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M A R A N A T H A

© Osfer, July 2005

_All rights reserved.

May only be distributed for free.

May not be altered in any way.

Contains material of an erotic and homosexual nature which may be illegal to

read in your country, state, province or region.

The author takes no responsibility for transgressions on the part of the reader

Comments welcome at

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Available on paperback in 2005

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Chapter XVIII - As Told By Nicky Marlowe

If more people understood the term 'melanistic' there would be far less confusion about my heritage. Keep this in mind, it's going to be relevant in a few minutes. I'm in an unoccupied office on the upper floor of the 21 st precinct, which has been invaded by some of Mister Sharpish' men. I'm here because I'm a spotty fool who thinks a five-foot-something eighteen-year-old jag actually stands a chance of saving his dad, who's supposedly somewhere in this building. My spots are rather hard to see because I sprayed myself with matte black military-grade camo dye. Everybody up to speed? Let's continue.

I've got my hand on the door's latch, about to risk stepping out into the hallway when a hand grabs my shoulder. Instantly I spin around, waving one arm up and swiping it under the one grabbing me - it's heavy, the guy's big, but I'm fast and I duck around his side. Shit. Away from the door, into the office. I'm stupid!

Back I dart, trying to rush around the guy's other side. He's big, indeed, but slow - a hoofer. He swears under his breath and doesn't walk to the side; a quick glance shows me he's a hoofer. Why isn't he moving?

The guy makes another swipe at me. Leather-clad arm swishes through the air overhead as I duck down and go for the holster at his waist, but it's empty and as I realize that the cold, hard barrel of a gun presses to my cheek and I look up into the eyes of a very angry-looking ram. "Hey," I say, clearly being very clever. "You're a cop."

"And you're a fucking rocket scientist," the ram says with a growl and a beefy hand with hoof-capped fingers wraps around my throat, pulling me from the door and pushing me up against the wall with a very controlled thump. He doesn't want to be heard by anyone outside the door. "Who the fuck sent you? How the fuck did you shits get in?"

I gurgle a little. Getting throttled's really uncomfortable, you know. "You're not gonna shoot me, pops," I wheeze and I kick myself for taking that kind of tone on such a gamble when somebody's got a gun to my head. But then, I ain't had a gun to my head before, so can I have a little slack?

I didn't know hoofers could snarl, but this black-furred ram, his lip curls and that low, growling sound comes out as his grip tightens - urk. "And what makes ya say that, squirt?"

"Cuz you're smart enough to not be caught yet," I squeak, "So you're smart enough to know that killing me's not gonna help your odds. Even if you kill me quiet-like so's they don't here, if I'm with the guys out there they'll come looking for me, and if I'm not, you've just killed somebody who might have helped you out." Christ, those hoofcaps on his fingers hurt .

There's that snarl again, but he's loosening his grip. The gun's pressed a little harder to my cheek. "So I assume you're the helpin'-out kind rather than the rattin'-out kind. But nothin's for free, not even where I come from and no way in this hellhole of a town. Now, you came in here thinkin' you could do whatever it is you wanna do all by yourself, so are you gonna tell me you're gonna help me out without asking nothin' in return?"

I've so had enough of this. I know he's got a gun against my face and I know there are few stupider things I could do than this, but still I knee him in the groin and jump back. Miracle of miracles, the gun doesn't go off, but the ram's grip loosens and he grabs at his abdomen, groaning sickly, trying to keep his gun aimed at me. "You fucking-- "

"I'm trying to find my Dad."

They say honesty is the best way to solve most problems and I never believed 'em till now. The black ram lowers his weapon, uncocks the hammer and stuffs it down the front of his jeans. "You're Lombardi's kid," he says, and before I can ask him how the fuck he figured that he grins. "Family resemblance."

This confuses me to no end because Dad and I don't look alike - he's a panther and I'm a regular jaguar. Which is to say we're both jags, he just happens to be melanistic and I'm not. Like I said, if more people understood that word... Factor in the military-grade black camo dye I've sprayed my fur with and, sure, there's a family resemblance. Black fur with the rosettes highlighted. Easy mistake to make, especially for a hoofer. Whatever. He's put his piece away and we seem to be on the same side, so I relax.

In hushed tones, we swap some info. His name's Bertram Gulliver, I'm Nicky Marlowe, pleased to meetcha, how'd'ya do. He's got a country accent, so he's not from around here. He last saw Dad in this office, after that Bertram went to get a car and he was just heading back into the precinct to report his ride's defective starter engine when the shit hit the fan. Apparently he walked in just after Feck and the rest of the gang Mister Sharpish sent to invade the precinct had slipped inside and it was pure, dumb lucky timing that he managed to slip up the stairs and hide while the rest of the cops were being locked up. The issue of cowardice crossed my mind, but the look in his eye and the sight of his gun made me wisely keep my mouth shut - until we arrived at the Big Question: how do half a dozen guys, give or take, capture an entire police precinct? Even with half the cops missing there still had to be security systems and even if those could be overridden, it's simply a question of manpower and guns, both of which the cops had an abundance of.

