to avert your eyes?" Iyan reminded Liahi. "You are not immune to evil yourself."

She didn't look away, though, but kept her wide eyed stare locked on Josem's face. Strangely, the parakeet didn't feel ashamed to have his friend look at him, even though he was naked and erect. He only felt Liahi's concern for him, and after his earlier abuse, it was a calming balm. For a moment, Josem went still in the wolf's grasp, staring back at Liahi.

Relaxing, however, only allowed Paolo more freedom to squirm inside him, pressing and sliding against places that made Josem gasp in unwilling pleasure. It was at that moment that the eagle's little body bucked and slammed his chest against the internal feathers of Josem's prostate, and the parakeet's balls tightened between his dangling thighs. He shot a long stream of sperm straight onto the ground in front of Liahi's forepaws, and she jumped back in surprise. When his orgasm continued unabated, his trembling body sucking Paolo deeper with every spasm, the panther taur clenched her eyes shut and turned her back on him, her lower lip trembling. Then she was running away, nearly bowling down anyone who didn't move out of her path.

Josem clenched his own eyes shut with a sob. He was alone, now. He was with the one person in all of Final York who he should have been able to trust, the High Priest, the one person who was supposed to be above reproach, in the midst of what had to be half of the city's populace. And he was utterly, helplessly alone.

"You'll have to carry him," High Priest Iyan was telling the wolf taur behind Josem. "He is too dangerous now to let him walk on his own. Do not fear, though. Your palms will be shaved and cleansed as soon as we are rid of him; we will make certain the demon's corrosion does not pass on to you." The wolf's hands tightened in sudden fear around Josem's arms, but he didn't let the parakeet go.

One last twitch of his orgasm pulled Paolo's feet completely inside him, and Josem felt his tail hole close behind the eagle's talons while the wolf taur carried him after Iyan, the crowd parting to either side to give them a wide berth. The High Priest's golden robes flowed quickly forward ahead of them, but Josem turned all of his turmoil inward, trying to think of a way to get Paolo out of him before it was too late. The eagle's struggles had calmed after Josem's climax, until Paolo was barely wiggling inside his bowels.

He didn't even notice what corridor he was being carried down until Father Betlam appeared unexpectedly beside him. "Take courage," the old pigeon said, hobbling along with his cane as if the swift pace didn't faze him in the least. "Exile is not the death sentence most believe."

"Exile!" Josem choked out around his musky hip wrap, a muffled whimper, but Betlam was already falling behind, unable to match the unhindered strides of the blue jay leading them after all.

That's when Josem saw them looming closer with every step: the towering Gates of Banishing. They were already being pulled open by a falcon and a raven who had hurried on ahead of them, and before he could register what was happening, he was carried to the other side.

Josem looked around the large chamber in terror, at the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of gleaming metal pods lining the walls, like the eggs of some horrible, gargantuan nightmare. They weren't really going to banish him, were they? Exile was reserved for those guilty of the unforgiveable sin, for murderers alone.

But then, that's what he was. Somehow, High Priest Iyan must have known.

"Load him quickly," the jay told the wolf taur without preamble, pointing at the nearest pod as a hidden door in its side lifted to show a padded bench in its interior. "Let us be done with this."

As soon as Josem was tossed head first onto the bench, the pod's door slid silently closed behind him, and in the next instant, before he managed to push himself upright with his bound hands, he felt the pod moving around him. At first it was only vibrating gently, but then, without warning, it shot in the direction the bench was facing, knocking Josem against the back of the padded seat.

When he finally managed to sit on the strangely comfortable cushion, the view outside the pod's unnatural windows was of a vast tunnel flying past at impossible speeds. That suddenly, it had happened. Josem had been banished, exiled to a world where all sentient life had died out long ago. Reprimanding himself before he could begin crying, Josem tore the sperm and spit-drenched loin wrap out of his mouth and, with his wrists and ankles still bound, tucked his knees up to his chest and looped his arms down past his feet. Paolo had stopped squirming inside him.

Sitting on his hands now, Josem ignored the jagged rock wall flying past his window, lit by the metal pod's own light, and reached a finger between his soft rump cheeks, hiking one hip up to give himself better access while the other buttock flattened against his palm. Gritting his beak, he found his abused tail hole and pressed in ruthlessly, thrusting his finger into himself until it was buried to the deepest knuckle. He didn't even graze Paolo's talons.

Inside, he couldn't feel the eagle any more, except for a heavy fullness in his gut. By now, he was pretty certain that Paolo was completely inside his stomach, and a sudden belch confirmed it as his belly began its deadly work. Still, though, Josem refused to give up. If there was any chance of keeping Paolo alive, any chance at all to stop himself from accidentally killing someone again. . . .

Josem was an avian. The solution wouldn't be pleasant, but it was simple, and after all he'd been through that day, he didn't even feel queasy about the prospect.

Swallowing a gulp of air and immediately burping again, he began the process of regurgitating Paolo's body.

It was a long, noisy ordeal, and in the end Josem had to loop his arms back around his legs and stick a finger into the back of his throat to make himself retch properly; anthro avians had no need to actually regurgitate for their infants, so his instincts were long buried. When Paolo finally began rising into the parakeet's esophagus, he had to hack and cough repeatedly to keep the eagle's body moving upward, like a cat with a hair ball, but after several disgusting minutes he finally spewed the foot long eagle into his waiting hands, along with a thick cocktail of saliva, centaur sperm, and bile. Josem couldn't seem to stop shuddering.

