FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

There comes a time in every man's life when he wonders whether it might not be a bad idea to consider a change of career. For me, that moment came as I lay at the bottom of a charnel pit north of Arkham, Massachusetts, hearing the chanting of the Cult of the Blood God outside my pit of death, and wondering whether Lady Luck had finally forsaken ol' Billy Keyes. Turns out she didn't: otherwise, I wouldn't be sitting with you right now, talking about the Night of Blood and Fire over a couple of gin rickeys. But I'm telling you, for a moment, down there in that pit of death, yeah, I thought ol' Keyes was gonna bite it.

It was the early 1930s, and the U.S was in the middle of a long, dark winter called the Great Depression. Maybe it wouldn't have been so depressing if a man coulda had a drink or two to kill the pain, but that grand experiment called Prohibition was still in effect, and so a good drink was hard to find. Not impossible, just hard. I was nursing my second gin rickey at the bar of my favorite speakeasy when this catboy comes up to me and asks if I'm Eighty Eight Keyes, the private eye.

Eighty Eight was my nickname from back when I was a Boston street kid: kids named me that because my full name was William Bonaventure Keyes, Billy for short. BB Keyes. Also cause I played the piano: not well, but I tried. Anyway, this kid comes up to me: skinny little guy with big round glasses and a lil bowtie, and he asks me whether I'm actually the private eye 88 Keyes and can I help him.

"Sure, why not. Not like I don't need the work. So, what's the problem? Your ol' lady fucking the milkman or somethin'?"

"Not that," the guy said, taking off his glasses and wiping them down with a white handkerchief. "I'm looking for a man."

I looked the kid over, from the top of his well-groomed ears to the tip of his perfectly coiffed tail. Feline. Blue-grey fur. Nicely groomed. Skinny looking kid, with way too much hair product and a bit of a funny tilt to the way he stands. I gave him a long, searching look, flipped a coin in my head. It came up tails. "Ain't lookin' for no sissy," I said. "I'm straighter than an arrow."

"What? How did you. . ." He dipped his voice down, blushing redder than a tomato. "Not so loud, please!"

"Sorry," I said. And I was too. That was a slightly less enlightened time, when folks weren't nearly as tolerant to homosexuals as they are today. Kid risked getting his ass beat if word got out he was a poof. "So," I said, "who are you looking for?"

He opened up his jacket and passed a small photo to me: his hand was shaking worse than a fucking maple leaf in winter. "This is Professor Danny Carnahan," he said. "He was one of our top researchers in ancient Mesopotamian artifacts. Three days ago, he disappeared. He hasn't attended any of his classes, he has not been seen in his office, and when we went to his home, he was not there. There were no records of where he might have gone. No note. Nothing."

"Call the cops," I said. "That's their sorta job, not mine."

"The police are claiming that he probably ran off with some mistress. I doubt it. He was. . ." The kid cleared his throat. Figured.

"Well, if you need me to help you find your. . . friend. . . I'll give it my best shot. Tell me what you can about him. Any friends? Any favorite hangouts? Any enemies?" Most times, guy turns up missing like this, he winds up at the bottom of some river.

"No enemies. . . few friends, too. Professor Carnahan was a consummate academic. He lived for his work."

"And what kind of work was that?" I asked.

"Ancient Mesopotamian artifacts. He was most recently working on a piece called the Pnakotic Tablet. A cuneiform tablet depicting ancient Babylonian religious rituals," the kid said. "It's an important find, one of the most vital pieces of ancient Mesopotamian religious paraphernalia ever recovered."

"Whatever the hell that means," I sighed. I finished off my drink and tossed a quarter into the jar for the bartender. "Well, let's get started. You might as well start by pointing me in the general direction of Professor Carmichael's office. Maybe we'll find something there."

"Carnahan," the kid said. "Professor Daniel Carnahan."

"Carney," I repeated. "Anyway, speaking of names, I never got yours?"

The kid cleared his throat. "I'd prefer not to give out my real name. . . just call me Clef."

"Cleffy, then," I said. I picked up my jacket and hat and started heading out the door, nodding to Big Jack, who checked through the peephole for cops and other miscreants before opening the door and letting me out. "Well, Cleffy," I said, "let's see what we can find out then." I was figuring that this should be a pretty cut and dry case: probably just an old man who got bored of the academic life and decided to run off to Mexico with some teaching assistant for some good ol' fun in the sun.