Bertram was about to open his mouth, when I cut him off. "They came up through the tunnels. The quake a few years back must have shaken the foundations and the walls between the garage's sub-basement and the old subway lines, enough so that, after the initial inspection, the walls continued to crumble. Nobody goes to those basements, so the guys slipped in after office hours, snuck upstairs, cold-cocking those few cops they needed to. Reaching the top of the stairs they left the garage and walked to the precinct across the parking lot - just walked, without their balaklavas. Somebody would surely see 'em on the security monitor, if anybody was looking, but seeing guys walk and not run would make it take a few more seconds to register in the viewer's mind."

Bertram's smile is more generous now and I return it. I think him and me are actually getting along. Maybe him and Dad are friends? "Then what happened?" he asks with a smile.

"They made a straight bee-line for the holding cells. There were a bunch of Sharpish' men that had been caught already," some colleagues of mine among them, I think, but wisely keep my lips from saying, "and with a few pistol-whippings of cops the breakers-in opened the cell doors one at a time, because those fancy electronic locks have alarms that go off when more than two cells are opened at once. Mister Sharpish' men brought some guns for their comrades, the rest were given whatever, Mag-lites, tire irons, that sorta thing, and were told to wait in the holding area till the alarms went off."

"You're clever, or you're in on this," says Bertram, his smile a little less sincere now.

"I'm clever," I assure him and go on. "Mister Sharpish' men made a run for the armory. Some fighting started, the alarm went off and the prisoners downstairs rushed the main floor. Overwhelming force tactics. I'd be surprised if a single body fell during the skirmish."

Bertram's smile fades even more. He takes a deep breath and walks toward the other side of the office. "You ain't tellin' me everything, kid, and you probably got reason for that. I won't ask you nothin', and after this is done, if you can manage to slip away without nobody noticin', I won't tell nobody you was ever here. All I need to know now is if it comes to a shootout, are you gonna be standin' at my side or hidin' outta sight. And if they take me down, are you gonna side with them, or are they gonna take you captive too. And for fuck's sake, be honest," he says. I've never heard a man so big and so healthy-looking sound so exhausted - like he's not tired physically, just tired of how the world works. Am I gonna be like that when I get older?

Nah.

I'm gonna be like The Dog.

"I'm no good with guns, but as soon as they see me here there won't be a lie I can tell 'em that they won't think suspicious. I won't be safe afterward... so I'll stand by you." I feel like a farmer boy being deputized by the town sheriff, especially when Bertram opens one of the many cardboard boxes littering the office and withdraws a gun, sleek and silvery, encased in a ziploc bag with an evidence tag on it. He takes out the gun and the clip and expediently begins rummaging through drawers.

"That's good to hear, kid," says Bertram, finding a box of bullets and, checking the barrel, starts loading them into the empty clip. "If you're lyin' to me I'm dead the moment I step outta there. But that'd be true if you hadn't dropped in here, too, so I guess it's all well and good. So, clever boy," the ram says, straightening up to his full height - which kinda makes my ears fold, I'm ashamed to say - "you got a plan to help your pops?"

I nibble a claw, slowly extending my hand to accept the big-ass chrome-plated gun Bertram holds out to me, butt-first. I've actually never held a gun before, and I actually didn't really have a plan for helping my dad. "I brought some useful stuff. Hairpins for picking locks and stuff, I'm pretty good at that."

"I'll bet you are."

I ignore him. "Firecrackers and a camera with a flash for distractions. GPS device..."

"We know where the fuck we are, boy."

I growl a little. I take a deep breath. "I figure they're keeping the hostages in the main floor. Moved the desks to the walls, put them all in a group in the middle. They probably let the cops outside know that, to discourage them from storming the place - the cops on the floor'd be dead meat if a firefight broke out. Things are probably hair-trigger down there; more than half the inmates didn't have anything to do with the invasion, some of them are psychos that shouldn't hold a gun ever , some of 'em may be innocent and are holding weapons so's the scum don't turn on 'em. If they've got my Dad, he'll be down there..."

This is where I start lying to Bertram, which is a shame, because aside from the obvious corruption - he'd let a felon like me go, he sounded honest about that - he seems like a stand-up guy. I can't tell him everything, though. Not that Sharpish sent his cronies here to find my dad, Detective Lombardi, specifically . That they'd do God knows what to him if they found him and that, most probably, they haven't yet found him because if they had, they'd be outta here. Which is why I'm fishing, and the bait was that last sentence.

Bertram bites. "I sneaked a peek out there half an hour ago, didn't see him among the captives. It's... it's bad out there," Bertram says with a softness to his voice that's more distressing than the growling, and he scratches at one of his curled horns, looking away. "the prisoners are taking the guys in blue down to the holding cells, one or two at a time... They bring 'em back, but they look like their pride took a bigger beating even than their body. Don't take a rocket scientist like you to figure out what those fuckers are doin' with 'em."

My ears fold and I bow my head, and once again, I feel like the goddamn softy my buddies always tell me I am. Maybe it's cuz I'm so small, that I'm used to being the one who's gotta show off so he don't get picked on, maybei t's cuz the kittyboy I sleep with's smaller still. But I never got into the whole rape thing. Some of my buddies do it - brag about it, at least. Chicks, mostly.

