Initially, Callie had been worried about trying to adapt to highschool life. On her first go around, her extremely-religious parents had horribly stunted her socialization by cutting her off from any cultural touchstones except conservative news channels and AM radio, leaving her with hardly any connections to her peers; combined with the ridiculous moral rhetoric they’d terrified her with, she struggled to overcome a decade of programming with almost no tools in how to relate to others, which alienated and isolated her to an extremely uncomfortable degree. Strangely-enough her second attempt was also somewhat awkward, but for almost the exact opposite reason.
Having lived for over three decades already, her social skills and ability to read other people would’ve been impressive for an adult, but as a teenager it made her a figure of almost zen-like wisdom. Combined with her imposing frame, ruthless good looks, and an excellent overall athletic ability, she immediately proved to be quite popular wherever she went.
From an external perspective she might have seemed to be doing quite well, but internally Callie was frequently lost whenever it came to discussing pop culture using appropriate slang common to her adopted generation. Fortunately her ability to excel everywhere else meant that she could truthfully claim not to have seen whatever viral video her peers had been gushing over, and her ignorance would be perceived as an enviable aloofness; her willingness to then allow her excitable classmates to inundate her with said clips or dump lengthy gossip on her earned her a reputation as a worthwhile conversationalist, and as a result she quickly ingratiated herself with her peers.
She was hot, smart, fit, polite, understatedly funny and eminently capable, and it made her miserable.
“I can’t seem to dig my way out of this hole,” she complained to Jersey at lunch time. “Whatever I do and however I do it, the kids just flock to me like I’m the lead in a highschool football movie.”
As a sophomore the younger sister was compelled to take first lunch, but Callie’s flexible schedule allowed her to skip over the ‘cooler’ second lunch to see her bestie, a move that bafflingly made her seem charmingly avant-garde to the rest of the student body.
“So it’s bad that people like you?” Jersey asked, phrasing her question as a blunt restatement of Callie’s gripes to prove a point; while the elder sister could appreciate it as a considerate rhetorical device, the rest of the school thought the younger sister’s tendency to repeat the obvious meant she was too stupid to ever have understood anything the first time, thus buoying her growing reputation as the biggest bimbo on campus.
“Obviously!” Callie exclaimed, venting her frustration. “I’m in my mid-thirties, right? I have no fucking clue what this generation is about, but they keep trying to drag me into all of their plots and dramas and love-triangles or whatever.”
“You’re seventeen,” she reminded her, again restating the obvious in her breathy timbre. “You’re as much a kid as anyone else here.”
“Not mentally, though,” she insisted. “If this was my first time I might’ve enjoyed the attention, but I’m not even doing anything to put myself out there. It’s like … ⸻ I don’t know, like my pheromones are irresistible or something. Like I’m just radiating this aura.”
“That’s what ‘alpha’ types are supposed to be like, innit?” Jersey mused.
“I’m not an ‘alpha male’,” Callie growled irritably, annoyed by the comparison.
Grinning impishly, the younger sister shook her head, tossing waves of golden silk back and forth. “Not a male, no. I mean like an ‘alpha’ in those fanfics you read. One of those confident lesbians with big muscles and an even-bigger co⸻”
“I get the picture,” she interrupted, clapping a hand over Jersey’s mouth before she could finish as a teacher walked within earshot, muffling her salacious line of reasoning before it got either or both of them in trouble.
Contrary to her goals however, the gesture did almost nothing to calm the petite girl’s mischievous streak, and the points of her nipples poking against the fabric of her top indicated that it might’ve exacerbated the problem instead. Perhaps trying to fight the public perception of Jersey as an idiotic, sex-addled slut was a losing battle, but it grated on Callie’s nerves that everyone was so willing to treat the older sister as a school idol and the younger as a horny chav. From her perspective, both of their reputations were unearned and undeserved ⸻ though given how many of the boys in class had pinups of her sister’s abandoned cam-star career as their phone backgrounds, perhaps a portion of Jersey’s rep was forgivable.
“Either way,” Callie continued, releasing the petite girl from her gag, “it’s getting to be obnoxious. I’ve been invited to like a dozen parties this weekend, and I’m worried that if I don’t go to at least one of them then it’ll cause trouble.”
The Veil’s purpose was to obscure changes brought-about through magic, which meant they were at least nominally obliged to follow-along whatever path it cleared for them. Since Callie was a popular highschool student, she would need to maintain the image of being both popular and a highschooler or the Veil would inflict consequences designed to drag her back on course. For some strange reason, the penalties Callie incurred were always worse than even Genie believed was proportionally reasonable, as though the Veil hung unusually thick around her. Unwilling to accidentally expose her adopted sister to danger, she knew she’d have to eventually bite the bullet and act like the girl everyone expected to see, but that expectation rankled her fur nonetheless.
“So why not go?” Jersey wondered; Callie couldn’t help but think that the way her pouty lips formed the last syllable looked unbearably cute, and the somewhat clueless vibe it added to her was just a tiny bit sexy. “It’s not like you have to worry about not studying enough or something.”