I was so totally wrong about that.

Carnahan, as it turned out, lived in a pretty little brownstone down near the harbor: nice, old place that was probably there since the days when the colonists decided to hold a little tea party for the redcoats. Door was half knocked off its hinges when we showed up there. Probably due to the cops, or maybe Carnie's friends checking up on how he was doing.

The place inside was a bit. . . well, let's put it this way: the guy worked at a museum, and he took a lot of his work home with him. Aside from a couple of photos of a what I assumed were his mother and father, the walls were covered in artifacts, weird looking maps, and framed parchments with some strange writing on them that looked like a cross between Egyptian heiroglyphics and Chinese. Next to it was this tribal made of gold, looking kind of like a giant bull with wings. "Man," I said, laughing. "This guy's got some weird tastes."

"It's a Mesopotamian priest's mask," Clef said. "The high priest would wear this on the festival of the winter solstice. He would use it to cover his face when he made the sacrifice to the Goddess of the Underworld, Ereshkigal."

"Goddess of the Underworld, huh? Sounds like a really nice dame," I quipped.

"Her religious rituals involved the sacrifice of goats, sheep, perhaps even men," Clef pointed out. "It was called 'feeding the death goddess.' It was believed that if she was not fed every year, that the world would be destroyed. She would open the gates to the underworld, and the dead would flood into the streets to devour the living."

"Huh." I looked at the mask with a greater sense of respect. "That's a bit. . . morbid."

"Given the fact that the ancient Mesopotamians died out over a thousand years ago, I'd say that it was more like evidence of their primitive, savage nature," Clef pointed out. "Like all religion."

"You're not a fan of religion?"

"I am a historian and a scientist. I believe in the real world, things that I can see, touch, and observe. Things like gods and superstition have no place in an enlightened mind."

"Right," I said, dubiously. "Where did Doctor Carnahan have his office?"

"Upstairs, in the study. I'll show you."

The office was a mess. The kind of place that looked like a small explosion had taken place. Notebooks and parchments were strewn all over the heavy oak wood desk, and a massive stack of books on the desk. The walls were covered with bookshelves, all of which held old dusty tomes with arcane titles, such as "A History of Mesopotamian Religion," and "A Study of the Death Cults of Sumeria." "Doctor Carnahan really took his work home with him, didn't he?" I mused, running a finger along the bookshelves.

"He did. His work was his life. He felt that he was in the midst of a great breakthrough, with the Pnakotic Tablets," Clef admitted.

"Where are the tablets now?" I asked.

"Excuse me?"

"A man who'd be willing to put this much time and energy into his work wouldn't have left the artifact that was the core of his research at the lab, would he? He took it home with him, didn't he?"

"The tablets are. . . missing," Clef admitted. "But we're pretty sure that if we can find Dr. Carnahan, he will have them with him."

"I see." I was starting to have a feeling about what was going on here. I went straight to the wastebasket and upended it over the desk, ignoring Clef's complaints. Sifting through the crumpled papers, I came across what I was looking for. "Here we go," I said, opening up the torn notepad page and spreading it out on the desk. "Just what I thought."

The torn paper read: See T. Marshall re: tablets: 5 pm Docks. Underneath it was a date from three days ago."

"Figured," I said, shaking my head, "Tyler Marshall."

"Marshall?"

"Of Marshall, Carter, and Dark. They're an auction house, rather like Sotheby's, based out of London, but they specialize in historic artifacts. Egyptian mummies. Chinese vases. That sort of thing. They're most interested in objects of occult significance. Druid daggers, Mohammedan texts, Voudoun dolls. That sort of thing. Anything that has to do with ancient magic and religion, they deal in."

"You think that Doctor Carnahan got involved in this?" Clef asked.

"I wouldn't be surprised. Marshall, Carter and Dark. . . let's just say that I've had some experience with them." I shook my head. "They tend to be known as rather ruthless. Kind of people who wouldn't mind stooping to blackmailing old Greek women in order to try and get a tenth century religious icon. . ."

"Or kidnapping a respected scientist?" Clef wondered.

"Mmm." I didn't reply to that. Truth was, I wasn't sure. Marshall, Carter, and Dark, were notorious for high handed threats and coercion, but outright kidnapping was another thing entirely. "Anyway, I may as well pay Tyler Marshall a call. Might as well see what they've got to say about this."