Tommie burgled a place once and found a boy and girl fucking in their parent's bed, honest to god, brother and sister, couldn't be older'n fourteen each. He cold-cocked the boy while he was still balls-deep and rolled him outta bed and told li'l sis that she'd have to put out for him if she didn't want him to send her folks the picture he said he'd taken... The other guys cheered at that, and I cheered too, but it didn't sit well with me. Couldn't even get it up that night, even though Alice had gone to all the trouble of arranging a 'date' so the two of us'd have four whole hours instead of the usual one or two.

The cops in Maranatha ain't the most caring of people, but when they ain't turning a blind eye or slacking on the job, they're actually looking out for people. They do their work sometimes and that makes some parts of the city a little safer - not nearly as much as you'd expect from a police force, but it's not nothing . And most of 'em probably don't deserve what those burly, room-temp IQ motherfuckers are doing to 'em.

But what can I do? I'm a five-foot-something cat painted black who's never won a fight against anybody more than two years older than him, holding a gun he's never fired, in a police precinct filled with two or three dozen thugs who'll ice me on sight and two or three dozen cops who won't see the difference between me and the bad guys.

I look at the door, feeling my heart beating under my tongue and even my quick breathing doesn't satisfy my need for air. I'm fucked , is what I am. I can't save my Dad, there's no chance in hell. Mister Sharpish' men are gonna kill him, and they're gonna kill me too. And then Alice is gonna be alone - oh my God , Alice! I'm not gonna come home to him tonight, and I'm not gonna take him to Amsterdam and, fuck it, I don't want to fucking be here any more.

"Relax," says a deep voice behind me, and a hand with hoofcapped fingers squeezes my shoulder. I hadn't even realized it, but I'm crying. The black dye I sprayed my face with was really high quality, because the tears that drip down my chin are clear as spring water. I have to chuckle at that realization, such a stupid thing to think. "Relax," Bertram repeats and I don't understand why, but it makes me feel better. I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand and glance out the window.

There's Maranatha Penitentiary, high on a hill. Looks real looming in the dark. Fences around it, guardposts. Couple of streets, then the precinct's parking lot. The garage with the sub-basements, the tunnels I found and which Mister Sharpish' men used to invade the precinct.

And the van.

The second fish van.

My tears stop, my shoulders square under Bertram's not-so-gentle grip. I made it in here without even being detected. I got past a police barricade and broke into a precinct with, as I may have mentioned, two or three dozen thugs and two or three dozen cops, all of whom would kill me for no other reason than that they're triggerhappy and I don't look like I ought to be there, and yet here I fucking am .

Nicky goddamn Marlowe.

I wanted to leave my family, and I did. I wanted to hook up with my kittyboy, and I did. I wanted to break into this precinct, and I did. I wanted a nice bit of goddamn fish and did I get it? Of course. Nicky Marlowe may be short but he gets his fucking way, one way or another. And now I want to help my Dad.

Tricky.

Tricky, but not impossible.

I shrug off Bertram's hand and start looking through my hipbag and pockets to remind myself what I brought. Mirror, goggles, firecrackers... plans begin forming, things I could do with these, but it's all too vague and too slow.

"See that latch under your thumb there?" says Bertram as I'm putting the gun he gave me on a desk - it's a beautiful thing, feels very satisfying, but it's awkward when you're sorting through your gear. I turn the weapon over, see the latch he's talking about. "That's the safety. It's in the safe position; the trigger won't work, so you can stuff it down your pants, no problem. Remember to flick it to the unsafe position if you ever draw it. Practice a couple of times." I nod to the ram, he begins quietly rummaging through other boxes to see if there was anything he missed.

I like how he treats me. No condescension, no false bluster either. He knows about weapons and I don't. I know what I'm doing here, he leaves me be. It feels honest. "I don't know enough about the layout of this place or the people involved to make a good plan," I say with a rowl - it actually sounds fearsome and grown-up instead of the kiddy-yowl I always used to make. Eighteen really is a milestone for your body, go fig. "I'm pretty good with thinking on my feet. If we could get out there I'd be useful."

More honesty, and it seems like the cop, despite being twice my age, almost twice my size and a damn deal angrier actually seems to take me seriously. Or maybe he's just faking it. Or maybe he's just real damn desperate. Who cares, I'll take what I can get. "We don't stand a chance out there, kid, surprise or no. It'd help if we knew what those shitkickers were after," Bertram says with bitten emphasis and he looks right at me, but I don't back down. Looks like he accepts that, too. I walk to the window, carefully, and look outside again at the empty parking lot, lit by the circle of blue illumination cast down by the searchlight on the noisy helicopter overhead "But even so, we'd need to get 'em distracted. Something big and good and solid that'd rattle everybody to no end. You wouldn't happen to have any more vans, do you? That was you, wasn't it?"