“Because I’m worried about what’ll happen to you,” she replied apprehensively. “With the ‘geas’ or whatever targeting you, I don’t want to leave you alone ⸻ but given how all the boys drool over you, I don’t want to drag you out with me to a rager, either.”
“I could take care of myself,” Jersey assured her. “I’m not helpless, and if anyone wants to look, they’re free to look; other people’s boners aren’t my problem.”
“Sure,” Callie allowed tentatively, wanting to support her bestie enjoying her wish-driven body, “but what if they try to do something about it? Something … physical.”
She smirked in response, leaning in closer as she fixed the older girl with a seductive look. “Then you’ll rescue me, won’t you?”
Entirely too aware of the way her outsized frame towered over the smaller girl, Callie couldn’t stop that possessive rumble in her chest from starting up again; sliding her arm around the other girl’s waist as she drew her closer, the edges of her vision blurred with a rising pink haze. Defensive of her ‘little sister,’ she wanted to acknowledge the truth of her claim, but a persistent desire had crawled up from the back of her mind, reminding her of how badly she’d wanted her bestie for years, and everything she’d done to the petite girl in her predatory dreams.
“... And what if I do something about it?” she growled, a burning need lingering on her tongue. “Something … really bad.”
Jersey bit her lip. “I wouldn’t complain.”
Callie had meant for her words to scare the other girl off, to impart the seriousness and violence of her strengthening protective instinct, but the timbre of her voice had twisted her husky tenor into something closer to a salacious purr, and focusing on Jersey only made the sharp feelings in her chest grow that much stronger.
“Don’t joke about this,” Callie warned, the air around her steadily filling with a sweet aroma that she found deliciously intoxicating. “I’m doing my best to control myself, but sometimes when you’re around and I see everyone eyeing you with hungry looks, I get this urge to like ⸻ ….”
She trailed off, but she couldn’t drop the sentiment entirely. There was a need there, lingering in her tone ⸻ and Jersey could hear it, too.
“The ‘urge to’ what?” she giggled, licking her plush lips.
Setting a hand on the taller girl’s thigh, she slowly drew her fingers upward, the tips of her gels brushing gently against the bulge in Callie’s jeans.
“Protect me?” she tried, fingertips inching ever higher. “Claim me?” She leaned in even closer, squishing her voluminous chest distractingly against the other girl; Callie’s breath felt hot and heavy, panting with barely-restrained thirst. Jersey smirked, her adorably-defiant attitude exacerbating the other girl’s growing appetite. “... Conquer me?”
The world of the crowded lunchroom seemed to fade away, Callie’s senses sharpening as they filtered out everything else. Set against a meaningless backdrop of glass, Jersey filled her vision completely, crowding out the boisterous hum of conversation until the taller girl’s awareness was centered entirely on her: her soft lips, the swell of her chest, the arc of her hips, the scent of her honey-blonde hair. Callie’s fangs ached with purpose, and she wanted nothing more than to take the last step and taste the other girl ⸻ properly this time, not the accidental satiation of the moment in her room, nor the snarling debauchery of her dreams.
One clawed hand poised to stroke the soft skin of the petite girl’s face, Callie was roughly dragged back to reality by a disgusted hacking noise.
“Gross!” Megan Baxter shrieked as she jabbed an accusatory finger in their direction, alleging the sight of the two together was enough to make her vomit. “Brambell’s perving on her sister!”
If they were doing anything else, Callie would’ve just ignored the irritating brunette and carried on; after all, that’s how she’d been spending her school days up to that point anyway. Still, the audible acknowledgement of her behaviour towards her bestie was a rude reminder that her predatory personality was just as vile as she had feared. Hurriedly dropping her hand back to her lap, she slid away along the bench, furious with herself.
Jersey had just been playing with her, right? There was no reason to get so worked-up over a joke between friends. In their odd twist of circumstances, she was supposed to be the older girl looking out for the smaller, weaker, more-vulnerable of the pair. What was the point of being her ‘familiar’ or whatever if she needed more protection from her guardian than anyone else?
Besides … ⸻ she was pregnant, and it wasn’t Callie’s, of that much she was certain. There hadn’t been any penetration when she’d attacked her in her room, and even the kids at an abstinence-only school knew that a blowjob didn’t lead to babies. As it was, she was imposing on the other girl when she should’ve been considering how to take care of her, exploiting the accident of their circumstances to get closer to her bestie than she ever would’ve dared.
I’m so fucking pathetic, she growled inwardly, clenching her teeth. I’m everything they said I’d be.
You’re so much better than that, the soft soprano of her inner monologue argued. You weren’t doing anything wrong, and it’s obvious how much she was enjoying herself ⸻ and why wouldn’t she? You’re attractive, sweet, attentive ⸻
“Shut up,” she hissed under her breath, fighting against the mistaken self-image intruding on her thoughts.