Paolo, on the other hand, didn't so much as twitch, and the parakeet immediately began stroking a finger down the doll-sized avian's spine, while pressing his thumb into the eagle's abdomen over and over again, brown and white feathers shedding in clumps with every rub of the parakeet's fingers. "Please," he whispered hoarsely. "You can't be dead, Paolo. Please, breathe." For all that the eagle had done to Josem, for all he had helped Cayin to do, Paolo deserved to be punished somehow, but Josem didn't want to be the one to do the punishing. He didn't want to murder someone again.

With a sob, he hugged the eagle's motionless form tightly against his chest, clenching his eyes shut as fresh tears overflowed from their corners. "Why did this have to happen?" he asked the empty banishing pod. "What did I do wrong?"

He squeezed Paolo tighter, and at first he didn't notice the tiny hand weakly gripping his knuckle. When he sobbed again, though, he felt the eagle's heel kick against his stomach and instantly held the small avian out at arm's length. "Paolo? Paolo, are you alive?"

The eagle tried to say something, but only coughed up a small spray of milky white liquid. After a shuddering breath, he tried again. "I'm going . . . to kill you, parakeet." It was an exhausted murmur, and a threat besides, but Josem had never heard a more wonderful noise in his life. He hugged the eagle again, ignoring Paolo's demands to put him down, to stop touching him all together. Josem had done it. Paolo was still alive.

Josem had won.

* * *

Some thirty minutes after the unique parakeet had been sent off, High Priest Iyan stood in his chambers' secret room. It was barely more than a large closet, but it held far more precious possessions than mundane clothing. It was one such possession, a palm-sized plastic rectangle with numerous buttons and ancient runes covering its lower half, that Iyan held to the side of his face.

"Tell the Great Mistress that I have sent her an invaluable gift."

* * *

Some two or three hours after he'd been stuffed into the banishing pod, Josem jumped in surprise, almost knocking Paolo from his perch on his shoulder as the metal door beside them slid silently open to reveal the cursed wastelands of exile, illuminated by the blessed stars and moon. The bare earth, crumbling brick walls, and steel beams jutting out of the ground were all as the parakeet had expected. What he hadn't counted on was the dozen or so anthro mammals circling his pod, peering at him curiously. They were every one of them naked, males and females alike, and each of them held strange metal tubes pointed straight at his face.

"Put up your weapons, everyone," a tall, spotted brown canine told them, shocking Josem with his foreign yet coherent dialect. "By the Great Mistress's command, no harm will befall her guest of honor."

"The . . . Great Mistress?" Josem repeated, cautiously stepping out of the pod at the canine's beckoning gesture. Paolo had helped him out of the torn robe binding his hands and wrists shortly into their trip, after a great deal of convincing.

"Indeed," the canine replied, smiling toothily. "It is my very great pleasure, young sir, to welcome you to Shigao."

* * *

Some ten or fifteen minutes before dawn, Sophan stretched from where he'd been curled up at the base of an enormous pine tree, and immediately winced at a protesting twinge from his injured buttock. Using the tree's trunk to get to his feet and hefting the new walking stick he'd found, he made his way to where Cill still sat cross legged at the edge of a cliff. The mysterious raccoon-wolf hadn't budged an inch all night. Not that Sophan blamed her for staying awake; even with his full coat of fur, it was too cold this close to the mountains' snow line for the cheetah to get any semblance of sleep. Still, if Cill had only consented to a bit of snuggling, they might have been warm enough to doze off for at least an hour or two.

He glanced at the raccoon-wolf's flying relic, the large, flat-bottomed metal egg sitting in a clearing a few dozen paces from their camp. Ileni and Delver were both inside the relic, where its ancient heating device was no doubt keeping them both perfectly cozy. With both the stag and the rabbit shaved, it probably would have been fatal for them to sleep outside in the mountain's chill, so Sophan couldn't fault them for claiming the relic as their bed. He only wished they wouldn't have demanded that he sleep outside and give them some privacy. The cheetah had even promised not to harass them until morning!

As soon as he had reached Cill's side, the female grabbed his wrist with a serpent's speed and tugged him close, until their noses were nearly touching. She looked up at him with unblinking white eyes, but didn't seem to even notice who she was looking at. "Guilt and shame are the tools of indoctrination," she told him distantly. It sounded like she was talking to herself more than to Sophan. "They have their proper purpose, but take great caution when they arise within. Guilt without reason eases manipulation, and the causelessly ashamed are puppets on unseen strings."

Sophan blinked down at her, baffled, then grinned. "Use caution if you want to Cill. Me, I think I'll just avoid those emotions entirely."

At the sound of her name, the raccoon-wolf shook her head, her brow knitting as if she was just waking up. Taking a deep breath, she let go of Sophan's wrist. "Someone with a newly awoken ability has just arrived in Chicago," she said, frowning down over the expanse of trees below the cliff's edge.

"Hey, that's a good thing, right?" Sophan asked. "Alan and the others can use all the help they can get."

Cill shook her head again. "It's only a good thing if Alan and the refugees are the ones who found him."

The cheetah grimaced at that, but shook off any worry or concern before it could completely form. Lifting his arms above him in another feline stretch, he yawned deeply, then hugged his arms to his chest with a shiver. Cold as it was, exhausted as he felt, he was still in a good mood. It was amazingly refreshing to be outside among the ruthless elements again. The ruins of Chicago were exotic and beautiful, but Sophan hadn't realized just how much he enjoyed being surrounded by trees and mountains and grassy fields until he was among them again. He felt the urge to hunt, and it was more than an empty stomach begging for attention, but he held his instincts in check.

It was going to be a beautiful morning. As long as he didn't meet any more angry, stabby chipmunks, nothing could go wrong.