Bait. And I might have bitten, if I wasn't distracted myself. "Looks like wishes are horses today, Bert," I say with a voice as soft as when I came into my Mom's bedroom one Christmas morning many moons ago and told her very quietly that, despite my claims that Santa didn't exist, the kind old man had dropped by in the night and brought presents for me and my sister, urging her in amazement to come look. Now, before you go thinking this is some happy childhood memory from a time when my mom wasn't Satan's stepmother; it was her then-boyfriend who, feeling sorry for us kids, had left us some nice but meaningless gifts in toy-store wrapping-paper and a note explaining to Mom that he was going back to his wife. Real swell Christmas that was.

Christmas is red and green; what I see is red and yellow. I feel it more than I see it, feel confidence swell in me even more than my little Nicky-centric pep-talk just now. A blur of those two colors flashes across the parking lot outside, too quick for the snipers to catch, too quick even for the chopper's search-light to spot. It sweeps from the garage to the rear entrance, man-sized and too fast to have a shape but I know, I just know that this is what we're after.

"We've got our distraction," I tell Bertram and brush right past the big ram and toward the door. He can't so much as lay a hand on me before I've opened it and I'm running out into the hallway. Blue carpet, white walls, wooden doors, can it get any more typical? The overhead lights blaze over my dark pelt like streetlights over a speeding car as I race to the other side of the hallway, ignoring the doors - some closed, some open and bloodied - and the stairwells, the plants and the photocopiers and the industrial art on the walls.

Bertrams' right behind me, and for a hoofer he cuts a damn fast pace, matching me for speed, one stride to my two. "Where the fuck d'ya think yer goin'!" he hisses behind me, but I'm all instinct now. I follow my nose and my gut; those're a good deal cleverer'n my brain right now.

The hallway ends at a T-intersection with in the middle of the opposing wall a big heavy metal door marked 'Armory', slightly ajar. My one hand goes for the doorlatch and pulls it open with as much force as I can muster, my other goes for the gun I've got tucked down the back of y pants - but gets stuck in my hip-bag and in a frenzy of timing I grab the very first thing my hand finds so that when the door swings open and a very confused-looking lion in a black bomber-jacket turns to look at me I pull my and out of my hip-bag and click the button on the camera I pulled out.

Flash.

I close my eyes just in time, but the lion's not so lucky and staggers back a step, just enough for me to slip past him and into the armory. It's like a bank vault from the movies, with white tiles on the floor and humming neon lights overhead, gleaming metal bars in front of racks of weapons, lockers with complicated locks on them. Only things that aren't locked away are lacquered black nightsticks on a rack - tonfas , Alice said they were called in French or something. Never mind. I snatch one up by the side handle and swish it around like a fucking ninja, spinning in place like a black silk Dervish and try to get a view of Wilber - that's the lion, he taught me the basics of boxing once when I'd gotten the shit kicked outta me - and maybe get in a few lucky strikes before he blinks the blinding flash away and levels his weapon at me.

I'd forgotten all about Bertram, though. By the time I'm good and ready to turn, swinging the nightstick, Wilber's already spun and aimed his fierce-looking SMG at me and I'm so dead there's no words to describe it, but in barges that black ram in his tough-guy jacket and knocks Wilber's hand against a locker with a flying kick. A goddamn flying kick! A hoofer doing a flying kick! There's the clatter of metal on metal as the gun smacks against the locker and then a leonine roar of pain that almost covers the sound of a forearm being crunched to powder by a thickly-shod hoof.

Bertram's lost his momentum now, falling to the floor. "Kid!" he yells and I'm actually so angry that he hasn't even remembered my name that when I smack the end of my nightstick up into the scraggy-maned lion's mouth, I see two trails of blood flying through the air and hear two big teeth clattering first on the tiles in the armory and then on the soft carpet outside.

"You are tho fuckin' dead!" yells Wilber, looking at me as if I'd just spit on his hat - the fact that he's bleeding from his mouth and nostrils doesn't seem to bother the huge lion and that's maybe more than a little scary. He shrinks for a second, bracing himself for a jump but when he makes it, a hoof-capped hand comes up from below and grabs him in the groin, throwing off his aim. I toss myself to the other side, missing the bulky lion's flying body by a whisker and avoiding death by crushing in the process. I hit the ground in a roll that'd make my Phys Ed teacher proud if I was still in school, rolling onto my feet, and under me I feel the soft give of cheap carpet.

Crap. I just rolled outta the armory.

And into the hallway and, looking around like my life depends on it, I spot two figures rushing form one the left branch of this T-crossing and using the momentum from the roll I hurl myself forward in a high, feline arch straight down the hallway I'd come running from in the first place, hands thrown forward, ears folded for aerodynamism, tail trailing loosely behind me. That I land gracelessly by falling with my face into my folded arms and slide on the carpet doesn't matter none to me when I hear gunfire cracking and hear the soft, deep thuds of bullets on carpets from the space I'd just occupied. "Bertram! Company!" I yell as I get back up onto my feet and, reaching for the gun at the back of my pants, find my hand stuck in my hip-bag again.