“You got something to say, Brambell?” Megan jeered, reveling in Callie’s frustrated expression and her chance to publicly drag the taller girl. “Or is that mouth just for kissing your sister.”
Ignoring the obnoxious brunette entirely, Jersey’s cute pout creased into a guilty grimace as she slowly shook her head like she was trying to wake from a trance. “I shouldn’t’ve done that,” she mumbled, clearly upset with herself. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m so, so sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Callie quickly apologized, claiming fault as she seized hold of her backpack and made to leave. “I’ll see you after school.”
Inwardly berating herself, she fled the lunchroom, chased by Megan’s laughter and Jersey’s worried gaze.
Despite Jersey’s repeated assurance that she was okay, things were still awkward between the two on the trip home. Steeped in ‘realistic’ examinations of her behaviour, Callie couldn’t forgive herself for causing such a difficult scene; Jersey was already hounded by a dozen rumours dragging down her reputation and she didn’t need Callie to make everything worse.
If they had been going back home to an empty flat the awful mood would’ve undoubtedly continued, but Xena and Kelly ⸻ the latter a sort of golden retriever human equivalent ⸻ had their ways of cheering the two up through their sheer exuberance. It was impossible to stay upset when a sympathetic snoot laid itself in your lap, after all, and Kelly’s chatty personality quickly banished any torturous introspection.
After regaling the two teenagers with stories of her own indiscretionary exploits during her school years, Kelly moved on to amusing anecdotes about her little family. Well, ‘little’ in an affectionate sense, if not absolute size; apparently the desire for sorcerers to have children was incredibly powerful and difficult to resist even after having a flock of darlings running around. As Genie had sired the majority of the children, Kelly transitioned easily into playing up the djinn’s parental qualities.
“Of course some of our eldest have long figured-out who ‘Aunt Genie’ really is,” the leggy blonde had been saying as Callie dutifully occupied herself with prep for the evening meal, “but we’re not really a conventional family in the strictest sense so it’s never really been a problem. I expect your own little sweetheart will get along quite well with her half-sisters.”
“How can you be sure I’ll have a girl?” Jersey inquired, perhaps wondering if it were some sort of sorcerous premonition.
“All of Genie’s kids are girls,” the other blonde explained. “She told me the reason once, and I think it has something to do with her inability to create the right chromosome? Not that I’m complaining ⸻ she did my ‘equipment’ for me, you see, so we’re comparable in function if not, uh, size, which I’m sure you’re intimately familiar with.”
“We are,” Jersey smiled abashedly; Callie shot her a confused look, unsure of whom the ‘we’ could be referring to, but the petite girl either didn’t notice or pretended not to. “I guess my next question is, how are you so sure it’s Genie’s?”
“It has to be, innit?” Kelly shrugged, as though the other girl had forgotten some obvious piece of information. “Dornollë told me she had to, ah, establish a link with you as part of the conditions one of your wishes ⸻ not that I know what the wish was, mind you. All wish-specifics are completely confidential.”
“I suppose I believe that coming from a solicitor,” the shorter girl giggled, her amusement slowly fading into something almost resembling disappointment as she set a hand on her tummy. “I guess I was just kind of hoping that her ‘sire’ might be … someone else.”
Sharing a brief but understanding glance, the two blondes turned their gazes to Callie in unison, as though searching for her opinion.
“If not Genie, then who?” the taller girl shrugged, affecting an image of concentration as she pretended that her mise en place was more demanding than it really was. “One of the clients, maybe?” Not that Callie had ever seen any, of course, but she assumed that the prostitution charges had to come from somewhere. Read this novel at novelping . com for the best experience.
“Are you taking the piss?” Kelly accused, her tone an equal mix of amused understanding and hesitant indignance. “Or are you just the daft one of the pair.”
“It wasn’t me,” Callie insisted, expressing the thought she’d had hours prior. “Nothing we did ⸻ …” she trailed off, feeling guilty for having phrased her assault as being reciprocal; swallowing her self-directed anger, she tried again. “Nothing I did would’ve knocked her up.”
“That’s not how Genie described it,” her ‘mum’ countered, searching for the source of the taller girl’s perceived reticence. “In her rendition you were a very enthusiastic participant.”
Setting the knife down on the counter, she glowered at the lawyer, upset that Genie would've spread the story of her severe mistake to her lovers. “I’m telling you, it couldn’t have been me.”
“Couldn’t have been?” Kelly continued, her interrogating tone becoming much less charitable. “Or do you just not want it to have been.”
“What I want is hardly relevant,” she replied, frowning slightly as she pushed down on her feelings for Jersey.
Of course she wanted it to be hers. Callie had been thinking about it ever since her bestie had first talked about desiring to start a family. Regardless of her opinions on Mark, she had genuinely wanted Jersey’s wish to have children to come true ⸻ but deep in her heart she’d long harboured a private yearning and miserable resentment, dreaming of an impossible miracle where she could’ve been the sire of the other girl’s little ones.
