Mayumi sensed the door opening. Turn around and she could see who was coming through the door. But she lacked the energy to do so.
She was in a room in a big warehouse. Though it dated back to before the Devil Quake, it didn’t appear to have suffered much structural damage. The high ceilings and walls were spackled with filling compound that covered up the cracks.
An oily smell hung in the air. Not so much from it being stored somewhere but rather from having soaked into the joists and beams.
Mayumi’s hands were handcuffed behind her, and the handcuffs were attached to a ring around a steel post with another pair of handcuffs. She saw no way of easily freeing herself, and was not in the mood to try.
The late afternoon light streaking through the window next to her painted long shadows on the concrete floor. Through the window and walls came the sound of footsteps and voices of men. Bad men. They were men, and that made them bad. That simple equation was all Mayumi needed to know.
She’d been snatched off Okubo Avenue the night before by this biker gang and violated in every orifice. The three of them had spent their wads and were probably off partying happy as clams.
A grating noise chased away the falling darkness. The steel shutters across the fifty-foot wide bay doors rolled up. Shadows like ghosts approached her through the slash of sunlight and solidified into the shapes of men.
The underboss of the gang that had kidnapped her along with several of his men, plus four others wearing dark suits.
One of the suits was a fat man in his fifties, but carrying the kind of fat that lent his presence additional psychological and not just physical weight. The rest, in their thirties, formed a line behind him. From the crisp line of the fat man’s suit, he was the only one not packing heat.
The men formed a half-arc around Mayumi. The fat man, obviously the godfather of the bunch, said to the biker gang underboss, “This is the girl, eh?”
“Yeah,” he answered, bowing repeatedly and subserviently. The balance of power was clear to anybody’s eyes. “I couldn’t hardly believe it myself. Three of our guys bit the dust in thirty seconds flat.”
“Why the long face? Thanks to her, you won yourself a promotion to boss of your little gang.”
“Well—I—” The underboss scratched his head in evident confusion.
“The problem is, how exactly do we know you’re telling the truth? Fuck her and die, you say? If that’s true, you deserve your reward.”
“Yes—that—” The underboss bowed again.
The godfather turned to one of the suits behind him and said with a greasy smile, “I happen to know a way. You—”
One of them nodded and melted back into the sunlight. He returned a minute later with another man. Mayumi aside, they all wore the same smile as the godfather.
“Shit! Feast your eyes on this!”
An abominable growl made Mayumi turn around before the words came out of the underboss’s mouth. She blanched with fear.
The man accompanying the suit was well over six feet tall. The growl issued from his parted thick lips—like a slit in a slab of fresh meat—revealing a set of yellow teeth and a dangling, rancid-colored tongue. From the swollen eyeballs and the dilated pupils, he was juiced on the hard stuff.
The hands and feet jutting out from the stained polo shirt and jeans were mottled and gray from the necrosis that attended habitual drug abuse. His legs bowed backwards from the knees down in the manner of the hind legs of a wild animal.
What froze the blood in Mayumi’s veins was the face, steadily transforming before her eyes. Not his expression. A black pelt was covering his skin, like that of a wolf or bear. In a flash the follicles sank into the skin and began to grow outwards.
“Surprised? He OD’d and fucked up his endocrine system. Can go from human to wolf man in five seconds flat. Brain’s in no better shape. Family gave up on him, sold him to us for pocket change. Not much good for anything, not even as a guard dog. Nobody will miss him when he’s gone. I’d say this would be the perfect way to ring his bell one last time.”
“Stop it.” Mayumi slowly shook her head, exhibiting a strength of resolve that would have made any other man withdraw the offer on the spot. “Stop it,” she said again.
Grinning faces filled her field of view. Wearing lewd smiles that turned them ugly and primitive, the suits and gangbangers alike were already close to slobbering at the prospect of a taboo sex show, practically trembling in anticipation.
“The two of you are going to do it,” the godfather proclaimed. “And we’re gonna watch. How you get it done is up to you. From the front, from the back, or with that pretty mouth of yours. But getting it done is the only way you’re walking out of here. Comprende?”
Mayumi remained silent in the face of such a cruel question. She would have nothing to say to anyone forever after this.