The firecrackers! A dozen of them still in their brown paper wrapping. I grin at this sight, let out a triumphant yell and toss the packet to the spot the two armed thugs had been shooting at. They take the bait and open fire and I quickly duck and over my ears for the explosion that's going to dazzle them, hoping the bang won't be big enough to bring the roof down...

Of course, nothing happens. The firecrackers don't blow a hole in the wall, they don't even go off as the bullets rip through them and throw the ratio of explosive to oxygen all to hell. One of the guys round the corner and presses his gun to my neck. The heated muzzle singes my fur and my blood goes ice cold as I realize I'm about to die.

Everything else, at that moment, seems more important. The sounds of screaming and gunfire coming from downstairs, the sound of a fresh scuffle behind me as Bertram drags the second gunman into the armory to give him the same kind of pounding he gave Wilber, if he doesn't get shot first. The growl of satisfaction from behind me that laces the thug's inhalation - why do people always inhale before they pull the trigger? - and the sound of footsteps coming up the staircase ahead, all of it means more to me than the feeling of that hot metal against the back of my neck, the sound and feel of a hammer being cocked and the complete numbness that takes over my body.

I can't move and I can't think, which isn't weird because the moment's probably less than a quarter second long. But it's more than long enough to feel guilt. See, I wish I could say that my last thought in this fucked-up world was of Alice, but it isn't and so I can't. Alice doesn't cross my mind - Mom does, and dear sis , her new boyfriend who's now only got one antler, Mister Sharpish, Feck, who's probably standing behind me right now and only recognizes me with the same inattention and uncertainty with which I recognize him, and my very very last thought is of The Dog.

I should tell you about him now, shouldn't I?

I was... thirteen, maybe, when I saw him. I looked out my window like I always did when I wasn't happy, and even if your family doesn't suck as mine does (or suck worse, whatever) just being a kid's enough reason to be unhappy sometimes. Things are bad, things are unfair... World shouldn't be like that, really, and when you're still a kid that bothers you a lot. Hell, you know what I'm talking about.

So I was looking out my window at the street across from us - we didn't live in that apartment building yet, we lived in a much smaller apartment a little further toward the edge of town - and I saw what looked like a shadow fly over the rooftops across the street. A bird, I thought, or some big housecat, because it leapt across the gaps between buildings, alley-width, and continued running as soon as it landed. It wasn't a housecat, though, because housecats don't stand upright and they certainly don't stop at the edge of a building to sit next to a gargoyle, legs dangling over the ledge, to light up a cigarette.

That was when I learned how grownups deal with an unfair world, where other guys steal your Geography paper during lunch break and hand it in as their own and the teacher won't even give you the time of day to hear your pleas while he could so easily see that the handwriting matched yours if he just took the trouble to whip out last week's papers...

He dealt with it by claiming the world where he could. He found a space that was his own - rooftops at night - and he made sure to visit there every now and again to remind himself that the world was his to experience, not just something that happens to you. These were the thoughts I had, the thoughts I put in my diary. I know boys are supposed to have journals instead of diaries but that always struck me as a ridiculous distinction. So I wrote about The Dog, which is what I thought the guy was, and how he must have felt and why he ran the roofs. And I started thinking about how other people do the same thing, making their own little world to retreat into now and again to take a breather. Like drawing, which I sucked at, or music, which I blew at.

I settled on stealing - first the righteous reclaiming of papers or lunch money that the school bullies extracted from a scrawny jag like me with little effort, which I'd snatch from their bags or their lockers, never being caught and later stuff like money and shit. Nothing major, I didn't steal anybody's discman or books they needed - not because I was a thief with a heart of gold, either, but cuz keeping a low profile seemed like the clever thing to do.

It felt real good, the thieving. I knew it was bad and I was enough of a pussy that I didn't wanna take anything from somebody who needed it really bad, but when I nabbed some plastic from an asshole in a suit or some pearls off some bitch who wouldn't stop yapping at a waiter, I didn't give a fuck about morality and just felt good about claiming some of the world for Nicky Marlowe.

Thieving came more and more naturally to me, cuz I'm humble enough that I never thought I was untouchable. I'd always weight my decisions; I'd let marks I thought were too risky slip and not feel bad about it. Damn clever jag, me. I learned how important acting was for stealing, how you had to make yourself inconspicuous without being too inconspicuous. Every little bit helps when you're about to boost a wallet or three.

Then came the burgling. Oh, man, the burgling...

So much more complex than just pick-pocketing. Stake out the neighborhood, track the inhabitants' schedules, decide for the right moment and what to steal... hen there's the actual breaking in. Running, jumping, climbing to get to the right entry point. Having the right gear, the right clothes, making sure you're not seen... You might think that lockpicking and stuff's the major challenge, but really it's not. It's hard, sure, but you can buy locks on things like trunks and shit at pawn shops or steal 'em from hardware stores and practice like that. It takes some work, but anyone can learn that .

The real skill of burgling lies in the planning, though. The decisions you make... That's why burglars so often shoot people when they get caught; it's such a shock to have your plan destroyed, you just don't know what to do! Course, I wouldn't know that. I've never been caught in my life, not even come close.

