Shifters, Beasts, and Monsters (67 page)

But then he started to change!

Oh my God!

I saw it first in his eyes. They changed from green
to… red! His head started to change shape, and his body started to grow even
bigger.

He fell of me, groaning in pain, off the bed and
onto the floor. I was just lying on the bed, watching him as he… as he shifted!
Horns grew from his head! His nose changed, two huge nostrils appeared, steam
pouring out of them.

Still half human, he spoke to me. His voice was so
deep. It was like a tremor in my soul.

“Where does your fertilizer come from?”

I shook my head. I didn’t know what he was talking
about.

“Did you put new fertilizer out today?” He groaned
in pain after that.

“Yes!” I shrieked. I remembered then. Dad said he’d
got some new stuff in from Greece. Crete to be exact. Something about the soil
on the mountainside, and how it was different, how it was more nutritious for
the crops.

“Oh, God!” he cried then, rolling on the floor.
“Not again!”

I blinked at him. I didn’t know what he meant.

“Get out of here!” he roared. “Go hide!”

But I couldn’t move. He was still changing. His
body was growing. Bits of his meat and flesh just started pulsing and
fluctuating. It was sickening.

And then he rose to his feet. He had the head of a
bull. He was a… a Minotaur!

I couldn’t move.

Fear gripped my heart.

He mounted me.

And he…

And he made love to me!

At first I didn’t want it…

But then I did…

And I even finished! So did he… he filled me up
with his monstrous seed.

And then he changed back, back into a man. The
episode was over, like a fit or a seizure.

He held me and apologized. Said that hadn’t
happened in a long time.

I told him… I told him it was okay.

I think I’m going to keep his secret.

I think I have to.

*

CHAPTER
FOUR

Emily screamed, scrambling backward. She was staring
at Jason, but it
wasn’t
him. Something was happening to him. Something
grotesque. Something impossible!

She tried to back up even more, but the shredded
foliage beneath her feet kept slipping and sliding, and she couldn’t get a
foothold anywhere, not even on the jutting root of a tree as it bent beneath
her weight.

Before her, Jason’s shirt, now ripped to shreds, loose
strands of string hanging everywhere giving him every appearance of a caveman,
hung from a gigantic, fur-laden, musclebound body. He was enormous. Twice the
size he had been as a man, and was already a muscular, tall man. Emily cried
out in fear again, unwilling to believe what she was looking at. On top of the
human-ish body was a gigantic bull’s head, flared nostrils out of which poured
columns of steam, and two curled yellow-bone horns that could puncture sheets
of steel.

“Jason?” she yelled, wondering if the bull-beast
before her, the monster of myth and legend, still had an ounce of humanity left
in him… if he could remember that he was once a man named Jason Harris. She had
watched him collapse to the floor, seizing and shuddering, every muscle in his
body stringy-hard and tight. She had first heard the snap of his leather belt,
splitting the air, before his t-shirt was demolished by the shifting, growing
form. She had seen his eyes, normally green, turn to a glowing, menacing red.
She had watched as he looked down at his changing body, as though in utter
horror.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” she whispered to
herself. “I can’t believe Jason’s a fucking Minotaur.”

It all clicked in her mind. Why Michael Nimon had
asked for him specifically. How had he known they’d send her, though? He did
say that the Minotaur would need a…
mate!

Maybe Tom had known! Maybe even Jason’s father! She
had been sold out!

Dread coursed through Emily’s mind.

The creature that was once Jason rose to its feet,
massive, hulking. The last bit of clothing fell off its body, and Emily’s eyes
went to the beast’s crotch, and saw there a penis of ridiculous size. The beast
roared at her again, and her bones rattled and shook, and she tried to back up,
tried to find purchase somewhere amongst the grass and leaves that kept on
giving way, continued to slide out from beneath her frantic feet and hands.

And when, on the stem of a sturdy bush, did she
finally find some leverage, she launched herself backward, perhaps two feet,
hoping to turn and start running. But she slammed her back into the trunk of a
tree. The rough bark felt like a bed of nails.

“Jason!” she yelled again, trying to bring the man out
of the beast. The Minotaur stopped, seemed to consider the sound, but only for
a moment. Then its eyes were once again on her, menacing, and the creature took
one thunderous step toward her, and Emily knew she was at its mercy.