I pocketed the slip of paper and turned to leave the room. Clef didn't follow me at first. When I turned around, he was touching a photograph of Doctor Carnahan that hung on the wall. There was a look of profound sadness on his face. I sighed and walked out. None of my business, after all.

Marshall, Carter, and Dark was one of the more notorious British auction houses: they were the type of folks who would desecrate a Crusader grave site just to obtain relics to sell off at exorbitant prices later on. They owned a small office down by the docks, where Tyler Marshall, the American liaison, kept a branch office. I'd had a few run-ins with Marshall before, mostly over issues regarding old ladies being threatened and coerced into selling priceless religious artifacts. So I felt pretty much justified in storming in through the front door and demanding to Guido, the guy behind the desk, that they let me up to see Marshall right away.

"Mister Marshall is currently busy," Guido rumbled. "Unless you have an appointment, I'm going to ask you to come back another time."

"How's the leg, Guido?" I asked, casually leaning against the front desk. "Feeling better?"

The big wolf just grunted. A few months back, during the case involving that old Greek lady I'd mentioned earlier, he'd come after me: nothing personal, just trying to convince the hotshot private dick to stop sticking his nose into business that don't concern him. I came away from it with a sprained wrist. He limped away with a .35 slug in his leg. "Feeling better," he admitted. "Feels a bit sore when it rains."

"Well, unless you want a repeat of that little incident, I'd recommend that you let me up to see Mister Marshall right away," I insisted, pulling out a cigar and my matchbook. "Otherwise, we might have to have a repeat of that unfortunate misunderstanding," I pointed out, shaking out the match and taking a long drag of my cigar.

Guido gave me a long, hard look, his massive hamlike hands rubbing each other, running a finger along the heavy gold rings he wore on his fingers. "I don't really want no trouble," he said, slowly, "But Mister Marshall was very insistent. No one but no one goes up to see him until he says otherwise."

"Well, then, I guess I'm just gonna have to do this the hard way, aren't I?" I said, calmly pulling the blackjack out of my coat pocket.

"Guy could come in here real nice and quiet like through the front door," Guido said, softly. "If I was listenin' to the radio, I might never hear him sneak up behind me and clock me upside the head."

"He could, at that," I admitted.

Guido didn't reply to that, just turned around and faced the back wall. He leaned over and turned on the old radio sitting on his desk, "A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a hearty 'Hi-yo, Silver, away!' The Lone Ranger!" the radio intoned.

I slid up behind him nice and slow and smacked him, hard, across the back of the head with my sock stuffed with pennies. Guido just sighed a bit and sagged in his chair, limply. I checked him for a pulse, found one, and nodded as I gave him a pat on the face. "Thanks, buddy," I said. "I owe you one."

Marshall's office was up the back stairs, behind the big oak door with the frosted glass window that read TYLER MARSHALL: PROCURATOR, MARSHALL, CARTER, AND DARK. I opened the door without knocking, found Marshall sitting behind his heavy wooden desk in his usual suit and tie, with his bowler hat off to one side. He looked up at me from the ledger book for a moment, then went back to his writing, dipping his pen into his inkwell with a sigh. "Mister Keyes," he said, slowly. "What brings you here tonight?"

"Marshall. How is it going. Threaten any old ladies lately?" I asked, taking a seat on his leather couch.

"That issue was resolved to the satisfaction of all parties involved. If you wish to continue holding a grudge, why don't you take it up with Mrs. Winkler?" Marshall said. The Brit stoat jotted down another note in his ledger book and blew on the page to dry the ink before turning it.

"I don't think that successfully coercing an old lady into giving up a family heirloom is exactly to the satisfaction of all parties," I shot back.

"How is the arm, by the way?" Marshall asked, calmly, as he consulted his notebook and jotted down another set of figures. A little after I shot Guido in the leg that one time, Marshall had gotten to me and put me in some kind of bartitsu arm lock. I'd tried to break the hold, and he wound up breaking my wrist. While I was laid up in the hospital, his group had convinced Mrs. Winkler to sell them her ancient icon at a premium price.

"It's more than good enough to punch your face in, you Brit bastard," I sneered.