“Let’s talk about something else,” Jersey implored softly, evidently having grown uncomfortable after hearing the taller girl’s answers.
“Are you sure, sweet?” Kelly returned in a much-gentler tone, easily stepping into the ‘mum’ role in the face of the petite girl’s distress.
“Please,” she nodded, shifting apprehensively in her seat.
Furious with herself for ruining yet another moment with Jersey, Callie returned to her cooking, grateful to have a reason to quietly erase herself from the scene.
After she’d cleared away the remains of dinner (in which she'd given herself a double portion on account of her voracious teenage appetite), Callie seized on her chance to retreat into the safety of solitude. Thankfully, Xena proved a convenient excuse to abandon the house for a little while; taking her fluffy companion out for a walk, she tried to shake off her depressing introspection and clear her head.
Xena had been particularly energetic lately, and Callie figured it had to be a result of her being drawn into the wish alongside her owner. The years had similarly evaporated from her canine bestie, freeing her from her joint pain so she could happily indulge her human in much-longer walks than before. Hoping to stay out for as much time as she could get away with, Callie took a meandering path as she tread along the streets of the neighborhood.
One of the nicer sections of town, their neighborhood was positioned close-enough inside the city to be an easy walk away from public transportation while remaining separate from the heavier traffic. It wasn’t exactly a gated community itself, but it sat on the periphery of a few of them; it often worked against her as the communities demanded a minimum number of police patrols, all of whom were happy to stop Callie and harass her with a bevy of pointless questions. It had gotten to the point where she’d considered taking her ID with her just to prove that she lived in the area, but she hated indulging a cop’s expectation of overzealous documentation.
Given that acclimating (if irritating) routine, the cruiser parked across the street from her house almost escaped her notice entirely.
Of course she’d seen it on her way out and suffered the suspicious stare of the man inside, but she’d chalked it up to typical creeping and thought nothing else of it. On her way back home over an hour later, however, she'd been shocked to find him still parked in the same spot. Approaching from the opposite direction as when she'd left, she could see what he was actually interested in; perhaps engaging in some kind of stakeout, it was obvious that he was watching her house very intently. The revelation sparked an eerie sense of consternation deep in her chest, her instincts warning her that the man was up to no good.
Deciding to test the water, she stole up on his cruiser from the driver’s side, pretending to play the part of a dutiful citizen.
“Are you lost, officer?” she smiled prettily.
Surprised by her sudden appearance, his hand went to his belt as whipped around to face her. Glowering at her, a momentary sense of recognition flashed across his angular features; frowning, he studied the taller girl for a few moments as if trying to place where he’d seen her before.
“You live around here?” he demanded, leaning on the implied authority lent to him by the badge and body armour.
“Obviously,” she confirmed, displaying Xena’s leash. While there was no way for a seventeen-year-old to intimidate a cop, she could at least try to make him uncomfortable. “You’ve been staring at my house for at least an hour, so I figured you didn’t know the neighborhood.”
“You got ID on you?” he replied gruffly, ignoring her veiled accusation.
“Do you?” she returned easily, pressing her luck. “The adults around here have been making complaints about thugs loitering in their vehicles and impersonating police officers.”
“Are you stupid?” he snapped, irritated by either her presence or her attitude, or maybe both. “None of this is fake.” Waving a hand, he indicated the mess of equipment inside the patrol car.
“How would I know? I’m only a teenager,” she countered, her tone dripping with a sickly-sweet, mocking politeness. “If you’re legit, it would make me feel a lot better if you gave me your badge number so I can call the station and ask if you’re supposed to be creeping on my residence or not.”
Clearly feeling threatened, he shot back a warning of his own. “It’s a serious offence to obstruct an officer carrying out his duties,” he snarled.
“I don’t know anything about that, either,” she replied coolly, “but I bet my mom does. She’s an attorney for the city, y’know ⸻ should I go ask her?”
It was a small lie, of course; Kelly was a lawyer for a city, obviously, but not the one they lived in. Still, if the officer tried to correct her on that point it would give away his inappropriate interest in their home; he stayed silent instead, preventing Callie from learning whether he knew what was up to, or if he was simply wary of being embroiled in a legal kerfuffle he didn’t need. Glowering once more at her, he gave her a rude gesture as he put his vehicle in gear and pulled away from the curb.
Satisfied with herself, she lingered for a few minutes anyway until she was certain he had completely left the area.
Giving her a little whine, Xena bumped against her leg.
“Sorry sweetie,” she murmured, crouching down to give her a proper scritching. “I’ll let you pee on his car next time.”
When she’d brought up the weird incident to Kelly, her ‘mum’ was clearly bothered by what had happened and cautioned her not to ‘play with fire’ in the future. Promising she’d look into it, magically or otherwise, she sent Callie off to bed with a vague reassurance that she and Genie were doing their best to protect the two sisters.