Which maybe is a problem. Like if The Dog had never come close to falling off a rooftop. Being smart, taking calculated risks and being prepared for everything, that's what keeps you alive and out of jail... but it does fade the thrill. It does make you ask why you're doing what you're doing. Whether there's any point in doing it any more, if it's really that different from the everyday drag you're trying to escape from.

That's how I felt the day before my birthday. I'd sorta thought that I'd call it quits once I turned eighteen and get serious with my life. Maybe sneak back into school or something. Instead my mom and sis piss me off enough that I decide that crime's the life for me after all, and the question of whether or not I made that decision to spite my mom could be conveniently waylaid by the more pressing decision whether or not to act on the information I had about my Dad being in trouble.

A few short minutes ago I was experiencing despair, back in Dad's office, at the hopelessness of the situation but now there's just that icy finality, the neutral feeling of regret that I don't even have time to decide if my life so far has had more in the plus column than in the minus as if I'm already out of my body, looking at the suddenly cooling corpse of Nicky Marlowe and asking Death if that's truly it, if that's all I get out of life.

And then, from the mounting screams on the ground floor, comes the flash of yellow and red speeding up the stairs ahead and toward me. It's passed me before I even hear the whooshing sound and when it does I feel the hot metal of the gun's muzzle leave the back of my neck, I feel warm wetness splashing the back of my head and a hard body falling atop me. It nearly crushes me, folding me onto the floor under its bleeding weight.

It's definitely Feck. The wolfish musk and the drawl that suffuses even his gurgling death-rattle, they're too tell-tale to ignore. It's Feck, I think to myself, tha's dying on top of me, and I can't move to roll out from under him.

From behind, more screams and more gunshots but I can't be bothered to care, to even imagine what's going on around the armory's entrance. Maybe Bertram's long dead or maybe he managed to best two of Sharpish' men and the ghostly red-yellow - not orange, but distinctly red and yellow - blur mistook the ram for one of the bad guys and took him out as well. Maybe it would have killed me, too, if I hadn't been kneeling.

"My... son?" is what I hear next. A lot of time has passed, at least, relatively a lot. Maybe a minute or two. When you're under a corpse, that's a lot. I don't recognize the voice, which isn't strange because there's several hundred pounds of wolf on top of me muffling the sound and only when Feck's body is pulled off me with some effort on the part of whoever pulled him off me do I realize how much I've needed to breathe as well as how busy it's become around me. No longer is the hallway empty, it's filled with uniformed men and women, some looking tough as they check the bodies for signs of life, some more bookish, dusting walls for prints and taking photographs.

Two sets of arms help lift me up. One of them belongs to Bertram, who doesn't look nearly as shaken by the experience as I feel, the other... Black-furred hands extend from a yellow raincoat, spattered with red blood. Red and yellow... Oh my God .

After moving so slowly for so long, time decides to catch up and things just whirl around me. Paramedics throw a thick blanket over me and tell me to wait where I am while the wounded are moved, then somebody scrubs the blood off my face and when my black camo fur dye starts to wear off, another - a cop, I think - takes over and scrubs my face and my arms clean with something that smells disgusting and sharp. It doesn't occur to me to tell them that there's a solvent in the hip-bag they took from me.

I'm patted down, people talk to me. Some talk rough, some nicely, it's really all the same to me. Bertram tells some lies about what I was doing there - something about me having been picked up for questioning because of all the gear I was carrying, that he saw me running down the street this afternoon and recognized that I was wearing military grade camo, something like that. Clever, like.

It happens pretty quickly. Half an hour later just about everything's sorted. I guess that's because of the shit that happened in the Sargasso building this morning, the cops got to use that as a practice run so when they got to this bloodbath in their own home turf they got things sorted right fast.

I catch glimpses of my Dad during all of this now and again. Talking to a bunch of other cops, all of them with notepads, going into the bathroom to scrub the blood off his yellow raincoat, talking in hushed tones with Bertram. He hardly ever looks at me and when he does it's too weird for words. It's like a man who sees his first baby for the first time and at the same time like a man who sees the corpse of his baby, such a profound change to the world simply by seeing something that the mind can't handle it, that's how he looks at me.

Bertram's awesome throughout all of this. He doesn't coddle me or anything, but when he has to sit down to let a medic put some stitches on his upper lip, he sits next to me and just him being there makes me feel better, even when he leaves again. The ram's got this perfect balance between wielding authority and showing respect for the authority of others, which is kinda something I never really got the hang of. Maybe you noticed, I don't know.

It's Bertram, more than Dad, who manages to convince the other cops not to slap me in irons., promising he and dad both'd keep an eye on me. Two detective is pretty decent security and means that all the paperwork on me can wait. None of the sleep-deprived, overworked and overstressed cops have a problem with that, it seems.

Dad and Bertram are on either side of me as we walk out the precinct through the back entrance, to avoid the mild throng of journalists huddled around he front of the precinct. You'd have expected more of a media blitz after an invasion and a massacre at a police station, but most of the media mosquitoes must still be at the Sargasso building. I'm wearing a plain white shirt that's way too big for me, pilfered from a dead cop's locker to replace the blood-soaked shirt I was wearing myself, which is now probably wrapped in plastic and tagged on its way to an evidence locker.