"If you insist, you uncouth yankee barbarian, we shall settle this like gentlemen, with fists, in the ring of honor. But given that you have come here wearing your coat and hat, and without a challenge to a duel like men, I assume that you are here on a matter of business, and not of personal pleasure," Marshall shot back, closing his ledger book and folding his hands.

I gestured to Clef, who was standing in the doorway looking a bit off-balance at the whole situation. "This is my client, Mister Clef," I said. "He's looking for Doctor Daniel Carnahan. Carnahan had something you wanted, and something you wanted bad, if I don't miss my guess. And now he's gone. What do you know about this?"

"Absolutely nothing. Go away," Marshall said.

I got up and pulled the revolver from my jacket pocket: Colt Single Action Army, the gun that tamed the west. The sound of the hammer being brought back was loud and sharp, but Marshall didn't even look up as I pointed it at his head. "Don't try to piss on my leg and tell me it's raining," I said. "You know something. Spit it out."

Marshall sighed and looked up at me, staring directly into the barrel of the gun. "If you must know," he said, "I did meet with Mister Carnahan about the Pnakotic Tablets. We were going to meet up last night and discuss a possible sale. Unfortunately, he never showed up. So if you can find out what happened to him, I'd be much obliged as well. Him being missing is nothing but bad for me."

"You're lying," I said, pushing the gun barrel into his head. "You wanna know what I think? I think Carnahan did meet up with you last night. He offered you the sale, but you didn't like the terms. So you did what you always do. You changed the terms of the deal. You killed Carnahan, dumped him into the river, and took the tablets. And now he's dead."

"Mister Keyes, why in the name of God would I ever do that?" Marshall sighed. "The tablets are, literally, priceless, but my close relationship with a respected searcher of artifacts like Carnahan is more valuable still. Killing him would be little more than slaying the goose that laid the golden eggs. There is no possible reason why that would be in my best interests at all. And, as you know, I always do what is in my best interests." He gave me a hard, stern glare. "Or do you wish to consider me a fool as well as a criminal?"

I grimaced and carefully lowered the hammer of my gun. "One of these days," I promised, "I'll get you. I'll find out what you're up to, and I'll bring the cops down on you like a ton of bricks."

"What I am up to, Mister Keyes, is procuring valuable artifacts for my clients and money for myself. Good day. I'd ask Guido to see you out, but you've no doubt rendered him unconscious in some misguided attempt to spare him my wrath." He waved at me dismissively and opened up his ledger book once again.

I left the office feeling annoyed as hell, stomping down the stairs in a mute rage. Clef followed right behind me, nervously wiping his face with a handkerchief. "So," he asked. "What now?"

"Now?" I sighed. "Now we're back to square one."

I wondered about the best way to proceed. Probably, it would be to go back to the office and see if I could pick up some other leads. The whole thing with Tyler Marshall was looking more and more like a dead end. Maybe I'd be able to find something more with the whole tablet angle.

That was the last thing I thought before the thug in the black overcoat came up behind me and gave me a solid whack in the head with the butt of his pistol. I had enough time to turn around and shout for help before he clocked me in the face with the weapon, dazing me. I saw Clef shouting as another pair of guys in the same black overcoat grabbed him by the arms. Then a massive, meaty fist smashed into my face, and the world went black.

Yeah. Things were not looking up for me.

When I opened my eyes again, things were very dark, and very unpleasant. A deep, dark stench, like dead bodies in a morgue, filled my nostrils. I fought back the urge to gag and struggled to my feet.

I was starting to wish I hadn't woken up.

I was laying, as it turned out, in about three inches of what can only be, in the most charitable way, described as water. It stank to high heaven, and the entire place was covered in a kind of green sludge that covered the walls and stuck to the water. I was struggling to my feet when I tripped over something round and hard.

What I first thought was a rock turned out to be a human skull. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see more of them, laying under the water and the sludge. A rat crawled out of the eye socket of one of the skeletons, hissed at me angrily. I kicked at the horrid rodent, and it ran off, chittering. Just in time, too, as my overwhelmed stomach rebelled against me, and I felt my bile rising.

I was noisily sick for a few minutes as my stressed system expelled as much of my stomach contents as possible, then I shuddered for a bit and took a moment to reassess my situation. Gun: gone. Notebook: gone. Wallet: gone. Pocketknife: gone. All I had left with me was the clothes on my back.