“What, your mouth stop working? Fine. Then we’ll let him choose.” The godfather jerked his chin toward the man-beast.
The man-beast crept toward her. His shirt bulged and rippled. The fur must cover his entire body by now. His black hands undid his fly and freed his rigid, engorged member, eight inches long and as dark as the rest of him.
He knelt in front of Mayumi and placed his hands on her hips and fixed her in his gaze, the red slits of his eyes alone radiating an all too human lust.
“Hoh. Wants to do you doggie style. Figures.” The godfather chuckled. He undid the handcuffs. “Go get her, pooch.”
Mayumi tried to scramble away. He tackled her by the legs, pinning her down as he tore off her clothing. Warm drool dripped onto her haunches. His fingers stabbed into her flesh like metal clamps, rendering her immobile.
He shoved hot and hard against her sex, penetrating her mercilessly and with overwhelming force. Mayumi screamed. The man-beast’s hips slammed against her ass. The muscles trembled.
The man-beast commenced his assault, and Mayumi felt a sensation melting through her lower torso she had never experienced before in her life. The man-beast’s cock stroked her like a fine paintbrush, filled her completely, massaging her soft, sensitive flesh with each thrust. At once vanishing and then driving at her again. The preternatural rhythm was driving her half-mad.
A wet, whimpering sound filled the empty warehouse. The beast-man leaned forward and seized Mayumi’s chin and pressed his mouth against hers.
One of the bikers shamelessly hurried around to get a better look.
Mayumi opened her mouth against his. His tongue and bodily fluids flowed in. The overpowering odor made her gag. The man-beast didn’t let up. His salivary glands must be as hopped up as his metabolism. His tongue swirled inside her mouth. A line of spittle trailed from her lips and across her cheek.
The gyrating motions shaking her from behind increased in speed and intensity. Mayumi screamed, the sounds forced out of her mouth by the burning pleasure.
The man-beast howled. He rammed himself home and poured his essence into her. The rest of the men moaned in a kind of sympathetic vibration.
The man-beast yanked himself free, a satisfied smile on the dumbly crazed countenance.
“Well?” the godfather said to the underboss.
“Soon.”
The eyes of the assembled men focused on Mayumi’s ass and the beast man. He lazily wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Nothing’s happening.” A growing edge of irritation punctuated the godfather’s statement.
“Another minute.” Sweat beaded on the underboss’s forehead.
The man-beast slowly came to his feet, pulled up his fly, and started toward the exit. The suit he’d come with chased after him.
“Hey.” He reached out to clap him on the shoulder. An odd sound rang out, followed by a hard thump and a spray of blood next to the godfather’s feet.
A man’s hand. The suit howled like a banshee. The shriek cut off like extinguishing a light. The suit crumpled to the floor, blood flowing from his wrist and neck. Next to him the man-beast raged, driven in some sort of avant-garde performance by his inner artistic demons.
Blood flew. Arms and feet slashed at the air. Not from any new victim, but erupting out of himself. The involuntary spasms of those in their death throes, known as St. Vitus’s dance or chorea, was known from time immemorial. But this was more a Danse Macabre.
Spraying blood from a thousand places, the man-beast charged amongst the dumbstruck humans. A frenzied swipe of a paw carved one biker’s face in half.
“Don’t shoot!” the godfather commanded his henchmen, even as they reached for their pieces. He grabbed the underboss by the collar and pushed him forward. “Hey! Want a piece of this? Come and get it!”
The head stuck out as if being thrust into the stock of a guillotine. Black lightning flashed through the air and ripped it off with no more difficulty than a freshly sharpened blade. The burly arm swept down at his head when the godfather jumped ten feet backwards with surprising nimbleness.
The man-beast reached his limit. A mist of blood enveloped his body. With one last cry, wheeling his arms and legs around, a moment later he collapsed to the ground, a bag of bones without a breath of life left in him.
The warehouse fell deathly silent.
“Looks like you were right, after all,” the godfather said to the now headless corpse of the underboss. He glanced at the man-beast and then Mayumi. “Fascinating. And this thing had the strength of a dozen tigers. What a prize you turned out to be.”