Unsatisfied with the perfunctory promise, Callie lay awake for a long while in her upstairs bedroom, scrolling her phone as she tried unsuccessfully to search the internet for anything that might explain what was going on, suspecting that the lingering cop might've had some connection to whatever was targeting Jersey. Scanning headlines in a news app while googling esoteric terms with her browser, she did her best to draw a link between the hate-filled rhetoric and violent consequences of the current administration’s executive orders, and the underlying structure of the shadowy cult.
At first she’d tried googling occult rituals and Christian extremism, but she quickly deduced that the former would be entirely unhelpful on account of the fact that the Veil would be actively suppressing information on real magic, and the latter didn’t dig up anything she wasn’t already aware of. Having been exposed to a number of ‘revivals’ and ‘spiritual conferences,’ she’d seen a vast swath of modern Abrahamic cults up-close; whatever was lurking around Jersey was something just a little different, even if her experience helped her guess at what their motivations might be.
Between the homemaker classes and the man that tried to command Jersey into supplying him sexual favours, Callie could imagine the interest the cult had in her ‘little sister’. Keeping in the tradition of conservative rhetoric venerating the unborn and sacrificing the born, she figured the cult’s ultimate goal was probably to father a bunch of babies to use as little spiritual batteries, ‘Quiverfull’ style. Callie believed Genie’s analysis had to be spot-on as far as that supernatural aspect was concerned and it meshed perfectly with her own understanding of masculine sexual proclivities and desire for power. It was a disgusting revelation if not a surprising one, and it made her wonder if they wouldn’t have tried to put a similar geas on herself if she had been a cis girl.
She had no idea how involved each member of the cult would be, but being supplied with young, fertile fuckdolls was undoubtedly a fantastic way to recruit and reward participants, and the unspoken hint of blackmail surrounding the sexual assault of a minor was a perfect insurance to maintaining their loyalty. An undeniably smooth operation, it made her skin crawl to imagine how long they’d been in operation before Jersey had caught their attention.
All of that together only reminded her of how incredibly outclassed she was.
There was little a seventeen-year-old girl could do against a committed system; anything she might try would inevitably expose herself and Jersey to a crazy amount of heat. Depending on how many hands they had inside the local government, she might not be able to get very far at all before they buried her and whatever evidence she’d collected.
And how would she obtain that ‘evidence’ anyway? Film a bunch of men assaulting underage girls on the side of the highway? It was a start, sure, but anyone stupid enough to get caught that easily was probably expendable anyway. Even if she did manage to capture the mundane aspects of their crimes, it would be impossible to punish their magical elements. The Veil would frustrate and retaliate against her attempts to expose the cult, which might even end-up obliterating the secular evidence as well; it would be a huge blow if she tried to accuse one of the supervisors of something awful only to have the Veil misplace, distort, or erase the video she’d filmed, and from what Genie had been saying something like that was a definite possibility.
Frustrated with her helpless inability to control anything in her new life, Callie flicked mindlessly through pages and pages of headlines on her phone, scrolling through dozens of passive-voice articles carefully skirting the outlines of domestic state-level abuses. Chewing through a hundred reports on sudden abductions, illegal deportations, police defense of far-right riots and the inexorable build-up of military presence in American streets, she stewed in her impotent outrage until she was finally too exhausted to stay awake.
As the fog of sleep curled around her like the familiar arms of a lover, she was no longer surprised to find herself adrift in another of her dreams.
Perhaps motivated by a desire for retribution, she prowled her neighborhood, striding through the darkness that puddled at the edges of streetlamps. A thousand strange scents pulled her in a hundred directions and she struggled to sift through their threads, hoping to discover a line to the interlopers in her territory. Snatching hold of a promising lead, she followed it out of the neat rows of houses, heading deeper into the city.
It seemed a mistake to be creeping around at night, but she was emboldened by the surety of her own strength and the armour of the muddied fantasy of her sleep, her hesitance melting into meaningless background distortion waving in the haze of her dreamscape. Overwhelmed with sensation, everything beyond her immediate area blurred into indistinct runs of colour and sound, yet she kept to a loping pace as she turned down corners and scraped through alleyways, pursuing her game.
She came upon him outside the stop where she and Jersey boarded public transit, his car parked carelessly up on the red brick of the tiny plaza as he congregated with others of his kind, ringed around the seated form of someone in clear distress, evident by the rapid beating of their heart. The sounds of human conversation were indistinct by comparison, unrecognizable to her in the same way that books were impossible to read inside a dream; still capable of recognizing tone and intention, it was obvious what they were planning, the pathetic creatures hiding behind numbers to appear strong.
Wrapped-up in the narrative of her nocturnal hallucination, she wasn’t motivated by the desire to ‘save’ whoever it was they had corralled; this would all burn away by the dawn, and there would’ve been no one to rescue in the first place. Still, it was a nice thought to toy with as she threw herself at the group, scattering the blue-clad figures in shrieks of alarm as her claws caught the adversary from earlier in the evening, her teeth ripping at the vulnerable juncture where his neck met his shoulder. Rewarded with a scream almost as delicious as the feeling of her claws sinking into the meat beneath his bulletproof casing, she spat out a mouthful of kevlar as she sought to put an end to the ominous threat against her mate.