I tried to climb up the walls, but they were too steep, and too slippery, and the smooth stone blocks gave me no purchase whatsoever. I tried taking off my belt and wedging it into the thin cracks between the blocks, to try and give myself a little more purchase. It didn't help. I was considering breaking some of the dead bones down here to try and fashion pitons when the sound of footsteps from up above drew my attention.

"Mister Keyes!" a man called out. "So good to see you! You must be the one who has been helping my associate to try and find me. Well, as you can see, there is no further need for your assistance. I am, after all, quite alive and well. If only I could say the same for you, Mister Detective."

My blood ran cold as I looked up the well shaft, at the smiling face of the grey-bearded otter who was leaning over the edge of the pit, looking down at me with a mocking smile on his broad face. The last time I had seen him, was in the photograph that Clef had touched in the office of Dr. Carnahan, the same face in the photo that he had slid over to me in the speakeasy just a few hours ago.

"Doctor Carnahan," I growled.

"High Priest Carnahan, if you will," the otter sneered. "High Priest of Ereshkigal, Lady of the Underworld. And you, my friend, are going to serve to help us save the world."

"From the moment that I first translated the Pnakotic Tablets," Doctor Carnahan said, as the muscular thugs dragged me from the pit, my hands bound behind my back, "Everything began to make sense. The decline of Western civilization. The collapse of society. The increase of decadence and the current troubles. They are all derived from a single, simple fact." He smiled as his thugs pushed me into a heavy steel cage, still bound and gagged. "Humanity has forgotten how to respect the Mother of the Dead. The ritual has not been performed in over a thousand years. She hungers, and yet, we feed her not." He grinned at me, a wide, manic grin, that showed too many teeth. "I plan to fix that."

The door opened, and the next thing I saw was Clef being led into the room, bound and gagged like I was. He was naked, and his slim, lithe body was bound by many ropes, showing off his slender feline body: despite myself, I couldn't help but feel a bit of a twinge. He was a guy, yeah, but he was an incredibly good looking guy, better than most females I'd seen: slender, long-limbed, and delicate, with wide eyes and long, black lashes. . .

I was suddenly aware of the thick, spicy smoke filling the room, as they shoved him into the cage alongside me. His head lolled on his shoulders loosely, as if drunk, or drugged. "They say," Carnahan mused, "That there were six kinds of sacrifices one could make to the Mother of the Dead. The simplest was the sacrifice of the goat. Then the sheep, then the woman, then the man. But the greatest of sacrifices was the man who was also a woman. It is said that such a sacrifice would carry with it the power of both a man and a woman, and that, after such a sacrifice, the Goddess would be most pleased, and her favor would smile upon the world for another hundred years." Carnahan grinned. "I plan to offer her one tonight."

". . . Okay," I coughed. "That's just mean."

"Hm? Whatever do you mean?" Carnahan asked.

"Seriously. You're going to sacrifice your. . . whatever the hell he is. . . to an ancient death goddess? That's just mean." I shook my head. The smoke was starting to really get to me. There was a strange, herbal scent to it, that was starting to make my head spin. Some sort of drug, maybe? "That's just. . . not right. . ."

"Oh no, Mister Keyes, I don't think you understand. I intend to sacrifice both of you to the Goddess." He walked up to Clef and cupped the young catboy's chin in his hand. The feline glared back at him angrily, but bound and gagged and drugged as he was, there wasn't much that he could do. "Sex magic is, after all, one of the most powerful forms of magic, second only to blood. I intend to make a sacrifice to the goddess in the truest, most powerful sense."

"Sorry, Carnie," I grinned. "Just one problem. I'm not a poofter like you are."

"Oh, you don't have to be, Mister Keyes," Carnahan said, grinning. "All you have to do is breathe. . . very deeply."

"The smoke. The goddamn smoke. . ."

"A powerful aphrodisiac from New Guinea, used by the savage cannibal tribes who live in that dark nation. It is normally used to awaken the desires of women, to make them submit after their raids on each others' villages, so that they will become submissive wives to the victors. I myself have blended the herbs in a different fashion. I believe," he said, grinning, as his thugs tore away my clothes with flint daggers, "that you will soon find what the effects are first hand."