She shut her eyes, squeezing tears of fear out of
each. She tried to control her breathing. She tried to think rationally. Could
she outrun the gigantic thing? Probably not, and even if she could, she
wouldn’t know where to go. It was getting dark, too. Soon the sun would dip
below the horizon, and as crazy as being at the mercy of a monster of myth
might be, being out alone in the wilderness was something altogether more
terrifying.

“Jason!” she shrieked, anger putting a dry desperation
in her voice. “Don’t hurt me!”

But the Minotaur bore down on her, and she yelped as
it took one of her ankles into its thick, hairy hand. She was hoisted up,
painfully, onto the creature’s shoulder, and the beast thumped off into the
forest, her upside-down world bobbing to and fro.

She was tired, exhausted even. She had nowhere to go,
did not know the land. The Minotaur…
Jason
was her only chance.

And Emily Worthington knew then that she had
completely resigned herself. She was at the mercy of the Minotaur.

“Where are you taking me?” she shrieked, thumping
uselessly at the beast’s back with her closed fists. She felt hard muscle
beneath the coat of thin fur, and knew she wasn’t causing so much as a ripple
of discomfort in the creature, let alone pain.

Carried, her view of the world swinging to and fro,
and leaned her head back to see Michael Nimon standing in their wake, grinning,
rubbing his hands together.

“You have no choice, Emily!” he shouted at her through
cupped hands. “Let yourself become his mate, and his species will be reborn,
rekindled!”

Emily couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
Rekindled? How? Wasn’t this just a gene? A genetic marker?

“If you are impregnated here,” he shouted as he grew
smaller in the distance, shrouded by trees and foliage. “Among the pheromone
contained in this soil of Crete, then your baby will be born a Minotaur.”

Emily’s bunched her face up. She wanted to cry.

“And you will be the mother of the progenitor of a new
alpha species! The Minotaurs shall walk this earth again, Emily! And you will
be their Goddess Mother!”

“No!” she cried, resuming her pounding against the
beast’s back. “No!”

But it was to no avail. Michael Nimon faded from view.
All she heard was the thunderous crunching of snapping twigs and cracking rock
beneath the Minotaur’s, beneath Jason’s, feet. All she heard was his deep,
hoarse breathing, his animalism intermittently punctuated by grunts and
unintelligible groans.

And as he carried her off, into the deep line of trees
that grew up the side of the mountain, the sun fell behind the precipice, and
she was enveloped by the dark side.

*

Dallas and I are going to run away. We’re not going
to tell Mum and Dad. He says we have to go to Crete. We have to find the source
of this soil. He says it is the only way to find out for sure what he is.

He told me how this happened to him once before. It
was when he was a boy, and he was at a Greek market festival in Brisbane,
Australia.

He told me that he had to run away and hide in a
public toilet while she shifted, tore through all his clothes.

A child Minotaur!

When he eventually returned to his human form, the
fit, the seizure over, his parents had asked him what happened. He lied to
them. He told them he was beaten up by some bullies.

He never told anybody the truth.

He never shifted again.

Until today.

Until today when he came into contact with that
fertilizer, when he changed into a monster while making love to me.

And then continued to afterward.

We’re leaving tomorrow. He says he’s got some money
stashed away for a rainy day. A bit of savings. He’s going to use it all on two
one-way tickets to Greece.

We’re going to go and find out the source of this
soil. I’ve got the fertilizer’s manufacturer stamp and label here. Nimon
Farming Products.

I hope Mum and Dad won’t be too upset.

I’ve left them a note.

Don’t worry, I’m bringing you, dear diary. I would
never leave you behind. Mostly for fear that someone might read you!

I’m still in shock, in disbelief.

Dallas is doing his best to comfort me, but some
things you just need time to get over.

I don’t know if it’s the smart choice to go with
him.

But it’s what I’m going to do.

*

“Put me down!” she cried, kicking her legs. “Jason!
Put me down! Listen to me! I’ll tell your father about this!”

Emily shook her head and sighed. She’d tried every
tactic to reach the Jason inside the Minotaur, but couldn’t. He was a beast,
and possessed by a seemingly singular drive. Where he was taking her, she did
not know. What he would do to her when he got there… she knew that acutely.