A series of deafening pops exploded nearby, heralding an intense pain in her side. Heedless of the wet feeling oozing down her torso, gluing her dampening shirt against her skin, she dropped her wounded adversary to turn on those who had opened fire. It took only a few quick swipes to disarm the one who’d shot her, the weight of her massive frame dragging them to the pavement. Slashing at their throat with sharp claws, she left the dying creature to search for others; two had fled, but the third drew his own handgun, pointing it threateningly in her direction. Snarling in growing rage, she was upon him before he could squeeze the trigger, his arms twisting as she wrenched at them with her powerful grip, tearing muscle and splintering bone.
Distracted by his pleasant screams, she almost forgot about the trespasser. Spinning around, she spotted him clambering into his car, the engine already running. Lurching forward as he stamped the petal down to the floor, the dark vehicle barely missed her as he yanked the wheel back and forth, trying to hit her with two tons of metal. As the cruiser crashed into the shelter, crunching through plastic and bending metal, she launched herself at the driver-side door; the impact of her body dented the frame, splitting the outer covering.
Bashing through the thick glass with a flurry of furious punches, she finally slipped one arm into the cab. Catching him by the ripped vest, she fought to keep hold as he threw the car into reverse, trying to shake her off as he dragged her along the pavement. Far more stubborn than any human assailant, she grabbed him in both hands and leaned back, using the mass of her almost eight-foot frame to haul him out onto the street; the cruiser continued under its own power until it smashed into parked vehicles on the other side of the lane.
It was impossible for her to tell if his screams were begging for mercy or threatening further violence, but she was beyond caring either way. Baring her fangs and she growled in delight, she watched the light leave his eyes as she jammed her claws around the edges of the ceramic armor and into his armpits, tearing out the arteries along with chunks of flesh.
Satisfied with her victory over the foolish challenger, she slipped back into the shadows, limping slightly as she made her way back to her den.
Doubtlessly her prey had heard her scrabbling up the outer wall, as by the time she reached the window the petite girl was already opening the wood-and-glass barrier. Rewarding her thoughtful assistance, she bore down on the smaller girl as she climbed into the bedroom, pressing her against the mattress shoved up against the square portal. Blood still slicking her claws and dribbling steadily from the rip in her shirt, she smeared gore over the sheets as she sought to divest the sweet-smelling cow of her covering.
Murmuring some considerate but unintelligible noise, the smaller girl’s eyes were wide with fear for her sake; unable to properly discern the meaning of the words, the wolf merely tilted her head to the side, trying to understand. Plush lips drawn down into a worried pout, the petite girl repeated her question again, a pile of syllables that glanced off her ears; trying her best to console her favourite, she dipped her shoulders as she drew the other girl closer to her, lapping at her neck with her warm tongue. It neither answered the questions nor calmed her little cow, but the reassuring affection encouraged her to respond in kind, gentle fingers sliding through her mane as her prey offered her soft pets and soothing murmurs.
Shedding her clothes, she eagerly pursued the real reason she’d sought her favourite. The dull ache in her side and growing arc of the other girl’s belly convinced her to take a slower pace than she otherwise would’ve liked, but she found her little cow just as accommodating as she’d expected. Working out the excitement of her bloody evening, she enthusiastically claimed her prey, heedless of the dripping mess steadily ruining the sheets beneath them. A contented rumble hummed in her chest as she fucked the other girl, their bodies writhing together in the rising heat of the room.
Lapping beads of sweat from her favourite’s massive tits, the conscious part of her mind was surprised as much by how little there was as how delicious it smelled, the light scent of cinnamon rising from her soft skin. It combined with the aroma of vanilla from the cum dripping from the little cow’s overstuffed pussy, reminding her of a fresh cinnamon roll; delirious from the unfollowable plot of her ridiculous dream, she laughed at the delightful absurdity, abandoning the rest of her reasoning as she indulged in more of the sweet treat.
Only when she was finally satisfied completely did she allow herself to collapse, nuzzling her face against her favourite’s neck as she wrapped her in a tight embrace, clinging to her like a body pillow as she dozed off.
She awoke the next morning in the linen closet, buried deep in a nest of spare sheets. Despite how out-of-the-way her hiding place was, Jersey must’ve found her in the night anyway, evidently having tried to put a pillow under her head and then left a teddy as something of a calling card; Callie had been squeezing it all night, and the sweet gesture left a guilty feeling deep in her chest as she recalled the monstrous dream she’d had about the other girl. This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
Pushing open the slatted door, she unfolded herself into the hallway, conscious of an ache in her side; entirely unsure as to where her shirt had gone, she covered her chest with her arm as she dragged herself into the upstairs bathroom.
Examining herself in the mirror, she could see a weird bruise about the size of a baseball towards the right of her abdomen, the flesh scabbed-over like a healing scar. Pressing her fingers against it elicited some discomfort, but not enough to make her want to lie down or anything; concerned but not overly so, she returned to her room to dress, then went back downstairs.