He was right. As they pushed the naked and bound Clef into the cage with me, I could already feel my vision starting to swim, and my body starting to grow hot. Try as I might to keep down the gallant impulse, my manhood was already starting to rise, and a strange tingling sensation was coming over me. The world swam in my vision, as if I were underwater, or under the influence of opium, as I had once ended up due to getting onto the wrong side of a Chinatown gang lord. I gasped as a knife was drawn across the last of my bindings, and my hands were freed. "Clef," I whispered, crawling over to the naked boy, "Can you move?"

He shook his head. "Hang on," I grimaced. "I'm gonna get you out."

All around me, the cultists were throwing off their robes, leaving themselves wearing only their masks. I was a bit surprised to find that they were, all of them, naked as jaybirds, and most of them had hard-ons already. "Oh, fuck," I growled. "I'm caught in a goddamn homo orgy." I pulled the gag off of Clef's face. "Come on," I whispered. "We've gotta figure a way out of this."

Clef's only answer was to lean up and kiss me on the mouth. I recoiled to the corner of the cage, wiping my lips with the back of my hand, shouting in surprise. "Goddamn it!" I shouted. "What the hell is wrong with you, you little poof?"

Clef mewed, an animal sound of desperate need, and his eyes were half-lidded and dark with desire. Rolling over onto his stomach, he slowly raised his hips up into the air, his soft, round buttocks lifting up, his feline tail swishing back and forth. I closed my eyes, trying to block out the sight. All around me, a low, rhythmic chanting was starting, along with a strange sound that, after I while, I started to recognize as low, masculine grunts of pleasure.

I opened one eye and immediately wished I hadn't. Every single one of the damn cultists was beating off at a furious pace, each of them wearing expressions of tension and building need.

"Oh hell hell hell hell hell!" I shouted. I had no idea what was going to happen, but I knew it was going to be bad. I crawled over to the other side of the cage, tried to force the door open, but wound up having to crawl over Clef in the process, and the little catboy rolled over and started sucking my cock, his soft lips wrapped merrily around my shaft. I couldn't help letting out a groan of pleasure as my vision went white for a moment. God, it felt good, and I'd gotten blowjobs from the best hookers on the Lower East Side.

Clef's was putting them all to shame.

My fingers dropped from the bars, and I felt myself go. Somewhere deep inside my mind, a little part of me shook its head in resignation and prepared for the inevitable. I pulled away from the bars and crawled over on top of the kid, rolling him over onto his stomach, lifting up his head from my throbbing member. Once again, he raised his hips with a little animal mewling sound of need, and I shoved myself in as hard as I could, the wetness from his mouth serving to lubricate my entrance just enough to push inside.

He let out a loud yowl of pleasure and pain: probably mostly pain, I was going in rough, but he didn't pull away, just kept moving that cute little ass against me, his slender body working like a high class whore, sliding up against me and sending all these thrills of pleasure through my body. I grabbed his hips and pounded away, hard, hating myself the whole time, but the drugs and the smoke and, God, I'll admit it, that little sissy's sexy girlish body, had done their work. I didn't care that this made me just as much a fag as any of them. All I knew was that I was loving the feel of this, and I was going to hump away until I was satisfied, and goddamnit, I didn't care if he did have a dong too!

There was something dark and evil rising up from the pit as I continued to pound away, something huge and shadowy emerging from the smoke. It was after a particularly hard thrust that the first of the cultists came, shooting his seed all over me and the kid, through the bars of the cage, and then it was this torrent of cum starting to shower down on me and him from every angle. With each splatter of seed over the two of us, the shadow grew stronger, and more coherent, until I could see the terrifying visage of Carnahan's goddess, looming over us. I don't know how much of it was the smoke, how much was the drugs, how much was honest to goodness reality, but it was a face out of nightmare, a face that still makes me wake up sometimes screaming.

She was at least thirty feet tall, and her flesh was rotting away, like a corpse dragged out of the river at the end of a bad investigation. Maggots and rats were crawling in and out of massive wounds in her face. Her sagging, pendulous breasts were dripping green pus from their withered nipples, and from her back, some sort of bizarre network of spider webs was spreading out from her, stretching to every one of the cultists, embracing them in a weave of silk, strange, chittering, ratlike beings pushing the immobilized cultists down to the ground and raping them as they screamed in pain and terror. Carnahan stood in front of her, naked as a jaybird, his tail swishing back and forth, fur drenched in sweat. "My GODDESS!" he screamed. "BEHOLD YOUR LOVER! ACCEPT THIS SACRIFICE IN THE NAME OF YOUR MOST HUMBLE SERVANT!"