"That coulda gone a lot worse," says Bertram as he leads the way through the parking garage gate, past the fish van that I used to break in, and points at his car down the road. "Those fuckers executed two guys - hands and feet bound, and they still shot 'em - when they heard you comin' in... Still, good thing you did. From what I've been hearin', they were fixin' to ice the whole precinct anyway." I notice Bertram looking inconspicuously at my Dad every now and again, even though Dad doesn't seem to notice. All the cops do that.

Nobody wants to really talk about the fact that Dad killed all twelve of Sharpish' men and all the escaped prisoners carrying guns in less than thirty seconds with his bare hands.

"How are you, son?" Dad asks as we get in the car. It sounds awkward, but that's okay, this whole situation's awkward. And if you think his question's hackneyed, wait till you hear my reply!

"Um, I'm gay, Dad."

Ain't I just fucking Chaucer?

I can hear Bertram choking a chuckle as he buckles his belt and turns the key and Dad turns around in the passenger seat to look at me. I feel so small on the back seat and shrink even farther. I thought I said it to be tough and stuff, if I even knew I had any reason at all, but now I just feel weird. Tiny, like I said.

"Oh, okay," says Dad calmly and Bertram shoots him a confused look, but Dad just keeps his eyes on me. He smiles, even. "It's okay... son. I'm your father, aren't I?" It's kinda weird, the way he talks. It's like he's holding a completely different conversation, all by himself. "I'm your father. I can be your father. I'm something else, but I can be your father too. I will be."

Bertram's pulling out of the street, away from the mild hubbub around the precinct. He looks over his shoulder and casts a 'keep your mouth shut, kid, I know your Dad's talking weird but he's probably suffering from post-traumatic stress on account of just having gone through a dozen bodies' kind of look at me. That ram can communicate a whole bunch with his looks.

"Hey, if we're going out for drinks," I say, not really knowing why I thought that we were going for drinks and suddenly sensing that everyone, including me, thinks its an absolutely fantastic idea. "Can we swing by the Low-Key Motel to pick my boyfriend up?" I think I can count on one hand the number of people I've said 'boyfriend' to when describing Alice.

"No sweat, kiddo. Long as you know a place where we can wind down good and proper, yeah?" asks Bertram and Dad sits back in his chair, facing forward, and all of us are relaxing as if the last few hours didn't happen.

"Hey, isn't that your sister?" I ask Alice, my arm across his shoulders and his lithe little body pressed right up against me - I feel so tall! - and point across the crowd in the Crosshairs bar to the stage, where a lioness in an austere black Chinese-style dress is wailing on an electric guitar. The music screams, that sound only feline players can wrest from the reinforced steel strings they pluck with bare, sharp claws. Alice tugs on my shirt and yells something I don't understand, trying to hop up to wave to his sister on the stage, so I bend down, take him by the hips and lift him up on my shoulders.

"Luke McCall and the Black and White Bullshits," says Bertram behind me, checking out the wall of flyers by the door as we walk into the smoke-filled bar. "What happened to bands called just 'the' somethin'? I'll take a 'the' band over this modern crap any day."

Dad's right behind him, far more relaxed now, even though he insists on keeping his shirt buttoned up and he's still wearing that dramatically uncool raincoat. "You've got to admit, Gulley, the kid's got a pair of lungs on him. Can you tell what species he is? He's got fur deco..." Bertram laughs, as he's done since Dad started calling him Gulley ten minutes ago. He was complaining how people made fun of his first name and never his last, Gulliver, and Alice came up with the idea of calling him Gulley. It stuck.

The mission's accomplished, Anezka has acknowledged her brother's presence with an impressive roar of her guitar and the insanely gorgeous lead singer, positively bouncing with energy, squeezes every last decibel from his chest to match her and between the two of them, the bassist and the drummer, both cats, the latter, they make a crescendo so deafening it takes a full minute of electronic howling and amplifiers dying town to realize the bar's ablaze with applause.

"Looks like we just missed the show," says Dad and as he leans back against the bar with his elbows it's like he's this regular Dad, you know? Who yearns for the seventies and ain't ashamed of it, who's got his shit together but remembers how much fun life was when he didn't. Dad cool enough to be seen with but lame enough to make you feel young, kinda Dad. I want to hug him, but he's entranced with the singer on stage, waving to the audience as the band packs up and the lights on stage go out.

Luke, he must be. And yeah, he'd make a straight guy blush. Tank top that don't even reach his navel - knitted too, all sortsa colors like the wool was donated by some psychedelic sheep high on smack. Jeans look more like faded blue paint slapped onto his long legs, firm-looking package and an ass to die for. Literally, it's a work of beauty. Alice's ass is gorgeous by design, Nature gave him that backside but the dude on stage had to work for his buns and by the way you see people rushing from the dance-floor to get to the bar and battle dehydration it's a fair bet that the work paid off.