Everyone was waiting for her, gathered around the kitchen island; Jersey offered the seat next to her, while Genie and Kelly stood in the kitchen proper like parents about to discipline their children with a stern lecture.
“What’s this about?” she asked as she hesitantly took the open seat, wincing slightly. “It’ll be time to head out for classes soon, so I hope it’s quick.”
“I already called-in your absence,” Kelly started, the tone of her voice somewhere between motherly concern and parental reproach. “We don’t want you leaving the house again until we figure out what’s going on.”
“How do you mean?” Glancing around at the expressions of the other women, she felt a little bit like she was in the middle of an intervention.
“Do you remember why you left last night?” Genie spoke up, the barest hint of worry concealed in her firm alto.
“I didn’t,” she answered uneasily. “As far as I know I was at home, asleep.”
“As far as you know,” Jersey echoed, worrying at her lower lip.
“Yeah,” she agreed, a rising panic building in her chest. “What’s this about?” she repeated, holding in her anxiety.
Taking out her phone, Kelly quick-tapped over to something and then set it down in front of Callie; dragging it towards herself along the counter, she saw the screen was open to a breaking news headline: 'One Wounded, Two in Critical Condition After Vicious Animal Attack.'
“I don’t get it,” she muttered, scrolling through the brief article; there were hardly any details save that a handful of police officers had been attacked by an enormous animal, sending three of them to the hospital. While she knew the location of the incident, nothing else was immediately familiar to her.
But then she spotted it: the smashed cruiser from her dream, jammed up against two parked cars with the driver-side door caved-in. An uncomfortable recognition settled on her features as she tapped open the image, alarmed by how closely it matched the events of her nocturnal fantasy.
“Are you sure you don’t remember anything?” Kelly tried again, softer this time.
“I mean, I had this weird dream,” she mumbled, working her way through ephemeral details she could scarcely recall. “I think I was somewhere downtown, and there was a fight ….” She trailed off, staring at the wrecked cruiser.
“You left the house last night around one or two in the morning,” Genie informed her, reconstructing what they knew. “I sent you a message on your phone as soon as I noticed but you didn’t answer, I assume because you hadn’t taken it with you. When I arrived at the house to try to follow you, almost no trace of your presence remained; it was like you had disappeared from the grounds, and didn’t return until almost three hours later.”
While their explanation sort-of matched the imagined time frame of her subconscious scenario, it didn’t make any sense at all. How could she just ‘disappear’ if they were magically monitoring her? She hadn’t felt all that in-control of her actions during her dream, which left her doubting her own internal narrative in a way she hadn’t since she stopped getting black-out drunk in highschool ⸻ well, the first time she was in highschool, anyway.
“At that point Jersey texted us,” Kelly continued, picking up where Genie left off. “She’d found you in her room, apparently, and told us that you seemed mostly okay.”
“Which was evidently a misleading truth,” the djinn acknowledged. “While you weren’t in any peril, there was an alarming amount of blood on the windowsill and sheets. Most of it wasn’t yours, and I’m not sure if we should be thankful for that or not.”
“It’s okay to tell us what happened,” Callie’s ‘mum’ assured her, the tone of her voice finally settling on ‘worried mother’. “We promise we won’t be cross with you, no matter what you say.”
“I genuinely don’t know,” Callie persisted, the ambient terror of her thoughts slowly spreading through her limbs. “I thought I was asleep, and I only really remember being, like … really big.” Pausing, she carefully considered her next words, but decided to be as honest as she could. “... Really big, and really angry,” she admitted. “I think I was looking for the cop I saw outside the house earlier, and I … ⸻ I wanted to hurt him.”
Genie watched her for a long moment, digesting what she’d heard. “... I see,” she said finally, evidently having come to a conclusion without deciding to share it. “I believe you achieved your aim.”
“It was a dream,” she muttered quietly, a bristly defensiveness weighing down her shoulders. “I didn’t know it was real.”
Even if she believed her own words, a knot of guilt formed in her stomach as she realised she didn’t particularly care what had happened to the man she’d seen outside the house ⸻ in fact, she was glad that they wouldn’t have to worry about him anymore. That self-assuredness was what made her so miserable; she knew Genie could read surface thoughts when she wanted to, so there would be no hiding her relief at seeing the man was in ‘critical condition’, or the disappointment and indignation she felt at the news that he wasn’t already dead.
Instead of an apology or explanation for her actions, all she could think was that next time she would make sure he didn’t survive.
“You won’t have to worry about that,” Genie assured Callie, her face an unreadable mask as she answered the taller girl’s thoughts. “I expect the news of their expiration will be reported shortly.”
“That makes me feel even worse,” she said with an ironic smile.
“Do you regret your actions?” the djinn asked.
“Of course not,” she answered uneasily, letting her apprehension hiss between her teeth in a long sigh. “I was sure he was after Jersey.”