That was when a massive hundred-fingered hand, all bones and rotting flesh and horrid, slimy things not alive and not dead, wrapped around his waist and lifted him up into the air. It drew him to its face, and a hundred hungry mouths filled with broken, rotting teeth, opened up. The first bite was the worst, and he screamed the loudest.

He almost sounded disappointed, as if he'd not expected this.

"Keyes," a low voice whispered. "Keyes, snap out of it."

I glanced down, and was surprised to see Clef laying on his back, my cock still shoved tightly into his tight ass, his hips still working away. His blue-grey fur was sticky and soaked with the seed of the cultists, and he was working himself against me, as the ground under him turned black and a myriad centipedes, scorpions, and maggots started to rise up out of the blighted soil. "Keyes, listen to me," he whispered. "You have to cum now."

"What?"

"I can stop this thing," Clef whispered, "But I need more power. You need to give me what you've got, or we're all going to die. . . and that'll be the least of the bad things that happen."

"It's kinda hard," I winced, and indeed, the reality of the situation was starting to come over me, and I was starting to feel myself grow weaker. . . and softer, at that. . . "Asking me to cum while fucking some boy with THAT looming over me. . . tall order, kid," I quipped.

"Then close your eyes," Clef said, and he reached a hand up and lowered my eyelids. "And just. . . pretend what you want to pretend."

What the kid did next, I'm not sure. . . I don't even know. My eyes were closed the whole time. And honestly, maybe I just don't want to tell you. I mean, hell, it's already bad enough I admitted to enjoying the experience. Do I have to tell you the rest of the details too?

Okay, fine, I'll put it this way. A few years back, I got to spend the night with a Thai prostitute one of the Chinatown kingpins imported for his brothels. The girl had trained her pussy muscles to the point where she could grip and squeeze and massage with them better than some girls could with their hands. Best sex of my life.

Clef? He made her look like a first-time ten cent alley girl.

"Oh, FUCK FUCK FUCK!" I shouted, after only a few minutes of that. "Oh holy FUCK that's good, gonna FUCK FUCK FUCKING CUM. . ."

"In my mouth, and hurry!" Clef shouted. I pulled out of his ass and began stroking my manhood. The first of the spurts of thick, white seed spurted out of my cock and into his small mouth. I shuddered with every surge of pleasure as he swallowed every drop, vision swimming. In my peripheral vision, I could see the goddess had finished devouring Carnahan, and was throwing his bloody bones away into the pit. All around us, the other cultists were screaming as their abdomens were torn open and horrific buglike creatures with nine eyes and cephalopod tentacles tore their way out of their bodies. Clef swallowed the last of my seed as I sagged, exhausted, in the corner of the cage.

He stood and turned to the goddess, as the tentacled monstrosities closed in. To my vision, it looked almost like the tendrils were coming out of his own body. Something changed, and then there was a pair of leathery wings, half batlike, half fish-fins, coming out of his body. He lifted up a hand with too many fingers, and the fingers spread out into a dozen long tentacles, as his legs changed into scaley, clawed limbs.

I passed out just as I saw him rise up out of the cage, a thirty foot tall beast of wings, tentacles, and fishlike scales, grabbing the goddess by the throat and hurling her back down into the abyss. Her screams were loud, and plaintive, but somehow familiar, kind of like the screaming of a battered wife whose husband is beating her not for the first time, and not the last. This had, I was convinced, happened before, and it would, probably, happen again.

Awakening.

Pain.

Oh god the pain.

My entire body hurt in ways that no man's body ever should. Getting slowly to my feet, I could see that the entire room was covered in a thin layer of slime. The ground was covered in a carpet of dead centipedes, maggots, and rats, all carrion eaters, all suddenly dead of no visible cause whatsoever.

I picked up a discarded robe from one of the dead cultists, wiped off as much of the sludge and gunk as possible, and threw it over my shoulders. Opened the big oak door.

And laughed bitterly.

I was in the main hall of Carnahan's brownstone. The entire horrid affair had taken place in his goddamn basement.

If I'd only gone downstairs, instead of up, I would have found out the whole thing.