“Put me down!” she screamed again, and this time, the
Minotaur did. It laid her gently on a bed of sloped, soft grass, and she looked
around wildly to see that they were in a clearing. A large ridge above them on
the mountain would prevent sunlight from reaching the area at all times of the
day, and so flora had naturally not flourished.

Emily returned her eyes to the beast. It was standing
before her, towering over her, muscles tensed and hard. Its skin looked as
thick as leather, and the curled horns must have been three feet long.

“Don’t touch me,” she said, scrabbling backward. The
beast titled its head to the side, and then looked down at his own body. Emily
followed his gaze to see that the Minotaur’s cock was coming to life, thickening
and rising with each enormous beat of the beast’s heart.

“No!” Emily screamed, pointing at it and then shaking
her head dramatically. She crossed both arms in front of her, continued shaking
her head, hoping that the message would be communicated.

But she couldn’t keep her eyes from the Minotaur’s
cock for long. The thing was simply massive, and the wriggling veins on either
side were easily as thick as one of her fingers. It was a very human penis,
with a wide, pink tip and thick shaft and bulged slightly in the middle. She
gasped when a huge droplet of pre-cum beaded at the tip, before tracking down
the underside of the bell.

The Minotaur took a menacing step toward her, and
reached down. “No!” she yelled, slapping away the beast’s hands. It tilted its
head to the other side, before narrowing its eyes and roaring at her. She
jumped, hair standing on end, as the roar echoed through the valleys.

Then the beast was on her again, hands at her jeans,
and he ripped them open, splitting the button and tearing the zipper from
fabric. Emily tried to turn and get to her feet, but it was in vain. With one
strong hand, the beast pinned her with one hand, and extended one of his hoofs
up beside her, so that he could fall on top of her if she managed to move.

“Please don’t,” Emily begged, trying to pry open a
massive finger of the beast as it yanked her jeans down. She was tugged
violently, her whole body lifting off the grassy ground for a moment, but then
the beast had her jeans off her legs, dislodging her sandals in the process,
and he flung the fabric away.

Dressed in only her tank top, bra, and panties, Emily
pushed her legs together and curled up into a ball, shaking her head. “Don’t do
this, Jason. Don’t hurt me.”

The Minotaur made a strange sound, then, almost like a
whine. She chanced a look at it, and it was peering at her, a strangely human
depth to its eyes. It dipped its big bull-head down, and the twisted horns
raked the ground on either side of her. It took a moment for Emily to realize
what the creature was doing… it was
smelling
her. The beast inhaled
deeply as it pulled its nose upward from Emily’s legs, over her mound, up her
belly, by her armpits, and the eventually to her neck.

And it began the process again, this time going down,
this time stopping and hovering above her sex. “Oh, God,” she groaned as the
beast pushed its huge nostrils into her underwear. The Minotaur took several
deep, shuddering breaths, and though mortified and modest, Emily couldn’t deny
that it had an effect on her. It was such a private, intimate place… and that
she already knew what the beast was going to do to her! Her mind raced forward,
her fear muddled with… something approaching anticipation.

The beast was still hard as an iron bar, organ jutting
out in between them like a spear. His fingers went to the elastic lip of her
panties, and he casually tore the fabric, as if it was the easiest thing in the
world. He let her panties flop open, baring her to him.

Emily by now had given up begging, and simply looked
out of worried eyes, groaning through gritted teeth, and the Minotaur stared at
her uncovered sex, before leaning down to run its nose through her tuft of
pubic hair, inhaling deeply again.

It was erotic that the creature was smelling her, but
that wasn’t yet enough to override the dread that had filled her heart.
“Please,” Emily whispered, trying one last time. The Minotaur looked up at her,
seemed to consider it for a moment. “Please, Jason.”

But it was all for naught. The Minotaur ducked back
down to her sex, this time prying apart her legs with its hands, spreading the
juncture of her thighs. He dipped down again, and this time dragged a hot,
powerful, and wet tongue up her slit. Emily shivered in sudden sensation, and a
half-sigh, half-moan escaped her lips. She sat up, looking at the Minotaur in
disbelief.

And it licked her again.

And again.

And again.

“Oh, God,” she groaned. What was the creature doing?
But it continued to lap at her slit, pulling its hard tongue up and down,
rounding the top of her clitoral hood and then repeating the circular motion.
Again and again it licked her, and Emily found her resolve wavering; the
feeling of it was distracting.