Then two people talk to me at once, both of whom I love. My Dad, who's only been in my life an hour or so and I'm already in the bar with his police partner and my boyfriend and everybody's having a good time. The bar's starting to drain, people get a last drink before heading home alone and buzzing with the music they thrashed to or in pairs, sometimes, lucky bastards, threes.

"So... how did you get into the precinct, son? Gulley told me something about vans and such..." asks Dad. He keeps calling me son, never by my name, and I like that. Even without my black camo dye there's a resemblance between us, facial structure and mannerisms, that sort of stuff, although there's something that's different about him that I can't quite place.

The other person talking to me is a very sweet young lion who gnaws on my ear as he informs me in his high, sultry voice that there's a sex act we omitted to perform during our mattress marathon in celebration of my birthday, and that he needs to wet his throat if we're going to spend the night talking. I now have to choose between my Dad and my horny kittyboyfriend.

You do the math, Einstein.

"Tell you all about it in a few minutes, Dad," I say to the panther who's been y father in name for all my life and in deed just an hour, squeeze his shoulder, nod to a grinning Bertram and with my boy clinging to my arm I push through the exiting crowd toward the men's room.

I push the burnt wood door open and the smell of sex instantly hits my nostrils. The Crosshair's ain't a meat market, per se, but either the staff don't mind people screwing in the bathroom as long as it makes 'em thirsty, or they just don't clean the head often. As it is, when I walk inside with a young lion who's eagerly groping my groin despite my efforts to get him to wait, I see something that'd get me instantly hard if I wasn't hard already.

There's a cheetah in dark blue slacks and a light blue shirt that, due to where I spent the last few hours, I instantly recognize as being police issue, who's staring at me wide eyed while holding on to the hips of a naked canine that's bent over a sink, his grinning face pressed against the mirror, the cheetah obviously balls-deep inside him. If the cheetah was fucking him, there's no sign of movement now, just stricken panic on the cat's face.

Which is weird! By the time you have sex in a public restroom you'd think you'd have the cool to keep doing it when you get caught?

"Relax," says the canine under him and I realize now he's not naked, his jeans are pooled around his ankles. I barely register Alice slowly pulling the tab of my zipper down as he hugs me from behind, scanning the view from those bare paws with jeans around them, just beside the shiny shoes the cheetah wears, up some muscular calves, some sleek, lean thighs and a butt that you don't even see in movies pressed to the cheetah's slacks. That, more even than the swirly markings on the canine's face make me recognize the canine as Luke, the lead singer. "Relax," the canine repeats, looking at the cheetah behind him. "They just wanna have some fun too, honey, nothing to worry about. Now come on, you've had a hard day and the last guy who fucked me was Hank - and he's been a real hardass lately, so I'll be damned if I go to bed with his load up my ass instead of yours!"

It's so very domestic, the way the canine implores and demands the attention of his man, who obviously responds to the pleas to his ego and even though he blushes at the sight of me and Alice, he resumes his thrusting. Luke, whatever his species, clearly loves it but when I check between his legs to see if there's any pink showing, all I see is the glint of metal where his sheath ought to be.

And then I don't see anything at all, except bright, sparkly stars, because my dick springs free and straight into the tightest, sweetest muzzle you've ever seen, tasted or felt. Slipping around me like a snake, Alice goes from being bent over around my hip to kneeling in front of me without letting me slip from his mouth, if anything, taking me deeper. I lean back hard enough against the bathroom door that the guy who just tried to open it gets it slammed into his snout and a loud "Ow!" echoes through the white-tiled room before the door shuts.

We're alone. Me, getting head from a beautiful teenager, and the cheetah boning a to-die-for hot guy. I make eye contact with the cheetah, and it's like we strike this pact; a secret pact of brotherhood between men who know they're richer than they deserve to be, having a young, beautiful male who loves pleasing them as much as they love being pleased. Alice moans around my dick, making me shiver and Luke for his part shivers every time the cheetah sticks his tool nice and deep under that raised, fluffy tail.

I watch the cheetah bone his... his boyfriend, I imagine, in a kind of D/s sorta way, and he watches me getting my dick serviced by a kneeling lionboy in far too few clothes, and even though we both know we've got it better than anyone in the world we let ourselves wallow in the idea that the grass is greener - or, as the joke goes, the ass is keener - in someone else's field.

This would have been when everything came back to me. The realization what I'd done, the consequences it would have. If anyone found out I was there at the precinct I'd be dead, so would Alice. We might still be, because Sharpish would really really want to take my Dad down now. I watched my Dad rip people in half like they were paper dolls with blood on the inside and I experienced the moment of certainty before death.

But it doesn't come. I do. I smile an honest smile as Alice goes down deep on me, wrapping his slick little lips far down the base of my shaft so that I can nut down his throat... He knows how I love it, even though I often pull back at the last second so he can taste my load, which he loves, so now he makes it clear he doesn't want me pulling back. I cum in his mouth and I watch the cheetah slump atop the canine as he squirts in the canine's beautiful ass.

It's still my eighteenth birthday, even after all that's happened. And after Alice is done blowing out my candle, I go back out and hang with my Dad till the sun comes up and they close the bar.

To be continued.

Available on paperback in 2005

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