Unable to even glance in the other girl’s direction, Callie let her gaze fall to her lap; she couldn’t bear to see how the other girl had taken her honest admission.
“That’s in line with your request, I suppose,” Genie allowed, crossing her arms beneath her chest as she considered the situation. “I might even say that this was an inevitable consequence of her wish.”
“Callie’s wish was to be a murderer?” Kelly gawped incredulously.
“No,” the djinn sighed, waving away her mistaken exclamation. “And it wasn’t Callie’s wish anyhow, it was a request made by Jersey on her behalf.” Drumming the fingers of one hand on her arm in a nervous fidget, she seemed deep in thought. “Perhaps this is my fault for entertaining such a wish without fully considering its consequences, especially in such … interesting times as these.”
“What I’m unsure of,” Jersey began in a muted voice, finally joining the conversation, “is why they’re reporting it as an ‘animal attack’.”
Sneaking a peek at the shorter girl, Callie was shocked that her first comment wasn’t some kind of accusation leveled in her direction. She’d killed a man, after all ⸻ maybe even more than one, and had then climbed in through her bedroom window covered in the evidence of her violence. How could she not hate that?
Or maybe she did, and the sentiment was buried deeper in her chest, held back by an unwillingness to accept her … former bestie’s crimes.
“That’s what it must have looked like,” Genie shrugged.
“But that’s not how she appeared to us,” Jersey challenged, unconvinced. “I will grant you that she has a sort of … bestial quality to her, but she was very much recognizable as a person.” She almost left it at that, but then added a qualifier to her analysis. “Mostly. I mean, I could tell she was Callie, and she looked more or less like herself after a fashion.”
“To you specifically, yes,” the dark-haired woman nodded. “Even my sight was somewhat baffled, and were I not a magical being I might not remember the encounter the same way.”
“If she’s disguising herself somehow,” Kelly tried, picking up a thread of understanding, “then that explains why the Veil is so tangled-up around her, innit?”
“It’s more that the Veil is the one doing the disguising,” Genie corrected. “Concealing the existence of supernatural creatures falls within its responsibilities.”
“What ‘supernatural creatures’?” Callie interjected, feeling lost.
“Unicorns and djinns and the like,” the dark-haired woman answered, an ironic half-smile turning up the corner of her mouth. “I can’t provide you with an exhaustive list as I only remember the ones I’ve personally seen.”
“So the wish is … turning her into a mythical animal?” Kelly wondered aloud, a perplexed look on her face; thinking better of her question, she quickly corrected herself. “I mean, I know you can’t tell us what the wish was, but is that kind of thing even possible?”
“I assume so,” the djinn guessed, her tone leading Callie to believe that plumbing the true depth of wish magic might be an undertaking that well-surpassed Genie’s hundreds of years in its practice. “That’s not what’s happening here, however. I think instead that the wish magic awakened some dormant sorcerous potential that matches the scope of what was requested.”
“Does that mean I was always a ‘mythical animal’?” Callie rejoined, skeptical of the assertion.
“It depends on how you’d prefer to define that bit of taxonomy,” Genie answered unhelpfully. “Whatever you were before matters less than what you are now, though, or what you might become. Since the wish magic isn’t causing the change, it will be almost impossible to reverse it ⸻ or at least, not without potentially harming either or both of you.” Tapping a finger against her lip, she considered the scenario carefully. “I’ve never tried to undo someone else’s pact on account of how chancy it is. That sort of ancient agreement has even older punishments, none of which tend to be … survivable.”
A grim revelation, it was a lot to take in all at once. Certainly she’d never heard any stories of her family being especially capable sorcerers or having a bestial tinge to their bloodline, but much like googling the occult Callie had to accept that the Veil would’ve obliterated any useful information anyway, or otherwise so thoroughly disguised it so that she wouldn’t understand what she might find. A frustrating double-edged sword, she could at least be happy that it had masked her … attack.
“... I think it might be my fault,” Jersey said in a low voice, her lips forming a cute pout as she worked her way through the upsetting quandary. “More than just the wish, I mean. Callie always comes to find me before she turns back, and she’s been, um … bigger every time.” Her cheeks flushed a bright pink. “In terms of mass, I mean, or her overall dimensions.”
“And she affects your own ‘dimensions’ in turn,” Genie mused.
Recalling how Jersey always seemed to be somewhat curvier and yet slightly more petite every time the other girl appeared in her dreams, Callie was forced to come to the same conclusion.
“It might be unwise to try to do anything about it at all, then,” the djinn posited. “A number of your wishes are wrapped-up in your physical form, and if the contract you’ve constructed has bled into it, then they might truly be impossible to separate.”
“So what,” Callie snapped, her mouth opening before she’d thought through any of her words, “am I just going to eventually turn into some kind of monster while Jersey … um, becomes … ah, like, usefully-shaped for that sort of thing?”
“Of course not,” Genie answered smoothly, eyeing her with a serious look. “You’re not ‘turning into’ anything, sweet. You already are a mythical beast.”