There was the sound of a door opening, and a bathtub draining. I turned to find Clef walking out of Carnahan's bathroom, freshly bathed, using a towel to dry off his hair. He was naked, and the rope burns on his body were starting to fade to angry red marks. "You'll probably be wanting a shower," He said, indicating the bath tub. "You should take one. I used up all the shampoo, though. Sorry."

"What the fuck did you do down there?" I asked.

"What I had to do. . . the only thing I knew how to do," Clef admitted.

"What the hell are you, some kind of. . . cultist too?"

"What I am," the blue-grey furred catboy said, "is a teaching assistant to Doctor Carnahan. . ."

"No," I said.

"No what?"

"You're not Carnahan's sissy. He didn't even know you. Not until we came into this place and messed around in his study and got his attention. So what that tells me is that you hired me under false pretenses to do. . . something else. And I don't like being fucked with, kiddo."

"Speaking of hiring, I'll have the money wired to your office." He was pulling on a dress shirt and a bow tie, and shrugging into a pair of trousers: he didn't bother with underwear. "I believe twice your normal rate would be fair, given the fact that you had to go above and beyond the call of duty on this one."

"What the hell did you hire me for? What the hell were you trying to accomplish? I want answers, damnit!"

"I'm afraid," Clef said, as he pulled on his suspenders, then shrugged into his vest, "That answers are the one thing that I can't provide." He finished buttoning up his vest and slid on his shoes. "But, if it makes you feel any better, Mrs. Winkler sends her regards, and tells you not to worry too much about the icon. That matter should solve itself eventually."

"What?"

"She was most flattered that you'd go to such lengths to help her, when all she'd hired you to do was to find out who that rather insistent man Guido worked for." He smiled winsomely. "You come well recommended." He leaned up and gave me a kiss on the lips, as I stood there, completely flabbergasted. "Adieu, Mister Keyes. I don't think we'll meet again, but if so, it will be none too soon."

And then he was gone.

Clef was right, of course, the issue with MC&D resolved itself. A few days after the incident, their main warehouse burned down in the middle of the night of mysterious causes. All three gentlemen, Marshall, Carter, and Dark, were in the warehouse at the time. Their skeletons were found clawing at the door, trying to be let out.

Funny thing, all of them had keys, and the door wasn't locked. Also strange was the presence of seawater in their lungs, far from any oceans, lakes, or docks.

The only thing missing from their inventories was a single Greek Orthodox icon, which they'd procured from one Mrs. Winkler a few months ago. The icon, incidentally, pictured Saint Florian, the patron saint of Poland. He's also the patron saint of firefighters and chimney sweeps, and is invoked for protection against fire, flood, and drowning.

I didn't know that at the time, though. I just stood there in the front hall for a bit, Clef's kiss lingering on my lips. The sun was just starting to rise, and it wasn't too far to my home, so I figured I'd risk it. Didn't much feel like taking a bath in the same house as those. . . things.

Wasn't a damn person on the streets at the time, the entire half-mile walk home. Funny that. Headed up to my apartment on the third floor of the tenement building, headed to my room and grabbed my bathrobe and towel. Used the bathroom at the end of the hall to wash away the filth and slime. My skin felt. . . sensitive, somehow. . . kinda good, actually.

I fell into bed and fell asleep almost right away. By the time I woke up again, it was already getting dark. The cops hadn't knocked on my door yet, so either they hadn't found Doctor Carnahan's remains, or I was scot free. Either way, I was feeling kinda screwed up in the head and way too sober for my own good.

Headed down to the speakeasy and paused with my hand on the door. It would, I thought, be way too easy if I walked in there and found Clef sitting at the bar. Maybe we'd share another drink, and we'd go back to my place. Maybe we'd have a couple more drinks there, and then we'd fall into bed and he'd show me what he could do when he wasn't tied up with a death goddess looming over us both.

Or maybe I'd walk away from the speakeasy, head to Chinatown, and head into one of the brothels there, ask the madam for a blue-grey furred catgirl with big tits and long legs. Have her sent up to me dressed as a boy.

I leaned against the wall, took out a cigar and my matchbook. Bit off the end and lit up, took a long drag of the fine madura tobacco and breathed out a cloud of fragrant smoke into the warm night air. Up above, the stars were shining brightly.